VI
It is now time for us to turn to India beyond the Harappan distribution zone: the North western Frontier Province of modern Pakistan, Kashmir, Ladakh, the are of the Himalayas up to Kumaon–Garhwal in Uttar Pradesh and the entire area east of the Delhi–Aravalli–Cambay line stretching up to the eastern frontier and to the tip of the southern peninsula. The purpose is to build up columns of archaeological sequence and show how these relate and lead to the foundations of early historic India. While dwelling on the growth of wheat–barley–cattle–sheep–goat domestication in the Baluchistan uplands and the phenomenon of the Indus civilization in the Indus-Hakra plain, Gujarat and elsewhere, we left this vast region basically in the hunting-gathering mesolithic stage with some evidence of the domestication of cattle, sheep and goat. The story of its agricultural growth will occupy most of this chapter.
But before we turn to this story, we have to realize the possible complexity of the process of the growth of food production in non-Harappan India. It is clear that there are multiple strands of this process focused around individual crops. As far as rice is concerned, Koldihawa seems to provide the earliest evidence. The site is in the Belan valley (UP), an area with a rich prehistoric sequence down to the mesolithic (cf. Chopani Mando). Wild rice has been noted in the mesolithic level of the area. Domesticated rice comes from the earliest, metal-free level of Koldihawa and occurs in a context of wattle-and-daub houses, polished stone celts, microliths and three types of handmade pottery—cord-marked and incised ware, plain red ware with ochrous slip on both sides and a crude black-and-red ware. Rice occurred as husks embedded in the clay of the pottery. The second level of the site is ‘chalcolithic’ but with evidence of continuity from the earlier, level in the form of cord-marked ware. The last phase shows iron, but also continuity from the previous ‘chalcolithic’ phase. The element of continuity between different levels of this site is important because out of about nine radiocarbon dates from here three are early (7505–7033, 6190–5764, and 5432–5051 BC calibrated range) and the rest much later. The earliest such range for the so-called Vindhyan Neolithic of Kunjhun II further to the west is 3499–3124 BC. It is easy to ignore the early Koldihawa dates, but from the point of view of the mesolithic site of Chopani Mando in the same area and the fact that Chopani Mando has yielded wild rice and that the area as a whole possesses varieties of wild rice, the possibility of an early rice-cultivating level at Koldihawa cannot be denied offhand. Fresh excavations and fresh dating of the site are necessary. Even if this is not earlier than the earliest range of Kunjhun neolithic, its beginning in the second half of the fourth millennium BC still remains to be explained.1
Map 5 General Distribution of Chalcohthic Sites from Rajasthan to South India 1. Gancshwar, 2. Balathal, 3. Ahar, 4. Eran, 5. Kayatha, 6. Dangwada, 7. Navdatoli, 8. Bahal, 9. Apegaon, 10. Daimabad, 11. Jorwe, 12. Nevasa, 13. Khed, 14. Inamgaon, 15. Chandoli, 16. Songaon
Another of such imponderables comes from the Rajmahal hills of the modern ‘Santal Parganas’ in Bihar. At Panchrukhi, a handmade, heavily weathered buff-red ware was found in association with microliths, including fluted cores. The date is uncertain, but the picture is suggestive of an early adaptation to agriculture in that region. At Kuchai in Mayurbhanj in Orissa, a prehistoric stratigraphy continues, through mesolithic, into a neolithic level.2 The date is uncertain, but a similar assemblage from a neighbouring site, Baidipur, has yielded rice. Similarly, when one thinks of the neolithic level of south India, which may go back to c. 3000 BC, one has to think of the beginning of food production in that part of India primarily in its own terms. In fact, the beginning of an early agricultural regime based on tubers, legumes and some millets has recently been inferred for south India, especially Karnataka and Andhra. The same problem emerges in the context of the sixth millennium BC (calibrated) date of an apparently neolithic stage at Giak in Ladakh. The neighbouring site of Kiari (10 km away) which belongs to the same complex has much lower dates—not much earlier than c. 1000 BC. The uncertainties implicit in the data and dates from each regional situation are perplexing. What is clear, however, is that the process of the growth of food-production in India outside the distribution of the Indus civilization is much more complex and multilineal than the beginning of wheat–barley cultivation and the domestication of cattle, sheep and goat in Baluchistan. As far as the domestication of cattle, sheep and goat is concerned, we noticed in an earlier chapter the 6th millennium BC evidence from Adamgarh and Bagor showing domesticated cattle, sheep and goat. This process is unlikely to have had anything to do with the process witnessed in Baluchistan. As one can perceive, this adds some complexity to the process of animal domestication too in the present context. On the whole, the transition to food production and the beginning of village life in non-Harappan India raises tantalizing questions to which we do not have answers at present.
Map 6 Some Sites of the Deccan Chalcolithic and South Indian Neolithic 1. Daimabad, 2. Nevasa, 3. Inamgaon, 4. Chandoli, 5. Songaon. 6. Kodekal. 7. Piklihal, 8. Maski, 9. Kallur, 10. Tekkalakota, 11. Utnur, 12. Sanganakallu, 13. Hallur, 14. Brahmagiri, 15. Palavoy, 16. Paiyampalli, 17. T. Narsipur, 18. Hemmige
Could the Harappans have played a role in this? First, they must have interacted in a direct or indirect way with the regions outside their own distribution area for raw materials and possibly finished goods. This process began in the early Harappan times. Otherwise, how can we explain the development of metallurgy in an essentially microlith-using stratum in the first phase of a site like Ganeshwar in the north-eastern Aravallis? Second, with their base both in Gujarat and in the upper part of the Ganga-Yamuna Doab, the Harappans could not have avoided getting mixed in the cultural flow of central India, upper Deccan and the rest of the Doab. Archaeological evidence, as we shall see later, has increasingly begun to support this hypothesis. The interaction between the Harappan plough-agriculture and the incipient agricultural regime of the hunter-gatherers of ‘inner India’ led to the formulation of the ‘neolithic–chalcolithic’ in the latter. The basic content of the present chapter is this ‘neolithic–chalcolithic’. We forthwith admit that ‘neolithic–chalcolithic’ is not a particularly happy or even a logical archaeological term, but it has long been used to denote the early village stage of non-Harappan India, and we may keep on using the term in this sense.