Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c8.19

c8.19

For the achievements of this field-work, under arduous conditions and in difficult terrain, one can have nothing but praise, but unfortunately the same cannot be said of much of the excavation which should provide us with the essential background for our study. Criticism is here inevitable, and also necessary if the Indian material is to be evaluated correctly. Of the broad facts of town-planning, streets, houses, drains, and so forth at Mohenjo-daro we have abundant evidence, even if its detail is sketchy, and the recognition of the great urban civilization of the Indus Valley would hardly have been possible without the wholesale methods of exploration which were in fact employed. But the reports on Harappā, Mohenjo-daro and Chanhu-daro published in eight impressive quarto volumes between 1931 and 1943 cannot, in all fairness, be said to approach the archaeological standards set in European archaeology by the 1890's, and in common employment since the 1920's.