The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c2: Prefatory Note
The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c2
- Language
- English
Prefatory Note
c2.1
THIS essay, in spite of its pretension as a “Supplementary Volume”, is in fact a new chapter for volume I of the *Cambridge History of India* and is designed to conform with the scope properly imposed by that setting. It is essentially a plain summary of the evidence available in 1953, without overmuch excursion into collateral fields. Elsewhere analysis of the chalcolithic village-cultures of the Indus region has now probably been carried as far as the nebulous condition of the available material warrants, and its main results are admirably accessible in Stuart Piggott, *Prehistoric India* (1950), and V. Gordon Childe, *New Light on the Most Ancient East* (1952). For the rest it is in the structural significance of the two principal Indus cities that the work of recent years has been able to add a little to the pioneer achievements of Sir John Marshall and his colleagues, and it is primarily in that context that the present chapter has been written.
c2.2
R. E. M. WHEELER
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LONDON 1953
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the *Gesta Romanorum*, the *Legenda Aurea* of Jacobus de Voragine, and the *Speculum Historiale* of Vincent of Beauvais. These were the books that fed the imagination of the Middle Ages, and they were the books that the Church, in its wisdom, provided for the instruction and edification of the faithful.
c2.5
But the Church did not merely provide books; it also provided the means of their dissemination. The monastic scriptoria, where monks labored in silence to copy the sacred texts, were the precursors of the printing press. And when the press finally arrived, it was the Church that first harnessed its power, using it to spread the word of God to the corners of the earth. The Gutenberg Bible, the first major book printed in Europe, was a testament to the Church's commitment to the written word.
c2.6
Yet, even as the Church championed the spread of knowledge, it also sought to control it. The *Index Librorum Prohibitorum*, or List of Prohibited Books, was a tool used by the Church to suppress ideas it deemed dangerous or heretical. This tension between the desire to educate and the need to control would define the Church's relationship with literature for centuries to come.
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It is a complex history, one that is marked by both enlightenment and suppression. But it is a history that cannot be ignored, for it is the history of the very foundation of Western civilization. The Church, in its role as the guardian of knowledge, has shaped the way we think, the way we write, and the way we understand the world around us.