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Passages From Chapter 1

The document summarizes several passages from chapters 1 and 2 of an unknown text. [1] It describes the types of grinding stones and cooking vessels found at ancient Indus Valley sites like Mohenjo-Daro. [2] It discusses the drainage systems of Indus cities, which were found to be well-developed even in smaller settlements. [3] It examines early interpretations and evidence regarding a potential massacre at Mohenjo-Daro versus more careful reexaminations that questioned this interpretation.

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Aditya Joshi
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190 views3 pages

Passages From Chapter 1

The document summarizes several passages from chapters 1 and 2 of an unknown text. [1] It describes the types of grinding stones and cooking vessels found at ancient Indus Valley sites like Mohenjo-Daro. [2] It discusses the drainage systems of Indus cities, which were found to be well-developed even in smaller settlements. [3] It examines early interpretations and evidence regarding a potential massacre at Mohenjo-Daro versus more careful reexaminations that questioned this interpretation.

Uploaded by

Aditya Joshi
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Passages from Chapter 1

HOW ARTEFACTS ARE IDENTIFIED


(Page 4)
Processing of food required grinding equipment as well as vessels for mixing, blending and cooking. These
were made of stone, metal and terracotta. This is an excerpt from one of the earliest reports on excavations at
Mohenjo-Daro, the best-known Harappan site:
Saddle querns … are found in considerable numbers … and they seem to have been the only means in use for
grinding cereals. As a rule, they were roughly made of hard, gritty, igneous rock or sandstone and mostly show
signs of hard usage. As their bases are usually convex, they must have been set in the earth or in mud to
prevent their rocking. Two main types have been found: those on which another smaller stone was pushed or
rolled to and fro, and others with which a second stone was used as a pounder, eventually making a large
cavity in the nether stone. Querns of the former type were probably used solely for grain; the second type
possibly only for pounding herbs and spices for making curries. In fact, stones of this latter type are dubbed
“curry stones” by our workmen and our cook asked for the loan of one from the museum for use in the
kitchen.
FROM ERNEST MACKAY, Further Excavations at Mohenjo-Daro, 1937.

THE MOST ANCIENT SYSTEM YET DISCOVERED


(Page 7)
About the drains, Mackay noted: “It is certainly the most complete ancient system as yet discovered.” Every
house was connected to the street drains. The main channels were made of bricks set in mortar and were
covered with loose bricks that could be removed for cleaning. In some cases, limestone was used for the
covers. House drains first emptied into a sump or cesspit into which solid matter settled while waste water
flowed out into the street drains.
Very long drainage channels were provided at intervals with sumps for cleaning. It is a wonder of archaeology
that “little heaps of material, mostly sand, have frequently been found lying alongside drainage channels,
which shows … that the debris was not always carted away when the drain was cleared”.
FROM ERNEST MACKAY, Early Indus Civilization, 1948.
Drainage systems were not unique to the larger cities, but were found in smaller settlements as well. At Lothal
for example, while houses were built of mud bricks, drains were made of burnt bricks.

EVIDENCE OF AN INVASION
(Page 18)
Deadman Lane is a narrow alley, varying from 3 to 6 feet in width … At the point where the lane turns
westward, part of a skull and the bones of the thorax and upper arm of an adult were discovered, all in very
friable condition, at a depth of 4 ft 2 in. The body lay on its back diagonally across the lane. Fifteen inches to
the west were a few fragments of a tiny skull. It is to these remains that the lane owes its name.
FROM JOHN MARSHALL, Mohenjodaro and the Indus Civilisation, 1931.

Sixteen skeletons of people with the ornaments that they were wearing when they died were found from the
same part of Mohenjodaro in 1925. Much later, in 1947, R.E.M. Wheeler, then Director-General of the ASI,
tried to correlate this archaeological evidence with that of the Rigveda, the earliest known text in the
subcontinent. He wrote: The Rigveda mentions pur, meaning rampart, fort or stronghold. Indra, the Aryan
war-god is called puramdara, the fort-destroyer. Where are – or were – these citadels? It has in the past been
supposed that they were mythical … The recent excavation of Harappa may be thought to have changed the
picture. Here we have a highly evolved civilisation of essentially non- Aryan type, now known to have
employed massive fortifications … What destroyed this firmly settled civilisation? Climatic, economic or
political deterioration may have weakened it, but its ultimate extinction is more likely to have been completed
by deliberate and large-scale destruction. It may be no mere chance that at a late period of Mohenjodaro
men, women, and children, appear to have been massacred there. On circumstantial evidence, Indra stands
accused.
FROM R.E.M. WHEELER, “Harappa 1946”, Ancient India, 1947.

In the 1960s, the evidence of a massacre in Mohenjodaro was questioned by an archaeologist named George
Dales. He demonstrated that the skeletons found at the site did not belong to the same period:
Whereas a couple of them definitely seem to indicate a slaughter, … the bulk of the bones were found in
contexts suggesting burials of the sloppiest and most irreverent nature. There is no destruction level covering
the latest period of the city, no sign of extensive burning, no bodies of warriors clad in armour and surrounded
by the weapons of war. The citadel, the only fortified part of the city, yielded no evidence of a final defense.
FROM G.F. DALES, “The Mythical Massacre at Mohenjodaro”, Expediton,1964.
As you can see, a careful re-examination of the data can sometimes lead to a reversal of earlier
interpretations.

Passages from Chapter 2

WHAT THE KING’S OFFICIALS DID


(Page 34)
Here is an excerpt from the account of Megasthenes:
Of the great officers of state, some … superintend the rivers, measure the land, as is done in Egypt, and
inspect the sluices by which water is let out from the main canals into their branches, so that everyone may
have an equal supply of it. The same persons have charge also of the huntsmen, and are entrusted with the
power of rewarding or punishing them according to their deserts. They collect the taxes, and superintend the
occupations connected with land; as those of the woodcutters, the carpenters, the blacksmiths, and the
miners.

CAPTURING ELEPHANTS FOR THE ARMY


(Page 35)
The Arthashastra lays down minute details of administrative and military organisation. This is what it says
about how to capture elephants:
Guards of elephant forests, assisted by those who rear elephants, those who enchain the legs of elephants,
those who guard the boundaries, those who live in forests, as well as by those who nurse elephants, shall,
with the help of five or seven female elephants to help in tethering wild ones, trace the whereabouts of herds
of elephants by following the course of urine and dung left by elephants. According to Greek sources, the
Mauryan ruler had a standing army of 600,000 foot-soldiers, 30,000 cavalry and 9,000 elephants. Some
historians consider these accounts to be exaggerated.

IN PRAISE OF SAMUDRAGUPTA
(Page 37)
This is an excerpt from the Prayaga Prashasti: He was without an antagonist on earth; he, by the overflowing
of the multitude of (his) many good qualities adorned by hundreds of good actions, has wiped off the fame of
other kings with the soles of (his) feet; (he is) Purusha (the Supreme Being), being the cause of the prosperity
of the good and the destruction of the bad (he is) incomprehensible; (he is) one whose tender heart can be
captured only by devotion and humility; (he is) possessed of compassion; (he is) the giver of many hundred-
thousands of cows; (his) mind has received ceremonial initiation for the uplift of the miserable, the poor, the
forlorn and the suffering; (he is) resplendent and embodied kindness to mankind; (he is) equal to (the gods)
Kubera (the god of wealth), Varuna (the god of the ocean), Indra (the god of rains) and Yama (the god of
death)…

LIFE IN A SMALL VILLAGE


(Page 40)
The Harshacharita is a biography of Harshavardhana, the ruler of Kanauj, composed in Sanskrit by his court
poet, Banabhatta (c. seventh century CE). This is an excerpt from the text, an extremely rare representation of
life in a settlement on the outskirts of a forest in the Vindhyas:

The outskirts being for the most part forest, many parcels of rice-land, threshing ground and arable land were
being apportioned by small farmers … it was mainly spade culture … owing to the difficulty of ploughing the
sparsely scattered fields covered with grass, with their few clear spaces, their black soil stiff as black iron …
There were people moving along with bundles of bark … countless sacks of plucked flowers, … loads of flax
and hemp bundles, quantities of honey, peacocks’ tail feathers, wreaths of wax, logs, and grass. Village wives
hastened en route for neighbouring villages, all intent on thoughts of sale and bearing on their heads baskets
filled with various gathered forest fruits.

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