Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c7.68

c7.68

To return now to the polished axes of India is in some measure to retrace the same ground. It can be stated without argument that these essentially east-Indian types were not derived, at any rate directly, from western Asia.¹⁶ On the other hand, they occur in Burma, although casual collecting has made it impossible to plot find-spots adequately on the map. More vaguely still, Laos has produced both axes and shouldered adzes. In Malaya pecked and partially smoothed axes, comparable with those from India though more round-butted, are a recognized type. In Tongking they were used by communities which were still, it seems, largely in the hunting stage, without systematic food-production, and a technical sequence with an increasing use of stone-polishing has been postulated though not proved. Farther north, they occur in Honan and Shantung, and it has been observed that some of the North Chinese examples of pecked axes correspond even more closely with certain of those of India than do the examples from Indo-China. The patchy state of present knowledge, and not least the absence of clear dating, prevents any close correlation of the Chinese and the Indian evidence; but, geographically, routes up the Yangtze river (for example), past Szechwan in the direction of Hunnan and the Burma passes seem possible for the axes, though scarcely for the shouldered hoes, which, unlike the axes, are absent from Yunnan. Alternatively, coastal routes to Indo-China are feasible lines of access to Burma, Assam and Bengal. At least the evidence is ample enough to suggest, if less forcibly than in the case of the shouldered hoes, an eastern origin for our Indian series, with a bias in favour of central China. Even so, the major exploitation of the round-butted or, more characteristically, point-butted axe occurred on Indian soil.