V
The inscribed seals of this civilization were known long before its discovery but their significance was not understood till the beginning of excavations at Harappa, currently in the Sahiwal district of Pakistani Punjab, by Pandit Daya Ram Sahni of the Archaeological Survey of India in 1920–21. Next year, Mohenjodaro in Larkana district of Sindh was excavated by another officer of the Survey, Rakhal Das Banerji. The fact that archaeologists in India were confronted with a new civilization comparable in antiquity to the civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia and south-west Iran or Elam was announced in the Illustrated London News in 1924.
Because Harappa and Mohenjodaro are both located in the Indus valley—Harappa in the upper Indus valley and Mohenjodaro in the lower—and because no site of this civilization was then known to exist outside the Indus valley, the civilization came to be called ‘the Indus civilization’. In fact, this is the term used in the first definitive volume on the results of the first phase of excavations at Mohenjodaro. However, as we shall see, the present extent of this civilization includes areas far beyond the Indus river valley, and number-wise, the most significant cluster of sites occurs in the Cholistan section of the Hakra plain in Pakistan. As the Hakra has been identified with the Sarasvati river mentioned in the earliest Indian literary tradition, some scholars have begun to call it ‘Indus-Sarasvati civilization’. The Sanskrit name ‘Sarasvati’ does not combine well with the (originally Greek) modern term ‘Indus’, and thus the term should be either ‘Indus-Hakra’ or ‘Sindhu-Sarasvati’, ‘Sindhu’ being the Sanskrit name of the Indus. Although this term includes what is perhaps the core area of the origin of this civilization (i.e. a section of the Hakra plain), this in no way reflects its vast extent covering such areas as Baluchistan, Gujarat and a part of the Ganga-Yamuna Doab. The most logical term would be ‘the Harappan civilization’ on the accepted model of naming archaeological cultures after the names of the sites where they are discovered or first identified. In this volume the terms ‘Indus civilization’ and ‘Harappan civilization’ have both been used.
Map 4 Some Major Sites of the Indus Civilization 1. Shortughai, 2. Manda, 3. Gumla, 4. Harappa, 5. Cholistan sites, 6. Kalibangan, 7. Mitathal, 8. Banawali, 9. Hulas, 10. Rakhigarhi, 11. Mohenjodaro, 12. Balakol, 13. Chanhudaro, 14. Dholavira, 15. Surkotada, 16. Nagwada, 17. Lothal, 18. Nageswar, 19. Kuntasi, 20. Rojdi, 21. Rangpur, 22. Padri