Fire

Fire, an element of almost equal importance to water, has also played a major role in Indian religion, as an agent of ritual purification and as a means of transmitting offerings to the gods. While water seems to have had a religious significance throughout the Harappan realms, ritual installations involving fire are at present known only from the southern parts, along the Saraswati and in Gujarat. These fire altars were first uncovered at Kalibangan, where one of the platforms in the southern part of the citadel had a row of seven oblong clay-lined pits containing charcoal, ash, and terra-cotta cakes; such cakes were used in kilns to retain heat and perhaps had a similar function in these fire pits. In each pit there was also a cylindrical or faceted clay stele, perhaps representing the lingam (sacred phallus). A paved bathing platform and a brick-lined well were associated with these pits. On another platform, a single fire altar was found alongside a rectangular brick-lined pit containing antlers and cattle bones, presumably from animal sacrifices. The use of these pits for making burnt offerings therefore seems a reasonable supposition. There was also a mound with other fire altars to the east of the town. Many of the houses in Kalibangan's lower town are reported to have had a room containing a fire altar, set aside as a domestic shrine. Many Indian houses today likewise have their own shrine, where incense is burned and food and flowers are offered to the gods.

Fire altars were also found at Rakhigarhi and Banawali in the east and at Lothal and Vagad in Gujarat. One suggested example at Nageshwar was alternatively, and more convincingly, identified as an updraft kiln. There was some variation in the form taken by both the pit and the clay stele in these sites. Some examples in the houses at Kalibangan were lined with mud bricks. At Lothal the fire altars were placed within brick enclosures in the lower town; they continued to be constructed there into the post-Harappan period.

The distinction between fire altars and domestic hearths is not always clear. Excavations at Nausharo have uncovered similar structures in a domestic context where they are interpreted as hearths, albeit of an unusual type; these bore some resemblance to the hearths used by the later inhabitants of the Deccan, which sometimes had a central clay support for pots. This therefore begs the question whether the domestic "fire altars" were in fact ordinary hearths or, conversely, whether all domestic hearths could have been used in family worship as well as for cooking.