Dholavira- The zenith of Harappan town planning!

Haldilal

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Dholavria an ancient remains of our history ?

An ancient painting found on the walls have military to the Shiva statue , many more similarity have found in dholavria , Shiva Linga found from Harappa and Kalibangan which are very similar to the Shiva Lingas worshiped today .
 

BangaliBabu

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People make the mistake of calling Dholavira a Harappan CITY. It's not a city, it's a PORT CITY and has no connection what so ever with the prosperous townships of Harappa and Mohenjo Daro.

Consider this city as exclusively for administrative officials with civilians/porters/slaves/others working in harbour during those times when the Great Rann of Kutch was a vast shallow sea.

There is no GRANARY in Dholavira..... one single point sticking out on why it's not just any regular Harappan township.
 

BangaliBabu

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Dholavria an ancient remains of our history ?

An ancient painting found on the walls have military to the Shiva statue , many more similarity have found in dholavria , Shiva Linga found from Harappa and Kalibangan which are very similar to the Shiva Lingas worshiped today .
Bunkum in the context of Dholavira.
 

Haldilal

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People make the mistake of calling Dholavira a Harappan CITY. It's not a city, it's a PORT CITY and has no connection what so ever with the prosperous townships of Harappa and Mohenjo Daro.

Consider this city as exclusively for administrative officials with civilians/porters/slaves/others working in harbour during those times when the Great Rann of Kutch was a vast shallow sea.

There is no GRANARY in Dholavira..... one single point sticking out on why it's not just any regular Harappan township.
130 acres within the walled city and more areas under the city outside the walls and still not a proper city ? Which weed are you smoking , perhaps a hight quality Afghan .
 

BangaliBabu

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130 acres within the walled city and more areas under the city outside the walls and still not a proper city ? Which weed are you smoking , perhaps a hight quality Afghan .
you have comprehension problems, sorry. Read again.....
 

asaffronladoftherisingsun

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DHOLAVIRA, a civilization hub ::: -- TS Subramanian (Photos: D. Krishnan) ::

is the Harappan hub.




A stone masonry reservoir.



Residential quarters in the citadel area.




Middle town with perfectly aligned streets, intersecting at right angles.



Lower town. Street lined with houses.




A bathroom in one of the houses in the middle town with limestone slabs for flooring and covered drains to let out water.



Jamalbhai R. Makwana and Ravjibhai Solanki. Both are guides at the site and have taken part in the Dholavira excavation.



Remains of circular huts in the citadel built in post-Harappan period



Broad northern gate. Has a flight of steps leading to the citadel. In the background is the bigger of the two stadia.

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To be continued.
 

asaffronladoftherisingsun

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Continued from[] https://defenceforumindia.com/threa...-of-harappan-town-planning.76253/post-2011590


The two 'sthambs' or pillars, which are claimed to resemble Sivalingas, in the citadel.





At the site museum in DHOLAVIRA, pots unearthed during the excavation.





A chessboard (on the stone slab at right) and an architectural member that resembles a SHIVA LINGAM.





A grinding stone at the site museum.





The three-metre-long signboard, with 10 Indus Writing glyphs, which was mounted above the northern gate of the citadel.





A rock-cut reservoir. Dholavira was encircled with such resevoirs.





Open drain for ferrying surplus water from them to reservoirs on the western side.





Veteran archaeologist Ravindra Singh Bisht receiving the Padma Shri from President Pranab Mukherjee at the Rashtrapati Bhavan on April 5, 2013.





The bigger of the two stadia, with the ruins of the terraced stand for spectators.





A covered drain and its mouth in front of the eastern fortification wall with its gate. This small stormwater drain let rain water into the eastern reservoir situated in front.





The fortification wall of the citadel on the northern side. Note how the wall slopes towards the top as in walls in other Harappan sites, to give it life and strength.





The entrance to the middle town.





A rock-cut well in the citadel from which was manually drawn and taken by an underground drain to a storage tnk (in the background, at left), from which it was ferried by another drain to the bathing place (in the background, at right). A great bath.





The eastern gate in the fortification wall of the citadel, with a flight of steps leading upto the citadel.





The layout of Dholavira.





The eastern reservoir, with a flight of steps into it. It has a rock-cut stepped well inside (not seen in the picture).





A man-made channel, around two metres deep, to harvest rain water snakes through the citadel. It has filtration points to ensure that the water is clean.



The ruins of fairly large houses in the citadel, seen on the left.

To be continued.
 

asaffronladoftherisingsun

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Continued from Part 1 and Part 2 [] https://defenceforumindia.com/threa...-of-harappan-town-planning.76253/post-2011590 and https://defenceforumindia.com/threa...-of-harappan-town-planning.76253/post-2011608 and https://defenceforumindia.com/threa...-of-harappan-town-planning.76253/post-2011617

The finds in DHOLAVIRA in Gujarat's Kutch district, unlike elsewhere, throw light on the rise and fall of the SINDHU SARASVATI civilisation in its entirety and in the correct sequence. By T.S. SUBRAMANIAN recently in Dholavira. Photographs by D. KRISHNAN.


“Your should visit Dholavira. The site adds a new dimension to the personality of the Indus civilisation,” Ravindra Singh Bisht, former Additional Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), had told me in 2010. Dholavira in Gujarat is among the five biggest Harappan sites, the others being Mohenjo-Daro, Harappa, Ganweriwala (all three in Pakistan) and Rakhigarhi in Haryana, India.


Professor Bisht had led 13 seasons of excavation at Dholavira from 1990 to 2005 and had revealed to the world the grandeur of the Harappan site and its futuristic water-harvesting techniques. “The efficient system the Harappans of Dholavira developed for conservation, harvesting and storage of water speaks of their advanced hydraulic engineering, given the state of technology in the third millennium BCE,” he had said.
Dholavira today is a small village in Bhachau taluk, Kutch district, and is situated in a corner of an island called Khadir in the Great Rann of Kutch. Its Harappan story began circa 3000 BCE and ended around 1500 BCE. Its genesis, growth, development, decay and collapse spanned seven stages in those 1,500 years. “It means we found the nascent, childhood, adolescent, ageing and, finally, de-urbanisation stages of the Indus civilisation there. That is why I call it the rise and fall of the Indus civilisation. This has been found elsewhere, but the sequence in its entirety is found at Dholavira, in the stratified debris in the castle, which witnessed the vicissitudes spread over 1,500 years,” Bisht had said (Frontline, June 18, 2010).

Journey to Dholavira :

After spending two days at Khirsara, a Harappan site in western Kutch, where an ASI-led excavation was under way (Frontline, June 28), we set out for Dholavira on a hot April 20 afternoon. Our destination was 340 kilometres away. As the car crossed Bhuj, 85 km from Khirsara, rain clouds and gusty winds eclipsed the blazing sun. Spells of rain greeted us as we crossed over to Rapar town, 100 km from Dholavira. On either side of the road were endless stretches of mesquite bushes. The few villages on the route were drowned in darkness owing to power failures after the rain. The car sped through the famed Great Rann of Kutch, that vast, featureless expanse.


Some 11 km to Dholavira, the driver insisted that we halt for the night because the roads ahead were rain-ravaged. We rang up Gautam Chauhan, Senior Conservation Assistant, ASI, Dholavira, and he advised us to go back to Rapar and stay in one of the lodges there. We spent the night on the hard kitchen floor of a “guest house” of the Gujarat State Electricity Corporation, on the way back to Rapar. The guest house was in fact a “control” station, situated right in the middle of the Rann of Kutch. It was a sleepless night, with the cold wind from the Rann blowing through the kitchen windows.

Early next morning, we went straight to the Dholavira site, for the photographs had to be taken before the sun got harsh. Waiting for us at the site museum were Ravjibhai Solanki and Jemalbhai R. Makwana, who had taken part in the excavation and were assigned to guide us.

“The local name of the site is Kotada,” Solanki told us by way of introduction. The entire site was spread over 100 hectares, with the built-up area occupying half that, he said. Solanki sketched the site on the ground with a twig for our benefit.

The layout of the excavated city consists of a citadel which can be divided into a “castle” and a “bailey”, a middle town and a lower town (where the traders and artisans lived), two stadia (one big and one small), servants’ quarters (also called annexe) and the reservoirs. They were set within an enormous fortification wall. Sixteen reservoirs, some rock-cut, formed a garland around the site. Several of them were inter-linked, allowing surplus water to flow from one to another.

As we walked a few hundred metres to the mound of the excavated site, we were greeted by the citadel’s towering fortification wall. (The citadel was the seat of authority as the ruling elite lived there.) The wall, built of partly dressed sandstone blocks, rose steeply but sloped towards the top as fortification walls in Harappan sites do. The wall with its eastern gate and a steep flight of steps inside the citadel proper signalled the grandeur that marked this Indus Valley Civilisation site more than 4,600 years ago.

What gave us an insight into Dholavira’s amazing water-harvesting system was a big reservoir on the eastern side, in front of the eastern gate, that was 79 metres long, 74 m broad and 10 m deep. It could hold 2,00,000 cubic metres of water, Makwana said. It had a beautiful rock-cut, stepped well, too. The city itself lay between the seasonal rivulets of Mansar and Manhar. The Dholavirans had built check dams on these nullahs, and water from these dams was let into the reservoirs too.

The ASI website on Dholavira says, “The citadel has yielded an intricate network of storm water drains, all connected to an arterial one and furnished with slopes, steps, cascades, manholes (air ducts/ water relief ducts), paved flooring and capstones. The main drains were high enough for a tall man to walk through easily. The rain water collected through these drains was stored in yet another reservoir that was carved out in the western half of the bailey. Besides, city has yielded toilets, sullage jars, or sanitary pits. Drains have shown a good variety.” They, it adds, included even pottery pipes.


R.N. Kumaran, Assistant Archaeologist, ASI, who took part in the excavations at Dholavira in the 2001-03 and 2008-09 seasons, said: “Dholavira had the first rock-cut reservoir in the world. The Dholavirans harvested every drop of water and sent it to the reservoirs. The site is ringed by a series of 16 reservoirs, which were built on the eastern, southern and western sides, and they were inter-linked. In several reservoirs, stone masonry was used. The reservoirs had a flight of steps [for people to go down and fetch water when the water level went down]. On the southern side, the reservoirs were rock-cut. These rock-cut reservoirs were inter-linked and had distillation chambers [to provide pure water]. They had channels to divert the overflowing water.” The rock-cut stepped well found in the eastern reservoir was built during the early phase of Dholavira’s development, Kumaran said. It was only 4,000 years later–during the medieval period–that the rulers of Gujarat took to building ornate, stepped wells again.


A steep flight of steps at the eastern gate led to the citadel proper. Inside the citadel was another rock-cut well with a platform for drawing water manually, a drain with filtering chambers to ferry this water to a tank, and a drain from the tank to a “hamam”, where the elite took bath. If this rock-cut well and the “hamam” represented the mature phase of Dholavira’s development, what mirrored its collapse were the ruins of circular huts with postholes, that residents of the late-Harappan phase had built. Two in situ“sthambs”, which looked like Sivalingas, stood near by.



Bisht said Dholavira’s fame rested on several counts. These included its long cultural sequence documenting the rise and fall of the Indus civilisation over a period of 1,500 years, its meticulous town planning with mathematical precision, its monumental architecture, its water management system, its stadia with terraced gallery for spectators, its sepulchral architecture in the form of spoked wheels and symbolic burials, and the discovery of a sandstone quarry, about 9 km away. Sandstone was mined and cut here and transported to DHOLAVIRA to build the reservoirs, fortification walls and residential quarters in the citadel, the middle town and the lower town.


Among the 1,500 Harappan sites found in India, pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, DHOLAVIRA has yielded the longest inscription, comprising 10 large-sized Indus signs, embedded on a three-metre-long board. This board was strategically positioned above the northern gate to the citadel. The ten letters, each 37 cm in height, were made of baked gypsum and they shone at night. But there is no knowing what the sign says because the Indus script has not been deciphered yet. It could stand for the name of the city or a king or it could just mean “welcome”. An equally important discovery was a sandstone block carved with four big Indus signs.

Of the two stadia, the bigger one, 305 m in length and 49 m in width, was in all likelihood a multi-purpose stadium, used for royal ceremonies, trade fairs, wrestling competitions and so on. The ruins of its terraced stands for spectators are a reminder of Dholavira’s glorious past. This playground was mud-plastered, with layers in different colours. Solanki scratched the track to show us white, pink and yellow-coloured layers! There was a drainage system in the stadium—it is still in a remarkably good condition even now—to prevent water from stagnating in the playground during the rainy season.


To be continued.
 
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asaffronladoftherisingsun

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Continued from Part 1 Part 2 and Part 3 [] https://defenceforumindia.com/threa...-of-harappan-town-planning.76253/post-2011590 and https://defenceforumindia.com/threa...-of-harappan-town-planning.76253/post-2011608

Seven stages of DHOLAVIRA :


Kumaran divides the seven stages of DHOLAVIRA’s rise, fall and collapse into pre-Harappan, mature Harappan, late Harappan and post-Happaran. If the elite of Dholavira, during its mature phase, lived in stone-built houses with inter-connected rooms, verandahs and sullage facilities, the post-Harappans, after Dholavira’s collapse, lived in jerry-built circular huts, made of wattle and daub, in the citadel. “The tradition of building circular huts continues to this day in Dholavira,” said Kumaran.


The first settlement, built during the first stage which began circa 3000 BCE, included a strong fortress (Frontline, June 18, 2010). In the second stage, the settlement expanded northwards. Although an earthquake struck the settlement between the end of stage II and the beginning of stage III, the most creative phase belonged to stage III, from circa 2850 BCE to 2500 BCE. During this phase, the fortress expanded into a castle and another fortified area called “bailey” came up adjacent to it. The castle and the bailey together formed the citadel. The two stadia came up to the north of the citadel and the Dholavirans built reservoirs on the east, south and west of the citadel.

Middle town, with quarters to house artisans and traders, has perfectly aligned streets and houses built to a plan at an elevated level. The houses have verandahs, inter-connected rooms and bathrooms with sloping limestone slabs for the water to flow into covered drains that extended into the streets.
In a few places, collapsed structures serve as reminders of an earthquake that struck during stage III. When the city burgeoned again, the lower town was built. Seals without the Harappan script and painted pottery, belonging to this period, have been found.

The Harappan culture at DHOLAVIRA reached its peak during stage IV, which began circa 2500 BCE and lasted for about five centuries. Several massive gates were built into the fortification wall. The board with the ten Indus signs belongs to this period. Classical Harappan elements such as pottery, seals, beads, and items made of gold, silver, copper, ivory, shell, faience, steatite, clay and stones from this period were found in abundance during excavations, according to Bisht. Stage IV extended into stage V. This phase was creatively active, going by excavations that have yielded a bonanza of seals, sealings, tablets, pottery, weights, shell-bangles, stone-ware, copper objects, beads and so on.

At the end of stage V, which was around 2000 BCE, the Harappans abandoned the settlement for several decades. When stage VI began, the Harappans returned to occupy it but they lived only in the citadel and at the edge of the middle town. The city was reduced to the size of a town. The Harappans lived there for about a hundred years, after which they deserted it for a few centuries. Those who belonged to stage VII lived in circular huts in the citadel for a few decades before they abandoned the site for good around 1500 BCE.
In the assessment of Bisht, “Dholavira was a great commercial centre, a great manufacturing centre”; raw materials were brought from Gujarat and southern Rajasthan and converted into finished goods there. These finished products, such as beads made of semi-precious stones, were marketed in other Harappan cities and towns.

Dholavira was “a great centre for making shell products, copper items, beads of semi-precious stones … there is evidence to show that Mesopotamia [modern-day Iraq] imported timber from Meluha, which has been identified as a Harappan area,” Bisht said. Different kinds of shank products—such as jewellery, small medals and souvenirs—and cosmetics were made at Dholavira. “A great amount of inlays” manufactured at Dholavira were unearthed during the excavations there. A variety of shells, which the Harappans at Dholavira used to convert into bangles and tools and so on, were available in the Gulf of Kutch. The Harappans of Dholavira procured raw materials for making shell products from the Gulf of Kutch, Bisht said. They made different varieties of aromatic gums and marketed them in other Harappan towns and even in Mesopotamia.

“So Dholavira must have been a great political centre, a commercial centre, and, of course, a manufacturing centre. It must have been a great hub,” asserted Bisht.

To be continued.
 

asaffronladoftherisingsun

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Continued from Part 1 Part 2 and Part 3 and Part 4 [] https://defenceforumindia.com/threa...-of-harappan-town-planning.76253/post-2011590 and https://defenceforumindia.com/threa...-of-harappan-town-planning.76253/post-2011608 and https://defenceforumindia.com/threa...-of-harappan-town-planning.76253/post-2011617 and https://defenceforumindia.com/threa...-of-harappan-town-planning.76253/post-2011622 Part 5th is concluding in this post.


DHOLAVIRA was also administratively controlling the entire Kutch because a powerful king or a group must have ruled from there. “Whatever the administrative structure, whether it was hierarchical or republican, or a monarchy or an oligarchy, Dholavira must have been a great centre of authority,” he added. The entire Kutch and part of Saurashtra came under its administrative control. “Lothal [Gujarat] was possibly under its influence.” About 10,000 people could have lived in Dholavira. Bisht said there were several Harappan cities like Dholavira which lasted a long time. For instance, “Harappa had a long life.” Harappa faced a problem when the water table shot up, and “a major part of the city now lies buried under the water table”.


Asked how Dholavira marketed its products in other far-away Harappan centres because no dockyard such as the one found at Lothal, has been discovered at Dholavira, Bisht replied, “Even if there is no dockyard of the kind found at Lothal, the entire Rann of Kutch was then a navigable sheet of water, which was connected to the Arabian Sea in the west and the Gulf of Kutch in the east. It was connected to the Arabian Sea in the west by the Khori Creek, where one of the tributaries of the SINDHU also met.”

K.C. Nauriyal, who was Superintending Archaeologist, Vadodara Circle (now he is with the ASI headquarters in Delhi), ASI, who was site-in-charge for several seasons of excavations at Dholavira, said: “The Rann of Kutch at that point of time must have been navigable and ships must have been able to reach Khadir. It was not necessary that there must have been a formal dockyard at Dholavira. Dhows and boats could have been stationed at the mooring point. There was brisk trade by sea and land. There was a high degree of mobility among the people of the surrounding sites. The bigger sites were helping the satellite sites. All of them were production centres, and goods were being exchanged. There was long-distance and short-distance trade. Ships could have come to Dholavira.”

Bisht was non-committal when asked if the two “sthambs” found at the Dholavira site and the phallus-like stone artefacts excavated there but kept in Purana Qila, New Delhi, looked like SHIVALINGAS.
Nauriyal said, separately: “They definitely resemble male organs. What the concept was, it is difficult to comment. Whether they were used for worship, magic, ritual or as a good omen, we do not know.”
On what led to the collapse of Dholavira, Nauriyal said: “The snap in the trade relationship with foreign countries, possibly.” It was largely maritime trade. Goods could not be traded any more. “There must have been a host of factors and the economic factor must have been one of them,” he said.
 

asaffronladoftherisingsun

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The metrology behind Harappan town-planning -- Michel Danino

How were DHOLAVIRA’s town planners able to impose such a set of precise ratios and dimensions on the ground?

Michel Danino
Indology | 28-05-2018

Abstract
The existence and use of Harappan linear units have remained a riddle. Harappan town planning, in particular, has not so far been known to have used precise units, although it displays elaborate geometry. This article proposes that the site of Dholavira, in the Rann of Kachchh, enables us to calculate a possible linear unit used to lay out the fortifications. This unit, which works out to 1.9 m, is then related to a proposed Harappan angula of 1.76 cm, with a factor of 108 between the two, as indicated in later classical literature. Besides other Harappan sites, independent research at early historical and historical sites and structures- e.g., Taxila, Shishupalgarh, Thimi and the Delhi Iron Pillar is quoted as confirmation of the proposed system an important case of continuity between India’s two urbanizations.

Dholavira’s Plan and Proportions
Dholavira (23°53’10″N, 70°13′ E) is probably the most spectacular Harappan site to be seen after Mohenjo-Daro, and, at 48 hectares, the second largest in India (after Rakhigarhi in Haryana). Discovered by the late Jagat Pati Joshi in the 1960s on the Khadir Island of the Rann of Kachchh, it was excavated in the 1990s under the direction of R.S. Bisht of the Archaeological Survey of lndia. The Harappans’ motivations in setting up this large city in such a harsh and forbidding environment must have been intimately related to access to raw materials, craft production and trade. There is evidence that the Rann of Kachchh was navigable in Harappan times, which would have given Dholavira access to the sea.[1] As a regional capital Dholavira must have exerted a measure of control over the hundreds of smaller Harappan sites dotting Kachchh, Saurashtra and mainland Gujarat. It flourished during the Mature Harappan phase, that is, between 2600 and 1900 BCE. Even if the climate might have been slightly more congenial than it is today, the establishment of such a city in this location is a feat of planning, engineering, labour control and execution, especially in the field of water harvesting and management: Dholavira’s colossal water structures, covering some 17 hectares and often interconnected through underground drains, were the sine qua non of the city’s survival through the year.
Like most Harappan sites, Dholavira followed a strict plan, but one of its kind with multiple enclosures. While Harappan town-planning is often based on an acropolis I lower town duality (as at Mohenjo-Daro and Kalibangan), Dholavira’s plan (Fig. 1) is triple: an acropolis or upper town consisting of a massive “castle” located on the city’s high point and an adjacent “bailey”; a middle town, separated from the acropolis by a huge ceremonial ground; and a lower town, part of which was occupied by a series of reservoirs. (Terms such as “castle”, “bailey”, etc., are those of the excavator.)
The Metrology behind Harappan Town Planning - 01

Fig. 1. Plan of Dholavira (adapted from Bisht 1999).

A mere look at the plan suggests a complex conceptual background. Can we make some sense of the concepts and rules Dholavira’s urban architects followed? To do so, we need to study the dimensions of the various fortifications, which were precisely measured by the ASI team. Table 1 summarizes them,[2] with a maximum margin of error of 0.5%.[3] Importantly, the three longest dimensions have since been confirmed by GPS readings.[4]

It became immediately clear to the excavator that these dimensions obeyed precise ratios or proportions. Bisht highlighted some of them as follows (I have added in parentheses the margins of error calculated on the basis of Table 1 and rounded off to the first decimal):
  1. The city’s length (east-west axis) and width (north south) are in a ratio of 5:4 or 1.25 (0.0%, a perfect match).
  2. The “castle” also reflects the city’s ratio of 5:4 (0.9% inner, 2.4% outer).
  3. The “bailey” is square (ratio 1:1).
  4. The middle town’s length and breadth are in a ratio of 7:6 (0.5%).
  5. The ceremonial ground’s proportions are 6:1 (0.7%).
All but one ratios are verified within 1%, an excellent agreement considering the irregularities of the terrain. In two papers,[5] I worked out a few other important ratios at work in Dholavira, some of which would have been chosen by the town-planners in order to define the whole city geometrically, others following as consequences of those initial choices. The principal ratios are summarized in Table 2 and Fig. 2. Not only are the margins of error very small, but the repetition of ratios 5:4 and 9:4 cannot be accidental.
Fig. 2. Main ratios at work in Dholavira’s plan




Dholavira’s Master Unit of Length
How were Dholavira’s town planners able to impose such a set of precise ratios and dimensions on the ground? Two assumptions appear reasonable at this stage: (1) they must have used a standard of length; (2) they chose integral (or whole) multiples of this standard for as many of the main dimensions as possible. I propose that there is a simple way to calculate the main linear unit used at Dholavira.
Let us call it “D” for Dholavira. Elsewhere,[6] I used a simple procedure to calculate the largest possible value of D that will result in most of the city’s dimensions being expressed as integral multiples of D. The procedure, briefly put, consists in algebraically expressing the smallest dimension in our scheme (i.e., the average width of the castle’s western and eastern fortifications) as a multiple of the unknown unit D ( or nD, n being an integer); then, using all available ratios, to express all larger dimensions in terms of nD. We find, of course, that a few dimensions are not integral but fractional expressions of nD. To make those fractions disappear, we choose “n” as the least common multiple of their denominators. It turns out that with n = 10, all fractional results disappear, except one. Going back to our initial formula, the width of the castle’s western and eastern fortifications, which we expressed as nD, is now 10 D. Bringing into play the proportions listed above, we can express all but one dimensions as multiples of D. Fig. 3 summarizes the findings.
We now only need to determine the value of D, which is simply derived from the city’s length: if771.1 m = 405 D, then D = 1.904 m or 190.4 cm, which we may round off to 1.9m.
Fig. 3: Dholavira’s main dimensions expressed in terms ofdhanus, Dholavira’s master unit of length.

Starting from this value and calculating the theoretical dimensions backward using Fig. 3, we can compare them with the actual dimensions. Table 3 lists the results, as well as the margins of error between theoretical and actual dimensions. The latter are remarkably modest, 0.6% on average (the highest being, again, in the outer dimensions of the “castle”). These almost perfect matches appear to rule out the play of chance.


Ratios in Harappan SINDHU SARASVATI Settlements :
For whatever reasons, Harappans clearly preferred certain fixed ratios to random proportions. This is visible not just at Dholavira but at other Mature Harappan sites, as the following selective list shows (in increasing order):
* Ratio 7:6, the ratio of Dholavira’s middle town, is found in the dimensions of the “assembly hall”, also called “pillared hall”, on the southern part of Mohenjo-Daro’s acropolis, which measures “approximately 23 by 27 metres.[7]
* Ratio 5:4, Dholavira’s prime ratio, is found elsewhere in Gujarat at Lothal, whose overall dimensions are 280 x 225 m,[8] and Juni Kuran Gust forty kilometres away from Dholavira in Kachchh), whose acropolis measures 92 x 72 m,[9] which approximates 5:4 by 2.2%. It is also reflected in Harappa’s “granary”[10] of 51:2 ~40.8 m (wit~ a precision of 0.3%) and in a major building of Mohenjo-Daro’s HR area[11]measuring 18.9 x 15.2 m (0.5%). Ratio 5:4 is repeated in other ways. At Dholavira, for instance, there are 5 salients on the northern side of the middle town’s fortification, against 4 on 1ts eastern and western sides (if we include the corner salients, their numbers grow to 7 and 6, which reflect the middle town’s ratio). Returning to Mohenjo-Daro’s “pillared hall”, it had four rows of five pillars each.[12] It is quite intriguing that this hall, in its dimensions (7:6) as well as rows of pillars (5:4), should reflect Dholavira’s two key ratios!
* Ratio 4:3 is visible in Mohenjo-Daro’s “granary” (also called “warehouse”): this structure is composed of 27 brick platforms (in 3 rows of 9); while all platforms are 4.5 m wide (in an east-west direction), their length (in a north-west direction) is 8 m for the first row, 4.5 m for the central row, and 6 m for the third row.[13] It is singular that both pairs (8, 6) and (6, 4.5) precisely reflect the ratio 4: 3.
* Ratio 3:2 is the overall ratio of Kalibangan’s lower town (approximate dimensions 360 x 240 m),[14] as well as of a sacrificial pit (1.50 x 1 m).[15] It is also the ratio of three reservoirs at Dholavira: one in the “castle” measuring 4.35 x 2.95 m,[16] and two larger ones to the south of the castle.[17] We find it again (within 1%) at Mohenjo-Daro in the overall platform of the “granary” which measures 50 x 33 m.[18]
* Ratio 2: 1 is that of Dholavira’s acropolis (“castle” and “bailey” together); it is also found at Mohenjo-Daro[19] (whose acropolis rests on a huge brick platform measuring 400 x 200m), Kalibangan[20] (acropolis of 120 x 240m) and Surkotada[21] (overall dimensions 130 x 65 m).
* Ratio 9:4, apart from its double presence at Dholavira is found at Mohenjo-Daro’s long building located just north of the Great Bath, called ‘”block 6″ and measuring approximately 56.4 x 25 m,[22] thus within 0.3%.
*Ratio 7:3 is found at Harappa’s mound AB in “14 symmetrically arranged small houses”,[23] each measuring 17.06 x 7.31 m (nil margin).
Fig. 4: A view of Dholavira’s eastern reservoir (author’s photo).


* Ratio 5:2 is that of Dholavira’s colossal eastern reservoir[24] (73 .5 x 29.3 m, thus with a margin of 0.3%), Fig. 4. It is also reflected, with the same high precision, in 12 rooms of Harappa’s “granary”, each measuring 15.2×6.1 m.[25]
* Ratio 11:4 is that of the secondary rock-cut reservoir “SR3”[26] found to the south of the Dholavira’s “castle”, 15.5 x 5.65 m, with a high degree of precision (0.2%), Fig. 5.
* Ratio 3:1 is found at Mohenjo-Daro’s “college” whose average dimensions are 70.3 x 23.9 m.[27]
Fig. 5: A view of Dholavira’s SR3 southern reservoir (author’s photo).


* Ratio 7:2 is that of Dholavira’s primary rock-cut reservoir “SR3”[28] mentioned above (33.4 x 9.45 m, thus with a margin of 1%), Fig. 5.
* Ratio 6:1 is reflected not just in Dholavira’s ceremonial ground but in Lothal’s dockyard[29] (average dimensions 216.6 x 36.6 m).
The above few examples are summarized (with a few more) in Fig. 6. In probabilistic terms, while lower ratios (such as 7:6) could be rejected as a rough approximation of 1 and therefore of no particular significance, the higher we rise in the scale and the less tenable such an explanation will be: the intentional use of specific proportions is indisputable and has not attracted sufficient attention so far. Harappan architects and builders did not believe in haphazard constructions, but followed precise canons of aesthetics based on specific proportions.
We can also see that Dholavira’s ratios are not exclusive to this site but are part of a broader Harappan tradition of town planning and architecture, whose conceptual foundations remain poorly understood.


Fig. 6: A sampling of ratios found at a few Harappan sites (on a linear scale), generally with a high degree of
precision.

Notes
[1] Michel Danino, The Lost River: On the Trail of the Sarasvati, Penguin Books, New Delhi, 2010, p. 165 and references cited.
[2] R.S. Bisht, “Dholavira Excavations: 1990-94”, Facets of Indian Civilization: Essays in Honour of Prof B.B. Lal, ed. J.P. Joshi, Aryan Books International, New Delhi, 1997, val. I, pp.107-120; “Dholavira and Banawali: Two Different Paradigms of the Harappan Urbis Forma”, Puratattva 1999, 29: 14-37; “Urban Planning at Dholavira: a Harappan City”, in Ancient Cities, Sacred Skies: Cosmic Geometries and City Planning in Ancient India, eds. J. McKim Mal ville & Lalit M. Gujral, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts & Aryan Books International, New Delhi, 2000, pp. 11-23.
[3] R.S. Bisht, “Urban Planning at Dholavira: a Harappan City”, op. cit.,p. 18.
[4] Michel Danino, “Further Research into Harappan Metrology at Dholavira”, Man and Environment, val. XXXV, no. 2, 2010 (in press).
[5] Michel Danino, “Dholavira’s Geometry: a Preliminary Study”, Puratattva 2005, 35: 76-84; “Unravelling Dholavira’s Geometry”, in Rama VTjayam: Recent Researches in Archaeology, History and Culture (Festschrift to Prof K. V. Raman), P. Chenna Reddy, ed., Agam Kala Prakashan, Delhi, 2010, pp. 179-193.
[6] Michel Danino, “Unravelling Dholavira’s Geometry”, op. cit.
[7] Gregory L. Possehl, The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective, AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, 2002; reprint Vistaar Publications, New Delhi, 2003, p. 194.
[8] B.B. Lal, The Earliest Civilization of South Asia, New Delhi: Aryan Books International, 1997, p. 129.
[9] Dilip K. Chakrabarti, The Oxford Companion to Indian Archaeology: The Archaeological Foundations of Ancient India, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2006,p.166.
[10] Ernest Mackay, Early Indus Civilization: Ancient Cities of the Indus Plains, 2nd ed., 1948, repr. Eastern Book House, Patna, 1989,p.45.
[11] Madhukar K. Dhavalikar & Shubhangana Atre, “The Fire Cult and Virgin Sacrifice: Some Harappan Rituals” in Old Problems and New Perspectives in the Archaeology of South Asia, ed. Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin, 1989,pp. 195-97.
[12] Michael Jansen, “Mohenjo-Daro: architecture et urbanisme”, Les cites oubliees de /’Indus: Archeologie du Pakistan, Jean-Francois Jarrige, ed., Association francaise d’action artistique & Musee national des Arts asiatiques Guimet, Paris, 1988,p. 137.
[13] Michael Jansen, “Architectural Problems of the Harappa Culture,” South Asian Archaeology 1977, ed. Maurizio Taddei (Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale, Seminario di Studi Asiatici, 1979), vol. 1,p. 420.
[14] B.B. Lal, India 1947-1997: New Light on the Indus Civilization, Aryan Books International, NewDelhi, 1998, p.l19.
[15] Ibid.,p.96.
[16] Ibid.,p.43.
[17] Michel Danino, “Further Research into Harappan Metrology at Dholavira”, op. cit.
[18] Michael Jansen, “Architectural Problems of the Harappa Culture”,op. cit.,p. 420.
[19] Michael Jansen, “Mohenj o-daro: architecture eturbanisme”,op. cit. ,p.134.
[20] B.B. Lal, The Earliest Civilization of South Asia, op. cit., p. 122.
[21] Ibid.,p.135.
[22] E.J.H. Mackay, Further Excavations at Mohenjo-Daro, Delhi: Government of India, 1938; Republished New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1998, vol.1,p.17.
[23] Dilip K. Chakrabarti, The Oxford Companion to Indian Archaeology, op. cit.,p.156.
[24] Michel Danino, “Further Research into Harappan Metrology at Dholavira”, op. cit.
[25] Jonathan Mark Kenoyer,Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization , Oxford University Press & American Institute of Pakistan Studies, Karachi & Islamabad, 1998, p. 64.
[26] Ibid.
[27] E.J.H. Mackay, Further Excavations at Mohenjo-Daro, op.cit.,p.10.
[28] Ibid.
[29] S.R.Rao, Lothal, a Harappan Port Town (1955-62), Archaeological Survey of India, New Delhi, 1979, vol. 1, p. 123.

Dimensions in harappan SARASVATI SINDHU Settlements
Ratios apart, we come across many dimensions of structures in Harappan settlements that can be expressed as integral multiples of our proposed Dholavira unit D = 1.9 m. A few examples are below in Table 4, while Fig. 7 illustrates the case of Mohenjo-Daro’s acropolis.
While every single dimension cannot be expected to be a whole multiple of D, it is striking enough that so many should turn out to be. This makes a strong case for Dholavira’s unit to have been one of the standards in the Harappan world, at least as far as town planning and architecture are concerned.

The Metrology behind Harappan Town Planning - 004
Table 4: Dimensions at various Harappan sites precisely expressed as integral multiples of D = 1.9 m. (The margin of error is included only if the published dimensions are judged precise enough).http://indiafacts.org/tthe-metrology-behind-harappan-town-planning-2/#_edn1,[ii],[iii],[iv],[v],[vi],[vii], [viii]
The Metrology behind Harappan Town Planning - 07

Fig. 7 Mohenjo-daro’s acropolis: a few ratios and dimensions expressed in terms of Dholavira’s
unit D = 1.9 m.

Dholavira’s Dhanus and Angula :
A unit does not exist singly: it is always part of a system. D = 1.9 m is a large unit and must have had subunits. In an attempt to figure them out, let us turn to divisions on the three known Harappan scales: those of Mohenjo-Daro (6.7056 mm), Harappa (9.34 mm),[ix] and Lothal (1.77 mm). The last is evidenced on an ivory scale found at Lothal, which has 27 graduations covering 46 mm. (Both S. R. Rao[x] and V.B. Mainkar erred in dividing 46mm by 27, when the length must of course be divided by the 26 divisions formed by the 27graduations).
Dividing D by the first two units yields no clear result. Dividing it by the Lothal unit (1904 by1. 77), we get 107 5. 7, or, with an approximation of 0.4%, 1080. This last number can be written 108 x 10.In other words, D can be expressed as 1 08 times 1. 77cm.
Let us pursue this line of inquiry: what is so special about 1.77 cm? First, let us remember that the values of the traditional digit in the ancient world, be it in Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, Greece, Japan or the Roman Empire, fluctuated between 1.6 and 1.9 cm.[xi] Ten times the Lothal unit falls in that range. Then, the Arthashastra defines a digit (angula in Sanskrit) as eight widths of barley grain (2.20.6) or “the maximum width of the middle part of the middle finger of a middling man” (2.20.7).[xii] Some eight centuries later, Varahamihira’s Brihat Samhita (LVIII.2) repeats the first definition; that is the “standard” angula of classical India (there are indeed variations in later or regional traditions of iconometry, but they need not detain us here). Most scholars from J.F. Fleet down took the angula to be “roughly 3/4th of an inch”,[xiii] that is, 1.9 cm. K.S. Shukla,[xiv] Ajay Mitra Shastri[xv] or A.K. Bag,[xvi] to quote just a few, endorsed this approximate value. In contrast, the metrologist V.B. Mainkar[xvii] traced the “development of length and area measures in India” and narrowed the value of the angula to 17.78 mm. He was probably the first to suggest that 10 times the Lothal unit, i.e. 1. 77 cm, was almost identical to the traditional angula.
Moreover, a crude terracotta scale from Kalibangan was submitted to careful scrutiny by the late R.Balasubramaniam, who established that it is based on a unit of 1.75 cm.[xviii] This is almost the same as the Lothal unit of 1. 77 cm.
Let us average the two and call 1.76 cm “A” for angula; we then have the following relation: D = 108A. This is an arresting result, since the concept of”108angulas” is well attested in classical India. For instance, one of the systems of units described in Kautilya’s Arthashastra (2.20.19) fits very well in the Dholavirian scheme: “108 angulas make a dhanus (meaning a bow), a measure [used] for roads and city walls.”[xix] “City walls” is precisely the context in which our unit D was used at Dholavira and elsewhere. We can now propose that “D” also stands for dhanus.
The Harappan brick provides us with a degree of confirmation of the Lothal angula. In the Mature phase (and occasionally in the Early phase), most bricks follow ratios of 1:2:4 in terms of height width-length; among several different sizes in this ratio, one dominates by far: 7x 14 x 28 cm, measured and averaged over numerous samples (as mentioned by Kenoyer[xx] and by Rottlander quoting Jansen[xxi]); the first dimension, 7 cm, is almost exactly 4 Lothal angulas (the difference being just0.5 mm or 0.7%). So the humble brick’s dimensions can be elegantly expressed as 4 x 8 x 16A.
Between the angula and the dhanus, there must have been several important subunits, and elsewhere[xxii] I attempted to work out a few of them; preliminary findings are that units of 4, 8, 10, 15, 16, 27 and 36angulas were probably in use in Harappan times. However, this requires confirmation through more systematic studies.

Continuity of the Dholavira Scheme of Ratios and Units
The scheme of ratio and units found at Dholavira finds further echoes in historical times. The Arthashastra apart, “many [early texts] concentrate on the description of an image of 108 angulas in length.”[xxiii] The origin of the concept behind the sacred number 108 is probably multiple. It could be simply based on the human body: 108 angulas (1.9m) is the height of a tall man, as specifically mentioned by Varahamihira in his Brihat Samhita (68.1 05).[xxiv] From a different perspective, simple but compelling astronomical considerations behind 108have been demonstrated by Sub hash Kak.[xxv]
Dholavira’s ratios must have been perceived as especially auspicious, otherwise every enclosure might as well have been square. Some of those ratios are still in use in various traditions of Vastu Shilpa. In the sixth century CE, for instance, Varahamihira wrote in his Brihat Samhita (53.4 &5):
The length of a king’s palace is greater than the breadth by a quarter…. The length of the house of a commander-in-chief exceeds the width by a sixth.[xxvi]
These two ratios, 1 + 1/4 and 1 + 1/6, are identical to5:4 and 7:6 – very precisely Dholavira’s most prominent ratios (see Fig. 2). Such a perfect double match appears to be beyond the realm of coincidence.
A recent work by Mohan Pant and Shuji Funo[xxvii] compared the grid dimensions of building clusters and quarter blocks of three cities: Mohenjo-Daro, Sirkap (Taxila, early historical, Fig. 8), and Thimi (in Kathmandu Valley, a contemporary town of historical origins). Carefully superimposing grids on published plans of all three cities (their own in the case of Thimi), the authors found that block dimensions measure 9.6 m, 19.2 m (= 9.6 m x 2), or multiples of such dimensions. This, they argue,
The Metrology behind Harappan Town Planning - 08
Fig. 8: Plan of Sirkap, one of Taxila’s mounds. The blocks of houses are separated by regularly spaced streets, 38.4m apart (=1.92×20).
evokes the Arthashastra’s unit called rajju, equal to 10 dandas. As regards the danda, which has four possible traditional values, the authors choose that of 108 angulas as prescribed in the Arthashastra (2.20.18-19); it is the same passage which I quoted earlier to define the dhanus, and the danda is mentioned in it as another name of the dhanus: for our purposes, the two terms are identical.
Pant’s and Funo’s unit of 1.92 m differs from mine of1.9 m by just 1%; in both cases, the unit was equated108 angulas. Their work thus lends support to my suggestion that such concepts survived the collapse of Harappan urbanism and re-emerged in Kautilya’s canons of urbanism. Is this so surprising, when we already know that the Harappans’ weight system, metallurgical, agricultural and craft techniques did live on, apart from numerous religious symbols and practices?[xxviii]
We get further confirmation of such continuity from a case study of the Delhi Iron Pillar (Qutub Minar complex) by R. Balasubramaniam,[xxix]who applied to it the Harappan dhanus and angula I had proposed and found they expressed the pillar’s dimensions with unexpected harmony (Fig. 9): its total length of7. 67 m, for instance, is precisely 4 D; its diameter, 36 angula sat the bottom, shrinks to 24 angulas at ground level, finally to taper off at 12 angulas at the very top. If this were not enough, the ratio between the pillar’s entire length (7.67 m) and the portion above the ground (6.12m) is 5:4, verified to 0.2% – again, Dholavira’s master ratio. This bears out once again that Harappan ratios and linear units survived the collapse of the Indus cities and passed to those of the Ganges Valley. Balasubramaniam applied the same units with excellent results to engineered caves of the Mauryan period[xxx] and to the Taj Mahal complex,[xxxi] opening a newline of inquiry in classical Indian metrology.

SARASVATI SINDHU Harappan Civilization and Classical Concepts :
On a cultural level, the presence of carefully proportioned fortifications as at DHOLAVIRA might be as much a specific cultural trait as pyramids are to Egypt or ziggurats to Mesopotamia. Here, instead of erecting colossal buildings, enormous energy was spent on defining spaces: the space of the rulers and administrators (the acropolis) and the spaces for other classes of citizens. Demarcating was a vital need not for defense, but for self-definition: fortifications probably stood for authority and segregation, as Piotr A. Eltsov has recently argued too. [xxxii]
But there may also be deeper motives at work: ratios and units apart, we can discern a few important
The Metrology behind Harappan Town Planning - 09
Fig. 9: A sketch on the Delhi Iron Pillar with the main dimensions expressed in terms of D = Dholavira’s
dhanus (1.9 m) and A= Dholavira’s angula (1.76
principles underlying Dholavira’s fascinating harmony, in an almost Pythagorean sense of the term. More work and data are needed to bring out those principles securely, but I proposed elsewhere[xxxiii] that the Vedic principle of addition of a unit is at work here: 5:4 should be read as “one unit plus one fourth”, and the key ratio of 9:4, for instance, is nothing but 5:4 plus one unit. This addition to the unit of a fraction of itself can also be seen as a process of expansion, of auspicious increase symbolizing or inviting prosperity. Thus the Manasara, a treatise of Hindu architecture, applies this process when it specifies (35.18-20) that ”the length of the mansion [to be built] should be ascertained by commencing with its breadth, or increasing it by one-fourth, one-half, three fourth, or making it twice, or greater than twice by one fourth, one-half or three-fourths, or making it three times.”[xxxiv] The outcome is a series of ratios: 5:4, 3:2, 7:4, 2:1, 9:4, 5:2, 11:4, 3:1. Since we found all these ratios at Dholavira or other Harappan settlements, it is tempting to assume that the concept behind such auspicious ratios was the same in Harappan times.
Also found at Dholavira is another Vedic principle, that of recursion or repetition of a motif. [xxxv]Thus the “castle” and the overall city share the same ratio (5:4), and 9:4 defines the expansion from the length of the “castle” to that of the middle town, and again to that of the lower town.
The thread connecting those principles was anticipated by astrophysicist J. McKim Malville, who saw in Dholavira’s features “the apparent intent … to interweave, by means of geometry, the microcosm and the macrocosm”.[xxxvi] To the ancient mind, the concept of sacred space was inseparable from the practice of town-planning and architecture. Dilip Chakrabarti echoes this in his recent observation: “The ideals of ancient Indian town planning seem to run deep through the concepts embedded in the Harappan cities like Mohenjo-Daro.

References :
http://indiafacts.org/tthe-metrology-behind-harappan-town-planning-2/#_ednref1 Gregory L. Possehl, The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective, op. cit., p. 101.
[ii] B.B. Lal, India 1947-1997: New Light on the Indus Civilization, op. cit., p. 44.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Michel Danino, “Further Research into Harappan Metrology at Dholavira”, op. cit.
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Ibid.
[vii] Ibid.
[viii] Dilip K. Chakrabarti, The Oxford Companion to Indian Archaeology, op. cit., p. 154.
[ix] V. B. Mainkar, “Metrology in the Indus Civilization”, op.cit., p.l46.
[x] S. R. Rao, Lothal, a Harappan Port Town (1955-62), Archaeological Survey of India, New Delhi, 1979, vol. 2, p. 626.
[xi] R.C.A. Rottlander, “The Harappan Line Measurement Unit”, Reports on Field Work Carried out at Mohenjo-Daro: Interim Reports Vol. 1, M. Jansen and G. Urban, eds., German Research Project Mohenjo-Daro RWTH Aachen, Aachen, 1983, p.205.
[xii] R. P. Kangle, The Kautilya Arthasastra, Motilal Banarsidass, New Delhi, 1986,partii,p.138.
[xiii] Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya, History of Science and Technology in Ancient India: The Beginnings, FirmaKLM, Calcutta 1986, p. 231.
[xiv] Kripa Shankar Shukla, Aryabhatiya of Aryabhata: Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi 1976, p. 19.
[xv] Ajay Mitra Shastri, Ancient Indian Heritage: Varahamihira’s India, Aryan Books International, New Delhi, 1996, vol. II, p. 327.
[xvi] A.K. Bag, History of Technology in India, Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi, 1997, vol. I, p. 667.
[xvii] V. B. Mainkar, “Metrology in the Indus Civilization”, op. cit., p. 147.
[xviii] R. Balasubramaniam & Jagat Pati Joshi, “Analysis of terracotta scale of Harappan civilization from Kalibangan”, Current Science, vol. 95, no. 5, 10 September 2008, pp. 588-89.
[xix] R.P. Kangle, The Kautilya Arthasastra, op. cit., p. 139.
[xx] Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization, op. cit., p. 57.
[xxi] R.C.A Rotlander, “The Harappan Linear Measurement Unit”, op. cit., p. 202.
[xxii] Michel Danino, “New Insights into Harappan Town-Planning, Proportions and Units, with Special Reference to Dholavira”, Man and Environment, vol. XXXIII, no. 1, 2008, pp. 66-79.
[xxiii] Isabella Nardi, “On Measuring Images: a Critical Analysis of the Theory of Talamana”, Sahrdaya: Studies in Indian and South East Asian Art in Honour of Dr. R. Nagaswamy, Bettina Baumer, R.N. Misra, Chirapat Prapandvidya & Devendra Handa, eds., Tamil Arts Academy, 2006, Chennai, p.260.
[xxiv] M. Ramakrishna Bhat, Varahamihira’s Brihat Samhita, Motilal Banarsidass, New Delhi, 1981, vol. l,p. 642.
[xxv] Subhash Kak, The Astronomical Code of the Rigveda, Munshiram Manoharlal, New Delhi, 2nd ed., 2000, pp.101-02& 124.
[xxvi] M. Ramakrishna Bhat, Varahamihira’s Brihat Samhita, op. cit., pp. 451-52.
[xxvii] Mohan Pant & Shuji Funo, “The Grid and Modular Measures in the Town Planning of Mohenjo-Daro and Kathmandu Valley: A Study on Modular Measures in Block and Plot Divisions in the Planning of Mohenjo-Daro and Sirkap (Pakistan), and Thimi (Kathmandu Valley)”, Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering, 2005, 4(1), pp. 51-59, retrieved from: www.j stage.jst.go.jp/article/jaabe/4/1 /51/ _pdf on09.09.07.
[xxviii] Michel Danino, “The Harappan Heritage and the Aryan Problem”, Man and Environment, 2003, X: XVIII (1): 21-32.
[xxix] R. Balasubramaniam, “On the mathematical significance of the dimensions of the Delhi Iron Pillar”, Current Science, vol. 95, no. 6, 25 September2008, pp. 766-70.
[xxx] R. Balasubramaniam, ”New insights on metrology during the Mauryan period”, Current Science, vol. 97, no. 5, 10 September 2009, pp. 680-82.
[xxxi] R. Balasubramaniam, ”New insights on the modular planning of the Taj Mahal”, Current Science, vol. 97, no.1, 10July2009, pp. 42-49.
[xxxii] Piotr A. Eltsov, From Harappa to Hastinapura: A Study of the Earliest South Asian City and Civilization, Brill Academic Publishers, Boston, Lei den, 2007.
[xxxiii] Michel Danino, “New Insights into Harappan Town-Planning, Proportions and Units, with Special Reference to Dholavira”, op. cit.
[xxxiv] Prasanna Kumar Acharya, Architecture of Manasara (vol. IV in Manasara Series), 1934, republished Munshiram Manoharlal, New Delhi, 1994, p.374.
[xxxv] Subhash Kak, “Archaeoastronomy in India”, online at http:/ /arxiv.org/pdf/1 002.4513v1 (retrieved23.12.201 0).
[xxxvi] J. McKim Malville & Lalit M. Gujral, eds., Ancient Cities, Sacred Skies: Cosmic Geometries and City Planning in Ancient India, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts & Aryan Books International, New Delhi,2000,p. 3.
This article was first published in Propagation: A Journal of Science Communication and has been republished with the permission of the author.


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The basic ratios adopted in Dholavira’s plan, r = 5/4 or 1.25 (for the castle, the town, and a few other internal proportions) and 7/6 (for the middle town), must have held a special significance in the Harappan mind, most likely an auspicious one. Indeed, it is quite remarkablethat these same ratios are commonly prescribed as auspicious proportions for houses in various traditions of Vastu Shilpa.

Varahamihira, for instance, writes in chapter 53 of his Brihat Samhita: “The length of a king’s palace is greater than the breadth by a quarter.... The length of the house of a commander-in-chief exceeds the width by a sixth.”

These two ratios (1 + 1/4 and 1 + 1/6) are better expressed as 5/4 and 7/6 — very precisely Dholavira’s basic proportions! This seems too much of a coincidence:while Vastu Shastra as codified in Varahamihira’s time (or possibly earlier) was clearly not in existence during the mature Harappan phase, it is wholly possible that specific proportions regarded as auspicious in Harappan times were carefully preserved and later integrated in a systematic approach to architecture. It may be objected that Dholavira’s architects preceded Varahamihira by some three millennia; if a tradition of auspicious ratios was thus preserved, should we not have some trace of it in between?

Indeed we do: the Shulba Sutras provide one such missing link. For instance, Baudhayana’s Shulba Sutra (4.3) lists detailed dimensions for the trapezium-shaped sacrificial ground (mahavedi),where the sacred fire altars are to be arranged its longer (western) side must measure 30 prakramas (a unit roughly equal to 54 cm) while its shorter (eastern) side will be 24 prakramas — exactly our ratio r = 5/4. We find r again embedded in Baudhayana’s system of units (spelt out in 1.3) for instance it is the ratio between the pada (= 15 angulas) and the pradesha (= 12 angulas), and between the purusa (5 aratnis) and the vyayama (4 aratnis). More research is likely to bring out similar examples from the Brahmanas and the Puranas.

In the meantime, is it not fascinating that proportions deliberately adopted at Dholavira and Lothal should have such a central importance in the Shulba Sutras as well as Vastu Vidya?

In itself, the preservation of ratios and units right from Harappan times is nothing to be surprised at: it has long been noted that Harappan units of lengths and weight resurfaced in historical times, and there has been a steadily mounting body of evidence.

The proportions mentioned in the Shulba Sutras for the mahavedi (the main sacrificial ground) appear earlier in the Shatapatha Brahmana (I.1.2.23, quoted in The Sulbasutras, ed. S. N. Sen & A. K. Bag, New Delhi: Indian National Science Academy, 1983, p. 170); in this ancient textinstead of specific units as in the Shulba Sutras, steps are used: the vedi’s western side is 30 steps long, while the eastern side is 24 steps. The result is however the same in terms of proportions — 5 : 4, our Dholavira ratio.

This is one more link in the long transmission from Dholavira’s architects to the codifiers of Vastu Shastra, but also one more connection between the Harappan and the Vedic worlds.

One system of units described in Kautilya’s Arthashastra (usually dated a few centuries BC) seems to fit very well in the Dholavirian schme. In a section on measures of space and time (2.20.19, see R. P. Kangle’s translation, New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1986, part II, p. 139)

We are told that “108 angulas make a dhanus, measure for roads and city-walls....” The actual measure of an angula, related to the width of a finger, has probably varied in time and space, as have most other units; common estimates include 17.78 mm,and three-fourths of an inch or and three-fourths of an inch or 19 mm (J. R. Fleet), among others. With such a value, a dhanus or 108 angulas as defined by Kautilya would be about 1.91 m. Since we noted that K is close to 10800 Lothal units, this leads to K = 1080 angulas = 10 dhanus.

This certainly looks like a convenient number, all the more striking as Kautilya states that the dhanus is to be used as a “measure for roads and city-walls.

”In a confirmation that this is not just wishful thinking or a happy coincidence, we find that we can easily express the city’s other main dimensions in terms of the dhanus: following our earlier formulas, the castle’s inner length (Lci / K = 6) becomes 60 dhanus (just like the southern side of Lothal’s “acropolis,” incidentally) while its inner width is 48 dhanus; the castle’s outer length (Lco / K = 8) and width become 80 and 64 dhanus respectivelythe middle town’s length (Lm = 3 Lci) is now 180 dhanus, while the city’s overall length (Lt / Lm = 9/4) and width are 405 and 324 dhanus. All these numbers are within 1% of actual figures.Such a system, based on a “master unit” equal to 108 times the basic Lothal unit multiplied by 10, appears to be the key to Dholavira’s metrology, and clearly survived the collapse of Harappan urbanism, probably because such units remained in use for sacred or ritual purposesSuch as fire altars.

Further verifications with dimensions of streets, large buildings etc. are certainly called for (keeping in mind however that different units can be used for different purposes), as is a systematic study of dimensions and proportions in major towns andand cities of the Sindhu-Sarasvati civilization, and their transmission to the historical period.
 

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