The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c2.1

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.