The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c6.4

c6.4

For what such claims are worth, the Indus civilization can thus claim a larger area than any other of the known pre-classical civilizations. From Rupar to Sutkagēn-dōr is 1000 miles. The axis of the two Egypts is only some 600 miles, and lowland Mesopotamia is of a similar length. But the significance of these figures extends beyond mere mileage. Behind so vast a uniformity must lie an administration and economic discipline, however exercised, of an impressive kind. For, as has been indicated above, the Harappans were not an oasis in a desert; the adjacent hills were teeming with a variegated life which must, we may suppose, have encroached readily upon the riverine civilization had this lacked effective integration. Of the precise nature of that integration we have no knowledge, and our only hope of information lies in the interpretation of the Harappan script. But the map may contain a hint of the matter. Of the sixty or more Harappan sites, two—Harappā and Mohenjo-daro—are so immensely larger than the others as to suggest to Professor Stuart Piggott a duality of control. “We are entitled to regard the Harappā