The nature of Harappan political organization is still unclear, though much debated, and there is not even agreement on whether it was a single state.
Toward a Model of Harappan Society
Accepting the Harappan ideology gave a sense of unity to the participating communities, but this was a matter of choice rather than compulsion; the political organization of the state therefore involved the willing participation of communities that had a stake in its running. This fits Possehl's (2002) suggestion that the state was a heterarchy, with shared power and collective responsibility. This would mean that the organization was bottom-up rather than top-down; rather than having a strong central authority appointing officials to control the regions and the subdivisions within them, those in authority would have been locally appointed, perhaps by a council of tribal or local elders, to manage the participation of the local community in the larger network. Alternatively, this responsibility might be vested in the community's religious leaders. Such a system would still require a degree of hierarchy and centralization of authority, though this could have been relatively weak. The great differential in size and complexity between the cities and the other settlements, the small number of the cities, and their even distribution demonstrate that they had a major political role as regional administrative and organizational centers.
State or Federation?
A number of scholars have suggested that the Indus civilization was not actually a state, but a federation made up of smaller units that shared a common material culture and a common ideology. The great uniformity of Indus artifacts and other aspects of Indus life masks smaller cultural groupings and cultural differences, making it hard to identify regional entities. However, these existed before the emergence of the civilization and reemerged after its demise, suggesting that they continued, unmarked, throughout the time of the civilization. The diversity of religious practices also points to some multiculturalism in Indus society. However, the existence of a number of smaller city-states would probably have led to competition and conflict, something for which there is no evidence. The degree of specialization and the huge scale of production of objects such as shell bangles or beads in particular areas also argues against the existence of regional states; such operations seem unlikely to have been undertaken by individual states relying on interregional trade to dispose of their products. Specialist settlements such as Nageshwar and Lothal served the entire Indus region rather than just Gujarat, and production was integrated, with some objects processed on the spot and others sent inland to be completed. An integrated state therefore seems a more probable interpretation of the evidence.
Priest-kings?
The suggestion that the Harappan state was a theocracy seems particularly apt in the Indian context, where the highest status in the ideological hierarchy is accorded to the priestly caste, which often enjoyed temporal power. Many scholars are nevertheless unhappy with this theory.
In some ways, however, the dichotomy between temporal and religious authority is a false distinction. In all ancient civilizations, whatever the form of government, the rulers governed through divine sanction. The gods were always the ultimate authority in society, and the rulers the channel through which their will was done. In this sense every society was a theocracy. What is in dispute, therefore, are the means by which those in power controlled society; the sanctions at their disposal; the mechanisms by which people were impelled to share the fruits of their labors with others and by which they could be assured a supply of other people's produce; the means by which the huge labor forces required to construct and maintain the settlements' flood defense platforms could be mobilized, inspired, and fed, as well as the smaller numbers of laborers needed to maintain and clean the complex waste-disposal system and other regular civic tasks. To my mind, the model of a society in which power was vested in the priesthood fits the Harappan evidence.
The elusive trappings of power, the emphasis on the use of water for purification, and the suggestion of segregation rather than glorification all accord better with a spiritual than with a temporal elite and head of state. The absence of overt evidence of the use of force as a sanction for unacceptable behavior suggests that the intangible threat of divine punishment was the main sanction that kept potential wrongdoers in line and ensured conformity with the requirements of the social order. Communities are generally very effective in administering and policing such a system themselves, without the need of intervention by the state.
Shared ideology was a major integrating mechanism. Religion would have played a regulatory role, individuals performing their obligations, making their offerings and supplying their labor to please the gods, and avoiding wrongdoing for fear of divine retribution. In many societies large-scale construction was of massive monuments, such as temples or tombs, but, given the astronomically linked orientation of the settlements and the link between astronomy and religion, the building of city platforms might well have been seen in a similar light as a construction that honored the gods.
Kinship Ties
Kinship may also have underlain the organization of the Harappan state. The historical integration of arable agriculture and transhumant pastoralism as activities practiced by members of the same family, maintained when the people of the Indo-Iranian borderlands colonized the plains, provided a mechanism by which people were linked and related to each other over wide areas, with systems of mutual obligation. Similar networks characterize hunter-gatherer societies such as those of the greater Indus region, with whom the people of the hills already had ancient connections on a small scale. The peaceful integration of the incomers and indigenes further strengthened a system of mutual interdependency, with rights and obligations that spread goods and services through communities, a forerunner of the jajmani system.
Some states are territorial in nature, their citizens owning land or being tied in some relationship to those who do. Such states have as their basis sedentary agriculture, and their people see their identity in terms of place. Power is therefore exercised through the control of territory, and often the ruler or the deity of the land is nominally owner of it all. Other states are based on control of people rather than territory and are more likely to be associated with economies in which pastoralism is important. These are characterized by hierarchies in which individuals owe service to their superiors in the state, to whom they often have a theoretical kin relationship; the land is not owned, only the rights to exploit it; and there is a complex network of rights and obligations. In such states loyalty was not to place but to people (the ethnic group or tribe), and identity was expressed in terms of kinship. Though the Harappans practiced agriculture as well as pastoralism, it is more likely that the Harappan state was of this second type. Pastoralism remained a major component of the economy, as did hunter-fisher-gathering, and, though permanently cultivated fields were possible in some regions, in many others, due to the vagaries of the rivers, cultivable areas were liable to change from year to year, making it inappropriate to have ownership ties to any particular piece of land. This social system, in combination with something similar to the jajmani system, would have enabled kin or occupational groups to be integrated into a single functioning whole.
394 THE ANCIENT INDUS VALLEY State Management
The development of the state strengthened the system of interdependency and added to it some official backbone and order as well as stepping up the scale at which it operated. A managerial class emerged whose role was to facilitate and organize the circulation of goods and materials. Economies of scale developed, with dedicated centers of craft production where materials were processed for distribution throughout the Harappan realms; trade missions were dispatched overseas; and a few resource procurement colonies were established even in Mesopotamia and Afghanistan.
Towns developed at communications nodes or in locations well-placed to procure resources. Rural and town craft production could have been sustained by local agriculture. Some villagers practicing farming or fishing for most of the year may have moved into satellite industrial villages during the slack part of the year to undertake such activities as beadmaking or shellworking. Artisans and state functionaries in the towns and cities may have been sustained by agricultural produce collected as taxes, probably at the city gate, where weights are often found, suggesting the weighing of goods or materials in order to deduct a fixed proportion.
Goods and materials may also have been collected as compulsory offerings, owed to the gods at appropriate times and seasons, and perhaps surrendered in the context of religious festivals. In the same context, other goods and materials may have been issued by the religious authorities, their value enhanced by having passed through the temporary ownership of the gods. In Indian tradition, nonfixed payments and services are made within the jajmani system at such times, and this may well also have been the case in the Harappan period.
The movement of goods and materials from other regions of the state or from overseas would probably have been bureaucratically controlled, but their distribution could also take place in the same contexts. Goods in transit or awaiting distribution would probably only have required temporary storage and in relatively small amounts; there seems unlikely to have been any of the stockpiling that characterized many states.
A Line of Kings?
The stone sculptures of seated men from Mohenjo-daro may be portraits or stock representations of rulers or important individuals (for example, saints or religious leaders). All come from late levels at Mohenjo-daro, and all are broken. They may have been deliberately vandalized, though the damage could be due merely to accident and weathering. A tempting reconstruction, though one for which there is at the present no supporting evidence, is that they are the portraits of a ruling dynasty, deliberately broken when the dynasty was overthrown. If so, the absence of such sculptures at an earlier date may mean that the existence of a line of kings at this time represented an unwelcome break with tradition.
Few Harappan stone sculptures are known, but the majority of those found are figures of seated men and were found at Mohenjo-daro. All of these came from late levels and all were broken. It is tempting to see them as the smashed portraits of a line of hated rulers. (J. M. Kenoyer, Courtesy Department of Archaeology and Museums, Government of Pakistan)
World History
