Appendix 1 - Prehistoric Indus Civilization

[Note: Appendices I & II are written and added by Swami Prajnanananda.]

Empires rise and fall. Civilization flash forth and vanish. Vanished off from the face of the earth, the mighty empires of Egypt, Chaldia, Babylonia, Mesopotemia, Assyria, Iran, Greece and Rome and have left behind them a trail of ruins in the shape of Pyramids, Ziggrats, palaces and sculptures. With the help of these ruins, archaeologists and historians have tried to reconstruct the history and culture of the peoples inhabiting them, so as to find who they were and what sort of life they lived. Rivers are the veins and arteries of civilization. Rivers like Nile, Tigris, Euphrates, Sarasvati, Indus, Ganges, Jamuna, etc. played conspicuous part in shaping the civilization and culture of the peoples inhabiting their banks. Vedic Aryans first settled on the banks of Sarasvati and then migrated to the Gangetic valley. That the Indus and the Ravi too played an important role in shaping the civilization of prehistoric India was unknown to the scholars and archaeologists for a long time. They, inspite of India’s possessing earliest human documents, the Rig Veda, transmitted from generation to generation through human mouth, felt shy, as it were, to assign a place to ancient India in the same rank with the countries of the bygone days, whose national remains they unearthed in other ancient tracts, but excavations of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro by a band of Indian and Western historians and archaeologists have revolutionized their notion about the antiquity of Indian civilization.

In 1920-21, Sir John Marshall directed Rai Bahadur Dayaram Sahni, then Superintendent of Archaeology, to undertake the excavations of the mounds of Harappa in the Montogomery district of the Punjab. Two years later Mr. R. D. Banerjee, Superintendent of Archaeology, Western Circle, undertook the excavation of the Buddhist stupa on an old mound at Mohenjo-daro in the Larkana district in Sind. Rectangular stone seals with figure of one-horned bull and inscription in pictographic script were first obtained from Harappa by Sir Alexander Cunningham and published by him in his Report for 1875. Other specimens were subsequently acquired by the British Museum and published by Dr. Fleet in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of 1912. But these seals did not attract the attention of the Sumerologists, who were familiar with the bone roll cylinder, found at Susa, bearing an inscription in pictograph of the same type and first published in Delegation en Perse, vol. ii. It was not till Sir John Marshall published some of the seals and other objects; discovered by Rai Bahadur Dayaram Sahni at Harappa and Mr. Rakhaldas Banerjee at Mohenjo-daro in the Illustrated London News of the 20th September, 1924, that the attention of the Sumerologists was drawn to Indian seals, discovered outside India.

Mohenjo-daro, the ‘Mound of the Dead’ stands on a long narrow strip of land between the main bed of the Indus and the Western Naro loop. Sir John Marshall has written regarding it: “The mounds which hide the remains of the ancient city, or rather series of cities (since there are several of them superimposed one upon the other) are conspicuous from afar in the rivers’ flat, the highest of them, near the north-west corner, rising to the height of some 70 feet, the others averaging from 20 to 30 feet above the plain. The actual area covered by the mounds is now no more than about 200 acres, but there is little doubt, as we shall presently see, that floods and erosion have greatly diminished their extent and that the deep alluvium deposited by the river has. covered all the lower and outlying parts of the city”. In 1922, the late R. D. Banerjee undertook the excavation of the remains of the Buddhist stupa and monastery on the highest mound. Coins, found in the debris of the monument, indicated that it was referable to the early centuries of the Christian era. Immediately below the earliest Buddhist pavement, Mr. Banerjee found remains of masonry structures, constructed with the same type of bricks as used in the Buddhist buildings, but associated with painted pottery and seals bearing designs and inscriptions in pictrographic script.

In 1923-24 and 1924-25, excavations were continued by Messrs. M. S. Vats and Rai Bahadur K. N. Dikshit. Sir John Marshall undertook the supervision of the operations, organised on a much wider scale in 1925-26. The work continued in the following year by Rai Bahadur Dayaram Sahni and Mr. Mackey. Now the level of the plain around Mohenjo-daro was 26 to 39 feet below the present level in the chalcolithic period. Between the level of the subsoil water and the summit of the mound, Sir John Marshall recognised not less than seven strata of remain. The first of the seven strata was termed by him as the ‘Late Period', comprised the 1st, 2nd and 3rd strata; the second, which was termed the ‘Intermediate Period’ comprised of the 4th, 5th and 6th strata; while the third, which was termed the ‘Early Period’ was for the present represented by the seventh stratum, though, as the digging proceeded lower, there was no doubt that earlier strata would be unearthed.

The chalcolithic culture of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa that was some four hundred miles apart, was completely uniform in character. It was not also confined within this narrow zone. Other chalcolithic sites have been found all over Sind as far as Gujo in he south and Vijnot on the dry bed of the Hakra on the north-east. Late N. G. Mazumdar, Assistant Superintendent of Archaeology, who was engaged in exploring the prehistoric sites of Sind up to 1931-32, has discovered a considerable number of them. The same culture probably flourished all over the Punjab. Harappa, on the old bed of the Ravi, is in the heart of the province. Chalcolithic remains have been found in Ruper on the Sutlej just below the Simla Hills. Chalcolithic remains have also been traced through Loralai, Derajat, Zhob, Waziristan as far as Bannu in the north.

The civilization of the seven levels of Mohenjo-daro was contemporaneous with the early Sumerian civilization represented by the relics recovered from the royal graves of Ur and from the ruins of A-anni-padda’s temple at al-‘Ubaid. The first six dynasties ruled Egypt about the same period. The Indus civilization was ahead of the contemporaneous Summerian and Egyptian civilizations in certain respects. The ordinary townpeople of Mohenjo-daro were better housed and with their wells, baths and elaborate system of drainage enjoyed a greater degree of civic comforts and amenities than the population of the other parts of the then civilized world. The scholars opine that authorities at Mohenjo-daro were perhaps the world’s pioneers in city construction. The conservancy and sanitation of the city were looked after by the municipal system. Wells were a remarkable feature of Mohenjo-daro. The most remarkable edifice was a great bath used for ceremonial purposes, and the remarkable buildings or a group of buildings, discovered at Harappa, were the granary used for storage of grain to be received by the state or municipal administration.

Rai Bahadur K. N. Dikshit has said that the wells at Mohenjo-daro were remarkable feature of the city, but in Harappa they are much less in evidence. It speaks volumes for the technical perfection of the builders that most of the wells, built thousands of years ago, are in perfect working order up to the present day. At Harappa, the only remarkable buildings or groups of buildings discovered as stated above are those known as the parallel wall or granary area. These consist of a series of parallel walls each 52 ft. long standing in two sections divided by a passage 23 ft broad. The walls are of an extraordinary thickness being about 9 ft thick and stand in groups of pairs each divided by about 5 ft from each other, and one pair separated from another by a distance of some 17 ft.

In Mohenjo-daro itself, the largest buildings, that have been discovered, measure 242’ in length by 112’ in breadth, and another of slightly smaller dimension. Each of these has several courtyards, surrounded by living rooms, store rooms, etc., which indicate that they must have been in the occupation of a person holding high position and having a large family and dependants.

In one area at Mohenjo-daro, a hall of considerable dimension of 85 square feet with a roof supported by 20 brick piers arranged in four aisles has been found. Rai Bahadur Dikshit has described that it was used for some public purpose of the community such as religious congregation, as it was in the neighbourhood of the great bath and possibly of the main temple underlying the Buddhist stupa. Dr. Mackey considered it to be a market-place. At some places in Mohenjo-daro buildings with large rooms and strong floors having regular depressions sunk in the floor have been found particularly at convenient corners of roads.

The dietary of the Indus people consisted of cereals, fish, meat, etc. Common people used to wear simple clothes, made of cotton and the richer people embroidered ones. In arts of lapidary, gold, silver and copper smiths attained high perfec-tion. Fragments of potteries both polished and plain, bespeak of the high skill of potters and evoke admiration of people even to this day.

Fine Arte:

As to the fine arts of the Indus Valley people, sculpture is represented by some very beautiful statuettes viz. the limestone statue of a bearded gentleman, and one of the small stone figurines from Harappa, where human anatomy has been perfectly deleneated. Seal-cutter’s art was very much advanced. People were very fond of music. They were highly cultured in the arts of dancing and singing. Rai Bahadur Dikshit has said: “Besides dancing, it appears that music was cultivated among the Indus people, and it seems probable that the earliest stringed instruments and drums (with which to keep rhythm in accompaniment with the music) are to be traced to the Indus civilization. In one of the teracotta figures, a kind of drum is to be seen hanging from the neck, and on two seals we find a precursor of the modern mridanga with skins at either end. On some of the pictographs appear representations of a crude stringed instrument, a prototype of the modern veena; while a pair of castanets, like the modern karatala have also been found”. Dr. Lakshman Svarup has also mentioned: “One seal has preserved a dancing scene. One man heating a drum and others are dancing to the tune. On one seal from Harappa, a man is playing on a drum before a tiger. On another, a woman is dancing. In one case, a male figure has a drum hung round his neck”.

Besides these, a bronze statue of a nude dancing girl, wearing a large number of bangles in one arm, was discovered from the mound by Rai Bahadur Dayaram Sahni. It is in a dancing posture, excellent in execution and represented perfect casting. Sir John Marshall and other archaeologists supposed that the dancing girl belonged to the aboriginal type as suggested by her feature. Now, from all the available sources we learn with a fair degree of certainty that the art of music (i.e. dancing, singing and drumming) was thoroughly cultivated by the higher classes and the masses of the Indus Valley epoch.

Religion:

People of the Indus Valley used to worship Mother goddess, goddess of fertility, trees and a god who was the prototype of Siva Pashupati. Regarding religion or religious cult of the people of the Indus Valley cities, Rai Bahadur Ramaprasad Chanda has said that the religion of the Indus Valley, in the Chalcolithic period, appears to include many elements that ultimately developed into Hinduism. “Our main source of information for the religion of the Indus folk is the magnificent collection of seals recovered from Mohenjo-daro and Harappa. As the inscriptions on these seals have not yet been deciphered and interpreted, we are dependent on the designs only. An overwhelming majority of these designs consists of figures of animals. But it would perhaps be as much a mistake to suppose that the religion of the Indus people was mainly animal-worship or worship of gods who were conceived as animals, both real and imaginary, as to suppose that the religion of the Buddhist laymen and monks, who erected the carved railing of the stupa of Bharut and the gateways of the great stupa of Sanchi, was mainly tree and serpent worship. The backbone of the religion of the builders of Bharut and Sanchi consisted of the worship of the Buddhas or human beings who bad attained perfect knowledge by practising dhyana, meditation and samadhi, rapt concentration, both different stages of Yoga. There is no definite evidence to show that the Indus religion had advanced as far as that, but there is ample evidence to show that it had already begun to move along the same line”. The stone heads from Mohenjo-daro also proves the fact.

Funerary Customs:

Though cremation was the main method of disposal of the dead among the Indus Valley people, yet customs of complete or fractional burials and post-cremation burial also prevailed among some classes of population. Rai Bahadur K. N. Dikshit is of opinion that the funerary customs of the Indus people are yet obscure, “and it is unfortunate”, he says, “that the elaborate provision for the afterlife made by the ancient contemporaries of the Indus people in countries like Egypt and Sumer, which have yielded such a rich harvest to the archaeologist, did not find a counterpart among them. At Mohenjo-daro no trace of cemetery or burial place has been discovered, and it is strange that if the people responsible for this civilization had adopted some customs of burial, they should not have been revealed in course of such investigation”. Rai Bahadur Ramaprasad Chanda has also said that no such cemetery has yet been found at Mohenjo-daro. “The lower stratum of the cemetery at Harappa has yielded some remains of complete burials and more may be expected in future. But these burials are somewhat later than the Indus period as represented at Mohenjo-daro. The few skeletal remains, recovered at Mohenjo-daro, were evidently buried in Late I or Late II Period in orthodox fashion. Therefore, as yet we have no material to determine what the authors of the Indus civilization were physically like. Among the twenty-four skeletons or portions of skeletons referable to chalcolithic age Colonel Sewell and Dr. Guha recognise four distinct ethnic types, viz. the Proto-Australoid (now represented by the Kols, Bhils, etc.), Mediterranean (like the modern long-headed Hindusthanis), Alpine (like the modem broad-headed Gujratis, Marathas, Bengalis) and the Mongolian. There skeletons, therefore, indicate that in the Late Period the population of Mohenjo-daro was ethnically as mixed as the present population of India. It cannot be expected that the population of the Indus Valley was more homogeneous in the Early and the Intermediate Periods of Mohenjo-daro”.

Writing:

The Indus writing has been characterised as pictographic, “but it is obvious”, says Rai Bahadur Dikshit, “that, except for a small number of signs, showing the pictures of birds, fish etc. and others indicating varieties of the human form, the rest have more or less conventional character. A remarkable feature of the Indus writing is its clarity and straight rectangular character”. The most satisfactory analysis, however, so far made, is that by Dr. Hunter. Mr. Dikshit has said: “Even for the most careful scholar it is possible to follow a majority of the conclusions, reached in his (Dr. Hunter’s) work on The Script of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. The signs which are over 230 apart from the compounds or slight modifications, have been arranged in 100 tables in which symbols of the same character have been grouped together”. “A large number of the Indus signs consist of one or more short lines, which are grouped together as the numerical symbols in most of the syllabaris. The short strokes occur only in groups of 1 to 12, mostly vertical or rarely transverse. The longer strokes are 1 to 5. A symbol consisting of one straight and another oblique stroke is also common, while others are shaped like brackets and arrows.* * One important figure shows a man carrying on his shoulder pitchers of water hanging from a pole. This sign is sometimes joined together to the commonest U-shaped sign of jar. One group of symbols consists of rectangles divided into a number of compartments by horizontal and vertical lines. We can see in these the representations of house with 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, 18 or even 21 compartments”. Nowadays many scholars are trying to decipher the scripts of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, but no satisfactory result has yet been obtained.

Now, from the available data it is possible to form an idea of the civilization and culture of the prehistoric Indus people as prevailed 5000 years ago. Controversy rages round the question of authorship of Indus Valley culture, be that as it may, inspite of the destruction of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, the culture of the people is still extant in Hindu society in another name and form.