The Personality of India: Pre- and Proto-historic Foundation of India and Pakistan c15.s1.1

c15.s1.1

The pattern of development of material culture in India described above, is fundamentally based on the geographic features of the country, depending on factors like attraction, aridity, relative isolation and isolation. We are all familiar with the physiographic divisions of the Indian sub-continent viz., the Mountain belt, Indo-Gangetic plains and Peninsular India which is capped by the Indo-Gangetic crescent. The archaeological picture that emerges closely follows the pattern laid down by Indian Geography. The whole Indus basin bounded by the Aravallis in the east first comes under the impact of the great civilization of Western Asia, but the local environment and the strong influence of a large river basin give it a distinctive character of its own. Almost at the declining stages of this urban civilization, an infiltration of vigorous new elements lead to a great expansion into the next major area i.e., the Gangetic basin. While these great valleys were being cleared and probably drained of their marshes, the upland region of Peninsular India too gets a new impact. We find the Malwa plateau emerging as a great corridor for the vigorous colonization of the Deccan plateau by metal using communities. With their extended contacts with Kathiawad and rapid spread into the South, more or less the present ethnic pattern emerges. Even according to the literary tradition, the Aryanization of Peninsular India was not based on mass movements of people, but infiltration of small Brahmin and other religious communities and fugitives, followed by expanding political forces. But by about the 4th century B.C., the whole country begins to display a degree of homogeneity coupled with a pleasant diversity. The even distribution of perennial nuclear regions, knit together by a trans-continental communication system had facilitated this process.