A History of Religious Ideas, Volume 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries

by Mircea Eliade

Today this culture is known to have extended far beyond the Indus Valley, and it everywhere presented the same uniformity. Gordon Childe considered Harappan technology to be equal to those of Egypt and Mesopotamia. However, the majority of its products lack imagination, “suggesting that the people of Harappa had their eyes on things not of this world.”28 As for the origin of this earliest urban civilization to develop in India, scholars are agreed in looking for it in Baluchistan. According to Fairservis, the ancestors of the Harappans were descended from the pre-Āryan agriculturalists of Iran. Certain phases of the pre-Harappan culture are beginning to be better known as a result of the excavations made in southern Baluchistan. It is noteworthy that the earliest important agglomerations were built near structures that had a ceremonial function. In the important archeological complex excavated in the region of the Porali River and known as the “Edith Shahr Complex,” a mound 7 to 12 meters high has been brought to light, together with a number of structures surrounded by walls. At its summit the mound rose in the form of a ziggurat; several stairways led to the platform.