Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c8.35

c8.35

It has been inferred that the deposition of the hoards 'itself suggests a time of insecurity and economic instability, and and may mean that the refugees from the Indus Civilization were not left undisturbed for long, as the Aryan invasions gathered momentum and pressed on, beyond the old frontiers of the Harappā kingdom and down into the Ganges valley'. This is to force the evidence beyond its warrant. The copper implements are shown, by their frequently specialized character and skilful casting and hammering, and by their distribution over 800 miles of jungle landscape, to have been the work of substantially whole-time experts who were probably also (as in other parts of the world) itinerant. The perils of one kind and another which must have beset them in their vagrancy and led to the occasional loss of their stock-in-trade were not necessarily more formidable than those which man and beast would normally impose upon the wandering craftsman and tradesman in the rough circumstances of the age. Once more it is unnecessary or premature to conjure up cosmic causes such as Aryan invasion to explain these sporadic casualties.