The Story of the Indus Valley Civilization

 

The Story of the Indus Valley Civilization

 The Indus Valley Civilization was a Bronze Age civilization located in the Indian Subcontinent. It is of the highest significance to us. Together with ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, it was one of three early civilizations of the Near East and South Asia, and of the three most widespread. Its sites spanning an area stretching from today’s North - East Afghanistan, through much of Pakistan, and into western and North-Western India. It flourished in the basins of the Indus River, which flows through the length of Pakistan, and along a system of perennial, mostly monsoon-fed, rivers that once coursed in the vicinity of the seasonal Ghaggar-Hakra River in North - West India and Eastern Pakistan.

⚫DISCOVERY AND ORIGIN OF THE INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION ➡
It was a hot sunny afternoon in the year 1920. The British were ruling India at that time. Workers were all tired and sweaty as they were digging the ground for construction of a new railway station at a small town called Harappa, Punjab. Suddenly, something very surprising happened. They stumbled upon a large pile of bricks buried under the ground. It was as if they have discovered a treasure. “Where did these bricks came from?” they wondered, “Who made all these bricks?” and the weirdest thing was the bricks were really, really old. The news of this mystery spread far and wide and archaeologists from all over the world set out to Harappa to unfold its mystery. In the years to follow, two archaeologists, Dayaram Sahni and R.D. Banerjee let the excavations at Harappa and MohenjoDaro respectively. After excavations, a lot of exciting things were found. There was a whole city buried there. There were seals and artefacts and amazing buildings all buried in that forgotten town. They were standing over the ruins of a great civilization. They realized it and rushed to inform their bosses. Thus, under the guidance of Sir John Marshal, about 1,500 sites were excavated. These excavations confirmed that an entire civilization existed around the river Indus and its tributaries about 4,500 years ago. Now, since it was a civilization along the valley of the river Indus, they named it the Indus Valley Civilization and since Harappa was the first and the biggest site to be excavated, it is also called the Harappan civilization. Studying the remains historians have predicted that this civilization started around about 3250 BCE and flourished between 2500 BCE and 1500 BCE. It is known to be the first civilization that ever existed in India. Suddenly, India’s history had some proper pedigree, richness, depth and archaeologically verified is ancientness. More than 250 centres of the Harappan culture have been discovered in different areas. Based on these discovery we now know that this civilization was huge and must have extended from the Jammu in the North to Gujrat in the South and from Meerut in the East to the sea coast of North – Western part of India to the West basically covering the entire North – Western region of the Indian subcontinent. Out of all these sites, Harappa and Mohenjo-daro both presently in Pakistan are the most important ones. We have plenty of sites from the Indian part of the subcontinent as well, such as Lothal and Dholavira in Gujrat, Kalibangan in Rajasthan, Alamgirpur in Uttar Pradesh and Mithal in Haryana. The artefacts and remains obtained from all these sites show that our ancestors were quite cool. They had an awesome lifestyle. In fact, in some aspects, I would say they are even better than us.

⚫TOWN PLANNING IN INDUS VALLEY ➡
It was all about how they planned their cities. The cities were divided into two parts. One part smaller and the other part bigger. The smaller part was raised above the ground about 12 meters height and it had massive walls surrounding it. The walls protected it from floods. It seems like a proper fort, Na? The archaeologists also thought so. That’s why they named it Citadel. Most of the important people like the kings, the royal families, the priests, they all lived here. The other part was bigger in size and it had all the residential buildings and the public facilities. It was the place for the common people and it was situated below the Citadel. So we call it the lower town and not just that the cities was guarded so well that they have watch towers made of stone to keep a watch on enemies. So that the cities was not only protected from flood but also from any attacks. The Harappan cities had an awesome system of water supply. There was no discrimination, water was made available to everyone equally. It was believed that they were the first civilization to achieve the great art of indoor plumbing. Each house had a separate well and there were community wells too. They kept it all so clean and hygienic. There sanitation system was the best. No city in the whole world was as clean as our Indus Valley Civilization. From each house waste water flowed down into small drains. These small drains from all the houses were connected to a large underground drain that is built under the streets and from there it was then carried out of the cities. The drains had man holes at regular intervals for cleaning and were always, always covered with bricks and stones. 

⚫HOUSE PLANNING IN INDUS VALLEY ➡
So the entire land was divided into blocks, small and big. Houses were constructed in just these blocks so they would have enough space between them. There was a central courtyard around which the rooms, kitchen, water wells and bathroom were arranged. Larger houses also had smaller dwellings connected to them for the guests or servants. The houses would be one to two story and there were stairs to go up and down. The Entrance Door to all these rooms faced the courtyard and also the Entry Gates to houses were restricted to only side streets. They also had compound walls hence anyone could hardly been to others affairs so that they nosy neighbours were a NO! NO!
⚫STREET PLANNING IN INDUS VALLEY ➡
The Harappans were perhaps were the first in the world to use wheel transport and there were no traffic jams. The secret behind no traffic jams was wide roads and proper planning. The roads in our Indus Valley cities were as wide as our national highways and even the normal streets were wider than a width of a truck and all these roads and streets were interconnected in perfect Right Angles with a slight curve at the corners so that the heavy carts can turn easily and they planned it all out perfectly to avoid traffic.

Even if we take all the vehicles of today and put them in the Harappan city then we would have smooth flowing traffic and no jams and it was all about planning and they were obsessive planners. 
⚫SPECIAL BUILDINGS IN THE CITAEDEL ➡
🔸 THE GREAT BATH
It is a well-engineered structure. The bricks at the side walls as well as the floor fit together so finely that the bath was water tight. In addition, there was a thick layer of bitumen on the brick to make it even more water proof and it had two wide stair cases, one from the north and the other from the south for entrance. There were changing rooms also along the eastern edge and there was a well for water supply and a small hole in corner of the bath for draining the dirty water. Near the South-West corner of The Great Bath, there was a Hummam, a facility for Sauna.

🔸 THE ASSEMBLY HALL
It was a large, tall hall about 25 Square Meter Area supported by 20 huge pillars arranged in 4 rows. People may have used it for general gatherings.
🔸 THE GREAT GRANARY
 It is a huge granary which is as large as a tennis court. They mastered the art of agriculture so much that they produced tools like the “plough” and also cultivated a huge variety of food grains. They grew wheat, barley, pulses, peas, rice, sesame, linseed, mustard. So the granaries were essential for storing
food grains for the public and even had circular brick platforms for grinding grains.

These measurements remained consisted throughout the civilization. All the way from Mohenjo-Daro to Harappa 700 km away from each other all these measurements remained exactly the same and this was all possible certainly because the civic authorities in Harappa were very bijered but also the Harappans [the people] obeyed them too.

⚫DAILY LIFE ➡
During that time, only normal mud pots were made everywhere in the world. Harappans were apparently the first ones to make these shiny pots called “Glazed Pottery”. Their pots had the perfect finish and rich designs. The Harappans painted animals, humans and patterns onto pots and utensils and also on the walls. The best part is even after so many years, the colours still stayed. The Harappan art of sculpting was very unique. A variety of terracotta sculptures was found during excavations. 

The archaeologists tried to get an idea about the Harappan life, culture, beliefs by
studying them like some statues were found in large, large numbers throughout the Indus Valley.

 

This statue of a woman wearing a fan-like a headdress and a lot of ornaments is “Mother Goddess"

Another god is this, a man with horns and three faces sitting all calm in a yogic pose in spite of being surrounded by all the fears’ animals such as the elephant, the Tiger, the Rhino, and the Buffalo. He’s called the “Pashupati Mahadev”.


The Harappans were also famous for their jewellery and their crafts. Their potters, painters, sculptures, weavers, jewellers were all so good that they were famous all over the world and thus they Harappan merchants used to trade them all over the world. They would take the glazed pots and other special; materials to the foreign lands and bring several materials, raw materials, metals, precious stones from there. Exchange of goods would happen between different cities of the civilization too. For internal trade, they used bullock carts and brought gold from South India, precious stone from Gujarat, copper from Rajasthan. For external trade, they would use costal routes using boats and ships to travel along the coasts to distant lands. They got gold from Oman, Silver from Persia, tin from Afghanistan and Iran and so on. They pasted seals on every goods. Seals are the older version of the company logos we see on products and advertisments. During trades, goods were packed on bags. A layer of wet clay was applied on the knots and then a seal was pressed on it. After drying, it would leave an impression called as "Sealing" or "Seal". Each trader had a unique seal. The seals were like an assurance of quality. More than 2000 varieties of such seals have been found in various Harappan sites. They were made of different materials and boar different designs of animals, birds, human figures. Many seals had inscriptions written on them but unfortunately we don't know how to read their scripts. When the Mesopotamian civilization was excavated, a seal was found where there was a mention of the Indus Valley in their scripts, which we can read. They called it "Meluha". We know from the kind of figurines and art in earth that they had some sort of religion that they might have worshiped many gods. Not only the Mother Goddess and Shiva Pashupati, they also worshiped several animals as a symbol of strength, dove as their sacred bird. In fact, a lot of their practices were similar to what teh Hindus do today. Like they even worshiped teh peepal tree and lit incense sticks during prayers. So, Hinduism is known to have been partially influenced from them, but many of teh practices were different too. Like today, the Hindus burn their dead bodies, but the Harappans would bury the dead bodies with utensils, ornaments and mirrors because they believed that people lived another life after death. There were home schools and they learned all their crafts and reading and writing at home itself. Harappan kids had lots and lots of toys all made using terracotta. Many utensils, figures of boys and girls, dogs and other animals, two or four-wheeled carts with moving wheels, and board games like "Ludo". The Harappan kids had it all.

⚫THE DECLINE OF HARAPPA➡
Although the Harappan civilization was very well organised and prosperous, things started going wrong at some point of time, just like with most civilizations. Increasing population made the administration difficult. Garbage piled up on streets, drainage systems broke down and houses were built on the roads. Too much grazing by the plentiful herds destroyed the green cover, increasing demands of wood for fuel led to deforestation because of the river Indus changed and it caused floods in some areas and droughts in others. One more popularly debated reason for teh decline of Harappans is that the Aryans invaded India. People vacated the cities and moved towards the Eastern and Southern parts of teh subcontinent. In no time, the entire civilization had completely disappeared. This sudden disappearance is more mysterious than the fact they declined. In every other place, the decline of one civilization led to some other civilization taking its place. But here, the Harappans just disappeared without a trace. Beneath the sand and the silt. Indian history had to begin again with a whole new set of people and that is the great mystery of Harappa, which is unsolved to this day. However, in India, the land of reincarnation there had to be a rebirth. The civilization may have vanished but the Harappans are still with us. There impact can be seen even today. The Harappan way of baking bricks, pottery, sculpting. All of them contributed to cultural developments in India.