Today, September 20, is the 100-year anniversary of the announcement of the discovery of the Indus civilisation in the Illustrated London News in 1924. The following is an excerpt from Nayanjot Lahiri’s Finding Forgotten Cities: How The Indus Civilization Was Discovered, a book that marks the centenary of the discovery’s announcement, co-published by Ashoka University and Permanent Black.
Finding Forgotten Cities (2005) ended with the beginning of the first phase of work that was followed by the announcement of the discovery in the Illustrated London News of 20 September 1924. Consequently, the first edition did not encompass the large-scale excavations of the ensuing years, the findings of which were later incorporated into excavation reports on the two city sites.
The first set of volumes on Mohenjodaro appeared in 1931 while the Harappa excavation report was published in 1940. In both instances the results published were distilled accounts, though much archaeological and architectural data also appears there: chapters on the site and its excavated localities, on antiquities and artefacts, and on the scientific analysis of objects. There are narrative descriptions accompanied by a large number of photographs and line drawings of buildings and streets, bones and beads, pottery and metal objects, remnants of food practices, seals and amulets, and a great deal more.
These are publications that continue to be used by scholars interested in India’s antiquity because they provide a fascinating window into the splendid character of those ancient cities across a substantial chunk of time. You could be forgiven for thinking that everything that needs to be known about those digs is contained in these volumes.
Finding Forgotten Cities, Nayanjot Lahiri, Ashoka University and Permanent Black, 2005.
Almost everything worth knowing would be more accurate. This is because there are little-known facts hidden in the archives relating to the 1920s digs that offer information qualitatively different from what is available in the published tomes. Unlike the publications, file notes and correspondence relating to the early excavations were generated as the work progressed. These capture the flavour of the digs and the character of the personalities involved.
Also, since the nature and uses of newly unearthed objects and structures were still being unravelled, the assumptions in these sources are more tentative and provisional than in the publications. A few such archival nuggets that I came upon in the course of research, which highlight the character of the excavations, seem worth outlining.
After the 1924 announcement Marshall ceased playing a role in the field; in fact, as we saw, he first visited the sites only in early 1925 and, most oddly, his detailed instructions on how the digging there should proceed were issued even before he visited the sites. He explained to K.N. Dikshit at Mohenjodaro and Daya Ram Sahni at Harappa how trenching should be done.
They were asked to carry out a network of trial trenches at say 50 or 75 yards apart over the whole site, some running north and south and some east and west. Simultaneously, you should sink trial pits and trenches at various points down to the virgin soil so as to ascertain what strata exist beneath the surface. When this is done, you will be in a better position to decide how to prosecute your works further.
The idea of sinking trenches right down to virgin soil was to get a clear idea of the stratification. As the trench went down, pottery specimens for every two feet were to be put in separate bags.
Sahni and Dikshit, for their part, had begun questioning Marshall’s use of the term ‘Indo-Sumerian’. Sahni constantly asked Marshall about possible Sumerian parallels for designs and objects found at his site – for the terracotta coiled snake at Harappa, and for the pipal tree engraved on a seal found by Dikshit at Mohenjodaro.
On finding a large shell spoon at Harappa, Sahni informed Marshall of the use of something similar in Hindu rituals: ‘In Sanskrit this is called Argha and is used to this day by orthodox Hindus in their morning and evening worship for pouring out water in honour of gods and for the purification of the manes. Gifts of land, gold, etc. to Brahmans are also marked by such libations. This is a very ancient institution with the Hindus and is frequently referred to in Sanskrit literature and inscriptions.’
Sahni also says that while libations in scenes of worship were engraved on Sumerian tablets, spouted jars were in evidence but not the Indian argha. Dikshit broadly echoed Sahni’s sentiments and, among other things, saw an essential difference in the way in which the earliest Sumerian writing was arranged – with pictographs in perpendicular columns, whereas the Indian seals showed linear writing going left to right. From his perspective, the idea of the Indus and Sumerian sites being organically related needed more thought because ‘a careful comparison of the products of early Indian civilization with those of the Sumerian will probably bring out more points of difference than similarity.’
Marshall agreed with Dikshit’s observation and eventually the term ‘Indo-Sumerian’ was dropped. In a note for a small exhibition organised by the Archaeological Department in 1926–7, Marshall wrote that owing to its close connection with the Sumerian civilisation of Mesopotamia, this prehistoric civilisation of Sind and the Punjab has hitherto been designated by the name ‘Indo-Sumerian’. With the progress of exploration, however, it has become evident that this connection was due not to actual identity of culture, but to intimate commercial or other intercourse between two countries. For this reason the term Indo-Sumerian has now been discarded, and the single word ‘Indus’ adopted in its place.
By this time Marshall had also seen for himself certain features at both Mohenjodaro and Harappa which were uniquely Indian. In the same note, he spoke of various rings and phallus-like objects that had been found in various sizes within the Indus cities – some of these objects were no more than an inch in diameter, while others were so ‘large that two men can scarcely lift them’. He added in his description that it was a plausible hypothesis but nothing more than a hypothesis at present – that the rings are symbolical of the yoni and the chessmen-like objects of the linga – the worship of which goes back to a very remote age in India; but whatever their symbolism, it seems clear that their ubiquitousness at Harappa and Mohenjodaro, that the cult was a very popular one.
This subcontinental distinctiveness of the Indus phenomenon subsequently showcased in the publications was, as these letters and note reveal, a consequence of insights offered by Sahni and Dikshit.
Nayanjot Lahiri is a historian and archaeologist of ancient India and a professor of history at Ashoka University.
