Prehistoric India (First Edition)

Author: Stuart Piggott
Publisher: Pelican (Penguin Books), 1950
Condition: Softcover, markings on first page, yellowed pages, interior clean
This book renders an account of our knowledge of Indian prehistory from the earliest times to the settlement of the Aryans in the north-west in the second half of the second millennium B.C. It does not pretend to be more than a stocktaking of our incomplete evidence and interpretation, as a preliminary and incentive to further work in the field. Some form of working hypothesis is essential, however drastically it may have to be revised, and I have therefore attempted to indicate what seem to me to be the nature and succession of the various human cultures making up the pattern of the earliest India.

Much of the material presented in the book is either new and hitherto unpublished or is a synthesis made for the first time. It is therefore inevitable that a great deal of technical detail has to be included, and much of the argument addressed to the specialist in oriental archaeology. But despite this, it is hoped that a coherent story of the general course of events in prehistoric India has been presented to the non-specialist reader.

The original work on which Chapters IV to VI are based was carried out in Indian museums (and to a very limited extent in the field) between 1942 and 1945 in the intervals of military intelligence duties. My gratitude is due to my friends on the Archaeological Survey of India who helped and encouraged me, notably the late Rao Bahadur Dikshit, formerly Director-General of the Survey, and Dr K. N. Puri. In 1944 Dr (now Professor) R. E. Mortimer Wheeler was appointed Director-General, and while we were both in India and since my return to Britain he has spared neither time nor trouble in giving me every assistance. It is a pleasant duty to record my gratitude here.