Tales of Aurangi’s hidden spring and Karachi’s kotiro

By Hasan Mansoor   
Some amateur archaeologists exploring the fast vanishing traces of ancient Sindh have failed to find a mountain spring that was once discovered by British officials before partition of the subcontinent in the city’s western hills that, at that time, was part of an area called Deh Aurangi or Audangi, now spelt as Orangi.    “Someone has told me that it is still there, but has become part of some private property,” a traveller and explorer says.    In their writings British officials and noted archaeologists, including Pithawala, Majumdar and Carter, had cited many wonderful traces and evidences of ancient life in these hills that have now become one of Karachi’s most populous and violent areas and is inhabited by around a million souls.    In their decades-old writings the British explorers reported about traces of prehistoric times in the city’s mountainous western part, which even included evidences of stone-age human life.    Some classic English writings have also cited the presence of a spring there since times immemorial. Local archaeologists and anthropologists had been reckoning such writings merely based on imagination until recently.    But someone informed Badar Abro, an amateur archaeologist and traveller, that the spring really existed and was part of one of thousands of houses dotting the thickly-populated area now called Orangi.    “An enthusiast like me is always in the hunt for something new, newly found or unexplored and this information had really excited me,” Abro says.    But no one, including Abro, has yet found the actual location of the legendary spring. But, Abro says, this spring is not the only historic location that has been ruined by the city’s unplanned growth and discusses many more which are no longer in sight now.    In this connection Abro terms the disappearance of kotiro (houses of pre-Islamic Sindhis made up of huge blocks carved out from the hills and mountains).    “I have read about their presence in abundance in Sindh and archaeologists found plenty of kotiro (a Sindhi word meaning a little fort) in the suburbs of then sparsely populated little Karachi,” Abro says.    According to him, people of ancient Sindh would get stones from mountains, carve large blocks and use them with fine stone pitching to establish their kotiro. Each block was that much heavier that four to five people could carry it.    “I visited various locations to find such kotiro, but now they are no more extant,” Abro says.    Some experts say there was a kotiro with traces of a temple near Hawkesbay and it has also vanished now. Archaeologists generally believe the mafias involved in illegal breaking of stones from mountains have also played a monstrous role to ruin history.    They saw fine stones present everywhere with no one there to stop them from destroying history and they literally destroyed history,” says an expert.