11
and floor of the tomb and entrance passage are walled in and flagged with massive slabs of cut stone which are firmly imbedded in the ground in an upright position and help to carry the heavy slabs above forming the roof over the tomb.'[1]
The archæologists' spade has recently brought to light two early copper age settlements of the Sindhu Valley, of more than six thousand years ago,—those of Harappa and Moheñjo Daro. The chief difference between these and the South Indian iron age sites is that in these there are relics of houses built of brick. Brick was used in North India millenniums before it was used in South India, for here very hard wood fit for house-building was available in large quantities till about a thousand years ago. The existence of these two seats of high civilization in the valley of Sindhu disproves conclusively the dream of Sanskrit scholars that Aryan immigrants with their wives and children and with their Lares and Penates, and a ready-made civilization, manufactured outside India, quietly occupied the Panjab about 3000 b.c. and, when these Aryan settlers appeared there, the original dwellers of the region vanished like the mist before the rising sun and let the foreign invaders people the Punjab with a pure Aryan race, possessing the Aryan nose and the Aryan cephalic index, as the current theory maintains. These finds also prove that, contrary to the opinion of Mr. J. Coggin Brown, in the neolithic as well as in the early metal age, there was a uniform degree of civilization attained throughout India. The advances to higher and higher civilization were as even as it was possible to be in a vast country like India.
Thus the evidence accumulated by the investigators of prehistoric antiquities of India proves that even before the spread of the Ārya fire-cult in Northern India, the people had reached a stage of culture indistinguishable from that which they occupy to-day except for the changes introduced by the cotton and metal manufatcures of Western Europe during the last hundred years. The rise of the Ārya fire-cult did not alter the stage of culture reached by the people, for we find from the study of the Vedic mantras that there was no 'difference of culture between the Ārya and the Dasyu; according to the Hymns composed for performing the Ārya rites, the Dasyus lived in 'cities[2] and under kings the names of many of whom are mentioned. They possessed accumulated wealth'[3] in the form of cows, horses and chariots[4] which though kept in 'hundred-gated' cities[5] Indra seized and gave away to his worshippers, the Āryas.[6] The Dasyus were wealthy[7] and owned property 'in the plains and on the hills.'[8] They were 'adorned with their array of gold and jewels.'[9] They owned many castles.[10] The Dasyu demons and the Ārya gods alike lived in gold, silver and iron castles.[11] Indra overthrew for his worshipper, Divodāsa, frequently mentioned in the hymns, a hundred stone castles[12] of the Dasyus. Agni worshipped by the Ārya, gleaning in
- ↑ Annual Report of the Archæological Dept., Southern Circle, Madras, for 1914-15, p. 40.
- ↑ R. V. i. 53. 8; i. 103. 3.
- ↑ R. V. viii. 40. 6.
- ↑ R. V. ii. 15. 4.
- ↑ R. V. x. 99. 3
- ↑ R. V. i. 176. 4.
- ↑ R. V. i. 33. 4.
- ↑ R. V. 3 69. 6.
- ↑ R. V. i. 33. 8.
- ↑ R. V. i. 33. 13; viii. 17. 14.
- ↑ S.Y.S. vi. 23; A. V. v. 28. 9; R. V. ii. 20. 8.
- ↑ R. V. iv. 30. 20.
