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PREHISTORY AND PROTOHISTORY 9

extended even further into Central India and South India. But Mohenjo-daro and Harappā in Pakistan are at present the two ancient cities which contribute to our knowledge of pre-Aryan civilization. AMAURY DE RIENCOURT who has written of the Soul of China has also written of the Soul of India. The following reading is from his book the Soul of India, Jonathan Cape London, 1961.

LIKE CHINA, INDIA is an immense subcontinent in its own right, almost as isolated from the rest of the world by towering mountain ranges rising out of impenetrable jungles and soaring up to eternal snows-a huge wall, known in the past as Himavat, stretching like a bent bow from Baluchistan to the wooded valleys of upper Burma. Here was no mere mountain range like the others. The Himalayas must have seemed to the Indians of thousands of years ago like a colossal outburst of cosmic anger throwing up tiers of towering peaks on top of one another or, in another mood, what the great poet Kāidāsa called the "massed laughter" of the god Śiva

A mental fog has concealed until very recently the remote history of this part of the world; even now, it is only partly dispelled. We are aware at least that about five thousand years ago a full-fledged Civilization was firmly settled in the area of modern Sind and the Punjab, in the broad plains and valleys of the lower Indus River-in those days a far more fertile region than today, with much heavier rainfalls and dense forests. Unlimited supplies of timber were available to the refined and sophisticated populations of what is known as the Harappā Civilization. This great Civilization was preceded by a Culture of which we know little, widely dispersed over scattered areas of Baluchistan's small valleys. In Quetta, Amri-Nal, Kulli and Zhob, to mention only the most important, the remains of small settlements have already been unearthed; in all likelihood, they were separate political entities linked together by a common cultural development, very much like Classical Greece. Baluchistan's hill country was not a favourable terrain for political centraliation and uniformity, any more than Greece's was. And, as has always happened in recorded history, the succeeding Civilization was bound to shift its centre of gravity to a contiguous area-the broad plains of the Indus-where these Civilization characteristics could find a more favourable geopolitical environment.

Let us now listen to the voice of archaeology; let factual archaeological research present its evidence unhampered by preconceived ideas, and we shall see to what extent the whole evolution of the Harappā Civilization conforms to the usual historical pattern. First of all, before we leave the pre-Harappā Culture, we must remember that "the variety in styles and techniques among the products of