Chapter 5 India 151Buddha that he and his companions mistook for a beautiful female deity. There
were rock-cut caves and arches with gigantic stone Buddhas they identified as
“female idols.” And he opened up some 40 stupas—raised spherical structures,
some 160 feet in circumference—and hauled off their treasures without under-
standing these were Buddhist monuments (Omrani 2008). Rather, he thought
they were burial places of past kings, and the Buddha figures were their effigies.
Knowledge of Buddhism’s millennium in India would slowly unfold over the
nineteenth century as more adventurers, scholars, and archaeologists turned
their attention to caves, ruins, sculptures, and art scattered throughout India.
In 1838 Masson made his most important discovery. He was back in the
Punjab, camped near a town on the Sutlej, one of the branches of the Indus. As
he writes in his memoirs:
A long march preceded our arrival at Haripah (Harappa), through jangal
(jungle) of the closest description.... When I joined the camp I found it in
front of the village and ruinous brick castle. Behind us was a large circular
mound, or eminence, and to the west was an irregular rocky height,
crowned with the remains of buildings, in fragments of walls, with niches,
after the eastern manner.... The walls and towers of the castle are remark-
ably high, though, from having been long deserted, they exhibit in some
parts of the ravages of time and decay. Between it and our camp extended a
deep trench, now overgrown with grasses and plants.... Tradition affirms
the existence here of a city, so considerable that it extended to Chicha
Watni, [20 miles] distant, and that it was destroyed by a particular visita-
tion of Providence, brought down by the lust and crimes of the sovereign.
(Masson 1844)This was the first description of what turned out to be one of two great cities of the
Indus Valley Civilization, a heretofore unknown urban civilization that preceded
the Veda-writers by a thousand years. It was a contemporary of Sumer and Egypt,
and it traded with them, but had disappeared without memory in India itself.
Puzzles of Indian Origins: The First Civilizations
The world’s earliest states, emerging in the second and third millennia
B.C.E. in Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and China, were the first to face the ques-
tions that all states, including modern ones, face: How to mobilize power effec-
tively? How to survive past the first generation? How to manage the force that
created the state without immediately destroying it? How to get and keep the
loyalty of diverse groups drawn together in the state? How to harness the eco-
nomic resources needed to keep the state afloat?
The first civilizations had accomplished a long evolution out of farming
communities whose growth and increased productivity supported the nonpro-
ductive elite that dominated them. The list in box 5.1 identifies some of the pri-
mary and secondary features associated with early civilizations.
The political structure of a civilization is the state, where power is central-
ized in a monarch or oligarchy. As society grew more complex, with new forms