Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c7.128

c7.128

First, the decline. Everywhere in the later levels of Mohenjo-daro the excavators have found an increasing deterioration in standards of building and living. Walling and flooring tended to become more ramshackle, older buildings were subdivided, even domestic courtyards, the focus of the household, were partitioned in untidy fashion. And that this process was prolonged may be illustrated by a single example. Adjoining the northern end of the Great Granary on the side of the acropolis, the main building-level is over twenty feet below the present level of the plain, and a dozen feet below the present dry-weather water-table. In digging down to it in 1950, I passed through a continuous succession of buildings, all subsequent to the construction of the acropolis-mound and the immense brick podium of the flanking granary. The lower buildings, so far as explored, were still of tolerably good build but the upper walls, enclosing small rooms, were of increasingly shoddy aspect. The highest of them, founded upon a mass of débris, were right at the top of the podium, at least forty feet above the lowest established level of the mound. Interpreted in terms of time, this vast accumulation must be supposed to represent the lapse of several centuries.