FINDS IN INDIA

Greymouth Evening Star, 6 February 1925, Page 2

FINDS IN INDIA

LINK WITH SUMERIANS. The important question whether Mesopotamia or India was the cradle 61 vi estern Asiatic culture has been raised by remarkable archaeological discoveries’ in the Indus Valley; Tne fact that the sites of the discoveries are more tliari 400 miles apart auds, to. their significance. They have been made by officers of the Indian Archaeological Department Rai Bahadur l.)aya Kam Salmi, at Harappa, iri . the Montgomery district Of. the Punjab ; and Mr. Rakhaldas Bennerji, at Mohenju Daro, in the Larkana district of Sind. Excluding a few .palaeolithic, neolithic. and .. Copper Age implements, and a few rude, primitive monuments here and there, our knowledge of Indian antiquities has taken us back no • more than 2,500 years, though Indians, proud . of their ancient civilisation, have long cherished the hope that archaeology would; discover definite monumental evidence of a much greater antiquity. “Now, at a single bound, ’ ’ writes Sir . John Marshall, the Director-General of Archaeology in India, “we have doubled that period, and find that 5,000 year’s ago the peoples of.Sind and the Punjab were living in well-built cities and were in possession of a relatively mature ’ civilisation with a high standard of art and craftsmanship and a developed system of writing.” . .The remains brought to light in these two widely separated sites include houses and temples, massively built of burnt brick, and provided with well-constructed water conduits coverel with marble slabs. The smaller antiquities include a quantity of pottery, both painted and plain, terra cotta, toys, bangles and blue glass, paste, and shell, new types of coins or tokens, curious stone rings, and diceFurther, there are a number of engraved and inscribed seals bearing inscriptions in a hitherto unknown pictographi.c script. It was clear from the -fii;st that these finds represented a widespread culture which must have flourished for many centuries in the plains of the Indus.

Sir John Marshall now reports that a careful examination and comparison leaves ■no room for doubt that these antiquities are closely connected and approximately contemporary with the Sumerian antiquities of Southern Mesopotamia, dating from the third or fourth.millennium B.C. The study of Sumerian culture is still at an early stage, but it is admitted on all hands that the Sumerians were entirely distinct, both linguistically and in other’ respects, from all other races in Mesopotamia. Many scholars hold that they were an intrusive element in the population, and various attempts have been made in recent years to derive them from one region or another outside and to the east of Mesopotamia. In the light of the Sind and Punjab discoveries, Sir John Marshall regards it as at least a reasonable hypothesis that India may prove to have been the cradle of Sumerian civilisation, which in its turn lay at the root of Babylonian, Assyrian, and Western Asiatic culture generally. This opening up of fascinating vistas, in the words of the Director-General, “emphasises the need for pushing on an extended scale and with as little delay as possible.”

Among the many problems connected with the new discoveries one of the most interesting is that of the interpretation of the , script in which the s6al legends fire written. The materials an too scanty for this to be possible as yet. and their augmentation by further discoveries is highly desirable. ‘ ..,.n