The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c20.35

c20.35

When we turn to the post-Sargonid period the problem becomes more complex and at the same time perhaps more intriguing in that we are now approaching the proto-history of the Vedic literature. It has been seen that two of the seals from Mesopotamia and a third from Syria appear to carry our evidence into the Isin-Larsa period, after *c.* 2000 B.C., and a third very shakily towards the middle of the second millennium. To a date about the end of the third millennium may be attributed a bronze or copper knife with the distinctively Harappan curved point reported to have been found at Hissar, in north-eastern Persia, in stratum IIIB.² The same or a somewhat later date has been hesitantly assigned to two copper spiral-headed pins, respectively from Mohenjo-daro and Chanhu-daro;³ though a type which occurs as early as the fourth millennium B.C. at Sialk and as late as 1300 B.C. in Italy is of doubtful chronological meaning until local values are settled independently. Meanwhile, its chief interest is that it establishes a link, however indirect, between the Indus, the Caspian and Anatolia, regions where it is at home, as distinct from Mesopotamia, where it does not occur: a link, in other words, with a northern trans-Asiatic zone rather than the more southerly one. A similar geographical horizon may be assigned in the main to an animal-headed pin from Mohenjo-daro and an animal-headed rod from Harappā,⁴ although occasional pins with heads in the form of animals or human figures are found in Early Dynastic Sumer, Elam and on the Khabur river. At Alasa Hüyük in Anatolia the type occurs probably soon after 2000 B.C., in the Koban cemeteries about 1300 B.C., in Trialeti (Georgia) and Luristan (Persia) before and after 1400 B.C. On a review of all the evidence, a date for the Indus example in the neighbourhood of 1500 B.C. presents an average probability.