Ancient Indus Civilization Blog

The Bengali filmmaker Satyajit Ray's book of short stories The Unicorn Expedition, the title story of which concerns Mohenjo-daro, includes another brilliant story which may also have connections to the ancient Indus civilization. It is called Night of the Indigo and begins with "My name is Aniruddha Bose. I am twenty-nine and a bachelor. For the last eight years I've been working in an advertising agency in Calcutta. . . .. The last few months I haven't written at all, but I have read a lot about indigo plantations in Bengal and Bihar in the nineteenth century. . . . and how, finall… >

"The bathroom itself was usually a small square or rectangular room with a carefully-laid brick pavement sloping towards one corner. In this corner was the outlet for the water, which, in some cases also ran through the latrine." >

The prominent Indian archaeologist Vasant Shinde, in a brand new article Current Perspectives on the Harappan Civilization in A Companion to South Asia in the Past (2016) writes: "The Harappan civilization was first discovered at the site of Harappa in 1924, in the jurisdiction of the modern large village of Harappa. in the the Punjab province (now Pakistan). Being that the civilization was first discovered here, it was termed the Harappan civilization. Over time, a large number of sites were discovered and the extent of this civilization became apparnent. Today the Harappan civiliza… >

The Lahore Museum, whose founding director was Rudyard Kipling, has an important collection of Indus objects and objects from Mehrgarh, some of which are on display in the gallery's display cases. >

Excavator Ernest Mackay wrote of this well-head in Mohenjo-daro: "Brick lined wells are a common feature, most of the larger buildings and houses having their own, to which the poorer people frequently had access. In the early days of the city it is probably that some of the wells were quite private, as their seems to be no means of reaching them from the street, but later on, as the population grew, they were thrown open to public use. The rooms within which the wells were situated were, as a rule, carefully paved, and the floor in many cases was marked with deep depressions where countless … >

One the one hand, the priest-king of Mohenjo-daro may look like a real person; on the other, his garment and other signs led the archeologist Ernest Mackay to write, "the only stone image yet discovered which can definitely be said to be that of a deity is a white steatite head and bust, now about seven inches in height, but once much larger as the lower part of it is missing. This figure is clothed in a robe which is carried over the left shoulder and under the right arm, and on which is carved in relief the trefoil pattern that, to judge from its frequent appearance at Mohenjo-daro and Hara… >

Seals as urban passports? Mackay wrote "most of the inhabitants of the Indus valley seem to have worn amulets of some kind or another. The so-called seal (Pl. M), of which many examples have been found, must now be regarded as having served also as an amulet, on account of the animals incised upon it. In most cases only the upper part, bearing the inscription was employed as a seal proper . . .. Objects of this type seem to have belonged to everyone, a fact which would necessitate a certain amount of mass production." What would you need to mass produce something to denote identity? The Au… >

"The cylinder seals of Mesopotamia constitute her most original art," wrote the scholar Henri Frankfort, and much the same has been said about the very different square stamp seals used by the ancient Indus civilization. Cylinder seals are "small, barrel-shaped stone object[s] with a hole down the center, rolled on clay when soft to indicate ownership or to authenticate a document . . . used chiefly in Mesopotamia from the late 4th to the 1st millennium BCE." Many of the handful of cylinder seals found at ancient Indus sites or Mesopotamian ones with Indus themes are collected below. 1. I… >

"The favorite toy seems to have been a little pottery cart, to judge from the number of specimens, usually in a damaged condition, which have been found. These miniature carts are practically . . .." >

"The economy of these people must have relied largely on agriculture. Although no cereals were found in the course of excavating the discovery of a ploughed field [1], situated to the south-east of the settlement outside the town-hall, is highly significant." >

John Marshall could hardly believe his eyes when this red jasper statuette was found by M.S. Vats at Harappa: ". . . it seemed so completely to upset all established ideas about early art. Modelling such as this was unknown to the ancient world up to the Hellenistic age of Greece, and I thought, therefore, that some mistake must surely have been made." >

"For the astounding remains of Mohenjo Daro, discovered in 1922 and excavated during the following years, are for the most part in a state of utter disintegration and decay and are rapidly approaching the point of total destruction." >

Exciting news the same week of ancient Indus finds in Botad village in Sarashtra 50 miles from Lothal, including beads and the evidence of industry. And at the giant site of Rakigarhi in Hisar, 15 more skeletons were found in Mound 7. Last year was exciting for its find of 5 skeletons, all of which together should enable DNA and other analysis. >

"The humped bull (Bos indicus) has a long and special association with India. Its association with Siva, its all pervading holiness and its basic usefulness in agriculture and commerce for than four millennia are too well known to need description. Its peculiar importance extends back to prehistoric times." >

However incredible this may seem, there now seems to be good genetic and material evidence that sailors from India arrived in Australia from either Sindh or South India at the height of the ancient Indus civilization. They brought with them some technologies and a type of dog that forever changed Aborigine culture. As principal scientist Irina Pulgach at the Max Planck Institute writes, "Their findings suggest substantial gene flow from India to Australia 4,230 years ago. i.e. during the Holocene and well before European contact. Interestingly this date also coincides with many changes in th… >