Indian Art and Letters

Author(s): India Society
Publisher: India Society

Page 38

ARCHÆOLOGICAL EXPLORATIONS IN INDIA, 1932-33
By Rai Bahadur Daya Ram Sauni
(Director-General of Archæology) A sum of about Rs 20,000 was spent during the year 1932-33 on excavations. Apart from important architectural remains and other historical evidences brought to light by this year's excavations, they have yielded a wealth of portable antiquities sufficient for a small museum. The following paragraphs contain a résumé of the principal results obtained.
Owing to the retirement of Dr. E. J. H. Mackay and lack of funds no excavations were carried out at Mohenjodaro. His volume on Further Excavations at Mohenjodaro is, however, in the press. At Harappa Mr. Vats brought to light more houses, comprising workmen's quarters, similar in some respects to the potters' quarters of the sixth century B.C. at Athens. The Indus Valley script has not yet been deciphered, but it may be of interest here to refer to an interesting article entitled "Seals of Ancient Indian Style found at Ur," published by Mr. C. J. Gadd of the British Museum in the Proceedings of
Academy, Vol. XVIII., London. Special interest attaches to one of the eighteen seals described in this article, as Mr. Gadd believes it to be a local imitation of the Indus Valley type made at Ur, with a legend in the archaic cuneiform writing instead of in the usual Indus Valley script. From this it seems reasonable to assume that the latter script must have been understood in Mesopotamia, and we may hope for the discovery sooner or later of a bilingual inscription in Mesopotamia or in the Indus Valley itself. Mention may also here be made of Mr. M. G. de Hevesy's discovery that the script of the Indus Valley was identical with that of the legends on a number of wooden tablets discovered in the Easter Islands in the Pacific Ocean. Professor Hevesy finds close similarities between three hundred signs of each of the two scripts.
In his Mohenjodaro and the Indus Civilization Sir John Marshall referred to the widespread diffusion of the chalcolithic culture and to Mr. Hargreaves' and Sir Aurel Stein's explorations of numerous sites of the early period in Baluchistan and Southern Waziristan. Since then Sir Aurel Stein has, with the support of the Harvard University and the British Museum, carried out extensive researches in Southern Persia and in Fars, the ancient Persia, resulting in the discovery of abundant remains of the chalcolithic period, which show close relation to the culture of the Indus Valley. 116