NCERT Solutions Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 the Beginnings of Indian Civilisation

F R E E S T U D Y M AT E R I A L F O R E V E R Y S T U D E N T

CLASS 6 · SOCIAL SCIENCE

NCERT Solutions

Chapter 6: The Beginnings of
Indian Civilisation

NCERT Textbook — Exploring Society: India And Beyond

BOOK PAGES SECTIONS QUESTIONS MEDIUM

85 – 104 21 33 English

Solutions, notes, sample papers & more at 49 pages

Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

CLASS 6 · SOCIAL SCIENCE · EXPLORING SOCIETY: INDIA AND BEYOND

NCERT Solutions — Chapter 6: The Beginnings of Indian
Civilisation
Complete NCERT Solutions for Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation from
the NCERT textbook Exploring Society: India and Beyond. Every question of the chapter is answered — The Big
Questions, all five THINK ABOUT IT boxes, all seven LET'S EXPLORE / LET US EXPLORE boxes, the in-text
questions on pages 86, 87, 88, 93, 97 and 102, Before we move on … and all eight Questions, activities and
projects — with the settlement map (Fig. 6.3), the timeline (Fig. 6.2), the site photographs of Kalibangan,
Dholavira, Mohenjo-daro and Lothal, and every artefact plate on pages 100–101 read carefully off the printed
page.

TEXTBOOK BOOK PAGES

Exploring Society: India and Beyond (Class 6) 85 – 104

SECTIONS QUESTIONS

21 33

MEDIUM

English

The Big Questions — Page 85
Chapter opening

THE BIG QUESTIONS

Q1 What is a civilisation?

A civilisation is an advanced stage of human societies. The chapter is careful not to leave it at
that, and gives a working checklist: to be called a civilisation, a society should have at least
seven characteristics.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

# CHARACTERISTIC WHAT THE BOOK SAYS IT COVERS

1 Government and Some form of it — to manage a more complex society and its many
administration activities

2 Urbanism Town-planning, the growth of cities and their management, which
generally includes water management and a drainage system

3 A variety of crafts The management of raw materials (such as stone or metal) and the
production of finished goods (such as ornaments and tools)

4 Trade Both internal (within a city or a region) and external (with distant
regions or other parts of the world) — to exchange all sorts of goods

5 Some form of writing Needed to keep records and to communicate

6 Cultural ideas Ideas about life and the world, expressed through art, architecture,
literature, oral traditions or social customs

7 A productive agriculture Enough to feed not just the villages, but also the cities

These seven do not sit side by side — they stand on one another. Farming has to come first,
because everything else depends on somebody growing surplus food:

government · writing · cultural ideas
what only a settled, organised society can build

urbanism · crafts · trade
cities, workshops and markets — they need people
who are not busy growing their own food

A PRODUCTIVE AGRICULTURE
“enough to feed not just the villages, but also the cities”

everything above rests on the food grown below

The seven characteristics of a civilisation, stacked in the order in which they can appear. Take away
the bottom block and the whole shape collapses.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Why the book bothers to define the word: ‘civilisation’ is used loosely in everyday
speech. A historian needs a test that can be applied to evidence dug out of the
ground. Each of the seven characteristics leaves something an archaeologist can
actually find — a street plan, a drain, a bead workshop, a foreign seal, an inscribed
object, a figurine, a grain store. That is how we can say the Harappans had a
civilisation without a single written sentence that we can read.

Did you know? Chapter 4 ended with the first human groups settling down, farming
and developing technologies such as construction, metallurgy and transport. This
chapter picks up exactly there — civilisation is the next step in that same story, not a
separate one.

Q2 What was the earliest civilisation of the Indian Subcontinent?

The Indus-Sarasvatī civilisation — also called the Indus, Harappan or Sindhu-Sarasvatī
civilisation. It is one of the oldest civilisations in the world, and its people are called
Harappans.

Villages → towns: from about 3500 BCE

Towns → cities (the First Urbanisation of India): around 2600 BCE

The city phase, as dated on Fig. 6.2: about 2600 to 1900 BCE

Where. In the north-west of the Subcontinent, along two river systems: the Indus (Sindhu) with
its five main tributaries — the Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas and Sutlej — watering the plains of
the Punjab (today divided between India and Pakistan) and Sindh (now in Pakistan); and a little
further east the Sarasvatī, which then flowed from the foothills of the Himalayas through
Haryana, Punjab, parts of Rajasthan and Gujarat.
How it fits into world history. Fig. 6.2 on page 87 puts three civilisations on one line:

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

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Three of the world's earliest civilisations, on one line

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Mesopotamia begins

a g Egypt begins

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4000 BCE 3500 BCE 3100 BCE 2600 BCE 2000 BCE

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villages grow into towns CITIES — 2600 to 1900 BCE

the Indus-Sarasvatī civilisation, with the dates this chapter gives

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Mesopotamia (modern Iraq and Syria) began about 6,000 years ago; ancient Egypt followed a few
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centuries later; the Indus-Sarasvatī cities date from about 2600 to 1900 BCE. (The line is a reading aid,
a
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not drawn to scale.)

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Tip: keep the two dates apart in your head. 3500 BCE is when villages started
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becoming towns; 2600 BCE is when towns became cities. Only the second one is the

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‘First Urbanisation’.

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What were its major achievements?
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Q3

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agl Run the chapter's own checklist of a civilisation against the evidence, and every box is ticked —
usually by something you can still go and look at.
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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

ACHIEVEMENT THE EVIDENCE IN THIS CHAPTER

Town-planning Cities built to precise plans, with wide streets oriented to the cardinal directions (Fig. 6.4,
Kalibangan; Fig. 6.5, Dholavira), fortifications, and an upper town and lower town — three
zones at Dholavira

Water Bathing areas in homes connected to covered drains running below the streets (Fig. 6.7,
management Lothal); about 700 brick wells at Mohenjo-daro; at least six large reservoirs at
Dholavira, the biggest 73 m long, linked by underground drains

Fair, uniform “The quality of construction was the same for small and big houses” — the point B.B. Lal
building makes in the chapter's opening quotation about a well-balanced community

Crafts and Drilled and decorated carnelian beads; shell bangles cut from hard conch; mastery of copper
metallurgy and of bronze (copper + tin); stone weights, a bronze mirror, a bronze chisel (Fig. 6.14)

Long-distance Harappan carnelian beads excavated at Susa (present-day Iran); an ivory comb found
trade on the coast of Oman; the 217 × 36 m dockyard at Lothal — India's first intensive
maritime activity

A writing system Thousands of steatite seals carrying signs of a script — though the script is still undeciphered

Productive Barley, wheat, millets, sometimes rice, pulses and vegetables; the first in Eurasia to grow
agriculture cotton; a clay model of a plough from Banawali (Fig. 6.9)

Art, games and The ‘Dancing Girl’ bronze (10.8 cm); the ‘Priest King’ statuette; the namaste figurine; the
daily life thirsty-crow story painted on a Lothal pot; a stone gamesboard and a terracotta whistle

Peace No army, no weapons of war, no trace of warfare — “a relatively peaceful civilisation”

Which achievement is the most unusual? Not the size of the cities —
Mesopotamia and Egypt had big cities too. It is the combination of two things: city-
wide drains and wells serving ordinary houses, and houses of rich and poor built to
the same standard, in a society that left behind no palaces, no royal tombs and no
weapons. Very few ancient civilisations anywhere can show that.

In-text Questions — Page 86

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

What Is a Civilisation?

Q1 What, then, is civilisation?

In general, the term is used for an advanced stage of human societies. The book then
makes that precise: “we will consider here that a ‘civilisation’ should have at least the following
characteristics” — and lists seven.

government and administration · urbanism · a variety of crafts · trade

some form of writing · cultural ideas · a productive agriculture

Notice the two careful words in that sentence.

“we will consider here” — this is the definition this book is going to use, not the only
possible one. Different historians draw the line in slightly different places.
“at least” — the seven are a minimum, not a full description. A civilisation may have far
more.

Why a definition is needed at all: the question “when did civilisation begin?” has no
answer until you say what counts as one. Once you have the checklist, you can test a
place: Mesopotamia passes it about 6,000 years ago, Egypt a few centuries later, and
the Indus-Sarasvatī region around 2600 BCE. Without the checklist, ‘civilisation’ is
only an opinion.

Careful: ‘civilisation’ is not the same as ‘good’ or ‘better’. It describes how a society is
organised — cities, records, trade, administration — not how kind or wise its people
were. Hunter-gatherer and village communities had rich cultures long before any
city existed.

THINK ABOUT IT — Page 86

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

What Is a Civilisation? — the seven characteristics

THINK ABOUT IT

Q1 Which of the above characteristics do you think is the most fundamental — that is,
a characteristic essential to the development of all others?

A productive agriculture. It is the one characteristic without which not a single other one on
the list can appear.

CHARACTERISTIC WHY IT CANNOT EXIST WITHOUT SURPLUS FOOD

Urbanism A city is full of people who grow nothing. They can only live there if farmers
produce more than they themselves eat and the extra reaches the city.
The book says it plainly: “the cities could survive only if enough agricultural
produce from rural areas reached them on a daily basis.”

Crafts A bead-driller or a shell-bangle maker spends the whole day at the
workbench. Somebody else must be feeding that person.

Trade You can only trade what you have to spare. Grain, cotton and the free time
to travel all come out of a farm surplus.

Government, writing, Officials, scribes and artists produce no food at all. They exist only where
cultural ideas food is plentiful and secure enough to support them.

A second answer that is also defensible. Some students argue for government and
administration, and the argument is a real one: somebody had to plan the streets, organise
the drains, standardise the weights and the brick sizes, and get hundreds of workers to build
Dholavira's reservoirs. That is exactly what the THINK ABOUT IT on page 96 asks you to
imagine.

How to settle it: ask which one can exist before the other. A farming village with no
government is perfectly possible — Chapter 4 describes exactly that. A government
with no farming is not: the officials would starve. So agriculture is the foundation
and administration is the first floor. If your teacher asks for one answer, give
agriculture; if the question invites a discussion, give both and say why agriculture
comes first in time.

Check it yourself: the chapter itself puts agriculture last in the list but first in
importance — and it is the only characteristic it defines by what it must do (“enough
to feed not just the villages, but also the cities”) rather than by what it is.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

LET'S EXPLORE — Page 87
What Is a Civilisation? — professions behind each characteristic

LET'S EXPLORE

Q1 For each characteristic in the list above, can you make a list of professions or
occupations that might exist in such a society?

Take the seven characteristics one at a time and ask: who would have to do this job every day?
Here is a full list — every profession named below could really have existed in a Harappan city,
and most of them left something behind that archaeologists have dug up.

CHARACTERISTIC PROFESSIONS OR OCCUPATIONS IT WHAT THEY WOULD
NEEDS HAVE LEFT BEHIND

Government and Ruler or chief; council members; city administrators; Warehouses, standard
administration tax or store officials; record-keepers; judges; weights, planned streets
supervisors of public works; guards

Urbanism Town planner; surveyor; brick-maker; mason; Bricks of standard size,
carpenter; well-digger; drain-builder; sweeper and wells, covered drains,
drain-cleaner; water carrier reservoirs

Crafts Potter; bead-maker and bead-driller; shell-bangle The mirror, chisel, beads,
maker; coppersmith and bronze-smith; goldsmith; comb, whistle and
ivory carver; stone-cutter; weaver; dyer; toy- and gamesboard of Fig. 6.14
game-maker

Trade Merchant; shopkeeper; caravan driver (bullock-cart); Seals, weights, the Lothal
boatman and sailor; dockyard worker; porter; dockyard, beads found at
weigher; seal-cutter Susa

Writing Scribe; seal-engraver; person who kept accounts of Inscribed seals and tablets
stored grain and goods

Cultural ideas Sculptor and figurine-maker; painter of pots; The ‘Dancing Girl’, the
musician and dancer; storyteller; priest or ritual ‘Priest King’, the namaste
specialist; toy-maker figurine, the thirsty-crow
pot

Agriculture Farmer; ploughman; herder and cattle-keeper; The clay plough model
fisherman; miller; cotton grower; gardener; cart- from Banawali; animal and
driver bringing grain to the city fish bones

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

The point of the exercise. Count the list: roughly forty different jobs. In a hunting-and-
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gathering group almost everyone does the same few things. In a civilisation people specialise —
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and specialisation is only possible when farmers grow more food than they need.

em a
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gl this: pick any object on pages 100–101 and work backwards to the people who
amade
Try
it. The bronze chisel alone needs a copper miner, a tin trader, a smelter, a

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smith who knows the right proportions, and a carpenter who will buy it. One small
tool, five occupations.
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Why this is a history skill, not a guessing game: archaeologists do exactly this.

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They find a heap of half-drilled carnelian beads and a broken stone drill in one

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house, and conclude that a bead-maker worked there. Objects are evidence

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occupations, gla organised.
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In-text Questions — Page 87
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What Is a Civilisation? — when did civilisation begin?
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But when did civilisation begin, in the sense we have now defined?
Q1

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There.cis no single date, because civilisation began at different
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WHERE MODERN COUNTRY WHEN IT BEGAN
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Mesopotamia Modern Iraq and Syria About 6,000 years ago — around 4000 BCE

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on Fig. 6.2

Ancient Egypt Egypt “A few centuries later” — around 3100 BCE

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on Fig. 6.2

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Indus- India and Pakistan (and a site in
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Cities from about 2600 BCE, lasting to about

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Afghanistan) BCE

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6,000 years ago ≈ 6000 − 2026 = about 4000 BCE — which is exactly where Fig. 6.2
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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Why it started in these places. All three grew up on great river systems — the Tigris and
Euphrates, the Nile, and the Indus with the Sarasvatī. Rivers make the soil fertile, water the
fields, and carry boats. That is the condition the seventh characteristic — a productive
agriculture — needs.

Why the book says these civilisations still matter: “In many ways, humanity
would not have reached its present stage without the enormous contributions and
advances of those ancient civilisations.” Writing, cities, drains, measured weights,
wheeled carts, metal tools, long-distance trade — these were invented once, in
societies like these, and we have been using them ever since.

Tip: ‘about 6,000 years ago’ and ‘about 4000 BCE’ mean the same thing. When a book
mixes the two ways of counting, convert one into the other before you compare
dates.

In-text Questions — Page 88
From Village to City — Don't Miss Out

Q1 Why are the inhabitants of this civilisation called ‘Harappans’ today?

Because the city of Harappa was the first site of this civilisation to be excavated — “way
back in 1920–21, over a century ago”. Harappa is today in Pakistan's Punjab. In archaeology, a
whole culture is usually named after the place where it was first recognised, whether or not that
place was the most important one.

NAME WHERE IT COMES WHAT IT SUGGESTS — AND WHERE IT
FROM MISLEADS

Harappan Harappa, the first site Safe and neutral. It says nothing about geography — which is
excavated (1920–21) why the book prefers it

Indus The Indus (Sindhu) True for Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, but half the sites are not
River on the Indus

Indus Valley The same river, plus Obsolete. The civilisation spread far beyond the Indus
‘valley’ region — see the THINK ABOUT IT on page 91

Indus-Sarasvatī / Both river systems The most accurate, because the Sarasvatī basin holds two
Sindhu-Sarasvatī together major cities (Rakhigarhi, Ganweriwala) and a very high
density of sites

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Why the name matters: a name quietly makes a claim. Call it ‘Indus Valley’ and you
have told your reader the civilisation lived in one river valley — and then the map on
page 89 contradicts you. This is a good habit to carry into all of history: ask what a
familiar name is assuming, and check it against the evidence.

Did you know? Harappa and Mohenjo-daro were the first two cities discovered, and
their identification as one civilisation goes back to 1924 — three or four years after
the digging at Harappa began. Discovery and identification are two different
moments, and the book gives both dates.

LET'S EXPLORE — Page 89

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

From Village to City — reading the map of settlements (Fig. 6.3)

LET'S EXPLORE

Q1 Some of the important cities of this civilisation are marked in the map (Fig. 6.3). As
a class activity, can you try to match these cities with the modern states or regions
in the table on the next page?

60°E 63°E 66°E 69°E 72°E 75°E 78°E 81°E

Shortugai

U SS HH
D U KK
U
U
36°N
H II NN
D
H
River
Indus
lum
he
rJ H
H
ive II M
R M A
A
b LL A
A
ena YY A
er
Ch Manda A SS
33°N
Riv
US
SUL

vi j
eas River Sutle
Ra er B
IAL

er Riv
AIM

v
Ri Rupnagar
Musa Khel
AM

HarappaBanawali
Harappa
AN

Dabarkot
KalibanganRakhigarhi
R N

Rakhigarhi 30°N
VATĪ
RAN

RAS Bhirrana
A

R SA Ri
RIVE Farmana
EGN

Karanpura ve
rG
GE

Ganweriwala
Ganweriwala an
A A

Ri ga
AR
R

Lakhanjo-daro ve
A

Lakhanjo-daro
Mohenjo-daro rY
V
VA

Mohenjo-daro
LA
am 27°N
LL

un
IL I

a
R R

Chanhudaro
NA
A

Sutkagen-dor s
N

na
EG
G

Balakot Ba
E

r
ve
Ri

Dholavira
Dholavira 24°N
Khirsara
Nagwada
Nageshwar Bagasra Lothal

21°N

60°E 63°E 66°E 69°E 72°E 75°E 78°E 81°E

km (approx.)
0 200 400 600 800 1000

Major city named on the map
Other settlement

Fig. 6.3 (pages 88–89) — some of the main settlements of the Indus-Sarasvatī civilisation,
redrawn with the book’s rivers, ranges, settlements and 3° graticule. The book’s own
caption reads: “Notice the natural boundaries formed by the mountain ranges (in brown
colour).” Note that on the printed map only the Hindu Kush, the Sulaiman Range and
the Himalayas are brown; the Aravalli Range is printed in the same yellow-green as the
country around it, with its name in green, so the caption’s “brown” does not cover every
range it labels.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

HARAPPAN CITY MODERN STATE / REGION

Dholavira Punjab

Harappa Gujarat

Kalibangan Sindh

Mohenjo-daro Haryana

Rakhigarhi Rajasthan

The matching table printed on page 90 — the two columns are not in matching order;
pairing them up is the exercise.

The table on page 90 is deliberately jumbled — not one pair as printed is correct. Trace each
red dot on Fig. 6.3 and the true matches come out like this.

HARAPPAN MODERN STATE COUNTRY HOW YOU FIND IT ON FIG. 6.3
CITY / REGION TODAY

Dholavira Gujarat India Low down on the map, in the Rann of
Kutch, near Khirsara, Bagasra and
Nagwada

Harappa Punjab Pakistan Upper middle, on the River Ravi, below
the Chenab and Jhelum

Kalibangan Rajasthan India On the dotted line of the River Sarasvatī,
between Harappa and Rakhigarhi

Mohenjo-daro Sindh Pakistan On the lower Indus, just below Lakhanjo-
daro and above Chanhudaro

Rakhigarhi Haryana India To the right, near Banawali, Bhirrana and
Farmana, in the dense cluster of sites

Page 13 of 49

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

co m
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Printed (wrong) → Correct
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Dholavira – Punjab → Dholavira – Gujarat
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l a se
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Harappa – Gujarat → Harappa – Punjab (Pakistan)
aKalibangan – Sindh → Kalibangan – Rajasthan

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Mohenjo-daro – Haryana → Mohenjo-daro – Sindh (Pakistan)
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Rakhigarhi – Rajasthan → Rakhigarhi – Haryana
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What else Fig. 6.3 is telling you. Read the map for more than the five names:

. c o
s em the middle. The
Natural boundaries in brown — the Hindu Kush and the Sulaiman Range to the west and
m a
. co sits inside this frame.
north-west,
a gl
the Himalayas along the top, the Aravalli Range cutting across

a s em
civilisation

a gl Two river systems, not one — the Indus with the Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas and Sutlej; and
the Sarasvatī, drawn running through Kalibangan and Ganweriwala down towards the Rann.

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Hundreds of small pink dots — the ordinary settlements. They cluster most thickly along

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the Sarasvatī, which is exactly the point the text on page 91 makes.

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The full spread — Shortugai in the far north (today in Afghanistan), Manda and Rupnagar
a
in the north-east, Sutkagen-dor far to the west on the Makran coast, and Lothal,
Nageshwar and Balakot on the sea.

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m l a se
How to run it as a class activity: copy the two columns on to the board in the
o
m .c order the book prints, then send one student at aa gtime to the map to find
jumbled
asethe city before drawing the arrow. Matching from memory teaches nothing;
agl matching from the map teaches map-reading.

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THINK ABOUT IT — Page
a

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Town-Planning — why ‘Indus Valley civilisation’ is obsolete

THINK ABOUT IT

Q1 You may have come across the term ‘Indus Valley civilisation’ and noticed that we
have not used it. A look at the map (Fig. 6.3 on page 89) explains why the term
‘Valley’ is obsolete, as we now know that the civilisation extended much beyond the
Indus region.

60°E 63°E 66°E 69°E 72°E 75°E 78°E 81°E

Shortugai

KK UU S HH
S
N DD UU
36°N
H II
H N
River
Indus
lum
he
erJ H
H
Ri
v II M
M A
A
LL A
ena
b A YY A
er
Ch Manda A SS
33°N
Riv
US SUL

vi j
eas River Sutle
Ra er B
IAL

er Riv
AIM

v
Ri Rupnagar
Musa Khel
AM

HarappaBanawali
Harappa
AN

Dabarkot
KalibanganRakhigarhi
R N

Rakhigarhi 30°N
VATĪ
RAN

RAS Bhirrana
A

R SA Ri
RIVE Farmana
EGN

Karanpura ve
rG
GE

Ganweriwala
Ganweriwala an
A A

Ri ga
AR
R

Lakhanjo-daro ve
A

Lakhanjo-daro
Mohenjo-daro rY
V
VA

Mohenjo-daro
LA

am 27°N
LL

un
IL I

a
R R

Chanhudaro
NA
A

Sutkagen-dor s
N

na
EG
G

Balakot Ba
E

r
ve
Ri

Dholavira
Dholavira 24°N
Khirsara
Nagwada
Nageshwar Bagasra Lothal

21°N

60°E 63°E 66°E 69°E 72°E 75°E 78°E 81°E

km (approx.)
0 200 400 600 800 1000

Major city named on the map
Other settlement

Fig. 6.3 (pages 88–89) — some of the main settlements of the Indus-Sarasvatī civilisation,
redrawn with the book’s rivers, ranges, settlements and 3° graticule. The book’s own
caption reads: “Notice the natural boundaries formed by the mountain ranges (in brown
colour).” Note that on the printed map only the Hindu Kush, the Sulaiman Range and
the Himalayas are brown; the Aravalli Range is printed in the same yellow-green as the
country around it, with its name in green, so the caption’s “brown” does not cover every
range it labels.

The term was reasonable in 1924 and is wrong today, and the map shows why in one glance:
most of the sites on Fig. 6.3 are not in the Indus valley at all.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

WHERE THE SITES EXAMPLES ON FIG. 6.3 DISTANCE FROM THE
ARE INDUS VALLEY

In the Indus valley — Mohenjo-daro, Lakhanjo-daro, Chanhudaro, Inside
the original meaning Harappa (on the Ravi, an Indus tributary)

The Sarasvatī Rakhigarhi and Ganweriwala (both major cities), A different river system,
(Ghaggar-Hakra) Kalibangan, Banawali, Bhirrana, Farmana, hundreds of kilometres
basin Karanpura east

Gujarat and the Rann Dholavira, Lothal, Khirsara, Bagasra, Nagwada, Far to the south-east, on
of Kutch Nageshwar the sea

The far north Shortugai — today in Afghanistan Beyond the Hindu Kush

The north-east Manda, Rupnagar Towards the Himalayan
foothills

The western sea coast Sutkagen-dor, Balakot On the Makran coast, far
west of the river

Two separate objections to the word ‘Valley’.

1. It is factually too small. The Sarasvatī basin alone holds two of the largest cities —
Rakhigarhi and Ganweriwala — plus a very high density of smaller sites. A name that leaves
out half the civilisation is not a good name.
2. ‘Valley’ is the wrong word even for the Indus. The Indus flows through wide plains here,
not a narrow mountain valley. The word paints the wrong picture of the land itself.

Why old names survive anyway: in 1924 only sites near the Indus were known, so
‘Indus Valley’ described everything then discovered. Then came Rakhigarhi,
Dholavira, Lothal, Banawali — “such discoveries continue even today!” — and the
name was left behind by the evidence. This is normal in history: the name is fixed at
the moment of discovery, but the knowledge keeps growing. The honest thing is to
change the name, which is why this book says ‘Indus-Sarasvatī’ or ‘Harappan’
instead.

Tip for the exam: if a question uses the phrase ‘Indus Valley civilisation’, you may
still answer it — but you gain a mark by adding one line: “this civilisation is better
called the Indus-Sarasvatī or Harappan civilisation, since it extended well beyond the
Indus region.”

In-text Questions — Page 93

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Town-Planning — the Great Bath (Fig. 6.6)

Q1 What was the purpose of such a structure?

We do not know for certain — and the chapter says so. “Archaeologists have proposed several
possible interpretations”, and one of the three has since been ruled out.

INTERPRETATION STATUS REASON

1. A public bath for Ruled out “It turns out that in this city, most houses had individual
people bathrooms.” People who can bathe at home do not need a
public bath

2. A bath for the royal Still Its position in the upper town, its size and its careful
family only possible waterproofing all suit a structure built for a few important
people

3. A tank used for Still Ritual bathing is very old in India, and the trouble taken to
religious rituals possible keep the water clean fits a sacred use

What we can say for certain, from the structure itself:

It measured about 12 × 7 metres — a little bigger than a classroom, so “small but elaborate”.
It was waterproofed with natural bitumen (a form of tar) laid on top of carefully laid-out
bricks — the same idea as tar-lining a modern tank.
It was surrounded by small rooms, one of which contained a well.
It had a drain in one corner, so the tank could be emptied from time to time and refilled
with freshwater.

What all that adds up to: whoever built it cared a great deal about the water being
clean and fresh, and was willing to spend a lot of skilled labour on that. A tank you
go to the trouble of emptying and refilling is not an ordinary water store. That is the
strongest single clue we have — and it fits both of the surviving interpretations
equally well, which is exactly why the debate is not over.

Be careful how you write this answer. Do not write “the Great Bath was used for
religious rituals” as if it were a fact. Write: “its purpose is still debated; a royal bath
and a ritual tank are the two interpretations that remain, while the public-bath idea
has been ruled out because most houses had their own bathrooms.” That sentence
is both shorter and truer.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

LET'S EXPLORE — Page 93
Town-Planning — a class debate on the Great Bath

LET'S EXPLORE

Q1 Have a debate in class about the last two interpretations. Can you think of any
others? Remember that in this case, we do not have any other source of history —
no inscription, no text, no traveller's account.

The two interpretations left standing are a bath for the royal family only and a tank used for
religious rituals. Here is the case each side can actually make from the evidence, plus three
further possibilities worth putting on the table.

SIDE A — A ROYAL OR ELITE SIDE B — A RITUAL TANK
BATH

Where it stands In the upper town, where the elite probably In the upper town, which in many ancient
lived — a private amenity for the few cities is also where the public and sacred
buildings stand

Its size 12 × 7 m is far too big for one family's daily Big enough for a group ceremony, small
bath — but right for a select group enough that only chosen people take part

The waterproofing Comfort and cleanliness for important Purity. The trouble taken to empty and
and the drain people refill it with freshwater is exactly what a
ritual bath needs

The small rooms Changing rooms or rooms for attendants Rooms for preparation before the bath, or
around it for priests

What weakens it We have found no palace and no royal We have no text and no inscription we
burial anywhere in this civilisation — so can read, so ‘ritual’ is a guess based on
we cannot even prove there was a royal later Indian practice, not on Harappan
family evidence

Three other interpretations you could propose:

A civic water store — a clean reserve of freshwater for the upper town in a dry season. It
would explain the well and the drain neatly.
A place for healing or medicine — bathing in clean water, perhaps with herbs, for the sick.
More than one use over time. Cities last for centuries; a building rarely keeps a single
purpose for 700 years. It may have begun as one thing and ended as another.

Page 18 of 49

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

co m
m.
Why the last sentence of the box is the most important one: “we do not have any

m l a se
other source of history — no inscription, no text, no traveller's account.” For Aśhoka
o
.c own words carved in stone; for the Harappans we have a g only the object
m
we have his

l a seThat is why the argument has to be built out of size, position, materials and
g
itself.
aplumbing — and why it cannot be finished. A good debater in this class must end
with “this is what the evidence supports”, never “this is what happened”.
co m
e m . ag
g l as
a
How to run the debate fairly: give each side ten minutes to list physical evidence
only — no “I feel that”. Then let each side name one discovery that would change
their mind. Side A might say “a palace next door”; side B might say “a deciphered
co m
inscription on the wall”. Naming what would prove you wrong is the heart of
em.
m l as
.co g
historical method.
m a
l a se
a g
LET'S EXPLORE — Page 95
m a s
Water Management — measuring against Dholavira's reservoirs
m .co agl
l a se
a g
LET'S EXPLORE

As a class activity, measure the length of your classroom, a school corridor or a
co m
.
Q1

e m
as
playground with the help of any measuring tape. Compare these lengths with the
m l
.co g
length of the largest reservoir in Dholavira.

em a
a s
agl ANSWER
The largest reservoir at Dholavira measured 73 metres in length — and the reservoir
se m
com g l a
.
photographed in Fig. 6.8, cut straight into the rock, is 33 metres long. Measure your own school
m a
ase
first, then do the division.

WHAT YOU MEASURE agl TYPICAL LENGTH HOW MANY FIT INTO 73 M?

co m
Your classroom
.
about 8 m 73 ÷ 8 ≈ 9 classrooms end to end

em
m l as
.co a g
A school corridor about 30 m 73 ÷ 30 ≈ 2½ corridors

a s em A school playground / small field
agl
about 70 m roughly the whole field

.c
A full football ground about 100 m about ¾ of the ground
s e m
m a
e m . c o agl
s
Drawn to scale, the Harappan structures in this chapter look like this:
a
agl

co m
m .
m ase
.co


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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

All drawn to the same scale — 1 metre = 3 pixels

classroom, 8 m

corridor, 30 m

rock-cut reservoir, 33 m

largest Dholavira reservoir, 73 m

football ground, 100 m

Lothal dockyard
basin, 217 m

100 metres
the Great Bath at Mohenjo-daro was only 12 m long — about one and a half classrooms

Harappan water structures against things you can measure in school. The Lothal basin is “just a little
more than two football grounds”, exactly as page 98 says.

Why the activity is worth doing with a real tape: a number on a page means
nothing until your legs have walked it. Pace out 73 metres in the playground and
you suddenly understand that this was dug or cut by hand, out of rock, with
copper and stone tools, more than 4,000 years ago — and that Dholavira had at
least six of them, most connected by underground drains.

Sample answer: “Our classroom is 7.6 m long and the corridor is 28 m. The largest
Dholavira reservoir would need almost ten of our classrooms in a row, or two and a
half corridors. Our whole playground is 60 m — shorter than one reservoir. We could
not believe that people 4,500 years ago cut something that long into solid rock
without machines.”

THINK ABOUT IT — Page 96

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Water Management — who organised the work?

THINK ABOUT IT

Q1 Imagine the large number of workers required to build such a network of
reservoirs. Who do you think organised their work and gave them precise
instructions? How do you think they were paid for their labour? (Hint: there was no
money at that time in the way we have today.) Since the reservoirs needed to be
cleaned from time to time, was there some local authority to manage their
maintenance? What clues do we get from all this about this city's ruler and
municipal administration?

The box asks four questions. Take them in order — and remember the honest ending the book
gives it: “Archaeologists also discuss these questions, and the answers are not always final!”
1. Who organised the work and gave precise instructions?
Nobody digs six rock-cut reservoirs by accident. Somebody had to decide where they should go,
at what depth, and how the underground drains would connect them so that water flowed the
right way. That means the city had:

a planner or engineer who understood levels and slopes;
supervisors who could direct hundreds of workers at once;
an authority — a ruler, a council, or a body of officials — whose instructions people actually
obeyed, year after year. Reservoirs like these take many seasons to build.

2. How were the workers paid, with no money?
Almost certainly in kind. The likely forms:

FORM OF WHY IT IS PLAUSIBLE HERE
PAYMENT

Grain and food The chapter says the cities depended on agricultural produce arriving from villages
daily, and that some large buildings were warehouses. A city that stores grain can
pay in grain

Other goods Cloth (they wove cotton), pots, tools, beads, bangles — all things the city's own
craftspeople made

Barter and exchange Trade “to exchange all sorts of goods” is one of the seven characteristics of a
civilisation. Wages could work the same way

Shared duty for a Everyone in a dry region needs water. Some of the work may have been done as a
shared benefit community obligation, not as paid labour

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

3. Was there a local authority for maintenance?
Very probably yes. Cleaning is the real proof of administration. Building something once can be
done in a burst of enthusiasm; cleaning it every year for centuries needs a permanent body
that assigns the job, checks it is done, and pays for it. The same argument applies to the
covered street drains — a drain nobody clears blocks within a season, yet these drains served
the cities for hundreds of years.
4. What does all this tell us about the ruler and the municipal administration?

CLUE WHAT IT SUGGESTS

Six large reservoirs, connected by Long-term planning and technical skill; an authority that could think
underground drains decades ahead

Streets oriented to the cardinal Rules that applied across the whole city — a real administration, not
directions; standard bricks and stone just a strong man
weights

Drains and wells serving ordinary The administration worked for the common people too, not only
houses for the elite

Same quality of construction for small Power that did not show itself off — B.B. Lal's “well-balanced
and big houses community … not of exploitation, but of mutual accommodation”

No palace, no royal tomb, no army, no Whoever ruled did not rule mainly by force or display. This is the
weapons great puzzle of Harappan history

Why archaeologists still argue about this: in Egypt a pyramid names its pharaoh;
in Mesopotamia a clay tablet lists the workers' rations. Here we have the reservoirs
but not a single readable word about who ordered them. So the honest answer is:
the works prove that an organised authority existed, but they do not tell us its shape
— king, council of elders, guild of merchants, or priests. Say that in your answer and
you will have written what a professional archaeologist would write.

In-text Questions — Page 97
What Did the Harappans Eat?

Q1 What did Harappan cooking pots contain?

Scientific examinations of the clay pots have provided some answers — and the surprises
are the interesting part.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

FOUND IN EXPECTED OR WHAT IT TELLS US
THE POTS SURPRISING?

Dairy products Expected They kept and milked animals — the chapter says they
domesticated a number of animals

Turmeric Surprising Food was spiced, not merely boiled. Turmeric is still in
every Indian kitchen today

Ginger Surprising A second spice — so cooking was already a matter of
flavour and, quite possibly, of health

Banana Surprising Fruit was being used in cooking, and it must have
been grown or traded for

Put these together with the rest of the section and the Harappan food basket looks like this:
cereals — barley, wheat, some millets, sometimes rice; pulses — beans, peas and lentils; a
variety of vegetables; meat from domesticated animals; fish from both rivers and the sea;
dairy; and spices and fruit. As the book concludes, “clearly, their diet was quite diverse!”

How can anyone know what was in a pot 4,000 years ago? Cooking leaves
microscopic residues soaked into the clay — starch grains, plant crystals and
chemical traces. Scientists scrape a sample from the pot's inner surface and analyse
it in a laboratory. Animal and fish bones from the rubbish heaps tell the rest of the
story. This is archaeology working with science — no text, no inscription, and yet
we end up with a menu.

Did you know? Turmeric and ginger in the same pot is very close to a modern
Indian tadka. It is one of the clearest threads running unbroken from the Harappans
to the kitchen in your house.

LET US EXPLORE — Page 97

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

What Did the Harappans Eat? — cooking a Harappan meal
co m
e m.
m as
LET US EXPLORE

.co a g l
a s em you cook a meal in a Harappan house. What dish or dishes would you
gl
Imagine
a
Q1
prepare, based on the data given above?

co m
m . ag
l a se
ag of these had reached India yet). Here is the pantry you
Everything on your menu must come from the list the chapter actually gives — no potato, no
chilli, no tomato, no tea, no sugar (none
are allowed:

co m
em.
com as
CATEGORY WHAT YOU MAY USE

. a g l
m
ase
Cereals Barley, wheat, some millets, sometimes rice

aglPulses Beans, peas, lentils (dal)

m a s
.co agl
Vegetables A variety — the book does not name them

se m
Meat and fish
g l a
Meat from domesticated animals; river fish and sea fish
a
Dairy Milk, curd, butter

co m
m .
e
Spices and fruit Turmeric, ginger, banana

com thali you could actually have cooked: g l as
A full.Harappan a
m
ase
agl 1. Barley or wheat rotis baked on a hot clay griddle — the cereal is the base of every meal.
2. Lentil dal tempered with turmeric and ginger, cooked in a terracotta pot over a hearth.
se m
The pot residues say this combination is not a guess.
com g l a
m . a
e
asturmeric and ginger, if the house is at Lothal or Mohenjo-
3. A vegetable cooked with curd — a kadhi-like dish, using the dairy the pots also recorded.

a g l
4. Grilled river fish rubbed with
daro, near water.

m
5. Banana to finish — the only sweet thing on the list.
. co
se m
o m l a
ag a lentil dal in a terracotta
.cbake flat rotis on a clay griddle. Beside them I would cook
Sample answer: “In my Harappan kitchen I would grind barley on a stone quern and

se m
g l a
a
pot with a little turmeric and ginger, and set out curd from our own buffalo. Because

.c
m
we live near the river I would grill a fish. There would be no chilli, no potato and no

m a s e
co agl
tea, because the Harappans did not have them. I would end the meal with a banana.

m .
e
Everything in this meal is something scientists have actually found traces of in
Harappan pots or grain stores.”
g l as
a

co m
m .
m as e
.co


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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

The historian's rule behind this game: you may imagine freely, but only inside the
evidence. Adding a chilli to your Harappan dal is not imagination — it is a mistake,
because chillies reached India only about 500 years ago from the Americas. Knowing
what to leave out is as much a part of history as knowing what to put in.

LET'S EXPLORE — Page 99
A Brisk Trade — the three Harappan seals (Fig. 6.13)

LET'S EXPLORE

Q1 Looking at these three Harappan seals with some writing signs, what goes through
your mind? Would you like to suggest any interpretations? Let your imagination
run!

First, look hard at what is actually printed on page 99. All three seals are built the same way: a
row of signs along the top and a single animal below, facing left, standing on a base line.

SEAL ANIMAL SHOWN WHAT IS STRIKING ABOUT IT

Fig. A unicorn — a one- The commonest animal on Harappan seals, and an animal that does
6.13-1 horned animal not exist in nature — so it must stand for an idea, a clan or a story

Fig. A bull A real, powerful, everyday animal — the strength that pulled the
6.13-2 plough and the cart

Fig. A horned tiger A real animal given an impossible feature. Again, this is imagination
6.13-3 at work, not a portrait

What we know for certain: the seals are only a few centimetres across; they are made of
steatite, a soft stone hardened by heating; thousands of them have been excavated from many
settlements; the signs above the animal “are part of a writing system”; and “what is certain is
that they somehow relate to trade activities.”
What we do not know — and this is the important half:

The writing system has not been deciphered. Nobody today can read a single Harappan sign
with certainty.
The symbolic meaning of the animals is equally unknown.
So any interpretation you offer — including the ones below — is a suggestion, not a
translation.

Interpretations worth suggesting (this is what the box invites you to do):

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

1. A merchant's name-tag. Pressed into soft clay on a bundle of goods, the seal says whose
the bundle is — like a stamp or a signature. This fits the book's own explanation: traders
needed “to identify their goods — and also each other”.
2. A city or workshop mark, showing where the goods came from.
3. A family, clan or guild emblem — the unicorn for one group, the bull for another, the way a
school has a house symbol.
4. A licence or permit issued by the city's administration to a trader.
5. A protective or lucky symbol, since the animals include imagined ones.

Why the undeciphered script matters so much: writing is one of the seven
characteristics of a civilisation, and the Harappans clearly had it. But because we
cannot read it, we do not know their language, their rulers' names, their laws, their
gods or their stories. Everything in this chapter had to be worked out from things —
bricks, drains, beads, bones and pots. If the script is ever read, half of what you have
learnt here may be rewritten.

Careful: you will sometimes see confident claims that the Harappan script has been
‘decoded’. Hundreds of such claims have been made and none is accepted. The
correct sentence, and the one this textbook uses, is: “that system … is yet to be
understood.”

THINK ABOUT IT — Page 102
The Lives of the Ancients — reading the objects on pages 100 and 101

THINK ABOUT IT

Q1 Looking at the objects on pages 100 and 101 — or any other pictured in this chapter
— can you make out what activities or aspects of life were important for the
Harappans?

Every object is a clue to an activity. Go through the two plates one by one and the shape of a
whole life appears.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

OBJECT (FIG.) WHAT IT TELLS US MATTERED

Bronze mirror (6.14-1, Personal appearance and grooming — and the skill to cast and polish
Dholavira) bronze until it reflects

Terracotta pot (6.14-2, Cooking, storage — and decoration. It is painted with bands and patterns,
Dholavira) so even a kitchen pot was meant to look good

Stone weights (6.14-3, Accurate measurement in trade. Weights in graded sizes mean fixed
Dholavira) standards, honest dealing and, behind them, an administration

Bronze chisel (6.14-4, Dholavira) Craft and construction — the tool that cut the stone the city was built with

Stone gamesboard, about 25 Leisure and play for adults — and rules, since a board game needs agreed
cm (6.14-5, Dholavira) rules

Terracotta whistle, about 4 cm Childhood. Somebody made toys for children
(6.14-6, Karanpura)

‘Priest King’ statuette (6.15-1) Important people, fine cloth and portraiture — note the patterned shawl.
But the book warns: “it is not known whose figure was this”

Seal with a swastika (6.15-2) Symbols and beliefs — a sign still in use in India today

Pashupati seal (6.15-3) Religious or symbolic ideas — a three-faced figure seated on a raised
platform, surrounded by powerful animals

‘Dancing Girl’ bronze, 10.8 cm Music, dance, ornament and confidence — and mastery of bronze casting
(6.15-4) in the round

Figurine seated in a ‘namaste’ Gestures of greeting or respect that are still used every day in India
(6.15-5)

Thirsty-crow design on a pot Storytelling — the very same story children are told today
(6.15-6, Lothal)

Now group the clues. Five aspects of life stand out:

1. Work and skill — bronze-casting, stone-cutting, pottery, weaving.
2. Trade and honesty in measurement — the graded stone weights.
3. Beauty and personal care — mirror, ornaments, painted pots, the ivory comb from Oman.
4. Play, music and childhood — gamesboard, whistle, the dancing figure.
5. Belief and story — swastika, Pashupati seal, namaste, the crow and the pot.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

What is missing from the two pages is just as revealing: there is no sword, no
dagger, no shield, no chariot of war, no image of a king trampling an enemy.
Compare that with almost any other ancient civilisation, whose art is full of battles.
Read pages 100–101 as a whole and you see a people who spent their skill on
bathing, measuring, decorating, playing and praying — which is exactly the
evidence behind the chapter's line that this “seems to have been a relatively peaceful
civilisation”.

LET'S EXPLORE — Page 102
The Lives of the Ancients — the Lothal pot and the ‘Dancing Girl’

LET'S EXPLORE

Q1 Complete the story found on the Lothal pot. How was such a story remembered for
more than 4,000 years, in your opinion?

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:

A crow is dying of thirst on a hot day.

It finds a pot with a little water at the very bottom — too low for its beak to reach.

It cannot tip the pot over, and it cannot break it.

Then it has an idea: it picks up pebbles one by one and drops them in.

The water rises with every pebble … until it reaches the top.

The crow drinks, and flies away.

Moral: where strength fails, thinking succeeds.

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:

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

It is short and has a clear picture at its centre — a bird, a pot, pebbles, rising water. Easy
co m
to remember, easy to retell.
se m.
o m l a
.c world; it never breaks as long as families continue. ag
It is told to children, and children grow up and tell it to their children. That is the strongest

e m
smoral
chain in the
l a
ag
The is universally useful — patience and cleverness beat force. Every generation
finds it true.

co m
It needs no props. Any grandmother anywhere can tell it. Unlike a building, a story costs
nothing to carry.
e m . ag
g l as
a
Did you know? The same story later appears in Aesop's fables in Greece and in

m
Indian story-collections, and it is still printed in Class 1 and 2 readers. When you tell
co
m.
it to a younger cousin, you are one link in a chain more than four thousand links

m as e
.co l
long, that starts at a potter's wheel in Lothal.
a g
a s em
a gl Why this single pot is important to historians: it is one of the very few places
where we can see a Harappan idea rather than a Harappan object. Bricks tell us how
m a s
.co agl
they built; the crow pot tells us what they found worth teaching their children.

se m
g l a
a
Consider the ‘Dancing Girl’ figurine. What do you make of the attitude the figurine
om
Q2

. c
expresses? Observe her bangles covering an entire arm, a practice still visible in

m a s
parts of Gujarat and Rajasthan. Where else in this chapter canem
you spot bangles

. o in this manner. What conclusion should we drawafrom
cworn gl this?
s em
aANSWER
a g l
se m
a
The attitude. The ‘Dancing Girl’ (Fig. 6.15-4) is a bronze figurine from Mohenjo-daro, only 10.8
m
cm high — smaller than your hand. Lookoat
g l
m .c how she stands:
a
se the head tilted back and slightly to one side; one leg bent
One hand on the hip, elbowaout;
l
and relaxed, the weight a
ongthe other.
She wears no rich clothing — her ornaments are her dress: a necklace and the bangles.

co m
m .
se
The pose reads as confident, relaxed, self-assured, even a little playful — a person entirely at

o m l a
.c ancient art usually gives to important figures. That is whyagit has fascinated people ever
ease, caught in the pause between two movements of a dance. It is not the stiff, formal posture

m
se since it was found: a tiny bronze from 4,500 years ago that looks completely alive.
that
a
agl c
The bangles. They cover almost her entire left arm, from wrist to shoulder, with a few more
m .
m a s e
agl
on the right wrist — a stack, not a pair.
. co
se m
Where else in this chapter can you spot bangles worn in this manner? Turn back to the very

l a
g woman seated in the foreground, in a Kutchi dress, is wearing
first page of the chapter, page 85 — Fig. 6.1, the photograph of the North Gate entrance to
Dholavira's ‘Castle’ area.aThe

com
m .
m ase
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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.

THE ‘DANCING GIRL’ (FIG. 6.15-4) THE WOMAN IN FIG. 6.1, PAGE 85

Date About 4,500 years ago, Mohenjo-daro Today, at Dholavira in Kutch, Gujarat

Bangles Stacked from wrist to shoulder on one arm Stacked along the whole forearm

Still Yes — “a practice still visible in parts of Gujarat and Rajasthan”, exactly the regions where
worn? Dholavira and Kalibangan stand

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.

Why this is a strong argument and not a coincidence: the resemblance is not
vague. It is a specific way of wearing a specific ornament, and it survives in the
same geographical region as the sites. Historians look for exactly this kind of triple
match — same object, same practice, same place — before claiming continuity.
Other examples in this chapter point the same way: the namaste figurine, the
swastika seal, the thirsty-crow story, turmeric and ginger in the cooking pot, and
the plough whose shape modern farmers still use.

Careful with one thing: the name ‘Dancing Girl’ was given by the archaeologists
who found her, not by the Harappans. We do not actually know that she was a
dancer — only that the pose suggests movement. Say “the figurine known as the
‘Dancing Girl’”, the way the book says the statuette is “often called ‘Priest King’
(although it is not known whose figure was this)”.

THINK ABOUT IT — Page 102

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

The End or a New Beginning? — why the Harappans went back to villages

THINK ABOUT IT

Q1 The Harappans returned to rural settlements because a rural lifestyle gives easier
access to food and water than an urban lifestyle. Then as now, cities depended on
villages to provide food, and sometimes water.

This box is not a puzzle — it is the explanation of something that would otherwise look strange.
If a civilisation collapses, why do people move backwards, from a comfortable city to a small
village? Because a city is the harder place to survive when supply lines fail.

LIVING IN A HARAPPAN CITY LIVING IN A VILLAGE

Food Grown somewhere else. It must arrive from hundreds of Grown in the fields around you.
rural sites on a daily basis, by cart and boat You eat what you harvest

Water Wells, reservoirs and drains — built structures that need A stream, a pond or a shallow
cleaning, repair and an authority to organise both well used by a few families

If the rains fail Thousands of people who grow nothing are suddenly A few families move to where the
hungry at once water still is

What holds it Administration, trade, planning — all of which can stop The family and the field —
together working which cannot

So the move was sensible, not a defeat. With the climate drier from about 2200 BCE and the
Sarasvatī drying in its central basin, the food and water reaching the cities fell. The Harappans
did the reasonable thing: they “adopted a rural lifestyle in the changed environment”,
scattering over “hundreds, if not thousands, of small rural settlements”.

Why the box says “then as now”: the dependence has not gone away. Your city's
rice, wheat, milk and vegetables are grown by farmers you will never meet, and
much of its water is stored far outside it. If lorries stopped for a week, the city would
be in trouble long before the village would. The Harappan cities failed at exactly the
point where every city is weakest — a city cannot feed itself.

Discussion point: ask in class where the food in your school lunch was grown, and
how far it travelled. Then ask how many days your town could manage if nothing
arrived. That single question makes 1900 BCE feel very close.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

In-text Questions — Page 102
The End or a New Beginning? — the causes of the decline

Q1 What caused this decline?

Two factors are currently agreed upon, and one old explanation has been thrown out.

EXPLANATION STATUS AND EVIDENCE

1 Climatic change from about 2200 BCE Agreed. Less rain would have made agriculture more
onward, affecting much of the world — difficult and could have reduced the food supply
reduced rainfall and a drier phase reaching the cities

2 The Sarasvatī River dried up in its central Agreed. Cities there — such as Kalibangan and
basin Banawali — were suddenly abandoned. Later texts also
describe the river drying up and disappearing (page
90)

3 Warfare or invasion destroying the cities Ruled out. “There is no trace of warfare or invasion.”
The Harappans “do not seem to have kept any army or
weapons of war”

The chapter is careful to add: “There could have been other factors” — the two agreed causes
are the best-supported, not the whole story.
Notice what the decline actually looked like. It was not a single catastrophe:

It happened around 1900 BCE, three centuries after the drier phase began — a slow
squeeze, not a sudden blow.
“The cities were abandoned one by one” — different cities failed at different times.
The people did not vanish. Those who stayed “adopted a rural lifestyle”, and the Harappans
“scattered over hundreds, if not thousands, of small rural settlements”.
“It appears that the earlier government or administration no longer existed” — what
really collapsed was the organisation that held cities together.

Why the section is titled “The End or a New Beginning?”: because the civilisation
did not die, it changed shape. “Although the cities disappeared, much of the
Harappan culture and technology survived and was passed on to the next phase
of Indian civilisation.” The crafts, the crops, the plough, the bangles, the namaste,
the stories — all of these walked out of the cities and into the villages, and are with
us still.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Tip for the exam: answer in three parts and you cannot go wrong — (i) climatic
change from about 2200 BCE, (ii) the drying of the Sarasvatī's central basin, and (iii)
not war or invasion, for which there is no evidence at all. Then add one line: “these
two causes remind us how much we depend on climate and the environment for our
well-being.”

Before we move on ... — Page 103
The chapter in three points

BEFORE WE MOVE ON ...

Q1 The Indus, Harappan or Sindhu-Sarasvatī civilisation is one of the oldest of the
world. Its inhabitants, the Harappans, created planned cities with efficient water
management, diverse crafts and a brisk trade.

Unpack this sentence and you have the first two-thirds of the chapter. Every phrase in it is
backed by a specific piece of evidence.

PHRASE THE EVIDENCE BEHIND IT

“one of the oldest Cities from about 2600 BCE. Only Mesopotamia (about 4000 BCE) and Egypt (about 3100
of the world” BCE) are older among the civilisations on Fig. 6.2

“planned cities” Built “according to precise plans”; wide streets oriented to the cardinal directions;
fortifications; an upper town and a lower town (three zones at Dholavira); the same quality
of construction for small and big houses

“efficient water Bathing areas connected to covered drains below the streets; about 700 brick wells at
management” Mohenjo-daro; six or more reservoirs at Dholavira, the largest 73 m, linked by
underground drains for water harvesting and distribution; the Great Bath,
waterproofed and refillable

“diverse crafts” Carnelian bead drilling and decoration; shell bangles cut from hard conch; copper and
bronze work; ivory carving; cotton weaving; pottery; toys and games

“a brisk trade” Internal and external; land routes, rivers and the sea; beads at Susa (Iran) and an ivory
comb in Oman; the 217 × 36 m dockyard at Lothal; thousands of seals to identify goods
and traders

Three names, one civilisation. Use whichever the question uses, but know why the book
prefers ‘Harappan’ or ‘Indus-Sarasvatī’: the first is neutral, the second is geographically honest,
and ‘Indus Valley’ is neither.

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Did you know? Cotton is the Harappans' quietest world record. Growing it, spinning
it and weaving it was done here first in all of Eurasia — and Indian cotton cloth went
on being one of the world's most wanted goods for the next four thousand years.

Q3 The civilisation eventually declined, probably because of climatic and
environmental changes; people returned to a rural lifestyle.

Read that sentence carefully: it says “declined”, not “was destroyed”, and “probably”, not
“certainly”. Both words are chosen on purpose.

Around 2200 BCE → a climatic change affecting much of the world: less rain, a drier phase

→ agriculture becomes harder, food supply to the cities falls

The Sarasvatī dries up in its central basin → Kalibangan, Banawali suddenly abandoned

Around 1900 BCE → cities abandoned one by one; the administration ceases to exist

→ Harappans scatter over hundreds, if not thousands, of small rural settlements

Why “probably”. The book adds, “There could have been other factors.” Nobody was there to
record what happened, and no readable text survives. Two causes are agreed on; the rest is
open.
Why “returned to a rural lifestyle” and not “disappeared”. The people did not die out and
were not driven out. They moved to where food and water were easier to get — the point of the
THINK ABOUT IT on page 102 — and they took their skills with them. “Although the cities
disappeared, much of the Harappan culture and technology survived and was passed on to the
next phase of Indian civilisation.”

The lesson the chapter itself draws: “these two remind us of how much we depend
on climate and the environment for our well-being.” A civilisation with the best
drains in the ancient world, brilliant crafts and sea-going trade could not out-plan a
change in the rainfall. That is worth thinking about in a century when the climate is
changing again.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Careful: older books blamed an ‘Aryan invasion’ for the end of these cities. This
chapter is explicit that there is no trace of warfare or invasion, and no army or
weapons of war. If you write ‘invasion’ in an answer, you are writing something the
evidence contradicts.

Questions, activities and projects — Page 104
End-of-chapter exercise

Q1 Why does the civilisation studied in this chapter have several names? Discuss their
significance.

Because it was named several times over, by different people at different stages of discovery —
and each name records what was known at the moment it was coined.

NAME WHERE IT COMES FROM WHAT IT CLAIMS — AND WHAT IT IS
WORTH

Harappan From Harappa, the first city of Neutral and safe. It names a site, not a region, so it
civilisation this civilisation to be excavated, cannot be proved wrong by a new discovery — which is
in 1920–21; its inhabitants are why archaeologists like it
therefore called Harappans

Indus civilisation From the Indus (Sindhu) River, True but partial. Many sites are nowhere near the Indus
along which Harappa and
Mohenjo-daro were found

Indus Valley The same river, plus ‘valley’ — Obsolete. The map (Fig. 6.3) shows the civilisation
civilisation the term used when only Indus “extended much beyond the Indus region”. The book
sites were known deliberately does not use it

Indus-Sarasvatī Both river systems together — The most accurate. The Sarasvatī basin alone holds two
/ Sindhu- the Indus and the Sarasvatī major cities (Rakhigarhi, Ganweriwala), several
Sarasvatī (today's Ghaggar-Hakra) smaller ones (Farmana, Kalibangan) and towns
civilisation (Bhirrana, Banawali) — plus the highest density of
sites on the map

The significance — three things the names teach us.

1. Names are dated evidence, like anything else. ‘Indus Valley’ tells you what people knew in
the 1920s, not what is true.
2. Every name makes a hidden claim. Say ‘Indus’ and you have quietly said the civilisation
belonged to one river. Say ‘Indus-Sarasvatī’ and you have restored the other half of it.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

3. Knowledge grows, so names must be revised. “Such discoveries continue even today!” —
Rakhigarhi, Dholavira, Bhirrana and Lothal were all unknown when the first name was given.

Tip: the safest sentence for an exam is: “It is called Harappan after the first site
excavated, Indus after the river along which it was first found, and Indus-Sarasvatī
because a very large number of its sites lie in the Sarasvatī basin; ‘Indus Valley’ is
now considered obsolete.”

Q2 Write a brief report (150 to 200 words) summing up some of the achievements of
the Indus-Sarasvatī civilisation.

Plan first, then write. A 150–200 word report has room for about six sentences, so choose six
achievements and give each one a fact.

SENTENCE ACHIEVEMENT THE FACT TO INCLUDE

1 When and where Cities from about 2600 to 1900 BCE, along the Indus and Sarasvatī

2 Town-planning Precise plans; wide streets on the cardinal directions; fortifications; upper
and lower town

3 Water management Covered drains below the streets; about 700 wells at Mohenjo-daro; 73 m
reservoir at Dholavira

4 Crafts and Carnelian beads, shell bangles, copper and bronze
metallurgy

5 Trade Beads at Susa, comb in Oman, the 217 m dockyard at Lothal, thousands
of seals

6 Agriculture and First in Eurasia to grow cotton; equal building quality; no weapons of
society war

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Sample answer (about 185 words):
“The Indus-Sarasvatī civilisation, also called the Harappan civilisation, was India's
first civilisation. Its cities flourished from about 2600 to 1900 BCE along the Indus
and the Sarasvatī rivers, and it is one of the oldest civilisations in the world.
Its greatest achievement was town-planning. Cities such as Mohenjo-daro,
Harappa, Dholavira and Rakhigarhi were built to precise plans, with wide streets
oriented to the cardinal directions, fortifications, and an upper town and a lower
town. Remarkably, small and big houses were built to the same quality.
Their water management was outstanding. Bathing areas in homes drained into
covered drains beneath the streets; Mohenjo-daro had about 700 brick wells, and
Dholavira at least six reservoirs, the largest 73 metres long.
The Harappans were skilled craftspeople who drilled carnelian beads, cut shell
bangles and made bronze tools and figurines, and they carried on a brisk trade by
land, river and sea — their beads have been found at Susa in Iran, and Lothal had a
217-metre dockyard.
They also grew a wide variety of crops and were the first in Eurasia to grow cotton.
Strikingly, they left behind no weapons of war.”

What makes a report good rather than long: one concrete number in every
sentence. ‘They had good drainage’ is an opinion; ‘about 700 brick wells at Mohenjo-
daro’ is history.

Q3 Imagine you have to travel from the city of Harappa to Kalibangan. What are your
different options? Can you make a rough estimation of the amount of time each
option might take?

Find both cities on Fig. 6.3 first. Harappa sits on the River Ravi in today's Pakistani Punjab;
Kalibangan lies south-east of it, on the Sarasvatī (Ghaggar) in today's Rajasthan.

Straight-line distance: roughly 180 km

A real route, following rivers and skirting the desert: roughly 250–300 km

A. Options a Harappan traveller had, around 2500 BCE

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OPTION ROUGH SPEED TIME FOR ~280 NOTES

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KM

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On foot 20–25 km a day about 12–14 days The cheapest way, and the way most

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of the way downstream; much plus walking
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By road, if the route were open: roughly

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The real obstacle is not distance. Harappa is in Pakistan and Kalibangan is in India, so the
journey today needs a visa and a border crossing — and would take far longer than the
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agla Harappa in about a fortnight, and both cities used the same kind of bricks, the same
weights and the same seals. That tells you these were not isolated towns but a
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m should come
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o close to 180 km in a straight line. Estimating distances
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Q4 Let us imagine a Harappan man or woman being transported to an average kitchen
in today's India. What are the four or five biggest surprises awaiting them?

Start from what they would recognise, so the surprises stand out. Wheat and barley flour, dal,
curd, turmeric, ginger, banana, clay pots, a grinding stone, a flat griddle — all of these would be
familiar. Now the shocks:

# THE SURPRISE WHY IT WOULD ASTONISH THEM

1 Fire that arrives at the They cooked over wood or dung fires that had to be lit and fed. Flame
turn of a knob — the gas with no fuel, no smoke and no ash would look like magic
stove

2 Water from a tap, They were the great water engineers of the ancient world — wells,
indoors, whenever you drains, reservoirs, the Great Bath. Water arriving under pressure inside
want it the house is the one thing they never managed, and they would
appreciate it more than anyone

3 The refrigerator — a cold Nothing in their world kept food from spoiling except drying, salting
box in a hot country and eating it quickly. A box that makes winter in July would be the
single strangest object in the room

4 Food they have never All of these reached India long after 1900 BCE — chillies, potatoes and
seen: potatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes came from the Americas only about 500 years ago. The
chillies, tea, sugar staples of a modern Indian kitchen would be completely unknown to
them

5 Steel, plastic and glass — They knew copper, bronze, stone, shell, ivory and terracotta. A steel
and printed packets pressure cooker, a plastic bottle and a sealed packet with writing on it
would each be a new material and a new idea

A sixth, if your teacher allows one more: the writing everywhere — on packets, on the
calendar, on the machines. They had a script of their own, but they would find ours unreadable,
exactly as we find theirs.

Sample answer: “The first surprise would be the gas stove, because fire came from
wood and had to be tended. The second would be the tap: the Harappans built wells,
drains and reservoirs, so clean water flowing indoors on demand would impress
them most of all. The third would be the fridge, a cold box in a hot land. The fourth
would be the food itself — the potatoes, tomatoes, chillies, tea and sugar that did
not exist in their India. The fifth would be steel and plastic, materials they had never
seen. But they would pick up the turmeric, the ginger and the dal and know exactly
what to do with them.”

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Why this question is really about continuity: it looks like a game, but it makes you
separate what has changed (technology and materials) from what has not (the grain,
the spices, the dal, the flat bread, the grinding stone). Four thousand years changed
the kitchen; it changed the menu much less.

Q5 Looking at all the pictures in this chapter, make a list of the ornaments / gestures /
objects that still feel familiar in our 21st century.

Go through the chapter picture by picture. The list is longer than most students expect.

CATEGORY WHAT YOU CAN SPOT WHERE

Ornaments Bangles covering the whole arm — worn by the ‘Dancing Fig. 6.15-4; Fig. 6.1; Fig. 6.10
Girl’, and by the woman in the photograph on page 85
Necklaces and strings of beads
Carnelian beads, still made and sold in Gujarat
Shell bangles, still worn in parts of India

Gestures The ‘namaste’ — a terracotta figurine seated with palms Fig. 6.15-5; Fig. 6.15-4
joined, exactly as people greet one another today
The hand on the hip, a completely modern-looking stance

Everyday A comb (ivory, about 7 cm — the same shape as a comb Fig. 6.11; 6.14-1; 6.14-2; 6.14-
objects today) 4; 6.14-3; 6.14-6; 6.14-5
A mirror
A painted pot with bands and patterns
A chisel
Weights in graded sizes
A whistle
A board game with pieces

Farming The plough — “some of which continue to be used by Fig. 6.9, from Banawali
modern-day farmers”

Symbols and The swastika, still drawn at doorways and on account Fig. 6.15-2; Fig. 6.15-6; Fig.
stories books 6.13-2
The thirsty-crow story, still told to children
The bull, still a familiar figure in Indian art

In the kitchen Turmeric, ginger and banana, and dairy — from the Page 97
residues in the pots

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

What this list proves: the chapter's closing claim — “much of the Harappan culture
and technology survived and was passed on to the next phase of Indian civilisation”.
The cities were abandoned around 1900 BCE, but the comb, the bangle, the
namaste, the plough, the crow story and the turmeric never were. This is one of the
longest unbroken cultural threads anywhere in the world.

Project idea: make a two-column wall chart, ‘Then’ and ‘Now’. In the left column
stick a printout or a drawing of the Harappan object; in the right, photograph the
same thing in your own house — a comb, a bangle, a whistle, a board game, a jar of
turmeric. Nothing teaches continuity faster than seeing the two side by side.

Q6 What mindset does the system of reservoirs at Dholavira reflect?

Look at what the system actually was: at least six large reservoirs, built with stones or cut
straight into the rock, the largest 73 metres long, and most of them connected through
underground drains for efficient water harvesting and distribution — in the Rann of Kutch,
one of the driest places in India.

WHAT THEY BUILT THE MINDSET IT REFLECTS

Reservoirs in a near-desert, Foresight and planning. They thought about next year's water, and the year
before there was any crisis after that

Six of them, not one Caution. If one fails or has to be cleaned, the city still has water — the same
thinking behind a backup today

Cutting a 73-metre tank into Willingness to invest enormous collective labour in something that produces
solid rock by hand no profit, only security

Underground drains linking Engineering intelligence. Rainwater is caught where it falls and moved to
them where it is needed — this is rainwater harvesting, four thousand years before
the phrase existed

A system that had to be Discipline and civic organisation. Somebody had to keep it working,
cleaned and maintained generation after generation

Water for the whole city, not A community mindset — water treated as a shared resource, managed in
one household common

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

In one sentence: the reservoirs reflect a mindset of respect for water, long-term planning and
collective responsibility — a society that read its harsh environment honestly and organised
itself to live within it rather than hoping for the best.

Why this is worth more than admiration: Kutch is still short of water, and so are
large parts of India. Modern Gujarat and Rajasthan have revived exactly this idea —
check dams, village tanks, rooftop rainwater harvesting. The Harappans' answer to a
dry land was not to bring water from far away but to catch and keep what falls.
That mindset is being rediscovered, not invented.

Think about it: in the end, even this was not enough — the climate turned drier
from about 2200 BCE and the cities were abandoned around 1900 BCE. Good
planning buys time against the environment; it does not defeat it.

Q7 In Mohenjo-daro, about 700 wells built with bricks have been counted. They seem to
have been regularly maintained and used for several centuries. Discuss the
implications.

Three separate facts are packed into that sentence — 700, maintained, and several centuries.
Each one implies something different.

THE FACT WHAT IT IMPLIES

About 700 wells Water was available within a short walk of every house — not one well for the whole town.
in one city Several neighbourhoods, and possibly many individual houses, had their own. That means
water was treated as a basic need of every citizen, not a privilege

Built with bricks Serious engineering. A brick lining stops the sides collapsing and stops dirty surface water
seeping in — so the wells were built for durability and cleanliness, not dug in a hurry

Regularly Somebody was responsible. Wells silt up and go foul within a year or two if nobody cleans
maintained them. Regular maintenance implies a municipal authority or a strong community system,
and people who understood that dirty water makes you ill

Used for several Stability. The system survived generations of rulers, whoever they were. It also means a
centuries reliable water table — until, in the end, it was not reliable any more

Put the wells next to the drains and the picture completes itself. Clean water came in from
700 wells; dirty water went out through covered drains under the streets. That is a complete
urban water cycle — supply and disposal, planned together, in a city of the third millennium
BCE.

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The comparison worth making: many towns in India got piped water and covered

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sewers only in the last hundred years, and some still do not have both. Mohenjo-
o
daro had .the a g
c equivalent, in its own technology, more than four thousand
m
years ago
—a
l se kept it running for centuries. The maintenance is the truly impressive part.
g
and
aBuilding something once is easier than looking after it for three hundred years.

o m
Discussion: ask your class who cleansm
e
. c ag
s
the water tank in your school, who repairs the

a g la who did those jobs in Mohenjo-daro. Nobody
taps, and who pays for it. Then ask
knows — which is exactly why archaeologists find the 700 wells so tantalising.

co m
se m.
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g the significance of
It isc often said that the Harappans had a high civic sense. Discuss
m . a
se this statement. Do you agree with it? Compare with citizens in a large city of India
Q8

l a
ag today.

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Civic sense means caring for shared spaces and shared systems — the street, the drain, the
water supply, the neighbour's convenience — and not only for your own house.
The evidence for the statement

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EVIDENCE IN THE CHAPTER WHAT IT SHOWS
as e
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Bathing
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Every household plugged its private waste into a shared

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public drain network below the streets system, and accepted the rules that came with it

Drains ran below the streets and were Waste was carried away out of sight — nobody was allowed
se m
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covered to throw it into the road

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Streets wide and oriented to the cardinal Nobody built out into the public street. Private building
directions; houses lining them respected public space

The same quality of construction for small
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A shared standard applied to everyone — B.B. Lal's

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and big houses “mutual accommodation”, not exploitation

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About 700 wells and six Dholavira reservoirs,
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warfare

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sense there is

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

How a Harappan house met the public drain — a cross-section

HOUSE

THE STREET — wide, and kept clear

bathing area oriented to the cardinal directions
manhole
(sloping floor)

outlet through the wall COVERED DRAIN, running below the street

ground below

Private waste joins a public system — and the public system has to be cleaned by somebody.
That connection, repeated in every house, is what ‘civic sense’ means.

The Harappan arrangement, as described on page 94 and photographed at Lothal in Fig. 6.7: bathing
area → outlet → covered drain below the street.

Do I agree? Yes — with one honest reservation. The physical evidence for civic sense is very
strong, and it is hard evidence: drains do not lie. But we should be careful about the word
‘sense’, which suggests a feeling inside people's heads. What we can actually see is a system.
We cannot tell from the ruins whether every Harappan cheerfully swept his own drain, or
whether a strict authority made him. Both would leave the same clean drain behind.
Compared with a large Indian city today

A HARAPPAN CITY A LARGE INDIAN CITY TODAY

Where we Drains covered and running under Litter and plastic in the streets; open and choked drains;
do worse every street; streets kept clear encroachment on footpaths and roads

Where we Same quality of building for rich and Very unequal housing in the same city
do worse poor

Where we Perhaps 30,000–40,000 people in the Millions of people, in a city that must also handle cars,
do better largest city industry and electronic waste — a far harder problem

Where we Unknown; no records of rights Municipal law, elected corporations, the right to
do better complain, and campaigns such as Swachh Bharat

The fair conclusion: the Harappans built better public systems for their size than
most modern Indian cities manage for theirs — and, more impressively, they
maintained them for centuries. But their task was smaller and ours is far more
complex. The lesson to take is not that the past was better; it is that a city works only
when private habits respect public systems. That was true in Mohenjo-daro and it is
true on your street.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Class activity: walk once round your school block and count three things — open
drains, litter on the footpath, and blocked or encroached pavements. Then write, in
one paragraph, what an archaeologist digging up your neighbourhood in 4000 CE
would conclude about your civic sense. It is a sobering exercise.

Chapter at a glance
A civilisation is not just ‘people living long ago’ — it is a checklist. The chapter sets out
seven characteristics: some form of government and administration, urbanism (town-
planning, water management, drainage), a variety of crafts, trade both internal and
external, some form of writing, cultural ideas expressed through art, architecture,
literature, oral traditions or social customs, and a productive agriculture — enough to feed
not just the villages but also the cities.
India's first civilisation grew in the north-west, along two river systems. The Indus
(Sindhu) and its five main tributaries watered the plains of the Punjab and Sindh; a little
further east flowed the Sarasvatī, from the foothills of the Himalayas through Haryana,
Punjab, parts of Rajasthan and Gujarat. From about 3500 BCE villages grew into towns, and
around 2600 BCE those towns grew into cities. This is called the First Urbanisation of
India.
It has four names, and the book uses all of them — ‘Indus’, ‘Harappan’, ‘Indus-Sarasvatī’
and ‘Sindhu-Sarasvatī’ civilisation. Its people are called Harappans, after Harappa (today in
Pakistan's Punjab), the first city of this civilisation to be excavated, in 1920–21. The old term
‘Indus Valley’ is now obsolete: the map (Fig. 6.3) shows the civilisation spread far beyond the
Indus region — from Shortugai in the north to Lothal in the south.
The cities were planned, and the planning shows in the water. Larger cities had wide
streets oriented to the cardinal directions, fortifications, and two distinct parts — an
upper town where the elite probably lived and a lower town for common people
(Dholavira had three zones). Houses of all sizes were built to the same quality. Bathing
areas drained into a network of covered drains below the streets; Mohenjo-daro had
about 700 brick wells and the Great Bath (12 × 7 m); Dholavira had at least six large
reservoirs, the biggest 73 metres long.
Farming fed the cities; crafts and trade connected them to the world. Harappans grew
barley, wheat, some millets, sometimes rice, pulses and vegetables, and were the first in
Eurasia to grow cotton. Clay pots have yielded traces of dairy products and — surprisingly
— turmeric, ginger and banana. They exported ornaments, timber and objects of daily
use; carnelian beads from Harappan workshops have been dug up at Susa in present-day
Iran, and an ivory comb on the coast of Oman. Lothal's basin, 217 × 36 metres, was almost
certainly a dockyard — India's first intensive maritime activity.
The seals carry writing we still cannot read. Thousands of small steatite seals, only a
few centimetres across, show animal figures with a few signs above them. The signs belong

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

to a writing system, but that system has not been deciphered, and the symbolic meaning of
the animals is also unknown. All we can say for certain is that the seals somehow relate to
trade.
Around 1900 BCE the cities were abandoned — but nothing was destroyed. There is no
trace of warfare or invasion, and no army or weapons of war. Two causes are agreed on
today: a climatic change from about 2200 BCE that brought less rain and a drier phase,
and the drying up of the Sarasvatī in its central basin, which suddenly emptied cities like
Kalibangan and Banawali. People went back to a rural life — but much Harappan culture
and technology survived and passed into the next phase of Indian civilisation.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Quick revision

TERM WHAT IT MEANS WHERE IT WORTH REMEMBERING
APPEARS IN
THE CHAPTER

Civilisation An advanced stage of human societies, Pages 86–87 The chapter gives seven
marked by government, urbanism, crafts, characteristics — learn them
trade, writing, cultural ideas and a as a list
productive agriculture

Metallurgy The techniques of extracting metals from Margin note, Copper + tin = bronze,
nature, purifying or combining them, and page 86 harder than copper (page 98)
the scientific study of metals and their
properties

Indus-Sarasvatī India's most ancient civilisation, also Page 88; timeline About 2600 to 1900 BCE for
civilisation called Indus, Harappan or Sindhu- Fig. 6.2, page 87 the city phase
Sarasvatī civilisation

Harappans The name for the inhabitants of this Page 88, Don't From Harappa, the first site
civilisation Miss Out excavated, in 1920–21

Tributary A river that flows into a larger river (or Margin note, The Indus has five main
lake) page 88 tributaries — Jhelum,
Chenab, Ravi, Beas, Sutlej

Sarasvatī River A river that once flowed from the Box, page 90 First mentioned in the Ṛig
Himalayan foothills through Haryana, Veda; later texts describe it
Punjab, parts of Rajasthan and Gujarat; drying up
today the seasonal Ghaggar-Hakra

First The growth of villages into towns and Page 88 Villages → towns from c.
Urbanisation of then into cities in this region 3500 BCE; towns → cities c.
India 2600 BCE

Fortification A massive wall surrounding a settlement Margin note, Most Harappan cities seem
or city, generally for protective purposes page 91 to have had one

Elite The higher layers of society — rulers, Margin note, They probably lived in the
officials, administrators and often priests page 91 upper town

Upper town / The two distinct parts of a Harappan city Page 91 Dholavira had three zones,
lower town not two (Fig. 6.5)

Great Bath A small but elaborate tank at Mohenjo- Pages 91–93, Fig. Its purpose is still debated —
daro, about 12 × 7 metres, waterproofed 6.6 a royal bath, or a ritual tank
with natural bitumen over carefully laid-
out bricks

Page 48 of 49

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

co m
m.
TERM WHAT IT MEANS WHERE IT WORTH REMEMBERING

as e
com
APPEARS IN

.
THE CHAPTER
a g l
a s em
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Reservoir A large natural or artificial place where Margin note, Dholavira: at least six; the
water is stored page 95 largest 73 m long

co m Margin note,
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Pulses A category of crops that includes beans, Grown alongside barley,

e m
as
peas and lentils (dal) page 96 wheat, millets and

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Seals Thousands of small steatite objects Pages 98–99, Fig. The script is undeciphered
6.13
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— do not claim it has been

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showing an animal figure with a few

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writing signs above it read

Dockyard .co
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Page 98, Fig.
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