The Personality of India: Pre- and Proto-historic Foundation of India and Pakistan c14.s1.t5: Maharashtra
The Personality of India: Pre- and Proto-historic Foundation of India and Pakistan c14.s1.t5
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Maharashtra
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Crossing the Narbada basin, we enter into the Tapi valley and the upper basins of Krishna and Godavary. This land is characterized by the occurrence of the fertile black-soil, interspersed with ridges of deciduous and mixed deciduous monsoonal forests. If we recall our section on the physical and cultural environment of the Neolithic people of the Gneissic and Metamorphic areas of the lower reaches of the Krishna and the Godavary valleys, we can understand the character of the first large scale agriculturists in the heavily wooded area of Maharashtra. It is easy to adduce to positive and negative evidence for the settlement of the Chalcolithic folk with their heavy metal tools. The dry-deciduous areas of Central Deccan and the occurrence of granatoid hills with basalt and dolerite dykes is very convenient for people practising primitive agriculture and pasturage. Absence of a favourable environment, capable of supporting large communities is sufficient for our purposes. Now it becomes easy to account for the spread of this Painted Pottery culture of Malwa with their metallurgy into this area with almost similar environment.
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The spread of this culture into the next basin, that of the Tapi is indicated by the extensive excavation of Prakasha in West Khandesh District. Here in a 50-feet section, the Maheshvar sequence was repeated exactly.¹ B. K. Thapar has made a sub-division of the earliest Proto-Historic period on the basis of slightly higher occurrence of the characteristic concave sided bowl in thinner fabric of the Jorwe-type in the upper strata of his earlist period. This requires further corroboration.
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¹ Archaeology in India 1954-55.
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The further extension of this culture has been amply demonstrated by the excavation of Bahal on the Girna, a tributary of the Tapi, by M. N. Deshpande and of Nasik on the Godavary and Jorwe and Nevasa on the Pravara by Dr. Sankalia. At all these sites, we find the same type of painted pottery and the specialized blade technique in association with copper. Besides, we know a large number of similar sites yielding the same assemblage. The most important evidence is furnished by the last-mentioned excavation at Nevasa where, for the first time, we see the association of polished stone axes with this culture, suggesting the possibility of its contact with the lower basins of the Krishna and the Godavary.
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The most important evidence bearing on the problem of burials and the black-and-red ware has been unearthed in Deshpande's resumed excavations at Bahal on the Girna river in West Khandesh. He exposed 5 phases with breaks between I and II, and III and IV. In his first phase, which he divides into 'A' and 'B', he found, thick grey ware urn types with flared rims (similar to Brahmagiri) succeeded by the typical Central Indian wheel turned black-on-red painted ware with a few sherds of "Post-Harappan lustrous red ware" and the carinated vessel with a tubular rim, with the typical blade industry. His phase II belongs to the Iron age and is characterized by the black-and-red ware and iron spear heads, arrow heads, knives, daggers, sickles etc.²
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² Indian Archaeology 1956-57, Figs. 8 and Pl. XXII, A and B.
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Hence for our purposes these phases are important in that they connect North and South, as does Nevasa. The most significant discovery is the cemetery on the other bank called Tekwada. Here he exposed three urn burials and one pit burial, all of them yielding balck-and-red vessels of different shapes, including the painted variety of black-and-red ware. He dates the cemetery to his IB on the basis of pottery. It is essential to recall the similarity, pot by pot, with the pit burials found under the cists V and VI at Brahmagiri. (Figs. 32 and 42)
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BRAHMAGIRI-CEMETERY AREA PITS WITH POTTERY OUTSIDE THE CISTS CIST V CIST VI Fig. 32. (After Wheeler)
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At all the sites mentioned above, this phase is invariably followed by the black-and-red pottery and N.B.P. phase with iron, as in Malwa. Here we have the additional advantage of a definite link with history, provided by the Satavahana coins and other datable antiquities in the later stages.