I visited Moscow as a delegate to the XXV Inter-national Congress of Orientalists in August last year. I had the good fortune then to meet a number of renowned scholars from different parts of the globe. Among others, I was introduced to a man of sharp features with penetrating eyes, which at once spoke of his attainments. He is Dr Heinz Mode, Professor of Oriental Archaeology, Halle University, East Germany. I came to know that he would be coming to India shortly. I did not lose any time to extend him an invitation to visit my institution, which is one of the ancient seats of Oriental Learning. Dr Mode, in response to my request, came to my College some time in November, 1960, and thereafter pretty frequently. He accepted the Honorary Fellowship of the College Seminar and delivered a learned discourse 'The Harappa Culture and the West' on February 27, 1961 which was published in Our Heritage, Volume VII, Part I. Realising the importance of the subject discussed by Dr Mode, the Board of Editors of the Publication Department of the College took the decision to reprint it as a monograph in the Studies Series of our Research Publications. I now place it before the scholars and those who are interested in the early history of Indian civilisation.
I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to Professor Dr Heinz Mode for his co-operation with this ancient institution in the East. I feel it my duty also to record my appreciation for the members of the Department of Ancient Indian & World History of the College and also to Sri Nani Gopal Tarkatirtha, Assistant Editor, Publication Department for the interest they have shown in the publication of this monograph.
I feel greatly honoured to be asked by my Principal, Dr Sastri, to write an introduction to the learned dissertation by one of the foremost archaeologists of the time, Dr Heinz Mode, who adorns the chair of Oriental Archacology of the Halle University, East Germany. In spite of my diffidence, which is but natural, I accept the proposal, only because it is a matter of great privilege to be associated with the work of a scholar of the stature of Dr Mode, whose friendship I claim to enjoy. In introducing Dr Mode I would like to refer to the valuable contributions he has already made to the reconstruction of the history of the early civilisations. Dr Mode's interest in Indian Archaeology brought him over to this country and during his short stay in India he established intimate contacts with even the humblest worker in the field. By scholarship as well as by temperament Dr Mode can very well be regarded as possessing the qualities of a true Brahmana. It is quite in the fitness of things that Dr Mode has chosen the topic of the interrelation between the early Indian Civilisation and that of the Near East for his monograph.
Ever since the excavations in 1921 at Mohenjo-daro in the Larkana district of Sind and Harappa in the Montgomery district of the West Punjab, now both in West Pakistan, archaeologists have been fascinated by the grandeur of the material remains of a highly developed urban culture.
Evidences thus unearthed pushed back the beginnings of civilisation in India for a few millennia. It was at first called Mohenjodaro, Indus valley or simply, Indus civilisation.
Further excavations, however, reveal that the civilisation was not confined in the Indus valley alone but 'stretched from Rupar at the foot of the Simla Hills to Suktagendor near the shores of the Arabian Sea, a distance of 1000 miles.
Explorations during the past ten years have extended the reach of this vast civilisations to Ukhlina, 19 miles west of Meerut in the Jumna basin, and southwards into Kathiawad (Rangpur, Lothal, Somenath, the Halar district), and beyond to the shore of the Gulf of Cambay near the estuaries of the Narbada and the Tapti. There five hundred miles south-east of Mohenjodaro, at three sites, Mehgam and Talod and Bhogertarar, potsherds of the Indus civilisation were found in 1957, and for the present, the civilisation's southernmost limit' (R. E. M. Wheeler, Early India and Pakistan, Pp. 94-95; for Rupar excavations, Indian Archaeology, 1956-57, page 1, and for explorations in Kathiwad and Surat, Indian Archaeology, 1953-54 page 7; 1954-55 Pp. 1, 11-12; 1955-56 Pp. 6-8; 1956-57 Pp. 15-16; 1957-58, Pp. 12-13; Rao, S. R., The Excavation at Lothal, Lalit Kala, 1956-57, Nos. 3 & 4). It has been further observed by Wheeler that Juduirjodaro, a mile west of the Quetta Road, 18 miles north of Jacobabad, was apparently early in the Indus series. It was in all likelihood one of the Indus towns, but never a true rival of either Mohenjo-daro or Harappa. The site has, however, not yet been excavated. The easternmost limit of the area of this civilisation is pushed back as far as the Ganga-Yamuna Valley by the finds of typically Harappan ware in 1959 at Alamgirpur, 50 kilometers to the north east of Delhi. (A. Ghosh, Indo Asian Culture, Delhi, 1959, P. 164).
By and large it is now clear that early appellations of the civilisation as Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, Indus valley or simply, Indus are inadequate. The civilisation is, however, sometimes described as 'Harappa culture' to mean the culture which was first discovered at Harappa, and here the term 'Harappa' has no geographical connotation. It is, however, much better to describe it as early Indian civilisation, as is done by Professor Mode.
Archaeological explorations have widened the horizon of our knowledge of this early Indian civilisation, and consequently a large number of scholarly works has been written on the subject. Apart from the earlier monumental works of Sir John Marshall and Ernest Mackay, in recent years very many books have been published. Of these the following need prominent mention: (i) Richard, P. S. Starr, Indus valley Painted Pottery (Princeton University Press, 1941); (ii) Heinz Mode, Indische Fruhkulturen, Basel 1944; (iii) Stuart Piggott, Prehistoric India (Harmondsworth, 1950); (iv) R. E. M. Wheeler, Indus Valley Civilisation, Supplement to Cambridge History of India Vol 1 (Cambridge, 1952); (8) Bedrich Hrozny, Ancient History of Western Asia, India and Crete, (Prague 1953); (vi) F. Heras, Studies in the Proto-Indo-Mediterranean Culture (Bombay, 1953); (vii) D. H. Gordon, The Prehistoric Background of Indian Culture, (Bombay, 1958); (viii) R. E. M. Wheeler, Early History of India and Pakistan (London, 1959); and (ix) Heinz Mode, Das Fruhe Indien (Weimar, 1960).
Comparative archaeological studies of the Near Eastern and the early Indian civilisations show striking similarities in many respects. Further the emergence of civilisations in the Fertile Crescent and the Indus Valley falls more or less in the same period. The general contemporaneity and similarity of the civilisations have given rise to the question of their mutual correspondence. Professor Mode in his present dissertation has shown that there are three different possibilities. The early Indian civilisation might have been completely an exotic growth, a transplantation of the Sumerian culture; or, it may be that it was influenced by the Near East directly or indirectly by way of trade; or these might have been parallel and simultaneous developments.
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