Indus Civilization Text and Context (Volume- II)

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I am happy to present here the second volume of studies on the Indus civilization: Text and Context.

First I would like to explain our aims of the Indus project. Even since ancient civilizations emerged, people have utilized and changed their natural environment in order to construct their settlements and to cultivate the land. It is on written record in Sumerian that environmental problems such as deforestation and soil degradation occurred even in the time of the Mesopotamian civilization. This means that environmental problems have originated not only in modern times with the industrial revolution, but from the ancient period. Our project aims to investigate the environmental changes and environmental problems in the middle and lower basin of the Indus River that have been taken as causes of the decline of the Indus civilization. There are two main causes of this decline: global factors like climate change and local factors such as floods and tectonic changes. We are here focused on local factors such as the loss of the Sarasvati River, as these have not been fully studied.

The other aim of our project is to postulate the process of the abandonment of urban life after the onset of environmental problems. If we understand the process of decline of civilization and the resilience of urban society in facing natural disasters, we should find a way to rethink modern urban civilization. In our project we need the research and collection on the socio-economic and cultural data of the Indus civilization. Our sources for this study are data from the excavated archaeological sites, and observations of transmitted cultures, folk cultures, of modern times.

Asko Parpola is a specialist on the Indus script who has investigated the transmitted culture as a Vedic scholar. He was at our Institute from July to December 2006 as a research fellow. In this volume he writes on seal impressions from Lothal, excavated in 1955-62. With Dorian Fuller and Nicole Boivin he gives us comments on the incised stone axe found in Tamil Nadu in 2006 and the claim that it contains an inscription in classical Indus script.

Jeewan Singh Kharakwal was at our Institute from May 2004 to May 2005 as a visiting professor. He is now a director of the Kanmer Archaeological Research Project (KARP) with Y.S. Rawat of Gujarat State Department of Archaeology. They present a preliminary report of the first season’s excavations at Kanmer in Kachchh. This is the first instance in the history of Indian archaeology of an excavation report appearing within a year of the closing of a season. We have just finished the second season’s excavation in March 2007. We hope to publish that report too within a year. We have just started a full-scale research of our.

project from April 2007 for five years. We hope we will continue our efforts to publish this series every year.

I sincerely thank Ramesh Jain of Manohar Publishers for accepting this manuscript for publication. Without his keen interest and cooperation, we would not have been able to bring this book out on time. I thank him for maintaining its quality too.

**Sample Pages**