Indian Art and Letters

Author(s): India Society
Publisher: India Society

Page 83

BOOK REVIEW
Memoirs of the Archaological Survey of India, No. 48. [Explorations in Sind.] By N. G. MAJUMDAR, M.A. (Delhi. Manager of Publications).
The brilliantly successful excavations at Mohenjo-daro which take the history of the Indus civilization back to the fourth millennium B.C. have now been followed by complementary work. From 1927 to 1931 Mr. N. G. Majumdar, Assistant Superintendent of the Archaeological Survey of India, was engaged from time to time in exploring and excavating a large number of likely sites in the Indus Valley, south of Mohenjo-daro. The valuable results of this work have now been published in the Memoirs of the Archaological Survey of India, No. 48, a volume with a hundred and seventy-two pages of text and forty-six plates.
Most of the sites showed more or less abundant remains of the chalcolithic age, chiefly pottery with painted or incised designs. In some cases, as in the mounds at Jhukar, three definite strata were discovered, the two lowest belonging to the chalcolithic period and the topmost to the Indo-Sassanian period round about the fifth century A.D. It is interesting to observe that painted pottery is still found in this stratum. Indeed, Mr. Majumdar states that it has never ceased to be made in the Indus Valley to this day.
At Amri was found not only pottery of the Mohenjo-daro type, but a lower and earlier stratum containing painted pottery of a different kind with "thin walls, having a plain reddish brown band at the neck, a chocolate band on the inner side of the lip, and geometric patterns on the body, in black or chocolate on pink, and in some cases on cream wash. . . This pottery was associated with chert flakes and cores."
This ware, which Mr. Majumdar has christened Amri pottery, is closely related to wares found by Sir Aurel Stein in Baluchistan, and is an interesting link between the Indus Valley and the countries west of it which Sir Aurel Stein has recently explored.
Further important finds were made at Chanhu-daro and Lohumjo-daro, round the Manchhar Lake, on the hill tract of Johi and in numerous other places, and the descriptions of the journeying and excavation make a fascinating story very well told.
No. 48 is a thoroughly scientific volume, with full descriptions of all the objects found, copious illustrations, complete lists of the items illustrated, and an index. No essential detail has been overlooked, and the Survey of India is to be congratulated not only on the splendid field work done by Mr. Majumdar, but also on the admirable manner in which he has recorded it.
R. L. H.
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