The Harappan site in the Montgomery (now Sahiwal) district of Punjab was first excavated in 1921 by:

Rai Bahadur Daya Ram Sahni began the excavations at Harappa, in the Montgomery (now Sahiwal) district of Punjab, Pakistan, in 1921.

About the discovery of Harappa:

• Harappa was the first site of the civilisation to be excavated.
• The site had been noticed in the 19th century; Charles Masson visited it in 1826, and Alexander Cunningham reported on it and found a seal there in the 1850s and 1870s, but its importance was not understood.
• Sahni's excavations in 1920-21 showed that it belonged to a very ancient culture.
• Because Harappa was the first site to be identified, the whole civilisation is often called the "Harappan Civilisation".
• After Sahni, Madho Swarup Vats continued the excavations at Harappa in the 1920s and 1930s.

About Daya Ram Sahni:

• He was born in 1879 in Punjab and died in 1939.
• He was one of the first Indian archaeologists in the Archaeological Survey of India.
• He studied Sanskrit and archaeology, and worked on sites such as Sarnath, Rampurva and Bairat (Viratnagar, Rajasthan).
• In 1931, he became the first Indian to be appointed Director-General of the ASI.

Main features of Harappa:

• A citadel mound and a lower town.
• A series of brick structures thought to be "granaries".
• "Cemetery H", which gave its name to a late Harappan culture.

Other discoverers of Harappan sites:

Kalibangan: identified by the Italian scholar L. P. Tessitori, later excavated in the 1950s and 1960s.

Kot Diji and Amri: excavated by Pakistani and other archaeologists.

Why not the other options?

• ✗Rakhaldas Banerji was another ASI officer of the same period.
• ✗Madho Swarup Vats continued the work at Harappa after Sahni.
• ✗Nani Gopal Majumdar explored many sites in Sindh, including Chanhudaro, and was killed by bandits in 1938.