The Age of Metals
There is, however, a general agreement that Neolithic men were the ancestors of the people who ushered in the next stage of civilisation which is distinguished by the knowledge and use of metals. That the transition from stone to metal was a slow and gradual process is proved by two undeniable facts, viz., the use of done and metallic implements side by side, and the close resemblance in the shape of early metal and Neolithic implements.
There was, however, no uniformity in the use of metals in different parts of India. In Northern India, copper replaced stone as the ordinary material for tools and weapons. Axes, swords, spear. heads and various other objects made of that metal have come to light in different parts of the country. It was not till centuries later that iron came to be known and gradually used as a substitute for copper. We can thus distinguish, between a Copper Age and the Early Iron Age in Northern India. In Southern India, however, the Iron Age immediately succeeded the Stone Age, and we find no traces of the intermediate Copper Age.
Bronze is a good substitute for copper. It is an alloy made up of nine parts of copper and one of tin, and, being harder than copper, is more suitable for the manufacture of tools and weapons. We find accordingly that in some countries in Europe a Bronze Age succeeded the Neolithic. Bronze implements of early data have been found in India along with those of copper, but it does not appear that metal was ever generally used in India to the exclusion of copper. In other words, there was, properly speaking, no Bronze Age in India.
With the Copper and Iron Ages we enter the limits of the historical period. It is a moot point to decide whether the period of the Rig-Veda—the earliest period of Indian history for which we possess literary evidence belongs to the former or to the latter epoch. The general opinion is in favour of the view that the Iron Age had already commenced when the Rig-Veda was composed. Be that as it may, we have now a splendid example of the civilisation of the Copper Age. This civilisation flourished in the Indus Valley and spread over the neighbouring regions to a considerable distance. It is known as the Indus Valley civilisation and merit a detailed treatment in view of its importance.
Classes of People
If we examine the people of India, both according to physical type and language, we can easily distinguish four broad classes.
First, the majority of high-class Hindus, who we tall, fair-skinned and long-nosed and whose language is derived from Sanskrit. These are known as Aryans or Indo-Aryans.
Secondly, the people mostly living in the South Indian Peninsula, whose features are somewhat different from those of the first group and whose languages—Tamil, Telugu, Kanarese and Malayalam—are entirely different from Sanskrit. These are called by the generic name of “Dravidians”.
Thirdly, primitive tribes living in hills and jungles who offer a striking contrast to the first category in physical type, being .short in stature, dark-skinned and snub-nosed. Their languages are also quite different from those of the preceding two. The Kols, Bhils and Mundas belong to this class.
Fourthly, a people with strong Mongolian features, beardless, yellow in colour, snub-nosed, with flat faces and prominent cheekbones. These mostly live on the slopes of the Himalayas and mountains of Assam. The Gurkhas, Bhutiyas and Khasis are striking examples of this class.
The last two classes of people may be regarded as descendants of the Neolithic peoples. We have already referred to the primitive type of civilisation in the Neolithic Age, and it does not appear that these peoples have made any appreciable progress during the thousands of years that have elapsed since then.
There is hardly any doubt that these primitive races at one time spread all over India. But they had to yield to the superior forces of the Dravidians, who gradually occupied some of their lands. The same process was repeated when large tracts of the country were conquered at a later time by the Aryans, The effect of these successive invasions by more cultured races on the primitive peoples was far-reaching. Many must have perished, and many more, reduced to subjection, formed the lowest strata in the community of the conquerors. while a few bands were saved from a similar fate by the shelter offered by fastnesses and jungles. This last category alone has preserved, to a certain extent, the physical features, the languages, and the habits of their remote ancestors, offering us a fair glimpse of the sort of life they must have led in times long gone by.
Philological researches have established a connection between these Neolithic peoples of India and the primitive tribes that lived in Indo-China, the Malay Peninsula and the Indian Archipelago. The German scholar Schmidt, for example, holds that the languages of the Mundas and Khasis belong to the same family of speech (called Austric) from which those of the peoples of Indo-China and Indonesia have been derived. According to this view, these peoples, who were originally settled in India, “passed gradually to the east and south-east and traversed, at first the whole length of the Indo-Chinese peninsula, and then over all the islands of the Pacific Ocean up to its eastern extremity.” Schmidt further believed that another current of emigration of the same people also started from India, but turned more directly towards the south and, touching only the western fringe of the Pacific Ocean, proceeded, perhaps by way of New Guinea, towards the continent of Australia.
According to Schmidt’s view, the Neolithic men of India played a dominant part in the early history of South-eastern Asia. But his theory has already been, challenged by other scholars and can be only be regarded as a provisional hypothesis.
The Indus Valley Civilisation
In recent year archaeological excavations have been carried on at Mohenjo-Daro in the Larkana district, Sind, and at Harappa, in the Montgomery district of the Punjab. These and smaller trial excavations at various other sites in Sind, Baluchistan, Punjab and even further east and south, have proved beyond doubt that some four or five thousand years ago a highly civilised community flourished in these regions. The antiquity of civilisation in India is thus carried back nearly to the same period which witnessed the growth of ancient civilisation in Egypt, Assyria and Babylonia. The valley of the Indus thus takes its rank with the valleys of the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates as having contributed to the most ancient phase of human civilisation of which we are yet aware.glazed tiles indus valley
Unfortunately we have no written records about the Indus valley civilisation comparable to those we in respect of the others. A number of seals have been discovered with a few letters engraved on each, but these still remain undeciphered. We are therefore totally ignorant of the political history of the Indus river and are not in a position to form an adequate idea of its culture and civilisation. We possess, at best, a vague and general idea of the subject which is entirely derived from a careful examination of the object unearthed at Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa.
