436 ANNUAL EEPOET SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 32 



It is a curious feature of Mohenjo-daro that there is very little 

 available evidence as to the method of disposal of the dead. If 

 burial was the custom, the cemeteries must now lie many feet below 

 the thick riverine deposit of silt; and their discovery in such a large 

 area must be mainly a matter of chance. Or cremation may have 

 been practiced, and the remaining bones and ashes scattered in the 

 river, as you see done in India to-day. There is some evidence at 

 Harappa of the practice of cremation, and ashes have been found 

 in various large pots at Mohenjo-daro together with small cups 

 and other objects. But no definitely human bones have been re- 

 covered from these pots, save in a few isolated cases (the so-called 

 fractional burials, because only part of the skeleton is present), 

 and it is open to belief that the majority of these jars were merely 

 receptacles for household rubbish. 



A certain number of skeletons have been found at Mohenjo-daro. 

 But of those unearthed in the earlier excavations and included in 

 the recently published book, only 15 can be regarded, from the 

 circumstances in which they were found and the associated objects, 

 as contemporaneous with the city. The remainder may have been 

 squatters in the ruins at any time within a century or two after 

 its abandonment, or even later than that. Of the 15, 14 lay in a 

 strange variety of attitudes in one single room, a circumstance that 

 itself gives pause to any that would deduce the racial elements of 

 the population from those few bones. The very fact that these 

 skeletons were together in one room, whereas the remains of the 

 rest of the large population are conspicuously absent, suggests that 

 they may have been a group of slaves or prisoners who died in 

 captivity of some sudden pestilence and were hastily covered over 

 where they lay instead of undergoing the customary burial or 

 cremation rites. Indeed, the fact that these skeletons represent 

 more than one race is in favor of their being foreigners, whether 

 prisoners or slaves. Of a number of skeletons more recently un- 

 earthed at Harappa, the associated pottery and other circumstances 

 make it probable that they date from some time later than the 

 final abandonment of Mohenjo-daro. 



Until, then, a great many more skeletons are unearthed at both 

 sites, it would be unjustifiable to draw any definite conclusions from 

 anthropometrical evidence as to the race that formed the predominant 

 element in the Indus Valley at that time. 



A study of the sculpture does not help very much, for though there 

 are features common to the few statue heads that have been found, 

 such as an extraordinarily low forehead and small cranium and a 

 tendency to narrowness and obliquity of the eyes, there are other 

 features that are entirely due to the lack of skill of the sculptors, such 



