The Lost River: On The Trail of Saraswati

by Michel Danino

  Agriculture was another pillar of the urban order, and was perfected not over centuries, but over millennia, as we saw at Mehrgarh. At some point, though probably not everywhere at the same time, ploughing and intensive techniques such as intercropping came into play. At Kalibangan, for instance (Fig. 5.9), excavators found a field of the pre-urban period (around 2800 BCE) with an ingenious double network of perpendicular furrows: the long ones were spaced out in a north-south direction and sown with taller crops (such as mustard); that way their longer shadows, cast mid-day during the winter season, did not fall on the shorter plants (such as gram) that were grown in the east-west furrows.18 The major crops were barley and wheat (grown in winter), along with various millets (grown during the summer monsoon), vegetables and grapevine—whether for the grapes themselves or for some sort of wine is unclear. Rice has been found at a few sites in Gujarat, and also at Harappa and in Cholistan,19 but was probably not a frequent or regular crop. Hunting and fishing supplemented agriculture; in fact, Harappans were so fond of fish that they had dried saltwater fish transported all the way from settlements by the Arabian Sea to Harappa! Domestication of cattle, sheep, goats and fowls began millennia before the Mature phase, at least in the Mehrgarh region. All in all, Harappans seemed to have had a diverse diet. Cotton was an important crop throughout the region, and fed the textile cottage industry.

  Naturally enough, Harappan life had room for dancing, painting, sculpture and music; there is, for instance, some evidence of drums and stringed instruments, and several statuettes are frozen in dance postures—not the ‘dancing girl’, ironically, whose jaunty stance is actually static. Drama is suggested by a number of expressive masks, and puppet shows were probably a treat for the young and not-so-young. The Harappans indulged in a possible ancestor of the game of chess, as evidenced by one terracotta set of chessmen found at Lothal (Fig. 5.10). Other kinds of gaming boards and pieces have come up at several sites, as well as cubical dice almost identical to those used today. Children were not neglected, judging from the exquisite care with which craftsmen fashioned toy oxcarts and figurines, spinning tops, marbles, rattles and whistles. And they could also amuse themselves with pet dogs and monkeys, possibly pet squirrels and birds too, many of which have been depicted in figurines.

  Harappan women appear to have enjoyed a status of some importance, as the terracotta figurines depicting them are far more numerous than those depicting men. Some figurines portray women in daily occupations, kneading dough or suckling a baby, sometimes also in comical postures that archaeologists are not quite sure how to interpret. But another category evokes a religious context, and we will turn to it when we probe Harappan religion.

  One of the persisting riddles of this civilization is its writing system, which appears fully developed at the start of the Mature period, although on earlier pottery some signs were written singly or in groups of two or three. Indus signs, as they are called, have been found carefully engraved not only on some 3500 steatite seals of the same type as those Marshall and his colleagues had marvelled at, but also on hundreds of terracotta tablets, a few of copper and silver, pottery and ornaments, among other media. Unfortunately, none of the numerous proposed decipherments has received wide acceptance: an entire aspect of Harappan life remains closed to us.

  Even the purpose of the seals is debated: a few impressions on soft clay have shown that they were sometimes used to seal and identify bales of goods being shipped; but with little or no sign of wear and tear, most seem to have been kinds of ‘identity cards’. Their occasional use as amulets is also not ruled out. Did they represent a clan (symbolized by the animal depicted on many seals), a city or region, a community, a ruler, a trader, a type of goods, a deity, or a combination of these? We have only question marks here. At least we know that the seals were fired for several days in special kilns that reached a temperature of 1000°C, making them hard enough to give repeated impressions on soft clay; such an expense of time and labour shows the importance attached to those mysterious objects.

  In all the daily activities of the craftsman, the brick-maker or the humble drain cleaner, what stands out is care and a sense of organization. This is not a ‘spectacular’ civilization; as a matter of fact, early archaeologists, especially European ones, complained at times of its ‘monotony’ : no great pyramid, no glorious tomb, no awe-inspiring palace or temple, no breathtaking fresco or monumental sculpture. But there is certainly an all-pervading sense of order: weights, seals or bricks were standardized, wells and drains were maintained for centuries, streets and public spaces were kept free from encroachments (something, again, almost unthinkable in today’s India!).

  A HARAPPAN EMPIRE?

  If the Indus civilization did not build pyramids, it left behind a few sphinx-like riddles for us to ponder on, besides the script. Perhaps the most puzzling of them is : Who determined or imposed this order? Who controlled and coordinated urban structures, access to raw materials, industries, trade and agriculture? Who made sure that weights from the banks of the Yamuna to Gujarat and Baluchistan had the same values, or that bricks respected the same proportions? Everyone agrees that civic authorities were unusually efficient—but also unusually discreet, to the point that they left no direct evidence of themselves.

  Influenced by the formation of great empires in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia and Rome, many early archaeologists spoke of an ‘Indus Empire’, with Mohenjo-daro as its capital. That broadly remains the view of Raymond and Bridget Allchin : they visualize a ‘forgotten Indian leader’ who, around 2600 BCE, unified the Indus heartland in order to control the trade with Mesopotamia.20 But the hypothetical ‘Indian leader’ apart, this theory of a ‘centralized state power’21 runs into serious difficulties.

  The first is the enormous distances involved, over 2000 km from east to west or north to south if we look at the remotest sites. Even if rivers, when navigable, permitted fairly quick communication between important sites, many of the outlying settlements had to be reached by bullock cart: it would have taken many days to carry an order from Mohenjo-daro to remote settlements in Haryana or Punjab. Such a far-flung ‘empire’ would have been fragile and unmanageable without a strong military control, for which no evidence exists.

  A second problem is the surprising absence of any obvious depiction of a ruler, emperor or king or chieftain, or again of any structure recognizable as a palace or a royal tomb. The Allchins themselves acknowledge that ‘the relative invisibility of royalty, with all its claptrap and accoutrements, in the Harappan state, stands in marked contrast to the prominence of these features in Egypt or Mesopotamia.’22 For some reason, here the ruling class did not seek to deify or glorify itself, and J.-F. Jarrige suggests that ‘the absence of a truly royal iconography in the Indus world is already an Indian trait’.23 Indeed, as pointed out by D.K. Chakrabarti, there is no contemporary depiction of the Mauryan emperor Ashoka, and were it not for his edicts inscribed on stone, archaeology would have had very little to show for his existence. Chakrabarti thus makes the point that the ‘value system’ of Indian kings ‘was different and the royal power was also tempered by an ideal of duty’.24 Third, to suggest that the Harappan state rose in response to the Mesopotamian trade appears artificial. Most of the basic ingredients of Harappan urbanism—fortifications, standardized brick ratios, drains, metal and bead industries, internal and external trade, seals, even writing—can be found in earlier phases, albeit embryonic, scattered or fragmented and were, in any case, converging. And, again, the benefits the Harappans derived from their external trade remain unidentified.

  Alternative models have therefore been put forward. At the other end of the spectrum, Jim Shaffer and Diane Lichtenstein proposed that the Harappans ‘do not appear to have developed a centralized structure based on hereditary elites’. Their society was rather ‘a complex cultural mosaic of related but distinct ethnic groups’,25 and amounted to a delicate assemblage of neighbouring chiefdoms, which does not quite meet the standard of a
‘state’. Gregory Possehl agrees with this model and proposes up to nine ‘domains’ centred around five major cities: Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, Ganweriwala (in Cholistan), Rakhigarhi (in Haryana) and Dholavira (in the Rann of Kachchh); the political structure, in his view, was a corporate one consisting of ‘a series of “councils” or gathering of leaders, rather than a king’.26

  B.B. Lal, the doyen of Indian archaeologists, excavator at Kalibangan and author of one of the most complete studies of the civilization,27 also proposes distinct Harappan regions, counting eight of them, but sees in them a parallel with the Mahājanapadas, the sixteen ‘proto-republics’ of early historical times, some two millennia later; in this perspective, the Harappan regions would turn into many states.28 We would have, in effect, a confederacy of regional powers sharing a common culture and common trade interests, but each with its own regional stamp, which would explain variations that have come to light in terms of the pottery styles or religious practices. Chakrabarti favours a similar picture of ‘multiple kingdoms centred around the major settlements of the region’.29

  J.M. Kenoyer, who spent many years excavating at Harappa, develops a parallel model of city-states.30 In his view,

  the Indus state was composed of several competing classes of elites who maintained different levels of control over the vast regions of the Indus and Ghaggar-Hakra Valley. Instead of one social group with absolute control, the rulers or dominant members in the various cities would have included merchants, ritual specialists, and individuals who controlled resources such as land, livestock, and raw materials. These groups may have had different means of control, but they shared a common ideology and economic system as represented by seals, ornaments, ceramics, and other artifacts.31

  Even if the said elites, which probably occupied Mohenjo-daro’s and Kalibangan’s ‘citadels’ or Dholavira’s massive ‘castle’, were indeed ‘competing’, it was clearly in a context of cooperation for mutual benefit. Thus, in Kenoyer’s view, trade and religion, rather than military might, were the real instruments of authority; indeed, no piece of Harappan art glorifies rulers, conquest or warfare.32

  Another US archaeologist, Rita Wright, emphasizes ‘a growing awareness that [the Harappan civilization] does not fit into the social, political and economic categories developed for the study of other states’, such as Mesopotamia or Egypt, which had centralized administrative structures. ‘Among the Harappans, on the other hand, a pattern of decentralization appears to have persisted.’ In the formative era, Wright also notes ‘an absence of factionalism’ and ‘a unified material culture’, which, to her, point to ‘production and distribution systems based upon kinship or community-related organization’.33 She suggests, in effect, that such a system could have persisted in the urban period.

  Whether it was an empire or a confederacy of chiefdoms or city-states, this civilization thus displays an individuality of its own based on decentralization and a community-based distribution of power—two traits that any rural Indian of today will instantly relate to. It also permitted regional variations while integrating them in an overarching cultural framework. Though not spectacular at first glance, this ‘unity in diversity’, a third typical Indian trait, was to have profound repercussions on the history of the subcontinent. The archaeologist D.P. Agrawal puts it this way:

  In a third millennium context, when communication and transport must have been difficult, the credit for unifying the north and west of the subcontinent goes to the Harappans. They were the first to achieve this unification of a society with so much diversity.34

  A PEACEFUL REALM?

  Kenoyer’s reference above to the invisibility of ‘military might’ brings us to a second riddle. Archaeologists who first dug at Harappa or Mohenjo-daro were used to glorious depictions of warfare and conquest found all over ancient Sumer, Egypt, China or Greece. To their great puzzlement, nothing of the sort emerged from Mohenjo-daro’s dust: no sign of military structure; not a single helmet or shield; not a trace of armed conflict at any point of time; no seal or jar depicting a battle, a captive or a victor. This apparently unnatural pattern repeated itself in site after site. The British archaeologist Jane McIntosh, who recently authored a book on the Indus civilization entitled A Peaceful Realm, explains her chosen title thus:

  One of the most surprising aspects of the Indus Civilization is that it seems to have been a land without conflict. There are no signs of violence and no depictions of soldiers or warfare in the Indus art. When we look at the other civilizations we can see how unusual and unexpected this is.35

  As unusual as the rulers’ invisibility, this double riddle will long remain unsolved, but it is doubtless intimately linked to the values central to Harappan culture.

  True, a few bronze weapons, mostly spearheads and arrowheads, have been found, but we know that the Harappans practised hunting. Archaeologists have also pointed out that without a central ridge for reinforcement, the spearheads would have made for rather ineffectual weapons—perhaps they were largely ceremonial, or intended for sentries who controlled the flow of goods at the city gates.

  Also, as I explained earlier, terms like ‘citadel’ or ‘defence walls’ give a warlike slant to those structures. But apart from the absence of evidence of warfare, the massive fortifications that define many of the cities and towns would actually have made poor defences.36Of course, outer fortifications would have guarded against local tribes or marauders. But in all likelihood, their real purpose was three-fold: to provide protection against floods to which some sites (such as Mohenjo-daro or Lothal) were certainly prone; to control the movement of goods coming into or leaving the city; and to define the urban space in tune with certain sacred concepts (which we will return to in Chapter 10).

  Lest this picture of a prosperous, orderly, industrious and peaceful civilization appear too rosy, we must remember that it remains very incomplete: less than 10 per cent of the 1140 known Mature Harappan sites have been substantially excavated,37 and the figure drops below 5 per cent if we include all the phases. This leaves most of them buried with their secrets, including a few giant ones such as Ganweriwala in Cholistan or Pathani Damb in Baluchistan. Despite eight decades of hard work, our understanding of this civilization is still in its ‘early phase’.

  Regrettably, in today’s India and Pakistan (let us forget Afghanistan), archaeology, afflicted by bureaucratic red tape, limited resources and obsolete methods, is not viewed as a priority. What made the Indus civilization tick, in close interaction with neighbouring civilizations yet so different from them, will long remain as inscrutable as the Sphinx of Giza.

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  From the Indus to the Sarasvatī

  Textbooks often state that Mohenjo-daro and Harappa were the first sites of the Indus civilization to have been ‘discovered’. That is not quite correct: they are, to be precise, the cities where the epoch and nature of this civilization were first identified. Before them, another site had been substantially explored: Kalibangan, in northern Rajasthan. About halfway between Hanumangarh and Suratgarh, the site lies on the left or southern bank of the Ghaggar river. We first discussed it in Chapter 3 in relation to geological studies of the Ghaggar’s now dry bed, and it is time to return to the region and to the river, which though defunct, holds crucial information in store for us.

  TESSITORI AT KALIBANGAN

  In April 1917, four years before Sahni began excavating Harappa, Luigi Pio Tessitori, a young Italian Indologist who had come to India in 1914, started digging at Kalibangan. The story of his tragically short life has been vividly captured by Nayanjot Lahiri.1 Well-versed in Sanskrit, Pali, Prakrit, Bengali and Hindi, apart from a few dialects of Rajasthani, Tessitori developed a sort of love affair with the rich bardic lore of Rajasthan. He started documenting oral and written chronicles of the states of Jodhpur and Bikaner, convinced that their critical study would help reconstruct a good deal of the history of the region. After Marshall took him into the Archaeological Survey, Tessitori, moving brisk
ly across the sands of Bikaner, added to his documentation of bardic traditions the study of inscriptions and a survey of ancient mounds in the region—a heavy double assignment in view of the environment in which he worked: ‘Distances between one village and another are often enormous, and the camel is the only means of conveyance available.’2

  On camelback, therefore, Tessitori explored Bikaner:

  On February 16, 1918 I went to Suratagadha* [Suratgarh] again, to make from there a tour to the west and explore the ancient theris,† which my travellers had referred us being found in large numbers all along the dry bed of the Ghagghar. This river, locally known under the name of Hakaro or Sotara, but commonly referred to as the nali ‘canal,’ or dariyava ‘sea,’ irrigated in ancient times all the northern part of what now forms the territory of the Bikaner State, from Bhatanera [Bhatnir]—the modern Hanumanagadha [Hanumangarh] to Vijnora [Bijnor, close to the international border], and thence running across the territory of Bahawalpur, went to join the Indus.3

  Except for the junction with the Indus (which Tessitori, of course, did not observe himself), his description agrees with those of his predecessors. And like some of them (notably Tod, Colvin and Mackeson), Tessitori did not use the name ‘Sarasvatī’: Bikaner’s bardic lore did evoke a bygone age when the Ghaggar was flowing and bringing prosperity to the region, but it does not appear to have associated the river with the lost Sarasvatī (the same is true of the Hakra in Cholistan). That association was only found upstream, in today’s Haryana, more precisely between Ad Badri and Pehowa.

  His official duties apart, Tessitori must have felt especially attracted to those ‘ancient theris’: