The Harappan Civilization (Origin)

The name 'Indus Civilization' evokes the urban, literate culture of the 3rd and early 2nd millennia BCE that flourished in the area around the Indus river and its tributaries. Its first known cities, Harappa on the banks of a dried up bed of the Ravi river, an Indus tributary and Mohenjodaro 570 kilometres downstream, in the vicinity of the Indus river itself.

The Indus civilization, while sharing many general features with the contemporary Brone Age culture such as the Sumerian civilization of Mesopotamia and Old Kingdom Egypt, has its own distinct identity. For one thing with a geographical spread of more than a million square kilometers, this was the largest urban culture of its time. Unlike Mesopotamia and egypt there were no grand religious shrines noe were magnificient palaces and funerary complexes constructed for the rulers. Instead, its hallmark was a system of civic amenities for its citizens rarely seen in the other parts of the civilized world - roomy houses with bathrooms, a network of serviceable roads and lanes, an elaborate system of drainage and a unique water supply system. Dholavira's network of dams, water reservoirs and underground drains and mohenjodaro's cylindrical wells, one for every third house, epitomize the degree of comfort that towns people enjoyed in relation to contemporary Mesopotamians and Egiptians who had to make do with fetching water, bucket by bucket, from the nearby rivers.

Indus settlements mainly though not exclusively flourished in the part of the Indian subcontinent which lies west of the Delhi Aravalli Combay geographical axis. Several segments of that zone had seen the birth and development of agriculture communities between 7000 BCE and the genesis of urban centers in the first part of the third millennium BCE. The subsistence pattern that is widely seen at Harappan sites - a combination of wheat and barley cultivation and domesticated animal species in which cattle was most preferred - goes back to Mehrgarh in the Kachhi plain of Baluchistan which has also yielded the earliest evidence of agricultural life in South Asia. From the 5th millennium BCE onwards, this pattern is found spread all over the major areas of Baluchistan, from the Zhob-Loralai region in the northeast to Las Bela towards the south.

At the same time, a majority of classic Indus sites are in riverine lowlands and the manner in which settlements and subsistence patterns had envolved in those areas, over a span of more than a thousand years prior to the efforescence of the Harappan civilization, is central to understanding its evolution. In several lowland areas, there was a long period of antecedence. At the beginning of the fourth millennium BCE, the Cholistan tract saw a well defined phase of occupation, known as the 'Hakra ware' culture named after the river around which its distinctive ceramic assemblage was first discovered. Although the largest concentration of sites is around the Hakra river, its spread included jalipur in Multan and Kunal in Haryana. Most of the sites seem to be small camps with a few permanently established settlements of substantial size. The Hakra horizon is the first culture of the lowlands, which utilized both the desert and the riverin environments, using a variety of stone and copper tools. There are also occasional manufactured goods in raw materials that were not locally available, as is indicated by jalipur's repertoire of semi-precious stone, coral and gold beads. Towards the western fringe of the indus lowlands the fourth millennium BCE witnessed the birth of another culture, known as the Amri culture which dominated the Kirthar piedmont and Kohistan. What is most significant is that some Amri sites are marked by an acrosanctum/lower town division a settlement plan that can be witnessed subsequently, in a highly developed and sophisticated form in the layout of indus cities. The spatial exclusiveness of the acro-sanctum is emphasized by a highly elevated, conically shaped hill with encircling terraced stone walls and remnanats of ramps. The general habitation area which was lower town, possibly contained domestic structures.

The immediate backdrop to the Indus civilization is formed by the next phase, known as the Kot Diji culture, when elements of common culture ethos can be seen across the Indus-Hakra plains and the Indo-Gangetic divide. There are several planned and fortified settlements, the construction of habitational areas aligned around a grid of north-south and east west streetsvat Harappa and the use of mud bricks in the Indus ratio of ratio 1 : 2 : 4, along with a drainage system based on soakage pits in streets at Kunal are especially noteworthy. There is also an extensive but partly standardized repertoire of ceramic designs and forms miscellaneous crafts and a sophististicated metallurgy that includes the manufacture of silver tiaras and armlets as also disc shaped gold beads, wide transport and exchange of raw materials, square stamp seals with designs, the presence of at least two signs of Indus writing at padri and Dholavira and rutuals beliefs embodied in a range of terracotta cattle and female figurines. Considered in totality, the term early Harappan is appropriate for this phase since a number of features related to the mature Harappan period are already present. Sveral of theses features also evoke the presence of commercial and other elite social groups. When one considers the intensification of craft specialization, dependent on extensive networks through which the required raw materials were produced, or the necessity of irrigation for agriculture in the Indus flood plain without the risk of crop failure for which a degree of planning and management was essential the emergence and the character of the controlling or ruling elites becomes clear.

On the whole there is little doubt that the Indus civilization had indigenous roots and that its culture precursors were the Calcolithic cultures of the northwest that flourished in the fourth and third millennia BCE.