Buried Treasure - Mohenjo Daro - 1957

First transmitted in 1957, Sir Mortimer Wheeler describes the results of his excavations of the 4,000 year-old, red brick Indus Valley civilization city of Mohenjo-daro in modern-day Pakistan.

بی بی سی کی جانب سے 1957 میں موئن جو ڈرو پر بنائی جانے والی ایک نادر و نایاب ڈاکیومینٹری، جسے مارٹیمار ویلر نے پیش کیا ہے۔ مارٹیمار ویلر وہی آرکیالاجسٹ ہے جنہوں نے 1945 کی موئن جو ڈرو کے کھدائی میں خود حصہ لیا اور دنیا کو پہلی بار قدیم انڈس تہذیب سے روشناس کرایا۔ آرکیالجسٹ نے موئن جو ڈرو کو دنیا کے اولین منظم شہر قرار دیا ہے۔

This is a 30-minute guide to the Indus Valley Civilization, which was the largest of the civilizations in antiquity. It is presented by Sir Mortimer Wheeler, who was one of the great popularisers of archeology as part of his Buried Treasures series.

The film focuses on Mohenjo daro, which along with Harappa, was one of the main cities founded by this civilization. The following facts are mentioned in the film, but perhaps not given the prominence they deserve, so I think it worthwhile emphasizing some of the peculiar characteristics of this civilization:

1) It doesn’t seem to have evolved gradually, the cities show an amazing regularity, characteristic of central planning, and have not grown organically. It was also very well planned with wide roads, good water supplies and drainage.

2) The civilization shows none of the normal signs of cultural evolution during its 1,000+ year existence, its writing, for instance, which is still undecipherable, never changed over that long period of time (unlike later Indian writing, which evolved so quickly it is possible to date manuscripts by that means).

3) It had virtually nothing that can be identified as weaponry, and presumably didn’t need to keep its own populace suppressed, or fend off enemies.

4) It collapsed as quickly as it appeared, but we still do not know why or how that happened. It may be it was overrun by invading Aryan hordes, as suggested here, but that is not proved.

The interest for Buddhists is that it seems nearly all samaṇa culture, of which Buddhism is a part, must have come down, not from the Aryans, but from a different source, and the indications are that it is remnant from the Indus Valley civilization.

Asceticism and its practices like meditation and tantrism; egalitarian social organization, which doesn’t know of, or acknowledge, caste hierarchy; and even such doctrines that are characteristic of the samaṇa culture, like rebirth, kamma, etc. may have originated in this civilization, even if they found their fulfillment in the later cultures of India.