The Personality of India: Pre- and Proto-historic Foundation of India and Pakistan c12.16

c12.16

In India, we have no such facilities and much more intensive explorations and excavations are needed before we can correlate archaeological and literary chronology. But the contacts of India with our neighbours in Western Asia provide some very valuable links to enable us to fix up a few terminal dates to start with. Hence our chronology is in an absolutely fluid state and requires constant revision for some time. It is well-known that the whole chronology of the Indus Valley civilization depends on the association of certain Indian objects in Sargonid and Post-Sargonid Mesopotamia with a central dating of about 2350 B. C. for Sargon of Akkad. This primary evidence is corroborated by certain datable Western Asian antiquities in India and vice versa, as well as a fairly satisfactory series of C-14 dates for the Pre-Harappan cultures on the Indo-Iranian border. Since the publication of Stuart Piggot's first synthesis,¹ the most important work covering the entire field of culture sequence in the Indus basin and the borders of Pakistan is that of Fairservis. Fairservis has made a very reasonable case for a reconsideration of the dates of Harappan culture itself.²