The basic archaeological stratigraphy of the civilization distinguishes between its ‘early’, ‘mature’ and ‘late’ forms. The early form—archaeologically the Kot Dijian level—has been considered in the previous chapter, and while it is true that it developed a number of features related to the mature or classic Harappan form, there is also an apparent element of abruptness in the appearance of the mature form in all its splendour, especially writing, multiplicity of art forms and the general scale of things. There is nothing intrinsically surprising about this seeming abruptness; a civilization is supposed to mean a qualitative change and it has never been easy to distinguish the precise span and process of this qualitative transformation in the archaeological record, whether in the Indus, Sumer, Egypt or elsewhere.
The fact that a transformation was taking place at a certain point in the sequence related to the emergence of the Indus civilization is clear at least at three excavated sites: Harappa, Kunal and Dholavira. At Harappa, the upper levels of the early Harappan phase suggest, according to the excavators, a gradual transition to the classic civilizational phase characterized, among others, by the construction of habitation areas along a grid of north–south and east–west streets. At Kunal, Period IC shows even mud-bricks in the classic Harappan ratio of 1:2:4, a drainage system based on soakage pits in the streets, square (although uninscribed) and knobbed steatite and shell seals, typical classic Harappan copper arrowheads, a large number of semi-precious stone beads and gold and silver ornaments containing not merely silver tiaras and ‘armlets’ but also disc-shaped gold beads associated with the Indus civilization. At Dholavira, it is only Period IV which is said to represent the classic Indus civilization but by stage IIIB the basic layout of the settlement was achieved along with ‘diagnostic Harappan elements such as stamp seals, the script, weights and many typical pottery forms as well as decorative motifs’. The stamp seals are uninscribed but carry designs recalling those on a famous Mohenjodaro seal (Siva Pasupati seal), and the script is in the form of two fragmentary ‘Indus’ signs painted in black on a potsherd. The evidence of such an earlier appearance of ‘Indus’ signs has also been found at Padri. The published data are still incomplete but it appears that at Harappa, Kunal and Dholavira we have eventually found the phase of transition to the Indus civilization.
The problem hardly ends here. How do we explain the process of transition? To a great extent the answer will have to be speculative, because the variables behind the emergence of a civilization, including the social and institutional changes are not always subject to categorical analyses, especially in the case of the Indus civilization where writing exists but, in the absence of its satisfactory decipherment, there is no literary testimony.
The variable which can easily be perceived in the archaeological record is the increasing level of craft-specialization in the transitional phase. This is manifestly apparent in the manufacture of pottery on a commercial scale (production of specific types of vessels), in the presence of bangles of a particular type of shell (Turbinella pyrum), and blades made of cherts derived from (he Sukkur-Rorhi hills of upper Sind in the relevant context at Harappa. The same context at Kunal shows large-scale metallurgy, seal-making, extensive familiarity with different types of stone beads and jewellers’ crafts in gold and silver. The transitional phase at Dholavira shows the beginning of script, the manufacture of seals and weights, the standardization of mud-bricks in the ‘Indus’ ratio and the burgeoning of potters’ craft antedating many features of the ‘Indus’ style.
This increasing level of craft specialization was probably set in motion by the development of copper metallurgy along the Aravallis, to which we drew attention in the previous chapter. By the late fourth millennium BC, this metallurgical tradition was fully in place and must have closely interacted with the early Harappan tradition of Cholistan and the Indo-Gangetic divide. In fact, around this time the thrust of this metallurgy could have been only towards the Indus-Hakra plain, because there is as yet no clear village tradition outside the orbit of the early Harappans and the still earlier Hakra ware tradition. The basic locale of this metallurgical tradition comprises the copper-bearing areas of north-east Rajasthan and its extensions in the Narnaul area of Haryana and the tin-bearing hills of the Tosam area of Haryana. This is a distinct centre of early metallurgy of which we do not have much detail. However, the hypothesis that it played a catalytic role in the intensification of craft activities before the emergence of the Indus civilization is well rooted in the available knowledge. The increasing level of craft specialization must also have warranted a more extensive and quantitatively significant dissemination of various types of raw materials, increasing the pace of integration of different areas along geographically defined routes. This, in its turn, helped to demarcate and stabilize the various social groups involved in craft production and trade.
Another major variable is the probable emergence of an organized irrigation system at this point. The major geographical argument in its favour can still be given only in the context of Sind, but the idea that the Harappans had an extensive irrigation system has been put forward in recent years in the context of the Indo-Gangetic divide by R.S. Bisht and H.P. Francfort on the basis of their field-studies in the region. Moreover, the network of irrigation canals around Shotughai in north Afghanistan was indisputably established before that. In the previous chapter we have also drawn attention to Fairservis’ inference that a trench at the western edge of Amri IA settlement was a canal. According to R.S. Bisht, during the protohistoric period people
apparently dug canals for irrigating fields and storing water in large ponds. The existence of a network of abandoned canals and river beds, dotted with numerous chalcolithic and Early Iron Age sites, in the Sarasvati valley in Haryana bears testimony to this.2
Francfort’s opinion too is worth quoting in detail:
The canals are slightly carbonated depressions about 1 m deep and 300–500 m wide. They mark the courses of ancient natural waterways which were used and perhaps, in some places, rerouted by man. These traces of small river channels … appear to have reached all of the archaeological sites. … Not only did they supply with water but at the same time they made the surrounding area more fertile than the natural plain. … The picture we are left with is that of a small-scale system, less impressive than the great hydraulic works of Mesopotamia or Central Asia during the same period. But here, as well as there, the spatial unit is the network, or the branch, or the cluster of networks which mark the ground and define the irrigable areas for farming.3
Bisht’s and Francfort’s observations and conclusions are valid only in the context of the Indo-Gangetic divide. As far as the Indus-Hakra plain is concerned, we begin by pointing out two archaeological features, both of which suggest a manifold expansion of settlements from the early Harappan level to the classic Harappan or Indus civilization level. First, ‘the number of sites in the lower Indus basin increases from 3 during the Amri–Kot Diji phase to 20 during the Harappan phase’, and secondly, as Mughal shows, in the Hakra plain of Cholistan this increase is from the 40-odd sites of the early Harappan phase to 174 sites of the Indus civilization phase. This expansion of sites in the Indus-Hakra flood-plain can be best explained by invoking the beginning or an expansion of an irrigation network in this flood-plain during this period.
No archaeological evidence of irrigation canals has been looked for in this region, but the ethnographic evidence makes our hypothesis probable. According to The Imperial Gazetteer of India published in 1908, the bed of the Indus is higher than the level of the surrounding plain and, as in Mesopotamia, affords ‘an easy means of irrigation, on which the agricultural prosperity of Sind entirely depends, by side channels drawn from the central river’. This gazetteer describes the pre-industrial agricultural regime of Sind: two principal harvests—the spring or rabi, sown in September, October, or November, and reaped in February, March, or April; and in autumn kharif, sown during the floods of the river from May to August, and reaped from October to December. The importance of irrigation in a province where the rainfall averages only 130 cm annually, with occasional failures, is obvious, and this is what the gazetteer narrates:
The dry character of the soil and the almost absence of rain render irrigation a matter of prime importance. Sometimes, indeed, for two or three years in succession, no rain whatever falls in the province. Under these circumstances the Indus is to Sind what the Nile is to Egypt. When the province was annexed in 1843, numerous irrigation canals existed which derived their supply direct from the river. These canals are carried away from the river bank in the direction the water can most easily flow to reach the fields that are to be irrigated. None of them has its head where the bank is really permanent, and they can draw off water only during the inundation season. The river must consequently rise several feet before the canals will fill. Many of these canals are but old deltaic channels, reopened and extended, and all have the appearance of rivers rather than artificial cuts.4
The picture becomes a little more clear from the data given by David Cheesman (1997). Rainy season brought about low shrub and cactus on the sandhills of the adjacent desert, turning the whole area into a grazing ground. In the level areas between sandhills, where water collected, some cultivation was possible, and to the west, at the foot of the Kirthars, water from flash-floods could be trapped with embankments. Cultivation from natural overflow of the Indus (sailabi method) was also possible but not without some dangers. The land could become choked by tough grasses before the waters subsided, thus preventing seeds from being sown in time. Second, uncontrolled flooding created tracts of salt-impregnated soil, and third, the waters might not recede in time for crops to be sown. Cheesman points out that in 1904–5 only 253,457 acres of land in Sind were cultivated by the sailabi method, whereas 2,802,962 acres, i.e. more than 11 times of the sailabi land, were cultivated by irrigation from canals.
Before the modern barrages were built, irrigation was provided through ‘inundation canals’. These were fed by overspill from the Indus during the inundation and were dry for the rest of the year. A typical inundation canal system consisted of a main canal, known as a ‘feeder’, which ‘took off’ (i.e. received water directly from) the river, then distributed its waters into a number of branch canals known as ‘distributaries’. These in turn might act as feeders for other distributaries. The point at which a canal took off its feeder was referred to as its ‘head’, the other end as its ‘tail’. Water was brought from the branches to the fields by karias (water courses).
… There were two methods of cultivating from canals: moki or ‘flow’ cultivation, through natural overflow from a karia, and charkhi (‘lift’) cultivation, where water physically had to be lifted into the field. … Most farmers used both methods, often within the same season.5
For efficient working, this canal system had to ensure the proper positioning of the heads (they had to be in places where the river bank was permanent and the canal mouths were not eroded or blocked by silt) and at the end of each season the beds had to be got rid of their deposits of silt. The task of canal clearance was very important in the pre-industrial agricultural life of Sind and this was certainly a cooperative affair in which ‘individual agriculturists might have to rely, not only on their own hard work, but on the energy and dedication of their neighbours’.
There is nothing in this scenario which was not possible during the protohistoric period, and we suggest that its induction made large-scale agricultural settlement of the Indus plain (and possibly the Hakra plain as well) possible and set the society, along with the increasing level of craft specialization, on its course toward the Indus civilization.
The social–institutional changes are no doubt uncertain, but one notes that the type of jewellery obtained from Kunal is still associated with affluence and aristocracy in India. This suggests the emergence of an elite class and this picture is further reinforced by the way the multiple divisions of urban space got crystallized even before the emergence of the full-fledged Indus civilization at Dholavira. When one thinks that irrigation and the general system of water management had to be a socially controlled affair, the possibility of the emergence of a controlling or ruling nucleus on this basis becomes clear.