The Personality of India: Pre- and Proto-historic Foundation of India and Pakistan c9.5

c9.5

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.