Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c7.94

c7.94

What wider function the two outstanding cities fulfilled is more speculative.* They are 400 miles apart, and between them, opposite the Sulaiman Range and the Bugti Country, the Indus valley is constricted, so that each city may be said to dominate a partially defined and unitary province. The over-riding facts remain, however, that they are situated upon the same river-system, and are culturally identical. That identity extends throughout the immense territory—nearly half a million square miles—wherein the Indus Civilization has now been recognized. It is tempting to infer something like an imperial status for so uniform a civilization, perhaps with the metropolitan duality which was later to mark the Kushān, Arab and Mogul régimes in northern India and seems indeed to be endemic in that spacious land. If at any rate the underlying inference is correct, as it may be, then the Indus Civilization exemplifies the vastest political experiment before the advent of the Roman Empire.