Bricks, Beads and Bones

This is Theme One of Themes in Indian History – I. Every other chapter of the trilogy starts from texts, inscriptions or travellers’ accounts; this one has almost none, so it is really a lesson in how archaeologists know — and how their interpretations change. Read it for two things at once: what the Harappans did, and how we know it.

• Leads into Theme Two (Kings, Farmers and Towns), which picks up the story more than a millennium later with the cities of the Ganga valley and the early states; NCERT itself says the subcontinent had to wait over a thousand years for new cities ‘in a completely different region’.
• Pairs with Theme Four (religious beliefs and buildings), where the later Puranic traditions that are sometimes read back into Harappan seals are explained.
• UPSC: GS1 Ancient History and Art & Culture — Prelims asks site-and-finding pairs, metals, seals, food, religion and discovery; Mains asks Harappan town planning and architecture (2014, 2025) and continuity of Indian civilisation (2015).

• Phases (2026-27 reprint): Early 6000–2600 BCE, Mature (urban) 2600–1900 BCE, Late 1900–1300 BCE; roots in farming communities of c. 7000 BCE.
• 2,000+ sites; five major cities — Rakhigarhi, Mohenjodaro, Harappa, Dholavira, Ganweriwala; Harappa was found first, Mohenjodaro is best preserved.
• Planning: Citadel (small, high, walled, on platforms) and Lower Town (large, walled, grid streets); bricks in a 4:2:1 ratio; covered drains laid before houses.
• Craft and trade: Chanhudaro (beads, shell, metal, seals, weights), shell at Nageshwar and Balakot, lapis near Shortughai, copper from Khetri and Oman (Magan); Mesopotamian texts call the region Meluhha.
• Seals with an undeciphered, non-alphabetic script (375–400 signs, written right to left); chert weights binary below, decimal above.
• Decline after c. 1900 BCE: seals, script, standard weights and cities vanish; the 1940s ‘invasion massacre’ reading was disproved; who ruled and what was worshipped are still debated.

Before the Mature Harappan there were several archaeological cultures in the region, each with its own pottery, evidence of farming and herding, and some crafts. Their settlements were mostly small, with virtually no large buildings. The reprint adds that recent evidence traces Harappan culture back to early farming communities of around 7000 BCE, and that the urban phase grew out of a gradual internal transformation during the Early Harappan phase — not from outside.

The Harappans ate a wide range of plant and animal products, including fish. Archaeo-botanists identify charred grains and seeds: wheat, barley, lentil, chickpea and sesame; millets from sites in Gujarat; rice relatively rare. Archaeo-zoologists show that cattle, sheep, goat, buffalo and pig were domesticated. Bones of wild boar, deer and gharial, and of fish and fowl, also occur — but we cannot tell whether Harappans hunted these themselves or got meat from hunting communities.

Agricultural practices are harder to reconstruct than crops. The bull appears on seals and in terracotta, so archaeologists infer that oxen pulled ploughs. Terracotta plough models come from Cholistan and Banawali (Haryana). At Kalibangan (Rajasthan) a ploughed field survives from Early Harappan levels, with two sets of furrows at right angles — suggesting two crops grown together. Harvesting tools are uncertain: stone blades in wooden handles, or metal tools?

Most sites are in semi-arid land where irrigation was probably needed. Traces of canals are found at Shortughai (Afghanistan) but not in Punjab or Sind — perhaps they silted up long ago. Water from wells was probably used, and the reservoirs of Dholavira may have stored water for farming.

Cities were the most distinctive feature of the civilisation. Mohenjodaro is the best known, though Harappa was discovered first. Mohenjodaro has two parts: a smaller, higher Citadel on the west, raised on mud-brick platforms and walled off from the rest; and a much larger, lower Lower Town, also walled, where many buildings stood on platforms too.

Three clues show the city was planned first, built later. (1) The platforms: if one labourer moved about a cubic metre of earth a day, the foundations alone needed about four million person-days. (2) Once platforms existed, building was confined to them. (3) Bricks, sun-dried or baked, had a standard ratio — length four times and breadth twice the height — at all Harappan settlements.

Drains were among the most distinctive features. Since streets with drains seem to have come first, every house needed one wall on a street. Domestic architecture in the Lower Town: houses built round a courtyard (probably for cooking and weaving in hot, dry weather), no windows in ground-level walls and entrances that gave no direct view inside — a concern for privacy. Every house had a brick-paved bathroom drained into the street; some had staircases to a second storey or roof; many had wells, often in a room reachable from outside. Mohenjodaro had about 700 wells.

On the Citadel stood buildings probably used for special public purposes. The warehouse survives only in its lower brick portions; its upper parts were probably of wood. The Great Bath was a large rectangular tank in a courtyard ringed by a corridor, with steps on the north and south, made watertight with bricks set on edge and gypsum mortar; rooms on three sides (one with a large well), and an outlet into a huge drain. North of it, across a lane, a smaller building had eight bathrooms on either side of a corridor. Its uniqueness and its setting on the Citadel lead scholars to suggest a special ritual bath.

Burials. Egypt’s pyramids, some contemporary with the Harappans, were royal burials full of wealth. Harappan dead were generally laid in pits; sometimes the pit was lined with bricks — a sign of status? We are not sure. Some graves have pottery and ornaments, perhaps for use in an afterlife. Jewellery is found with both men and women: in the mid-1980s, at the Harappa cemetery, an ornament of three shell rings, a jasper bead and hundreds of micro beads lay near a man’s skull. Some dead were buried with copper mirrors. On the whole, though, Harappans did not bury precious things with the dead.

Artefacts. Archaeologists sort objects into utilitarian (everyday things of ordinary materials such as stone or clay — querns, pottery, needles, flesh-rubbers — found all over a settlement) and luxuries (rare, of costly non-local materials, or made with complicated technology — e.g. little faience pots). Hard cases exist: spindle whorls of faience are everyday tools in a costly material. Distribution helps: rare objects cluster in big cities like Mohenjodaro and Harappa; faience miniature pots (perhaps perfume bottles) are absent from small settlements such as Kalibangan; all gold jewellery came from hoards.

Chanhudaro was tiny (under 7 hectares, against Mohenjodaro’s 125 hectares) and devoted almost entirely to crafts: bead-making, shell-cutting, metal-working, seal-making and weight-making. Bead materials were remarkably varied — carnelian (a beautiful red), jasper, crystal, quartz, steatite; copper, bronze and gold; shell, faience and terracotta. Some beads joined two or more stones, some had gold caps; shapes included disc, cylinder, sphere, barrel and segmented forms; some were incised, painted or etched.

Techniques varied with the material. Steatite, very soft, was easy to work; some beads were moulded from steatite paste, allowing many shapes. How the minute steatite micro bead was made is still a puzzle. Experiments show carnelian’s red colour came from firing the yellowish raw material at several stages.

Nageshwar and Balakot, both near the coast, specialised in shell objects — bangles, ladles, inlay — sent to other settlements. Finished beads from Chanhudaro and Lothal probably went to the big cities. To identify a production centre archaeologists look for raw material (stone nodules, whole shells, copper ore), tools, unfinished objects, rejects and, best of all, waste. Tiny waste bits in work areas of Mohenjodaro and Harappa show crafts were practised in the big cities too.

Clay was local, but stone, timber and metal came from beyond the alluvial plain. Terracotta bullock-cart models suggest carts on land routes; the Indus and its tributaries and coastal routes were probably used too. Methods: (1) settlements near sources — Nageshwar and Balakot (shell), Shortughai near the best lapis lazuli, Lothal near carnelian (Bharuch), steatite (south Rajasthan and north Gujarat) and metal (Rajasthan); (2) expeditions — to the Khetri region of Rajasthan for copper and to south India for gold, contact shown by occasional Harappan finds such as steatite micro beads. Around Khetri lies the Ganeshwar-Jodhpura culture, with non-Harappan pottery and unusually many copper objects; its people may have supplied copper.

Distant lands. Copper probably also came from Oman: chemical analysis finds nickel traces in both Omani copper and Harappan artefacts. A large Harappan jar coated with thick black clay (to stop liquids seeping) has been found at Omani sites — perhaps its contents were exchanged for copper. Mesopotamian texts of the third millennium BCE mention copper from Magan (perhaps Oman) and contact with Dilmun (probably Bahrain), Magan and Meluhha (possibly the Harappan region), listing Meluhha’s products as carnelian, lapis lazuli, copper, gold and varieties of wood. A myth hopes Meluhha’s ‘haja-bird’ will be heard in the royal palace — perhaps the peacock. Texts call Meluhha a land of seafarers, and seals show ships and boats.

Seals and sealings helped long-distance communication. A bag’s mouth was tied with rope, wet clay was pressed on the knot and one or more seals were stamped into it. An intact sealing on arrival meant the bag was untampered, and it showed the sender’s identity.

The script. A seal usually has a line of writing, probably the owner’s name and title; the animal motif may have conveyed meaning to those who could not read. Most inscriptions are short — the longest has about 26 signs. Still undeciphered, it was clearly not alphabetic, because it has too many signs — 375 to 400. It was written right to left: some seals are spaced widely on the right and cramped on the left, as if the engraver ran out of room. Writing appears on seals, copper tools, jar rims, copper and terracotta tablets, jewellery, bone rods and even an ancient signboard — and perhaps on perishable materials. Was literacy widespread? We cannot say.

Weights. Exchanges were regulated by a precise system of weights, usually cubical chert with no markings (Fig. 1.2). The lower denominations were binary (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32); the higher followed the decimal system (160, 200, 320, 640). Small weights were probably for jewellery and beads. Metal scale-pans have also been found.

Complex decisions were clearly taken and carried out: extraordinary uniformity in pottery, seals, weights and bricks (bricks were not made at one centre, yet kept one ratio from Jammu to Gujarat); settlements set up at strategic places; and labour mobilised for bricks, massive walls and platforms. Who organised it?

Palaces and kings? Archaeology gives no direct answer. A large building at Mohenjodaro was labelled a palace, but nothing spectacular was found in it. A stone statue is still called the ‘priest-king’ because archaeologists familiar with Mesopotamia’s priest-kings saw a parallel — but Harappan rituals are poorly understood, and there is no way to know whether ritual specialists also held political power.

Three views: no rulers, everyone equal; several rulers, one for each major city; a single state, given similar artefacts, planned settlements, standard bricks and sites near raw materials. The 2026-27 reprint then adds that the Harappans probably practised ‘some sort of democratic system’ and that some structures were apparently built for utilitarian purposes.

By c. 1800 BCE most Mature sites in regions such as Cholistan were abandoned, while population moved into new settlements in Gujarat, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh. In the few sites occupied after 1900 BCE, material culture changed: weights, seals and special beads disappeared; writing, long-distance trade and craft specialisation ended; far fewer materials made far fewer things; houses were poorer and no large public buildings were raised. The result was a rural way of life — the ‘Late Harappan’ or ‘successor cultures’.

Why? Suggested causes include climatic change, deforestation, excessive floods, shifting or drying rivers and overuse of the landscape. Each may explain some settlements, but none explains the collapse of the whole civilisation. NCERT’s conclusion: a strong unifying element, perhaps the Harappan state, came to an end — shown by the disappearance of seals, script, distinctive beads and pottery, the shift from standard to local weights, and the decline of cities. New cities would arise only after more than a millennium, in a different region.

After the cities fell into ruin, people forgot them; strange objects occasionally surfaced through floods, erosion, ploughing or treasure-digging. Alexander Cunningham, first Director-General of the ASI, began excavating in the mid-nineteenth century when archaeologists followed the written word. His main interest was the Early Historic period (c. sixth century BCE – fourth century CE); he used the accounts of Chinese Buddhist pilgrims (fourth to seventh centuries CE) to locate sites, and collected and translated inscriptions. Harappa was neither on the pilgrims’ routes nor a known Early Historic city. When an Englishman gave him a Harappan seal, he noted it but could not place it, because he — like many — believed Indian history began with the first cities of the Ganga valley.

In the early twentieth century Daya Ram Sahni found seals at Harappa in layers much older than Early Historic ones, and Rakhal Das Banerji found similar seals at Mohenjodaro — suggesting one archaeological culture. In 1924, John Marshall, Director-General of the ASI, announced a new civilisation in the Indus valley. Similar seals had been found in Mesopotamia, so the world learnt not only of a new civilisation but of one contemporary with Mesopotamia. As S.N. Roy put it, Marshall ‘left India three thousand years older than he had found her’.

Marshall, the first professional archaeologist in India (with experience in Greece and Crete), looked for patterns of everyday life as well as spectacular finds. But he dug in uniform horizontal units, ignoring the stratigraphy, so objects from different layers were grouped together and their context was lost for ever. R.E.M. Wheeler, Director-General from 1944, corrected this by following the layers, and as a former army brigadier brought military precision.

After Partition the major known sites went to Pakistan, spurring Indian archaeologists to find sites in India: surveys in Kutch, and in Punjab and Haryana, revealed many; Kalibangan, Lothal, Rakhigarhi and most recently Dholavira were excavated. New questions arose — cultural sequence for some, the logic of site locations and artefact functions for others. Since the 1980s international teams have worked at Harappa and Mohenjodaro with modern scientific methods, analysing every scrap of clay, stone, metal, plant and animal remains.

It is material evidence, not the script, that lets us reconstruct Harappan life. Organic materials — cloth, leather, wood, reeds — usually decay, especially in tropical climates; stone, terracotta and metal survive. Only broken or useless things were thrown away; the rest was recycled. So intact valuables were either lost or hoarded — their discovery is accidental, not typical.

Classifying finds is the next step: by material (stone, clay, metal, bone, ivory) and, harder, by function (tool, ornament, both, or ritual). Function is inferred from resemblance to present-day things and from context — house, drain, grave or kiln? Sometimes only indirect evidence exists: there are traces of cotton, but clothing must be judged from sculpture. And archaeologists need frames of reference — the first seal meant nothing until it had a cultural sequence and a Mesopotamian comparison.

Religion shows the problems most clearly. Early archaeologists treated unfamiliar objects as religious: jewelled female terracotta figurines (‘mother goddesses’), rare stone male statues seated with one hand on the knee (like the ‘priest-king’), and structures such as the Great Bath and the fire altars at Kalibangan and Lothal. Seals were read too: some seem to show ritual scenes; plant motifs suggest nature worship; the one-horned ‘unicorn’ looks like a mythical composite creature; a cross-legged figure in a ‘yogic’ posture, sometimes among animals, was called ‘proto-Shiva’; conical stones were classified as lingas.

Such readings assume later traditions mirror earlier ones — moving from the known (present) to the unknown (past). That works for querns and pots but is speculative for ‘religious’ symbols. The Rigveda (compiled c. 1500–1000 BCE) names a god Rudra, a name later used for Shiva in the Puranic traditions of the first millennium CE; but the Rigvedic Rudra is neither Pashupati (lord of animals, especially cattle) nor a yogi. So the seal does not match Rudra — perhaps it shows a shaman, as some scholars suggest.

What has been achieved? A fairly good idea of the economy, of social differences, and of how the civilisation functioned. It is not clear how much more decipherment would add; a bilingual inscription could settle what languages were spoken. Still open: was the Great Bath ritual? how widespread was literacy? why do cemeteries show little differentiation? did women make pots or only paint them? what were female figurines for? Gender is a whole new field. And more research is needed on the relationship between the Harappans and the Vedic people, since some scholars argue they were the same people.

Q1–5: answer in 100–150 words. Q6–9: short essays of about 500 words — the outlines give the skeleton; expand each point with one example from the chapter. Try each yourself first.

Numbers

One-liners

• Harappan history is written from bricks, beads and bones — the script is undeciphered.
• Harappa was found first; Mohenjodaro is best preserved; Rakhigarhi is the largest.
• Citadel: small, high, walled, west; Lower Town: large, walled, east, grid.
• Drains first, then houses — the clearest sign of planning.
• Chanhudaro made beads, shell, metal, seals and weights.
• Meluhha = Harappan region; Magan = Oman; Dilmun = Bahrain.
• Seals guarded goods and named the sender.
• Decline = the unifying system ended, not the people.
• Wheeler accused Indra; Dales cleared him.
• From the known to the unknown works for querns, not for gods.

Traps to avoid

• Ploughed field: Kalibangan (Early Harappan levels). Plough model: Banawali. Canals: Shortughai.
• Sahni → Harappa (1921); R.D. Banerji → Mohenjodaro (1922); Marshall announced; Wheeler fixed stratigraphy.
• The script is not alphabetic (375–400 signs) and runs right to left.
• Lower weights are binary; higher ones decimal (NCERT).
• No iron; no securely identified palace, temple or royal tomb; no horse-drawn chariots (UPSC 2013).
• At Lothal the Citadel was raised but not walled off; Dholavira and Lothal were fortified as a whole.
• Great Bath steps are on the north and south; made watertight with bricks on edge and gypsum mortar.
• ‘Priest-king’, ‘mother goddess’, ‘proto-Shiva’ are interpretations in inverted commas, not facts.
• The massacre at Mohenjodaro is a discarded theory — the skeletons are of different periods (Dales 1964).
• The cow does not appear on Harappan seals (UPSC 2001); the humped bull and ‘unicorn’ do.

Prelims — what UPSC asks

• Site + finding pairs are UPSC’s favourite format: Lothal (1980, 1982, 1998 dockyard), Kalibangan / Dholavira / Banawali (2002), Dholavira’s water system (2021), Ganeshwar copper (2021), ‘not a Harappan site’ (2019, Sohgaura). Make a one-line card per site from sections 1, 2 and 5.
• Material culture: metals — no iron, silver earliest here (1985, 1987, 1990, 1994); burnt bricks (1984); food — wheat (1986); seals and art — no cow on seals (2001), bronze ‘Dancing Girl’ (2025); undeciphered script (1982).
• Society and religion statements: palaces, deities and chariots (2013), secular character and cotton (2011), Rigvedic vs Indus culture (2017), inferences from spindle-whorls, weights and houses (2026). NCERT’s cautious ‘we do not know’ approach helps eliminate over-confident statements.
• Discovery and sources: archaeology as the source (1979), why ‘Harappan’ and who found Mohenjodaro (1991), spread across regions (1984), percolation far south — Godavari basin (1988). Neolithic as the start of food production comes from Timeline 1 (1988).

Mains — where it appears and how to answer

• GS1 2025: salient features of Harappan architecture — use section 3: Citadel/Lower Town, platforms, 4:2:1 bricks, grid and drains, courtyard houses, Great Bath, warehouse, Dholavira reservoirs, Lothal’s burnt-brick drains.
• GS1 2014: inputs of Indus urban planning to present-day urbanisation — grid layout, drainage before housing, waste-water treatment (cesspits, sumps), water harvesting (Dholavira), standardisation, zoning (Citadel vs Lower Town); add today’s gaps (unplanned growth, open drains).
• GS1 2015: continuity of Indian civilisation compared with Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece — this chapter supplies the beginning: successor cultures after 1900 BCE, crafts and farming that continued, NCERT’s genetic-continuity argument (cite it as one study and note the debate); later chapters supply the rest.
• Answer frame: evidence → inference → caution. Name the site, the find and what it shows; mark interpretations (‘priest-king’, ‘proto-Shiva’) as interpretations.

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