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A hundred years ago, on 20th September 1924, the world learnt about the Indus (Harappan) Civilization for the very first time. Sir John Marshall, then the Director General of the Archaeological Society of India stated this in The Illustrated London News.
“Not often has it been given to archaeologists, as it was given to Schliemann at Tiryus and Mycenae in the deserts of Turkestan, to light upon, the remains of a long-forgotten civilization. It looks, however, at this moment, as if we are on the threshold of such a discovery in the plains of the Indus… up to the present, our knowledge of Indian antiquities has carried us back hardly further than the third century before Christ…. The two sites where these somewhat startling remains have been discovered are some 400 miles apart – the one being at Harappa in the Montgomery District of Punjab, the other at Mohenjo – Daro in the Larkana District of Sindh. At both these places there is a vast expanse of artificial mounds evidently covering the remains of once-flourishing cities, which………. must have been in existence for many hundred of years.”
The dating was actually done through a ‘Letters to the Editor’ column by Professor A.H. Sayee on 27th September 1924. He recognised the seals as identical to those he had found in Sumer, dated to 2300 BC. Thus India’s history was objectively pushed back another 2000 years. It all began 4500 years ago, may be 5000. Originally described as Indus-Sumerian, it was soon clear that this civilization had developed independently, and so was named Indus.
Courtesy: 100 Reflections on the Harappan Civilization, AHIMSA, written and illustrated by Devdutt Pattanaik.
