The Lost River: On The Trail of Saraswati

by Michel Danino

  The lower town reveals considerable industrial activity dealing with beads of various semi-precious stones, shells and metal working among other crafts, all of them using techniques that have been well-documented at other Harappan sites. The presence of sacrificial and fire altars recalls the structures found at Kalibangan, but here they are found in individual houses or in streets. We will study one of them in Chapter 10.

  The most remarkable structure, alongside the town’s eastern side, is a 217-m-long, 36-m-wide basin (Fig. 7.6). (Its proportions, incidentally, are almost exactly in the ratio of 6:1.) If we consider that its 1.5 to 1.8 m-thick walls were made of millions of carefully adjusted baked bricks, we will have an idea of the energy and resources deployed on its construction. No other Harappan site has so far come up with such a huge water structure (as long as two-and-a-half football fields!). In view of stone anchors and marine shells found in it, S.R. Rao, the excavator, identified it as a tidal dockyard: at high tide, boats sailing up the Gulf of Cambay would have easily pushed on upstream the Bhogavo before berthing at Lothal’s basin. There are other considerations, too: its vertical walls are ideal for such a purpose, and the flat top of the town’s eastern fortification would have acted as a wharf; the proximity of the warehouse with its numerous sealings is another clue to the export of goods; a seal evocative of contact with the Persian Gulf was found elsewhere at Lothal; and an inlet channel was identified at the basin’s northern end, while a spillway for overflowing waters was spotted at the southern end.

  Here again, not everyone agreed that it was a dockyard, especially in view of the two sharp bends in the defunct stream leading to the dockyard. But the alternate theory of a water reservoir has been rather less convincing: the basin would have been unconscionably large for the purpose; a normal reservoir would be expected to have slanted walls with steps leading down into it (as we can see at Dholavira); and what is more, sullage from one of the town’s major drains emptied right into the basin.6 A recent study, by three Indian scientists, of multi-spectral satellite imagery combined with an analysis of sediments around Lothal has lent considerable support to the concept of a tidal dock: the evidence of former estuaries inland demonstrate that the sea level was higher during Lothal’s heyday, while an analysis of the satellite photographs reveal that ‘a meandering, tidally influenced river flowed from the north past Lothal. Tidal waters would thus have been used to approach up to and slightly beyond the town of Lothal’,7 which is just what S.R. Rao had proposed some four decades earlier.

  It may, however, be that Lothal was not a point of direct export, and that small river boats rather than larger seafaring ships took the goods away to a point of trans-shipment on Saurashtra’s coast. But Lothal’s association with the sea seems clear enough. Even today, at high tide, sea water enters the lower reaches of the old riverbed. And when the excavators first explored the site, they found that at that spot villagers were worshipping a sea-goddess named Venuvatimātā. But soon, an incident occurred which aroused the goddess’s displeasure. Let us hear the story from Rao himself:

  Before extending the operations to this sector [of the warehouse] the stones in worship representing the sea-goddess had to be removed against the wishes of the labourers. A few days later there was an accident resulting in injury to some labourers and the death of one of them. Immediately the labourers attributed the accident to the sacrilege committed by us in removing the goddess from her original place of worship, and refused to work on the site. They were later satisfied when the goddess was re-installed elsewhere with some ceremony. This incident is particularly mentioned here to show how strong is the tradition of worshipping the sea-goddess at Lothal.8

  DHOLAVIRA9

  Discovered by J.P. Joshi in 1966 on the Khadir island of the Rann of Kachchh, and excavated two decades later under the direction of R.S. Bisht, this site had quite a few surprises in store for the archaeological world, not the least of which was its very location, in the middle of what is today a harsh and arid landscape. But we saw how the sea reached higher in the Gulf of Khambat, and in a study of changes in the sea level around Gujarat, U.B. Mathur recently argued that this was also the case in the Rann: in Mature Harappan times, it was a ‘shallow arm of the sea’,10 and therefore navigable. (Indeed we know from Greek records that it was still partly so in the first century BCE.11) It is likely, then, that Dholavira had easy access to the sea.

  In the opinion of the Allchins, ‘Dholavira appears to be one of the most exciting discoveries of the past half century!’12Exciting for the following three reasons at least.

  The first is its unique town planning (Fig. 7.7): though it followed some of the classical Harappan norms, its overall concept departed from everything we have seen so far. At 47 ha, Dholavira’s fortified area is four times that of Kalibangan. The city is bracketed between two small seasonal streams. As at Lothal, its acropolis is inside the city, but as at Kalibangan, it consists of two adjoining fortified enclosures of similar size, named ‘Bailey’ and ‘Castle’ by the excavator, the latter no doubt because of its massive walls of mud bricks flanked by dressed stones. Remarkably, the bailey’s dimensions, 120 x 120 m, are exactly those of the two portions of Kalibangan’s acropolis. Since Lothal’s acropolis (119 x 118 m on an average) is also of almost the same size, we can rule out the play of chance: Harappan architects had precise norms in mind, just as craftsmen had with weights or seals, and builders with brick proportions.

  But the similarities end here. While Mohenjo-daro and Kalibangan appear to be based on a duality between separate upper and lower towns, Dholavira’s plan is essentially triple: just north of the acropolis lies the middle town, neatly criss-crossed by broad streets at right angles. While the bailey and the castle must have been home to the city’s rulers and officials, the middle town perhaps sheltered traders and craftsmen. It boasted a huge ‘stadium’ or ceremonial ground, over 283 m long and 47.5 m wide, which must have witnessed elaborate public events. (Its proportions, incidentally, are 6:1, exactly those of Lothal’s basin.) It had four long and narrow terraces on its southern side, which suggests a provision for seating. Towering over it, an imposing gate through the castle’s northern wall led down to a ceremonial pathway that descended on to the stadium: we can almost picture rulers and high officials leading the procession, though the nature of the ceremonies and other activities enacted there can only be guessed.

  Beyond the middle town lay the lower town with habitations in its northeastern and eastern sectors; common workers probably lived there. With architectural hierarchy being a reflection of social stratification, it would be tempting to interpret the three successive enclosures and the presence of more habitations outside the city’s fortifications as the signs of a functional caste system; yet we must resist the temptation until much more is known about Harappan society and its internal workings. (Let us keep in mind, too, that a Kshatriya or warrior class is conspicuously absent from Harappan society.)

  Dholavira is the only known Harappan site where stone was used on such a scale. Stone dressing was done with chisels of hardened bronze, and we will have some inkling of the task involved if we remember that the castle’s fortifications, up to 18.5 m wide in places, were made of mud bricks flanked by high stone walls; within its width a few rooms were built with dressed stones, and in some of them highly polished segments of pillars, both square and circular, were found in their original places (Fig. 7.8). Such segments, with a central hole, were piled up on top of one another, and when the desired height was reached, a wooden pole was inserted through the whole column to keep it together—an ingenious alternative to monolithic pillars.

  There is an unexpected feature in Dholavira’s town planning, which has to do with the specific proportions followed by its enclosures, and we will have a peep at it in Chapter 9.

  Water conservation is Dholavira’s second hallmark, inseparable from the first. The city had a few wells, with the most imposing of them (Fig. 7.9) being in the castle, but great care was taken t
o store every possible amount of rainwater: a series of huge reservoirs hugged the castle’s eastern and southern fortifications; the largest two measured about 73 x 29 m and 33 x 9 m respectively, with the latter carved out of massive rock, making it, in Bisht’s opinion, ‘the earliest ever rock-cut example’13 of water structure (Fig. 7.10). They were partly fed by rainwater harvested from the castle, where complex stone structures were built to that effect. Elsewhere, huge stone drains, high enough for a man to walk through, directed storm water to the western and northwestern sections of the lower town separated by broad bunds, creating in effect as many reservoirs. Their main supply, however, came from the two seasonal streams to the north and south of the city, whose waters were slowed down by a series of dams and partly deflected to the lower town. Altogether, as much as a third of Dholavira’s area was intended to conserve water: in effect, the monsoon must have turned it into a kind of lake city.

  Two important conclusions flow from Dholavira’s skills in water management—which, once again, will long remain the envy of our modern Indian cities. First, the size of the storm-water drains points to the sudden inrush of water during heavy rains, while the dams, the rainwater harvesting structures and the sheer hugeness of the reservoirs reflect a desire to save every drop of the precious liquid: rains must have been rare overall. In other words, the pattern of rainfall was more or less what it is today in Kachchh. Second, we find at Dholavira the same obsession with water as at Mohenjo-daro: there, most archaeologists have seen in it a religious trait, keeping in mind the Great Bath, the vast number of wells, and the luxury of the bathrooms.

  Its town planning apart, Dholavira shot into prominence because of a unique find: an inscription almost three metres long, found lying on the floor of one of the chambers of the castle’s northern gate. It was not inscribed there; its ten signs, each over 35 cm high, were made of a crystalline material which must have been embedded in a wooden plank, and the whole ‘signboard’ was probably hung above the northern gate, where it would have been visible to much of the middle town. In terms of size, there is no remotely comparable inscription from any other Harappan site. (Of course, boards with signs simply carved or painted on a plank would have vanished without a trace; it is the crystalline material alone that was preserved in this case.)

  Although the Dholavira signboard has not helped crack the script, it does show that a substantial number of people—at least those assembled on the ceremonial ground just below, in this case—were expected to read it. This gives the lie to earlier theories that knowledge of the script was reserved for a small ‘elite’.

  After a few centuries, Dholavira’s admirable urban order suffered an eclipse. The civic maintenance came to be neglected; the city shrank to a small settlement, which was eventually abandoned. After an interval, new people came and occupied the site for a while, but their rough circular dwellings had no connection with the previous planned houses, nor were any of the classical Harappan features visible. Gone was the splendour of the city with its massive acropolis towering over wide streets and huge water reservoirs.

  The new dwellers could not stay very long. The last standing buildings crumbled, and sand and mud slowly buried the ruins, sending them to sleep for some four millennia.

  {8}

  When Rivers Go Haywire

  Why this brilliant civilization disintegrated after seven or eight centuries is perhaps the greatest enigma of its enigmatic evolution. In fact, a few archaeologists question the very concept of an ‘end’. There is no doubt that towards the end of the third millennium, the striking cohesion of the urban order, which had taken shape over long ages, crumbled over a century or two. Most cities were abandoned; the few that still harboured inhabitants saw the complete loss of a civic order: no more standardized bricks or neat streets or drains or garbage bins—in a word, settlements that began to resemble suburbs of our Indian cities of the twenty-first century!

  What might have triggered this collapse? The only safe answer is, we do not know for sure; there are several possible explanations, all of them plausible.

  A MAN-MADE END?

  There are, broadly speaking, three schools of thought on the issue: the first attributes the end of the Indus cities to a destruction wrought by invaders; the second rests its case on political or economic turmoil; the third lays emphasis on environmental upheavals of various kinds.

  By man-made destruction a bloody invasion is generally meant, possibly by Aryans carried across the Khyber Pass by their conquering impulse: the militarily superior, horse-riding Aryans swooped down on unsuspecting Harappans and sacked their orderly cities. But on the basis of hard evidence marshalled during the last few decades, the archaeological community has long discarded such a blood-and-thunder end for the Indus-Sarasvatī cities. Not only has the evidence initially proposed (such as skeletons found in a street of Mohenjo-daro) been categorically rejected, but archaeologists have also agreed that there are no traces of the arrival of a new culture from Central Asia, such as we should expect in the case of an Aryan invasion or migration.1

  There are a few advocates of violence caused by marauders or some internal social turmoil; for example, some scholars have tried to make much of ‘vandalized’ statues found at the end of the Mature phase.2 However, as Kenoyer pointed out, some of those statues ‘may have been damaged in the collapse of a building or through natural weathering’.3 In his opinion, ‘there is no evidence for violent conflict in the Indus cities during the late phase of occupation, though there may have been increased banditry along trade routes and outside of the cities.’4

  In the last analysis, human aggression and violent social upheavals remain wholly conjectural in the Harappan context: no doubt the social order must have vastly changed with the great urban breakdown, but more likely as a consequence than as a cause of it.

  The same uncertainty surrounds the thesis that a drastic reduction in external trade, evidenced in Mesopotamia around 1900 BCE, might have triggered a chain reaction in Harappan society, depriving it of a source of wealth and rendering many craftsmen jobless. While the reduction in trade is a fact, whether it was a prime cause or a concomitant circumstance cannot be determined at this stage.

  There are subtler propositions in the category of a systemic collapse. One, expressed by Possehl, envisages that the ‘Indus ideology’, which we see at work in the high civic order, was perhaps ‘too perfect’5—in other words, too set in its ways and unable to adapt to ‘changing conditions’. There may well be some truth in this ingenious hypothesis, but it is hard to put it to test and it does not explain what the changing circumstances might have been; moreover, by spreading to very diverse regions and exploiting a wide array of natural resources, the Harappans did demonstrate a degree of adaptability.

  More convincing, to my mind, is the view put forth by Dilip Chakrabarti: ‘The Harappans eventually came to be rather thinly stretched on the ground, and the weakening of their political fabric became almost inevitable . . . The Harappans overstretched themselves.’6 There may be merit in this perspective, as we know that the Harappan state was not held together by a strong centripetal force such as military coercion; the complex internal relationships between the different classes and communities may have become increasingly difficult to maintain or coordinate across the vast Harappan world. Kenoyer proposes, for instance, that ‘the widely extended trade and political networks would have been seriously impacted by minor changes in economic productivity . . .’7

  Both Chakrabarti and Kenoyer, however, also acknowledge the play of environmental factors, which are of two kinds: humanly induced and natural. Before we turn to them, we need to explore a crucial question: In what kind of environment did the Harappan cities develop?

  DID HARAPPAN URBANISM RISE IN AN ARID PHASE?

  The answer to this question depends largely on whether the Indian monsoon was more copious or less than it is now. If it was the former, were today’s parched regions of northwest India and Pakistan covered with lush f
orests babbling with streams? Many climatic and environmental studies have come up with elements of an answer—unfortunately with divergent results. It is well established, for instance, that as the planet warmed at the end of the last Glacial Age, the southwest monsoon intensified on the subcontinent around 8000 BCE. But what happened afterwards?

  Among the first major studies, Gurdip Singh’s, in 1971, remains a reference. It was based on palynological evidence from three lakes of Rajasthan, and envisaged a wet climate during the Mature phase followed by a sharp decline in rainfall around 2000 BCE.8* In 1984, V.N. Misra refuted Singh’s chronology on the basis of archaeological and other evidence, which in his view showed that ‘the semi-arid and arid environments’ of the region were already established in Harappan times.9 Moreover, Singh’s radiocarbon dates, once recalibrated by Shaffer and Lichtenstein,10 pushed the wet phase into Early Harappan times and, therefore, placed the Mature phase in an already marked trend to aridity.

  A decade after Gurdip Singh’s study, R.A. Bryson and A.M. Swain also examined ancient pollen from the lakes of Rajasthan, and opted for a similar high rainfall model (especially high winter rainfall), with aridity setting in sometime before 1800 BCE.11 This study, which confirmed Singh’s initial interpretation, remains often quoted too, but here also, it was pointed out that after recalibration, this phase of higher rainfall should be ‘re-dated to a pre-Mature Harappan period’.12

  In other words, if the recalibration exercises are accepted, these two studies support the view that ‘the climate of [the Greater Indus Valley] was not markedly different in the third millennium BC from the one we have today’, as Possehl puts it.13 Indeed, this is the dominant opinion among archaeologists today, and in support of it, several new studies can be cited besides the above two. We have already seen three of them. One, Marie-Agnès Courty (p. 62) deduced from her study of soils and archaeological deposits in the Ghaggar-Chautang region that ‘climatic conditions have actually fluctuated very little since the Protohistoric period and have therefore remained semi-arid’.14 Two, Geyh’s and Ploethner’s work (p. 76) showed that the Hakra had stopped flowing before 2700 BCE in a section close to the Indian border. Three, Rao’s and Kulkarni’s isotope study (p. 74) of palaeo-waters in western Rajasthan found no recharge after about 3000 BCE.