Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c7.99

c7.99

How far was the Indus Civilization a product of the *genius loci*? How far, if at all, was it indebted to outside influence? One's thoughts, encouraged by the new coastal bias of the Indus distribution, turn naturally to Mesopotamia as a source. Certainly Mesopotamian civilization was a going concern several centuries before the earliest date to which we can ascribe that of the Indus. Certainly, too, there is much in what we know of the Mesopotamian urban way of life that matches our Indus evidence: the suggestion of middle-class well-being, of effective civic consciousness, to which the Mesopotamian records give a definition that is absent from the Indus evidence. The indication is that the citizen in the streets of Mohenjo-daro must have had much the same sort of interests as his contemporaries in the streets of Sumerian Ur. Of the two cities, indeed, Mohenjo-daro with its admirable public sanitation and its comprehensive planning suggests an even more evolved civic intelligence. True, we cannot there point to an artistry that might rival the elaborate polychromy of the Mesopotamian temples or the dramatic extravagance of Sir Leonard Woolley's 'Royal Tombs'. But then we have as yet found nowhere in the Indus valley the corresponding tombs of the ruling class, and cannot guess what awaits us when chance shall deliver them to us, if, as may be suspected, they somewhere exist. Nor can we guess the quality of the vanished Indus woodwork, though the skill of later Indian wood-carvers suffices to remind us of the possible magnitude of our loss. We can find some consolation in the superb carving of miniature animal forms on the famous steatite seals of the Indus, and reflect that to these at least Mesopotamia can offer no native equivalent.