NCERT Class 12 - Themes in Indian History Part I, Chapter 1

Harappan Economy, Script and Decline

The Harappan economy rested on farming, craft production and long-distance trade, all held together by standard weights and seals. Its script remains undeciphered, and its cities were abandoned by about 1900 BCE for reasons still debated.

Agriculture and animals

• Main crops were wheat, barley, peas, lentils, sesame and mustard; rice traces come from Lothal and Rangpur in Gujarat.
• The Harappans were probably the first in the world to grow cotton; the Greeks later called it Sindon, after Sindh.
• Kalibangan preserves a ploughed field with two sets of furrows crossing at right angles - two crops in one field.
• Animals kept: humped bull, buffalo, sheep, goat, pig, dog and, in some places, elephant and camel.
• Evidence for the horse is not conclusive; this is a much-debated point. The lion does not appear, but the tiger, rhinoceros and elephant do.

Crafts, weights and seals

• Chanhudaro and Lothal were bead-making centres, using carnelian, agate, steatite, jasper and shell.
• Weights were made of chert, usually cubical, with no markings. The lower values doubled - 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 - and higher values went in multiples of 16.
• Seals were mostly square, made of steatite, carrying an animal figure and a line of script. The unicorn is the most common motif.
• The Pashupati seal from Mohenjodaro shows a seated figure with a horned headdress surrounded by an elephant, tiger, rhinoceros and buffalo, with deer below.
• Famous objects: the bronze Dancing Girl and the steatite Priest-King from Mohenjodaro; both are from Mohenjodaro, not Harappa.

Trade

• Trade was by barter - no coins have been found.
• Mesopotamian records mention Meluhha, generally identified with the Harappan region, and the intermediate points Dilmun (Bahrain) and Magan (Oman).
• Harappan seals have been found at Ur in Mesopotamia.
• Raw material sources: copper from Khetri (Rajasthan) and Oman, lapis lazuli from Shortughai (Afghanistan), gold from Karnataka, shell from the Gujarat coast.
• Lothal's dockyard and the coastal sites point to sea trade along the Gulf.

Script and religion

• The script is pictographic and undeciphered, with roughly 375 to 400 signs.
• It was written right to left, and in longer inscriptions boustrophedon - the next line runs in the opposite direction, like a plough turning.
• Terracotta female figurines are read by many scholars as a mother goddess cult.
• The pipal tree and the humped bull appear repeatedly on seals, suggesting they were held sacred.
• No temple has been identified with certainty, and no priestly class can be proved from the evidence alone.

Decline

• By about 1900 BCE the Mature Harappan cities were abandoned; distinctive seals, weights, script and baked bricks disappear.
• Main theories: drying of the Ghaggar-Hakra river, repeated flooding, climate change and increasing aridity, deforestation and soil exhaustion, tectonic movement, and the fall in trade with Mesopotamia.
• Mortimer Wheeler's "Aryan invasion" explanation, based on unburied skeletons at Mohenjodaro, is no longer accepted.
• The end was gradual and regional, not one sudden event; Late Harappan village cultures continued in Punjab, Haryana and Gujarat.