An Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology v1.c16.s16.13

v1.c16.s16.13

The basic spadework on the NBPW chronology was done by Wheeler and Krishna Deva, 1946. They proposed a span of from the 5th to the early part of the 2nd century B.C., because at Taxila the NBPW was mainly pre-Greek. Lal, [1954 and 1955, pp. 23-3], using the HASTINĀPURA evidence, dated it from the early 6th to the early 3rd century B.C. According to him as the NBPW at Taxila was pre-Alexandrian and with a 2 m thick occupational deposit between the coins of Alexander and the lowest NBPW the ware might have appeared at Taxila during the 6th century B.C. Later on Wheeler, 1959, p. 31, rejected the Taxila evidence on the ground that Taxila had not been dug stratigraphically. The next important evidence for the dating of NBPW comes from KAUŚĀMBĪ and PRAHLADPUR. AT KAUŚĀMBĪ the beginning of the ware was placed to *c.* 600 B.C. but the upper date was modified to the middle of the 1st century B.C. (Sharma, 1960, pp. 19-23). The beginning of the ware at PRAHLADPUR was assigned to 500 B.C. and the end to 21 B.C. [How the exact terminal date has been arrived at is not clear.] Thus the evidence can loosely confine the NBPW to a period from 600 to 100 B.C.