The Personality of India: Pre- and Proto-historic Foundation of India and Pakistan c9: I. Introduction
The Personality of India: Pre- and Proto-historic Foundation of India and Pakistan c9
- Language
- English
I. Introduction
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The problem and the approach—Some problems of culture dynamics and interpretation.
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I
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The following account of the development of material culture, or to speak in more precise terms, the Pre and Proto-historic foundations of India and Pakistan, as the new sub-title puts it, is the elaboration of a hypothesis, put forward in the first edition of this book. The inspiration for the title comes from the famous attempt at correlation of British geography, history and archaeology by Sir Cyril Fox in his *Personality of Britain*. It is true, the Indian sub-continent, with its vastness and its great environmental and cultural diversity, provides a more difficult task; and a contributory difficulty is the circumstance that serious archaeological research in India is still in its infancy. Yet, an attempt has been made with the same objective of correlating Indian geography, history and archaeology. At the same time, an effort has been made to define the pattern of development of cultures; and as Gordon put it in the review of the first edition, "a great deal of that personality does emerge in this essay". Finally, this essay is a reply to the dramatic query of Sir Mortimer Wheeler, in 1946, "Where is the *Personality of India*?"
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Besides an attempt has been made in this revised and enlarged edition to unravel the development of Indian culture—particularly, in respect of the large scale agricultural communities—with the help of archaeology and history. In this process, I have drawn upon some of the allied disciplines like ethnology and philology, and I am indebted to such of my colleagues who helped me with suggestions.
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Until 1945, our knowledge of Indian history and archaeology consisted of an incoherent mass of well-observed and ill-observed data without a link and collected without a purpose. It will not be amiss to say that no attempt has, as yet, succeeded in giving a true perspective of Indian history. Within the last few years, archaeology has come to its own stature in Indian studies. A great lead in coordinated plan of research was given by Sir Mortimer Wheeler, and it has been carried further by his former colleagues and pupils. He initiated a policy of unfolding the sequence of cultures in different parts of the country and linking these regions with the help of certain common diagnostic traits and associated finds of an unmistakable character. Today in 1958, with the increased tempo of work by the Government of India, supplemented by the growing number of University Departments, we have a faint outline of the vertical development of cultures in different parts of India and Pakistan. The emphasis on vertical sequence is justified in the initial stages over a vast and unexplored country, though it gives us only the skeleton without the flesh and blood. But once a rough outline has emerged within the framework of a satisfactory chronology, we shall be able to revert to large scale horizontal excavations to fill in the details, and so to reconstruct the physical and cultural environment of Prehistoric and Historic civilizations of India.
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In the following pages, the recent studies in Indian archaeology (particularly since 1945) have in the main been used to explain the development of material culture in India and incidentally attempt an integrated picture of the foundations of Indian History and Culture. The primary object is achieved by an analysis of the excavated material and correlating the various physical and cultural regions in time and space.
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II
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For this survey, it is proposed to treat India in its geographic sense and so to include Pakistan. It is a very familiar experience of all of us that Indian history cannot be treated as a single unit at any period for any considerable duration. The obvious reason is the magnitude of the sub-continent. The maxim of unity in diversity has almost become stale. The whole history of India, in a sense, can be described as the conflict between the centripetal and centrifugal forces, engendered by geography. The former, viz. the centripetal forces, have always tried to give a political expression to the fundamental unity based on a common cultural and social heritage linked by a trans-continental communication system. As the following account will show, these forces have been strengthened by certain technological traditions common to the whole country. The centrifugal forces on the other hand are manifestations of the more vital geographic factors and have counter-acted the forces of unification. For example, while centralized empires like those of the Mauryas, Satavahanas, Guptas, Harsha, Mughal and the British etc., were short-lived, the ancient kingdoms like Kosala, Magadha, Gauda, Avanti, Lata, Saurashtra, Kalinga, Andhra, Maharashtra, Karnata, Chera, Chola, Pandya, seem as Dr. Majmudar¹ put it, "to have eternal lives", since they are the perennial nuclear regions in terms of human geography.
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¹ MAJUMDAR, R. C. & PUSALKAR, A.D. (Ed.) Vedic Age, History of the Indian people. Vol. I. Bombay, 1952. p. 101.
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This difficulty of the historian is gradually confronting the archaeologist. The need to understand the significance of these smaller units is being driven home by the results of Indian archaeology during the last few years. A distinct geographic pattern is emerging in the development and spread of cultures in different parts of the country. It is difficult to draw lines of contemporaneity across the lines of vertical development, since the horizontal expansion of those cultures has been influenced and to some extent retarded by the geographic factors within, and without the sub-continent. This phenomenon can be understood by the analogy of the spread and development of Vedic Hinduism and the Sanskrit language in different parts of the country at different periods, influencing and absorbing the regional and local forms and manifestations. This is accentuated by problems of Indian archaeological chronology, since the bullock-cart and the aeroplane move together in India. The recognition of this basic truth and its application to our problems are an essential condition in future research in India in all fields of history and culture.
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III
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This study postulates certain agreed definitions of terms like 'Culture', which have been used here, and the function of some of the objects such as pottery, the main raw material of the archaeologist. Similar problems of correlations and allied difficulties were faced in the Seminars held recently in America.¹ The problems of correlation on a continental basis in North America were studied by a Seminar under the auspices of the American Prehistoric Society.² In a country of the size and environmental diversity of the Indo-Pakistan sub-continent, it is impossible to postulate a uniform development of culture in *time and space*. The recognition of this fundamental principle—the geographic and ecological basis of Indian history and culture—will help us to understand the true significance of the physical and cultural diversity of the country based on deeper social, economic and technological differences, which are the results of a slow penetration of higher cultures in different parts and at different periods.
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¹ EHRICH, ROBERT W. (Ed.) *Relative Chronologies in Old World Archaeology*. Chicago, 1953. pp. vii-viii.
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² WOODBURY, RICHARD (Ed.) *Seminars in Archaeology*—1955.
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While defining culture as the total way of life of a specific group of people, Ehrich comments, that "the archaeologists have become much more conscious of cultural dynamics and they have shown a constantly increasing tendency to restrict the use of the term 'Culture' to broader aspects of consistency in the ways of life of larger and larger units." Just as an ethnologist talks of the culture of a tribe or a village or a region, Ehrich³ justifies the archaeological discussion of the culture of a single site, or groups of sites or cemeteries, "provided such groups can be indentified as entities, if only by common aesthetic traditions as reflected in the relative degree of identity in their ceramic wares. So used, of course, the ceramics themselves form trait-complexes rather than cultures, but they do furnish criteria for isolating groups of people whose cultures can be discussed......Since archaeology deals with time-depth as well as spacial distribution, it seems admissible to use the term 'culture' to delineate differences between periods, as well as to express continuities of more general patterns in the way of life."
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³ EHRICH. *op. cit.*
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About the pottery, Ehrich very aptly remarks, "some concern was voiced over the heavy emphasis on pottery, with the comment that a pottery style by itself does not constitute a culture. However, for the purposes of cross dating, pottery does fill most of the requirements. It is short-lived, normally present in great quantity, usually well-preserved once it has been broken, distinctive with regard to locality and period, and an inherently complex criterion, in that, it is subject to infinite variation in technique, form and style of decoration. While a pottery type admittedly does not constitute culture, it is a valuable index criterion."
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This long explanation is not superfluous in the initial stages of studies in India, since our inadequate knowledge of Indian archaeology is entirely based on ceramic studies just at present. The following account is one of those attempts at integration, in time and space, of the known material relics excavated during the last few years. From the nature of the subject, there can be no finality. Hence, if this survey is followed by critical and extensive studies based on more field work, its purpose will have been more than fulfilled.
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IV
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The other important phenomenon which has been greatly neglected in this country is an attempt at an objective analysis of the familiar slogan of 'unity in diversity'. This will be discussed at greater length in the next Chapter. But it is not out of place here to state certain problems created by physiography, long distances, and relative isolation of the Indo-Pakistan sub-continent from the rest of Eurasia. Firstly, on account of our location of the margin of the Eurasian mainland, with a close proximity and yet sufficiently powerful barrier, the dynamic changes in the Western Asian cradle of civilization have left their deep imprint on the origin and development of cultures in India. The slow penetration further east and south into the rest of the sub-continent has created a complex problem of interpretation and it is not out of place to explain a theoretical idea of Geography, called the "Zones and strata concept", which has a great validity to us.
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Griffith Taylor, using a biological analogy expresses it in this way. "If there be a centre where evolution (whether of organic or inorganic type) is taking place......then, after a reasonable lapse of time, the various differentiated classes will be found to be ranged in zones......so that the most primitive is at the margins and the most advanced at the centre of series of zones. Thus the earliest class will have covered the greatest area in its migrations; but fossil evidence of this class will be found in the deepest stratum, under the later strata at the centre of evolution. This is the *zones and strata* concept, which is less clearly called the *Age and area* concept by certain biologists." This concept is very essential for an understanding of culture dynamics in India. Its application can be considered in two different contexts: one to the relation of India and Western Asia and secondly to the relations between the several regions within the country.
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¹ TAYLOR, GRIFFITH (Ed.). *Geography in the Twentieth century* London. 1953. pp. 447.
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As already indicated, India is cut off from the rest of Eurasia by a vast chain of high mountain ranges which have helped in the desiccation of the regions to the north. Even the transcontinental communication system of Asia and Europe, connecting China with Europe, leaves India alone. The main route passed across to Hindu-kush and Pamirs through the Valleys of Syr-Darya and Amu-Darya and then from the shores of the Caspian and Azerbaijan to Western Asia. There was a sort of a feeder route (along the Kabul Valley) connecting India, and all these routes met in Bactria and further west. Hence we have to some extent escaped the main impacts, and due to the inaccessibility and the difficulty of communications, the links were broken too often, to keep up a continuous movement of goods and ideas. And these lost their identity in the main corpus of Indian culture.
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The most remarkable demonstration of the validity of this zones and strata concept comes from recent archaeological studies. While a Pre-pottery Neolithic culture in the nuclear Near-east is at least as old as 7000-8000 B.C., at Jericho, a similar community with an identical technology on the borders of Baluchistan is dated to 3500 B.C.¹ Even if we accept the slightly later dates of Jarmo and Hassuna for the incipient agricultural communities (about 5000 B. C.), a similar technological stage shows a time lag of about 1500 years. It has been well demonstrated by Braidwood² (fig. 2) who has devised his 'Iso-chrons' to show a slow spread of technological advances from an epi-centre in the 'Fertile crescent'. Thus we are well justified in treating the Indus Basin as a peripheral region of the ancient cradle of civilization in Western Asia. Yet, the comparative isolation from the dynamic regions of the Middle East has set its own pattern of cultural development. Adopting the famous analysis by Collingwood³ of the relation between Britain and Europe, one can easily say that the rhythms of civilization have always been slower in India and its pulsations less violent, than in Western Asia. Though we do not have the quick and brilliant flowering of Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Assyrian or Achaemenid art, this seldom failed to find a reflection in India. Besides, each phase of cultural development in India, as a sort of compensation, tended to overlap with the next, to give an impression of continuity and relative permanence. This slowness of rhythm gives an impression that India "is a mere laggard" in the movement of the history of civilization, and a "refuse heap" on the edge of the Western Asian cradle of civilization.
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¹ CHILDE, GORDON V. The Pre-history of European Society, Pelican book. 1958.
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² BRAIDWOOD, R.J. Near East and the Foundations of Civilization. Oregon.
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³ COLLINGWOOD R. G. Roman Britain and English Settlements, Oxford, 1945, pp.3-4.
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Fig. 2. The spread of food producing economy out of the nuclear Near East from an assumed beginning at Ca. 6000 B.C., suggested by means of iso-chronic lines. (After Braidwood)
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Moving to the problem of the several regions within the country, we see the same consistent pattern of migration of peoples and cultures on a set "Z" pattern of communication system linking the Himalayas with the Cape Comorin.¹ Beginning with the openings in the North-west, one moves along the Upper Punjab and into the Delta of Bengal along the Ganges. Again from the Central Gangetic basin, one sees a movement along the foot hills of the Vindhyas into Central India, and thence into the coastal areas of Maharashtra and the Upper valleys of the Godavary and the Krishna, along their courses downstream. Then crossing the Ghats on the east coast, we go further down into South India. These routes cut across the hill and forest belts which neatly separate the various perennial nuclear regions constituted by the distinct river basins of the country. Hence one sees, as our further account will show, the operation of the zones and strata concept. In recent years the chronology based on archaeological excavations, has been bringing out the differences in time and space of almost similar traits in different parts of the country.
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¹ RICHARDS F. J. "Geographic Factors in Indian Archaeology." Indian Antiquary Vol. LXII. 1932.