On the Pakistan side, archaeological evidence now available overwhelmingly affirms that the Hakra was a perennial river through all its course in Bahawalpur during the fourth millennium B.C. (Hakra Period) and the early third millennium B.C. (Early Harappan Period).53
Then, around the beginning of the Mature phase (2600 BCE), still according to Mughal, two hydrographic events disrupted the Hakra’s flow: one was the capture of the Chautang (or Drishadvatī) by the Yamunā, which depleted the Ghaggar’s waters; the other was the drying up of a channel of the Sutlej feeding the Hakra at Walhar near the international border, the same channel that Stein had noted (p. 133). As a result, Mature sites close to the border are very few. But the Sutlej still flowed into the Hakra through another channel further south, which sustained ‘the highest clustering of sites near Derawar’54 so conspicuous in Fig. 6.8. There, as Mughal puts it, the Hakra, whose reduced waters could no longer reach the sea, ‘fanned out’, forming an inland delta southwest of Derawar.
Mughal’s inferences are quite consistent with the picture of the Sarasvatī that we have built so far, but he adds a degree of confidence in dating the start of the Hakra’s depletion. And his chronology happens to be in excellent agreement with the isotopic study by Geyh and Ploethner cited earlier (p. 76), which dated the Hakra’s palaeo-waters between 10900 and 2700 BCE: the last date suggests that the Hakra stopped flowing just before the start of the Mature phase in the area tested, between Fort Abbas and Fort Mojgarh—both the date and the area match Mughal’s. So does Clift’s conclusion (p. 76) that ‘between 2000 and 3000 BCE, flow along . . . the Ghaggur-Hakkra River ceased’.
Mughal’s thesis that the river broke up before the start of the Mature phase has been further strengthened by a recent survey of the Indian side of the Ghaggar basin. The Indian archaeologist Vasant Shinde and his Indian and Japanese colleagues, revisiting a number of sites of the region, first remind their readers that ‘the Ghaggar-Hakra River has been identified as the ancient Saraswati and Chautang as Drishadvati very often referred to in the Rg Vedic period.’55 They sum up their findings in these terms:
The archaeological survey carried out by the present authors in 2007 in parts of Hanumangarh and Ganganagar Districts of Rajasthan and Bhiwani and Rohtak Districts of Haryana have recorded some of the sites with the help of the GPS [Global Positioning System]. Surprisingly all the sites near Anupgarh area are actually located in the Ghaggar River course. This is very interesting and suggests that the Ghaggar (Saraswati) River had dried much before the emergence of the pre-Harappan culture in this area.56
We thus have four streams of evidence converging on a major disruption of the Sarasvatī in the third millennium BCE, and probably before the start of the Mature phase.
Gregory Possehl’s analysis also starts from the observation that ‘settlement patterns in the area indicate a strong flow from the Sarasvati and Sutlej into the Cholistan area, as far as Fort Derawar’.57 He adds:
It seems that during the Indus Age the Sarasvati was a large river and that water that now flows in the Yamuna and/or Sutlej Rivers made it so. Over time these waters were withdrawn and the Sarasvati became smaller, eventually dry. The agency for these changes was the tectonic reshaping of the doab [interfluve] separating the Yamuna from the rivers of the Punjab.59
The agency for the changes was ‘tectonic’ because, as Valdiya and others suggested earlier (p. 66), all it would have taken to divert the Yamunā and the Sutlej away from the Sarasvatī is a slight uplift of the doab. Such an uplift could occur progressively as a result of the continued northward movement of the Indian tectonic plate, or more suddenly in the event of a powerful earthquake in this seismically active region. Irrespective of the precise cause of the Sarasvatī’s depletion, Possehl proposes a synthesis of archaeological and geographical studies (mainly Wilhelmy’s for the latter) in three stages—a chronology ‘actually founded in archaeological data and the study of settlement patterns of the Indus Age’.60 His maps61 present the following scenario:
Till about 3000 BCE, the Sarasvatī, whose tributaries include the Yamunā and the Sutlej, is in full flow (more or less as in Wilhelmy’s map, Fig. 3.8). This corresponds broadly with the Early phase.
At some point during the Mature phase, the Yamuna gets captured by the Gangetic system, resulting in the drying up of the Drishadvatī and of middle sections of the Sarasvatī. The Sutlej shifts westward and its braided channels meet the Ghaggar-Hakra at several points between Hanumangarh and Fort Abbas.
In the post-urban phase (2000-1500 BCE), the Sutlej pursues its migration and meets the Hakra downstream of Fort Abbas. The Sarasvatī and its tributaries are reduced to seasonal rain-fed rivers in their upper reaches.
Although the actual sequence of events may have been more complex, this scenario is compatible with the distribution of Harappan sites of various phases in the region, and with all the other evidence that we have surveyed so far: from topography, local traditions and textual descriptions.
But archaeology has more to say. On the Indian side of the border, not only are the Early and Mature Harappan sites crowding the banks of the Ghaggar, the Chautang and their tributaries (Figs 6.7 and 6.8), they are also completely absent along the present courses of the Sutlej (except in its upper reaches during the Mature phase) and the Yamuna,62 a splendid confirmation that these two rivers did not occupy their present beds while the Indus-Sarasvatī civilization flourished.
And when we come to the Late phase (Fig. 6.9), we see an extraordinary proliferation of settlements (160 in India’s Punjab and almost 1200 in Haryana alone) hugging the piedmonts of the Shivaliks, visibly clinging to the last rain-fed streams flowing down the hills, while not a single site can be spotted in the central part of the Sarasvatī’s basin: the river’s wide bed further downstream must have been almost bereft of water.
A LIFELINE
We have travelled a long way. Before we set off on fresh explorations, let us take stock, first with Jane McIntosh, who in her latest book on the Indus civilization restates in clear terms the contribution of the Sarasvatī:
In the Indus period the Saraswati river system may have been even more productive than that of the Indus, judging by the density of settlement along its course. In the Bahawalpur region, in the western portion of the river, settlement density far exceeded that elsewhere in the Indus civilization . . . While there are some fifty sites known along the Indus, the Saraswati has almost a thousand . . .
[The Yamuna] shifted its course eastward early in the second millennium, eventually reaching its current bed by the first millennium, while the Drishadvati bed retained only a small seasonal flow; this seriously decreased the volume of water carried by the Saraswati. The Sutlej gradually shifted its channel northward, eventually being captured by the Indus drainage . . . The loss of the Sutlej waters caused the Saraswati to be reduced to the series of small seasonal rivers familiar today. Surveys show a major reduction in the number and size of settlements in the Saraswati region during the second millennium.63
We then turn to the Encyclopœdia Britannica:
Several hundred sites [of the Indus civilization] have been identified, the great majority of which are on the plains of the Indus or its tributaries or on the now dry course of the ancient Sarasvatī River, which flowed south of the Sutlej and then southward to the Indian Ocean, east of the main course of the Indus itself.64
Those lines were written by Raymond Allchin, who thus acknowledged the identification of the Ghaggar-Hakra with the Sarasvatī. Indeed, in a recent book co-authored with Bridget Allchin, he reminisced how it was for them ‘a most moving experience to stand on the mound at Kalibangan, and to see still preserved in the modern cropping the area of the flood plain of the Sarasvatī still clearly visible’.65 They also accepted their colleagues’ view that ‘the major reduction of sites [along the Sarasvatī] in the Early Post-urban¶ period (c. 2000-1700 BC) . . . strongly suggests that a major part of the river’s water supply was lost around that time’.66
Finally, in a wide-ranging survey entitled ‘Indus Civilization and the Rgvedic Sarasvatī’, V.N. Misra supports the view that the river was depleted by the loss of the Yamunā and the Sutlej. His conclusion leaves no room for ambiguity:
The description of the location, size and desiccation of the Sarasvatī River in the Vedic, epic and classical literature perfectly matches the features and history of the Ghaggar-Hakra River. Therefore it can be stated with certainty that the present Ghaggar-Hakra is nothing but a remnant of the Rgvedic Sarasvatī which was the lifeline of the Indus Civilization.67
One major lifeline, that is, with the other being the Indus. Just like Mesopotamia, this urban civilization emerged around these two major river systems; but here, one of them was already on its way to extinction.
{7}
New Horizons
Abrief visit to four important sites on the Indian side of the border will complement our acquaintance with Indus-Sarasvatī urbanism: they all bear the Harappan stamp, but because they sharply differ from each other, they open new horizons on what was already a rich and complex civilization.
Let us start from the Sarasvatī’s upper reaches and go with the current.
BANAWALI
This Harappan city of about 10 ha was found in the Fatehabad district of Haryana, on the bank of an old bed of the Ghaggar. According to R.S. Bisht, who directed the excavations in the 1970s, ‘Banawali was an important administrative headquarters or provincial capital and a prosperous trading centre along the Sarasvatī during the Indus times.’1
The site was already occupied in the pre-urban phase, with some evidence of fortifications and bricks following the typical Early Harappan proportions of 1:2:3. At the start of the urban phase, ‘all the pre-existing residential houses were razed to the ground and fresh ones were raised with the newly introduced bricks and with thicker walls of better workmanship’.2 Those ‘newly introduced bricks’ followed the standardized proportions of 1:2:4, and this ‘razing to the ground’ is one more illustration of the ‘clean-slate strategy’ we saw in the Indus region.
The site of the Mature phase has a layout not found anywhere else so far (Fig. 7.1), with an overall trapezoidal shape and a semi-elliptical acropolis. Another unique feature of Banawali is the presence of a six-metre-wide, V-shaped moat outside the town’s fortifications, which was most likely a protection from floods when the river was in spate.
While the streets of the acropolis are mostly at 90° angles, those of the lower town follow a more complex radial pattern; but several of them are precisely oriented along the north-south axis, and the larger ones are a comfortable 5.4 m wide. Some rich traders lived there, judging from the presence of seals, hoards of jewellery and stone weights in some of the bigger houses. One of them boasted a paved living room and a bathroom complete with a raised washbasin!
Perhaps the most remarkable structure unearthed at Banawali’s acropolis (Fig. 7.2) is a small building shaped as a semi-ellipse—precisely the shape of the acropolis. As if to make it amply clear that this was a conscious choice and not an accident, the building harbours an altar that once again conforms to a semi-elliptical (or apsidal) shape. There can be little doubt that this building was a small temple dedicated to fire worship (we will return to it in Chapter 10).
KALIBANGAN
Some 200 km downstream from Banawali, we come to Kalibangan, on the left bank of the Ghaggar. Indeed, just a few kilometres further downstream is the confluence with the Chautang, still so conspicuous on satellite photographs (Fig. 3.3). Gregory Possehl puts it this way, ‘Kalibangan . . . is strategically located at the confluence of the Sarasvatī and Drishadvatī Rivers and must have played a major role as a way station and monitor of the overland communications of the Harappan peoples.’3
Kalibangan, like Banawali, saw an Early phase, complete with fortifications, rectangular houses, streets and even drains. In its Mature phase, however, this town embodied a very different concept of town planning from Banawali’s, even though it was of about the same size: 11.5 ha for the area within fortifications, and probably a few more hectares outside. Here, the acropolis and the lower town were twin enclosures, in the form of two oblique parallelograms whose longer sides were oriented north-south (Fig. 7.3). In this, Kalibangan followed the general scheme of Mohenjo-daro (Fig. 5.1), whose acropolis occupied a separate mound to the west of the lower town. Mohenjo-daro’s acropolis is thought to have measured some 200 x 400 m, while Kalibangan’s was precisely 120 x 240 m—in both cases, the ratio of length to breadth is 2:1. A massive east-west wall further divides the acropolis into two rhombs of nearly 120 x 120 m each. But Kalibangan is luckier than Mohenjo-daro in that the lower town’s fortifications are largely traceable, measuring at least 360 x 240 m.
The lower town’s streets formed a well-planned and carefully maintained grid; their widths, starting from the narrowest, were 1.8 m, 3.6 m, 5.4 m and 7.2 m, in a perfect geometric progression of 1:2:3:4. (This pattern is partly visible at other sites: we just saw, for instance, street widths of 5.4 m at Banawali.) As with the overall town plan, we must note the Harappan engineers’ and planners’ fondness for precise proportions: they did not believe in leaving things to chance, as our ‘modern’ municipal authorities seemingly do. No urban jungle in those protohistoric times!
The only structures permitted on the streets were small brick platforms jutting out near house entrances, where people evidently sat together in the evening to chat and exchange the day’s news: perhaps the arrival of a caravan of traders from Harappa, less than 200 km away, or the latest gossip from Rakhigarhi and other large urban centres upstream—unless it was simply the recent harvest in the fields around the town. Houses were, as elsewhere, organized around a central courtyard, and surplus of wealth (what we call ‘luxury’) is visible in some of them in the form of tiled floors decorated with the typical Harappan motif of ‘intersecting circles’ (Fig. 7.4).
At Harappa (Fig. 5.3) the acropolis (on mound AB) is also in the shape of a parallelogram, measuring roughly 200 x 400 m (the same size as at Mohenjo-daro), while a recessed entrance on its northern side faces a now dry riverbed of the Ravi. We find a similar device at the northern end of Kalibangan’s acropolis, facing the Sarasvatī’s dry bed and wide enough to allow carts in and out. Such a layout makes eminent sense with rivers acting as important links between towns and regions; the recess must have been designed to afford a measure of control on the movement of people and goods.
While the northern portion of the acropolis was residential in nature, the southern brought to light a series of massive brick platforms oriented along cardinal directions. According to B.B. Lal, who conducted the excavations with B.K. Thapar and J.P. Joshi, the area must have been reserved for ritual purposes.4 There are several clues to this effect. First, as far as can be judged, it had no regular houses or other buildings. Second, both accesses to it, through the partitioning wall in the north and an entrance in the southern fortification wall, were stairways, therefore disallowing the movement of carts: there must have been a specific reason to compel inhabitants to reach the area on foot. Third and more explicit, on one of the platforms, a row of seven oval-shaped structures, five of them fairly intact, were found next to each other, sunk in the ground, with a slender stele of clay standing in the middle of each of them. They contained ash and charcoal, which prompted the excavators to identify them as fire altars. Their location alongside a wall made the officiants sit facing east, the direction still favoured today in rituals; behind them was a half-buried terracotta jar containing more ash and charcoal; nearby, a few bathing pavements and a well suggest ablutions. In every detail, the complex is evocative of religious rituals, and we will return to it when we discuss Harappan religion. Interestingly, the same kind of altar with a central stele was found in many individual houses, and Lal attributes a religious purpose to them, since cooking was done in the open courtyards.
On another of the brick platforms, a carefully built rectangular pit of burnt br
icks measuring 1.5 x 1 m contained antlers and bones of bovids, evidently sacrificed as part of a ritual.
LOTHAL
This important site of Gujarat is located some 70 km southwest of Ahmedabad, near the Bhogavo, a tributary of the Sabarmati river; the Sabarmati flows into the northern end of the Gulf of Khambat (or Cambay) some 23 km downstream.5 At 7 ha, Lothal is modest in size, though, as often, there is evidence of habitations extending outside the fortified area (Fig. 7.5). The town’s peripheral wall is massive, from 12 to 21 m thick, and was clearly intended to offer a measure of protection against floods, whose repeated onslaughts left tell-tale marks of ravage on the town and probably brought about its end.
Lothal’s town planning follows the pattern of Banawali in one respect: the acropolis is within the town, not separate from it like Kalibangan’s; tucked in the southeast corner, it is demarcated not by internal fortifications, but by a separate platform of mud bricks almost four metres high. It has wide streets, well-designed drains, and a row of twelve bathing platforms in a perfectly straight line (Fig. 5.4 shows a few of them)—a layout that hints at more than a purely utilitarian purpose. The acropolis also boasts a large building identified as a warehouse, with square platforms where we can visualize the goods being packed, tied, sealed, lifted on the shoulders of coolies and finally taken away. The building seems to have suffered a fire, as some of the mud bricks are partly burned; but we should be grateful for that, as otherwise the sixty-five sealings (impressions of seals on clay) found there might not have been preserved; some of those sealings still bore the impression of the ropes tied around the bundles of goods waiting to be shipped.
The Lost River: On The Trail of Saraswati Page 13
