Harappan Civilisation Sites and Planning

Why the Harappan Civilisation Matters for CDS

The Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC) is the oldest in the Indian subcontinent and one of the four great Bronze Age civilisations, alongside Mesopotamia, Egypt and China. For the CDS and OTA aspirant it is high-yield and low-effort: the questions are factual, repetitive and rarely tricky.

It is also called the Harappan Civilisation because Harappa was the first site excavated (1921, by Daya Ram Sahni). The term Indus-Saraswati Civilisation is also used, since many sites sit along the dried-up Ghaggar-Hakra (identified with the Vedic Saraswati).

Extent, Discovery and Phases

The civilisation covered roughly 1.3 million sq km, far larger than contemporary Egypt or Mesopotamia put together. It spread across present-day Pakistan and north-western India, forming a rough triangle. Knowing its four geographical extremities is a favourite CDS objective question.

• Northernmost site: Manda (Jammu & Kashmir, on the Chenab).
• Southernmost site: Daimabad (Maharashtra, on the Pravara).
• Easternmost site: Alamgirpur (Uttar Pradesh, on the Hindon).
• Westernmost site: Sutkagendor (Balochistan, near the Makran coast).

Historians divide the civilisation into three phases. The Early Harappan (c. 3300–2600 BCE) was a formative, pre-urban stage with farming villages. The Mature Harappan (c. 2600–1900 BCE) was the great urban climax with planned cities, seals and long-distance trade. The Late Harappan (c. 1900–1300 BCE) saw de-urbanisation, when cities were abandoned and people shifted to smaller rural settlements.

This three-phase model matters because it shows the civilisation did not appear suddenly out of nowhere — it grew steadily from a long Neolithic-Chalcolithic background, best seen at the village of Mehrgarh in Balochistan, one of the earliest farming sites in South Asia.

Major Sites and Their Famous Finds

If you remember nothing else, learn the site-and-find pairs — the CDS exam asks them almost every year.

• Harappa (Ravi river, Pakistan): granaries, coffin burial, red sandstone male torso, evidence of cemetery R-37.
• Mohenjodaro (Indus, Sindh, Pakistan): the Great Bath, Great Granary, bronze ‘Dancing Girl’, steatite ‘Priest-King’ bust, the Pashupati seal.
• Lothal (Gujarat, on Bhogavo): a tidal dockyard, rice husk, fire altars, a painted jar showing the ‘cunning fox’ story.
• Kalibangan (Rajasthan, on Ghaggar): ploughed field, fire altars, evidence of an earthquake.
• Dholavira (Gujarat, Rann of Kutch): unique water harvesting reservoirs and a large signboard inscription.
• Banawali (Haryana): both Early and Mature phases, oval-shaped town plan.
• Chanhudaro (Sindh): the only city without a citadel; a bead-making centre.

A useful detail: each major site sits on or near a river, because the Harappans depended on river water and fertile flood plains. Harappa is on the Ravi, Mohenjodaro on the Indus, Kalibangan and Banawali in the Ghaggar-Saraswati belt, and Lothal and Dholavira in the Gujarat coastal zone. Linking a site to its river often resolves a confusing map question.

Town Planning — The Grid System

The hallmark of the Harappans was their planned cities. Streets ran in a grid pattern, cutting each other at right angles, dividing the city into rectangular blocks.

Most cities had two parts:

1. The Citadel (or acropolis) — a raised western mound built on a mud-brick platform, housing important public buildings.
2. The Lower Town — the larger, lower eastern area where the ordinary population lived.

Houses were built of standardised, kiln-burnt bricks with a fixed ratio of 4 : 2 : 1 (length : breadth : thickness). This uniformity across hundreds of kilometres points to a strong sense of central control and shared standards.

Drainage, the Great Bath and the Granary

The drainage system is the most praised Harappan feature. Covered drains ran along the streets, made of bricks and fitted with manholes for cleaning. House drains emptied into the street drains — an attention to sanitation unmatched in the ancient world.

The Great Bath

Found at Mohenjodaro, the Great Bath is a large rectangular tank (about 12 m × 7 m, ~2.4 m deep) made watertight with bitumen, with steps at both ends. It probably served ritual bathing, suggesting religious importance of water.

The Granary

The Great Granary at Mohenjodaro was the largest building of the city, used to store grain — evidence of an organised system of collection and possibly taxation paid in kind. At Harappa, a row of six granaries was found near the citadel, along with circular brick platforms thought to be used for threshing grain. Such large storage structures imply a central authority that gathered surplus produce and redistributed or controlled it.

Other notable buildings include the so-called Assembly Hall and the College of Priests at Mohenjodaro, and warehouse platforms at several sites. Public structures clustering on the citadel suggest that administration, ritual and storage were managed collectively rather than by individual households.

Economy, Agriculture and Trade

The economy rested on agriculture, animal rearing, crafts and trade. Wheat and barley were the main crops; Lothal and Rangpur show evidence of rice. The Harappans were the first to grow cotton, which the Greeks later called Sindon after Sindh.

Trade was both internal and external. Goods moved by bullock carts and boats. Foreign trade reached Mesopotamia, where Indus seals have been found; Mesopotamian texts mention trade with Meluhha, generally identified with the Indus region, and the trading stations of Dilmun (Bahrain) and Magan (Oman).

• Weights and measures were standardised, mostly in multiples of 16 (16, 64, 320…).
• Trade was based on barter; no metallic money or coins were used.
• Raw materials like copper (from Khetri, Rajasthan), gold, silver, lapis lazuli and carnelian were imported and worked into beads and ornaments.

Seals, Script and the Arts

The most characteristic artefacts are the seals, usually square, made of steatite (soft stone). They carry animal figures — especially the unicorn (one-horned bull) — and short inscriptions.

The Indus script appears on these seals. It is pictographic and written in boustrophedon style (right to left in the first line, left to right in the next). It remains undeciphered, so we have no readable written records.

Art and craft were highly developed: the bronze Dancing Girl (made by the lost-wax / cire perdue technique), the steatite Priest-King, terracotta figurines, painted pottery (red ware with black designs) and fine bead work.

Religion and Society

There were no temples or monumental places of worship. Religion is reconstructed from seals and figurines:

• Worship of a Mother Goddess (fertility cult), shown by many female terracotta figurines.
• A seal showing a horned, seated, three-faced male figure surrounded by animals, identified by Marshall as ‘Pashupati’ (a proto-Shiva).
• Reverence for trees (the peepal) and animals (the bull), and possibly phallic (lingam) and yoni worship.

Society appears to have been urban and relatively egalitarian — houses differ in size but there are no grand palaces or royal tombs of the kind seen in Egypt. The presence of granaries, standardised bricks and weights suggests a central authority, though its exact nature (king, priests or a merchant oligarchy) is unknown. Burials were generally simple, with the body laid out and accompanied by a few pots and ornaments, hinting at a belief in life after death without elaborate royal tombs.

The Harappans were craftsmen and traders rather than warriors. Very few weapons of war have been found, and there are no clear depictions of armies, chariots or large-scale fighting — a striking contrast with later civilisations. This relatively peaceful, commercial character is one reason historians describe Harappan urban life as remarkably orderly and uniform.

Worked Example — Matching Sites to Finds

Notice that the ‘trap’ pairings (Great Bath with Lothal, dockyard with Mohenjodaro) are exactly the kind the examiner uses. Always anchor on the most famous find of each site first.

Decline of the Harappan Civilisation

By around 1900 BCE the great cities declined. No single cause is accepted; historians list several overlapping reasons:

• Climatic change and drying of rivers — especially the Ghaggar-Hakra (Saraswati) drying up.
• Floods and shifting of the Indus, repeatedly damaging cities like Mohenjodaro.
• Ecological degradation — deforestation and over-exploitation of land from brick-burning and farming.
• Decline of trade with Mesopotamia, weakening the urban economy.
• An older theory of an Aryan invasion (skeletons at Mohenjodaro) is now largely rejected as the sole cause.

Previous-Year Style Question

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