PREHISTORY OF THE INDUS CIVILISATION
The prehistory of the Indus civilization can be identified through the discoveries of cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro and the evidences of the Mesopotamian civilisation.The Indo-Aryans were supposed to be the first early civlization of the subcontinent. They were regarded to have come down to the Indian plains in the second millennium BC. But the history of the Indian subcontinent attained a new dimension after the discoveries of great cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro in the year 1920s. 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.
Both the cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro share a similarity although they were separated by about 350 miles. Archaeological reports say that in both the cities there was an acropolis and a lower city. The acropolis located to the west of each city were used for religious cults. In Mohenjo-Daro there was a ‘Great Bath’ (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 elaboratwater 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.
The Great Bath
A special feature of each of these cities were the large platforms which have been interpreted by the excavators as the foundations of granaries. In Mohenjo-Daro it was situated in the acropolis where as in Harappa it was immediately adjacent to it. The next similarity between the two cities is the system of weights and measures based on binary numbers and the decimal system. Evidence show that there was international trade when seals of the Indus culture were found in Mesopotamia.Further more the artclies made of copper and ornaments with precious stones show that there was a flourishing international trade. It was believed that Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro were merely outposts of the Mesopotamian civilisation, either constructed by migrants or at least designed according to their specifications.
Mohenjo-Daro
The Indus civilisation was thought to be based on a theocratic state whose twin capitals Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro obviously showed the traces of a highly centralised organisation. The reasons for the sudden decline of these cities may br due to the Scholars since scattered skeletons which showed traces of violent death were found in the uppermost strata of Mohenjo-Daro. It appeared that men, women and children had been exterminated by conquerors in a ‘last massacre’. The conquerors were assumed to be the Aryans who invaded India around the middle of the second millennium BC.
Harappa
After the Second World War, intensive archaeological research in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India greatly enhanced our knowledge of the historical evolution and the spatial extension of the Indus civilisation.Earlier assessments of the rise and fall of this civilisation had to be revised. The new excavations showed that this civilisation, at its height early in the late third millennium BC, had encompassed an area larger than western Europe.
The other important cities of the Indus valley civilisation were Kot Diji to the east of Mohenjo-Daro and Amri in the Dadu District on the lower Indus, were discovered in the years after 1958. In Kathiawar and on the coast of Gujarat similar centres were traced. Thus in 1954 Lothal was excavated south of Ahmadabad. It is claimed that Lothal was a major port of this period. Another 100 miles further south Malwan was also identified in 1967 as a site of the Indus civilisation. It is located close to Surat and so far marks, together with Daimabad in the Ahmadnagar District of Maharashtra, the southernmost extension of this culture. The spread of the Indus civilisation to the east was documented by the 1961 excavations at Kalibangan in Rajasthan about 200 miles west of Delhi.
The amazing extension of our knowledge about the spatial spread of the Indus civilisation was accompanied by an equally successful exploration of its history. Earlier strata of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa as well as of Kalibangan, Amri and Kot Diji were excavated in a second round of archaeological research. In this way continuous sequence of strata, showing the gradual development to the high standard of the full-fledged Indus civilisation, was established. These strata have been named Pre-Harappan, Early Harappan, Mature Harappan and Late Harappan. The most important result of this research is the clear proof of the long-term indigenous evolution of this civilisation which obviously began on the periphery of the Indus valley in the hills of eastern Baluchistan and then extended into the plains. There were certainly connections with Mesopotamia, but the earlier hypothesis that the Indus civilisation was merely an extension of Mesopotamian civilisation had to be rejected.
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