Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c6.s3.33

c6.s3.33

Here two points emerge, both of which will be encountered in later contexts. The first is the recurrently unitary aspect of the cultures fringing the Indian Ocean. We are accustomed to the recurrent interrelationship of the lands framing the Mediterranean; we may equally accustom ourselves to a cultural community between East Africa, Arabia and India, whether in prehistoric or historic times. Today, the interests of the East African Coast are vested in Indians and Arabs no less than in Africans and Europeans. Further back, the principal medieval mosque on the island of Kilwa, off the coast of Tanganyika, reflects the great mosque of Gulbarga in the Deccan. The medieval history of that same coast is a story of Arab trade and domination. Then and later, Chinese wares flowed around this great periphery. Earlier than all these, the *Periplus* tells us how in the 1st century A.D. traders linked East Africa with Egypt, Arabia and India. Like the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean is an essentially unitary 'culture pool', if so insignificant a name may be stretched to so immense [Figure: CHOPPER CHOPPING-TOOLS— DARK PORTION OF EACH CIRCLE