Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c14.38

c14.38

Our knowledge that the Harappā civilization was flourishing in Northern and Western India at the beginning of the second millennium B.C., centred on cities with strongly fortified citadels and containing among its population a large proportion of proto-Australoids with dark skin and flat noses, and that these cities came to a sudden and violent end, makes the identification of the dasyus and dāsas with the inhabitants of Harappā and Mohenjo-daro something near to a certainty. Indra’s exploits as a destroyer of forts, recently discussed by Wheeler in connexion with the defences of the Harappā citadel, go to confirm this view.