Dholavira's Hydraulic Mastery and Urban Design: Insights from R.S. Bisht's Excavation Reports

“Most guides also resent that all credit for the discovery of Dholavira went to J.P. Joshi of the ASI, with no mention at all of two villagers, Shambhudan Gadhavi, master clerk and amateur geologist, and Velubha Sodha, former sarpanch, who had earlier found the site, picked out some beads and pottery shards, and sent them to the Kutch Museum in 1967….Joshi recognized the artefacts from Dholavira at once, and was immortalized by history, even before turning up on site, allege the guides.” Such was the story of discovery of Dholavira, or the ‘smart village’ as designated by the Gujarat government, and true to its name, this Harappan site was able to mesmerise J.P. Joshi, its alleged discoverer and then subsequently R.S. Bisht, and his team from Archaeological survey of India (ASI), when it was excavated for the first time in 1990, and continued till as recently as 2005. As asserted by Chakraborti, Dholavira along with sites of Harappa and Kunal showcase the point where the ‘transformation was taking place at a certain point in the sequence related to the emergence of Indus Valley Civilization.’ (Chakrabarti, 1999: 160) However, something that caught the attention of archaeologists was that it was a city unlike any other in the Harappan world, built not along a river but in an arid wasteland. What had emerged from the dust was not just another Harappan settlement, but a ‘hydraulic masterpiece’. This extensive and accomplished water management system gives Dholavira its unique place among the Indus civilization sites. (Chakrabarti, 1999: 320) Arora, in his book, Indians: A Brief History of a Civilization, lines out other features among Dholavira’s water management system, that according to him, attempted to save every water droplet as though it was gold: “For instance, Dholavira lay in an arid zone and, compared to northern sites, focused a lot more on water harvesting and storage; its trade and material culture was more maritime than riverine; its funerary structures took many forms and differed from other regions’ Harappan sites.”