An Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology v1.c9.s7.21

v1.c9.s7.21

The writer’s previously-mentioned hypothesis, modified by Agrawal, has bloomed into a full-fledged model in a recent writing of Gupta, 1975-6, pp. 141-6, who concedes that the Kot Diji-Sothi complex provided a strong base achieved by a long process of evolution. ‘Therefore,’ says he, ‘what is mysterious to us is not so much the origin of the basic form of the Harappa culture but the suddenness with which it appears on the so-called pre-Harappan sites’ [Kot Diji and Kalibangan] which Gupta calls the ‘First Cities in [Pakistan and] India’. The much-needed opportunity for the take-off towards a richer and more complex urban set-up was provided when natural calamities overtook them—e.g. tectonic disturbances at KALIBANGAN and a devastating fire at Kot Diji, there being no evidence of the bearers of the Harappa culture being responsible for the destruction of the settlements. ‘Calamities themselves generate, almost all of a sudden, a number of new forces and factors which successfully bring about socio-economic changes of vast dimensions . . . The emancipator, one or a group of a selected few, becomes the hero . . . Herein lies the birth of a citadel . . . To us, the citadel of Kalibangan was more modest in dimensions and contents than the citadels of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro . . . Obviously, we visualize the birth of twin-mound system in the lower Sarasvatī basin and its later movement in the Ravi and Indus plains . . . “The plan of the Harappan fortification followed the plan of the pre-Harappan fortification while the roads followed a new plan” (Thapar, 1978, p. 98) . . . Nothing of the kind is witnessed at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro; they were planned from the very beginning . . . To us it appears that the Harappa ideology was basically mercantile . . . The overall form of the Harappa culture appears to have been determined by the mercantile ideology whose pace is usually extremely rapid.'