internal trade, Indus Civilization

II.4.3. Internal Trade

Editorial Note [The issue here is simple: What were the possible sources of raw materials of different types at Harappan sites and how did they reach the concerned sites? Scientific provenance studies on the model of R. Law, are no doubt helpful but seldom conclusive, and eventually the ethnographic documentation of the relevant scenario may bring us closer to the truth than we realise.]

h The basic picture of the internal trade of the Harappan Civilisation comes from at least three interrelated lines of investigation. One may begin by drawing up a composite list of raw materials found at various Harappan sites; and this can be done on the basis of the occurrence of these raw materials either in their natural forms or in finished states at these sites. In the next stage, it will be important to identify the areas from where it was geologically feasible for these raw materials to arrive. This will need a familiarity with the relevant geological literature and the preparation of a list of possible source areas on that basis. The various compositional aspects of the naturally occurring ore bodies and the range of their possible relationships with the raw materials used in the different products will play a major role in this regard. However, it may be borne in mind that the correlation of ore bodies and the metals used in the metallic products are never matters of oneto-one equations, and eventually one has to exercise oneís options on the basis of oneís familiarity with the historical knowledge of various interactions between the concerned areas. The third line of investigation is to identify the range of routes by which the raw materials

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and/or products were likely to have reached the sites. A major source of identifying the routes which linked the sites with the relevant source areas is no doubt the distribution of contemporary sites which linked them but the general ethnographic evidence, i.e. the traditional lines of movement between different areas, which can be deduced on the basis of historical or oral documentations, is also useful in this regard. Trade in agricultural commodities will naturally lie outside the picture emerging from the application of these interrelated methods, and to this extent the knowledge of the Harappan internal trade or trade of any period which is unsupported by literature will remain incomplete. In 1992, Nayanjot Lahiri (1992) published a detailed inventory of the raw materials and finished products, which were identified in the excavations of the Mature Harappan sites till the late 1980s. Mohenjodaro and Chanhudaro yielded the largest number of items and the composite list was found to comprise the following: steatite, alabaster, shell, ivory, carnelian, agate, jasper, jade, lapis lazuli, copper-bronze, gold, silver, lead, semi-precious stones and ordinary stones. The last two categories included, in their turn, serpentine, turquoise, amazonite, onyx, topaz, haematite, bloodstone, amethyst, plasma, feldspar, chalcedony, chert, limestone, slate, flint, sandstone, milky quartz, basalt, Jaisalmer stone, tachylite, calcite, diorite etc. Silajit or ìa compact mass of bituminous substance ejected from the crevices of rocks in the lower Himalayas and Nepalî may be added to the Mohenjodaro list. Coral may be added to the Harappa list and emerald occurs at Dher Majra near Rupar in the Punjab Siwaliks. Jade, lead and silver do not occur at Lothal but many other materials are present at this site. Interestingly, most of these

listed items are found in the Early Harappan contexts as well. The list compiled by Lahiri is truly representative of the raw materials and finished products found at different Harappan and Early Harappan sites. Randall Law (2011) has recently published a detailed study of the geological provenances of Harappan rock and mineral assemblage, and although the basic pattern of the siteís interaction with its resource areas has not substantially changed, and although it is possible to question the wisdom of postulating specific phasewise zones of contact on the basis of the available data, the study is an improvement on the early study by Edwin Pascoe on the provenance of various raw materials from Mohenjodaro, because this is based on well-targeted laboratory analyses. However, it is worth noting that laboratory results are seldom conclusive in determining provenance of stones and metals, but on the whole, there can be no quarrel with Lawís opinion that the concerned sources were always likely to be varied. It is not necessary to draw up a full pattern of Harappan internal trade in this context, but it is important to offer a general idea. The Son Miani Bay of Baluchistan and the sea off the coast of Gujarat were likely to be the sources of shell, including its most important type, Turbinella pyrum used for preparing bangles. In view of the fact that Gujarat possesses some shell-processing sites like Nageshwar, Nagwada and Bagasra, Gujarat is likely to be the more important source. Elephants must have been common all over the Harappan distribution area, and, thus, the source of ivory cannot be pinpointed. Coral in its natural state supposedly occurs in Sind and true jade was likely to have come from Chinese Turkestan. Turquoise can be related to the Chagai Hills, Afghanistan and northeast Iran. True lapis could come only from

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Fig. 1. Internal trade newtwork of Harappan civilization (after Lahiri 1992).

Badakhshan, but a partial supply from the Chagai Hills, unless the report of lapis in Chagai is wrong, cannot be ruled out. Virtually all the stones, both semi-precious and ordinary, could originate in one or more of the following areas:

the hilly area from Baluchistan to Jammu and Kashmir, the Kirthar zone, the hills of Himachal Pradesh, the rocky terrains of Gujarat, the Aravallis and their extensions. Silajit has been reported from Baluchistan. All the minerals found

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in the Harappan Civilisationógold, silver, lead, tin, zinc, copper and even iron (cf. Lothal and Ahladino)óhave their sources in the hill zones listed above. There are major deposits of copper and lead in Baluchistan while the Aravallis of Rajasthan and their extensions in Gujarat have plenty of copper, lead and zinc. Some copper exists in the Aravalli extensions in Haryana which also has a major deposit of tin near Tosam. On the whole, it is apparent that the bulk of the internal trade linked the alluvial plains of Sind, Punjab (both Pakistani and Indian), U.P. and parts of Rajasthan with the resource-bearing areas of Gujarat, the Aravallis, the Northwestern Frontier hills and perhaps Jammu and Kashmir. Much has been written in some recent literature on the importance of Oman as a source of copper to the Harappan Civilisation. There is no convincing direct evidence and, above all, it was not necessary for the Harappans to import copper from Oman. The riverine network of the Harappan and the Ghaggar-Hakra were presumably the lifelines of the trade which took care of the movement of bulky goods like grains and miscellaneous items like pottery, timber, salt, textile, etc. Some amount of timber must have come floating down the Punjab rivers from the Himalayas. One is not sure if the salt mines of the Salt range were being worked during this period or the Harappans were dependent mostly on the supply of salt from the Gujarat coast. What is interesting about the Harappan internal trade is that this civilisation was not dependent on long-distance supplies of any basic raw material. It had everything it needed either in the distribution area itself or in its immediate peripheries. Baluchistan and Sind were connected in various ways but most notably with areas across Sind Kohistan to Las Bela and beyond, across the Mula to Kalat, and up the

Kachi Plain to the Bolan Pass and Quetta. The importance of the route from the Bolan Pass to the Indus can be pointed out by drawing attention to its significance right from the case of Shikarpur in the nineteenth century to that of Mohenjodaro in the mid-third millennium BC. Till the nineteenth century, the trade coming down the Bolan Pass used to join the Indus at Shikarpur, acknowledgedly a major trading hub of the period. The point is that the location of Mohenjodaro is near Shikarpur and it is most likely that as a trading entrepot Mohenjodaro served the same function in the mid-third millennium BC as Shikarpur did in the nineteenth century. The case of Harappa (Chakrabarti 2010) is no less interesting. A major early historic route emanated from the area between Delhi and Mathura and went both to Sind and the Northwestern frontier in the area of the Gomal Valley, access to which is from places like Dera Ismail Khan and Dera Ghazi Khan, both located on the Indus and both accessible from Multan. Between Rohtak near Delhi and Abohar and Sirsa near the Ferozepur border with Pakistan, this route passed through Rohtak, Jind, Hansi, Hissar, Abohar and Fazilka. At each of these places there are early historical ruins. The point is that the distribution of Mature Harappan sites in Haryana also falls in this alignment. Beyond Fazilka, Dipalpur is an important trading mart in Pakistan and 28 miles southwest of Dipalpur lies the principal ferry on the Sutlej, Pakpatan or Ajudhan. At Ajudhan, the roads coming from Dera Ghazi Khan and Dera Ismail Khan meet, the one from Dera Ghazi Khan coming through Harappa, among other places, and the one from Dera Ismail Khan coming through Multan. The Montogomery District Gazetteer of 1883-84 is categorical about the importance of Harappa on the route which went to Delhi via Hissar, Hansi,

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etc. Another major communication point in the network of Harappan internal trade was Bahawalpur which maintained in the nineteenth century trading links with Karachi, Bombay, Lahore and Calcutta. Sind was approached from Bahawalpur through Fort Derawar and Marot, and from Bahawalpur, Multan too was easily

approachable. Between Sind and Gujarat, the easiest route was possibly across the islands or bets of the Rann of Kutch. Thus, to understand the Harappan internal trade in its proper historical context one has to focus on the network of routes linking various segments of its distribution zone.

REFERENCES Chakrabarti, Dilip K. 2010. Notes on the Historical Geography of the Pakistani Punjab. Pakistan Heritage 2: 79-84. Lahiri, Nayanjot. 1992. The Archaeology of Indian Trade Routes. Delhi: Oxford University Press

Law, R. 2011. Inter-regional Interaction and Urbanism in the Ancient Indus Valley. A Geologic Provenance Study of Harappan Rock and Mineral Assemblage. Kiyoto: Research Institute for Humanity and Nature. [DKC]