The art and architecture of India - Buddhist, Hindu, Jain (Art Ebook)

CHAPTER 2
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THE PROTO-HISTORIC PERIOD:
THE INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION
Before 1924 the history of Indian art in surviving
The Indus Valley Period certainly cannot be
or talismans found at all the centres excavated. 2 Aryan invasion in about 1500 B.C.
monuments could not be traced farther described as prehistoric, nor does the evidence
back than the Macedonian invasion in the fourth of the finds entirely permit the definition
century B.C. The entire concept of the early of chalcolithic in the sense of a bronze or
cultures of India was changed by the dramatic copper age. In view of the many well-forged
discovery of a great urban civilization that existed
links with later developments in Indian culture,
contemporaneously with the ancient cul-
a better descriptive term would be 'proto-
ture of Mesopotamia in the third millennium historic', which defines its position in the
B.C. 1 Although the chief centres of this civilization
were brought to light in the Indus Valley,
there are indications that it extended uniformly
period before the beginning of known history
and its forecast of later phases of Indian civilization.
as far north as the Punjab and the North-west The principal cities of the Indus Valley
Frontier (Pakistan) and may have included all
or part of Rajputana and the Ganges Valley.
The term Indo-Sumerian, sometimes used
to describe this period of Indian history, derives
from the resemblance of many objects at the
chief centres of this culture to Mesopotamian
forms. It is, in a sense, a misleading designation
culture are Mohenjo-daro on the Indus River
and Harappa in the Punjab. The character of
the finds has led investigators to the conclusion
that the peoples of the Indus culture must have
had some contact with ancient Mesopotamia.
These commercial connexions with the ancient
Near East were maintained by sea and overland
because it implies that this Indian civilization by way of Baluchistan. The dating of the Indus
was a provincial offshoot of Sumeria, whereas it Valley civilization depends almost entirely on
is more proper to think of it as an entirely comparison with vestiges of similar architectural
separate culture that attained just as high a level
as that of the great Mesopotamian empires. A
better title would be the 'Indus Valley Period',
and sculptural remains in Mesopotamia and
on the discovery of objects of Indian origin in a
level corresponding to 2400 B.C. at Tel Asmar in
since this designation is completely descriptive Iraq. On the basis of these finds and other
of the principal centres of this civilization. As
will be seen, it is not so much the relationships
to Mesopotamia and Iran that are surprising, as
the complete separateness and autonomy of this
related objects found at Kish and Susa in Iran,
the beginnings of the Indus culture have been
fixed in the middle of the third millennium B.C.
The latest evidence suggests that the civilization
first great civilization in Indian history in the
of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa lasted for
major aspects of its development. Typical of the about eight hundred years, until the seventeenth
independence of the Indus Valley art, and the
century B.C. 3 It was succeeded by an
mysteries surrounding it, is the undeciphered inferior and very obscure culture known as the
script which appears on the many steatite seals Jhukar, which endured up to the time of the