The Indus Valley Civilization

The Indus Valley Civilization

The Indus Valley, or Harrapan, civilization was discovered in 1920-21 when engraved seals were discovered near present-day Sahiwal in Pakistani Punjab at a place called Harappa. Later Rakhal Das Banerjee, John Marshall, E.J.H Mackay and M.S.Vats carried out excavations at Mohenjodaro in Sind and discovered the buried remains of a civilization with a pictographic script. Many archaeologists , including the celebrated Sir Mortimer Wheeler, added to our knowledge of this civilization. We now know that it extended to the Yamuna along the bed of the river Ghaggar in Rajhastan, Gujrat and upto the mouths of the rivers Narbada and Tapati

It does appear, however, that the major sites of this civilization are in Pakistan. In fact it is in Pakistan that an earlier phase of it has also been unearthed. This happened between 1955-57 when a Pakistani archaeologist, F.A.Khan, discovered a town of the pre-Indus period (c. 3300-2800 B.C) at Kot Diji in Khairpur, Sind. Such sites were also discovered by Rafique Mughal in Bahawalpur, especially in the Cholistan desert, extending the area of this culture to the whole of southern Pakistan.8 The area was further extended by Professor Ahmad Hasan Dani, the famous Pakistani archaeologist and Sanskritologist, when he discovered the sites of this civilization at Gumla, seven miles from Dera Ismail Khan. In fact Dani identified six cultural periods and Professor Farzand Ali Durrani , who excavated Rahman Dheri which is fourteen miles north of Dera Ismail Khan city, provided more details about the extension of this civilization in the North West Frontier Province.

Archaeologists disagree whether the Kot -Diji type of cultural artifacts constitute a separate civilization or an early phase of the same civilization. Rafique Mughal, citing evidence from the excavations at Bahawalpur and Cholistan, concluded that 'all Kot Diji-related sites together constitute an Early Harappan or early urban, formative phase of the Indus Civilization'.11 However, Parpola argues that the term is misleading because it 'suggests discontinuity, like pre-Aryan vs. Aryan'.12 In fact, many scholars treat the latter culture as a changed form of the earlier one. This is significant because, if the dates of the Indus Valley Culture are approximately 2300-2000 B.C, and the dates of the kot Diji one are c. 3300-2800, then the length of the period of urban civilization in South Asia have been pushed back a thousand years. The area of the early culture is given by Mughal as follows:

... the central-northern areas of Baluchistan, the greater portion of Sind and the Punjab, Kalibangan on the Indian side, and the south-western part of the Frontier Province are the regions which are likely to have been comprised within the limits of the Kot Dijian culture.

Thus , one may suggest that the area now called Pakistan had some sort of cultural similarity as early as three thousand years before the birth of Christ. Whether it also had linguistic similarity is a question which needs to be answered.