The Personality of India: Pre- and Proto-historic Foundation of India and Pakistan c10.85

c10.85

The story of these regions in a "pre-agricultural economy" does not concern us, since environmental diversity reflects itself in the presence or absence of large agricultural populations. It is very remarkable that the entire sub-continent displays a uniformity in its stone age cultures. Significantly the differences emerge with the Neolithic and later phases of Indian history, where we have evidence of horizontal spread from different foci. A close study of the migrations, and the historical events that surround these spreads give a set of such historical continua for the various regions. We have already defined the pattern of the development of cultures as one of gradual displacement in time and space, by large scale cultivators, of the more primitive agricultural, hunting and fishing folk. A look at Fig. 8 will show the emergence of large scale agricultural economy in each of these regions. The first farmers in the Indus Basin and the Indo-Iranian borderlands belonged to the Pre-Harappan and Harappan cultures, which are partly derived from the higher cultures of Western Asia. In the Gangetic basin, they are represented by the "Grey Ware folk," probably the Aryan immigrants from the North-west. While the Vindhyan foot-hills were inhabited by Neolithic communities, the Malwa plateau and Maharashtra were first cleared of their virgin forests, by Chalcolithic folk who seem to carry with them some of the Late Harappan elements with some new Iranian influences. In the Central Deccan, (Andhra-Karnatak), widespread Neolithic communities preceded the advent of the Chalcolithic folk moving from Maharashtra. In the extreme tip of the peninsula (Tamilnad and Kerala), Megalithic folk in an Iron Age economy seem to be the first large scale settlers. While in Gujarat and Kathiawad a few Harappan elements seem to have survived for a longer time, in Eastern India on the other hand, (Orissa, Bengal and Assam), the Stone Age folk seem to have survived, till these areas were colonized in the Historic period. Thus the establishment of large scale agricultural economy in the main river basins of the country was spread over a span of 3000 years (3500 B.C. for the Kili Ghul Mohammad to about 500 B.C. for the Megalithic cultures of the South). Hence it is not surprising that this difference in the technology and socio-economic development of the various regions should have been at the root of the later cultural divergences.