CDS (II) 2022 General Knowledge · Question 95 of 120

Correct — C, Dholavira. Dholavira stands at Khadirbet on Khadir island in the Great Rann of Kachchh, in Bhachau taluka of Kutch district in Gujarat, and its hydraulic works are what set it apart from every other Harappan city. Its people cut a chain of check dams across the seasonal streams beside the site and led the water through channels into a series of stone-built reservoirs that ring the settlement, sixteen or more of them, created in the third stage of the city's life and among the earliest such systems found anywhere. One was carved about seven metres deep and seventy-nine metres long straight into the rock. Excavation in 2014 exposed a rectangular stepwell 73.4 metres long, 29.3 metres wide and 10 metres deep. The citadel and the bath stand on higher ground in the middle while the reservoirs skirt the town, which is exactly the arrangement the stem describes.

• (a)Banawali — Banawali, in Haryana, is a Harappan town on the dry course of the Ghaggar and is discussed for its planning and its layers running from pre-Harappan to Harappan levels. It has no reservoir system of this kind.
• (b)Mohenjodaro — The most tempting wrong answer, because Mohenjodaro is famous for water — the Great Bath, hundreds of wells and a covered drainage network. But it drew water from the ground through wells and from the Indus beside it, and did not build the great stone-cut storage tanks that Dholavira did.
• (d)Rakhigarhi — Rakhigarhi in Haryana is one of the largest Harappan sites in India by area and is best known for its mounds, its cemetery and the ancient genetic work done there. Water storage on the Dholavira scale is not its distinguishing feature.

Dholavira was laid out in three parts — a citadel, a middle town and a lower town — and the whole plan is organised around the problem of holding water in a place that has almost none. The island had no perennial river, so rain that fell in a short season had to be caught, stored and made to last the year. The answer was engineering at scale in stone rather than the brick that Mohenjodaro and Harappa used, which is also why so much of it survives. J. P. Joshi of the Archaeological Survey of India identified the site in 1967 and 1968, systematic excavation began in 1989, and thirteen field seasons ran between 1990 and 2005.

The stem gives away more than it looks. Citadel and lower town could describe several Harappan cities, but cisterns and reservoirs in the plural, and large ones, narrow it to a site that stored surface water instead of digging wells — and that points to the arid Kachchh island rather than to the river-bank cities of the Indus plain. Anchor it to recent news as well: Dholavira was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List on 27 July 2021, about a year before this paper was written, which is why the site was fresh in the examiners' minds and appeared in CDS papers of both 2021 and 2022.

• Dholavira lies at Khadirbet on Khadir island in the Great Rann of Kachchh, Kutch district, Gujarat, on the Tropic of Cancer.
• Its people built sixteen or more stone reservoirs during Stage III of the settlement, among the earliest such systems known.
• One reservoir was cut about 7 metres deep and 79 metres long into the rock.
• A rectangular stepwell exposed in 2014 measured 73.4 by 29.3 metres and was 10 metres deep.
• The site was found by J. P. Joshi in 1967-68, excavated from 1989, and inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site on 27 July 2021.

• Answering Mohenjodaro for anything to do with Harappan water; wells and a bath are not reservoirs.
• Assuming the largest site must be the answer; Rakhigarhi is bigger and is known for other things.
• Forgetting that Dholavira is in Gujarat rather than in Haryana, where three of the sites in this option set lie.

As a which-site item like this one, or as a current-affairs question tied to the World Heritage inscription.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Harappan site of Dholavira is located in which one of the following States?

  • (a)Haryana
  • (b)Gujarat
  • (c)Rajasthan
  • (d)Punjab

  Answer(b) Gujarat — at Khadirbet on Khadir island in the Great Rann of Kachchh, Kutch district.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following Harappan sites is best known for the Great Bath?

  • (a)Dholavira
  • (b)Lothal
  • (c)Mohenjodaro
  • (d)Kalibangan

  Answer(c) Mohenjodaro — the Great Bath and its wells, as distinct from the stone reservoirs that mark Dholavira.