# The Indus (Harappan) Civilisation: Town Planning, Sites, Economy & Decline Source: https://tracknation.in/story/the-indus-harappan-civilisation-town-planning-sites-economy-decline (TrackNation — free UPSC notes with PYQs) > India's first cities, in full depth. This high-yield guide covers the discovery and vast extent of the Harappan civilisation, its grid-planned towns, the Great Bath and granaries, the world's finest ancient drainage, its farming-craft-trade economy (cotton 'sindon', the Lothal dockyard, Meluha trade), society, religion (the Pashupati seal, mother goddess), the undeciphered script and seals — and the competing theories for its decline. Site-by-site (Mohenjo-daro, Dholavira, Kalibangan, Lothal, Ra ## Start Here — Why the Harappans Are High-Yield 🎯 **Exam priority: High-yield.** *This is one of the most-tested Ancient topics, and in 2025 even Mains asked the "salient features of Harappan architecture". Go deep: master the **site-to-feature** matches (the prelims workhorse), the town-planning details, and the **decline debate**. Don't skim it.* Around 2500 BCE, while most of the subcontinent was still living in Chalcolithic villages, the north-west produced something astonishing: **India's first cities** — planned on a grid, drained by covered sewers, fed by huge granaries, and trading by sea with Mesopotamia. This is the **Harappan** (or Indus Valley) civilisation, the largest cultural zone of its age. ## Discovery, Extent & the Major Sites The civilisation is named **Harappan** after the first site excavated, at **Harappa** (West Punjab, Pakistan) in **1921**. It is also called the **Indus Valley** civilisation after the river along which its great cities grew. - **A vast triangle.** It covered parts of Punjab, Sindh, Baluchistan, Gujarat, Rajasthan and the fringe of western UP — from Jammu in the north to the Narmada estuary in the south, and from the Makran coast to Meerut. At roughly **1.3 million sq km** it was **larger than contemporary Egypt and Mesopotamia combined**. - **Over 250 sites, but only a handful of true cities.** The classic six are Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, Chanhudaro, Lothal, Kalibangan and Banawali; later excavations added great centres like **Dholavira** and **Rakhigarhi**. UPSC's favourite is the **site-to-feature** match — learn this table cold: | **Site (modern country/state)** | **Best-known for** | | Harappa (Punjab, Pakistan) | First discovered (1921); granaries, on the Ravi | | Mohenjo-daro (Sindh, Pakistan) | Great Bath, Great Granary; 'Dancing Girl' & 'Priest-King' | | Dholavira (Gujarat, Kutch) | Advanced water management (reservoirs/dams); the large 'signboard' | | Lothal (Gujarat) | Tidal dockyard (port); bead-making; rice; fire altars | | Kalibangan (Rajasthan) | Ploughed field (pre-Harappan furrows); fire altars | | Rakhigarhi (Haryana) | Among the largest Harappan sites | | Chanhudaro (Sindh) | Bead-making; the only major city with no citadel | | Banawali (Haryana) | Both pre-Harappan & Harappan phases | | Surkotada (Gujarat) | Disputed horse bones (c. 2000 BCE) | ## Town Planning — the Grid, the Citadel & the Great Bath The hallmark of the Harappans was **town planning**. Each major city was laid out in two parts: - **The citadel (acropolis)** — a raised, fortified western mound, probably for the ruling class and key public buildings. - **The lower town** — the larger residential area of brick houses for ordinary people. Streets followed a **grid system**, cutting across one another at right angles and dividing the city into rectangular blocks — true of settlements of every size. ### Signature structures - **The Great Bath at Mohenjo-daro** — a beautifully brick-built tank (about **12 × 7 metres, 2.4 m deep**) on the citadel, watertight, with steps, side rooms and a drain. Almost certainly used for **ritual bathing**. - **Granaries** — the largest building at Mohenjo-daro is a great granary; Harappa had a block of **six-plus-six granaries** near the river, with circular threshing floors (wheat and barley were found in the cracks). - **Burnt bricks.** Unlike Egypt (which mostly used dried bricks), the Harappans used **kiln-baked bricks** on a huge scale, in a remarkably standard ratio. ## The Drainage System & Civic Life If one feature defines Harappan genius, it is **water management**. Almost every house — big or small — had its own courtyard, bathroom and often a well (especially at Kalibangan). Waste water ran from the houses into **covered street drains** built of brick or stone slabs and fitted with **manholes** for cleaning. No other ancient civilisation gave so much attention to health and sanitation; the Harappan drainage system is virtually unique in the Bronze Age. **Dholavira** takes this further, with an elaborate system of reservoirs, dams and channels to harvest scarce water in the arid Rann of Kutch — which is exactly why UPSC singled it out in a prelims question. ## Economy — Agriculture, Crafts & Trade ### Agriculture The flood plains of the Indus, enriched by annual silt (as the Nile enriched Egypt), let villages grow **wheat and barley** (sown after the November floods, reaped in April), plus sesame, mustard and peas; **Lothal** in Gujarat even grew **rice** by c. 1800 BCE. A **ploughed field** with criss-cross furrows survives at **Kalibangan**. Above all, the Harappans were the **earliest people to grow cotton** — the Greeks later called it *sindon*, from Sindh. ### Crafts & technology (a Bronze-Age culture) They knew **bronze** — copper (from the **Khetri** mines of Rajasthan) alloyed with tin (brought with difficulty from Afghanistan) — though tools were not abundant. They excelled at **bead-making**, seal-cutting, weaving (cotton and wool), brick-laying, boat-building and goldsmithy. ### Trade - There was **no metallic money** — exchange was by **barter**. They used carts with solid wheels and practised coastal navigation. - They traded with Rajasthan, Afghanistan, Iran and **Mesopotamia** — many Harappan seals turn up there. Mesopotamian records (c. 2350 BCE) call the Indus region **Meluha**, with two trading stations, **Dilmun** (Bahrain) and **Makan**, in between. - **Lothal** had a **dockyard** — a tidal port — underlining maritime trade. - **Weights & measures** were standardised on a **binary system using 16 and its multiples** (16, 64, 320…) — the "16-anna rupee" echoed it into modern times. ## Society, Polity & Religion ### Polity — rule without temples or palaces Strikingly, **no temples or grand palaces** have been found at any Harappan site — a sharp contrast with Egypt and Mesopotamia, where priests ruled. This suggests the Harappans were governed **not by priest-kings but perhaps by a class of merchants**, more concerned with commerce than conquest. ### Religion - **Mother Goddess:** numerous female terracotta figurines — one shows a plant growing from a woman's womb — point to worship of the **earth as a fertility goddess**. - **The Pashupati seal:** a seal shows a horned, three-faced male god seated like a *yogi*, surrounded by an elephant, tiger, rhinoceros and buffalo — recalling the later **Shiva (Pashupati, "lord of animals")**. **Phallus (linga) and yoni worship** also appear, prefiguring Shaiva practice. - **Nature worship:** the **pipal tree** and the **humped bull** were revered; **amulets** suggest belief in evil spirits. No idols sat in temples, and because the script is unread, much of their belief stays uncertain. ## Script, Seals & Art - **The script is undeciphered.** It is **pictographic** (about **250–400 signs**), not alphabetic, usually written **right-to-left** (boustrophedon in places), and survives only in *short* inscriptions on seals — so we cannot read Harappan literature or beliefs. It is an indigenous invention, unrelated to Egyptian or Mesopotamian scripts. - **Seals** are the finest Harappan craft — about **2,000** have been found, mostly **steatite**, engraved with animals (the one-horned "unicorn" bull, the humped bull, tiger, rhinoceros, elephant) and a few signs; they probably marked private property and trade goods. - **Art:** the bronze **"Dancing Girl"** (Mohenjo-daro) and the steatite **"Priest-King"** are the masterpieces; terracotta toys and figurines were the art of the common people. Harappan art in stone is otherwise modest. ## Decline & End — Why the Cities Fell The mature civilisation flourished roughly between **2500 and 1750 BCE** (modern dating often narrows the mature phase to about **2600–1900 BCE**). Around 1750 BCE, Harappa and Mohenjo-daro were abandoned and the culture **faded gradually**, lingering in degenerate form in Gujarat, Rajasthan and western UP. There is no single agreed cause: | **Theory** | **Core claim** | **Status now** | | Climate / aridity & river shift | Growing aridity + drying of the Ghaggar-Hakra (Saraswati) system starved the cities | **Leading explanation today** | | Floods / tectonics | Repeated flooding or land subsidence/uplift on the Indus | A contributing factor | | Soil salinity / ecological | Over-irrigation, deforestation and salinity cut fertility | A contributing factor | | Aryan invasion | Incoming Aryans destroyed the cities (Wheeler's 'massacre') | **Largely discredited** — no evidence of mass conflict | The old "Aryan invasion / massacre at Mohenjo-daro" idea is now **largely rejected** — there is no evidence of large-scale conflict, and the **Rig Vedic Aryans settled the same Sapta Sindhu region only later**. Most scholars today favour a **combination of climate change and the drying of the Ghaggar-Hakra (Saraswati) river system**, which triggered a slow **de-urbanisation** rather than a sudden collapse; Painted Grey Ware and the Cemetery-H culture mark the later, post-urban phase. ## Why this matters for UPSC - Prelims drills the **site-to-feature** table (Lothal = dockyard, Kalibangan = ploughed field, Dholavira = water management) and "what characterised the Harappans" (male & female deities, no temples, no horse-chariots). - Mains asks the **town-planning legacy** for modern urbanisation (2014), the **salient features of Harappan architecture** (2025), and the **decline debate**. ## Further Reading - Standard NCERT-level texts and reference books on ancient, medieval and cultural Indian history (any UPSC reading list). ## Test Yourself: Practice Questions & PYQs The Harappan questions are mostly site-to-feature matches and 'what characterised them'. Commit to an answer before revealing each one. ## Practice Questions **Q1.** Which Harappan site is famous for its tidal dockyard, indicating maritime trade? - (a) Chanhudaro - (b) Lothal - (c) Banawali - (d) Kalibangan **Answer: (b)** — Lothal (Gujarat) had a brick dockyard — a tidal port — along with a bead factory and rice. **Q2.** A ploughed field with criss-cross furrows from the pre-Harappan phase was found at: - (a) Kalibangan - (b) Surkotada - (c) Dholavira - (d) Mohenjo-daro **Answer: (a)** — Kalibangan (Rajasthan) preserves an early ploughed field, with fire altars also reported there. **Q3.** The site renowned for advanced water management — reservoirs, dams and a large 'signboard' — is: - (a) Harappa - (b) Chanhudaro - (c) Rakhigarhi - (d) Dholavira **Answer: (d)** — Dholavira in Kutch is famed for its elaborate water-harvesting system and the large inscribed 'signboard'; UPSC has asked about it directly. **Q4.** The Great Bath is located on the citadel of: - (a) Harappa - (b) Mohenjo-daro - (c) Kalibangan - (d) Lothal **Answer: (b)** — The Great Bath — a watertight brick tank likely for ritual bathing — is the famous public structure of Mohenjo-daro. **Q5.** Which statement about Harappan religion/society is correct? - (a) They worshipped both male and female deities - (b) They built great temples and palaces - (c) They were ruled by priest-kings from temples - (d) They used horse-drawn chariots in war **Answer: (a)** — They worshipped male (Pashupati/proto-Shiva) and female (mother goddess) deities. No great temples/palaces have been found, and the horse was not in regular use. **Q6.** Cotton was first produced by the Harappans; the Greeks later called it 'sindon', a word derived from: - (a) Sanskrit 'sutra' - (b) Dilmun - (c) Meluha - (d) Sindh **Answer: (d)** — Because cotton was first grown in the Indus (Sindh) region, the Greeks named it 'sindon', from Sindh. **Q7.** The Harappan system of weights was based on: - (a) Base-12 (dozen) units - (b) No standard system - (c) A binary system using 16 and its multiples - (d) A decimal (base-10) system **Answer: (c)** — Harappan weights used 16 and its multiples (16, 64, 320…) — a tradition echoed in the old 16-anna rupee. **Q8.** The Harappan script is best described as: - (a) Identical to the Mesopotamian cuneiform - (b) Written only on copper plates - (c) An undeciphered, mainly pictographic script on short seal inscriptions - (d) A deciphered alphabetic script **Answer: (c)** — The script (about 250–400 signs) is undeciphered and pictographic, found in short inscriptions on seals; it is indigenous, unlike West-Asian scripts. ### UPSC Previous Year Questions (PYQs) *Two genuine UPSC Prelims questions on the Harappans. Explanations in our own words.* **Q9.** Which of the following characterises/characterise the people of the Indus Civilization? (1) They possessed great palaces and temples. (2) They worshipped both male and female deities. (3) They employed horse-drawn chariots in warfare. Select the correct answer: (UPSC Prelims 2013) - (a) None - (b) 2 only - (c) 1, 2 and 3 - (d) 1 and 2 only **Answer: (b)** — Only statement 2 is correct (male and female deities). No great palaces or temples were found, and horse-drawn chariots were not in use. **Q10.** Which one of the following ancient towns is well known for its elaborate system of water harvesting and management by building a series of dams and channels and creating water reservoirs? (UPSC Prelims 2021) - (a) Rakhigarhi - (b) Dholavira - (c) Ropar - (d) Kalibangan **Answer: (b)** — Dholavira (Gujarat) is celebrated for its sophisticated water-harvesting and reservoir system. **Q11.** With reference to the difference between the culture of Rigvedic Aryans and Indus Valley people, consider the following statements: 1. Rigvedic Aryans used the coat of mail and helmet in warfare whereas the Indus Valley people did not leave any evidence of using them. 2. Rigvedic Aryans knew gold, silver and copper whereas Indus Valley people knew only copper and iron. 3. Rigvedic Aryans had domesticated the horse whereas there is no evidence of Indus Valley people having been aware of this animal. Which are correct? (UPSC Prelims 2017) - (a) 2 and 3 only - (b) 1 only - (c) 1 and 3 only - (d) 1, 2 and 3 **Answer: (c)** — Statement 2 is the error, and it turns on one word: the Harappans did NOT know IRON — the Indus civilisation is Bronze Age, and iron arrives in India only in the later Vedic period. They did know gold, silver and copper. The coat-of-mail and the horse are both genuine Rigvedic-only markers. **Q12.** Which one of the following is NOT a Harappan site? (UPSC Prelims 2019) - (a) Desalpur - (b) Kot Diji - (c) Sohgaura - (d) Chanhudaro **Answer: (c)** — Sohgaura in Uttar Pradesh is the find-spot of a MAURYAN copper-plate inscription about famine relief — several centuries after the Harappans. Chanhudaro, Kot Diji and Desalpur are all genuine Harappan sites. **Q13.** Which one of the following ancient towns is well known for its elaborate system of water harvesting and management, with water reservoirs built of rock cut into a series of channels? (UPSC Prelims 2021) - (a) Kalibangan - (b) Ropar - (c) Dholavira - (d) Rakhigarhi **Answer: (c)** — Dholavira in the Rann of Kutch is celebrated for its rock-cut reservoirs and channelled water-management — the response of a Harappan city in an arid zone with no perennial river. Kalibangan is known for its ploughed field and fire altars, and Rakhigarhi is the largest Harappan site. ### Mains Practice Questions Use these to frame full-length answers. You don't have to answer one exactly — they show the angles UPSC tests, so let them guide which points you cover. - Account for the decline of the Harappan civilisation, critically evaluating the competing explanations. - What do the religion and town-planning of the Harappans tell us about the nature of their society and polity? - Evaluate the achievements of Harappan town-planning and their relevance to present-day urbanisation. ### Mains PYQs — Last 10 Years (UPSC GS-I) *The exact questions UPSC has actually asked on this topic over the last decade. Practise writing full-length answers to these.* - Discuss the salient features of the Harappan architecture. **(UPSC GS-I, 2025)** - To what extent has the urban planning and culture of the Indus Valley Civilization provided inputs to the present-day urbanization? Discuss. **(UPSC GS-I, 2014)** - The ancient civilization in the Indian sub-continent differed from those of Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece in that its culture and traditions have been preserved without a breakdown to the present day. Comment. **(UPSC GS-I, 2015)**