The main features of Mauryan administration were:

• There were five important political centres in the Mauryan Empire: Patliputra (the capital city) and the provincial centres of Taxila, Ujjayini, Tosali and Suvarnagiri.
• It was not possible for such a large empire to have a uniform administrative system so historians believe that the administrative control was perhaps strongest in the capital and in provincial centres.
• Communications along the land and riverine routes were developed to administer the Empire.
• The army was an important tool for not only extending the territories of the empire but also for administering them.
• Committees and sub-committees were formed for coordinating military activities. They looked after the navy, horses, chariots, elephants, recruiting soldiers and managing transport and food supplies for soldiers.
• Asoka held his Empire together by propagating the doctrine of Dhamma, whose principles were simple and universally applicable. The doctrine propagated the ideas of peace, non-violence and respect towards elders. Dhamma mahamattas were appointed to spread the principles of Dhamma.

The last feature of the Mauryan administration is evident in the Asokan inscriptions that we have studied. It is because Ashoka inscribed the main features of his policy of 'dhamma'. According to the inscriptions, he had also appointed Special officers called Dhamma Mahamtras to spread Dhamma.

A humped bull, elephant and rhinoceros engraved on some seals indicate that these animals may have been considered sacred. These seals were probably used for trade or for rituals. These seals provide us with a lot of information about the life and culture of the Indus Valley people

Vaṃsa, alternatively spelled as Vamsa or Vamsha, is a Sanskrit word that means "family, lineage". A vamsa can be focussed on a dynasty, family, individual such as a saint, line of teachers of a particular tradition, or a place particularly of pilgrimage. Some of these texts are titled with vamsa as a suffix.

Inscriptions are the writings that are engraved on stones or are etched on metals in ancient times. They're mostly found in the southern parts of India and were found to engrave on copper plates, on the stones of the buildings etc., The study of inscriptions is called Epigraphy. They're a significant and essential source of important information. 

• The paintings on the walls, showcase a lot about the ancient cultures and their beliefs.
• The help the historians date the events in the proper time.
•  It gives a lot of information about the previous rulers, their lifestyle etc.
• The language and the style of writing will throw light on their economic and cultural lifestyles.
• For example, the Mandosore Stone Inscription during the reign of Kumar Gupta and Bandhuvarman of the Malwa dynasty indicates the use of seals for commercial purposes. 
• it gives information about the birth, death and other important events that took place in that century.
• Another example is the 'Rosetta' Stone, which allowed historians to find out about the Egyptian scripts
•  It also gives us valuable and approximate information about the ancient kings and queens, their names, their food habits and also about flora and fauna in that place, during that time.

Stratigraphy is a branch of geology concerned with the study of rock layers and layering. It is primarily used in the study of sedimentary and layered volcanic rocks. Stratigraphy has two related subfields: lithostratigraphy and biostratigraphy.

1. This civilization is extended far beyond the Indus Valley. The main towns of Indus valley civilization were Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro, Kalibangan, Lothal.

2. The significant features of Indus Valley civilization are personal cleanliness, town planning, construction of burnt-brick houses, ceramics, casting, forging of metals, manufacturing of cotton and woolen textiles.

3. Mohenjo-Daro people had finest bath facilities, drainage system, and knowledge of personal hygiene.

4. They were equally conscious of plant medicine since there was occasional warfare.

5. The town planning and other characteristics indicate that a homogeneous indigenous culture developed.

6. The portrayal of a three-faced figure surrounded by various animals has been considered as Shiva in the form of Pasupati or Brahma, the originator of Brahmi School of learning.

7. The seal has been available in the stupa area that is generally believed as college area. Computer study of the available seals has been started in different centers.

8. The naksatras are of Harappan origin and these are related to later Dravidian names.

9. Application of decimal scale in linear measure is another very important achievement of the Harappans.

Religious beliefs of the people of Indus Valley Civilisation:

• Seals form an important source of information about the religious life of the Harappans. Apart from the discovery of fire altar from Kalibangan, no cult objects, temples or places of worship have been found.
•  From the seals which have been discovered , it has been concluded that religion during the Harappan times bore traces of later Hinduism as images of pashupati, goddess and sacred trees and animals have been discovered.
• In one of the figures, a plant is shown as growing out of a woman’s body. Historians believe it to be Mother Earth, who was also worshipped in Middle East and Europe.
• No place of worship such as temples were found in any of the cities of the Indus Valley Civilisation.

It was composed under the leadership of a noted Indian Sanskritist, V.S. Sukthankar.
 The elements considered:

 (i) They selected the verses that appeared common to most versions.
 (ii) There were several common elements in the Sanskrit versions of the story, evident in manuscripts found all over the subcontinent.
 (iii) When issues of social history were explored for the first by historians in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, they tended to take these texts at face value-believing that everything that was laid down in these text was actually practiced.
 (iv) The studies indicated that the ideas contained in normative Sanskrit texts were, on the whole, recognized as authoritative: they were also questioned and occasionally even rejected.

Historians have diverse opinions regarding the existence of rulers in the Harappan society. While some historians believe that the Harappan society had no rulers, other claim that there were rulers. Historians who believe in the existence of rulers claim that the elaborate town planning and use of same weights and measures across the IVC indicate that it were rulers who set standards and implemented such complex decisions.

Functions that were probably performed by the rulers of the Harappan society were:

• During excavations, archaeologist have found the remains of planned Harappan cities. The bricks used on making houses were of standardized ratio and were used in all Harappan cities. There was a well planned drainage system in place. There are indications of complex decisions being taken and implemented in Harappan society. There was a uniformity of Harappan artefacts such as pottery, seals, weight and measures. Thus, one of the functions of the ruler was to set guidelines for making houses and other commodities.
• In the IVC, settlements were strategically set up in specific locations for various reasons. One such case is the setting up of settlements near the source of raw materials so that it is easy to produce various ornaments and craft products. Thus, another function of the ruler could be of maintain production centers and chalking out strategies to procure raw materials from distance lands.
• Another function of the ruler may have to mobilise the work force for procuring bricks and required materials for constructing houses and other buildings.
• The Harappan established flourishing trade relations with far off lands like Oman, Mesopotamia and Bahrain. The presence of uniformity in seals, weights and measures indicate that the rulers looked after the economy of their territory.

The Harappa site was first briefly excavated by Sir Alexander Cunningham in 1872-73, two decades after brick robbers carried off the visible remains of the city. He found an Indus seal of unknown origin.
The first extensive excavations at Harappa were started by Rai Bahadur Daya Ram Sahni in 1920. His work and contemporaneous excavations at Mohenjo-daro first brought to the world's attention the existence of the forgotten Indus Valley civilization as the earliest urban culture in the Indian subcontinent.
His work was followed later in the decade by that of Madho Sarup Vats, also of the Archaeological Survery of India. M.S. Vats first excavated the "Granary," and published the results of his and Sahni's excavations in 1940. Excavations by other archaeologists continued in the 1930's, and in 1946 Sir Mortimer Wheeler excavated the so-called fortification walls and found the first pre-Indus Valley civilization (Kot Dijian) deposits.

After independence, Harappa was excavated by Mohammed Rafique Mughal of the Archaeological Survey of Pakistan in 1966. In 1986, the first systematic, multi-disciplinary excavations of an Indus Valley city were begun by the Harappa Archaeological Project (HARP), under the direction of George F. Dales and J. Mark Kenoyer. These excavations, now also co-directed by Richard H. Meadow, have continued almost every year since then.

There is an enormous amount still to be learned about the site, most of which remains unexcavated. The earliest deposits on the site go back to 3300 B.C. and the area seems to have been continuosly inhabited ever since. Archaeologists think that ancient Harappa was the urban center dominating the upper Indus region, much like Mohenjo-daro dominated the lower Indus Valley and Ganweriwala might have been the urban center for what is now Rajasthan

Over the past century, archaeologists working in the Middle East have time and again excavated seals bearing what they call “Indus-style inscriptions”, complete with the script and the usual unicorn or bull. However, such Indus- or Harappan-style seals discovered “overseas”, so to speak, displayed a different shape as well as craftsmanship, being shaped either as circles or cylinders which were “rolled over wet clay rather than pressed upon it.” At times, such seals have also been discovered from within the defined boundaries of the Indus Valley Civilization – or, shall we say, Meluhha, as most modern scholars agree the contemporarily-named Indus Valley Civilization was called at the time of its existence – such as the “Gulf seal” discovered from Lothal, Gujarat. All of these discoveries give rise to many questions: did the people from the-then Dilmun and Magan Civilizations – as the civilizations from the modern-day Bahrain and Oman were respectively known – produce those seals indigenously? If so, did they understand the Meluhhan language? Or did the Meluhhans themselves make different seals for trade-items being sent to different places? In which case, too, the question remains: could the people from neighbouring civilizations understand the script? If they could not, then why did the Meluhhans send them these seals? Or, if those civilizations produced them indigenously, why so? Answers to these questions might hold the key to the decipherment of the Indus Script, by aiding archaeologists in the discovery of a bilingual text: the Rosetta Stone of the Indus Valley Civilization.

Harappan civilization:

The subsistence strategies of Harappan people included wide range of diet which included both plants and animals produce.

The Harappan Civilization or the Indus Valley Civilization is one of most ancient civilizations of world that existed around 2500 to 1700 BC along the banks of rivers Indus and Saraswati. Harappa was first site to be discovered and hence given the name.

Since, it was present on banks of two mighty rivers, most of their diet came from agriculture, but it also included animal products such as fish which can easily be caught from the river.

The archaeologist have found charred remains of grains such as wheat, barley, and millet. They also found the charred remains of bones of some animals like wild boar, deer, some wild birds which were probably used for eating purposes. In this way they sustained themselves.

Two strategies adopted to identify social differences among the Harappans are:
1. Burials- How the death are buried, what artefacts are buried along with it does help in identifying social differences.
2. Luxury goods-  Archaeologists assume objects were luxuries if they are rare or made from costly, non-local materials or with complicated technologies. By the availability of it we can assume the existence of social differences. For example larger town like Harappa or Mohenjodaro have large evidence of luxury goods whereas smaller settlement like kalibangan did not.