Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c6.s1.8

c6.s1.8

At the upper limit of the dating, a clear archaeological gap has been established between the end of the Indus Civilization (c. 1500 B.C.?) and the beginning of the P.G. Ware at Rupar and other sites in N.W. India. Nevertheless, if as archaeologists we must be for ever tracing the steam-engine back to the tea-kettle, we may postulate a link, however tenuous, with Baluchistan, where the bowls from the secondary burials at Shāhi Tump seem to have a certain ancestral affinity with the Ganges material; and the Shāhi Tump burials post-dated the Indus Civilization at that spot. Certainly the sudden appearance of the high-class P.G. fabric in the Ganges basin suggests, or even proves, that its technique had already been perfected elsewhere. If Aryans must be dragged into this picture, it is possible to suppose that the P.G. Ware may represent the second phase of their invasion of India, when, from the Punjab, they entered and Aryanized the Middle Country of the Ganges-Jumna doāb, after picking up ideas and doubtless craftsmen in the Indus valley and the Baluch borderland. But see p. 126.