Until now the basic archaeological evidence related to the growth of village occupation west of the Delhi-Aravalli-Cambay axis of Indian geography has been outlined. If more space has been devoted to Baluchistan than anywhere else, it is because of the relative abundance of archaeological data from that region. It is illogical to think that the Baluchistan archaeological evidence lies in a straight arrow-like direction to the growth of the Indus civilization. This is a riverine civilization and the basic transition to it could not take place in the constricted world of the Baluchi hill valleys. As we shall see later, many of these Baluchistan areas were penetrated by the Indus civilization, and we have already argued that by the time of Mehrgarh VII and Damb Sadaat II–III, the Indus civilization had already developed in the Indus–Hakra plain. It is in this plain that the course towards this civilization has to be understood and assessed.
The area which comes immediately into focus is Cholistan along the Ghaggar-Hakra course—99 sites with a definite site-size hierarchy and evidence of craft-specialization in a narrow geographical zone. Mughal has drawn attention to the occurrence of some sites with Hakra ware outside this zone: about 25 sites in the Pakistani Punjab doabs as far as Multan (the site of Jalilpur) and Faisalabad, and on the Indian side we can add to this one site in the Kalibangan area of Rajasthan and one site (Kunal) near Hissar in Haryana. However, it is in Cholistan that the distribution is most dense, and from this point of view, sites beyond Cholistan may be comparatively later than the Cholistan sites. Besides, although Hakra ware has been found in the first phase of occupation at Jalilpur in Multan, do we consider it as a classic Hakra ware culture site? We do not know, because no classic Hakra ware site in Cholistan has been excavated. Further, Mughal’s opinion that the Hakra ware culture goes back to the very beginning of the fourth millennium BC is no doubt right, but the point is: what about the presence of Hakra ware in the early level of Sheri Khan Tarakai in Bannu, which falls in the second half of the fifth millennium BC? Does the Hakra ware culture go back to this chronological phase too? Finally, what is the origin of this settlement phase in Cholistan? In the form in which we perceive it today, it is a fairly developed cultural phase. How did it spring in Cholistan? Till a Hakra ware site in Cholistan is excavated we are unlikely to receive answers to these questions. However, the evidence of a well-settled agricultural life is clear in whatever we know from the site distribution in Cholistan and excavations at Jalilpur and Kunal, although the latter need not be as early as the Cholistan sites. This no doubt marks the first well-defined archaeological phase of the Indus-Hakra plain moving towards the Indus civilization.
The ramifications of the next phase, generally known as the Kot Diji or Kot Diji-related phase, are much wider. Again, its core distribution area is Cholistan, and it is here that it is assumed to have its earliest stage of development. The existence of more than one stage of this cultural phase is apparent from the excavated evidence at Harappa, Rehman Dheri and Dholavira. The first stage at Harappa and Rehman Dheri seems to fall in the second half of the fourth millennium BC, and on that basis, a date around the middle of the fourth millennium BC for the beginning of this phase in Cholistan is a possibility. There is a clear picture of its expansion in a wider area to form the backdrop of the Indus civilization, although the dates vary from site to site or from area to area. Considered in totality, this marks both consolidation and expansion of agricultural life all over the Indus-Hakra plain, and when one considers along with this, its planned, fortified settlements, an extensive but partly standardized repertoire of ceramic forms and designs—some of which are carried over into the Indus civilization—metallurgy, plough agriculture, miscellaneous crafts, wide transport and exchange of raw materials, ritual beliefs embodied in a wide range of terracotta cattle and female figurines, potter’s graffiti, square stamp seals with designs, the presence of at least two signs of Indus writing both at Padri and Dholavira, the presence of a ‘weight’ at Dholavira and equally importantly, the fact of its having the same distribution area as the Indus civilization, one realizes that the term ‘early Harappan’ is appropriate for this phase. The extent to which it imparted uniformity over its entire distribution area cannot be assessed without further research, but as far as we understand it, a common cultural ethos spread with this phase all over the Indus-Hakra plain and adapted itself to the local contexts. These contexts may not always be clearly defined everywhere, especially in the Indus-Hakra plain, but they presumably existed. The efflorescence of a rich metallurgical centre in the Aravallis in the second half of the fourth millennium BC is a good indication of the existence of such regional diversifies within an otherwise integrated world of the Indus-Hakra system.