Madho Sarup Vats (1896–1955, shown above at Mohenjo-daro) was an influential Indian archaeologist best known for his pioneering work on the Indus Valley Civilization, particularly the sites of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. Born in Punjab, India, Vats was one of the early Indian archaeologists trained under the British colonial framework. His contributions played a significant role in shaping Indian archaeology as an independent field. He served as Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India (A.S.I.) from 1950-1954.
Vats’s most significant publications was the two-volume Excavations at Harappa (1940), a detailed report of the site’s archaeological finds from the A.S.I.'s first modern excavations in 1920. This work is considered a landmark in South Asian archaeology and has been widely cited by scholars in the field. His careful analysis of the site and its artifacts, including seals, pottery, and terracotta figurines, provided critical insights into the daily life, religious practices, and trade networks of the Indus Valley people and built on and commented on the work of other excavators like Daya Ram Sahni.
Dr. Nayanjot Lahiri writes in her book tracing the history of the discovery of the ancient Indus civilization, Finding Forgotten Cities: "In mid 1924, though, Vats was a junior member of the archaeological establishment. An MA from the Punjab University, he had begun his career in the Patna Museum. In 1918 he was appointed there to prepare impressions of the inscriptions in Bihar and Orissa. His association with the Survey began a little later, in March 1920 when he was awarded its Sanskrit scholarship, which was regularly extended till 1923. In that year the scholarship had to be discontinued, thanks to drastic pruning of the archaeological budget. Fortunately, there was soon to be an alternative opening for him in the Survey. When Rakhaldas Banerji proceeded on medical leave in the summer of 1923, the assistant superintendent of the Western Circle, G.C. Chandra, was the man appointed to officiate for Banerji. In place of Chandra, Vats was asked in early July 1923 to officiate-as assistant superintendent. During that year, Vats is likely to have been involved in various circle activities, such as the wide-ranging conservation that was the hallmark of the Western Circle. He also deciphered several newly discovered votive inscriptions from the chaitya cave at Karle.38 But the excavations with which he was entrusted in Mohenjodaro must have made the winter season truly memorable for him. It was news concerning his month-long sojourn there that he now conveyed to Marshall.
"Vats had chosen a mound for his excavation which lay to the north of the modern cart track at Mohenjodaro. His letter begins with a long description of the seven Harappan seals that his dig at that mound yielded.39 The various symbols used on them, of the 'pictographic script,the ideographic nature of which it is now too late to mistake, were outlined and com-pared with those that Banerji had found at Mohenjodaro, as also with the Cunningham seals from Harappa. Interestingly,Vats believed that the seals were not used for affixation but func-tioned as amulets. For one thing, the round projection on the reverse side of the seals was too small to be held and pressed down. The material from which they were made, according to Vats, also was too friable and'singularly inappropriate for the preparation of seals proper'. Moreover, several of the symbols that were used on the seals such as the fish and unicorn, lent additional support to the idea that they were used as amulets. About the unicorn, Vats wrote:
'Curious ideas are associated with unicorn viz. that cups prepared from his horn are supposed to be efficacious against poison; that when the animal drinks water froma pool and dips his horn into it, the water gets purified and sweetened; and the animal is supposed to represent the softening influence of love, which is sometimes represented by his becoming so tame as to surrender himself to a virgin. This is said to be the only means by which he could be caught as he is supposed to be peculiarly fierce, and fleet of foot. His fierceness gives a mythical background to his traditional rivalry with the lion. Thus the device of the unicorn conjures up an idea of charm, mystic efficacy or symbolism . . .'
"In suggesting the seals were like amulets, Vats anticipated the ideas of those archaeologists who, in more recent years, have argued for this. Several features of the Indus specimens that Vats noticed, as also the fact that they are found abraded only at the edges and not on the inside, has fuelled speculation that these were not used as seals (for making impressions on clay), but functioned either as amulets or as identifying devices.
"Marshall may have mulled over these insights about the Mohenjodaro seals and the symbols on them. Most of all, he must have been both startled and enthused by what was con-veyed in the last paragraph of Vats's letter. There, the possibility that Mohenjodaro existed prior to the time of the Mauryan dynasty was underlined, this being a chronology in line with what Sahni had suggested for Harappa. Most importantly, Vats pointed to the fact that the similarities that existed between the two sites extended beyond synchronous dates and seals. This was something that no excavator before Vats had highlighted.
"The presence of dull creamy-coloured flint scrapers, and the blocks from which they are chipped, together with the general absence of coinage, as also the negative evidence regarding iron, of which not a single bit was found, goes to show that the site is very old. Pottery, specially tiny vases, is more general than anything else on the site, and the shapes of some of them here, as at Harappa, are similar to those of the pre-historic pottery found in the Tinnevally [sic] District. Further, it would go a great deal to establish the cultural affinity of Mohenjo-Daro with Harappa and their lying in one and the same zone of influence when we remember that not only the size of bricksis the same-viz 11”x 5 1/2 ”x 2 1/2” to 2 3/4”-but the essential bond between the so-called seals from the two places-the strongest and the most valuable link-as well as the crude caricaturing of terracotta figurines, earthen bangles, balls for slings etc. are found essentially to be of a kindred kind. The cumulative evidence of the finds shows that the site is probably pre-Mauryan, though in the absence of a dateable piece, and further and fuller exploration it would be difficult to assign them a definite or even an approximately accurate date at present." (Nayanjot Lahiri, Finding Forgotten Cities, pp. 306-309.)
Sir Mortimer Wheeler, a prominent British archaeologist, did criticize some aspects of Madho Sarup Vats's work, particularly his excavation techniques and interpretations at the Indus Valley sites. Wheeler, who served as the Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) from 1944 to 1948, was known for his rigorous excavation methodologies and his emphasis on stratigraphy, a technique that helps establish the chronological sequence of archaeological layers. When Wheeler reviewed the work of earlier archaeologists in India, including Vats, he felt that their did not adequately employ stratigraphic principles, which could have clarified the chronological relationships among different occupational layers at these sites.
Despite Wheeler's criticisms, and some might say arrogance, Vats work remains foundational and Wheeler’s critiques are seen today as part of the evolution in archaeological practices, highlighting the shift from early exploratory excavation Vats had learned from Sir John Marshall to more scientific and methodological approaches in the mid-20th century.