History of Technology in India, Vol. I: From Antiquity to c. 1200 A.D. v1.c39.s1: (A) Pre- to Post-Harappan Scenario
History of Technology in India, Vol. I: From Antiquity to c. 1200 A.D. v1.c39.s1
- Language
- English
Contents
(A) Pre- to Post-Harappan Scenario
v1.c39.s1.1
Mortimer Wheeler wrote in his book *Indus Civilization* (1968) that this civilization is a book ‘whose first and last chapters are missing’. Intensive research and new findings made during the last quarter of a century have largely restored the missing chapters. As a matter of fact there has been a sea-change in our concept of Pre-, Mature- and Post-Harappan scenario.
v1.c39.s1.2
Gregory L.Possehl has edited the proceedings of the 1979 Kashmir conference on Harappan Civilization attended and contributed by 49 world-renowned participants (Possehl, 1982). Forty papers were published; in the concluding paper, Robert H. Dyson, Jr. summed up the recent and profound paradigm changes in the study of the Indus Civilization (Dyson, 1982, pp. 417-27). He wrote :
v1.c39.s1.3
‘The specific paradigms which defined the study of Indus Civilization in the earlier years, and which must now be abandoned, include the concepts of: (a) a sudden and late origin, (b) a long period of widespread and static cultural uniformity, (c) a sudden and uniform collapse caused by (d) an invasion of the Indo-Aryans (with an assumed second millennium date)’.
v1.c39.s1.4
We may briefly mention the various justifications made by Dyson, quoting other reputed scholars, while discarding the four above-mentioned paradigms. We may also add some of our own observations.
v1.c39.s1.5
(a) Jean-Francois Jarrige’s presentation of the discoveries (1977) at Mehrgarh (also spelled Mehargarh), Kachi District, Baluchistan, documented (Jarrige, 1982, pp. 79-84) the introduction of a subsistence economy to the north-western part of India well before 5000 B.C. Later Jarrige reported ‘the first coarse ware’ of the neolithic settlement dated sixth millennium B.C. and the early graves of the 7th millennium B.C. showing shell, turquoise, lapis lazuli, beads, pendants and sacrificial young goats buried with the dead (Asthana, 1985, See Foreword by Jarrige). There were also the Mother Goddess human figurines. These indicate very early cultural contacts with Iran, Afghanistan and maritime people and development of the Mother Goddess sacrificial cult. Workshop for soapstone beads show sixth and fifth millennia craft specialisation and beginnings of long distance trade. The needs of agriculture caused increasing population in the alluvial areas. During the first half of the 4th millennium B.C. cylindrical jasper drills were evolved to serve the bead factories, and copper metallurgy was initiated, as evident from crucibles of the period containing some copper adhering to the walls. The latter evidence demolishes the hypothesis proposed by D.P. Agrawal (1971) that ‘the metallurgical know-how had already diffused from Iran, hence we get in the Harappan culture (3rd-2nd millennia) a full-blown technology right from the beginning’.
v1.c39.s1.6
The basic pattern of craft specialisation, mass production of potteries, terracotta figurines etc. at Mehrgarh clearly preceded the Mature Harappan Period. This is in consonance with Kenneth Kennedy’s interpretation of the human skeletal evidence that there had been a stable population in the north-western part of the sub-continent for several millennia prior to the Harappan period (Kennedy, 1982, pp. 289-295).
v1.c39.s1.7
The early settlement in the north-west was aided by the topography: gentle hills not too far from rivers, absence of dense forest, nearby maritime route for trade, pasture land and land suitable for cultivation of cereal crops. In such a topography, the earliest Indian civilization flourished at least several millennia before Iran developed village cultures. Shashi Asthana has rightly commented:
v1.c39.s1.8
“The Indus civilization was conceived locally in the court- yard of one or more of the Pre-Harappan cultures - Baluchistan was not only a nuclear zone of several Pre-Harappan Cultures (Amri, Kot Diji, Sothi), it also served as a barrier to mass infiltration of the West Asian cultures. Some feeble alien waves did come but soon got assimilated” (Asthana, 1985). A chapter in Asthana’s book is appropriately titled ‘The Collapse of the Irano-Centric View’.
v1.c39.s1.9
Further work is necessary so that the following problems are resolved. What was the precise origin of the Pre-Harappan Sothi culture which thrived in the Sarasvati valley? Were there specific influences towards it from the earlier Ganga-Vindhya (6570-4530 BC C-14 dates) and Bagor-Puskar neolithic traditions? The Ganga-Vindhya Culture did not spread like the Mehrgarh tradition; was it on account of the formidable dense forest in the Gangetic valley?
v1.c39.s1.10
Before the onset of the third millennium B.C., the Ganeswar - Jodhpura complex (around Jaipur district, Rajasthan) started to feed the Pre-Harappan Sothi, Kalibangan I and Mature Harappan cultures with chalcolithic materials (Agrawala and Kumar, 1982, pp. 125-34). The Sarasvati - Hakra river route (not extinct in the Colistan desert, Pakistan) was studded with Pre-Harappan settlements of artisans who specialised in fabricating intermediate and finished chalcolithic (copper and bronze) products. Thus there is enough evidence to suggest that the Mature Harappan civilization did not originate suddenly. The Harappan culture was indeed indigenous, synthetic and gradually evolved, and this permitted regional diversities and cultural interactions within and across its boundaries, without its central character being lost. We do not yet know how the concepts of planning the cities, trade infrastructure and central control emerged in the Early Harappan millieu. We are seriously handicapped by our ignorance of the Harappan script. But in the technology sphere, we may well imagine that the emergent urban culture, based on indigenous Pre-Harappan tradition, triggered new innovations such as the lost wax process of casting, diverse uses of minerals and metals, some imported and most locally processed.
v1.c39.s1.11
(b) Despite broad similarities, common seals, the use of standard bricks and weights, specific patterns of city layout etc., the heterogeneities in Harappan settlements clearly indicate diverse components in culture and tradition. Subsistence patterns were different in the major sites: wheat and barley at Mohenjodaro, Chanhudaro and Harappa; barley at Kalibangan; and rice and millet at Rangpur and Surkotada. Sacrificial altars appear to be absent at Mohenjodaro and Harappa (which show Pasupati cult and Mother Goddess figurines as at Mehrgarh) while present at Lothal and Kalibangan.
v1.c39.s1.12
Mature Harappan sites indicated different funerary practices. At Kalibangan, the cemetery yields abundant evidence for heterogeneous funerary practices with mutually exclusive areas. Social differentiation was strongly indicated. The Hakra river settlements were under Mature Harappan control.
v1.c39.s1.13
The transition of Kalibangan I to Kalibangan II indicates intrusion of the central Harappan authority and culture into a predominantly rural and agricultural millieu. Similarly the full- bloomed Indus culture made its appearance at Banawali (Hissar district, Haryana) with ‘proverbial dramatic precocity’ bringing in gold, etched carnelian and lapis lazuli jewelleries, seals and weights of merchants, Mother Goddess figurines, objects of copper, arrowheads, spearheads, sickle blade, double spiraled pins, fish hooks etc. This place was evidently an important trading center along the Sarasvati river, with well-demarcated acropolis and downtown, inhabited by Rgvedic paṇis.
v1.c39.s1.14
Chanhu-daro was a bead manufacturing centre. Whereas Mohenjo- daro must have been the capital, showing prolific varieties of metals and gem minerals, Harappa was more of a manufacturing centre containing many more furnaces and exhibiting specialities not found at Mohenjodaro - such as coral, mica, yellowish limestone, yellow arsenic. The last item is interesting; Harappan copper was often heavily alloyed with arsenic (to substitute scarce tin, scrap bronze pieces were carefully stored in jars) whereas Lothal copper had no trace of arsenic.
v1.c39.s1.15
Thus the previously held notion of ‘static cultural uniformity’ in the Harappan sites needs very serious alteration. Of particular importance is the cluster of Sarasvati valley sites which showed pre-Harappan Sothi-type trends, earliest agricultural fields, and despite intrusion of Harappan potteries, seals and artifacts, undeniable evidences of Rgvedic sacrificial altars and social stratification. The Harappan civilization represented unity and diversity. The Rgvedic culture on the banks of Sarasvati river network (mistaken as alien Aryan intrusion) belonged to the Indus civilization in the wider sense and yet represented very special features particularly sacrificial altars, pastoral cum agricultural community suffering economic exploitation in the hands of Rgvedic paṇis coming from the Indus valley. The Rgvedic strife was a civil war between tribes speaking the same language but different dialects. The Aryan- Dravidian theory is an over-statement of the reality.
v1.c39.s1.16
(c) The Harappan civilization did not collapse suddenly or uniformly. The field evidence shows that the decline was irregular, long-drawn and caused by different factors in different areas. These factors included changes in coast-lines, repeated floods in the Indus valley, the drying up of the Sarasvati-Hakra river system due to drought and tectonic changes, collapse of the Ur and Sumer civilizations (the trade with which had sustained the technologies in and around Mohenjodaro), civil strife and so on. Probably all these factors contributed to the slow but inevitable downfall of the first urban civilization in India.
v1.c39.s1.17
The major shift of population due to the drying of the Hakra (or Sarasvati) river (Mughal, 1982, pp. 85-95) was certainly of crucial importance. A significant population moved east from the Hakra area into Haryana and Uttar Pradesh; this is attested by the number of sites in this region going up from two to three in the Mature Harappan to sixty or more afterwards. Harappan potteries were gradually replaced by PGW in the Ganga-Yamuna valley.
v1.c39.s1.18
There was also a perceptible shift towards the south. New Harappan sites without antecedents came up in western central India. Bronze technology was transmitted to Daimabad. The Harappan technology was persistent and prolonged in Gujarat. A nexus was established between the Harappan culture in Gujarat and the Ahar Chalcolithic culture around Udaipur in Rajasthan. It is most probably the Ahar people who mined zinc ore in the Rajpura- Dariba mine (C-14 dates 1260 B.C., 1136 B.C. etc.) and pioneered the making of cementation brass (an effort to substitute tin in bronze) which was definitely used in Lothal and later at Atranjikhera (Biswas, 1993).
v1.c39.s1.19
Like the first chapter of the Harappan civilization, the last chapter of the ‘book’ is also likely to be deciphered and written in greater detail.
v1.c39.s1.20
(d) Writing on the recent paradigm changes, Dyson’s fourth and last point related to the so-called ‘invasion of the Indo- Aryans in the second millennium’. He observed :
v1.c39.s1.21
“The invasion thesis becomes a paradigm of limited usefulness. There is a continuing lack of agreement over the criteria by which the presence of the Indo-Aryans can be demonstrated and, even more surprisingly, an absence of a rigorous analysis of available archaeological evidence against the cultural content of traditional Vedic literature” (Dyson, 1982, 417-24).
v1.c39.s1.22
The skeletal record is mute and does not suggest any large scale massacre or the intrusion of any new race in the Harappan civilization (Kennedy, 1982, pp. 289-95). Dales questioned: “Where are the burnt fortresses, the smashed chariots and the bodies of the invaders”? (Dales).
v1.c39.s1.23
The history of the Indo-Aryans continues to haunt the study of Harappan civilization. At Kalibangan we find the Vedic sacrificial altar in a Harappan millieu. Lamberg-Karlovsky, Fairservis and many other scholars had to accept that the Indo- Aryans could have been in the Indus Valley a thousand years before the end of the Harappan civilization.
v1.c39.s1.24
Brain-washed by the linguists, the archaeologists vainly look for the evidence of Aryan intrusion. Jim G. Shaffer however writes categorically :
v1.c39.s1.25
“Current archaeological data do not support the existence of an Indo-Aryan or European invasion into South Asia at any time in the pre-or proto-historic periods. Instead, it is possible to document archaeologically a series of cultural changes reflecting indigenous cultural development from pre-historic to historic periods. The early Vedic literature describes not a human invasion into the area, but a fundamental restructuring of indigenous society that saw the rise of hereditary social elites.
v1.c39.s1.26
“The linguistic similarities (between the Indo-European languages) that are cited as proof of these human invasions have alternative explanations — What was theory became unquestioned fact. It is time to end the linguistic tyranny” (Shaffer, see Lukacs, ch. 4, pp. 77-90).
v1.c39.s1.27
The present author elaborated the theme in his 1990 essay on The Aryan Myth (Biswas, see Ray and Mukherjee, 1990, pp. 29-47) quoting Professor H.D. Sankalia’s letter (dated 10 October, 1986) written to him:
v1.c39.s1.28
“These theories (of Aryan intrusion) cannot be proven, unless definite knowledge regarding script, language etc. can be had—. The old problems, first raised in 1930, have remained unsolved”.
v1.c39.s1.29
The problem is artificial and falsely created. Like Shaffer, the present author also asserted (Biswas, see Ray and Mukherjee, 1990, pp 29-47) that the archaeological and literary (Vedic) data are easily correlated in terms of the obvious and alternative paradigm namely that the Ṛgvedic culture was autochthonous in the Sarasvatī valley overseeing the Indus valley civilization. These were indeed sister civilizations. At sites like Kalibangan and Bhagwanpura, the Ṛgvedic culture was Pre-Harappan which, in the words of B.B. Lal, ‘formed the base on which the Mature Harappan appeared like bubbles on a vast lake, only to disappear and merge into the waters of the lake itself (Lal, see Possehl, 1982, pp. 335-38).
Social factors underlying first urbanization
v1.c39.s1.t1.1
It is difficult to make firm statements on the subject except that the gravitation of diverse cultures (with strong technological components) towards Mohenjo-daro, Harappa and Kalibangan was a long-drawn process. The motivations were essentially economic with some theological overtones.
v1.c39.s1.t1.2
Stone, copper and bronze implements were used, and therefore Harappan era could be characterised as bronze age. Bronze was used more for decorative and agricultural/production purposes and less as a raw material for warfare. Hoes and celts must have been used for cultivating annually inundated Indus valley agricultural fields. Technology was sustained by agricultural surplus as attested by the huge brick-built granaries.
v1.c39.s1.t1.3
Several kinds of technologies such as gold, silver, copper, bronze metallurgy, pottery and bead industry flourished on the basis of well-established furnace technology. Sun- and fire-baked bricks had been evolved much earlier in the Mehrgarh culture, R.S. Sharma writes: ‘obviously the laying out of towns with intersecting streets and perfect drainage system, and the erection of houses all made of burnt bricks, must have required a huge staff of bricklayers, masons, wood-cutters, charcoal burners, metalsmiths, engineers, a fact which bears testimony to the great organizing feat of the Indus valley people’ (Sharma, R.S. 1983).
v1.c39.s1.t1.4
The other means of livelihood were cotton-growing, textiles, carpentry, river-and sea-based trade. Although magic, theology and priestcraft played strong roles in the society, the overriding power structure specialised in trade and its efficient management. The earliest specimens of writing on seals were probably meant for book-keeping. The use of uniform weights ensured standardisation and control over the huge Harappan network. The theological component of the culture promoted the studies of astronomy and geometry which were sustained in the Rgvedic and later Vedic cultures after the collapse of the Indus valley civilization.
Cites (1)
- Ṛgvedasaṃhitā — Sanskrit