HT Archives| Character, culture: Closely looking at Indus Valley finds
Sir John Marshall detailed discoveries in the Indus Valley in 1924, linking ancient Indian civilization with Sumerian culture.
The director general of Archaeological Survey of India, Sir John Marshall, wrote a series of articles for Hindustan Times, giving details of the remarkable discovery made by the Archaeological Department in the Panjab and Sind region in November 1924. The discovery opened up a link with the ancient Indian civilisation and Sumerian culture of Mesopotamia some five thousand years ago. Edited excerpts from the articles:
During the last few months many enquiries have been addressed to me about our recent archaeological discoveries in India and particularly about the results of our work among prehistoric remains in the Indus valley and the Punjab. The points on which information has chiefly been sought are the nature of the finds made at Mohenjodaro and Harappa; the extent, and age and character of the culture revealed; its relationship with other known cultures of the Chalcolithic epoch in Asia and the scope; and the race and language and condition of the people who developed it, as well as the mode of their daily life.
Many of the questions put to me can be answered but very vaguely at present; others are not yet susceptible of being answered at all; for we are still at the beginning of our labours, and there is much spadework to be done, and in many more sites to be explored before we can hope to find the solution of the problems before us. So far, however, as answers are possible and so far as they can be given within the narrow compass of articles, I will endeavour to supply them. But first let me say that a three-volume monograph on the Excavations at Mohenjodaro will be going to press in a few weeks’ time and may be expected to be issued to the public in the early part of next summer...
Mohenjodaro Structures
The remains now laid bare at Mohenjodaro cover an area of more than 13 acres and belong to the three latest cities on the site. The best built structures are those of the third city; the poorest of the first. All, however, are built of well burnt brick usually laid in mud, but occasionally in gypsum (plaster of Paris) mortar, with foundations and infillings of sun-dried brick. Of the various groups of buildings that have been exposed, the most striking are focussed around about a lofty eminence near the north-west corner of the city, which in after times was crowned with a Buddhist stupa...
Outstanding among them is an imposing edifice containing a large bath or tank, which may be assumed to have been used either for ablution purposes in connection with the neighbouring temple, or possibly as a reservoir for sacred fish, crocodiles and the like. Sacred tanks for both purposes have long been a familiar feature in India and it is likely that they were already in use during the Chalcolithic age. The reservoir itself is 39 feet in length by 23 feet in breadth, and in sunk eight feet below the floor level. On its four sides is a boldly fenestrated corridor, with a platform in front and halls or small chambers behind....
Of the chambers ranged along the east side of the building, the middle one is occupied by a large well, from which the bath could be fed. At either end of the bath is a descending flight of steps, with a shallow landing at their foot. Like the bathroom floors of the private houses, the floor is laid in finely jointed brick-on-edge, and remarkable care and ingenuity has been exercised in the construction surrounding walls. These walls which are nearly 10 feet in thickness are made up of three sections: the inner and outer of burnt brick, the infilling between them of sundried brick, both in order to render them completely water-tight, the brick work has been laid in gypsum mortar, and the back of the inner wall coated with an inch-thick layer of bitumen...
Apart from the above, the remains brought to light at Mohenjodaro are for the most part private dwelling houses or shops, which tend to confirm more and more our earlier impression that the amenities of life enjoyed by the average citizen at Mohenjodaro were far in advance of anything to be found at that time in Babylonia or on the banks of the Nile. At Ur, in Sumer, it is true, Woolley has recently unearthed a group of houses which afford interesting parallel with those of Mohenjodaro and supply still another proof of a close cultural connection between Southern Mesopotamia and Sind. But even at Ur, the houses are by no means equal in point of construction to those of Mohenjodaro, nor are they provided with a system of drainage at all comparable with that found at the latter site — a system by which the sewage was carried by drains into street tanks and thence removed by scavengers.