Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c12.197

c12.197

To sum up, then, the Harappā civilization, while largely self-sufficient and essentially Indian in its origins, and in the whole fabric and texture of its peculiar constitution, nevertheless did have certain intermittent outside contacts. The trade with Sumer seems almost certainly to have been initiated by the South Baluchistan merchants of the Kulli Culture in Early Dynastic times, and it is not straining the evidence to attribute to these men also the establishment of ‘factories’ in the Sumerian cities where colonies of Indian merchants lived and worshipped in their traditional way. The Harappā traders acquired a business which was already flourishing by about 2300 B.C., and they again must have had their resident representatives in Ur and Lagash and other centres of trade, using the characteristic seals on merchandise and documents. In connexion with this trade, surely sea-borne up the Persian Gulf, the fortified station at Sutkagen-dor must have played a part, at the convergence of the routes inland from the little harbours between Gwatar Bay and Gwadar – perhaps other ports existed at the mouths of the Indus.