The earliest city discovered in India was
(A) Harappa
(B) Punjab
(C) Mohenjo Daro
(D) Sindh
Answer: (A) The ruins of Harappa were first described in 1842 by Charles Masson in his Narrative of Various Journeys in Balochistan, Afghanistan, and the Punjab, where locals talked of an ancient city extending “thirteen crosses” (about 25 miles), but no archaeological interest would attach to this for nearly a century. In 1856, General Alexander Cunningham, later director-general of the archaeological survey of northern India, visited Harappa where the British engineer's John and William Brunton were laying the East Indian Railway Company line connecting the cities of Karachi and Lahore. In 1872–75 Alexander Cunningham published the first Harappan seal (with an erroneous identification as Brahmi letters). It was half a century later, in 1912, that more Harappan seals were discovered by J. Fleet, prompting an excavation campaign under Sir John Hubert Marshall in 1921–22 and resulting in the discovery of the civilization at Harappa by Sir John Marshall, Rai Bahadur Daya Ram Sahni and Madho Sarup Vats, and at Mohenjo-Daro by Rakhal Das Banerjee, E. J. H. MacKay, and Sir John Marshall.
