Called Meluhha in the Mesopotamian sources, Harappan culture flourished from 2500 B.C. to 1800 B.C., then went into a catastrophic decline. It is named after one of its two major cities, Harappa. The other is Mohenjo-daro. The ruins of both cites are located on the Indus River and show a high degree of urban planning and extraordinary feats of engineering. The ruins from the time of many other towns and settlements in the drainage basin of the Indus River have also been located. Until a few decades ago, scholars ignored the existence of ruins and artifacts found in the nineteenth century along the Indus because there was not supposed to be a highly sophisticated ancient culture there. Instead, Scottish engineers used the bricks from the site of Harappa as a bed for the Punjabi railroad and the artifacts showed up in European museums as curiosities. In the 1920s, Sir John Marshall rediscovered the site of Mohenjo-daro and scholars began to make connections with the Aryans of the Rg Veda. At first they thought the Aryans founded the Harappan culture, but then they realized the Aryans came later after Harappan culture was already well developed. Mortimer Wheeler suggested that the Aryans destroyed it. Now the most prevalent view is that other considerations, such as natural forces (climatic change or earthquakes and floods) brought an end to this highly organized culture.
Much remains mysterious and controversial about the ruins and artifacts and one of the most sensitive issues is the Harappan language, which is preserved mostly on carved seals. The Russian philologist Iu. V. Knorosov, after preliminary investigation, thought it might be Dravidian, which has been confirmed to a degree by computer analysis. Yet, other scholars (e.g., S. R. Rau) claim that the Dravidians, the ancestors of low social status inhabitants of the Deccan in contemporary India and of Sri Lanka, could not have constructed such a well-organized culture. Instead they argue for an Indo-European origin, which is the same origin they see for themselves.
Methodological Focus:
Our study of this controversy focuses on how sensitive issues of social and religious status are often involved in historical work. It explores the problem of the limited source base and it also shows how our view of the past is influenced by our view of the present. In particular, how what we expect to find affects how we see the evidence.
Preliminary Bibliography:
Dales, George F., “The Decline of the Harappans,” Scientific American, May 1966: 92–100.
Wheeler, Mortimer. The Indus Civilization, 1953, 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
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