The prehistory and protohistory of India and Pakistan

These two books are based upon lectures given by Professor Sankalia at Bombay in 1961 and are here noticed €or two reasons. First, they present the current state of prehistoric and protohistoric studies within the Indian subcontinent on tolerably comprehensive lines as they appear to a scholar working primarily in central India. Secondly, they are the mature product of one who, however embarrassed initially by an unequal knowledge of English and by a widespread indifference to archaeology amongst his fellowcountrymen, has worked hard and successfully to enlarge our-and their-appreciation of India’s remoter past. He deserves our gratitude as a pioneer in the fullest sense. In basic techniques he was trained in England at a time when they were in a formative stage here and were still unknown in India. On his return to Poona, in western India, he developed his subject at the Deccan Research Institute by tireless fieldwork and lecturing and, when the University of Poona was established, became head of its new Department of Indian Culture and Archaeology. His laboratory-museum is there a model of its kind, and, centred upon it, he and his students have over the years built up an impressive tradition of creative research. Before his time, archaeology was scarcely known in India outside the central government department and its provincial offshoots. Unless very tentatively at Calcutta, it had not achieved recognition as an academic discipline. Today, at half-a-dozen of the Indian universities, and at more than one in Pakistan, it is incorporated in 39.50 fi.