also called INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION, OR HARAPPAN CIVILIZATION, the earliest known urban culture of the Indian subcontinent, first identified in 1921 at Harappa (see photograph

photograph: Remains of the artisans' quarter excavated at Harappa, in Pakistan) in the Punjab and then in 1922 at Mohenjo-daro, near the Indus River in the Sindh, now both in Pakistan. Subsequently, vestiges of the civilization were found as far apart as Sutkagen Dor, near the shore of the Arabian Sea 300 miles (480 km) west of Karachi, and Rupar at the foot of the Simla Hills, 1,000 miles (1,600 km) to the northeast. Later exploration established its existence southward down the west coast as far as the Gulf of Cambay, 500 miles (800 km) southeast of Karachi and as far east as the Yamuna Basin, 30 miles (50 km) north of Delhi. It is thus decidedly the most extensive of the three earliest civilizations, the other two being those of Mesopotamia and Egypt, both of which began somewhat before it.

The civilization is known to have comprised two large cities, Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, and over 100 towns and villages, often of relatively small size. The two cities were each over 3 miles (5 km) in circuit, and their outstanding magnitude suggests political centralization, either in two large states or in a single great empire with alternative capitals, a practice having analogies in Indian history. Or it may be that Harappa succeeded Mohenjo-daro, which is known to have been devastated more than once by exceptional floods. The southern region of the civilization in Kathiawar and beyond appears to be of later origin than the major Indus sites. The civilization was literate, and its script, with some 250 to 500 characters, has been partly and tentatively deciphered; the language has been tentatively identified as Dravidian. The nuclear dates of the civilization appear to be about 2500-1700 BC, though southern sites may have lasted later in the 2nd millennium BC.

The Indus civilization apparently evolved from the villages of neighbours or predecessors, using the Mesopotamian model of irrigated agriculture with sufficient skill to reap the advantages of the spacious and fertile Indus River valley while controlling the formidable annual flood that simultaneously fertilizes and destroys. Having once obtained a secure foothold on the plain and mastered its more immediate problems, the new civilization, doubtless with a well-nourished and increasing population, would find expansion along the flanks of the great waterways an inevitable sequel. The civilization subsisted primarily by farming supplemented by an appreciable but often elusive commerce. Wheat and six-rowed barley were grown; field peas, mustard, sesame, and a few date stones have also been found, as well as some of the earliest traces of cotton known. Domesticated animals included dogs and cats, humped cattle, shorthorns, domestic fowl, and possibly pigs, camels, and buffaloes. The elephant was probably also domesticated, and its ivory was freely used. Minerals, unavailable from the alluvial plain, were brought in sometimes from far afield. Gold was imported from southern India or Afghanistan, silver and copper from Afghanistan or northwestern India (now Rajasthan), lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, turquoise from Iran (Persia), and a jadelike fuchsite from southern India.

Perhaps the best-known artifacts of the Indus civilization are a number of small seals, generally made of steatite, which are distinctive in kind and unique in quality, depicting a wide variety of animals, both real--such as elephants, tigers, rhinoceros, and antelopes--and fantastic, often composite, creatures. Sometimes human forms are included. A few examples of Indus stone sculpture have also been found, usually small and representing humans or gods. There are great numbers of small terra-cotta figures of animals and humans.

How and when the civilization came to an end remains uncertain. In fact, no uniform ending need be postulated for a culture so widely distributed. But the end of Mohenjo-daro is known and was dramatic and sudden. It was attacked toward the middle of the 2nd millennium BC by raiders who swept over the city and then passed on, leaving the dead lying where they fell. Who the attackers were is matter for conjecture. The episode would appear to be consistent in time and place with the earlier Aryan onslaught upon the Indus region as reflected in the older books of the Rigveda, in which the newcomers are represented as attacking the "walled cities" or "citadels" of the aborigines and the Aryan war-god Indra as rending "forts as age consumes a garment." However, one thing is clear: the city was already in an advanced stage of economic and social decline before it received the coup de grace. Deep floods had more than once submerged large tracts of it. Houses had become increasingly shoddy in construction and showed signs of overcrowding. The final blow seems to have been sudden, but the city was already dying. As the evidence stands, the civilization was succeeded in the Indus valley by poverty-stricken cultures, deriving a little from a sub-Indus heritage but also drawing elements from the direction of Iran and the Caucasus--from the general direction, in fact, of the Aryan invasions. For many centuries urban civilization was dead in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent.

In the south, however, in Kathiawar and beyond, the situation appears to have been very different. Here it would seem that there was a real cultural continuity between the late Indus phase and the Copper Age cultures that characterized central and western India between 1700 BC and the first millennium. These cultures form a material bridge between the end of the Indus civilization proper and the developed Iron Age civilization that arose in India in about 1000 BC.