the floodplain proper only with the emergence of the Indus civilization, which means that the behavior of the Indus was understood and controlled before this period. In the premodern period, the river could be used in the otherwise arid landscape of Sind for agriculture because of an irrigation system based on artificially dug flow channels that moved from the higher level of the riverbed to the lower level of the adjacent plain. It has been argued that this system came to be devised in the early Harappan period, possibly first in the Ghaggar-Hakra drainage in the Bahawalpur sector. I believe that because of its lesser gradient and also because of its origin in the outer Himalayan arc, and not in the snow-fed region, this drainage system was far easier to control than the Indus in full flow. There is also a study based on remote-sensing techniques and micromorphological studies that shows that early Harappan and later sites in Haryana were linked to irrigation canals, which thus gives the present hypothesis added credibility.

The second variable is in the shape of the singularly copper-rich Ganeshwar culture, of which more than fifty sites exist to the east of the Ghaggar-Hakra system. It has been argued that the development of a very rich copper metallurgical tradition with demonstrably close links to the early Harappan level was likely to have led to the intensification of metallurgical and other craft activities at this level. This process could be the key second variable in the emergence of the Indus civilization.

Regarding the end of the Indus civilization, it has been argued that when the central system of the civilization collapsed, there emerged some regional cultures covering a large number of mostly small sites. The distribution maps suggest a steady movement of “late Harappans” to the Doab on the one hand and to Deccan and Malwa on the other. One of the major factors of collapse was possibly the increasing drying up of the Ghaggar-Hakra drainage, which in the Bahawalpur sector was indeed the core area of the development of the civilization. Another probable factor was the archaeologically demonstrable fact that even though a considerable part of its distribution lay outside the core area, the Indus civilization was imposed on an essentially hunting-and-gathering economy. Therefore, it was much easier for the civilization to revert to a rural form once the central system collapsed. It has further been argued that the Harappans in general and the late Harappans in particular interacted with the advanced Mesolithic hunter-gatherers of inner India, which led to the growth of Neolithic-Chalcolithic communities in various parts.

At the grassroots level, the history of India is the story of absorption of regional hunter-gatherers within the fold of a plow-based agricultural system, and it is obvious that the indigenous approach outlined above enables one to visualize the beginning of this process as early as the period of the Indus civilization. The facts that the Bahawalpur area was the core area of development of the Indus civilization and that, toward the end, this civilization merged with the cultural process of inner India have been made clear by the work in Bahawalpur in Pakistan and the work in India from near that sector to the Doab on the one hand and from Kutch to Maharashtra and Malwa on the other.

Dilip Chakrabarti

References

Agrawal, D.P. 1964. “Harappa Culture: New Evidence for a Shorter Chronology.” Science,28 February, 1–3.

———. 1971. The Copper-Bronze Age in India. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal.

Bisht, R.S. 1982. “Excavations at Banawali: 1974–77.” In Harappan Civilization, 113–124. Ed. G.L. Possehl. New Delhi: Oxford & IBH in collaboration with American Institute of Indian Studies. Hereafter cited as HC.

———. 1987. “Further Excavation at Banawali: 1983–84.” In Archaeology and History, 1:135–156. Ed. B.M. Pande and B.D. Chattopadhyay. Delhi: Agam Kala Prakashan.

———. 1991. “Dholavira: A New Horizon of the Indus Civilization.” Puratattva 20: 71–82.

Brunswig, R.H. 1975. “Radiocarbon Dating and the Indus Civilization Calibration and Chronology.” East and West 25: 111–145.

Chakrabarti, D.K. 1982. “Long Barrel-Cylinder Beads and the Issue of Pre-Sargonic Contact between the Harappan Civilization and Mesopotamia.” In HC, 265–270.

———. 1988. A History of Indian Archaeology from