The art and architecture of India - Buddhist, Hindu, Jain (Art Ebook)

THE INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION
maritime importance of this coastal city. The
finds at Lothal included the usual types of seals
or talismans and the painted pottery found at
Mohenjo-daro and Harappa. As we already
know from the discovery of seals and other
artefacts of the Indus Valley type at Tel Asmar,
which may be dated c. 2500-2300 B.C., it is
possible to date the high point of the Mohenjodaro
and Harappa civilization. Finds from the
upper levels at Lothal appear to indicate that a
late phase of the Harappa culture survived here
and at other sites in Kathiawad until 1200 B.C.
or even later. It is as yet impossible to say
whether the Aryans, generally thought to have
been responsible for the downfall of the Indus
culture, are to be associated with the type of
debased pottery and other finds in the post-
Indo-Sumerian strata of these excavations.
As a result of these latest explorations some
scholars have come to the conclusion that the
whole Indus culture was an indigenous growth,
by no means dependent on the early cultures of
Iran and Mesopotamia but developing its own,
including the advanced systems of fortification
and town-planning, from the still earlier phase
of Indian civilization represented by the finds
at Kot Diji. It must be admitted at the same
time that some of the characteristic designs of
Mohenjo-daro pottery, including the ibex and
the antelope, seem to indicate borrowings from
ancient Iranian culture that filtered in through
the hills of Baluchistan.
significant of the Indus Valley sites to have
survived [10]. This fragment illustrates the
applique technique universally employed in
these images, whereby such features as the
head-dress, eyes, nose, lips, breasts, and ornaments
were attached as separate pinched pellets
while the clay was still moist. At this period of
Indian civilization the mould was unknown for
clay figurines, which were built up by hand in
exactly the same way as were the statuettes of
the mother goddess discovered at such Mesopotamian
sites as Tel Asmar and Khafaje at
levels referable to about 2500 B.C. A notable
attribute of the representations of the Indian
fertility goddess is the prominence given to the
hair and heavy head-dress, the depiction of
jewellery, and the breasts and navel. These features,
as well as the beaded apron worn by some
of the statuettes, were fertility symbols, since
both are also found in representations of the
mother goddess from Mesopotamia and Iran.
Excavations conducted since 1956 at Kot
Diji across the Indus from Mohenjo-daro and at
Lothal in Gujarat have somewhat changed our
picture of the Indus civilization. The exploration
of Kot Diji revealed a town, surrounded by
a defensive wall with buildings of sun-dried
brick, that presumably antedates the earliest
levels at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa. Types of
pottery and clay figurines found at this site
appear to antedate the earliest finds at the more
famous cities of the Indus Valley. This has led
to the hypothesis that the finds at Kot Diji represent
a civilization flourishing in the early
third millennium B.C. which was destroyed by
the advent of the Harappa people c. 2500.
The discovery of a city of the Indus civilization
at Lothal on the coast of the Indian Ocean
was a further step in revealing the extent of this
proto-historic culture. The excavations at
Lothal revealed not only the regular city-planning
of Mohenjo-daro with its highly developed
system of tanks and public drains but also the
development of a great dock area pointing to the
The excavations conducted by a French mission
at Mundigak in the now desiccated region north
of Kandahar in Afghanistan have brought to
light the remains of a civilization linking Afghanistan,
Iran, and India of the Indo-Sumerian
Period in the period extending from the late
fourth to the late third millennium before
Christ. 18 The growth of this culture paralleled
the development in Mesopotamia in the gradual
urbanization of thriving village settlements.