Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c14.120

c14.120

Perhaps it would be too much to say that Chandragupta Maurya and his dynasty were the ghosts of the Harappā Empire sitting crowned on the ruins thereof, or to claim, in Toynbee’s phrase, that the Harappā kingdom was ‘apparented’ to that of the Mauryas. But to the complex pattern of the Indian Middle Ages the ancient urban civilization of the Punjab and the Indus surely contributed not a little. And this was a contribution not only in the sphere of religious speculation or in traditions of ritual and ceremonial observances: the whole character of medieval Hindu society and the structure of its polity and government seem inevitably a reflection of the Bronze Age civilization of Sind and the Punjab.