Indus creed: What we’re still learning about the Harappan Civilisation, 100 yrs on
It stretches further than we thought. It was largely rural. And it’s possible we haven’t cracked the script... because what we have is largely names and numbers
The Harappan Civilisation has turned out to be a bit like a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle.
It’s maddening, confounding. People have ended up yelling at each other; some have walked away from the table, only to be drawn inexorably back to the board.
What is it? What are we missing? How do the pieces fit together?
As we learn more, in little bits (only the littlest bits are possible, since the script still hasn’t been cracked), the map of what we thought it was, is being redrawn.
Existing information is being dusted off and re-examined. Even its name has changed (from Indus Valley to Harappan; more on this in a bit).
It has now been 100 years since efforts began to piece the puzzle together.
In 1924, John Marshall, then director-general of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), first publicised the discovery of the ancient ruins, in an explosive article published in The Illustrated London News.
“(It) seems… probable… that this forgotten civilisation… (was) just as distinctive of that region as the civilisation of the Pharaohs was distinctive of the Nile,” he wrote.
Harappa, now in Punjab, Pakistan, was partially excavated by British general Alexander Cunningham about 50 years earlier, in 1872-73. He found a seal “smooth black stone without polish. On it is engraved very deeply a bull, without hump, looking to the right, with two stars under the neck. Above the bull… an inscription in six characters, which are quite unknown to me”.
Finding signs of an ancient city was exciting. But city shifted to civilisation in 1922.
That’s when ASI archaeologist RD Banerji stumbled upon the ruins of Mohenjo-Daro, while on a deer hunt.
There were uncanny similarities in the objects found at the two sites, Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro — which were 600 km apart.
Eventually, archaeologists would find pottery, seals, copper jewellery and beads that would be dated to about 3300 BCE. They would find, over and over, homes, streets, public baths, granaries and dockyards that followed similar patterns.
These weren’t just ancient cities. This was a massive civilisation.
The known timeline of Indian history was moved back by more than 2,000 years.
First Light on a Long-forgotten Civilisation: New Discoveries of an Unknown Prehistoric Past, Marshall’s article was titled.
A new name
Because the first two sites discovered were situated along what was once the route of the Indus River (it has changed its course over time), Marshall, in his article, called it the “civilisation of the Indus valley”.
It has since been confirmed that the civilisation stretched far, far further than these plains. It is now believed to have stretched, in fact, from Pakistan’s Makran coast in the west to Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh, in the east; and from Shortugai all the way in the remote northern reaches of Afghanistan to Surat in Gujarat.
As more sites were uncovered, new names were proposed. Many of the new sites sat along the seasonal Ghaggar-Hakra river, which itself is said to be the last vestiges of the long-lost Saraswati, mentioned in the Rigveda. So some suggested the civilisation be called the Indus-Saraswati or Sindhu-Saraswati.
“None of these are correct,” says archaeologist Kurush Dalal, director of the India Study Centre (Instucen) Trust. “The international protocol is simple. If you do not know the name of a culture, it is named after the first archaeological site that is discovered. In this case, Harappa. Hence, the Harappan Civilisation.”
A rural civilisation
The ancient cities have received the most attention, with their wide streets, public wells and famously elaborate drainage systems. As a result, the Harappan civilisation is generally discussed as a “surprisingly urban” one. Which it is.
But it is also true that a large percentage of its people likely lived in rural areas, says Cameron A Petrie, professor of South Asian and Iranian archaeology at the University of Cambridge.
Petrie has studied the Harappan civilisation for more than 25 years and has been intrigued by the remains of rural settlements.
They indicate a degree of self-sufficiency, while maintaining a relationship with urban centres, he says.
There are signs of extensive irrigation, and of cottage industries built around the making of ceramics, beads and seals. These areas flourished in terms of both agriculture and commercial exchange, and so they may have qualified, by today’s standards, as small towns rather than villages.
Echoes of today
Which elements of the Harappan civilisation survive, in contemporary India and Pakistan?
“In many ways, from the crafts practised to the crops grown, it is the rural life that found continuity in later years in India,” Dalal says.
Barley, wheat, lentils, millets and rice were among the crops grown then, and remain key crops today.
Traces of food found in ancient earthenware suggest that pulses have been eaten in this swathe since about 3000 BCE. The tandoor, and possibly the tandoori roti, were likely favoured.
What does that say?
Despite excavations at about 1,500 sites, the script remains an enigma. Found on seals, pottery, and tablets, it consists of pictographic symbols. Some inscriptions using up to 17 characters; most, however, are in the range of five to seven.
Unlike the Rosetta Stone, which helped unlock Egypt’s hieroglyphics, no instances of bilingual text have been found.
“If we do decipher the script, my hunch is it won’t reveal what we want it to because these are such short inscriptions,” says Dalal. “We are yet to locate a comprehensive, long text.”
There is some speculation that the inscriptions could consist largely of names and numerals — accounts of various kinds, and personalised inscriptions — which is why it has not been cracked. A longer text would then be the only real hope.
Without that, it would be like trying to learn Ancient Latin or Tamil, from a list of account holders’ names and their ledger balances.
Where next?
The final mysteries, of course, are: What happened, and where did they go?
We’re used to not knowing what happened to ancient civilisations, beyond the usual factors of implosion, natural disaster, and possible violent invasion.
But the riddle of where Harappa’s people went could potentially be answered. DNA from a 4,500-year-old burial site has provided some inroads, though so far all the findings show is that their descendants are scattered across South Asia.
Did the communities themselves move south? Is it possible that, in some of the villages that sit above the ruins, people continue to live where they have lived for 5,000 years?
These are all exciting theories, but the evidence simply doesn’t point one way or another.
It’s the 1,000-piece puzzle all over again, but no one is giving up hope. The dream is that someone will eventually look at it all afresh and go, “Hey, isn’t that where that piece goes?”, and provide the clue that cracks it all.
“We need to keep questioning what we think we know,” says Petrie. “Sometimes, you keep rejigging the pieces and they fit.”
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