History of Orissa from the Earliest Times to the British Period v1.c14.34

v1.c14.34

The discovery of glass and porcelain in Indonesia is far more interesting, as it supplies the fourth and the most definite link with the pre-Aryan colonizators of Indonesia and the Chalcolithic people of the Indus Valley. Glass was known in the Copper age in the Indus Valley and Baluchistan as proved by the discoveries of Major Mockler in the Pre-historic dambs of Baluchistan and the excavations of Mr. H. Cousens at Brahmanabad-Mansura. The Mockler collection in the Indian Museum at Calcutta contains beautifully tinted glass, which is certainly not the product of amateur efforts. The discovery of Faience at Mohen-jo-daro, both blue and white, by me in 1922-23 and in subsequent years by others, led to the recognition of the large bangles discovered by Rai Bahadur Dayaram Sahni at Harappa in 1920-21 as pure Faience. I am suspicious of the term porcelain used by Perry and others, and I think that this porcelain may turn out to be Faience after all. That this strange civilisation of Oceania and Indonesia is earlier and quite separate from that of the Aryan civilisation of Indonesia is apparent from the statements of writers on Indonesian antiquities. Perry says that "It is certain that the two have certain elements in common, such as irrigation, the working of metals and stone-carving. But in one respect it is possible to distinguish between the Hindu civilisation of Java and that responsible for cultural progress in Oceania; the Hindus of Java never made megalithic monuments of the dolmen or stone circle type... of late years dolmens have been discovered in Java, as well as images of the Polynesian type."¹ The culture contacts of the Indus Valley civilisation have not been fully established as yet. In order to proceed in this direction it will be necessary to distinguish between the earlier age of pure megaliths and dolmens and the later period in which dolmens were used as burial places by a subsequent race. Then it may be possible to find out how the Oceanic and Indonesic civilizators were connected with the civilisation of the Indus Valley.