Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c13.56

c13.56

The date of these hoards of axes and harpoons cannot be fixed precisely. The axes and ‘bar-celts’ probably owe their origin to types within the Harappā or allied cultures in Western India, unless we assume an independent invention of metallurgy in another centre or centres of prehistoric India, and one’s instinct is therefore to date the finds within the period of that culture or in one shortly after its end. The concentration round Ranchi suggests the exploitation of the local copper deposits there, and the distribution of the finds westwards to Rajpur, 300 miles east of Harappā, does strengthen the idea that there was a spread of metallurgical techniques, and of the people responsible for them, from the confines of the Harappā kingdom eastwards. It would be tempting to associate this movement with something more than trade, and to see in it the colonization of the Ganges Basin by refugees and displaced persons from the Punjab and the Indus Valley during the time of the break-up of the Harappā empire and the coming of the raiders from the west. The deposition of hoards itself suggests a time of insecurity and economic instability, and may mean that the refugees were not left undisturbed for long, as the invasions gathered momentum and pressed on, beyond the old frontiers of the Harappā kingdom and down into the Ganges Valley. But here we leave archaeology for the ambiguous hints of legend and tradition.