Nahta Bandhu Abhinandan Granth

Author(s): Dashrath Sharma
Publisher: Agarchand Nahta Abhinandan Granth Prakashan Samiti

Page 552

Noh the pottery occurs below a deposit that contains Black-and-Red ware which in turn lies below the Painted Grey ware. Unfortunately, so far at nearly all the sites where the Ochre Coloured Pottery has been found, it occurs in silty layers which appear to have been formed by river floods. Thus very little is known of the original nature of the pottery and the other items of material culture associated with it. But scholars who have considerable experience of handling Harappan pottery are inclined to believe that the Ochre Coloured Pottery is a degenerated version of Harappan pottery which has lost its original colour and sturdiness due to its long stay in the waterlogged Gangetic silt. The site of Noh located midway between the Harappan sites of the Saraswati valley and the 0. C. P. sites in the Jumna valley would fit in well with this theory, and suggest that the Harappan from the Saraswati valley as also those from west Punjab moved towards the east in their decadent days. More field work in north Rajasthan is needed to throw light on this interesting problem. 6. The Spread of Settled Village Life : The Beginnings of Iron Age
While, as we have already seen, large areas of Rajasthan were colonised by peasant farmers during the Chalcolithic period, the universal extension of agricultural way of life had to wait for the introduction of irom tools. Iron was more plentifully available and cheap, and so only with its discovery could common man afford metal tools. With the universal availability of metal tools it became possible for peasant farmers to clear newer lands for agriculture and establish new settlements there. This event in north India is believed to have taken place around the beginning of the first millennium B. C. or soon thereafter for the first reliable evidence of iron in this area is associated with the Painted Grey ware. This ceramic, first found at Ahichchhatra in northern Uttar Pradesh in the early forties, has since been discovered at numerous sites in the Sutlej and Ganga basins. Many of these sites are closely linked with the story of the great epic, Mahabharata. In Rajasthan the Painted Grey ware is now known from many sites in two areas : The Saraswati valley in the west, and north-eastern region in the east. While in the Saraswati valley there is a clear break between the Harappan occupation and the Painted Grey ware, in the evidence from Noh, limited though it is, reveals a continuity from the 0. C. P. to Painted Grey ware. At this site these two cultural phases are intervened by a deposit yielding black-and-red pottery. This pottery is said to be unpainted unlike that from Ahar and other sites. Nothing more is known about this pottery and its associations. But eastern Rajasthan is an important area for resolving the question of the relationship between the black-and-red ware and the Painted Grey ware.
In eastern Rajasthan Painted Grey ware is known from a number of sites in Bharatpur, Jaipur and Ajmer districts. Excavations have been done only on two sites, namely, Noh near Bharatpur and Bairat in District Jaipur. These are, however, so far of a limited nature and do not throw much light on the way of life of the
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