Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c9.47

c9.47

Most of these analogues are over a thousand years earlier than the Indian series, but the structural likeness is often astonishingly close. Is there a causative link through all this diffuse geography? Or did the south Indians evolve their tombs from their own inner consciousness, without foreign aid? Certainly some of the Kerala types are unique and therefore local. But in regard to the cists we do not know. One thing, at least is certain: in the 3rd century B.C. there was no monsoon-borne sea-traffic, no short cut, direct to peninsular India; that was a discovery of the 1st century B.C.¹⁰⁶ Any link with the West must have been closely coastwise or overland, and has presumably left intermediate traces. If the little-known cists of the Karāchi region turn out, on excavation, to be of the series, a solution is perhaps on the way. That, however, remains to be seen.