Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c8.37

c8.37

From these *disjecta* we turn to the great urban sites which came into being in the Ganges valley during the 1st millennium B.C. and have sufficiently homogeneous elements to justify the name of the ‘Ganges Civilization’. Culturally, their common denominator is the presence successively of Painted Grey and Northern Black Polished Wares, described above (p. 26). Some of these sites, even in the dusty and ruinous condition in which we find them today, are truly stupendous. Overlooking the junction of the Ganges and the Jumna opposite Allāhābād is the immense mound of Jhusi, its riven sides oozing with sherds, including the famous Northern Black Polished or N.B.P. Ware of the middle and second half of that millennium. The mound has not yet been explored, but both its key-position and its size indicate its importance. And there are many others, ranging from the little fortified town of Bhiṭā, eighteen miles south of Allāhābād, to the mighty Kaushāmbi beside the Jumna, thirty-two miles to the west, or to metropolitan Mathurā (Muttra) itself, by the same kingly river. Bhiṭā is merely 400 yards square, though its mounds stand boldly above the plain. It may have been the Vichhī or Vichigrāma mentioned on certain sealings found on the site, but the scrappy excavations carried out there half a century ago were incompetent even for their age, and only the occurrence of N.B.P. Ware hints at the antiquity of the place. Kaushāmbi, on the other hand, has a circuit of some four miles and is one of the great sites of India. Before and after the time of the Buddha (c. 500 B.C.) it was the capital of the Vatsa Kingdom of the Purāṇas, and here stood one of Ashoka's edict-pillars (p. 174), now in Allāhābād Fort. Slight excavations were carried out on the site in 1937–8, and since 1948 its systematic exploration has been undertaken for Allāhābād University by Mr. G. R. Sharma. The results have not yet been published, save for interim notes.88