Minerals and Metals in Ancient India v1.c16.s1.13

v1.c16.s1.13

About the origin of this culture, Dhavalikar thinks that the affinities between the Kayatha ceramic industries with that of the Pre-Harappan Sothi culture would suggest that it was a Pre-Harappan culture already developed and flourishing somewhere in the northern parts of the sub-continent. The people of this culture appear to have been pushed out from their original habitat by the urbanized Harappans and they therefore had of necessity to migrate to new lands. They may have thus reached the Chambal Valley in Malwa. Both Dhavalikar and Sankalia have raised the same question: did the immigrants name the river Kali Sind on whose banks they settled in reviving the memory of their motherland which was lost to them? Although this is a mere hypothesis, the superior pottery, the advanced metal technology, the sophisticated ornaments — all suggest that the culture is akin to the Pre-Harappan with some Harappan elements in it. Thus, it may be that the Kayatha people, who had settled earlier in the Bikaner desert region of Rajasthan, where Pre-Harappan settlements have been discovered, later migrated to Malwa region, across southeast Rajasthan. (Dhavalikar In Agarwal and Chakrabarty, 1979: 233-34)