Political Structure Flashcards
Political form
Though such a homogenous and well governed civilisation could not run without government but Indus rulers have themselves remained anonymous. Harappans have left behind almost negligible evidence of temples, priests, palaces, weapons of war or standing armies. This really jumps out when compared to other civilizations, there is simply no evidence of royalty,
palaces, priests, aristocratic burials, or a warrior class. Thus, we are not certain of their form
of government
Unusually peace
Even weapons of Ivc lake middle rib(weapons not for war but for Basic law and order and hunting)
Single empire
Earlier we thought that it was an Empire, ruled by a king, with two capitals. Vast geographic
area with uniformity of material culture and near total identity in the layout of the two cities.
However, the whole region was too extensive to be ruled effectively by a centralized
authority in prehistoric times.
Amalgamation of small state
Ivc is made up of various small states comprising of ruling villages from capital city
Complex congratulation of states at diffrent level of polity
Complex conglomeration of states at diffrent level of polity - some cities, some villages, some tribals, some large states, some city states etc.
City states who buy their food from nearby states
Some scholars therefore postulate that the region was divided into two or more independent
city-states with their own bureaucracy (as in Mesopotamia). But this view also has its own
difficulties because there is no evidence of conflict between them
Municipality
Cities of ivc had municipal ruling authority (all the traders and artisans formed councils for government
some sort of unified socio-political authority
That there was some sort of unified socio-political authority over the entire area to enforce
order and uniformity is certain, but the nature of authority is still elusive to us.
