Excavations At Harappa - Set of 2 Volumes (An Old and Rare Book)

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Preface THE excavations at Harappa described in this Volume were carried out between the years 1920-21 and 1933-34. Being one of the two best known and important sites of the Indus Valley Culture, large scale work was under-taken here by the Archaeological Department and the excavations have contributed not a little to our knowledge of the prehistoric civilization of India. On account of the close relation and mutual dependence of the discoveries made at Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, this monograph has been planned as a complement to the three monumental volumes on Mohenjo-Daro and the Indus Civilization edited by Sir John Marshall and the two volumes of Further Excavations at Mohenjo-Daro by Dr. K J. H. Mackay. The arrangement of Chapters and Plates follows the former work as far as possible. In Mohenjo-Daro and the Indus Civilization, Sir John Marshall has most ably dealt with the Art, Religion, Disposal of the Dead, Extent and the Age and Authors of the Indus Civilization mainly on the basis of the discoveries made at the above two sites, while Dr. Mackay has fully described and illustrated numerous finds, mostly identical with those of Harappa-notably Plain and Painted Pottery-and other experts have written on the Indus Script, System of Weights, Minerals and Metals, etc. To that extent, not only has it been possible for me to avoid much needless duplication and to curtail my own work, but what is more, I have derived infinite help and guidance from their masterly handling of so many difficult problems for which I am greatly beholden to them all. To Sir John Marshall I owe a very special and infinite debt of gratitude not only for the thorough guidance and inspiration I received from his great work and the instructions given by him from time to time both in the conduct of excavations and for the preparation of these volumes, but also for the very great trouble he generously under-took (at the sacrifice of much valuable time when he was fully occupied with several pressing works of his own) in preliminarily editing my work, in course of which he made numerous corrections and many valuable suggestions which I have gratefully incorporated.

With the plan and scope thus somewhat defined, I have generally refrained in this monograph from covering common ground as regards various types of finds already described and illustrated in Mohenjo-Daro and the Indus Civilization, though a little overlapping of such material could not be avoided altogether if the individuality of the site was to be maintained. Happily, Harappa has its own distinct contributions to make to the Proto-Indian Civilization in the shape of the Cemetery with its highly interesting and fascinating pottery much of which is painted and the miniature amulet seals and sealing’s of an amazing variety of Napes associated with strata of the Middle and Early Periods (Pl. LXXXIV), the like of which are not known elsewhere. These discoveries help us in tracing this civilization forwards and backwards from the time it flourished at Mohenjo-Daro.

In making plans of the Cemetery, each burial pot (howsoever small) or earth-burial was plotted with the utmost care : the sections were drawn to the scale of one foot to an inch by means of a dumpy level to allow of groups or individual pots being shown with scientific accuracy exactly in the manner they were found. The whole of Chapter VI, illustrated by 26 Plates (Nos. XLIII-LXVIII), has been devoted to the Cemetery and besides the plans and sections, and photographic views of the two strata of burials and of the contents of burial pots, the types of burial pottery have been illustrated both by means of photographs and drawings, thus bringing out the peculiarities of the highly interesting paintings and the obvious differences between them and the designs painted on household pottery from the city sites (Chapter VII). Inscribed or stamped pottery, again, has been illustrated in 4 Plates (Nos. CI-CIV) as it is much more common here than at Mohenjo-Daro. The bat buildings, so far discovered in the excavations at Harappart, are those of the Middle Period, which • include the Great Granary, one or two better class houses, some neat pavements, wells, and two large public drains of rectangular section. The art of Harappa is similar to what is found at Mohenjo-Daro, but the Harappa torso of a nude male figure in red sandstone and the statuette of a dancer in grey stone (illustrated in Plates LXXX and LXXXI) perhaps mark the acme of perfection that was seldom attained by the ancients until Greek times. In contrast with these, the statuary at Mohenjo-Daro is remarkably poor, even crude. But if Harappa, by its size and importance, may thus be regarded as one of the twin centres of the Indus Valley Civilization, such buildings as it possessed have mostly been swept away by brick .diggings carried on for more than three quarters of a century until the site was declared protected in 1920. So few are the structural remains left that for carrying on work. and recording finds and other facts, I was compelled to stick on till the end to the system of squares referred to at pp. 8 and .9.

In order to show the extent of this civilization, I have added at the end of this volume very brief notices of two other contemporary sites discovered by me, namely, Chak Pourboire Synic, which lies on the deserted bed of the Beas some 13 miles south-east of Harappa and Kotla Nihang Khan near Ropar in the Ambala district between the Sutlej and Jamna. To the already known prehistoric sites in Baluchistan, Sindh, Derajat districts and the Punjab I should add my latest discovery of a site at Rangpuri village in the Limbdi State of Kathiawad near the gulf of Cambay. Besides other things, I found that the pottery of this site bore a family likeness to that of the Indus sites and striking resemblances to paintings on the Harappa burial pottery.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages