The Wonder that was Harappan Civilisation

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About the Book In July 2021, Unesco inscribed Dholavira, a Harappan civilisational site in Gujarat, as a World Heritage Site. The first excavation in the Indus empire took place at Harappa in 1921. The 100th year of the excavation at Mohenjo-daro, the biggest Indus Civilisational site, is coming up in 2022-23. The centenary of announcement of the discovery of the "Civilisation of the Indus Valley" on September 20, 1924 by John Marshall, Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) falls in 2024. To celebrate these events, The Hindu has published this special coffee-table book replete with a range of stories, over 600 photographs and a variety of maps on the Harappan civilisational sites, the excavations done there, the artefacts unearthed etc. Several scholars have written these stories in depth and in a popular manner.

Preface The historic past is as much a space as it is a time period: the scene of contestation about how the present is constituted for the living, and, therefore, about what shape the future should take. A lot is at stake in the understanding of the past, which becomes, in conflicted spaces and times, more a site for revisit than a period for remembering.

The Indus Valley Civilisation, or Harappan Civilisation, as it is also known, is an ancient civilisation that is inextricably involved with the issues of Aryan migration and Dravidian ancestry, both extremely sensitive in their political implications for the very idea of Indianness in the present day.

Introduction The Harappan Civilisation continues to mesmerise and intrigue archaeologists, epigraphists, town- planners, metallurgists, and water experts. It was bigger than the Sumerian and Egyptian civilisations.

T.S. SUBRAMANIAN was not prepared for what I was about to see as the group climbed the gradual slope of a mound situated in a barren expanse in Gujarat's Kutch district: suddenly, a wall that rose steeply and stretched into the distance came into view. It was the most spectacular and stunning introduction we could have had to Dholavira, a site belonging to the Harappan Civilisation. It was a fortification wall built of sandstone blocks on the eastern side about 4,600 years ago.

**Contents and Sample Pages**