KALIBANGAN

Kalibangan is perhaps the largest prehistoric site in Northern Rajasthan. It is situated in the Ganganagar District (now Hanu- mangarh) which was formerly a part of the state of Bikaner. It is easily approachable from Hanumangarh Railway Station on the Delhi- Bikaner line.
       The ancient site lies on the bank of the Ghaggar. It was discovered by Shri A. Ghosh, a former Director General, Archaeological Survey of India, during his explorations in the Saraswati and Drishadwati valleys.
       People of Rajasthan, and particularly the residents of Jodhpur, Jaipur and Bikaner know that this region is practically a desert, with occasional thorny bushes of babul and thor. In this surroundings, a village or a town with whitewashed mud houses, or timbas (tillas)-small mounds or hillock, strike the eye immediately. While many of these tillas are nothing but sand-dunes, some of these, as Rangmahal on Kalibangan are littered with innumerable potsherds. Because these potsherds were originally red or even bright red, these mounds even now after hundreds or thousands of years appear reddish. Particularly this is so at Rangmahal.
      Normally no one cares for or looks at these potsherds, certainly not the caravan driver who passes by these tillas while carrying goods to and fro, from distant towns and cities. But to an archaeologist these potsherds are like open books. All these potsherds speak. Perhaps each potsherd has some story, to relate. You may wonder "how". The reason is simple. Though the shape of the pots to which these potsherds belong are rarely intact, stil the potsherds are not dead. It e one of the wonders of nature that once a clay pot is given some. colour, or naturally painted with some designs and then fired, neither the colour nor the design goes, though the pot or its pieces may be exposed to the sun and rain and even used for hundreds of years. It is this Nature's secret that we archaeologists discovered some 150 years ago. For by carefully studying potsherds and intact pots if available, an archaeologist can gradually tell how old the pot is, he can also say by further study and by piecing together broken parts of the one and the same pot, what the original shape was, and what part it played in the life of the person who possessed it.
     It is the peculiar feature-almost total indestructibility-of pottery- that is one of the main clues which an archaeologist looks for while searching for bygone cultures and civilizations. Hence Shri Amalananda Ghosh during his exploration of the valleys of the Ghaggar, the ancient Saraswati and the Drishadvati primarily looked for collected potsherds. Of course he was not the first scholar to do so. Before him Shri Aurel Stein had done so for that part of the Ghaggar which flows into the Bahawalpur District of Pakistan. Stein thus had discovered numerous ancient sites. In some of these, he had discovered the kind of pottery which had been discovered previously at MohenJodaro and numerous other sites in Sind. Ghosh did exactly what Stein had done, but being more experiençed and well acquainted with the Harappa or the Indus Civilization he noticed that three or four different kinds of potteries were found littered over these tillas in the Bikaner State. While those similar to or identical with that of the Indus Civilization can be easily assigned to Hie Indus Civilization, others belonged to different cultures. The Pottery found at Sothi and other sites in and around the present town was designated as "Sothi". While another-found at Rang Mahal was called "Rang Mahal Culture," Because of its bright red colour and ing, Rang Mahal appeared promising. It was certainly new. But when it was excavated by a Swedish Expedition, it was found to be- long to the Early Historical period, to the period of the Kushan ruler of Northern India, including Rajasthan. So when the Archaeological survey of India thought of examining.of pursuing Ghosh's discoveries they took up the mounds at or near Kalibangan. For here had been found potsherds and chert knife blades indicative of the existence of the Indus Civilization and also another culture or civilization called the Sothi Culture by Ghosh.
      And as rightly anticipated by Ghosh, several years of excavations at Kalibangan by Prof. B.B. Lal and Shri B.K. Thapar have brought to light the existence of a fairly extensive town of the Indus Civilization or Harappa Culture, and also the earlier existence of a town to the pre-Indus or Sothi culture. However, as it is the practice with archaeologists, these Sothi or pre-Indus culture have been designated respectively Harappan and pre-Harappan cultures respectively.
          The ancient habitation was spread over an area of a quarter of a square kilometer, and from the beginning consisted of two closely- knit but distinct mounds, an eastern and a western mound. These form a prominent feature of the landscape with their slopes strewn with dark brown nodules, mud-bricks, and numerous potsherds. No traveller in this desert, whether he be an archaeologist cr not, could but be struck by this feature.for these are so conspicuous among the masses of sand dunes on the west, east and south and the green fields on the north; the latter as a result of irrigation.
          Whether right from the beginning there were two separate but closely knit habitations which later turned into mounds on their desertion or whether the Harappans who in our present knowledge initiated this feature in their town planning and civic life cannot be asserted, without large scale excavation on both the mounds. For the pre-Indus, Harappan settlement is exposed in its barest outlines only on mound I, known as Kalibangan I (KLB-I). This is 8 metres (about 26 feet) high. The extant deposit is 1.6 m. and lies over the river silt. That is, the earliest and in our knowledge the first habitation took place very near, or just overlooking the river, the present dry bed of the Ghaggar. The river is now silted up, and there is hardly a bank worth the name. But anciently the river might and should have flowed at least 15 to 20 feet below the present surface. On such an elevated surface the first inhabitants of the Ghaggar settled. Within this no less than five structural phases have been recognized.
       In several ways, these first settlers are remarkable and distinct from their successors, the Harappans.
         The houses were made uniformly of mud-bricks, their size being 30 cm. ¥20 cm. ¥10 cm. that means the length was thrice the thickness, while the breadth was just double. These bricks were laid very sufficiently, to provide the requisite strength to the structure. A course of headers was followed by stretchers. Such a method, called "the English bond", of brick-laying in masonry, was followed by the pre-Harappans. Further, they anticipated the Harappans by occasionally using specially made wedge-shaped bricks to get over awkward corners in houses (and plinths of walls). Since this pre- Harappan settlement lies immediately underneath the Harappan, it has not been yet possible to lay bare a complete house, so that we do not know the plan of any house, and the size of rooms, and such other significant details. But it appears from the exposure of a well- aligned street or lane between a row of houses that at. least a section of the habitation was well-planned.
        Something about their hearths or chulas is also known, and this to me is important, for these are true ovens, whether they be of underground or overground variety. The underground variety had mud-plastered walls with a slight overhang near the mouth, and the other had a bridged side opening for feeding fuel etc. These ovens are said to resemble very closely the present day tandoors, which again, we are told, are common in the Bikaner region. This is very important feature. For people in India do not generally bake their bread by keeping it against the walls of an oven. We first bake it on a tava and then put it on open fire, so that the bread would swell or liven up. But the tandoori fashion of baking bread is current all over Western Asia including Iran, Iraq, Turkey and has penetrated the Balkans, or parts of Yugoslavia. Thus this one feature helps in tvine up W. Rajasthan with Iran and Western Asia, and that too as early as 2,500 B.C.

Fortification :

    This pre-Harappan settlement was protected by a mudbrick fortification. When first built it was about 6 feet (1.90m) wide, but later the width of the wall was almost doubled. It varies between 3.70 and 4.10m. The brick size however remained the same. No corner angles of these walls have been found. The north-south distance of the fortified area measures approximately 250 m. The necessity of such an increase indicates that the inhabitants felt insecure with a wall that was only 6 feet wide and hence made it up to nearly 12 feet. This is certainly a good thickness for a fortification wall at this period, for it had to withstand only such missiles as stone or coppetipped ar- rows and clay or stone sling balls. Whether this wall could be easily scaled or not cannot be said, for there is no means of knowing its height, since the later people-the Harappans in our present knowledge had to break it or remake it to suit their requirements.
         What is important is that the traces of a fortification wall have survived. We were told by Marshall some 40 years ago that the Harappans lived in open, unwalled cities, and therefore they were a non-violent people. Then came Sir Mortimer Wheeler who was the first to identify a defence wall at Harappa and then later at Mohenjodaro. This discovery made him propound his famous theory that the Aryans destroyed the Indus Civilization, for he saw in Indra, the Purandara, one who destroyed "walled" "fortified cities."
         Now with the discovery of fortification at Kalibangan, and also at Kot Diji in Sind, where the mud-brick wall has a plinth of stone rubbles, the whole problem of fortification takes a different turn.
           The least we can say is that the Harappans were not the first to have fortified cities in Sind and Rajasthan. And hence the question of Aryans along being "the Purandaras" does not arise. These might as well be the Harappans, who at Gumla destroyed the pre-Harappan habitation.
        Again, they were not the first to introduce wheeled conveyance and metal tools/weapons, in these regions, for these were also known to the pre-Harappans.
          But what the latter did not have was the first access to the flint quarries of Sukkur and Rohri so that their tools for daily use in the house for cutting, slicing, and piercing had to be made from (pre- sumably local) material such as agate, chalcedony and carnelian. These tools are in now way different from the microliths made by the Bagor and Tilwara people, except that at Kalibangan we have mostly straight sided blades including serrated and backed and fewer lunates, trapezes and such geometric shapes. This small difference is significant, indicating that man no longer needed and made com- pound tools like the sickle and harpoon and the arrow-head with stone tips, but utilized (probably) copper tools instead.

Pottery :

   However, the most striking difference between the pre- Harappan and the Harappan, which is of utmost importance to an archaeologist, is pottery. The Harappan pottery is bright or dark red and uniformly sturdy, and so well baked that no part of the core remains yellowish or blackish showing imperfect firing. This is not the case with the pre-Harappan pottery. The latter is pinkish, comparatively thinner, and not so well baked as the former. Some of it is distinctly carelessly made. One of its variety, though well-potted, has its outer surface, particularly the lower part, roughened or rusticated (this is also seen at Ahar). Still another variety, represented mainly by basins, is decorated all over by obtusely incised patterns on the inside and with single or multiple rows of cord-impressions on the outside.
        Not only the fabric and most.of the decorative patterns, but the forms of the pre-Harappan pottery are strikingly different from the Harappan. While the graceful painted Harappan vase, the goblet and the cylindrical perforated vessel, and the variety of footed.dishes or foot-stands are conspicuous by their absence, present are some six to eight types of small and medium-sized vessels. And amongst these, the most noteworty is a small footed cup. This and its likes remind us on the one hand of the carlier Iranian goblets from Sialk and Hissar, and on the other the goblets or footed cups from Navdatoli on the Narmada.

The details of this pottery are as follows: 

Some six fabrics (A-F) have been recognized. 

All are wheel made. Among these we may note one (viz. A)

          with a light and thin fabric, reddish to pink in colour, painted in black, combined at times with white, over a dull red surface. Comparatively small vessels- bowls and jars-are made of this fabric, and decorated with some 32 characteristic designs, many of which are normally not seen in the Harappan pottery. Fabric B may be briefly described as rusticated and painted, and is remarkable, for very artistic and pleasing designs, particularly of the deer with long, wavy horns and curved horns like a 'buchranian'. Fabric C has a finer tex- ture, and among the 19 designs which decorate it, occurs the "scalt pattern, which is typical of the Harappan. Fabric D which also in eludes the incised ones, comprises sturdy fabrics, consisting of stor- age jars and bowls. Vessels in fabric have a buff or reddish buft slip, and include chalices, and small and medium-sized jars. Fabric F is confined to grey-coloured pottery, including dish-on-stand, basins, and bowls. It is painted, both in black and white.
       In brief, the pottery fabrics and forms show a close affinity with the early Baluchi and Iranian pottery, known already from Amri, Kot Diji in Sind, pre-defence levels at Harappa and several sites in Baluchistan.
      Other objects associated with the pre-Harappan settlement are characteristically different. Besides the stone blades there are beads of steatite, shell, carnelian, terracolta and copper, etched variety and of faience. The bangles are of terracotta, sheel and copper, quern stones with mullers and a bone point. Notable among these is a terracotta cart-wheel with single-sided hub. There is also a copper-celt and a few non-descript copper objects, all den- nitely indicating the knowledge of copper.
      Remarkable, however, is the discovery of a ploughed field, situ- ated to the southeast of the settlement outside the town wall.The field showed a grid of furrows, with one set being more closely spaced (30 cm. apart), running east-west and the other being widely spaced (1.90 cm. apart) running north-south. This pattern bears a close resemblance to modern ploughing in the neighbourhood, where types of cereals are grown in the same field. If the field indeed be- longs to this period, it shows the use of the plough and an identical method of sowing two types of grain (of which only those of barley have survived.)
      
Though numerous Harappan sites have been spotted in the Saraswati-Drishadvati valleys, so for only one site is excavated. This has revealed in no uncertain way the typical Harappan features-a fortified citadel together with a city also probably fortified, laid out like a chessboard, with arteial roads and lanes, characteristics pot- tery and other objects of daily and ceremonial uses, such as ornaments, tools and weapons of stone and copper/bronze, toys, weights and seals and a cemetery outside and away from the habitation.