LONDON: Latest archaeological surveys have revealed that at least three large cites other than Harappa and Mohenjodaro once existed at regular spaces through the Indus Basin, throwing fresh light on the vastness of the ancient Indus valley civilization excavated in the Sindh and Punjab.
While one of them Kalibangan was discovered in India in the 1960s by the Archaeological Survey of India, the other two Ganweriwal and Rakhigarhi have been discovered in recent Archaeological surveys.
Ganweriwala on the now dry Hakra River in Cholistan, is 81.5 hactres, larger than Harappa’s estimated 76 hectares, but Slightly smaller than Mohenjodaro, according to Dr Rafique Mughal, director of archaeology for northern Pakistan.
Dr Mughal says Ganweriwala is midway between the two well-known cities of Harappa and Mohenjodaro, while Rakhigarhi lies of equal distance east of Harappa in the Haryana state of India, and also lies on what was once the Hakra drainage. Like the other cities it has two mounds, together covering 80 hectares.
Writing in the “Journal of Central Asia”, Dr Mughal says these two sites, and Kali bangan downstream from Rakhigarki, Show that the upper Indus plain was studded with substantial communities each large enough to be a capital of regional states, challenging the hitherto accepted belief that Harappa and Mohenjadaro, though 360 miles apart, were twin capitals of one great empire.
According to Dr Mughal, Kousda, in the southern Indus basin, lies on an island in the great Rann of Kutch near the Pakistan border.
Kotada site dating to the peak of the Indus civilization, lies where water routes from Sind, Rajasthan and Kutch meet and evidence that the ancient sea level was higher than at present suggests that the Rann was then navigable.
Kotada site has yielded texts in the un-deciphered script and though only half the size of the largest cities, it is of classic Indus from and well within known geographical limits of the culture.
Dr Mughal says “Kotada is a strongly fortified city spreading over a total area of more than 40 hectares, It consists of an inner acropolis or citedal, integral with a middle town and surrounded by double ramparts lined with stone. Access from the acropolis and middle sown is through gateways with flights of stone steps.
Outside, the lower town occupies areas on three sides of the citadel: the remains still Show chessboard planning of stone-built houses and streets, all enclosed by another fortified wail”
According to him several other Indus culture towns along the Arablan sea coast are known to have been similarly stranded. Dr Mughat’s earlier surveys in the Ghaggar valley located numerous smaller sites indicating a once flourishing region that died as the water supply disappeared.
Dr Mughal believes that another important city remains to be discovered in the eastern sind because Kotada is over 500 km from Ganweriwal and Mohenjodaro whereas the mean distance between the Indus major cities has been generally noticed to be about 290 km.
Pointing towards the fortifications located around Ketada and other cities, he says “such a pattern of cites calls for explanations more convincing than the hypotheses of trade networks or centers of production and redistribution.
He says, tikes wise the major cities cannot be regarded as administrative capitals of the Indus empire the fortified towns along the coast certainly had different functions from the cities in the plains of Punjab and Sindh.”
Article extracted from this publication >> January 4, 1991
