The Personality of India: Pre- and Proto-historic Foundation of India and Pakistan c2.4

c2.4

The other problem is that of the astonishing and seemingly sudden emergence of rich iron-working cultures in peninsular India during the latter half of the first millennium B.C. Of the associated black-and-red pottery, Dr. Subbarao has interesting things to say, but the iron-industry itself remains an unsolved mystery. How did it arise? If it was imported, whence and when? These are questions which only further digging can elucidate, both inside India and, perhaps, along those Arabian shores of which at present so little is known. The fact cannot be over-stressed that, in many aspects, the Indian Ocean constitutes a unitary culture-pool; with India, Arabia and Africa as its continuous margin. This was so in ages past; it remains so to-day.