The Personality of India: Pre- and Proto-historic Foundation of India and Pakistan c14.s1.t4.1

c14.s1.t4.1

Moving south-west from the Gangetic basin into Central India and the Malwa plateau, we find an altogether different sequence. The explorations of V. S. Wakankar and A. V. Pandya, followed by the large scale excavations at Maheshvar by the Deccan College Research Institute and the University of Baroda¹ and of Tripuri by M. G. Dikshit have enabled us to get a clear picture. Here we have very widespread settlements in the valleys of the Chambal and the Narbada of a people using a painted pottery characterized by black designs on red or cream slipped pottery and a highly specialized microlithic blade industry employing the technique of crested guiding ridges and the elaborate preparation of cores, simulating the well-known " *Grand Pressigny* " technique of Europe. From an analysis of nearly 7000 specimens from the excavations at Maheshvar the whole technique of manufacture of these blades was studied by the writer. It is essentially intended to mass-produce blades. This technique is definitely identified in Western Asia and the Aegian region. In India, it seems to be associated for the first time with the Indus Valley Civilization. This Proto-historic culture of Malwa can be approximately dated to the 1st half of the 1st millennium B.C. or earlier on account of its stratigraphic position below the deposits of N.B.P. Its contemporaneity with the Grey ware cultures is indicated by the common association with both of the black-and-red ( usually associated with megaliths in the South) in the Bikaner region. Near Udaipur, this black-and-red ware has been found with black-on-red painted ware. At Maheshvar, this ware occurs with the earliest painted pottery culture, but it becomes predominant in the following phase characterized by the appearance of iron (sickle, arrowheads, hoe spearheads, nails, etc.) and N.B.P. (Fig. 29)