The second urbanisation: towns, crafts, urban society

Detail

What "second urbanisation" means

• First urbanisation = Harappan cities (c. 2600–1900 BCE) in the Indus region. Those cities ended, and for centuries India had no big towns.
• Second urbanisation = new towns rising again from c. 6th century BCE, this time mainly in the Ganga valley, not the Indus.
• Scholars place the start of this second city-building in the Ganga and Yamuna valleys, coming after the Painted Grey Ware (PGW) phase (c. 1200–800 BCE, a grey pottery with painted designs) and going along with Northern Black Polished Ware (NBPW). By the second quarter of the 1st millennium BCE this process gave the Ganga system its first cities. [2]
• So the two urbanisations are separated by a long gap in both time and place.

Where the new towns stood — and why there

• Many new towns were fortified capitals of mahajanapadas (the big states of the 6th century BCE).
• Almost all sat on communication routes. Trade and the movement of goods decided where a town could grow. Three kinds:
• Riverine (on rivers) — Pataliputra, on the Ganga.
• Overland (on land routes) — Ujjayini. Mathura grew into a hub of trade, culture and politics at once.

• Coastal (on the sea) — Puhar, on the Tamil coast.

• Ujjayini was the capital, as Ujjain, of the Avanti kingdom in the 6th–4th century BCE, and lay on what ancient Indian geographers treated as the first meridian (their zero line of longitude). [3]

• Mathura was already settled before the 1st century CE, and then flourished under the Kushan dynasty. [4]
• Most of these capitals are still living cities 2,500 years later — Patna, Ujjain, Mathura. People never stopped living there.

Shishupalgarh — an eastern town we can measure

• Shishupalgarh lies in Kalinga, inside today's Bhubaneswar (Odisha).
• Its plan is square, with fortifications (defence walls) and a moat (water ditch around the wall).
• Its gateways were deliberately narrow. The point was control: a narrow gate lets guards check who and what enters and leaves. Narrow gates are about taxing and watching trade, not only about war.
• Shishupalgarh was dug and reported by ASI in its journal Ancient India, in an article titled "Sisupalgarh 1948: An Early Historical Fort in Eastern India". [5]

Pataliputra — the full arc of one city

• Stage 1 — village. It begins as Pataligrama, a small village.
• Stage 2 — 5th century BCE. Magadha shifts its capital here from Rajagaha (Rajgir).
• Stage 3 — 4th century BCE. It becomes the Mauryan capital and one of the largest cities in Asia.
• Stage 4 — 7th century CE. The Chinese pilgrim Xuan Zang visits and finds it a ruin.
• Lesson for the exam: cities are not permanent. Political power moved away, and the city died with it.

What the spade found at Pataliputra

• The Mauryan pillared hall at Kumrahar (in Patna) was excavated by the Archaeological Survey of India in 1912–15 under D. B. Spooner. [6]
• The hall stood on a high wooden platform of excellent workmanship; on it stood eight rows of 10 columns each — 80 columns — which once held up a second storey. [6][7]
• Remains of wooden palisades (a defence fence of upright timber posts) have been found at Bulandibagh, Lohanipur, Bahadurpur, Sandalpur and Kumrahar. The city was ringed by timber palisades and a broad, deep moat that also drained the city. [6]
• An official photograph in the national archive records the "Bulandi Bagh excavation — Mauryan palisade from west to east." [8]
• The Greek ambassador Megasthenes came to Chandragupta Maurya's court at Pataliputra (Greek Palimbothra) as an envoy of the Seleucids. Classical writers said the royal palace could not be matched by Susa or Ekbatana, the great Persian cities. [7]
• Why this matters: the timber is the proof. A city built mostly in wood rots away, which is exactly why Pataliputra could look like a "ruin" to Xuan Zang while its temple-town rivals survived in stone.

The material culture of the new towns

• NBPW (Northern Black Polished Ware) — a very fine, shiny black pottery. It is tableware of the rich, not everyday village pots. Where NBPW appears, an urban, well-off group is eating there.
• A wide list of materials is found in these towns, made into ornaments, tools, weapons and figurines:
• Metals: gold, silver, copper, bronze.

• Other: ivory, glass, shell, terracotta (baked clay).

• Iron tools in the hands of craftspersons made this possible. Iron cuts, shapes and drills what copper cannot.

• Chain of reasoning — why towns and crafts grow together:
• Farmers in the Ganga plain produce a surplus (extra grain beyond what they eat).
• That surplus feeds people who do not farm — smiths, potters, weavers, scribes.
• These non-farmers live close together, in a town, and make goods for elite demand — rich buyers who want fine pots, jewellery and weapons.

Votive inscriptions — an occupational census in stone

• Votive inscription = a short record cut into stone by a person who gifted something (a pillar, a railing, a slab) to a religious site.
• They appear from the 2nd century BCE onward.
• They usually name the donor, and very often the donor's occupation. Read together, they work almost like a census of jobs in an early Indian town.
• Occupations that turn up: washing folk, weavers, scribes, carpenters, potters, goldsmiths, blacksmiths, officials, religious teachers, merchants and kings.
• Example: at Mathura, a gift by Nagapiya, wife of the goldsmith Dharmaka. The Prakrit word for goldsmith is sovanika.
• Two things this tells us:
• Ordinary craft families had enough spare wealth to make religious gifts — they were not poor.
• Women donated in their own names and were recorded. Nagapiya is named, not hidden.

Prelims Hooks

• Shishupalgarh, a square fortified early-historic town with a moat and narrow gateways, is in Kalinga, within present-day Bhubaneswar, Odisha.
• Pataligrama (village) → 5th century BCE Magadhan capital, shifted from Rajagaha → 4th century BCE Mauryan capital.
• Xuan Zang, visiting in the 7th century CE, found Pataliputra in ruins.
• The Kumrahar pillared hall was excavated by the ASI under D. B. Spooner, 1912–15; it had eight rows of 10 columns = 80 columns on a wooden platform. [6][7]
• Mauryan wooden palisades have been found at Bulandibagh, Lohanipur, Bahadurpur, Sandalpur and Kumrahar, along with a broad moat. [6]
• NBPW = Northern Black Polished Ware, the fine luxury tableware of second-urbanisation towns; it follows the Painted Grey Ware (PGW) phase of c. 1200–800 BCE. [2]
• Ujjayini/Ujjain was capital of Avanti in the 6th–4th century BCE and sat on the ancient first meridian. [3]
• Puhar = the coastal example; Ujjayini = overland; Pataliputra = riverine.
• Votive inscriptions from the 2nd century BCE name donors and their occupations — the best written source on urban jobs.
• Nagapiya, wife of the goldsmith (sovanika) Dharmaka, is a named woman donor at Mathura.
• Megasthenes was the Seleucid envoy at Chandragupta Maurya's Pataliputra, called Palimbothra by the Greeks. [7]

Mains Points

• Urbanisation followed routes, not just soil. Riverine (Pataliputra), overland (Ujjayini, Mathura) and coastal (Puhar) sites all sit on movement corridors. Trade routes, not agricultural land alone, decided where towns rose — which links this section directly to guilds, coinage and long-distance exchange.
• Fortification was fiscal as much as military. Shishupalgarh's narrow gateways controlled who and what passed. Walls and gates let a state count goods and collect tolls — the physical face of early state revenue.
• Cities rise and fall with political power. Pataliputra grew because Magadha and then the Mauryas ruled from it, and became a ruin once that power left. Its timber construction made the collapse total. Yet most mahajanapada capitals survived 2,500 years — so the argument must be site-specific, not sweeping.
• Votive inscriptions correct the elite-only picture. Because they name washing folk, weavers, smiths and women donors — not only kings — they show wealth spread wide enough in towns for artisan families to make religious gifts. Useful against any answer that treats early Indian towns as purely royal or priestly.