DR. B.R.

AMBEDKAR NATIONAL LAW

UNIVERSITY

PROJECT WORK
SUBJECT – HISTORY
HARAPPAN CIVILISATION
 Harappan Civilisation is also known as Indus Valley Civilisation. It is the oldest
Civilisation of India.
 There is no consensus about the chronology of the Harappan Civilisation.
 Various scholars have given different dates about this period.
 According to Sir John Marshall, “this civilisation flourished between 3250 and
2750 BCE”.
 It was Daya Ram Sahni, who first discovered the sites of Harappan in 1921.
 The main centres of this civilisation are in Pakistan. The same famous sites of
this civilisation (now in Pakistan) are Mohenjodaro and Chanhudaro.
 The main centre where this Civilisation flourished in India are Kalibangan,
Sangol, Pengplor, Lothal, Dholavira and Banawali.
 The urban planning of this civilisation was very magnificent. The houses were
built in a systematic manner. Roads were wide and cut each other at right angle.
 The people of Indus Valley Civilisation had also made best planning for the
drainage of rainwater and dirty water.
 The caste system was not present in the society. All the people lived together
with mutual love and understanding.% The women held a high position or rank
in the society.
 They were fond of fashion. The economic life the people was very prosperous.
 The main occupations of the people were the agriculture and domestication of
animals.
 Trade was well developed. Both maternal and external trade was carried out.
 The people worshipped many gods and goddesses. They worshipped mother
goddesses, Lord Shiva, animal, birds, trees and the Sun.
 They knew arts and crafts. They knew the art of making beautiful sculptures,
toys, pottery, ornaments, etc. They were skilled in the production of seals.
  The languages used by them on the seals is still to be deciphered. If one is able
to decipher their script inscribed on the seals, it will throw a flood of the light
on the various aspects of the Harappan Civilisation.
 The main sources of our information of Harappan Civilisation is archaeological
materials. The excavation carried out at Indus sites tries to reconstruct the
history of this civilisation.
 During the excavation of Indus sites, many tools, pottery, seals, household
objects, etc. have excavated.
 All these excavated materials are deeply examined by the archaeologists.
 Many historians like Cunningham, R.E.M. Wheeler, John Marshall and G.F.
 Dates have played a valuable role in reconstructing the history of the ancient
past including the Indus Valley Civilisation sites.
 Many Indian archaeologists like Daya Ram Sahni, S.R. Rao, R.S. Bisht and
B.K. Thapar have played a great role in excavations of the Indus sites.
 Indus Valley Civilisation is also known as Bronze Age Civilisation, because
people used bronze extensively for making their pottery, figure lines and
ornaments.
 Almost 1900 BCE, these were explicit signs about the decline of this
civilisation.
 By this time the two most important cities of Indus Valley-Mohenjodaro and
Harappa had been completely declined.
 Around 1200 BCE, this civilisation had completely vanished. Epidemic, Aryan
Invasion, change in the course of the river Indus, excessive floods, earthquake,
etc. may be the main reasons for the decline of this civilisation.

Archeological Evidences of The Harappan Civilisation:

 The Harappan Civilisation is also known as Indus Valley Civilisation. This

civilisation is dated between BCE 2600 and 1990 BCE. It is the oldest
civilisation of India. We know about the civilisation from archaeological
evidences like houses, pots, ornaments, tools and seals used by the people of
that period.
 There were also earlier and later cultures, known as Early Harappan and Late
Harappan Civilisation.
 Cunningham was the first Director General of Archaeological Survey of India
who began archaeological excavations in the Harappan sites.
 Cunningham was unable to find the significance of Harappan Civilisation and
thought that Indian history began with the first cities in the Ganga valley.
 Daya Ram Sahni, Rakhal Das Baneiji, John Marshall were some of the
important archaeologists associated with the discovery of Harappan
Civilisation. The frontiers of the Harappan civilisation have no connection with
present day national boundaries. The major sites are now in Pakistani territory.
 In India, a number of Harappan settlements were found in Punjab and Haryana.
The main centres where this civilisation flourished in India are Kalibangan,
Lothal, Dholavira, Rakhi Garhi and Banawali.
 Archaeologist tried to classify artefacts in terms of material and in terms of
function by comparing these with present-day things. The problems of
 archaeological interpretation are most evident in attempts to reconstruct
religious practices of the Harappan.
 Unusual objects like terracotta figurines of women, stone statuary of men, motif
of unicorn and figure in yogic posture on seals and structures like the great bath
and fire altars may have had a religious significance. Several reconstructions
regarding the Harappan civilisation remain speculative at present and there is a
vast scope for future work.

Seals, Script, Weights of Harappan Civilisation:

 Seals and sealings were used to facilitate long distance communication. If the
bag of goods reached with its sealing intact, it meant that it had not been
tampered with. Seals also conveyed the identity of the sender.
 The Harappan script remains undeciphered to date. The script was not
alphabetical and had many signs between 375 and 400.
 Exchange were regulated by a precise system of weights, usually made of a
stone called chert with no marking. The lower denominations of weights were
binary7 and the higher denominations followed the decimal system.

Food Habits of Harappan People:

 The people of Harappan Civilisation ate a wide range of plant and animal
products including fish and meat, wheat, maize, millet, pulses, rice and another
eatables. For this, cattle, sheep, goat, buffalo and pig were domesticated by the
Harappans.

Agricultural Techniques Using by Harappan People:

 Archaeological evidences suggested that oxen were used for ploughing and two
different crops were grown together. As most of the Harappan sites are located
in Semi-arid lands, it is evident that water from canals and wells was used for
irrigation.

Social and Economic Differences among Harappan People:

 Archaeologists use certain strategies to find out social and economic differences
among people. These include studying burials and artefacts which can be
divided into utilitarian and luxuries.
 Valuable materials are generally concentrated in large settlements, but rarely
found in smaller settlements.

Craft Production of Harappan People:

 Harappans knew the art of making beautiful sculptures, toys, pottery,

ornaments, etc. Chanhudaro was a tiny settlement exclusively devoted to craft
production, including bead-making, shell-cutting, metal-working, seal-making
and weight-making.
  Grinding, polishing and drilling were done for making beads. Nageshwar and
Balakot were specialised centres for making shell objects as both these
settlements are near the coast. Apart from smaller settlements, larger cities like
Mohenjodaro and Harappa were also the specialised centres for craft
production.

Acquiring Materials for Craft:

 The Harappans procured materials for craft production in various ways.

Sometimes they established settlements where raw materials were available.
Another strategy for procuring raw materials may have been to send
expeditions to areas where these were available e.g. Khetri region for copper
(Rajasthan) and South India for gold.
 The Harappan made contact with distant lands like Oman for procuring copper.
The Harappan seals, weights, dice and beads were found in other countries,
Oman, Bahrain and Mesopotamia.

Economic Life and Trade during Harappan Civilisation:

 Economic life of the people was very prosperous The main occupations of the
people were agriculture and domestication of animals.
 Trade was well developed. Both internal and external trade were carried out.
Pictures of ships, boats have also been found on seals which throw light on
Harappan contacts with far off places

Religious Belief of Harappan People:

 People of this civilisation worshipped many Gods and Goddesses. They

worshipped Lord Shiva, mother Goddesses, animals, birds, trees and the sun.

Caste System in Harappan Civilisation:

 The caste system was not present in the society. All people live together with
mutual love and understanding. Women held a high position or rank in the
society.

A Planned Town of Harappan Civilisation Mohenjodaro:

 Mohenjodaro was the most well-known urban site of the Harappan Civilisation.
Although Harappa was the first site to be discovered, it was badly destroyed by
brick robbers.
 The settlement in Harappan civilisation was divided into two sections, one
smaller in terms of land but higher in terms of power known as the Citadel, the
other much larger in terms of area but lower in terms of power was known as
Lower Town.
  All the Harappan cities had carefully planned drainage system. The residential
buildings at Mohenjodaro were centred on a courtyard, had its own bathrooms,
the drains of which were connected to the street drains.
 In Mohenjodaro, many houses had well and their estimated number was about
700. Structures like warehouse and the Great Bath’ were used for public
purposes.

Institutions and hierarchies

How was Harappan society organized, and what institutions functioned as centers of
authority? Archaeological records provide no immediate answers regarding a center of
authority or depictions of people in power in Harappan society, and there are few written
records to consult. However, Harrapan artifacts display an extraordinary uniformity. Pottery,
seals, weights, and bricks with standardized sizes and weights, suggest some form of
authority and governance, though it is not clear what that form was exactly.

Over time, various theories have developed concerning Harappan systems of rule. One theory
is that there was a single state encompassing all the communities of the civilization; this
theory is supported by the similarity in artifacts, the evidence of planned settlements, the
standardized ratio of brick size, and the apparent establishment of settlements near sources of
raw material. Another theory posits that there was no single ruler, but rather a number of
leaders representing each of the urban centers, including Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, and other
communities. It seems likely that there was not one centralized and all-powerful state but that
various classes and centers of power were integrated into a decentralized structure.

Written records gave historians a great deal of insight into the civilizations of ancient
Mesopotamia and Egypt, but very few written materials have been discovered in the Indus
valley. Though seal inscriptions do seem to have written information, scholars have not been
able to decipher the Indus script. As a result, they have had considerable difficulty
understanding the nature of the state and religious institutions of the Indus Valley
Civilization. We know relatively little about their legal codes, procedures, and systems of
governance.
Historians have made educated guesses about the nature of Harappan civilization from the
available artifacts and physical structures. Some experts have theorized that the Indus Valley
Civilization had no rulers as we understand them, that everyone enjoyed equal status. Some
evidence in support of this conclusion is that most Harappan residents seem to have enjoyed
relatively equal health and that there were not many elite burials, which archaeologists have
discerned through mortuary analysis—the study of graves and deposits containing human
remains.

However, this does not conclusively prove that Harappan society lacked any social hierarchy,
and it could possibly be the result of other factors, like different beliefs about the afterlife.
Some scholars point to varying house sizes and varied heights of structures to suggest that
different social classes occupied different levels in the cities. Others identify items such as
painted pottery, bangles, beaded ornaments, and even location within cities as indicators of
wealth. A considerable degree of craft specialization also suggests some degree of socio-
economic stratification.

It is widely believed that the Harappan civilization was a peaceful one that did not engage in
any warfare, but there is not conclusive evidence to support this belief, and some
archaeologists consider it a pervasive myth. Some scholars argue that Harappans were
peaceful primarily because there were no natural enemies due to the geographic location of
the major cities. Weapons have been found at sites, but there is debate as to whether they
were used in conflict with other groups or as defense against wild animals.

The End of Harappan Civilisation:

 By 1800 BCE, most of the mature Harappan sites were abandoned. Around
1200 BCE, this civilisation had completely vanished. After 1900 BCE, a rural
way of life what was known as ‘Late Harappan’ or ‘successor cultures’
emerged.
 The reasons for the end of the civilisation range from climatic change,
deforestation, excessive floods, the shifting and drying up of rivers and to
overuse of the landscape. All these factors may have weakened the civilisation,
but its ultimate extinction is more likely to have been completed by deliberate
and large-scale destruction or by an invasion.