Mohenjo-daro

Mohenjo-daro is an archaeological site in Larkana District, Sindh, Pakistan. Built c. 2500 BCE, it was the largest settlement of the ancient Indus Valley Civilisation, and one of the world's earliest major cities, contemporaneous with the civilizations of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Minoan Crete, and Norte Chico.

Quotes

• There is nothing that we know of in pre-historic Egypt or Mesopotamia or anywhere else in Western Asia to compare with the well-built baths and commodious houses of the citizens of Mohenjo-daro. In those countries, much money and thought were lavished on the building of magnificent temples for the gods and on the palaces and tombs of kings, but the rest of the people seemingly had to content themselves with insignificant dwellings of mud. In the Indus Valley, the picture is reversed and the finest structures are those erected for the convenience of the citizens.
  • Marshall, John, (ed.), Mohenjo-daro and the Indus Civilization, Arthur Probsthain, London, 1931, 3 vols, several Indian reprints, vol. I, p. vi. in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• We have found at Mohenjodaro evidence of practically every one that is capable of formative expression, viz of the cults of Shiva and the Mother goddess, of the Nagas and tree deities , of animal tree and stone worship, of phallism and of the practice of Yoga. We have seen, moreover, that although there are no visible traces Of Saktism at Mohenjodaro, there are strong reasons for believing that it existed on the Indian soil from a very early period..
  • John Marshall 1931: 78, quoted in Chakrabarti, D. K., 1997. Colonial Indology: Sociopolitics of the Ancient Indian Past. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd.166

• Mohenjo-daro, whose population has been estimated at 40,000 to 50,000, was probably the most extensive city; its total area, a fifth of which has been excavated, is generally stated to be between 150 and 200 ha (hectares), although the German archaeologist Michael Jansen, who conducted a detailed research on the city’s urbanism, leans towards 300 ha,17 which would make it possibly the largest city of the ancient world. Harappa was about half that size.
  • Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• Mohenjo-daro’s acropolis, measuring about 200 x 400 m, is majestic by any standard. It boasts the famous complex of the ‘great bath’ with its central pool used for ritual ablutions, a huge ‘college’, a ‘granary’, an ‘assembly hall’ (or ‘pillared hall’), and wide streets carefully aligned along the cardinal directions. We may allow ourselves to conjure up the ruler or rulers meeting in some of those spacious halls along with officials, traders and, perhaps, on special occasions, representatives of the main craft traditions : builders, potters, seal makers, metal workers or weavers.
  • Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• There is continuity in the survey and planning tradition from Mohenjodaro to Sirkap and Thimi . . . The planning modules employed in the Indus city of Mohenjodaro, Sirkap of Gandhara, and Thimi of Kathmandu Valley are the same.
  • Pant, Mohan & Shuji Funo, ‘The Grid and Modular Measures in the Town Planning of Mohenjodaro and Kathmandu Valley’, in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• The time before Islam is a time of blackness: that is part of Muslim theology. History has to serve theology. The excavated city of Mohenjodaro in the Indus Valley—overrun by the Aryans in 1500 B.C.—is one of the archaelogical glories of Pakistan and the world. The excavations are now being damaged by waterlogging and salinity, and appeals for money have been made to world organizations. A featured letter in Dawn [a daily Pakistani newspaper] offered its own ideas for the site. Verses from the Koran, the writer said, should be engraved and set up in Mohenjodaro in "appropriate places": "Say (unto them, 0 Mohammed): Travel in the land and see the nature of the sequel for the guilty. . . . Say (O Mohammad, to the disbelievers): Travel in the land and see the nature of the consequence for those who were before you. Most of them were idolaters."
  • V.S.Naipaul, quoted in Ibn Warraq, Why I am not a Muslim. 1995. p 199-200