3300 BCE to 1300 BCE.

Public Administration in the Indus-Sarasvati Civilization

“One thing that stands out clear and unmistakable both at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, is that the civilization hitherto revealed at these two places is not an incipient civilization, but one already age-old and stereotyped on Indian soil, with many millennia of human endeavour behind it. Thus India must henceforth be recognized, along with Persia, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, as one of the most important areas where the civilizing processes of society were initiated and developed.”

A civilization was discovered in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent in 1920-21 following the excavations at Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa and by now, almost 1400 settlements of this civilization had been identified so far embracing Baluchistan, the whole of Sindh and Punjab, Gujarat and Rajasthan, a part of the Ganga Basin, banks of the Ghaggar-Hakra River, and the valley of the Narmada River. In terms of contemporary political boundaries, of these 1400 settlements, nearly 925 are in India and 475 are in Pakistan,^[1] covering an area of about 12,50,000 sq. km.^[2] A close look at the distribution pattern of these settlements discloses that about 80% of the sites are located on a vast plain between the Indus and the Ganga, mainly on the bank of the Sarasvati river which become dry around 1500 BCE.^[3] This shifted the epicenter of India’s earliest civilization towards the Saraswati River and its tributaries which flowed between the Indus and the Ganga. Thus, a new nomenclature, ‘Indus-Sarasvati’ or ‘Sindhu–Sarasvati’ civilization has been coined for India’s earliest civilization.^[4]

The Indus-Sarasvati civilization is considered to be the most advanced among all its contemporary civilizations, with highly developed agriculture, architecture, trade and urbanization in addition to advanced pottery and usage of script. The civilization had a well-developed civic organization to look after the arrangements of the cities which included town planning, proper drainage system, maintenance of public halls and baths, other urban infrastructures, and granaries for the upkeep of agricultural production. The presence of numerous seals, uniform scripts, and regulated weights and measures attests that the civilization carried internal as well as external trade with Mesopotamia and Egypt.^[5]

The sustenance of such an advanced civilization must have required a system of public administration or political control to maintain various organizations of cities. There is no clear idea about the public administration of the Indus-Sarasvati civilization since the script of this civilization is yet to be deciphered. But many archaeological features highlight how developed the public administration of the civilization was.

Know the Sources +