IMPORTANT INDIAN FINDS.

Te Aroha News, Volume XLI, Issue 6602, 21 May 1925, Page 7

IMPORTANT INDIAN FINDS.

POSSIBLE LINK WITH SUMERIANS

The important question whether Mesopotamia or India was the cradle of Western Asiatic culture * has been raised by remarkable archaeological discoveries in the Indus Valley. The fact that the sites of the discoveries are more than 4000 miles apart add to their significance. They have been made by officers of the Indian Archaeological Department, Ral Bahadur Daya Ram Sahni, at Harappa, in the Montgomery district of the Punjab; and Mr Rakholdas Bennerji, at Mohenjo Daro, in the Larkana district of Sind.

Excluding a few palaeolithis, neolithic and Copper Age implements, and a few rude, primitive monuments here and there, our knowledg of Indian antiquities has taken us back no more than 2500 years, though Indians, proud of their ancient civilisations, 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 five thousand 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 in elude houses and |;emples, massively built of burnt brick and provided with well constructed 'water conduits covered with marble slabs. The smaller antiquities include a quantity of pottery, both painted and plain, terra cotta, .toys, bangles of blue glass, paste and shell, types of coins or tokens, curious stone rings and dice. Further, there are a number of engravings and inscribed seals bearing inscriptions in a hitherto unknown pictographic script. It was clear from the first 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.

4> 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 areas, in the words of the Director-General, “emphasises the need for pushing on with the exploration of the Indus sites 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 seal legends are written. The materials are too scanty for this to be possible as yet, and their augmentation by further discoveries is highly desirable.