India an Archaeological History (Palaeolithic Beginnings to Early Historic Foundations)

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Item Code: NAH506
Author: Dilip K. Chakrabarti
Publisher: Oxford University Press, New Delhi
Language: English
Edition: 2023
ISBN: 9780198064121
Pages: 410 (30 B/W Illustrations)
Cover: Paperback
Other Details 8.5 inch x 5.5 inch
Weight 390 gm
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Book Description
About The Book

This book present archaeological history from the palaeolithic beginnings to c.AD 300’ when early historic India assumed its basic from. It lucidly reconstructs the historical development of human-natural resource interaction in the subcontinents using maps, illustration, and tables. The second edition update the research to include new ideas and discoveries – of tools from the palaeolithic and mesolitshic ages and human fossil finds – in Indian archeology between 1998 and 2008. This comprehension and up to date book will be an essential reading for students and teachers of archaeology and ancient Indian history.

 

About The Author

Dilip K. Chakrabarti is Emeritus professor of South Asian Archaeology and Senior Fellow, McDonald Institute for Archaeology Research, Cambridge University.

 

Preface

The Indian subcontinent has been an area for archaeological research for over 200 years. Since Independence the pace of this research has increased manifold, and despite some major lacunae, we have reached a stage of knowledge where it is possible to offer a connected account of the history of prehistoric and early historic India primarily, if not exclusively, on the basis of archaeology. The present volume aims to do that. It is much more than a compendium of ancient Indian archaeological data, bringing out, as it does, the flow of 'India's grassroots archaeological history in all its continuities and diversities. Beginning with the first stone tools in the subcontinent, the book weaves its archaeological history in all the areas and multiple strands of development till the early historic foundations. Among other things, it discusses the basic significance of Indian prehistoric studies, the variegated pattern of the beginning of village life in India, the various issues related to . , the Indus or Harappan civilization and how the transition to, and consolidation of, the early historical India took place.

This was written in the academic year 1997-8 and the formal invitation to do so came from OUP, New Delhi. I would like to thank them for this privilege.

Dr Sylvia Lachrnann kindly found time to read all its chapters, some of which were also read by Reverend G. Seevalee, Christopher Bayliss and Corinna Bower. My thanks are due to all of them. Dr Nayanjot Lahiri gave me a copy of Indian Archaeology-A Review, 1992-93 and helped in other ways.

The 'India' of this book is the Sanskrit Bharatavarsha, the subcontinent as a whole. In a major Bengali literary piece-Aranyak ('forest-dweller')- the author, Bibhuti Bhusan Bandopadhyay, enters into an imaginary dialogue with Bhanumati, a tribal princess who lived in a forest village called Chakmakitola.

Have you heard the name of Bharatavarsha? Bhanumati nodded to say that she had not heard the name. She had never been out of Chakmakitola. In which direction could one find Bharatavarsha?

If at the end of this book one is left with a sense of the archaeological direction to Bharatavarsha, I shall consider this humble endeavour of mine successful. . This book is dedicated to Mr v.c. Joshi, who played a significant role in the development of archaeological research in the subcontinent in the 1980s. As a consultant of the Ford Foundation, Delhi, he was instrumental in shaping the Foundations' interest in South Asian archaeology. In India this interest led, among, 9Jh.el:.things, to the sanction of major grants to the Indian Society for-Prehistoric and Quaternary Studies for its journal Man and Environment and the. archaeology sections of the Banaras Hindu University, Deccan College, Pune, and M.S. University, Baroda. In Bangladesh, the Foundation initiated the process of establishing archaeology in one of the universities, with Mr Joshi closely working with Bangladeshi colleagues. Those of us who came in contact with him will always remember his kindness and grace and deep commitment to duty.

 

Introduction

There are two reasons why a historical study of ancient Indian cannot realize its full potential in the basis of textual sources alone. First, the sources which have been used, beginning with the Rigveda, were not meant to be historical sources, and whatever historical information has been gleaned from them is not free questions regarding their chronology, geographical applicability and even content. Except for the history of the king of Kashmir, written by kalhana in the twelfth century, there is no proper historical chronicle dating from the ancient period of Indian history. As H.C. Raychaudhuri wrote: ‘No Thucydides or Tacitus has left for posterity a genuine history of Ancient India.’ K.A.N. Sastri wrote of ‘the utter impossibility of basing any part of the ancient history of India solely, or even primarily, upon literary evidence.’

The problem of source is not limited to the texts. It affects in good measure inscription, coins, sculpture, painting and architecture as well, although in these cases geography and chronology are not among the problems. The number of early inscription is severely limited. They increase in number only in the tenth-twelfth centuries, more in the south than in the rest of the subcontinent. But inscriptions are not textual compositions, and like other textual composition, devote a lot space to conventional descriptions rather than to the first place. Coins come mostly from ‘hoards’—accidental, non-contextual discoveries which very often end up with the coin-dealers. A framework of the study of coins has no doubt emerged, but on many occasions the study of ancient India coins has not been to able to proceed beyond a study of their design. The same is true of the specimen of art and architecture. They are concerned much more with individual authorship and patronage, precisely the issue which would have made them exciting as historical documents.

Over the last two centuries or more, scholars have certainly mapped out the different areas of ancient India history, but in many cases this has been no more than a preliminary sketch of the terrain. It is doubtful I f they could do any better. When one remember that there is no fine chronological grouping of the early Buddhist literature and that the whole of it can be out only in a board period from the sixth to the second century BC, the generalized version of ‘Buddhist India’. Further, because the geographical perspective of these texts is limited mainly to the middle Ganga plain, this generalized version can apply not to India as a whole but only to the region which it invokes. This situation is true not merely of Buddhist India but virtually of all the epochs and geographical regions that we can think of in the context of ancient India. In fact, behind its academic curtain, there are vast stretches of darkness and too many loose ends. Under the circumstances, the pioneering modern historians of ancient India could only lay the outline of the subject, moving from epoch to epoch and giving us a general scaffolding which somehow holds together. It could also be only a story of historical development in a more or less single line which, in fact had the effect of blurring the multiple regional strands of India’s historical growth, at least for the early period.

Such basic limitation of the available sources cannot be wished away, nor can the situation improve by rephrasing the historical question in the language of the social sciences. Whatever cloak a modern historian of ancient India may wear—that of an old-fashioned or of a modern social scientist—one cannot shed the burden of proof , and historical proof, as well all know, lies basically in the sources.

Archaeology can greatly expand the nature of the sources in the context of ancient India. Even in the areas with a much larger mass of detailed and rigorous textual documentation, archaeological research often leads to hitherto unperceived dimensions of the historical landscape. In the case of ancient India , where the basic quantum and the rigour of textual documentation are comparatively limited, archaeological research becomes more than ordinarily significant.

Archaeology can also greatly change the nature of historical questions, and it is here that the second reason of the significant of archaeology in ancient Indian historical research is rooted. Although modern archaeology is not afraid of handing multitude of issue ranging from environment and subsistence to symbolism and cognition, it is primarily in the reconstruction if the story of man-land relationship through the ages that subject excels . what we want to emphasize in the context of the ancient history of such a vast land mass as the subcontinent that the framework of a past acceptable to all segments of its population can emerge.

The past is a hotly contested arena of modern times, and the fact that it has become so is in a large measure due to a sense of monolithic, racist past that we have inherited as a colonial legacy in a large part of the world. In the case of India, one immediately realize that since beginning of research on the history of ancient India, the story of its conquest by a carefully constructed ‘superior’ recial and linguistic group called the Aryans has been an overwhelmingly dominant theme and that this conquest and the subsequent assimilation of the various indigenous strands of culture by the conquering Aryans have been said to constitute the very basis of ancient Indian society and history. Even if this theme and approach are true—and we shall see in a later section that they are not –why should those who are considered beyond the Aryans pale accept this reconstruction of the past as their own?

 

Contents
     
  Preface xv
I INTRODUCTION 1
  ANCIENT IND~ 'THE IMPOI«ANCE OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL 1
  EVIDENCE  
  THE DEVELOPMENT OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH IN THE SUBCONTIN 4
  Early Notices 4
  The Middle of the Eighteenth Century 4
  The Establishment of the Asiatic Society in Calcutta 5
  The 1830s 7
  Alexander Cunningham and His Successors till 1902 8
  The Role of Indians in Indian Archaeological Studies till the Close of the Nineteenth Century 10
  Some Operative Forces in the Study of Ancient India 10
  Indian Prehistoric Studies till the End of the Nineteenth Century 12
  Indian Archaeology at the Turn of the Twentieth Century and the Impact of lord Curzon 12
  The John Marshall Era in Indian Archaeology, 1902-44 14
  Mortimer Wheeler and the Archaeological Survey, 1944-48 15
  Archaeology in Post-Independence India 16
  AIMS AND STRUCTURE 19
  THE LAND MASS 20
  Geographical Preliminarie 20
  Geographical Issues 24
  India in Relation to the Rest of Asia and Africa 24
  Frontiers and Boundaries 26
  India as a Geographical Entity 28
  Major Geographical Lineaments of Indian History and Archaeology 29
  Areas of Attraction, Relative Isolation and Isolation: a Critique of the Idea 30
  PEOPLES AND LANGUAGES: THE BASIC CLASSIFICATORY FRAMEWORKS 30
  Recent Approach of the Anthropological Survey of India 31
  The Classificatory Systems based on the Concept of Race 34
  CONCLUDING REMARKS 39
II THE PALAEOLITHIC CONTEXT 41
  RESEARCH BACKGROUND 41
  SKELETAL EVIDENCE 48
  THE EARLIEST DATES of PALAEOLITHIC TOOLS IN THE SUBCONTINENT 51
  DISTRIBUTION, STRATIGRAPHY, CLIMATE 54
  Preliminary Issues 54
  Regional Survey 58
  CHRONOLOGY 74
  CULTURAL EVIDENCE 75
  Preliminary Remarks 75
  Beyond Tools 78
  Ethnographic Approach 86
  THE EVIDENCE OF ART (? 88
  CONCLUDING REMARKS 89
III THE MESOLITHIC HORIZON AND ASSOCIATED ROCK ART 91
  THE CONCEPT OF A MESOLITHIC LEVEL AND ITS DISTRIBUTION 92
  CLIMATE 95
  CHRONOLOGY 98
  CULTURAL EVIDENCE 100
  Bagor, Phase I 100
  Adamgarh 101
  Baghor II 101
  The Excavated Sites in Uttar Pradesh: Chopani Mando, Sarai Nahar Rai, Mahadaha and Damdama 102
  Paisra 109
  ASSOCIATED ROCK ART 110
  CONCLUDING REMARKS 116
IV THE GROWTH OF VILLAGES: FROM BALUCHISTAN TO HARYANA AND GUJARAT 117
  THE MOUNTAINOUS RIM IN THE NORTH-WEST: BALUCHISTAN 117
  The Northern Part of the Kachhi Plain: Mehrgarh 117
  The Quetta Valley: Kite Gul Mohammad and Damb Sadaat 126
  The Zhob-Loralai Area: the Rana Ghundai Sequence 128
  The Kalat Plateau: Anjira and Sia Damb in the Sohrab Area 130
  The Khozdar Area: Nal 131
  The Kulli Culture of Kolwa and the Area around Bela: Niai Buthi, Nindowari and Edith Shahr Complex 133
  The Coastal Plain of Sonmiani Bay: Bala Kot 134
  The Turbat Oasis in the Kej Valley: Miri Qalat and Shahi Tump 135
  Early Village Cultures of Baluchistan 136
  THE MOUNTAINOUS RIM IN THE NORTH-WEST: BANNU 136
  THE WESTERN FRINGE OF THE INDUS-HAKRA ALLUVIUM: THE GOMAL V ALLEY 138
  THE WESTERN FRINGE OF THE INDUS-HAKRA ALLUVIUM: KIRTHAR PIEDMONT AND KOHISTAN 138
  THE WESTERN FRINGE OF THE INDUS-HAKRA ALLUVIUM: THE POTWAR PLATEAU 140
  THE INDUS-HAKRA PLAIN 140
  The Hakra Ware Sites in Cholistan 141
  The Kot Diji Sites in Cholistan and Kot Diji in Sind 142
  The Hakra Ware and Kot Diji Phase at Jalitpur 144
  The Kot Diji Phase at Harappa 144
  The Kot DijilSothi Phase at Kalibangan 144
  The Hakra Ware and Kot Diji/Sothi Phases at Kunal 145
  The Kot DijilSothi Phase at Banawali and Other Places in Indian Punjab and Haryana 146
  THE ARAVALLI BELT: THE GROWTH OF AN EARLY METALLURGICAL CENTRE 146
  GUJARAT 147
  TOWARD THE INDUS CIVILIZATION 148
V THE INDUS OR HARAPPAN CIVILIZATION 151
  NAME 151
  DISTRIBUTlON 153
  ORIGIN 160
  MORPHOLOGY OF SOME MAJOR SITES 164
  Mohenjodaro 164
  Chanhudaro 168
  Harappa 168
  Kalibangan 169
  Banawali 171
  Lothal 172
  Surkotada 173
  Dholavira 175
  Kuntasi 178
  General Features of Harappan Settlements 179
  GENERAL FEATURES OF HARAPPAN CIVILIZATION 179
  Seals and Script 179
  Pottery 182
  Lithic Industry 186
  Metallurgy 187
  Miscellaneous Arts' and Crafts 188
  Weights and Linear Measures 189
  Crops arid Domestic Animals 190
  Trade 192
  Religion 194
  Sculptural Art 195
  Skeletal Biology 197
  CHRONOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK 198
  POLITICAL AND SOCIAL FRAMEWORK 199
  DECLINE AND TRANSFORMATION 200
VI NEOLITHIC-CHALCOLITHIC AND IRON-BEARING CULTURES BEYOND THE HARAPPAN DIS1RIBUTION ZONE 205
  COMPLEXITIES OF THE BEGINNING OF FOOD PRODUCTION IN NON-HARAPPAN INDIA 205
  THE MOUNTAINS IN THE NORTH 209
  Gandhara Grave Culture 209
  Kashmir Neolithic, Ladakh and Almorah (UP) 202
  RAJASTHAN 216
  North-east Rajasthan: Ganeshwar-Jodhpura Culture 216
  South-east Rajasthan: The Ahar Culture 217
  MADHYA PRADESH 221
  MAHARASHTRA 224
  KARNATAKA, ANDHRA, TAMIL NADU 236
  The South Indian Neolithic and the Chalcolithic in Andhra 236
  The Megalithic Complex 238
  ORISSA, THE NORTH-EASTERN STATES, WEST BENGAL AND BIHAR 239
  Orissa 239
  The North-eastern States 240
  West Bengal 241
  Bihar 243
  UTTAR PRADESH 247
  Eastern Utter Pradesh 247
  Western Uttar Pradesh 251
  Upper Ganga Valley 'Copper Hoards' 254
  THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE INDIAN NEOLITHIC-CHALCOLITHIC AND IRON-BEARING CULTURES BEYOND THE HARAPPAN DISTRIBUTION ZONE 260
VII THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF EARLY HISTORIC INDIA 262
  THE HISTORICAL FRAMEWORK OF EARLY HISTORIC INDIAN ARCHAEOLOGY 265
  Dynastic History 265
  A Geo-political Perspective of Early Indian Political History 274
  Major Phases of Early Historic Economic History 275
  SE1TLEMENT CONTEXTS 279
  The North-west 279
  Kashmir, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Sind 281
  Haryana and the Upper Gangetic Valley 284
  The Middle Gangetic Valley and the Trans-Sarayu Plain 287
  Assam and the Northeast, the Padma-Bhagirathi Delta (Bangladesh-West Bengal) and Orissa 288
  Andhra, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu 288
  Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Rajasthan 290
  INSCRIPTIONS 290
  The Antiquity and Variety of Scripts 290
  Contents and Styles of Early Inscriptions 291
  Inscriptions of the Early Centuries AD 294
  COINS 295
  SCULPTURE, TERRACOITA, PAINTING 300
  ARCHITECTURE 309
  CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS 315
VIII SOME GENERAL ISSUES 319
  GEOGRAPHY 319
  PREHISTORY 321
  SEITLEMENT 324
  AGRICULTURE 326
  METALLURGY 329
  TRADE AND TRADE ROUTES 333
  Afterword 339
  Notes 359
  Bibliography 368
  Index 387

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