Piecing together parts of Harappa history C
i. Cunningham’s confusion- Harappan artifacts were found fairly often during the nineteenth century and some of these reached Cunningham, he did not realise how old these were but unsuccessfully tried to place it within the time-frame of c. sixth century BCE-fourth century CE.
ii. John Marshall`s Ignorance- Marshall tended to excavate along regular horizontal units, measured uniformly throughout the mound, ignoring the stratigraphy of the site. This meant that all the artefacts recovered from the same unit were grouped together, even if they were found at different stratigraphic layers. As a result, valuable information about Harappan civilisation was irretrievably lost.
iii. R.E.M. Wheeler`s problems- R.E.M. Wheeler took over as Director-General of the ASI in 1944, rectified many problems. Wheeler recognized that it was necessary to follow the stratigraphy of the mound rather than dig mechanically along uniform horizontal lines.
iv. Daya Ram SahniSeals- were discovered at Harappa by archaeologists such as Daya Ram Sahni in the early decades of the twentieth century, in layers that were definitely much older than Early Historic levels. It was then that their significance began to be realized.
v. Rakhal Das Banerji- in 1924,John Marshall, Director-General of the ASI, announced the discovery of a new civilization in the Indus valley to the world.
vi. S.N. Roy- As S.N. Roy noted in The Story of Indian Archaeology, “Marshall left India three thousand years older than he had found her.”This was because similar, till-then-unidentified seals were found at excavations at Mesopotamian sites. It was then that the world knew not only of a new civilization interesting results in the future.
