Indus Valley Civilization

and Rakhigarhi,[24] Rakhigarhi in Haryana, India, being

the largest Indus Valley Civilization site with 350-hectare
(3.5 km2 ) area.[3][25][26][27]

The Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) was a Bronze Age

civilisation (33001300 BCE; mature period 26001900
BCE, pre-Harappan cultures starting c.7500 BCE[3][4] )
in northwest Indian subcontinent (including present day
Pakistan, northwest India[5] ) and also in some regions
in northeast Afghanistan.[6][1] Along with Ancient Egypt
and Mesopotamia, it was one of three early civilisations of the Old World, and the most widespread among
them,[7] covering an area of 1.25 million km2 .[8] It ourished in the basins of the Indus River, one of the major
rivers of Asia, and the now dried up Sarasvati River,[9][10]
which once coursed through northwest India and eastern
Pakistan [6] together with its tributaries owed along a
channel, presently identied as that of the Ghaggar-Hakra
River on the basis of various scientic studies.[11][12][13]
Due to the spread of the civilization along both the river
valleys, some scholars use the term Indus-Sarasvati
Civilisation.[14][15]

The Harappan language is not directly attested and its afliation is uncertain since the Indus script is still undeciphered. A relationship with the Dravidian or ElamoDravidian language family is favoured by a section of
scholars,[28][29] while others suggest an Austroasiatic language related to Munda.[30]

1 Discovery and history of excavation

At its peak, the Indus Civilization may have had a population of over ve million.[16] Inhabitants of the ancient
Indus river valley developed new techniques in handicraft
(carnelian products, seal carving) and metallurgy (copper,
bronze, lead, and tin). The Indus cities are noted for their
urban planning, baked brick houses, elaborate drainage
systems, water supply systems, and clusters of large nonresidential buildings.[17]
The Indus Valley Civilization is also known as the Harappan Civilization, after Harappa, the rst of its sites to
be excavated in the 1920s, in what was then the Punjab Excavated ruins of Mohenjo-daro, with the Great Bath in the
province of British India, and is now in Pakistan.[18] The front
discovery of Harappa, and soon afterwards, MohenjoDaro, was the culmination of work beginning in 1861
with the founding of the Archaeological Survey of India in the British Raj.[19] Excavation of Harappan sites
has been ongoing since 1920, with important breakthroughs occurring as recently as 1999.[20] There were
earlier and later cultures, often called Early Harappan and
Late Harappan, and pre-Harappan cultures, in the same
area of the Harappan Civilization. The Harappan civilisation is sometimes called the Mature Harappan culture
to distinguish it from these cultures. Bhirrana in Haryana,
India may be the oldest pre-Harappan site, dating back to
7570-6200 BCE.[3][21]
By 1999, over 1,056 cities and settlements had been
found, of which 96 have been excavated,[22] mainly in the
general region of the Indus and the Sarasvati River[23] and Early Harappan Period, c. 33002600 BCE
their tributaries. Among the settlements were the major urban centres of Harappa, Mohenjo-daro (UNESCO The ruins of Harappa were rst described in 1842 by
World Heritage Site), Dholavira, Ganeriwala in Cholistan Charles Masson in his Narrative of Various Journeys
1

CHRONOLOGY

called Brahminabad. Visiting the city, he found it full of

hard well-burnt bricks, and, convinced that there was a
grand quarry for the ballast I wanted, the city of Brahminabad was reduced to ballast.[32] A few months later,
further north, Johns brother William Bruntons section
of the line ran near another ruined city, bricks from which
had already been used by villagers in the nearby village of
Harappa at the same site. These bricks now provided ballast along 93 miles (150 km) of the railroad track running
from Karachi to Lahore.[32]

Mature Harappan Period, c. 26001900 BCE

Late Harappan Period, c. 19001300 BCE

Skull of Indus Valley inhabitants, Indian Museum

In 187275 Alexander Cunningham published the rst

Harappan seal (with an erroneous identication as
Brahmi letters).[33] It was half a century later, in 1912,
that more Harappan seals were discovered by J. Fleet,
prompting an excavation campaign under Sir John Hubert Marshall in 192122 and resulting in the discovery of the civilisation at Harappa by Sir John Marshall,
Rai Bahadur Daya Ram Sahni and Madho Sarup Vats,
and at Mohenjo-daro by Rakhal Das Banerjee, E. J. H.
MacKay, and Sir John Marshall. By 1931, much of
Mohenjo-Daro had been excavated, but excavations continued, such as that led by Sir Mortimer Wheeler, director
of the Archaeological Survey of India in 1944. Among
other archaeologists who worked on IVC sites before the
independence in 1947 were Ahmad Hasan Dani, Brij Basi
Lal, Nani Gopal Majumdar, and Sir Marc Aurel Stein.
Following the independence, the bulk of the archaeological nds were inherited by Pakistan where most of the
IVC was based, and excavations from this time include
those led by Sir Mortimer Wheeler in 1949, archaeological adviser to the Government of Pakistan. Outposts of
the Indus Valley civilisation were excavated as far west as
Sutkagan Dor in Baluchistan, as far north as at Shortugai
on the Amu Darya (the rivers ancient name was Oxus) in
current Afghanistan, as far east as at Alamgirpur, Uttar
Pradesh, India and as far south as at Malwan, in modern
day Surat, Gujarat, India.[34]
In 2010, heavy oods hit Haryana in India and damaged the archaeological site of Jognakhera, where ancient
copper smelting furnaces were found dating back almost
5,000 years. The Indus Valley Civilization site was hit by
almost 10 feet of water as the Sutlej Yamuna link canal
overowed.[35]

in Balochistan, Afghanistan, and the Punjab, where locals talked of an ancient city extending thirteen cosses" 2 Chronology
(about 25 miles), but no archaeological interest would attach to this for nearly a century.[note 1]
Main article: Periodization of the Indus Valley CivilizaIn 1856, General Alexander Cunningham, later direc- tion
tor general of the archaeological survey of northern India, visited Harappa where the British engineers John
and William Brunton were laying the East Indian Railway Company line connecting the cities of Karachi and
Lahore. John wrote: I was much exercised in my mind
how we were to get ballast for the line of the railway.
They were told of an ancient ruined city near the lines,

The mature phase of the Harappan civilisation lasted

from c. 2600 to 1900 BCE. With the inclusion of the predecessor and successor cultures Early Harappan and
Late Harappan, respectively the entire Indus Valley
Civilization may be taken to have lasted from the 33rd
to the 14th centuries BCE. The early Harappan cultures

3
while smaller isolated colonies can be found as far away
as Turkmenistan and in Gujarat. Coastal settlements
extended from Sutkagan Dor[40] in Western Baluchistan to Lothal[41] in Gujarat. An Indus Valley site has
been found on the Oxus River at Shortughai in northern Afghanistan,[42] in the Gomal River valley in northwestern Pakistan,[43] at Manda,Jammu on the Beas River
near Jammu,[44] India, and at Alamgirpur on the Hindon
River, only 28 km from Delhi.[45] Indus Valley sites have
been found most often on rivers, but also on the ancient
seacoast,[46] for example, Balakot,[47] and on islands, for
example, Dholavira.[48]
There is evidence of dry river beds overlapping with
the Hakra channel in Pakistan and the seasonal Ghaggar River in India. Many Indus Valley sites have been
discovered along the Ghaggar-Hakra beds.[49] Among
them are: Rupar, Rakhigarhi, Sothi, Kalibangan, and
Ganwariwala.[50] According to J. G. Shaer and D. A.
Lichtenstein,[51] the Harappan Civilization is a fusion
of the Bagor, Hakra, and Koti Dij traditions or 'ethnic
groups in the Ghaggar-Hakra valley on the borders of
India and Pakistan.[49]

Indus Valley pottery, 25001900 BC

are preceded by the Mehrgarh (c.7000-3300 BCE), with

Bhirrana even dating back to 7570-6200 BCE, according
to a December 2014 report by the Archaeological Survey
of India.[3][4]
Two terms are employed for the periodisation of the
IVC: Phases and Eras.[36][37] The Early Harappan, Mature Harappan, and Late Harappan phases are also called
the Regionalisation, Integration, and Localisation eras,
respectively, with the Regionalization era reaching back
to the Neolithic Mehrgarh II period, the discovery of
which changed the entire concept of the Indus civilization, according to Ahmad Hasan Dani, professor emeritus at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad. There we
have the whole sequence, right from the beginning of settled village life.[38]

Geography

The Indus Valley Civilization encompassed most of Pakistan and parts of northwestern India, and Afghanistan,
extending from Pakistani Balochistan in the west to Uttar
Pradesh in the east, northeastern Afghanistan to the north
and Maharashtra to the south.[39] The geography of the
Indus Valley put the civilisations that arose there in a
highly similar situation to those in Egypt and Peru, with
rich agricultural lands being surrounded by highlands,
desert, and ocean. Recently, Indus sites have been discovered in Pakistans northwestern Frontier Province as
well. Other IVC colonies can be found in Afghanistan

According to some archaeologists, more than 500 Harappan sites have been discovered along the dried up river
beds of the Ghaggar-Hakra River and its tributaries,[52]
in contrast to only about 100 along the Indus and its
tributaries;[53] consequently, in their opinion, the appellation Indus Ghaggar-Hakra civilisation or Indus-Saraswati
civilisation is justied. However, these politically inspired
arguments are disputed by other archaeologists who state
that the Ghaggar-Hakra desert area has been left untouched by settlements and agriculture since the end of
the Indus period and hence shows more sites than those
found in the alluvium of the Indus valley; second, that
the number of Harappan sites along the Ghaggar-Hakra
river beds has been exaggerated and that the GhaggarHakra, when it existed, was a tributary of the Indus, so
the new nomenclature is redundant.[54] Harappan Civilization remains the correct one, according to the common archaeological usage of naming a civilisation after
its rst ndspot.

4 Early Harappan
The Early Harappan Ravi Phase, named after the nearby
Ravi River, lasted from circa 3300 BCE until 2800 BCE.
It is related to the Hakra Phase, identied in the GhaggarHakra River Valley to the west, and predates the Kot Diji
Phase (28002600 BCE, Harappan 2), named after a site
in northern Sindh, Pakistan, near Mohenjo Daro. The
earliest examples of the Indus script date to the 3rd millennium BC.[55][56]
Latest discoveries from Bhirrana, Haryana, in India since
2012 onwards, by archaeologist K. N. Dikshit indicate
that Hakra ware from this area dates from as early as 7500

5 MATURE HARAPPAN
the general region of the Indus Rivers and their tributaries.

5.1 Cities

Computer-aided reconstruction of coastal Harappan settlement

at Sokhta Koh near Pasni, Pakistan

Ceremonial vessel, Harappan, 26002450 BC. LACMA

BCE, [2][4][1] which makes Bhirrana the oldest site in Indus Valley civilization.[3]
The mature phase of earlier village cultures is represented
by Rehman Dheri and Amri in Pakistan.[57] Kot Diji represents the phase leading up to Mature Harappan, with
the citadel representing centralised authority and an increasingly urban quality of life. Another town of this
stage was found at Kalibangan in India on the Hakra
River.[58]
Trade networks linked this culture with related regional
cultures and distant sources of raw materials, including
lapis lazuli and other materials for bead-making. By this
time, villagers had domesticated numerous crops, including peas, sesame seeds, dates, and cotton, as well as animals, including the water bualo. Early Harappan communities turned to large urban centres by 2600 BCE, from
where the mature Harappan phase started. The latest research shows that Indus Valley people migrated from villages to cities.[59][60]

A sophisticated and technologically advanced urban culture is evident in the Indus Valley Civilization making
them the rst urban centres in the region. The quality of municipal town planning suggests the knowledge
of urban planning and ecient municipal governments
which placed a high priority on hygiene, or, alternatively,
accessibility to the means of religious ritual.
As seen in Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro and the recently
partially excavated Rakhigarhi, this urban plan included
the worlds rst known urban sanitation systems: see
hydraulic engineering of the Indus Valley Civilization.
Within the city, individual homes or groups of homes
obtained water from wells. From a room that appears
to have been set aside for bathing, waste water was directed to covered drains, which lined the major streets.
Houses opened only to inner courtyards and smaller lanes.
The house-building in some villages in the region still
resembles in some respects the house-building of the
Harappans.[62]

The ancient Indus systems of sewerage and drainage that

were developed and used in cities throughout the Indus region were far more advanced than any found in
contemporary urban sites in the Middle East and even
more ecient than those in many areas of Pakistan and
India today. The advanced architecture of the Harappans is shown by their impressive dockyards, granaries,
warehouses, brick platforms, and protective walls. The
5 Mature Harappan
massive walls of Indus cities most likely protected the
from oods and may have dissuaded military
By 2600 BCE, the Early Harappan communities turned Harappans
[63]
conicts.
into large urban centres. Such urban centres include
Harappa, Ganeriwala, Mohenjo-Daro in modern day The purpose of the citadel remains debated. In sharp conPakistan, and Dholavira, Kalibangan, Rakhigarhi, Rupar, trast to this civilisations contemporaries, Mesopotamia
and Lothal in modern day India.[61] In total, more than and Ancient Egypt, no large monumental structures were
1,052 cities and settlements have been found, mainly in built. There is no conclusive evidence of palaces or

5.2

Authority and governance

5.2 Authority and governance

Archaeological records provide no immediate answers for
a centre of power or for depictions of people in power in
Harappan society. But, there are indications of complex
decisions being taken and implemented. For instance, the
extraordinary uniformity of Harappan artefacts as evident
in pottery, seals, weights and bricks. These are the major
theories:
There was a single state, given the similarity in artefacts, the evidence for planned settlements, the standardised ratio of brick size, and the establishment of
settlements near sources of raw material.
There was no single ruler but several: Mohenjo-daro
had a separate ruler, Harappa another, and so forth.
Harappan society had no rulers, and everybody enjoyed equal status.

5.3 Technology
So-called Priest King statue, Mohenjo-Daro, late Mature
Harappan period, National Museum, Karachi, Pakistan

Further information: Indian mathematics Prehistory

The people of the Indus Civilization achieved great ac-

templesor of kings, armies, or priests. Some structures

are thought to have been granaries. Found at one city is
an enormous well-built bath (the "Great Bath"), which
may have been a public bath. Although the citadels were
walled, it is far from clear that these structures were defensive. They may have been built to divert ood waters.
Most city dwellers appear to have been traders or artisans, Unicorn seal of Indus Valley, Indian Museum
who lived with others pursuing the same occupation in
well-dened neighbourhoods. Materials from distant regions were used in the cities for constructing seals, beads
and other objects. Among the artefacts discovered were
beautiful glazed faence beads. Steatite seals have images
of animals, people (perhaps gods), and other types of inscriptions, including the yet un-deciphered writing system of the Indus Valley Civilization. Some of the seals
were used to stamp clay on trade goods and most probably
had other uses as well.
Although some houses were larger than others, Indus Civilization cities were remarkable for their apparent, if relative, egalitarianism. All the houses had access to water and drainage facilities. This gives the impression of a
society with relatively low wealth concentration, though
clear social levelling is seen in personal adornments. The
prehistory of Indo-Iranian borderlands shows a steady increase over time in the number and density of settlements.
The population increased in Indus plains because of hunting and gathering.[64]

Elephant seal of Indus Valley, Indian Museum

curacy in measuring length, mass, and time. They were

among the rst to develop a system of uniform weights
and measures. A comparison of available objects indicates large scale variation across the Indus territories.
Their smallest division, which is marked on an ivory scale
found in Lothal in Gujarat, was approximately 1.704

5 MATURE HARAPPAN

Indus Valley seals, British Museum

mm, the smallest division ever recorded on a scale of

the Bronze Age. Harappan engineers followed the decimal division of measurement for all practical purposes,
including the measurement of mass as revealed by their
hexahedron weights.[65]
These chert weights were in a ratio of 5:2:1 with weights
of 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200,
and 500 units, with each unit weighing approximately 28
grams, similar to the English Imperial ounce or Greek
uncia, and smaller objects were weighed in similar ratios with the units of 0.871. However, as in other cul- The "dancing girl of Mohenjo Daro"
tures, actual weights were not uniform throughout the
area. The weights and measures later used in Kautilya's
Arthashastra (4th century BCE) are the same as those
used in Lothal.[66]
Harappans evolved some new techniques in metallurgy
and produced copper, bronze, lead, and tin. The engineering skill of the Harappans was remarkable, especially
in building docks.
In 2001, archaeologists studying the remains of two men
from Mehrgarh, Pakistan, discovered that the people of
the Indus Valley Civilization, from the early Harappan
periods, had knowledge of proto-dentistry. Later, in
April 2006, it was announced in the scientic journal
Nature that the oldest (and rst early Neolithic) evidence
for the drilling of human teeth in vivo (i.e., in a living person) was found in Mehrgarh. Eleven drilled molar crowns
from nine adults were discovered in a Neolithic graveyard in Mehrgarh that dates from 7,5009,000 years ago.
According to the authors, their discoveries point to a tradition of proto-dentistry in the early farming cultures of
that region.[67]
A touchstone bearing gold streaks was found in Banawali, Chanhudaro. Fragment of Large Deep Vessel, circa 2500
which was probably used for testing the purity of gold B.C.E. Red pottery with red and black slip-painted decoration,
15
(such a technique is still used in some parts of India).[68] 4 /16 6 in. (12.515.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum

5.4

Arts and crafts

steatite have been found at excavation sites.

A number of gold, terracotta and stone gurines of girls

Various sculptures, seals, pottery, gold jewellery, and in dancing poses reveal the presence of some dance form.
anatomically detailed gurines in terracotta, bronze, and These terracotta gurines included cows, bears, monkeys,

5.5

Trade and transportation

and dogs. The animal depicted on a majority of seals 5.5

at sites of the mature period has not been clearly identied. Part bull, part zebra, with a majestic horn, it has
been a source of speculation. As yet, there is insucient
evidence to substantiate claims that the image had religious or cultic signicance, but the prevalence of the image raises the question of whether or not the animals in
images of the IVC are religious symbols.[69]

Trade and transportation

Sir John Marshall reacted with surprise when he saw the

famous Indus bronze statuette of a slender-limbed dancing girl in Mohenjo-Daro:
When I rst saw them I found it dicult to
believe that they were prehistoric; they seemed
to completely upset all established ideas about
early art, and culture. Modeling such as this
was unknown in the ancient world up to the
Hellenistic age of Greece, and I thought, therefore, that some mistake must surely have been
made; that these gures had found their way
into levels some 3000 years older than those
to which they properly belonged .... Now, in
these statuettes, it is just this anatomical truth
which is so startling; that makes us wonder
whether, in this all-important matter, Greek
artistry could possibly have been anticipated by
the sculptors of a far-o age on the banks of the
Indus.[70]
Many crafts such as shell working, ceramics, and agate
and glazed steatite bead making were used in the making of necklaces, bangles, and other ornaments from all
phases of Harappan sites and some of these crafts are
still practised in the subcontinent today.[71] Some makeup and toiletry items (a special kind of combs (kakai),
the use of collyrium and a special three-in-one toiletry
gadget) that were found in Harappan contexts still have
similar counterparts in modern India.[72] Terracotta female gurines were found (ca. 28002600 BCE) which
had red colour applied to the manga (line of partition
of the hair).[72]
Seals have been found at Mohenjo-Daro depicting a gure
standing on its head, and another sitting cross-legged in
what some call a yoga-like pose (see image, the so-called
Pashupati, below).

The docks of ancient Lothal as they are today

Further information: Lothal and Meluhha

The Indus civilisations economy appears to have depended signicantly on trade, which was facilitated
by major advances in transport technology. The IVC
may have been the rst civilisation to use wheeled
transport.[75] These advances may have included bullock
carts that are identical to those seen throughout South
Asia today, as well as boats. Most of these boats were
probably small, at-bottomed craft, perhaps driven by
sail, similar to those one can see on the Indus River today;
however, there is secondary evidence of sea-going craft.
Archaeologists have discovered a massive, dredged canal
and what they regard as a docking facility at the coastal
city of Lothal in western India (Gujarat state). An extensive canal network, used for irrigation, has however also
been discovered by H.-P. Francfort.
During 43003200 BCE of the chalcolithic period (copper age), the Indus Valley Civilization area shows ceramic similarities with southern Turkmenistan and northern Iran which suggest considerable mobility and trade.
During the Early Harappan period (about 32002600
BCE), similarities in pottery, seals, gurines, ornaments,
etc. document intensive caravan trade with Central Asia
and the Iranian plateau.[76]

This gure, sometimes known as a Pashupati, has been

variously identied. Sir John Marshall identied a resemblance to the Hindu god, Shiva.[73] If this can be validated, it would be evidence that some aspects of Hinduism predate the earliest texts, the Veda.

Judging from the dispersal of Indus civilisation artefacts,

the trade networks, economically, integrated a huge area,
including portions of Afghanistan, the coastal regions of
Persia, northern and western India, and Mesopotamia.
Studies of tooth enamel from individuals buried at
Harappa suggest that some residents had migrated to the
city from beyond the Indus valley.[77] There is some evidence that trade contacts extended to Crete and possibly
to Egypt.[78]

A harp-like instrument depicted on an Indus seal and two

shell objects found at Lothal indicate the use of stringed
musical instruments. The Harappans also made various
toys and games, among them cubical dice (with one to
six holes on the faces), which were found in sites like
Mohenjo-Daro.[74]

There was an extensive maritime trade network operating

between the Harappan and Mesopotamian civilisations as
early as the middle Harappan Phase, with much commerce being handled by middlemen merchants from Dilmun (modern Bahrain and Failaka located in the Persian
Gulf).[79] Such long-distance sea trade became feasible

5 MATURE HARAPPAN

with the innovative development of plank-built water- acterised as a literate society on the evidence of these
craft, equipped with a single central mast supporting a inscriptions, this description has been challenged by
sail of woven rushes or cloth.
Farmer, Sproat, and Witzel (2004)[82] who argue that the
Several coastal settlements like Sotkagen-dor (astride Indus system did not encode language, but was instead
Dasht River, north of Jiwani), Sokhta Koh (astride Shadi similar to a variety of non-linguistic sign systems used
River, north of Pasni), and Balakot (near Sonmiani) in extensively in the Near East and other societies, to symPakistan along with Lothal in western India, testify to bolise families, clans, gods, and religious concepts. Oththeir role as Harappan trading outposts. Shallow harbours ers have claimed on occasion that the symbols were exclusively used for economic transactions, but this claim
located at the estuaries of rivers opening into the sea alleaves unexplained the appearance of Indus symbols on
lowed brisk maritime trade with Mesopotamian cities.
many ritual objects, many of which were mass-produced
in moulds. No parallels to these mass-produced inscriptions are known in any other early ancient civilisations.[83]
5.6 Subsistence
Some post-1980 studies indicate that food production
was largely indigenous to the Indus Valley. It is known
that the people of Mehrgarh used domesticated wheats
and barley,[80] and the major cultivated cereal crop was
naked six-row barley, a crop derived from two-row barley
(see Shaer and Liechtenstein 1995, 1999). Archaeologist Jim G. Shaer (1999: 245) writes that the Mehrgarh
site demonstrates that food production was an indigenous South Asian phenomenon and that the data support interpretation of the prehistoric urbanization and
complex social organization in South Asia as based on indigenous, but not isolated, cultural developments. Others, such as Dorian Fuller, however, indicate that it took
some 2000 years before Middle Eastern wheat was acclimatised to South Asian conditions.

5.7

Writing system

Main article: Indus script

Between 400 and as many as 600 distinct Indus
symbols[81] have been found on seals, small tablets, ceramic pots and more than a dozen other materials, including a signboard that apparently once hung over the
gate of the inner citadel of the Indus city of Dholavira.

Ten Indus Signs, dubbed Dholavira Signboard

Typical Indus inscriptions are no more than four or ve

characters in length, most of which (aside from the
Dholavira signboard) are tiny; the longest on a single
surface, which is less than 1 inch (2.54 cm) square, is 17
signs long; the longest on any object (found on three different faces of a mass-produced object) has a length of
26 symbols.
While the Indus Valley Civilization is generally char-

In a 2009 study by P. N. Rao et al. published in Science,

computer scientists, comparing the pattern of symbols to
various linguistic scripts and non-linguistic systems, including DNA and a computer programming language,
found that the Indus scripts pattern is closer to that of
spoken words, supporting the hypothesis that it codes for
an as-yet-unknown language.[84][85]
Farmer, Sproat, and Witzel have disputed this nding,
pointing out that Rao et al. did not actually compare
the Indus signs with real-world non-linguistic systems
but rather with two wholly articial systems invented by
the authors, one consisting of 200,000 randomly ordered
signs and another of 200,000 fully ordered signs, that they
spuriously claim represent the structures of all real-world
non-linguistic sign systems.[86] Farmer et al. have also
demonstrated that a comparison of a non-linguistic system like medieval heraldic signs with natural languages
yields results similar to those that Rao et al. obtained
with Indus signs. They conclude that the method used
by Rao et al. cannot distinguish linguistic systems from
non-linguistic ones.[87]
The messages on the seals have proved to be too short
to be decoded by a computer. Each seal has a distinctive combination of symbols and there are too few examples of each sequence to provide a sucient context.
The symbols that accompany the images vary from seal
to seal, making it impossible to derive a meaning for the
symbols from the images. There have, nonetheless, been
a number of interpretations oered for the meaning of the
seals. These interpretations have been marked by ambiguity and subjectivity.[87]:69
Photos of many of the thousands of extant inscriptions
are published in the Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions (1987, 1991, 2010), edited by Asko Parpola and his
colleagues. The nal, third, volume, republished photos
taken in the 1920s and 1930s of hundreds of lost or stolen
inscriptions, along with many discovered in the last few
decades. Formerly, researchers had to supplement the
materials in the Corpus by study of the tiny photos in the
excavation reports of Marshall (1931), MacKay (1938,
1943), Wheeler (1947), or reproductions in more recent
scattered sources.

5.8

5.8

Religion

Religion

The so-called Pashupati seal, showing a seated and possibly

ithyphallic gure, surrounded by animals.

Further information: Prehistoric religion

The religion and belief system of the Indus valley people have received considerable attention, especially from
the view of identifying precursors to deities and religious
practices of Indian religions that later developed in the
area. However due to the sparsity of evidence, which is
open to varying interpretations, and the fact that the Indus
script remains undeciphered, the conclusions are partly
speculative and largely based on a retrospective view from
a much later Hindu perspective.[88][89] An early and inuential work in the area that set the trend for Hindu interpretations of archaeological evidence from the Harrapan
sites[90] was that of John Marshall, who in 1931 identied
the following as prominent features of the Indus religion:
a Great Male God and a Mother Goddess; deication or
veneration of animals and plants; symbolic representation
of the phallus (linga) and vulva (yoni); and, use of baths
and water in religious practice. Marshalls interpretations
have been much debated, and sometimes disputed over
the following decades.[91][92]
One Indus valley seal shows a seated, possibly ithyphallic
and tricephalic, gure with a horned headdress, surrounded by animals. Marshall identied the gure as an
early form of the Hindu god Shiva (or Rudra), who is
associated with asceticism, yoga, and linga; regarded as a
lord of animals; and often depicted as having three heads.
The seal has hence come to be known as the Pashupati
Seal, after Pashupati (lord of the beasts), an epithet of
Shiva.[91][93] While Marshalls work has earned some support, many critics and even supporters have raised several objections. Doris Srinivasan has argued that the
gure does not have three faces, or yogic posture, and
that in Vedic literature Rudra was not a protector of wild

9
animals.[94][95] Herbert Sullivan and Alf Hiltebeitel also
rejected Marshalls conclusions, with the former claiming that the gure was female, while the latter associated the gure with Mahisha, the Bualo God and the
surrounding animals with vahanas (vehicles) of deities
for the four cardinal directions.[96][97] Writing in 2002,
Gregory L. Possehl concluded that while it would be appropriate to recognise the gure as a deity, its association
with the water bualo, and its posture as one of ritual
discipline, regarding it as a proto-Shiva would be going
too far.[93] Despite the criticisms of Marshalls association of the seal with a proto-Shiva icon, it has been interpreted as the Tirthankara Rishabha by Jains & Dr. Vilas
Sangave[98] or an early Buddha by Buddhists.[90] Historians like Heinrich Zimmer, Thomas McEvilley are of
the opinion that there exists some link between rst Jain
Tirthankara Rishabha & Indus Valley civilisation.[99][100]
Marshall hypothesized the existence of a cult of Mother
Goddess worship based upon excavation of several female gurines, and thought that this was a precursor of
the Hindu sect of Shaktism. However the function of the
female gurines in the life of Indus Valley people remains
unclear, and Possehl does not regard the evidence for
Marshalls hypothesis to be terribly robust.[101] Some
of the baetyls interpreted by Marshall to be sacred phallic representations are now thought to have been used as
pestles or game counters instead, while the ring stones
that were thought to symbolise yoni were determined to
be architectural features used to stand pillars, although
the possibility of their religious symbolism cannot be
eliminated.[102] Many Indus Valley seals show animals,
with some depicting them being carried in processions,
while others show chimeric creations. One seal from
Mohen-jodaro shows a half-human, half-bualo monster attacking a tiger, which may be a reference to the
Sumerian myth of such a monster created by goddess
Aruru to ght Gilgamesh.[103]
In contrast to contemporary Egyptian and Mesopotamian
civilisations, Indus valley lacks any monumental palaces,
even though excavated cities indicate that the society possessed the requisite engineering knowledge.[104][105] This
may suggest that religious ceremonies, if any, may have
been largely conned to individual homes, small temples,
or the open air. Several sites have been proposed by Marshall and later scholars as possibly devoted to religious
purpose, but at present only the Great Bath at Mohenjodaro is widely thought to have been so used, as a place for
ritual purication.[101][106] The funerary practices of the
Harappan civilisation is marked by its diversity with evidence of supine burial; fractional burial in which the body
is reduced to skeletal remains by exposure to the elements
before nal interment; and even cremation. [107][108]

10

Collapse and Late Harappan

Main article: Late Harappan

Around 1800 BCE, signs of a gradual decline began to
emerge, and by around 1700 BCE, most of the cities were
abandoned. In 1953, Sir Mortimer Wheeler proposed
that the decline of the Indus Civilization was caused by
the invasion of an Indo-European tribe from Central Asia
called the "Aryans". As evidence, he cited a group of
37 skeletons found in various parts of Mohenjo-Daro,
and passages in the Vedas referring to battles and forts.
However, scholars soon started to reject Wheelers theory, since the skeletons belonged to a period after the
citys abandonment and none were found near the citadel.
Subsequent examinations of the skeletons by Kenneth
Kennedy in 1994 showed that the marks on the skulls
were caused by erosion, and not violent aggression.[109]
Today, many scholars believe that the collapse of the Indus Civilization was caused by drought and a decline in
trade with Egypt and Mesopotamia.[110] It has also been
suggested that immigration by new peoples, deforestation, oods, or changes in the course of the river may
have contributed to the collapse of the IVC.[111]
Previously, it was also believed that the decline of the
Harappan civilisation led to an interruption of urban life
in the Indian subcontinent. However, the Indus Valley
Civilization did not disappear suddenly, and many elements of the Indus Civilization can be found in later
cultures. David Gordon White cites three other mainstream scholars who have emphatically demonstrated
that Vedic religion is partially derived from the Indus Valley Civilizations.[112]
Current archaeological data suggests that the material culture classied as Late Harappan may have persisted until
at least c. 1000900 BCE and was partially contemporaneous with the Painted Grey Ware culture.[113] Harvard
archaeologist Richard Meadow points to the late Harappan settlement of Pirak, which thrived continuously from
1800 BCE to the time of the invasion of Alexander the
Great in 325 BCE.[110]
Recent archaeological excavations indicate that the decline of Harappa drove people eastward. After 1900
BCE, the number of sites in India increased from 218 to
853. Excavations in the Gangetic plain show that urban
settlement began around 1200 BCE, only a few centuries
after the decline of Harappa and much earlier than previously expected.[110] Archaeologists have emphasised that,
just as in most areas of the world, there was a continuous
series of cultural developments. These link the so-called
two major phases of urbanization in South Asia.[113]
A possible natural reason for the IVCs decline is connected with climate change[114] that is also signalled for
the neighbouring areas of the Middle East: The Indus
valley climate grew signicantly cooler and drier from
about 1800 BCE, linked to a general weakening of the

LEGACY

monsoon at that time. Alternatively, a crucial factor may

have been the disappearance of substantial portions of the
Ghaggar Hakra river system. A tectonic event may have
diverted the systems sources toward the Ganges Plain,
though there is complete uncertainty about the date of this
event, as most settlements inside Ghaggar-Hakra river
beds have not yet been dated. The actual reason for decline might be any combination of these factors. A 2004
paper indicated that the isotopes of sediments carried by
the Ghaggar-Hakra system over the last 20 thousand years
do not come from the glaciated Higher Himalaya but have
a Sub-Himalayan source. They speculated that the river
system was rain-fed instead and thus contradicted the idea
of a Harappan-time mighty Sarasvati river.[115] Recent
geological research by a group led by Peter Clift investigated how the courses of rivers have changed in this
region since 8000 years ago, to test whether climate or
river reorganisations are responsible for the decline of the
Harappan. Using U-Pb dating of zircon sand grains they
found that sediments typical of the Beas, Sutlej and Yamuna rivers (Himalayan tributaries of the Indus) are actually present in former Ghaggar-Hakra channels. However, sediment contributions from these glacial-fed rivers
stopped at least by 10,000 years ago, well before the development of the Indus civilisation.[116]
A research team led by the geologist Liviu Giosan of
the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution also concluded that climate change in the form of the easterward migration of the monsoons led to the decline of the
IVC.[117] The teams ndings were published in PNAS in
May 2012.[118][119] According to their theory, the slow
eastward migration of the monsoons across Asia initially allowed the civilisation to develop. The monsoonsupported farming led to large agricultural surpluses,
which in turn supported the development of cities. The
IVC residents did not develop irrigation capabilities, relying mainly on the seasonal monsoons. As the monsoons
kept shifting eastward, the water supply for the agricultural activities dried up. The residents then migrated towards the Ganges basin in the east, where they established smaller villages and isolated farms. The small surplus produced in these small communities did not allow
development of trade, and the cities died out.[120] There
is also a Harappan site called Rojdi in Rajkot district of
Saurashtra. Its excavation started under archaeological
team from Gujarat State Department of Archaeology and
University of Museum of the University of Pennsylvania
in the year 1982 83.[121]

7 Legacy
Main article: Iron Age India
In the aftermath of the Indus Civilizations collapse, regional cultures emerged, to varying degrees showing the
inuence of the Indus Civilization. In the formerly great

11
city of Harappa, burials have been found that correspond
to a regional culture called the Cemetery H culture. At the
same time, the Ochre Coloured Pottery culture expanded
from Rajasthan into the Gangetic Plain. The Cemetery H
culture has the earliest evidence for cremation; a practice
dominant in Hinduism today.

northern and eastern Sri Lanka, but pockets of it still

remain throughout the rest of India and Pakistan (the
Brahui language), which lends credence to the theory.
Finnish Indologist Asko Parpola concludes that the uniformity of the Indus inscriptions precludes any possibility
of widely dierent languages being used, and that an early
form of Dravidian language must have been the language
of the Indus people. However, in an interview with the
Herald on 12 August 2012, Asko Parpola clari8 Historical context and linguistic Deccan
ed his position by admitting that "Sanskrit has also prealiation
served a very important part of the Indus heritage and
that even Sangam Tamil had possible inuences of the
[125]
See also: Substratum in Vedic Sanskrit and Harappan Brahmins .
language
Proto-Munda (or Para-Munda) and a lost phylum (perhaps related or ancestral to the Nihali language)[126] have
The IVC has been tentatively identied with the toponym been proposed as other candidates for the language of
Meluhha known from Sumerian records; the Sumeri- the IVC. Michael Witzel suggests an underlying, prexing
ans called them Meluhhaites.[122] It has been compared language that is similar to Austroasiatic, notably Khasi; he
in particular with the civilisations of Elam (also in the argues that the Rigveda (composed by the Indo-Aryans
context of the Elamo-Dravidian hypothesis) and with after the decline of the Harappans) shows signs of this
Minoan Crete (because of isolated cultural parallels such hypothetical Harappan inuence in the earliest historic
as the ubiquitous goddess worship and depictions of bull- level, and Dravidian only in later levels, suggesting that
leaping).[123] The mature (Harappan) phase of the IVC speakers of Austroasiatic were the original inhabitants of
encountered speakers of
is contemporary to the Early and Middle Bronze Age in Punjab and that the Indo-Aryans
[30]
Dravidian
only
in
later
times.
the Ancient Near East, in particular the Old Elamite period, Early Dynastic to Ur III Mesopotamia, Prepalatial
Minoan Crete and Old Kingdom to First Intermediate Period Egypt.
After the discovery of the IVC in the 1920s, it was immediately associated with the indigenous Dasyu inimical
to the Rigvedic tribes in numerous hymns of the Rigveda.
Mortimer Wheeler interpreted the presence of many unburied corpses found in the top levels of Mohenjo-Daro
as the victims of a warlike conquest, and famously stated
that "Indra stands accused of the destruction of the IVC.
The association of the IVC with the city-dwelling Dasyus
remains alluring because the assumed timeframe of the
rst Indo-Aryan migration into India corresponds neatly
with the period of decline of the IVC seen in the archaeological record. The discovery of the advanced, urban IVC
however changed the 19th-century view of early IndoAryan migration as an invasion of an advanced culture
at the expense of a primitive aboriginal population to a
gradual acculturation of nomadic barbarians on an advanced urban civilisation, comparable to the Germanic
migrations after the Fall of Rome, or the Kassite invasion of Babylonia. This move away from simplistic invasionist scenarios parallels similar developments in thinking about language transfer and population movement in
general, such as in the case of the migration of the protoGreek speakers into Greece, or the Indo-Europeanization
of Western Europe.
It was often suggested that the bearers of the IVC corresponded to proto-Dravidians linguistically, the breakup of proto-Dravidian corresponding to the break-up of
the Late Harappan culture.[124] Today, the Dravidian language family is concentrated mostly in southern India and

9 See also
List of Indus Valley Civilization sites
List of inventions and discoveries of the Indus Valley
Civilization
Cradle of civilization
Bronze Age
Iron Age India
Synoptic table of the principal old world prehistoric
cultures

10 Notes
[1] Masson: A long march preceded our arrival at Haripah,
through jangal of the closest description.... When I joined
the camp I found it in front of the village and ruinous brick
castle. Behind us was a large circular mound, or eminence,
and to the west was an irregular rocky height, crowned
with the remains of buildings, in fragments of walls, with
niches, after the eastern manner.... Tradition arms the
existence here of a city, so considerable that it extended
to Chicha Watni, thirteen cosses distant, and that it was
destroyed by a particular visitation of Providence, brought
down by the lust and crimes of the sovereign.[31] Note that
the coss, a measure of distance used from Vedic period to
Mughal times, is approximately 2 miles (3.2 km).

12

11

11

References

[1] Archeologists conrm Indian civilization is 2000 years

older than previously believed, Jason Overdorf, Globalpost, 28 November 2012.
[2] Indus Valley 2,000 years older than thought.

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EXTERNAL LINKS

Srinivasan, Doris Meth (1997). Many Heads, Arms

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13 External links
Harappa and
harappa.com

Indus

Valley

Civilization

at

An invitation to the Indus Civilization (Tokyo

Metropolitan Museum)
Cache of Seal Impressions Discovered in Western
India

17

14
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14.2

Images

File:Ceremonial_Vessel_LACMA_AC1997.93.1.jpg Source:
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Vessel_LACMA_AC1997.93.1.jpg License: Public domain Contributors:
Image: http://collections.lacma.org/sites/default/files/remote_images/piction/ma-31963494-O3.jpg Original artist: ?
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File:Indus_civilisation_seal_unicorn_at_Indian_Museum,_Kolkata.jpg Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/
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Rama%27s_Arrow
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SA 1.0 Contributors: Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons. Original artist: The original uploader was M.Imran at English Wikipedia
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