India and the Arab World: A Study of Early Cultural Contacts

There is hardly any country in the world with which we have better, warmer and more cordial relations than the Arab World. India's cultural relations with Arabia date back to prehistoric times. In India the Harappans, Dravidians and Aryans wove the webs of many cultures. In the Arab lands, Babylon, Assyria, Syria, Palestine, Arabia, Egypt, Sumer and Elam were the centres of ancient civilizations. The people of the Indus Valley had intimate relations with the people of Sumer and trade relations with Egypt and Crete. The presentation on a seal of a mastless ship with a sharply upturned prow and stern, similar to the archaic representation on early Mingan seals, cylinders of Sumer and pre-dynastic pottery of Egypt testify to it. The similarity of these sculptures in fact led scholars to designate at least for some time the Indus Valley Civilization as Indo-Sumerian. The influence of the Indus Valley on Sumer is best illustrated in the fashion of hair dressing which was adopted by the Sumerian women from the Indus Valley. Recognising the importance of the Harappans, Prof. Frankfort says: “It has been established beyond a possibility of doubt, that India played a part in that early complex culture which shaped the civilized world before the advent of the Greeks.†Recent excavations have further confirmed this view; the black and red ware bowls and red ware stands recently discovered in the excavations of graves near Tumas are very much similar to those found in the megalithic burials of South India. The resemblances include the corbelled arch at Tell Asmar and Mohenjodaro and the use in Sumer and the Indus of circular wells of segmental bricks. Common also is the use of stone circles in Nubia and South India.