The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c9: Mohenjo-daro and Harappā: general lay-out
The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c9
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Mohenjo-daro and Harappā: general lay-out
c9.1
Of the two major sites, the complex of mounds at Harappā, in the Montgomery district of the Punjab, was largely wrecked in the middle of the nineteenth century by the systematic extraction of bricks as ballast for the Lahore-Multān railway, and has otherwise been ransacked by local housebuilders. Nevertheless, enough remains to indicate that the general lay-out of this city was comparable with that of Mohenjo-daro, in the Lārkanā district of Sind, where excavation has revealed considerable elements of the town-plan, in spite of the age-long encroachments of the annual Indus flood. Both sites were, at a rough estimate, upwards of 3 miles in circuit; the exact extent cannot be gauged on the surface, since trial-excavations at Harappā have shown that, beyond the fringe of the mounds, the foundations of buildings lie buried beneath the level surface of the plain, and there are hints of a similar spread on the northern fringe of Mohenjo-daro. The mounds themselves, at each site, fall into two groups: a high mound towards the west, and a much more extensive but somewhat lower series to the east. At Mohenjo-daro a large modern mud-quarry to the west of the high mound shows no evidence of occupation hereabouts; in other words, this mound stood on the fringe of the main area of the town, and there is every appearance that the corresponding high mound at Harappā occupied a similarly peripheral position. Even without excavation, the interpretation of this arrangement was not difficult: it is one which recurs abundantly amongst the towns of Asia to-day and is well illustrated, for example, by Lahore or Multān. The acropolis on the one hand and the lower city on the other fit into a familiar Eurasian polity (fig. 4).
c9.2
At both cities the acropolis or citadel was a parallelogram some 400-500 yds. from north to south and 200-300 yds. from east to west, with a present maximum height of about 40 ft. At both, whether by chance or design, it was similarly oriented, with the major axis north and south. At Mohenjo-daro it appears to occupy an *insula* in the lay-out of the town, of which the main streets form a grid-plan enclosing other *insulae* on that scale. The eviscerated mounds of the lower city at Harappā have not been dug, but it is fair to assume a similar plan there, and to credit the Indus civilization generally with a carefully engineered civic lay-out from as early a period as has been reached by excavation. In this respect it seems to differ from the available town plan of its Mesopotamian counterpart, Ur,¹ where the street-plan hinges upon a main street that wanders and curves with the casualness of a village lane or of New York’s Broadway, and suggests a phase of evolutionary development. If any inference may be drawn from this comparison, it might be that Mohenjo-daro, unlike Ur, was laid out at a time when town-planning had passed the experimental stage—an inference which, if correct, would be consistent with the relatively later date ascribed to the Indus site. But unknown factors at present impair the value of this argument.
c9.3
¹ C. L. Woolley, *Ant. Journ.* XI (1931), pl. XLVII.
c9.4
We now turn to the principal sites *seriatim*.