NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 6 The Lives of the Ancients — LET'S EXPLORE

The story is the thirsty crow — and the painting on the Lothal pot (Fig. 6.15-6) shows the exact moment the crow works it out. Completed, it runs:

Why the pot is such remarkable evidence. The Harappan artist did not draw a crow sitting on a pot — that would only be a picture. The design shows the tall narrow pot with the water low inside it and the bird beside it, which means the painter expected you to already know the rest. A picture that assumes the story is proof that the story was already famous.

How was it remembered for more than 4,000 years? Not by writing — the Harappan script cannot be read, and this story was never written down until much later. It survived because of oral tradition, and the chapter's list of the characteristics of a civilisation names oral traditions as one of the ways cultural ideas are expressed. Four reasons it lasted:

• It is short and has a clear picture at its centre — a bird, a pot, pebbles, rising water. Easy to remember, easy to retell.
• It is told to children, and children grow up and tell it to their children. That is the strongest chain in the world; it never breaks as long as families continue.
• The moral is universally useful — patience and cleverness beat force. Every generation finds it true.
• It needs no props. Any grandmother anywhere can tell it. Unlike a building, a story costs nothing to carry.

The attitude. The ‘Dancing Girl’ (Fig. 6.15-4) is a bronze figurine from Mohenjo-daro, only 10.8 cm high — smaller than your hand. Look at how she stands:

• One hand on the hip, elbow out; the head tilted back and slightly to one side; one leg bent and relaxed, the weight on the other.
• She wears no rich clothing — her ornaments are her dress: a necklace and the bangles.

The pose reads as confident, relaxed, self-assured, even a little playful — a person entirely at ease, caught in the pause between two movements of a dance. It is not the stiff, formal posture that ancient art usually gives to important figures. That is why it has fascinated people ever since it was found: a tiny bronze from 4,500 years ago that looks completely alive.

The bangles. They cover almost her entire left arm, from wrist to shoulder, with a few more on the right wrist — a stack, not a pair.

Where else in this chapter can you spot bangles worn in this manner? Turn back to the very first page of the chapter, page 85 — Fig. 6.1, the photograph of the North Gate entrance to Dholavira's ‘Castle’ area. The woman seated in the foreground, in a Kutchi dress, is wearing white bangles covering her whole forearm, exactly like the figurine. She is a living woman photographed a few years ago, sitting inside a Harappan city.

What conclusion should we draw? That Harappan culture did not die with the Harappan cities. The chapter's last paragraph says it in words — “much of the Harappan culture and technology survived and was passed on to the next phase of Indian civilisation” — and these two pictures say it in evidence. A custom of dress has been handed down, woman to woman, in the same part of India, for more than four thousand years.