Civilization
wakes up - By Anand Sundas
Publication: Indian Express
Date: April 22, 1998
Dholavira. The lost empire that 300 labourers and a
six-member team of archaeologists have made it their mission to rediscover. After seven
long years of hope and sweat they have stumbled on to something - something really big.
Dholavira, in the middle of the Khadir island, along the Rann of Kutch, is again the
:cynosure of all eyes - western and Indian -after the excavation of the oldest and largest
reservoir with archaeologists expecting to unearth at least 60 metres more. So there is
the National Geographic team camped out there and 5 host of TV channels either in or
trying to get in. Ministers, bureaucrats, businessmen have suddenly woken up with a jolt
to the reality that is Dholavira.
It is so distant and uninhabitable that it looks far away
from civilisation. So distant that apart from the chartered tourism buses or the tax[s
that you succeed in hiring only after much wrangling and enticing, there is no easy mode
of transportation that takes you to Dholavira.
The site has proven wrong some age old and widely held
archaeological 'truths.' For instance, Dholavira - meaning white well - has proven that
the Indus culture (Harappan, as archaeologists prefer to call it) was not totally a
riverine civilisation, as it is in the middle of a Rann. So both academically and
archaeologically, the site today is the most important of all Harappan sites, including
the three in Pakistan - Mohenjodaro, Harappa and Gandhariwala - and gari in India.it is
also a most sophisticated and scientifically built site; and unlike other sites, 80 per
cent of what has been excavated has been found well preserved.
Archaeologists can't stop talking about the site. R S Bisht,
director (Explorations & Excavations), ASI says: "Even after 5,000 years the 32
steps that lead to the reservoir still retain their geometrical balance. This Indus
capital city site shows how man first came, settled and then abandoned the site for more
comfortable ones. It was only after 1,500 years of habitation that the people started
moving north towards sites near the Ganga
and Yamuna, at about the time when the Mahabharata was being fought."
Another unique feature of the site is the "tremendous sense of
town planning." As Sanjay Singh, archaeologist and site supervisor says: "The
concepts that were later de tailed in the Rig Veda and the Puranas are all there. For
instance, there is the param vesthinah madhyam vesthinah and awam vesthinah. The upper,
middle and lower towns." Seven years of exploration - officially, the site was first
excavated in 1969-70 by J P Joshi who was looking for a lost trade route from
Pakistan-Sindh to Lothal - have thrown up more than 22,000 artefacts, seals, terracota,
steatite and stone pillars.
"We have also recovered 37 micro beads of gold," says
Bisht adding, "which cannot be picked up by bare fingers. Look at the size of the
beads and you wonder what kind of hammer they used to round them off so perfectly and then
what kind of a boring instrument they must have used to drove a hole within. "The
site also boasts of a multi-purpose stadium, the oldest and biggest in the world, with
three sides for spectators and a path for ceremonial procession, There is a smaller
stadium beside it. "We have conclusive evidence to prove that they were also used as
haat bazaars with national and international business transactions taking place,"
adds Bisht.
Archaeologists have also for the first time found an outer city wall along with the
first ever evidence of damming the channels Mansar and Manhar) for water harnessing.
Interestingly, at all the dam sites archaeologists have found clusters of houses,probably
for the staff to look after the dams!
"They knew the, value of measuring distance according to
laws of horizontality and verticality," smiles Bisht before signing off. "Even
if the, government today, after 5,000 years, makes the kind of arrangement that the
Harappan people made then there will be no scarcity of water in the region." Perhaps.
For, it is never too late to learn.
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