INDUS VALLEY

CIVILIZATION
 TIMELINE
• Paleolithic and Mesolithic periods caves, rock shelters and open
campsites
• Late Mesolithic period round, stone-paved huts with
wattle and daub walls found
in Andhra Pradesh
• Neolithic Era rectangular houses were built
of pressed earth and sun-dried
brick
• Around 7000 BC settled cultures emerged in the
eastern hills of the Baluchistan
Mountains.
• 7000-2500 BC Mehrgarh, Baluchistan Hills,
Central Pakistan
• 5000-2600 BC Indus Valley Period
• 3000-1300 BC Harappa and Mohenjodaro,
Indus Valley
• 2nd millennium BC Ghaggar-Hakra begins to dry
out
• Around 1500 BC Aryans come into India
• 1500-500 BC Vedic Period
MAJOR SITES:

Mohenjodaro

Harappa

Chanhu Daro

Kot Diji

Kalibangan

Lothal
MAJOR FEATURES:

1. Tightly packed dwellings

2. Higher citadel mound to the west and
usually separated by open ground
3. Citadel was walled and fortified with
towers and bastions
4. It contained massive public buildings
set on mud brick podia oriented N-S
5. Bricks were laid in mud mortar in what is known as the “English bond” and
so the builders were experienced in the brick layers craft
6. Residential areas were oriented N-S E-W in regular rectangular blocks which
were separated by streets
7. They probably had the world’s most advanced water supply and sewerage
system
8. There were shops and single and 2-storeyed houses with flat roofs
9. They were entered through narrow winding alleys
10. Blank windowless walls faced the main street
MEHRGARH (7000-2500BC)
Started as a simple village and over the course of 5000 years
became a regional trading centre. It was made up of small villages known as
Mehrgarh I to VII. Each was established on new ground after the previous
site had been abandoned.
Mehrgarh I (5000 BC) and II (4500 BC) were
similar in that they consisted of
rectangular, multi-roomed, mud brick
dwellings about 8x4m in area with
between 6 and 9 rooms on either side of
a central corridor.

Mehrgarh VI (3000-2700 BC) and VII (2600-

1700 BC) were contemporary with the
Indus civilizations and house plans had
become more complex. Some were 2
storeys high with the upper storey
carried on timber joisted floors.

By 3500 BC, they had mastered extensive

grain cultivation and had square mud
brick buildings which probably served as
multi roomed granaries with no doors
which suggests that grain was probably
fed from the top.
There is no evidence of dominant temples or ritual structures. The granaries were the
centre of social life and a large hearth was found outside one along its western
wall. Along its southern wall were the remains of a cutter workshop and on the
eastern side were heaps of animal bones mixed with ash which indicate the
presence of intense butchering activity.

The granaries were also the centre of ritual

practices and many human bones were
found buried in its corridors and
intermediary spaces.
INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATIONS: (around the 3rd millennium BC)

1. First urban civilization with over a thousand cities and towns discovered.
2. Shared a common language and standardized systems of weights.
3. Extensive trade with Mesopotamia through land and sea.
4. Sophisticated planning and water drainage.
5. Instead of ziggurats or pyramids they had huge public baths (Great Bath,
Mohenjodaro).
6. Rivers prone to flash floods.
7. Cities were constructed on huge brick platforms over existing mounds.
8. Huge production of standardized burnt brick.
9. Wall built both for defence and to keep out flood waters.
10.Elaborate interconnected drainage systems were designed to disperse
storm water.
11.Even so Harappa had to be rebuilt about 7 times.
12.The largest cities were usually divided into an Upper town (palaces,
ceremonial spaces etc) and a Lower town (most of the housing).
13.A wall usually surrounded the whole city and another wall surrounded the
upper town.
14.No centralized religious structures.
 MAP OF THE
INDUS VALLEY
CIVILIZATIONS
INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATIONS: (around the 3rd millennium BC)

4 phases of development:

•Around 2800 BC the urbanization of the Indus valley

•Around 2500 BC dominance of Harappa, Mohenjodaro, Rakhigarhi and Ganweriwala
•Around 2200 BC urbanization of areas to the South and East
•Around 1700 BC, post decline re- urbanization of the Indus Valley

Reason for decline? Drying up of the Ghaggar-Hakra river.

MOHENJO DARO (2500-1700 BC)

•Located along the banks of the southern Indus in Sind.

•Prone to flash floods and therefore buildings were raised on high brick platforms.
Floodwaters dispersed through a series of culverts into settling tanks.
•It consisted of an artificial citadel mound about 15m high situated 150m to the NW of
the town.
•It was fortified by a baked brick wall with solid towers.
•It had a 13m high brick platform which might have served as a refuge in times of
flooding.
•There were many public buildings in this citadel but the 2 most important are the
Granary and the Great Bath.
•The town occupied about 2.5sq.kms.

•The residential district was made up of

blocks about 365mx182m oriented N-S and
subdivided by lanes.

•The main streets were about 14m wide

and had open drainage ditches on either
side.

•Houses were flat-roofed and single or

double storied and built of fired bricks.

•Larger houses had 2 stories with the upper

one built of wood.

•Some houses had flights of brick stairs

giving access to a first floor or roof.

•Houses were inward looking and faced

courtyards.

•Most street elevations had blank walls.

•Houses did not open directly onto the street but instead plain doorways with timber lintels
lead into courtyards, off which household rooms opened.

•The number of rooms varied from one to more than 20 with single or multiple courtyards.

•Many houses had wells and bathrooms and toilets with drains that lead to sewers in the
main street.
THE GREAT BATH was the social centre of the city
(12x7x3m).
Made of burnt bricks with gypsum mortar and
waterproofed with bitumen.
Surrounded by a brick colonnade with a series of staggered changing rooms on the
periphery.
Some of the changing rooms had toilets and private baths.
Accessed by symmetrical stairs on the north and south with timber treads set in bitumen.
Outlet from SW corner leads to a high corbelled drain that empties into the surrounding
lowlands.
2 stories. Central pool courtyard was probably open to sky.
West of the bath was THE GRANARY consisting of about 27 blocks of brickwork crisscrossed by
narrow ventilation channels. It was later enlarged and partially rebuilt with a brick stair leading
to an upper level timber superstructure.

HARAPPA:
Located on the banks of the Ravi (tributary of the Indus) in Punjab.
It has a layout similar to that of Mohenjodaro.
The citadel mound was fortified with mud-brick ramparts
tapering upwards from a 12m thick base with an external
revetment of baked brick.
Between the citadel and the town was a barrack like block of
workmen’s quarters.
The granary at Harappa did not form a part of the citadel mound.
It was between the citadel and the river and was set on a 1m high
brick podium.
It was approached from
the north.
It had 12 granaries
each about 16x6m.
They were aligned in 2 rows separated by a
wide central passage. The total floor space was
about 800sq.m.
 THE VEDIC PERIOD (1500-500 BC)
The Indus Valley Civilization declined around the early second
millennium BC. There was a dark period between the decline and disappearance of the
Indus Valley civilization and the beginning of the Vedic period.

After the decline of the Indus Civilization when the art of building again
comes into view it takes a much more rudimentary form of humble village huts
constructed of reeds and leaves and hidden in the depths of the forest.

The Vedic culture appeared probably towards the end of the 2nd
millennium BC. It was the outcome of a great Indo-Aryan migration from the NW. The
people who laid the foundations of the Vedic age were by no means related to those of the
Indus Valley civilisations.

The Vedic people unlike the Indus valley traders and town-dwellers
were of the country. They eked their living from the fields and forests. Originally nomads,
they became partly pastoral and partly agricultural after settling down in the plains of India.
Their habitations were rudimentary structures of reeds and bamboo thatched with leaves.

A variety of sources ranging from the Vedas to bas reliefs carved on

stupa railings of Barhut and Sanchi help us visualize the kind of buildings that marked the
beginnings of the Vedic period. Apart from these sources the subsequent architecture
reproduces the characters of the structures from which it originated.
 People lived in clearings cut out from the forest. In order to protect
themselves and their property from wild animals, they surrounded their little collection of
huts (grama) with a special kind of fence or palisade. The fence consisted of upright posts
(thabha) which supported 3 horizontal bars or suchi (needles) as they were threaded into
holes in the uprights.
This type of railing became the emblem of protection and was
universally used not only to enclose the villages but also to enclose fields and eventually to
preserve anything of a special or sacred nature.
Entrances were formed by projecting a
section of the bamboo fence at right angles and placing a
gateway in front of it (gamadvara). This form is still
preserved in the gopurams of south India.

From this the

characteristic Buddhist
archway known as the
“Torana” was derived
and was carried to the
Far East in the form of
Japanese “Torii” and
Chinese “piu-lu”.
 Within the village huts with circular plans were dominant. They were of
a beehive pattern made of a circular wall of bamboos held together with bands of withes
and covered either with a domical roof of leaves or thatched with grass. An illustration of
this can be seen in the interior of the Sudama cell in the Barabar hill group where every
detail of the timber construction is copied in the living rock.

At a later date the circular plan was elongated into an oval with a
barrel roof formed on a frame of bent bamboo and covered with thatch. Soon these huts
were arranged in 3s or 4s around a square courtyard and the roofs were covered with
planks of wood or tiles. Better houses used unbaked bricks for walls.

To maintain the barrel shape of the roof a withe was stretched across
the end of the arch like the cord of a bow. This produced a horseshoe shape.

This type of archway was commonly

referred to as the chaitya or sun-window
and was to become a characteristic of
subsequent Buddhist architecture. Features
like the railing, the gateway, the rounded
hut with the heavy eave of thatch, the
barrel roof with its framework of bent
bamboos, influenced the style that
followed.
Decorative character of these forest dwellings was by means of colour applied on the mud
walls.

In the MIDDLE OF THE 1ST MILLENNIUM BC, towns arose a certain important centres. The
traditional structural features of the village were reproduced on a larger scale and in a
more substantial form. These towns were strongly fortified and surrounded by a rampart
and wooden palisades. The buildings were almost entirely of wood. This was the era of
timber construction.

It was followed by the employment of more permanent materials for building purposes.
During the timber era people developed dexterity in wooden construction of a very high
standard. In the Rig Veda the carpenter is recorded as holding a place of honour among the
artisans. The constructional features of timber were freely and closely imitated in the
rock and stone architecture that was to follow.

An architect by the name of Maha-Govinda was responsible for the layout of several north
Indian capitals in the fifth century BC. This is the first mention of an architect. Cities were
rectangular in plan and divided into 4 quarters by 2 main thoroughfares intersecting at
right angles each leading to a city gate.

One of these quarters contained the citadel and the royal apartments. Another contained
residences of the upper class. A third was for the buildings of the middle class and the last
was for the accommodation of traders with their workshops open to view much like a
modern bazaar.
 Vedic and Mughal palaces share many common features although they
were separated by a time span of more than 2000 years.

They were both built around an inner courtyard within the citadel and had a large
central window.

Both had a wing reserved for the royal ladies with pleasure gardens, having fountains
and ornamental waters attached.

There was also an office enclosure containing audience and assembly halls, a court of
justice, a music gallery and an arena to witness wrestling matches and contests of wild
beasts.

The only difference was that the Mughals build in marble but in the
Vedic era the royal residences had not advanced beyond thatched roofs.