Dholavira

Dholavira is an archaeological site at Khadirbet in Bhachau Taluka of Kutch District, in the state of Gujarat in western India, which has taken its name from a modern-day village 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) south of it. This village is 165 kilometres (103 mi) from Radhanpur. Also known locally as Kotada timba, the site contains ruins of a city of the ancient Indus Valley Civilisation.

Quotes

• In the opinion of the Allchins, ‘Dholavira appears to be one of the most exciting discoveries of the past half century!’
  • Danino, M. (2010). The lost river: on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• Its town planning apart, Dholavira shot into prominence because of a unique find: an inscription almost three metres long, found lying on the floor of one of the chambers of the castle’s northern gate. It was not inscribed there; its ten signs, each over 35 cm high, were made of a crystalline material which must have been embedded in a wooden plank, and the whole ‘signboard’ was probably hung above the northern gate, where it would have been visible to much of the middle town. In terms of size, there is no remotely comparable inscription from any other Harappan site. (Of course, boards with signs simply carved or painted on a plank would have vanished without a trace; it is the crystalline material alone that was preserved in this case.)
  • Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• [I was]‘surprised to find that the dimensions and the orientation of the Drupad Kila coincided exactly with those of Dholavira’....
  • Filippi, Gian Giuseppe & Bruno Marcolongo, (eds), Kāmpilya : Quest for a Mahābhārata City, D.K. Printworld, New Delhi, 1999, p. 10. in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• The problem is that Dholavira was a town of the Indus-Sarasvatī civilization, 2,000 years older than Kāmpilya. This fact offered evidence of the continuity of only one urban model from the Indus-Sarasvatī to the Ganges civilizations in the time frame of two millennia.
  • Filippi, Gian Giuseppe, ‘The Kampilya Archeological Project’, article published online at: http://atimes.com/ind-pak/DC21Df02.html (accessed 15 September 2009). in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.