The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation

This is Chapter 6 of Exploring Society: India and Beyond (Class 6, the new 2024 book under NCF-SE 2023), the last chapter of Theme B, ‘Tapestry of the Past’. Chapter 4 (Timeline and Sources of History) ended with the first farmers settling down; Chapter 5 (fees105) showed how the Subcontinent was named, many names coming from the Sindhu. This chapter asks three ‘Big Questions’ — what is a civilisation, what was the earliest civilisation of the Subcontinent, and what were its major achievements. Chapter 7 (India’s Cultural Roots) follows with the Vedas. The site map is turned into a table here; no outline, river course or site distribution is drawn.

• Links in this book: fees101 (latitude and longitude, to read Fig. 6.3); Chapter 4 (the first farmers; sources); fees105 (the Sindhu and the ‘River Sarasvati’ label; the Harappan bull on the Constitution’s first page); Chapter 7 (the Ṛig Veda’s Sarasvatī).
• Deeper pages: lehs101 (Class 12, ‘Bricks, Beads and Bones’ — the fullest treatment: phases, crafts, seals, weights, the decline and the ‘invasion’ debate); iest104 (Class 9 — the Early Harappan roots and the name ‘Sindhu–Sarasvatī’, with positions); kehs101 (contacts with Mesopotamia); kefa102 (Harappan art: Priest King, Dancing Girl, seals). This page links them and does not re-teach them.
• UPSC: Prelims asked what throws light on Harappan culture (1979), what Lothal is (1980, 1982), where the civilisation spread (1984), its food and city life (1986), what followed it (1988), why it is called ‘Harappan’ (1991) and which town managed water through reservoirs (2021 — Dholavira). Mains GS1 asked how Harappan urban planning informs today’s cities (2014) and the salient features of Harappan architecture (2025). Many other Harappan questions already sit on three chapters (lehs101, iest104, kefa102) and are not repeated here.

• Civilisation = 7 marks (NCERT): government and administration; urbanism; crafts; trade; writing; cultural ideas; productive agriculture. Mesopotamia ≈ 6,000 years ago (Fig. 6.2: 3500 BCE), Egypt 3100 BCE.
• Names: Indus, Harappan (Harappa first excavated 1920–21), Indus-Sarasvatī, Sindhu-Sarasvatī; ‘Valley’ obsolete. Villages → towns from 3500 BCE; cities ≈ 2600 BCE (‘First Urbanisation’); period ≈ 2600–1900 BCE.
• Cities: Mohenjo-daro (Sindh), Harappa (Punjab, Pak.), Dholavira (Gujarat), Rakhigarhi (Haryana), Ganweriwala (Cholistan); Kalibangan (Rajasthan), Lothal; Sarasvatī = Ghaggar (India) – Hakra (Pakistan), now seasonal.
• Town planning: precise plans, wide streets to cardinal directions, walls, upper/lower town (Dholavira: 3 zones, stone); same quality for small and big houses; Great Bath ≈ 12 × 7 m, bitumen; drains under streets; ~700 wells at Mohenjo-daro; Dholavira ≥ 6 reservoirs, largest 73 m.
• Economy: barley, wheat, millets, rice, pulses; first cotton in Eurasia; plough model (Banawali); dairy, turmeric, ginger, banana. Trade: carnelian beads (to Susa), shell bangles, bronze (copper + tin); Lothal basin 217 × 36 m; steatite seals, script undeciphered.
• End ≈ 1900 BCE: no trace of invasion; book’s two factors — drier climate from 2200 BCE and the Sarasvatī drying (Kalibangan, Banawali abandoned); back to villages; culture survived. UPSC: Lothal (1980, 1982), spread (1984), ‘Harappan’ name (1991), Dholavira water (2021).

At the end of Chapter 4, the first human groups were settling down, farming and developing technologies — construction, metallurgy, transport — on the way to ‘civilisation’. In general the word means an advanced stage of human society. The book takes a civilisation to have at least seven characteristics: some form of government and administration, to manage a complex society; urbanism — town-planning, the growth and management of cities, usually with water management and drainage; a variety of crafts, from managing raw materials such as stone or metal to making ornaments and tools; trade, both internal and external; some form of writing, to keep records and communicate; cultural ideas expressed in art, architecture, literature, oral traditions or customs; and a productive agriculture that feeds the cities as well as the villages. Most societies today have all of these. Civilisation began at different times in different places: in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq and Syria) about 6,000 years ago, and in Egypt a few centuries later. Humanity owes much to these early civilisations. The book now turns to the Subcontinent, whose north-west is where the story begins.

The vast plains of the Punjab (today divided between India and Pakistan) and Sindh (in Pakistan) are watered by the Indus and its tributaries, which made them fertile and good for farming. A little further east, a few millenniums ago, another river, the Sarasvatī, flowed from the foothills of the Himalayas through Haryana, Punjab, parts of Rajasthan and Gujarat (as the book puts it). In this whole region, from about 3500 BCE, villages grew into towns, and with growing trade and other exchanges the towns grew into cities around 2600 BCE. Archaeologists have called this civilisation the ‘Indus’, ‘Harappan’, ‘Indus-Sarasvatī’ or ‘Sindhu-Sarasvatī’ civilisation, and the book uses all four; its people are called Harappans, because Harappa (now in Pakistan’s Punjab) was the first city of this civilisation to be excavated, in 1920–21. It is one of the oldest civilisations in the world, and its rise is also called the ‘First Urbanisation of India’. Harappa and Mohenjo-daro were the first two cities discovered, and their identification as a civilisation dates to 1924; since the first sites were in the Indus plains, it was at first called the ‘Indus Valley civilisation’. Later finds — Dholavira (Gujarat), Rakhigarhi (Haryana), Ganweriwala (Cholistan desert, Pakistan) and hundreds of smaller sites such as Lothal (Gujarat) — showed it reached far beyond the Indus, which is why the book calls ‘Valley’ obsolete. The Sarasvatī basin alone has two major cities (Rakhigarhi, Ganweriwala), smaller cities (Farmana in Haryana, Kalibangan in Rajasthan) and towns (Bhirrana and Banawali, both in Haryana) — a high density of sites.

The book’s box: Fig. 6.3 shows the Indus (Sindhu) and its five main tributaries, along which cities such as Mohenjo-daro and Harappa grew. But there are also many sites along the Sarasvatī, which today is called the Ghaggar in India and the Hakra in Pakistan — hence the ‘Ghaggar-Hakra River’. It is now seasonal, flowing only in the rainy season. The Sarasvatī is first mentioned in the Ṛig Veda, a collection of prayers (Chapter 7), where it is worshipped both as a goddess and as a river flowing ‘from the mountain to the sea’. Later texts describe it as drying up and eventually disappearing. In section 9 the book makes the drying of the Sarasvatī in its central basin one of two factors in the civilisation’s decline.

The larger Harappan cities were built to precise plans. They had wide streets (Figs. 6.4, 6.5), often oriented to the cardinal directions. Most cities seem to have been surrounded by fortifications and had two distinct parts — the ‘upper town’, where the local elite probably lived, and the ‘lower town’, for common people. Some large buildings seem to have had collective purposes — for instance warehouses for goods to be transported. Houses of various sizes lined the streets and lanes, and — interestingly — the quality of construction was the same for small and big houses. Buildings were generally of bricks; at Dholavira, which had three zones rather than two, most foundations were of stone. The purpose of some structures is still debated — above all the Great Bath of Mohenjo-daro, a small but elaborate tank of about 12 × 7 metres, waterproofed with natural bitumen over carefully laid bricks, surrounded by small rooms (one with a well), with a drain in one corner to empty it and refill it with fresh water. Archaeologists have proposed that it was a public bath, a bath for the royal family, or a tank for religious rituals; the first is now ruled out, because most houses in the city had their own bathrooms.

The Harappans gave great importance to water management and cleanliness. Homes often had separate bathing areas, connected to a larger network of drains that generally ran below the streets and carried waste water away (Fig. 6.7, Lothal). In Mohenjo-daro people drew water from hundreds of brick wells (about 700, says exercise 7). Elsewhere water may have come from ponds, nearby streams or human-made reservoirs. At Dholavira, in the Rann of Kutch in Gujarat, at least six large reservoirs were built with stones or even cut into the rock; the largest was 73 metres long, and most were linked by underground drains for efficient water harvesting and distribution.

The Harappans built many settlements along riverbanks — for water and because rivers enrich the soil. Archaeological finds show they grew cereals such as barley, wheat, some millets and sometimes rice, as well as pulses and a variety of vegetables. They were also the first in Eurasia to grow cotton, which they wove into cloth. They made farming tools, including the plough (Fig. 6.9), some kinds of which modern farmers still use. Hundreds of villages managed this farming; then as now, cities survived only if enough produce reached them from the countryside every day. The Harappans also domesticated animals for meat and fished in rivers and the sea, as large numbers of animal and fish bones show. Scientific tests on cooking pots found expected remains (dairy products) and surprising ones — turmeric, ginger and banana. Their diet was diverse.

The Harappans traded actively — within their civilisation and with other civilisations and cultures inside and outside India. They exported ornaments, timber, some objects of daily use (Fig. 6.11), probably gold and cotton, and possibly some food. The favourite ornaments were beads of carnelian, a reddish semi-precious stone found mostly in Gujarat, which craftspeople learned to drill and decorate; they also worked conch shell into bangles, a hard material that needs skill. Their imports are less clear — probably copper, which was not so common at home. They mastered copper, and by adding tin made bronze, harder than copper, for tools, pots and pans, and figurines. They used land routes, rivers and the sea — the first intensive maritime activity in India — with many settlements on the coasts of Gujarat and Sindh. Lothal, a small settlement in Gujarat, has a huge basin 217 m long and 36 m wide — a little more than two football grounds — which the book reads as a dockyard. Traders had to identify their goods and each other: this seems to have been the chief purpose of thousands of small seals, usually of steatite hardened by heating, a few centimetres across, showing an animal and, above it, a few signs of a writing system. The writing and the animals’ meaning are not yet understood; what is certain is that seals relate to trade.

Archaeologists have found many objects that Harappans made and used. Objects of daily use: a bronze mirror, a painted terracotta pot, a set of stone weights and a bronze chisel (all from Dholavira), a gamesboard engraved on stone about 25 cm long (Dholavira), and a terracotta whistle about 4 cm long (Karanpura, Rajasthan) — the Harappans designed many games and toys for adults and children. Cultural and symbolic objects: the statuette often called the ‘Priest King’ (though whose figure it is, is not known); a seal with a swastika; the ‘Pashupati’ seal, with a three-faced figure seated on a raised platform surrounded by powerful animals; the bronze ‘Dancing Girl’ from Mohenjo-daro, 10.8 cm high, her arm covered in bangles; a terracotta figure seated in a ‘namaste’; and a pot from Lothal whose painting seems to tell the story of the thirsty crow who drops pebbles into a pot to raise the water.

Around 1900 BCE, the Sindhu-Sarasvatī civilisation began to fall apart. The cities were abandoned one by one; those who stayed took up a rural lifestyle in a changed environment, and the earlier government seems to have ended. Gradually the Harappans scattered over hundreds, if not thousands, of small rural settlements — villages give easier access to food and water than cities, which depend on villages. What caused the decline? Long ago it was thought that warfare or invasions destroyed the cities, but there is no trace of warfare or invasion; the Harappans do not seem to have kept an army or weapons of war, and the civilisation seems to have been relatively peaceful. The book says two factors are currently agreed upon: a climatic change affecting much of the world from 2200 BCE, with less rain and a drier phase that made farming harder and could have cut food supplies to the cities; and the drying of the Sarasvatī in its central basin, after which cities such as Kalibangan and Banawali were abandoned. There could have been other factors, but these two show how much we depend on climate and the environment. The cities disappeared, but much of Harappan culture and technology survived and passed into the next phase of Indian civilisation.

The chapter’s activity boxes, in page order. (The map matching on pages 89–90 is answered in section 2.)

Numbers

One-liners

• Harappa was the first city of this civilisation to be excavated.
• The rise of the Harappan cities is called the ‘First Urbanisation of India’.
• The Sarasvatī is called the Ghaggar in India and the Hakra in Pakistan; it is now seasonal.
• The Ṛig Veda worships the Sarasvatī as a goddess and as a river ‘from the mountain to the sea’.
• Most Harappan cities had an upper town for the elite and a lower town for common people.
• Dholavira had three zones, and most of its foundations were of stone.
• The Great Bath was waterproofed with natural bitumen.
• Harappan drains generally ran below the streets.
• The Harappans were the first in Eurasia to grow cotton.
• Carnelian, a reddish semi-precious stone, came mostly from Gujarat.
• Bronze is copper with tin added.
• Harappan seals were mostly of steatite hardened by heating.
• Harappan carnelian beads were excavated at Susa in Iran.
• Kalibangan and Banawali were abandoned when the Sarasvatī dried in its central basin.

Traps to avoid

• ‘Harappan’ = after the first excavated site, not the largest site and not a Vedic name.
• ‘Indus Valley’ is obsolete in the book: sites reach Gujarat, Haryana, Rajasthan, Afghanistan (Shortugai) and Jammu (Manda).
• Dholavira: three zones, stone foundations, reservoirs — Gujarat (Rann of Kutch), not Rajasthan.
• Rakhigarhi is in Haryana; Kalibangan in Rajasthan; Ganweriwala in Cholistan (Pakistan); Lothal in Gujarat.
• The Great Bath is at Mohenjo-daro; the book rules out a public bath.
• The Dancing Girl is bronze; the Priest King is steatite (Beyond NCERT) and of unknown identity.
• Seals relate to trade; the script is undeciphered.
• Decline: no trace of invasion; climate from 2200 BCE and the Sarasvatī’s drying are the book’s two factors.
• After the cities came village life — the book does not say ‘pastoral’.
• Text vs Fig. 6.2: Mesopotamia ‘6,000 years ago’ (≈ 4000 BCE) vs 3500 BCE.

Prelims — what UPSC asks

• From this chapter: 1979 — Harappan culture is known from archaeological excavations (the book: no inscription, text or traveller’s account); 1980, 1982 — Lothal is a Harappan site in Gujarat; 1984 — spread over Afghanistan, Sind, Punjab, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Kashmir (Fig. 6.3: Shortugai, Manda) — key (c) is the most complete option, though it omits Balochistan (Sutkagen-dor, Balakot, Dabarkot are on the map); 1986 — principal food: wheat (with barley); characteristic feature: amenities of a developed city life; 1991 — called ‘Harappan’ because Harappa was the first site excavated; 2021 — Dholavira’s dams and connected reservoirs.
• Disputed key — 1988: ‘Urbanisation was followed by pastoral life’ (A) because ‘the Harappan culture was urban’ (R). Stored key (d) — A false, R true. The book says the Harappans returned to rural (village) settlements, which supports (d); but the Ṛig Vedic society that followed in time was largely pastoral (iest105), so some read A as true. Keep (d) — it is not likely wrong — but treat it as disputed.
• Elsewhere (cap of three chapters reached): contacts with Mesopotamia (1980), the undeciphered script (1982), the ‘Dancing Girl’ in bronze (2025) — on lehs101, iest104, kehs101 and kefa102. Also on lehs101: metals and iron (1985, 1987, 1990), burnt bricks (1984), Mohenjo-daro’s discoverer (1991), Lothal dockyard pairs (1998, 2002), seal animals (2001), secular character and cotton (2011), palaces and chariots (2013), Rigvedic v Harappan (2017), not a Harappan site (2019), spindle-whorls (2026).

Mains — where it appears and how to answer

• GS1 (Indian culture; ancient history): 2014 — how far Harappan urban planning and culture informs today’s urbanisation; 2025 — salient features of Harappan architecture. Use this chapter’s evidence: grid streets to the cardinal directions, upper and lower towns, walls, equal building quality, warehouses, the Great Bath, drains, wells, Dholavira’s reservoirs and Lothal’s basin — then add the limits (no deciphered records; much is inference). For decline and continuity, give attributed positions rather than one cause (section 9; lehs101).

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