Excellent study material for all civil services aspirants - being learning - Kar ke dikhayenge!
SHARE:
The Indus Civilisation - Part 3
12.0 Origin, maturity and end
The Harappan culture existed between 2500 B.C. and 1800 B.C. Its mature phase lay between 2200 B.C. and 2000 B.C. but throughout the period of its existence it seems to have retained the same kind of tools, weapons and houses.The whole style of life appears to be uniform. We notice the same town-planning, the same seals, the same terracotta works, and the same long blades. But the view stressing changelessness cannot be pushed too far. We do notice changes in the pottery of Mohenjo-daro over a period of time. By the eighteenth century B.C., the two important cities of the Harappan culture, Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, disappeared but the Harappan culture at other sites faded out gradually and continued in its degenerate phase in the outlying fringes in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh.
It is as difficult to explain the origin of the Harappan culture as its end. Several pre-Harappan settlements have been found in Baluchistan and in Kalibangan in Rajasthan, but the connection between them and the mature Harappan culture is not clear, though the Harappan culture may have evolved out of these indigenous settlements. Nor do we have clear proof of outside influence which helped the rise of the Harappan cities in the subcontinent. Contact with Mesopotamian cities may have provided some stimulus to the development of the Harappan culture. But there can be no doubt about the Indianness of the Harappan culture. Certain elements distinguish it from the contemporary cultures in western Asia. It planned its towns with their chess-board system, streets, drainage, pipes and cess pits. On the other hand, the Mesopotamian cities show a haphazard growth. Rectangular houses with brick-lined bathrooms and wells together with their stairways are found in all Harappan cities. Such town-planning is not to be found in the cities of Western Asia. No other people in antiquity had built such an excellent drainage system except perhaps those of Crete in Knossos, nor did the people of Western Asia show such skill in the use of burnt bricks as the Harappans showed.
The Harappans produced their own characteristic pottery and seals; the latter represented the local animal world. Above all, they invented their own typical script, which bears no resemblance to the Egyptian and Mesopotamian scripts. Although the Harappan culture was a Bronze Age culture, they used bronze on a limited scale, and largely continued to use stone implements. Finally, no contemporary culture spread over such a wide area as the Harappan culture did. The structures of Harappa cover 5 km in circuit, and in that way is one of the largest of its type in the Bronze Age. No urban complex of the Harappan magnitude has been discovered so far. While the Ancient cultures of Mesopotamia continued to exist even after 1800 B.C., the urban Harappan culture disappeared at about that time. Various causes have been suggested.
It is held that the amount of rainfall in the Indus region slightly increased around 3000 B.C. and then decreased in the earlier part of the second millennium B.C. This may have adversely affected agriculture and stock breeding. Some ascribe the decline to the decreasing fertility on account of the increasing salinity of the soil caused by the expansion of the neighbouring desert. Others attribute it to a sudden subsidence or uplift of the land which caused floods. Earthquakes caused changes in the course of the Indus which led to the inundation of the hinterland of Mohenjo-daro. And, still others point out that the Harappan culture was destroyed by the Aryans.
The consequences of the disintegration of the largest Bronze Age cultural entity are still to be clarified. We do not know whether the urban eclipse led to the migration of merchants and craftsmen, and the dissemination of the elements of Harappan technology and way of life in the countryside. Something is known about the post-urban situation in Sindh, Punjab and Haryana. We find agricultural settlements inside the Indus region, but its connection with the preceding culture is not clear. A lot of the Indus story is shrouded in mystery.
12.1 Post-Urban phase of the Harappan culture
The Harappan culture seems to have flourished until 1800 B.C. Afterwards its urban phase marked by systematic town planning, extensive brickwork, art of writing, standard weights and measures, distinction between the citadel and the lower town, use of bronze tools, and red ware pottery painted with black designs practically disappeared. Its stylistic homogeneity disappeared, and the post-urban Harappan stage was marked by sharp stylistic diversity. Some traits of the post-urban Harappan culture are found in Pakistan, and in central and Western India, in Punjab, Rajasthan, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Delhi and western Uttar Pradesh. They broadly cover the period from 1800 B.C. to 1200 B.C. The post-urban phase of the Harappan culture is also known as the sub-Indus culture and is more popularized as the late Harappan culture.
The late Harappan cultures are primarily Chalcolithic in which tools of stone and copper are used. They do not show metal objects requiring complicated casting, although these consisted of axes, chisels, knives, bangles, curved razors, fish-hooks and spear-heads. The Chalcolithic people in the later Harappan phase lived in villages subsisting on agriculture, stock raising, hunting and fishing. Probably the dissemination of metal technology in the rural areas promoted agriculture and settlements. Some places such as Prabhas Patan (Somnath) and Rangpur, both in Gujarat, are the direct descendants of the Harappan culture. But in Ahar near Udaipur only a few Harappan elements are found. Gilund which seems to be a regional centre of Ahar culture has even brick structures which may be placed roughly between 2000 B.C. and 1500 B.C. Otherwise burnt bricks are not to be found anywhere else except in the a Harappan phase at Bhagwanpura in Haryana; stray pieces occur at the OCP site of LaI Quila in Bulandshahr district in Western Uttar Pradesh. It should be, however, emphasised that Harappan elements neither appear in the Chalcolithic culture of Malwa (c. 1700 - c. 1200 B.C.), which had its largest settlement at Navdatoli, nor in the numerous Jorwe sites found in the valleys of the Tapi, Godavari and Bhima, The largest of the Jorwe settlements was Daimabad which had about 22 hectares of habitation with a possible population of 4000; it may be considered Proto-urban. But a vast majority of the Jorwe settlements were villages.
The post-urban Harappan settlements have been discovered in the Swat Valley. Here the people practised a developed agriculture and cattle-breeding together with pastoralism. They used black-grey burnished ware produced on a slow wheel. This ware resembles the pottery from the Northern Iranian plateau during the third millennium B.C. and later. The Swat valley people also produced black-on-red painted and wheel-turned pottery which shows close links with the Indus pottery auring the early post-urban period. They show the connection with a post-urban culture associated with Harappa. The Swat valley, therefore, may be regarded as the Northernmost outpost of the late Harappan culture. Several late Harappan sites have been excavated in the Indian territories of Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh and also in Jammu.
Mention may be made of Manda in Jammu, Chandigarh and Sanghol in Punjab, Daulatpur and Mitethal in Haryana and Alamgirpur and Hulas in Western Uttar Pradesh. It seems that the Harappans took to rice when they came to Daulatpur in Haryana and Hulas in Saharanpur district of Uttar Pradesh. Ragi or the finer millet is not known so far to any Harappan site in North India. In Alamgirpur the late Harappans also produced cotton, as can be inferred from the cloth impression on the Harappan pottery.
The painted Harappan pottery found in late Harappan sites in Northern and eastern areas is replaced with less intricate designs although some new pot forms appear. Some late Harappan pot forms are found interlocked with Painted Grey Ware remains at Bhagwanpura, but by this time the Harappan culture seems to have reached a point of complete dilution. In the late Harappan phase no object for measuring the length is noticed. In Gujarat, cubical stone weights and terracotta cakes were absent in the later period. Generally all later Harappan sites lack human figurines and characteristic painted designs. Although faience went out of fashion in Gujarat, it was freely used in North India. The post-urban phase of Harappa saw the end of the Indus trade with the West Asian centres. Lapis lazuli, chert, carnelian beads and copper and bronze vessels are either absent or scarce as trade items. All this was natural because most late Harappan sites excavated in Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh are rural settlements.
During the later phases of the Harappan culture some exotic tools and pottery indicate the slow percolation of new peoples in the Indus basin. A few signs of insecurity and violence appear in the last phase of Mohenjo-daro. Hoards of jewellery were buried at places, and skulls were huddled together at one place. New types of axes, daggers, knives with midribs and flat tangs appear in the upper levels of Mohenjo-daro. They seem to betray some foreign intrusion. Traces of new peoples appear in a cemetery belonging to the late phase of Harappa, where new kinds of pottery occur in the latest levels. New types of pottery also occur in some Harappan sites in Baluchistan. At several sites in Punjab and Haryana, Grey Ware and Painted Grey Ware, generally associated with Vedic people, have been found in conjunction with some late Harappan pottery dated around 1200 B.C. All this can be attributed to the barbarian horse-riding people who may have came from Iran through the hills. But the new peoples did not come in such numbers as to completely overwhelm the Harappan cities in Punjab and Sindh. Although the Rig Vedic Aryans settled down mostly in the land of the Seven Rivers, in which the Harappan culture once flourished, we have no archaeological evidence of any mass-scale confrontation between the mature Harappan and Aryans. The Vedic people may have encountered the people belonging to the late Harappan phase between 1800 B.C. and 1200 B.C.
According to an Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) report that was published in April 2015 the largest and the oldest sites of the Harrapan civilization are located in the Bhirrana village in Fatehbad district, Carbon dating techniques reveal that the site dates to a period between 7570-6200 BC. With this finding this site has discplaced Mehrgarh as the oldest site of the Indus valley civilization. According to this report, Rakhigarhi, a village close to Bhirrana, is the largest Harappan site in the world. Excavations have revealed that the site is spread over 400 hectares, nearly double that of Mohenjo Daro in Pakistan.
The new excavations have also revealed a variety of ancient artefacts including terracotta bangles; pottery pieces; a seal and a pot shard, both inscribed with the Harappan script; pot shards painted with geometric designs; and terracotta animal figurines, all belonging to the Mature Harappan phase of the civilisation. These signify the existence of material prosperity in the region. In addition, five trenches around the mounds have revealed residential rooms, a bathroom with a soak jar, drainages, a hearth, and a platform, all built with mud bricks. The rest of the ancient Harappan site of Rakhigarhi still lies buried under the present-day village, with several hundred houses built on the archaeological remains.
In October 2014 it was reported that a 5,000-year-old stepwell has been found in one of the largest Harappan cities, Dholavira, in Kutch, which is three times bigger than the Great Bath at Mohenjo Daro. It's rectangular and 73.4m long, 29.3m wide, and 10m deep.
COMMENTS