The Indus Civilization

by Gregory L. Possehl

  The structure is an open, columned hall approximately 23 by 27 meters. The building seems to have had its principal entrance in the center of the northern wall. The roof was supported by four north-south rows of five columns each. The bases of the columns are made of baked brick. Mackay dates the original building to the Intermediate Period and notes that later additions have obscured some parts of the original plan. At the same time, strips of pavement, arranged in a peculiar way not found elsewhere at Mohenjo-daro, were laid down between the columns (figure 11.21). This curious arrangement of paving is a mys-tery, and I have no good idea as to its function. Wheeler says that the entire matter “cries aloud for intelligent re-excavation,” 24 which is probably the best thing.

  There is a great deal of Late Period material above the curious paving, and most of the artifacts that have been found in L Area seem to be best placed in this latter time frame. The most interesting of the artifacts is a large (61 by 54 by 37 centimeters) worn stone that is dark brown or black in color. The top is flat and polished and “it was possibly used by a leather-cutter or sandal-maker.”25

  Figure 11.9 The “College of Priests” (after Mackay 1937—38)

  The Latest Occupations on the Mound of the Great Bath

  The presence of the “leather cutter’s stone” is in agreement with the general observation that the Late Period on the Mound of the Great Bath, when the Bath and Warehouse were abandoned, was a time when it was used for craft activities and daily life. This seems to be a significant change from the function(s) envisioned by the builders of the place. This leather cutter’s stone brings the Mound of the Great Bath down to earth, with the real, daily needs of people. Whoever lived on the southern part of the Mound of the Great Bath needed sandals and other leather items, and the local chamar set up shop in the neighborhood to take care of them. It also may inform us of the fact that the people who lived here did not exclusively use the bazaars of Mohenjo-daro to fill their needs, but that day-to-day living activities were a part of life on the Mound of the Great Bath. In fact, the late levels in L Area are filled with objects of daily life: pottery, storage jars, bangles, seals, beads, and the like. And there is evidence for craft activities there, including lapidary work and shell work, along with the leather cutter’s stone.26

  Mound of the Great Bath: Overview

  The Mound of the Great Bath is an impressive place, even forty centuries after its abandonment. Set aside and elevated over the Lower Town gives it a special quality. Its separateness suggests exclusivity, a position where the upper rank or ranks of Indus society would have been comfortable, possibly even at home. The elevation suggests dominance and complements the sense of being exclusive. There would have been a wide view of Mohenjo-daro and the surrounding plain from the Mound of the Great Bath, where the elites could look down upon the workings of the city and the lower and middle classes that were the warp and weft of their society. Thus, whoever conceived of Mohenjo-daro as a totality was intelligent enough to use two dimensions, separateness and height, to symbolically set apart the functions and functionaries of whatever went on within the precincts of the Mound of the Great Bath. This was symbolism, since we can be quite certain that it was simply another representation of a social reality that all of the members of Mohenjo-daro society would have recognized from their day-to-day lives. So, the construction of the Mound of the Great Bath incorporated aspects of those clever tricks that are at the heart of every society by using symbols in a rich and effective way to manage, govern, and perpetuate a social order. How different all of this is from the sprawling, urban functionalism of the Lower Town.

  Figure 11.10 L Area on the Mound of the Great Bath (after Marshall 1931i)

  THE LOWER TOWN AT MOHENJO-DARO

  The best way to enter the Lower Town of Mohenjo-daro today is to walk into HR Area in the southwestern quarter of the archaeological mound, just where it meets the remains in the GFD Area.27 GFD Area informed us of a number of things at Mohenjo-daro, such as a late “squatters’ level” there and evidence for a conflagration very late in the history of the site.28 The other documentation we find is for “a massive structure of mud brick with a solid, burnt brick wall. It provided a facing and support to the mud brick structure for a length exceeding 600 feet (183 meters) along the western face of HR mound.”29 Here we have sound evidence for platform building and that the Mature Harappan pattern at Mohenjo-daro was to face walls with baked brick.

  HR Area

  The best view of HR Area is straight north, up First Street, which was a linear depression of some magnitude on the surface of unexcavated Mohenjo-daro (figure 11.12). Excavators went to this depression hoping to uncover a major street, and they did. First Street is just over 10 meters wide in this part of Mohenjo-daro. It is wide enough for wheeled vehicles to use, although there is no good documentation for carts in the city, and there are some reasons for us to believe that their use inside the municipality was restricted.

  The starkness of First Street is readily apparent. There are blank walls of baked brick, broken by the lanes that join into it. There are few doors and windows, little sense of an eagerness to welcome visitors to share the hearth and company—all very Harappan.

  Figure 11.11 Detail of paving in the Pillared Hall (after Marshall 1931i)

  There are two modern parts to HR Area: Section A to the east and Section B to the west. Coming north, up First Street, one sees to the right House 1 of HR-A, a building proposed to have been a temple.

  The southern end of Deadman’s Lane, is also open to traffic, and it is a nice stroll north, past South Lane on the right, where the second part of the Sad Man was found. One passes doorways of houses in this little neighborhood of the third millennium B.C. It is 70 meters to the end of Deadman’s Lane, where it turns left and joins First Street. Just at the turning, Hargreaves found a skeleton lying on its back, giving the street its name.30

  Most of the buildings in this part of Mohenjo-daro are thought to have been the houses of the Mohenjo-daro elite, or at least those who could afford large houses and the expensive baked-brick architecture. I would like to describe one of them here.

  The Building in HR-A, Block 3, House VIII

  The building with the Mohenjo-daro address of HR-A, Block 3, House VIII, hereafter simply called “House VIII,” is in the northern part of this excavation area. Marshall described it in detail and took the time to have an isometric drawing prepared of the place (figure 11.13).31 The original core of the building was said to have been built in Intermediate II times, modified in Intermediate I, and then burned down.32 This chronology is not necessarily correct.33

  The main entrance to House VIII is on High Lane, just 15 meters east of First Street. There is also a back door on the northernmost wall. This can be considered typical for a residence in the city, since it places the entrance off of a major thoroughfare. House VIII is surrounded by buildings that one could reasonably think of as residences, and this would have been an upper-class neighborhood of the ancient metropolis. The front of the house, or its southern wall, is approximately 26 meters long. Including the little extension of the core building to the north, House VIII is 29.5 meters deep (north-south). The walls that surround it are of baked bricks and 1.2 to 1.5 meters thick. There are two exterior doors, but no windows or other large apertures in the exterior walls.

  The main entrance was originally 3 meters wide, but was narrowed to 2.3 meters in a remodeling. There is an entrance foyer (space 5) fronting a small room (5a) that Marshall and I feel was a place for the chowkidar, or watchman, to sit. The walls of space 5 were plastered with about 2 centimeters of mud and chopped grass finished by a wash of fine clay; they were preserved because of the house fire.

  Having entered House VIII, and passed through security, one took a dogleg turn to the right, passing the entrance to space 17 on the left and entering the central courtyard (spaces 18 and 18a), which has eight small spaces (6—13) on its southern and eastern sides. The courtyard was a focus of the house a
nd was probably open to the sky. If it was not open, the ground floor of House VIII would have been very dark, as dark as a cave, in fact, given the absence of windows and the door placed so as to shield the entry of light.

  The whole of the courtyard and other rooms on the ground floor of House VIII were paved in baked brick, and there is a small raised area (18a) with a protective coping on the outside. There is an intramural floor drain fronting spaces 12, 12a, and 11. This is connected to a vertical earthenware pipe in space 12a and another in space 9, not shown on the oblique projection.

  But a strange thing about this drain is that it discharged, not, as was usually the case, into one of the street drains, but into a moderate sized earthenware vessel sunk beneath the courtyard pavement in front of Room 11. That this receptacle was intended to take the whole discharge from the vertical pipes which served the upper story, is perfectly clear from the slope of the courtyard drain itself, which falls from both directions towards the vessel. The point of interest, because it is evident that in this house at any rate the main drain was not intended to carry off either the bath water from the upper or lower floor, or rainwater from the roof. Indeed, it seems as if it was meant to serve the upstairs privies only, the vessel into which it discharged being cleaned as often as was necessary and the contents conveyed by hand to one or other of the street drains or soak-pits.34

  Figure 11.12 Plan of HR Area (after Marshall 1931i)

  I rarely have an opportunity to absolutely disagree with Marshall on matters of this sort, but his interpretation of this drain makes no sense at all. First, without huge amounts of running water, the drains would be completely plugged in no time if this facility was used for the servicing of privies. Moreover, drains and pipes used to convey raw sewage can be identified by the residual material, usually a slightly greasy, green glaze or patina, and there is no mention of this. Also, the earthenware vessel that would have been regularly emptied is buried as a permanent facility below a neatly paved floor. There is no evidence that it was ever opened, let alone opened daily (or more) once it had been paved over. Finally, one can imagine the implications of this entirely malodorous facility in the middle of the prime space of an upper-class Mohenjo-daro house. This family may have well put an open privy in the dining room. How can this interpretation be matched against the fastidiousness of the people who are said to have inhabited the city? The drains in question were intended for rainwater, possibly bathwater, and other light-duty domestic waste, not the “upstairs privies.”

  Space 6, which could be entered by rising three steps, has a brick-lined well (number 3) in it, so its function is reasonably clear (figure 11.14). There is an opening between the well room and spaces 7 and 8 large enough for vessels of water to be passed from the well to the aforementioned spaces, which were a bathing-washing facility. Space 7 was a typical Mohenjo-daro bathing floor, with a small drain through the outer wall, emptying into the street drain on High Lane.

  Figure 11.13 Oblique projection of House VIII (after Marshall 1931i)

  Space 8 is an extension of the bathing room, and both it and 7 were provided with a window onto the courtyard. This was lined in wood, and Marshall suggests it may have been covered with a latticework. He further suggests that the opening was convenient, so that clothes could be passed out of the bathing space into the courtyard, implying the possibility that the dhobi washed clothes there. There were several modifications made to this part of House VIII over its lifetime, and the original arrangement of spaces 7, 8, and 9 is not clear. Marshall’s oblique projection shows stairs descending from above in space 9. This would have allowed the family members to come down to this bathing space from the private rooms on the southeastern side of the upstairs without having the inconvenience of moving through the more open parts of the house. One could also enter space 7 from the courtyard, via a door in space 9.

  Figure 11.14 Oblique projection of the southern chambers of House VIII, from the north (after Marshall 1931i)

  Spaces 10 through 13 are very small. Number 10 is 2.1 by 3.6 meters, and 13 is 1.5 by 2.4 meters. Marshall believes these to be used by “menials,” but they could have been storerooms as well and may have served both these purposes, and others, in antiquity. The jambs of the openings into 10 through 12 were rebuilt over the life of the house. This might be taken to indicate hard use, harder than that a “menial” might inflict on his or her room, but the kind of use that storage facilities get, tilting the balance slightly in this direction. But household staff have been known to live in what we might think of as storerooms, and we have to imagine that the notion of clear-cut, single-purpose functions for these spaces, especially over the lifetime of House VIII, is not likely. They probably served a number of functions, and this shifted over time, depending on the needs of the inhabitants and the taste of those in charge of space allocation. Whatever the case, space 13 was a pretty mean, dark little room, whatever it was used for.

  Before proceeding upstairs, something more should be said of space 17, near the High Lane entrance. This is actually a room inside a room (17a). The largest of these is approximately 8 by 5.5 meters. The inner space is approximately 5 by 4 meters. The larger space could be entered either off the dogleg from the High Lane entrance or directly from the courtyard. There is a small space in the southwestern corner that might have been a bathing area, but this is not mentioned by Marshall. The inner room has a hidden entrance, in the sense that no one but those who had entered the space and moved to the western hall could see into it. The ceiling had been lowered, and there were rafters of deodar and sissoo placed in beam holes.35 The craftsmanship employed in creating the inner room is also seen in the brickwork of the southwestern corner of the space. The outer corner has been very carefully rounded, doubtless for the comfort of the inhabitant(s). The inner corner, however, was kept square. Marshall thought of space 17 as a guest chamber, and this fits well with the evidence. But it also has the look of a “grandmother’s apartment.” It is on the ground floor, so no stairs to climb. There is privacy and quiet in a place obviously carefully crafted near water and bathing facilities. This could have been a place for the senior generation of a family to live in relative peace and comfort, slightly away from the normal hustle and bustle of children and day-to-day family life. Another alternative, one that is probably better than the guest room notion, possibly even the grandmother’s room notion, is that this was were the chowkidar or some other menial lived. It is on the ground floor and close to the door.

  Figure 11.15 Oblique projection of steps in House VIII (after Marshall 1931i)

  The northern platform in the core structure is of solid brick, very stable and a good protection against floods. Marshall thought that “the idea being to have at least one fair-sized room where the family could find refuge if the rest of the house collapsed.”36

  The upper floor(s) of House VIII were reached via a stairway leading from Courtyard 18 and from a flight of steps at the back door off of an unnamed lane at the northern limit of HR-A (figure 11.15). There is also the set of stairs in a bathing area (space 9). Marshall opines that the first floor above the ground had rooms disposed around the courtyard. This arrangement is eminently reasonable since the hot season at Mohenjo-daro is stifling. The ground floor of the houses in the interior of the city would be quite uninhabitable if there was not some way for them to have access to air. An open courtyard is the obvious solution to this problem.

  Michael Jansen has located the fieldworkers’ notebooks for the premodern excavations at Mohenjo-daro, and he published the antiquities register for the finds in HR Area.37 He informs us that there were more than 200 entries for things found in House VIII.38 His analysis of them and the layout of the house are interesting.

  First, he concludes that the inner courtyard is the focus of the finished building. In the principal settlement level, that is objects recovered from 54.15+15 centimeters above mean sea level, he found a complete absence of ceramics. In most of the other squares at this level there had
been an abundance of ceramics. There was a great deal of stone in the courtyard, including one millstone. Complementing this was the recovery of carbonized wheat seeds. One can therefore envision that grain may have been stored here and that the grinding operation took place near storage. The other thing that Jansen found was that there was a sizable amount of shell in the southwestern corner of the courtyard. Shell made up 61.6 percent of the total finds in this area. This included one complete shell, two partially complete shell bangles, and several other conch shell objects, some of which may have been wasters.

  Jansen cautions us that his analysis of objects from House VIII is preliminary and should be taken as an indication that there is potential in this approach. Much of it is dependent on the state of record keeping that the excavators used; however, they did record things in three dimensions. But the association of artifacts in the ground is ultimately related to taphonomic processes, and these are poorly understood at Mohenjo-daro. It could be that the courtyard of House VIII was filled with debris from other abodes in the neighborhood after it had been abandoned. The shells in the southwestern corner may therefore be simply a rich deposit of trash from another place. But work with the collections and field notebooks have the potential to sort out some of these problems, and that is the promise of Jansen’s project in House VIII.

  House VIII must have been a very fine place in its day. It was well built, with thick sturdy walls, sound stairs, good bathing facilities, all neatly tucked into what seems to have been a congenial neighborhood just off First Street. On the other side of First Street is HR-B, a large complex of buildings and streets about 120 by 100 meters on a side.