EARLY CIVILISATIONS OF THE NORTHWEST
EARLY CIVILISATIONS OF THE NORTHWEST
PREHISTORY AND THE INDUS CIVILISATION
When the great cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro were discovered in
the 1920s the history of the Indian subcontinent attained a new dimension.
The discovery of these centres of the early Indus civilisation was a major
achievement of archaeology. Before these centres were known, the IndoAryans were regarded as the creators of the first early culture of the
subcontinent. The Vedic Indo-Aryans had come down to the Indian plains
in the second millennium BC. But the great cities of the Indus civilisation
proved to be much older, reaching back into the third and fourth millennia.
After ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, this Indus civilisation emerged as
the third major early civilisation of mankind.
Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro show a surprising similarity although they
were separated by about 350 miles. In each city the archaeologists found
an acropolis and a lower city, each fortified separately. The acropolis,
situated to the west of each city and raised on an artificial mound made of
bricks, contained large assembly halls and edifices which were obviously
constructed for religious cults. In Mohenjo-Daro there was a тАШGreat BathтАЩ
(39 by 23 feet, with a depth of 8 feet) at the centre of the acropolis which
may have been used for ritual purposes. This bath was connected to an
elaborate water supply system and sewers. To the east of this bath there
was a big building (about 230 by 78 feet) which is thought to have been a
palace either of a king or of a high priest.
State formation in Mohenjo-Daro, Harappa and Kalibangan was
probably not uniform at this stage, each centre serving as an independent
capital of its particular region. But then from about 2500 BC onwards
there is evidence for a striking uniformity of all these centres. This was
probably achieved at the cost of war and conquest. The sudden extinction
of early Kalibangan around 2550 BC and its reconstruction in the uniform
Harappan style about 50 to 100 years later seem to point to this
conclusion. There was also a spurt of fortification at Harappa at that time
where some city gates were completely closed with bricks. Kot Diji
witnessed a second conflagration around 2520 BC from which it never
recovered. But Lothal and several other settlements which have been found
in recent years can also be traced to the Mature Harappan phase of rapid
expansion and uniform construction.
