C. The Mythical Massacre at Mohenjodaro


Sir Mortimer Wheeler made an attempt in the 1940’s to re-interpret some archaeological data as a proof of the Aryan Invasion scenarios. He [1947:81] identified mound AB at Harappa as a citadel. Linking it with the intrusive/foreign elements at Cemetery H burials [ibid:82], and following the Marxist scholar Vere Gordon Childe, Wheeler concluded that he had at last found proof that the bellicose Aryans had indeed invaded IVC, extinguishing that Bronze Age culture violently.



The Aryan invasion of the Land of the Seven Rivers, the Punjab and its environs, constantly assumes the form of an onslaught upon the walled cities of the aborigines. For the cities, the term used in the Rigveda is pur, meaning a ‘rampart’, ‘fort’ or ‘stronghold’ ….. Indra, the Aryan god, is puramdar, ‘fort destroyer’…. In brief, ‘he rends forts as age consumes a garment’. Where are or were these citadels? It has in the past been supposed that they were mythical, or were merely places of refuge against attack, ramparts of hardened earth with palisades and a ditch’. The recent excavations of Harappa may have thought to have changed the picture. Here, we have a highly evolved civilization of essentially non-Aryan type, now known to have dominated the river-system of north-western India at a time not distant from the likely period of the earlier Aryan invasions of that region. What destroyed this firmly-settled civilization? Climatic, economic, political deterioration may have weakened it, but its ultimate extinction is more likely to have been completed by deliberate and large-scale destruction. It may be no mere chance that at a late period of Mohenjodaro men, women and children appear to have been massacred there. On circumstantial evidence, Indra stands accused. (emphasis added).



The rash pronouncement by Wheeler came in for a lot of adverse comment. Archaeologist B. B. Lal [1954/55:151] examined the matter closely. He concluded that according to Wheeler’s excavation report itself, the Harappans and the Cemetery H people (viz. the invaded and the invaders) had never come into contact with each other. There was a clear-cut chronological break between the Cemetery H culture and the culture represented by the Citadel.



Another archaeologist George V. Dales [1961-62] forcefully argued for caution in interpreting the presence of skeletons as a proof of invasions:



…we cannot even establish a definite correlation between the end of the Indus civilization and the Aryan invasion. But even if we could, what is the material evidence to substantiate the supposed invasion and massacre? Where are the burned fortresses, the arrowheads, weapons, pieces of armor, the smashed chariots and bodies of the invaders and defenders? Despite extensive excavations at the largest Harappan sites, there is not a single bit of evidence that can be brought forth as unconditional proof of an armed conquest and the destruction on the supposed scale of Aryan invasion. It is interesting that Sir John Marshall himself, the Director of the Mohenjo-daro excavations that first revealed the “massacre” remains separated the end of the Indus civilization from the time of the Aryan invasion by two centuries. He attributed the slayings to bandits from the hills of west of the Indus, who carried out sporadic raids on an already tired, decaying, and defenseless civilization.



Dales pointed out that the stratigraphic context of these skeletons had not been recorded properly and so it was impossible to verify if they really belonged to the period of the Indus civilization. He also highlighted the fact that these skeletons did not constitute an orderly burial, and were in fact found in the Lower town – probably the residential district, and not in the fortified citadel where one could have reasonably expected the final defense against the so called invaders.



Therefore, Dales concluded:



The contemporaneity of the skeletal remains is anything but certain. Whereas a couple of them definitely seem to represent a slaughter, in situ, the bulk of the bones were found in contexts suggesting burials of sloppiest and most irreverent nature. There is no destruction level covering the latest period of the city, no sign of extensive burning, no bodies of warriors clad in armor and surrounded by weapons of war. The citadel, the only fortified part of the city, yielded no evidence of a final defense.

…..Indra and the barbarian hordes are exonerated. (emphasis added)



Subsequently, Kenneth Kennedy pointed out that skulls of two of the victims did carry marks of injury. However, it was clear that they had survived the attack by several months [1982:291]. Finally, in his study of the word ‘pur’ in the Rigveda, German Indologist Wilhelm Rau [1976] pointed out that the typical plan of Harappan cities was square in shape, whereas the Rigvedic pur of the ‘Dasas’ was a circular structure with numerous concentric walls. Moreover, while the Harappan cities employed baked bricks on a large scale, the Rigvedic pur was a temporary structure made of palisades, mud, stones etc. Indra was indeed exonerated finally of the massacre at Mohenjodaro.



The skeletons are no longer taken as a proof of the AIT. Rather, they are interpreted in a different manner [Ratnagar 2000:42]:



…I would urge that we do not throw out the political significance of these skeletons just because the Aryan connexion (sic) is dubious. The fact that they do not amount to a massacre does not rule out conflict, strife, or raids on the city in the last days of its occupation.



Very unfortunately, Wheeler did not relinquish his allegiance to AIT even in his last work published in 1968 [Kazanas 2000:35]. And in fact, many academicians continue to cling to this theory to this day.