HVK Archives: Civilisation wakes up to step into 5000-year past
Civilisation wakes up to step into 5000-year past - Indian Express
Anand sundas
()
April 22, 1998
Title: Civilisation wakes up to step into 5000-year past
Author: 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.
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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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