ABSTRACT
The Harappan civilisation, which reached its mature phase with the great cities of Harappa and Mohenjo Daro, was the culmination of a long and sustained cultural evolution that took place in the plains, valleys and surrounding regions of a mighty river in the north-west of India: the Indus. The Indus civilisation was thus a complex, stateless society of the post-Neolithic era. The absence of the state is testified by the fact that no palaces or royal tombs have been discovered; neither have any systematic dynastic or governmental records been found. Some scholars also like to use the term Sarasvati for the name of civilisation. They point out that the core culture of the cities of Mohenjo Daro and Harappa, which actually lay on the periphery, developed out of a more dense and substantial cluster of villages and settlements that had existed along the banks of other nearby rivers, the now dried up GhaggarHakra, also called the Sarasvati, and the Drasadvati.
