Du néolithique à la civilisation de l'Inde ancienne : contribution des recherches archéologiques dans le nord-ouest du sous-continent indo-pakistanais - article ; n°1 ; vol.50, pg 5-30

Arts asiatiques - Année 1995 - Volume 50 - Numéro 1 - Pages 5-30This article develops some of the points which were discussed in the keynote address of the Annual South Asian Conference in Madison in November 1994. The main question was to know what was the true significance of the pre- and protohistorical investigations in the Indo-Pakistani subcontinent for the specialists of the later Indian civilisation. It has often been thought from the archaeological record that a very important break had occurred between the end of the Indus civilisation and the coming of the Indo-Aryans which could mark the true begininng of the Indian civilisation. The controversy between those who assumed that the Indian civilisation owed some of its aspects to the earlier Indus civilisation and those who were convinced that there was very little to sustain such an assumption is still far from being settled. Using some of the new data provided by the work of our archaeological mission in the Kachi/Bolan area (Mehrgarh, Nausharo, Pirak) and the available information about the Indus civilisation, we first stress the fact that many features of the cultures of Balochistan and of the Indus civilisation ranging from craft activities to burial practices are highly original when we compare them with what we know from the contemporary cultures and civilisation of Middle Asia, Central Asia and Egypt. Then our assumption is that such original features including the apparent absence of the royal and religious apparatus found everywhere else in the great civilisations of the Antiquity could precisely provide us with some important key to understand some of the very specific elements of the Indian civilisation. It is also assumed that the particular agricultural system of the Northern part of the subcontinent with the summer flood of the Indus and the summer monsoon is also a major factor which has contributed to the originality of the subcontinent from the Neolithic period till the historical time. Before concluding, the question of the Indo-Aryan invasion is briefly discussed. In spite of obvious factors of continuity between the 3rd and the 2nd millennium BC, excavations at Pirak (Balochistan) and in the Swat Valley show the occurrence of major changes around 1800 / 1700 BC. The farming economy with the beginning of the system of two crops a year and the arrival of the first horsemen are among the most spectacular new features of the 2nd millennium BC, in a context antecedent by a few centuries to the earliest possible evidence of the Vedic culture. The gap between the end of the cities of the Indus civilisation and the estimated age of the beginning of the Vedic period is now filled by many archaeological finds which change entirely our perception of the 2nd millennium BC and we can now assess that from the Neolithic time till almost today there has never been in spite of spectacular changes in the course of time, a definite gap or break in the history of the subcontinent.26 pagesSource : Persée ; Ministère de la jeunesse, de l’éducation nationale et de la recherche, Direction de l’enseignement supérieur, Sous-direction des bibliothèques et de la documentation.