The Mohenjo Daro necklace: two halves of a whole

Under the British Raj, one of the most astonishing archaeological finds from Mohenjo Daro was a necklace

MOEN JO DARO:

The partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 was a tragic event that resulted in massive displacement, violence, and loss of life. The division also had significant cultural implications, including the division of historical artefacts and sites. Both countries won their independence but at a price. One item was so valuable to both sides that it had to be chopped in half. It is a 4,500-year-old necklace from Mohenjo Daro, and neither country could allow the other to keep it intact.

The entire necklace was originally made of fine gold thread, 55 golden semi-precious stones, 55 golden beads, 10 jades, and seven pendants. When the necklace was separated into two sections, Pakistan received a portion of six light-green jade beads and three agate-jasper pendants. Currently, this half of the necklace is on exhibit at the Mohenjo Daro Museum in Pakistan, while the other half is located in the National Museum in New Delhi, India. Unfortunately, there is only one black-and-white visual evidence available of the whole original necklace.

Aside from demonstrating the superior craftsmanship and artistic ability of the people of the Indus Valley Civilisation, the Mohenjo Daro necklace represents the wealth and strength of the civilisation. The necklace comprises of gold, agate, jasper, steatite, and green stone (lizardite or grossular garnet). The gold beads are hollow, and the agate and jasper pendant beads are strung on thick gold wire. Each of the pendant beads is separated by steatite beads capped with gold.

The necklace features five jade beads on one side and four jade beads on the other. The thick gold wire that passes through each bead's protruding lower end is fitted with a small cylindrical bead and a gold cap. It is coiled at the upper end to form the eyelet for the cord, with the following dimensions: green stone beads two cm in length and one cm in diameter; the gold beads are 0.44 cm in length and one cm in diameter.

British archaeologist Sir John Marshall, who was Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India from 1902 to 1928, in his world-renowned book Mohenjo-Daro and the Indus Civilization termed the necklace as one of the greatest finds of the Indus: "the jewellery illustrated ... was found in the silver vessel illustrated on the right of the plate, which was unearthed by (Archaeologist) K.N. Dikshit in a long trench that he dug to connect up sections B and C in the DK Area ... As the walling in this Block is of the Late Period and the depth of the find was only three feet below the surface, this hoard of jewellery can definitely be dated to that period. The large necklace is made up of barrel-shaped beads of translucent, light-green jade, measuring 0.9 inches long by 0.45 inches in diameter in the middle and 0.25 inches at the ends. The beads are all not accurately graded, but in this respect nevertheless they compare well with other specimens of ancient jewellery. Each jade bead is separated from its neighbours on either side by five disc-shaped gold beads, 0.4 inches in diameter and 0.2 inches wide, made by soldering two cap-like pieces together. The join is very fine and can only just be detected in some of the beads."

In the 1920s, during the British Raj in the Subcontinent, excavations at Mohenjo Daro were extremely fruitful. They discovered some spectacular stuff, such as the bronze statue of a dancing girl and the bust of a priest-king sculpted from limestone. The archaeologist literally struck gold one day when they uncovered this magnificent piece of jewellery. At that time, so little jewellery was discovered at Mohenjo Daro that this would have been a sensation that came to be recognised as "unique." The necklace was found in the little copper pot. It was determined that the location must have been a jeweller's shop due to the discovery of other items, such as broken gold beads, bronzes, and copper rings. This necklace was the sole object discovered that was not broken or twisted.

As a result of the partition of India and Pakistan, what was once a cherished discovery is no longer a spectacular visual feast. Not only did the division generate civil-bureaucratic upheaval, but it also disturbed both countries' claims to the prehistoric sites of the Indus Valley. India claimed that the partition of historical artefacts from Mohenjo Daro and other Harappa sites that came under Pakistan's administration had jeopardised its national heritage and cultural-religious history. According to some historians, giving up ancient artefacts like the Mohenjo Daro necklace and others is tantamount to robbing India of its historical legacy.

During and after the Partition, India fought tooth and nail to obtain half of the Lahore Museum's artefacts, which included items from Mohenjo Daro and the Buddhist site of Taxila. Certain pieces, including two gold necklaces from Taxila, one carnelian and copper girdle from Mohenjo Daro, and the jade and gold necklace were purposely fractured to ensure a fair divide.

Anwesha Sengupta, assistant professor of history at the Institute of Development Studies Kolkata, India, explains in her study Breaking up: Dividing assets between India and Pakistan in times of Partition that the Partition troubled the grand imagination of the marvellous Indian ancient past because the project of nationalist history writing in India could not afford to abandon the Indus Valley Civilisation as the genesis of the nation's history.

In her famous work Partitioning the Past, Marshalling the Past, Professor of History at Ashoka University in India Nayanjot Lahiri demonstrates that the integrity of these artefacts was sacrificed in the name of equal distribution. In 1949, the famed Mohenjo Daro bull was depicted on postage stamps from the "Indian archaeological series". It replaced an image of the famed Konark Horse in the earlier archaeological series of stamps.

In her research The History Debate in School Textbooks in India: A Personal Memoir, Romila Thapar, Emeritus Professor of History at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, who specialises in the early history of India, argues that the Konark temple of Orissa was undeniably Indian, but the appropriation of Mohenjo Daro was far more significant. Parallel to this, a systematic effort was made to discover Indus Valley Civilisation sites on the Indian side of the border immediately after Partition.

The Archaeological Survey of India attempted to make up for the loss of Harappa and Mohenjo Daro to Pakistan by making discoveries within India. A 17-minute black-and-white video titled A Century of Indian Archaeology (1961) made by the Video Division of India attempted to locate the Indus Valley Civilisation inside the territorial boundaries of post-colonial India. In Being and Becoming Indian: The Nation in Archaeology, Sraman Mukherjee of the Department of Visual Arts at Ashoka University writes, "The moving footage from excavations at Ropar and Kalibangan fades into a post-1947 territorial map of India to narrate how the Indus civilisation extended beyond the territorial limits of West Pakistan to the Gangetic heartland — the territorial core of the post-colonial nation." Similar efforts have been made in India to establish that the Indus Valley Civilisation was an integral element of Vedic civilisation.

All of these academic hypotheses demonstrate how historians and archaeologists of India and Pakistan responded to these worries and the new nationalist historiographical tropes that were created after the Partition.

Symbolic representation of a necklace

The Great Mother Goddess is a figure in many ancient societies, notably the Mohenjo Daro-centred Indus Valley Civilisation. Mohenjo Daro figures of the Great Mother Goddess frequently represent her adorned with a necklace. Sir Mortimer Wheeler, a British archaeologist, observed that the figurines were "always wearing a necklace," implying that it was an essential quality or symbol of the Great Mother Goddess.

Numerous terracotta figurines depict women, and there has been an excessive propensity to view them as manifestations of the Great Mother Goddess familiar in the religions of Western Asia and parts of Europe. Wheeler, who excavated Mohenjo Daro in the 1920s and 1930s, in his renowned book The Indus Civilisation, writing about the subject, observed that "the commonest Harappan type is a standing figure adorned with a wide girdle, often with a loin-cloth and nearly always with a necklace and an emphatic head-dress which is generally fan-shaped above, sometimes with a shell-like cup or pannier on each side."

According to Wheeler, this seems to have been used occasionally to burn lamp oil or incense. The eyes and breasts are circular pellets, the nose is beak-like, and the mouth is a clay strip with a horizontal gash that has been applied. These figures were made without any great artistic skill. Occasionally, a lump of clay is added to represent an infant at the breast or on the hip, and the general idea of fertility, whether in thanksgiving or anticipation, is further indicated by representations of pregnancy. However, there is no emphasis on the generative organs, as is customary in Mother Goddess cults."

It is evident that the necklace worn by the Great Mother Goddess figures at Mohenjo Daro resembles the necklace worn by the actual inhabitants of the city during the Indus Valley Civilisation. This implies that the Great Mother Goddess represented the people and their culture and that her necklace played a significant role in this symbolism.

Mohenjo Daro ornamentation culture

The most stunning and fascinating objects discovered at Mohenjo Daro were jewellery people wore as personal adornment. Literature has often included references to numerous sorts of jewellery. Several archaeological sites in Mohenjo Daro and Harappa have shown the presence of diverse types of jewellery from the earliest periods of human history. From the human figurines recovered at numerous ancient sites, it indicates that jewellery was spontaneously worn by all social classes; necklaces, fillets, armlets, girdles, and finger rings by both men and women; while women wore necklaces, head jewellery, rings, bangles, and anklets in particular.

In ancient times, jewels and jewellery were considered to possess magical and mystical powers, a well-accepted reality. Both genders used jewellery to shield themselves from the influence of evil. In addition to enhancing the wearer's beauty, Mohenjo Daro jewellery symbolises wealth, virtue, marital status, and contentment. Moreover, jewellery reveals the economic status of the Mohenjo Daro culture. It is obvious from these that the residents of Mohenjo Daro engaged in lucrative trade with other countries, in which jewellery and precious stones played a significant role.

Necklaces of semi-precious stones, gold, copper, steatite, shell, etc., have been discovered at Mohenjo Daro and Harappa. Many pendants of various forms and materials have been unearthed. Gold necklaces, chains of copper, bronze, cabled strips of gold, solid wire torsion of gold sheet pounded on a lac core, etc., have been uncovered.

Names for jewels found from Mohenjo Daro and other Harappan sites are unknown because of the undeciphered language. However, in later eras of ancient India, the necklaces mentioned below were referred to in literature: Niska, a necklace made of round pieces of silver or gold that were perforated and threaded; Rukma, the pendant of a necklace; Atkan, a long belt of gold that passed over the shoulder and across the chest like a Yajnopovita. Moreover, Kautilya's Arthashastra mentions eight distinct styles of necklaces. Among them, Phalakahara was a necklace consisting of multiple strands of gold or precious stones and gems with flat rectangular slabs interspersed at intervals.

Evidence of beaded jewellery has been discovered dating back to the Indus Valley Civilisation circa 1500 BCE. The best example of the renowned bronze image of the dancing girl from Mohenjo Daro (now on display at the National Museum in Delhi, India). The statue depicts her wearing a necklace with three large pendants and approximately twenty-five bangles on her left hand and four bangles on her right hand.

The Mother Goddess figures crafted from terracotta by the Indus Valley Civilisation are magnificent examples of decorated women. The Mother Goddess of Mohenjo Daro, circa 2600-1500 BCE, is clay figurine adorned with multiple necklaces, pendants, a headpiece shaped like a fan, earrings, armlets, and girdles.

Semi-precious stones such as agate, carnelian, steatite, faience, turquoise, and feldspar were fashioned into tubular or barrel-shaped beads by the Indus Valley Civilisation's artisans. They engraved them with carvings, bands, patterns, and dots or painstakingly put them in metal. As seen by the jewellery they created and wore, the ancient people of the Indus Valley Civilisation were highly intellectual. They possessed a highly developed creative sensibility and sophisticated industrial skills.

The writer is a Lahore-based author, educationist, brand strategist, historian and journalist. He can be reached at: [e-mail]

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