Ancient Indian History

Until the 1920s schoolbooks said Indian history began with the Vedic age. Then in 1921 Daya Ram Sahni dug at Harappa (on the Ravi, in Punjab, Pakistan) and in 1922 R.D. Banerji dug at Mohenjo-daro ("mound of the dead", on the Indus, Sindh). The finds were so alike that Sir John Marshall announced in 1924 a whole new civilisation, older than anything known in India. Because Harappa was dug first, the correct name is the Harappan civilisation; "Indus Valley civilisation" is the older popular name. It is a Bronze Age culture — copper and tin, but no iron — and its mature phase lasted about 2600–1900 BCE.

Every big Harappan city follows the same plan, and that plan is the most-asked exam fact.

• The town is divided into two parts: a raised citadel in the west (for the rulers, granaries, big public buildings) and the lower town in the east (where ordinary people lived).
• Streets cut each other at right angles — a grid pattern — with covered drains along the roads. Every house had its own well and bathroom, and the waste water flowed into street drains through clay pipes.
• Buildings used burnt bricks of a fixed ratio 1 : 2 : 4 (width : height : length). Using standard bricks everywhere is the clearest sign of a strong central authority.
• The Great Bath of Mohenjo-daro is a public tank with steps on two sides and a bitumen (water-proof) lining; the Great Granary stood nearby.

Exams test the pairing "site ↔ special find" again and again.

The four extremes run north-south-east-west: Manda, Daimabad, Alamgirpur, Sutkagendor.

• Agriculture: wheat and barley were the staple crops; cotton was grown here for the first time in the world (Greeks later called it sindon, after Sindh). Rice husks appear at Lothal and Rangpur in Gujarat.
• Trade: seals of steatite (soapstone) with animal motifs — the unicorn bull is the commonest — were pressed on clay tags for bales of goods. Trade with Mesopotamia is proved by Persian Gulf and Mesopotamian finds; the dockyard at Lothal served sea trade.
• Metal work: copper and bronze tools, gold and silver ornaments; the famous bronze Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-daro shows lost-wax casting. Iron was unknown.

No temple building has been found anywhere — that is a key difference from Egypt or Mesopotamia. Worship seems to have centred on the Mother Goddess figurines, a proto-Shiva (Pashupati) seal showing a figure seated cross-legged surrounded by animals, the pipal tree, and small stone linga-like objects. Burial was in brick chambers or pits; some graves (Lothal, Kalibangan) show double burials. The script is pictographic, read right to left (boustrophedon in places), and is still undeciphered — so we know the civilisation only through objects, not through its own words.

Around 1900 BCE the cities thinned out. Suggested causes work together, not alone: river shifts, floods, drying of the region, overuse of land. No single cause is proved — exam options usually ask which is not a cause (a favourite wrong option is "Aryan invasion, proved by evidence").