The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation — Class 6 Social Science
Exploring Society: India and Beyond · Chapter 6
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- Space weighted by chapter size
- Charts from the book's own data
- Traps corrected
- Space weighted by chapter size
- Charts from the book's own data
- Traps corrected
- Space weighted by chapter size
- Charts from the book's own data
- Traps corrected
- Space weighted by chapter size
- Charts from the book's own data
- Traps corrected
- Space weighted by chapter size
- Charts from the book's own data
- Traps corrected
Chapter summary
Key ideas & terms
- Civilisation
- An advanced stage of human society with government, cities, crafts, trade, writing and productive agriculture.
- Indus-Sarasvatī civilisation
- India's oldest civilisation (about 2600–1900 BCE), also called Harappan, Indus or Sindhu-Sarasvatī.
- Town-planning
- The deliberate planning of cities with laid-out streets, drains and zones, seen in Harappan cities.
- Great Bath
- A large, carefully built, waterproofed tank at Mohenjo-daro, whose exact purpose is still debated.
- Seal
- A small carved object, usually of steatite, showing an animal and writing signs, used in Harappan trade.
- Dockyard
- A structure for receiving and sending boats; the huge basin at Lothal is believed to be one.
Extra questions & answers
Name three characteristics of a civilisation.
Some form of government, urbanism (town-planning), and writing — along with crafts, trade, cultural ideas and productive agriculture.
Why does this civilisation have several names?
It is called Indus, Harappan or Indus-Sarasvatī because it spread along the Indus and Sarasvatī rivers, and Harappa was the first site excavated.
When did villages grow into cities in this civilisation?
Villages grew into cities around 2600 BCE, in what is called the ‘First Urbanisation of India’.
Why is the term ‘Indus Valley civilisation’ considered out of date?
Because the civilisation extended far beyond the Indus Valley, including many sites along the Sarasvatī River.
How were Harappan cities planned?
They had wide streets often oriented to the cardinal directions, fortifications, an upper and a lower town, and brick houses of similar quality.
What was the Great Bath?
A small but elaborate waterproofed tank at Mohenjo-daro, about 12 by 7 metres, whose purpose — ritual or royal — is still debated.
What crops did the Harappans grow?
They grew barley, wheat, millets, sometimes rice, pulses and vegetables, and were the first in Eurasia to grow cotton.
What were Harappan seals used for?
Seals, usually of steatite with an animal and writing signs, were used in trade to identify goods and traders.
What is special about Lothal?
Lothal in Gujarat has a huge basin about 217 m long, believed to be a dockyard for sending and receiving boats.
Why did the civilisation decline around 1900 BCE?
Most likely because of climate change reducing rainfall and the drying up of the Sarasvatī River, after which people returned to rural life.
The Big Questions
1. What is a civilisation?
A civilisation is an advanced stage of human society. In this chapter a civilisation is said to have at least seven features: a form of government and administration to organise society, urbanism with planned towns and cities including water supply and drainage, a variety of crafts using raw materials like stone and metal, internal and external trade to exchange goods, a form of writing to keep records, cultural ideas expressed through art, architecture and customs, and a productive agriculture that can feed both villages and cities.
2. What was the earliest civilisation of the Indian Subcontinent?
The earliest civilisation of the Indian Subcontinent was the Indus or Harappan or Indus-Sarasvati or Sindhu-Sarasvati Civilisation. It developed around 2600 BCE and lasted till about 1900 BCE. It is also called the First Urbanisation of India and is one of the oldest civilisations in the world.
3. What were its major achievements?
Its major achievements were planned cities with wide streets oriented to cardinal directions, fortifications and division into an upper town and lower town, sophisticated water management with drains, wells and large reservoirs, skilled crafts such as pottery, brick making, bead making from carnelian, shell bangles and bronze tools, brisk internal and maritime trade with seals and a dockyard at Lothal, and a productive agriculture growing barley, wheat, millets, pulses, vegetables and cotton.
THINK ABOUT IT
Which of the above characteristics do you think is the most fundamental — that is, a characteristic essential to the development of all others?
Most students and historians consider productive agriculture to be the most fundamental. Without a surplus of food, people cannot stay in one place, support non-farmers, or build cities. Surplus food allows some people to become craftsmen, traders, administrators and writers, and makes town planning, trade and government possible. Other answers, such as government or water management, can also be argued if well reasoned.
LET'S EXPLORE
For each characteristic in the list above, can you make a list of professions or occupations that might exist in such a society?
Government and administration: king or chief, council members, tax collectors, clerks and scribes, town officers. Urbanism: town planners, architects, masons, bricklayers, well diggers, drain cleaners and sweepers. Crafts: potters, weavers, carpenters, coppersmiths and bronzesmiths, goldsmiths, bead makers, shell cutters, stone cutters. Trade: merchants, shopkeepers, caravan leaders, boatmen and sailors, weight makers, seal makers. Writing: scribes, record keepers, seal engravers. Cultural ideas: priests, artists, musicians, dancers, storytellers. Agriculture: farmers, plough makers, herders, fishermen and grain store managers.
LET'S EXPLORE
Some of the important cities of this civilisation are marked in the map (Fig. 6.3). As a class activity, can you try to match these cities with the modern states or regions in the table on the next page?
The correct match is: Dholavira — Gujarat, Harappa — Punjab (now in Pakistan), Kalibangan — Rajasthan, Mohenjo-daro — Sindh (now in Pakistan), Rakhigarhi — Haryana. The table printed on page 90 has them jumbled, so students should re-arrange them to this correct order using the map and chapter description.
LET'S EXPLORE
Have a debate in class about the last two interpretations. Can you think of any others? Remember that in this case, we do not have any other source of history — no inscription, no text, no traveller's account.
The two interpretations left after rejecting a public bath are 1) a bath for the royal family or elite only and 2) a tank for religious rituals. Both are possible but unproven. Since most houses had private bathrooms, the Great Bath was probably special, not daily bathing. Its careful waterproofing with bitumen, steps, surrounding rooms and a well suggest ceremonial use where cleanliness was important for rituals. Another idea could be a community gathering place for festivals or a reservoir to store clean water. Because there is no writing we can read and no eyewitness account, any interpretation must be based only on the physical remains and comparison with later Indian traditions of ritual bathing.
LET'S EXPLORE
As a class activity, measure the length of your classroom, a school corridor or a playground with the help of any measuring tape. Compare these lengths with the length of the largest reservoir in Dholavira.
In class, stretch a measuring tape along the floor. For example, a typical classroom is about 6 to 8 metres long and a school corridor may be 20 to 30 metres long. A small playground of 50 metres length is still shorter than the largest reservoir at Dholavira, which measured 73 metres in length. That is about 9 to 12 classrooms placed end to end, and together the six reservoirs at Dholavira show a huge effort in water harvesting. Even the rock-cut reservoir shown in Fig. 6.8 is 33 metres, about four classrooms long.
THINK ABOUT IT
Imagine the large number of workers required to build such a network of reservoirs. Who do you think organised their work and gave them precise instructions? How do you think they were paid for their labour? (Hint: there was no money at that time in the way we have today.) Since the reservoirs needed to be cleaned from time to time, was there some local authority to manage their maintenance? What clues do we get from all this about this city’s ruler and municipal administration?
Building six large reservoirs, some cut into rock and linked by underground drains, needed hundreds of workers, planners and overseers. A strong central or municipal authority — rulers, town administrators and engineers — must have planned the layout, measured the levels and divided the work. Since coins did not exist, workers were likely paid in kind with grain, food, cloth, or allowed to receive protection and housing, or they contributed labour as a community duty. Regular cleaning and repair show there was a permanent system of maintenance, with officers to organise it. This indicates a well-organised, efficient government with civic sense, technical knowledge and ability to mobilise and care for people.
LET US EXPLORE
Imagine you cook a meal in a Harappan house. What dish or dishes would you prepare, based on the data given above?
With Harappan ingredients I could prepare a simple, balanced meal. I would make flatbreads or porridge from barley or wheat and millets, a dal from pulses like peas or lentils, a seasonal vegetable curry, and curd or milk as dairy was used. For flavour I could add a little turmeric and ginger, and for dessert slices of banana. I would cook in the terracotta pots found by archaeologists and grind grain with stone tools, just as Harappans did.
LET'S EXPLORE
Looking at these three Harappan seals with some writing signs, what goes through your mind? Would you like to suggest any interpretations? Let your imagination run!
The seals are small, made of steatite and show carefully carved animals — a unicorn, a bull and a horned tiger — with a few writing signs on top. I imagine they were like modern logos or identity cards for merchants. The animal may represent the merchant family, a guild or a god protecting trade, and the signs may give a name, quantity or ownership of goods. They were pressed on clay to mark packages, so the imagination can see them as ancient brand stamps before anyone could read long texts.
THINK ABOUT IT
Looking at the objects on pages 100 and 101 — or any other pictured in this chapter — can you make out what activities or aspects of life were important for the Harappans?
The objects show many sides of daily and cultural life. Bronze mirrors, pots, chisels and stone weights show interest in personal grooming, storage and cooking, tool making and standardised trade. The gamesboard and terracotta whistle show they valued play for adults and children. The Priest King statue, swastika seal and three-faced deity seal show religious or symbolic beliefs. The Dancing Girl and namaste figurine show dance, art, respect greetings and love of ornaments. Together they suggest an orderly, craft-loving, trade-minded, clean and culturally rich society.
LET'S EXPLORE
Complete the story found on the Lothal pot. How was such a story remembered for more than 4,000 years, in your opinion?
The design on the Lothal pot shows the thirsty crow story we know today: a thirsty crow finds a pot with little water at the bottom, unable to reach it, it drops pebbles one by one until the water rises and it can drink. Such simple, clever animal stories are easy to remember and retell. They were likely kept alive through oral tradition — parents telling children, storytellers and folklore — and later written down in collections like the Panchatantra. The same moral about intelligence and effort made the tale useful in every generation, so it travelled unchanged for over 4000 years.
Consider the ‘Dancing Girl’ figurine. What do you make of the attitude the figurine expresses? Observe her bangles covering an entire arm, a practice still visible in parts of Gujarat and Rajasthan. Where else in this chapter can you spot bangles worn in this manner. What conclusion should we draw from this?
The 10.8 cm bronze Dancing Girl stands confident, with one hand on her hip and a relaxed, proud posture, suggesting that dance, art and self-expression were valued and women could be artists. Her entire left arm covered with bangles shows a fashion for large numbers of bangles. The same style can be seen on the woman sitting in the foreground of Fig. 6.1 at Dholavira’s North Gate, who also wears many bangles up the arm. Seeing the same ornament style after about 4000 years shows strong cultural continuity — traditions of dress and jewellery have been passed down from Harappan times to present-day Gujarat and Rajasthan.
Questions, activities and projects
1. Why does the civilisation studied in this chapter have several names? Discuss their significance.
It has several names because knowledge about it grew in stages and each name highlights something true. Harappan comes from Harappa, the first city excavated in 1920-21. Indus or Indus Valley stresses the first finds along the Indus River, but later it was found too narrow. Indus-Sarasvati or Sindhu-Sarasvati is now preferred because many sites, including two major cities Rakhigarhi and Ganweriwala, plus Kalibangan, Farmana and Banawali, lie along the seasonal Sarasvati or Ghaggar-Hakra River, not just the Indus. The multiple names therefore tell the history of discovery and the true geographic extent of the civilisation.
2. Write a brief report (150 to 200 words) summing up some of the achievements of the Indus-Sarasvatī civilisation.
The Indus-Sarasvati Civilisation, flourishing about 2600 to 1900 BCE, was India’s First Urbanisation. It built carefully planned cities such as Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, Dholavira and Rakhigarhi with wide streets aligned to cardinal directions, fortifications and two or three zones for elite and common people, all in uniform bricks. Its water management was outstanding: private bathrooms connected to covered street drains, hundreds of brick wells in Mohenjo-daro, and at Dholavira six large rock-cut reservoirs up to 73 metres long linked by drains for harvesting rainwater. Agriculture was productive, growing barley, wheat, millets, rice, pulses, vegetables and cotton for the first time in Eurasia. Craftsmen excelled in bronze tools, carnelian beads, shell bangles and standardized stone weights, while maritime trade reached Oman and Iran through the Lothal dockyard measuring
3. Imagine you have to travel from the city of Harappa to Kalibangan. What are your different options? Can you make a rough estimation of the amount of time each option might take?
Harappa is on the Ravi near the Indus and Kalibangan is on the Sarasvati in Rajasthan, about 400 to 500 km apart across Punjab and Haryana. Options then and now are: walking with pack animals like bullock carts, going by river where possible and then overland, or today by road and train. Harappans would have used bullock carts or caravans at about 15 to 20 km per day and boats downstream faster. The journey might take 20 to 30 days on foot or cart, and perhaps 10 to 15 days combining river and land. Today by bus or car at 50 km per hour it is about 8 to 10 hours, and by train with changes about 10 to 12 hours. Harappans would have followed river valleys and desert tracks with night halts.
4. Let us imagine a Harappan man or woman being transported to an average kitchen in today’s India. What are the four or five biggest surprises awaiting them?
They would be most surprised by electricity and gas: a switch gives instant light, a fan moves air and a gas stove gives fire without wood. Next, piped tap water and the refrigerator that keeps food cold for days, unlike daily fetching from wells and storing grain. They would be amazed by metal and plastic utensils, pressure cookers and mixers instead of earthen pots and stone grinders, and by packaged foods, spices from far away and many new crops like chili, tomato and potato unknown to them. Finally, they would wonder at the lack of open hearth smoke, the presence of a television or phone, and waste going down a modern sink rather than to open street drains.
5. Looking at all the pictures in this chapter, make a list of the ornaments / gestures / objects that still feel familiar in our 21st century.
Still familiar are: many bangles covering the whole arm as seen on the Dancing Girl and the woman in Fig. 6.1; shell and bead necklaces of carnelian and other stones; nose or ear ornaments implied by terracotta figures; the namaste gesture with palms joined seen in the terracotta figurine; bindi or head ornament on the Priest King and other figures; everyday objects like bronze mirrors, clay pots and pans, chisels and weights; toys like terracotta whistles and gamesboards engraved on stone; brick houses and drains; the swastika symbol still used in rituals; and reservoirs and wells for water storage.
6. What mindset does the system of reservoirs at Dholavira reflect?
The reservoirs reflect a mindset of far-sighted planning, cooperation and conservation. Dholavira is in the dry Rann of Kutch where rain is scarce, so the builders did not waste water. They built six large reservoirs, some cut into rock up to 73 metres long, linked by underground drains to harvest every drop of rain and distribute it. This shows careful observation of climate, technical skill, concern for the community’s long-term survival, civic responsibility and a government that could organise labour and maintain the system year after year.
7. In Mohenjo-daro, about 700 wells built with bricks have been counted. They seem to have been regularly maintained and used for several centuries. Discuss the implications.
Seven hundred wells in one city means water was available very close to every house, which kept the city healthy and independent of the river flood. The wells were well built in bricks and cleaned regularly for centuries, so they did not silt up or collapse. This implies a high standard of engineering, a municipal authority to inspect and repair them, and disciplined citizens who kept them clean and did not pollute them. It also shows Mohenjo-daro valued hygiene and daily bathing, had enough surplus to support well diggers and maintainers, and enjoyed political stability that allowed such long-term upkeep without war or neglect.
8. It is often said that the Harappans had a high civic sense. Discuss the significance of this statement. Do you agree with it? Compare with citizens in a large city of India today.
I agree the Harappans showed high civic sense. Streets were straight and well laid, drains were covered and connected to houses, garbage was channelled away, bricks were of standard size and houses small and large were built with the same quality, suggesting concern for equality and cleanliness, not just for the elite. Water structures were maintained for generations, showing collective responsibility. Compared to many large Indian cities today, we have better technology but often poor maintenance of drains, littering, encroachment on roads and unequal housing quality. Learning from the Harappans would mean keeping public spaces clean, maintaining drains and water bodies, following town plans and sharing civic duties equally.