the merchant towns of IVC

[Guest guest]

The original meaning of Pattna is a merchant town. The meaning of a Nagara, as used in South India, is a merchant guild. As such they did not mean the residential colonies, as they mean today.the words Pur or Ur are coined to convey these meanings.

The colonies of Harappa and other IVC towns are basically merchant towns and are not meant to be residential towns. The people continued to live in the rural conglomerations but have built a well planned towns for conducting the trading. The wide roads ,the drainage system and the godowns for the grains show that the towns are meant to be commercial colonies and not merely residential towns.

These towns seem to be under the control of Jain merchants, who have had their colonies in far off lands such as Sumeria. the figure of 'priest' found is actually of a jain merchant. This is precisely the reason why the usual elements of a regular residential town were not found in the IVC towns, such as the elements of State or religion. They seemed to be very slack on defense, whereas the Malwa culture found in few hundreds of kilo meters from these spots was well fortified, even though there was no town living there.

Precisely for this reason again , you might not have found a horse. You will find heavy trucks and tractors in a market yard, not swanky luxury cars. thus, you are likely to find only bullock driven carts, which are meant for transporting merchandise and not light weight chariots, which can not be used for goods transport.

These towns seem to have had a system of slaves, as Kosambi found some evidence for the same and he opined that these slaves must have lived in the small rooms found, next to the big ware houses. These small rooms also must have been used as temporary lodges for the visiting farmers, who used to come with their agri products dumping in these towns.

That a lot of figurines of dancing girls were found in the excavations, it is possible that prostitution was rampant in the town. Once the agri products were sold, the rural farmers would be rich with the money (or the promise of money). He would have used these lodging rooms for hiring a prostitute. Kosambi also conjectures that these rooms are meant for sexual intercourse , though the basis of such intercourse is religion and not prostitution.

Another reason why these towns are seen to be merchant towns is that only the commercial elements of these towns find unchanged continuum in the later cultures. That IVC vanished around 1800 bce makes it very near to the traditional dating of Mauryans (around 1600 bce, just a mere two hundred year later Harappa)

The weight of karshapanas is found intact into the culture of Mauryans. The Harappa has used Sun as the first symbol in the seals just as Mauryans and later cultures did. The concept of merchant towns is very interestingly found in Artha sastra, where Canakya says that it is the responsibility of the State to start and maintain such merchant towns (panya pattanas) He also discusses the system of slaves, which was prevalent in the time of IVC whereas Megasthanese did not find any system of slaves when he has visited India.

I await the comments of the group, regards, Kishore patnaik

[Guest guest]

>

> The colonies of Harappa and other IVC towns are basically merchant

towns and

> are not meant to be residential towns. The people continued to live

in the

> rural conglomerations but have built a well planned towns for

conducting the

> trading. The wide roads ,the drainage system and the godowns for

the grains

> show that the towns are meant to be commercial colonies and not merely

> residential towns.

 

 

http://www.zeenews.com/articles.asp?redirectpage=a & aid=457051 & sid=FTP

 

 

Indus Civilization - a commerce hub

Islamabad, July 22: Scientists have determined that the emerging new

understanding of the Indus Civilization suggests that it might have

been " a powerhouse of commerce and technology in the 3rd millennium BCE. "

 

According to a recent report in the journal Science, though there is

much written about the Indus Civilization, this report is different

because it highlights how our scientific - in this case archaeological

- knowledge on the subject is not only expanding, but changing.

 

Striking new evidence from a host of excavations on both sides of the

tense border that separates India and Pakistan has now definitively

overturned the second-class status given to the Indus Civilization.

 

No longer is the Indus the plain cousin of Egypt and Mesopotamia

during the 3rd millennium BCE.

 

Archaeologists now realize that the Indus dwarfed its grand neighbours

in land area and population, surpassed them in many areas of

engineering and technology, and was an aggressive player during

humanity's first flirtation with globalization 5000 years ago.

 

The old notion that the Indus people were an insular, homogeneous, and

egalitarian bunch is being replaced by a view of a diverse and dynamic

society that stretched from the Arabian Sea to the foothills of the

Himalaya and was eager to do business with peoples from Afghanistan to

Iraq.

 

The Indus people worried enough about the privileges of their elite to

build thick walls to protect them.

 

" This idea that the Indus was dull and monolithic–that's all

nonsense, " said Louis Flam, an archaeologist at the City University of

New York who has worked in Pakistan. " There was a tremendous amount of

variety, " he added.

 

Even well-combed sites have revealed some surprises:

 

While the city of Harappa may be 1000 years older and Mohenjo Daro far

larger than once thought, the dramatic " Buddhist stupa " adorning

Mohenjo Daro's high mound may in fact date back to the Indus heyday

around 2000 BCE.

 

For the first half-century after its discovery, the Indus was

virtually synonymous with Mohenjo Daro and Harappa. No other major

cities were known.

 

But along with 1000 smaller sites, archaeologists now count at least

five major urban areas and a handful of others of substantial size.

 

These sites reveal new facets of Indus life, including signs of

hierarchy and regional differences that suggest a society that was

anything but dull and regimented.

 

Also, one of the most fascinating aspect of the Indus Civilization is

about international trade.

 

While evidence accumulates from Indus cities, other insights are

coming from beyond the region, as artifacts from Central Asia, Iraq,

and Afghanistan show the long arm of Indus trade networks.

 

ANI