SmartSurat  #  Hinduism

The Indus valley cities

The excavated cities of the Harappan culture have revealed a high level of urban sophistication. The cities were designed on a grid system, like many modern American cities. The streets ranged from wide thoroughfares of about 34 feet to smaller ones about 9 feet wide. There were many public wells and many houses had their own water source. Evidence of street lighting has also been found at Mohenjo-daro. The cities had highly efficient sewage disposal systems below the surface of the roads and there were even inspection points, making the whole sewage system the most efficient in the ancient world until the time of the Romans. The houses were well structured with thick windowless walls lining the streets, the poorer having at least two rooms while the larger and wealthier as many as thirty. Staircases led to upper storeys and to the flat roofs. The houses even had rubbish chutes for the disposal of waste. All the edifices were constructed with kiln-burnt bricks - an expensive and somewhat rare building commodity in the ancient world.        The main cities incorporated separate, mounted citadels. These contained larger, more impressive and probably therefore more important buildings, perhaps of administrative or religious importance. At Mohenjo-daro stone sculptures were found in the citadel area which may have had some connection with the religious practices of the city but this is a good example of how absence of written evidence makes such a suggestion suspect. At the citadel at Harappa a series of pits have been excavated containing ash, charcoal and animal bones, as well as constructions which have been suggested as fire-altars. At Lothal no citadel has beern found though there is evidence of a raised platform on which some of the important buildings have been located. Similar high-raised platforms have been found at the citadel site at Kalibangan and there is evidence suggestive of altars, as well as bathing places. The evidence here at Kalibangan seems more reasonably indicative of a temple or cultic area and in some of the houses at this site fire altars, separate from domestic fires, have been discovered, indicating home shrines. Stepped mounds, rather like the Babylonian ziggurats, have also been found at other excavated Indus valley sites but to date, no conclusive evidence for temples is available. Perhaps temples were not needed and worship may have taken place in open spaces.