Author: Nayanjot Lahiri
Publisher: Permanent Black
Year: 2000
Language: English
Pages: 410
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8178240327
Description
Now in paper back edition, this volume is an informed perspective on the history and content of the thought-provoking, continuing debate on the decline of the Indus civilization.
Perhaps the fiercest debate on the Indus civilization is over the reasons for the end of India’s earliest cities. Did they dramatically collapse or was there a steady urban decline? Was the decline a result of inroads by the notorious Aryans or should the idea of these invasions be relegated to mythology? How did rivers, earthquakes and climatic shifts contribute to the disintegration? Was the end of the civilization marked by a cultural fracture or did its traditions persist? Read this book to find out…
Reviews:
The volume is more than a compendium of the debates: it is also a guide to the issues at the heart of them…Lahiri brings to bear unique insights due to her longstanding association with the field.
—The Telegraph
…Valuable both for scholars and for general readers seeking an informed perspective on the history and content of the though-provoking, continuing debate on the decline of the Indus civilization.
—The Indian Express
…contains thirty articles classified under different subjects and themes with a covering introduction. Diverse publications on the decline and fall of the Indus civilization and the change and continuity thereafter ranging from the 1920s to the 1990s are juxtaposed here.
—Indian Review of Books
Contents
Introduction
PART I
INDUS CITIES AND THE ARYANS: HISTORICAL CONQUERORS, MYTHICAL MARAUDERS OF VEDIC HARAPPANS?
First Formations: Chanda vs. Chanda
The Indus Valley in the Vedic Period
The Aryans: A Study of Indo-European Origins
Survival of the Prehistoric Civilization of the Indus Valley
The Debate Continues
Harappa 1946: The Defences and Cemetery R37
The Supposed Carnage of the City People by the Aryans
The Relation of Harappan Culture with the Rgveda
The Mythical Massacre at Mohenjodaro
It is Time to Rethink
Have Aryans been identified in the Prehistoric Skeletal Record from South Asia? Biological Anthropology and concepts of Ancients Race
Aryan Invasions Over Four Millennia
PART II: INVIRONMENT AND COLLAPSE
Silt and Sediment: Evidence and Interpretation
Chanhu-daro Excavations
Lothal: A Harappan Port Town
Bio-geological Evidence Bearing on the Decline of the Indus Valley Civilization
The Indus Flood Plain and the ‘Indus’ Civilization
The Consequences of River Changes for the Harappan Settlements in Cholistan
Kalibangan: Death from Natural Causes
Remote Sensing of the ‘Lost’ Saraswati River
High-resolution Holocene Environmental changes in the Thar Desert, Northwestern
India
Climate, a Factor in the Rise and Fall of the Indus Civilization ---- Evidence from Rajasthan and Beyond
The Impact of Harappans on the Environment
The Origin, Character and Decline of an Early Civilization
PART III: FROM A CITY CIVILIZATION TO A PHASE OF DEVOLUTION
Continuity or Change?
The Late Harappans
Conquerors from the West
Excavation at Rangpur and Other Explorations in Gujarat
Survival? Revival? Import?
Dholavira
Late Harappan Settlements of Western India, with Special Reference to Gujarat
Continuity and Change in the North Kachi Plain (Baluchistan, Pakistan) at the
Beginning of the Second Millennium BC
The Patterns and Problems in the History of Crops
Rice and Ragi at Harappa: Preliminary Results by Plant Opal Analysis
Raw Material Usage and Trade Routes
Bibliography
Endpapers: Material equipment of Rangpur and other chalcolithic sites.