Lehal Library

10 The Punjab and the Birth of Sikhism Near Rawalpindi, spears and hatchets ma<le of quartzite have been found which date human habitation in the region to between 300,000 and 500,000 years ago.9 Agricultural implements made of copper and bronze have been found in mounds on both sides of the river Indus which prove the existence of fairly organized rural communities between 25,000 co 20,000 BC. Nothing more is known about these communities. nor would it be right to describe I.hem as chilizations. We are, however, on surer ground when we c-0me to the archaeological remains of Mohenjodaro in Sindh and Harappa in southern Punjab, both of which were uneanhed in the 1920s. From the sculpture, pottery, jewellery, fabrics, and other relics (particularly seals bearing extremely beautiful figures of bulls, rhinoceros, and other animals) found among the ruins of baked-brick buildings in these cities (and subsequently in many other places) it can be presumed that the people of the Indus Valley had attained a high degree of civilizaLion. They lived in multi-storeyed houses with marble baths; their craftsmen made goods which were sold as far away as Mesopotamia; and they had evolved some form of religion around the worship of a mother goddess and her male consort. Neither rhe hieroglyphics nor the relics found in these cities have vet revealed all their secrets; archaeologists aud historians are still disputing the identity of the people who made them. The generally accepted view is that these cities flourished between 2500 BC and 1500 BC and that they were dcstrored by a people known as the Aryans who began to infiltrate into Sindh and the Punjab about fifteen centuries before the birth of Christ. 111 TI1e Aryans. who were tall and fair, drove out the darkerskinned inhabitants and occupied most of northern Hindustan. The newcomers were a pastoral people with a religion and a language of their owu. Both of these were further developed in the land of their domicile. It was in the Punjab that Vedic 9 S. M. fkram and Percival Spear. eds., Th, Cultural Heritage ofPakistan, pp. 20--4; Sir RE. Monimer Wheeler, The Indus Civili.z.alion. 10 A L. Rasham, Th, W<mdl'I' That Was llldia. p. 28.