Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c7.65

c7.65

partially coincides with them in distribution. The tanged and shouldered hoe or adze, with angular or sloping shoulders, often carefully polished and with a single-chamfered edge in one of the broad planes, is a well-known though not a common type in certain parts of eastern India, as far south as the lower Godāvarī. The material is commonly chert or schist. In Assam the form occurs freely except in the Sadiya frontier area; but examples from the Gāro and Khāsi Hills are rough and irregular and suggest provincial imitations. Though rare in Bengal (an example has recently been found in Midnapur district) they reappear near the Bengal-South Bihār border in the Santal Parganas, Mānbhūm and Dhālbūm, and farther south in Mayurbhanj and elsewhere in Orissa. To the west, stray specimens have been found in the Banda district of southern U.P. and within the fortifications of Kaushāmbī (p. 128), and one is alleged to have come from as far afield as Chitor in Rājasthān. Generally, however, the eastern bias of the type is clear enough.