________________
94
BHARATIYA ASMITA PART 11
dharmacakra and the lions and other animals seated back to back.
In the same way the Mughals whose early ancestors had passed through Iran and had tasted the Iranian wine, and had admired the Iranian gardens, and the delicate Iranian arts and crafts, introduced all this into Indian life, to a much greater extent than their predecessors had done. The result was the exquisite Mughal art and architecture.
(c) the buccranian, with a figure of a full
blown flower under one of the horns; first seen in the Hissar IB and Sialk 1117, then at the junction of the Kot Dijian and Harappan at Kot Diji, and then ubipuitously in several post-Harappan cultures (Prakash,
Nagda, etc.), (d) the zoomorphic figure from Nevasa atid
Candoli (not yet found elsewhere or recognized, for instance at Daimabad or several sites on the Tapi and the Purna and their
tributaries in Khandesh, Dhulia, Jalgon), (e) the mother goddess with a cylindrical or
conical stumpy head, and short outstre ched
arms, and upspecified lower part of the body. In the light of this fresh study of the rel.tionship between :
It was somewhat in this way, which cannot be yet fully demonstrated, that Iranian culture-ways of life as illustrated by the peculiar pedestalled pottery at Navdatoli with its specialised designs--fertilizd, first the neighbouring region, viz. Afghanistan and Bluchistan, then Sind, Rajasthan and later Saurashtra and Central India and the South
In every case, the original Iranian inpact was modified by the existing people and cultures, but the nature of modification depended upon the vitality of the indigenous or preexisting cultures and the force of the newly arrived people or influences In every case the resultant product was different from the respective parent cultures. Nevertheless, ancestry of these influences may be traced, and in this search for the pedigree, it will be found that :
(i)
the pre-Harappen cultures of Sind Rajasthan show considerable affinities with Iranian and Baluchi ;
(ii) the Harappan exhibits a lot of new features,
because it had developed its own particularly highly specialized pottery, though some of the traits in the latter can be traced back to the Iranian through the pre-or proto-Harappan at Amri, Kot Diji and Kalibangan;
1. the Irani..n or West Asiatic, II. the Pre-or Proto-Harappan, III. the Harappan, and iv. the Post-Harappan Chalcolithic,
One hs to say that the Harappan influence on the Acarian, Navdatolian and Jorwe-Nevesion, and the distant Neolithic of ahnagiri, was considerably less than the Iranian. Even a close study by a Russian scholar 24+ has revealed only two or three per cent Harappan influence on the Central Induin Chalcolithic. Not only the form, but also the designs are admitted to be completly different from th: Harappan.
The same thing is to be seen in Saurashtra. Here as at Rangpur, the Harappan Culture continued to survive in a degenerated form towards the close of Period ll and in Period II. But though the Harappan was not completely wiped out, the force or the character of the new culture is clear. It is seen the increased and varied types of goblets with a highly carinated side a feature which was absent in the Harappan. This all over Northern, Central and Western ( nduccrding to some scholars even in Southern or Peninsel r) Indi we witness new cultural influences. These are so fa best seen in new pottery fabrics, forms and design motif According to our study, these show a great affinity with the Iranian, particularly with those from H ar. Sialk, Susa, and to some extent Giyan.
24. A. Ya. Shchatenko, 'On the origin of the Encolithic Cultures of Central India', trsl. into English by Koichi Inopue and revised by M. A. Konishi, in Cultural Anthrnpology 1, 204.
(iii) the post-Harappan and the cultures contemporary
with the late Harappan or the closing phases of the Harappan show once again certain Iranian traits ; those however are seen at their best in the Navdatolian, particularly in its numerous gablets of varied shapes, the channel-spouted bowls, and in the design elements :
(a) such as the pot-hock or crook spiral, (1) animals with elongated limbs and filled up
in various ways, first seen in Silak 115 and Hissar IC,
Jain Education Intemational
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
