
Pakistan's History
Pakistan
emerged on the world map on August
14,1947. It has its roots into the
remote past. Its establishment was
the culmination of the struggle by
Muslims of the South-Asian
subcontinent for a separate
homeland of their own and its
foundation was laid when Muhammad
bin Qasim subdued Sindh in 711
A.D. as a reprisal against sea
pirates that had taken refuge in
Raja Dahir's kingdom.
The advent of Islam further
strengthened the historical
individuality in the areas now
constituting Pakistan and further
beyond its boundaries. Stone Age
Some of the earliest relics of
Stone Age man in the subcontinent
are found in the Soan Valley of
the Potohar region near Rawalpindi,
with a probable antiquity of about
500,000 years. No human skeleton
of such antiquity has yet been
discovered in the area, but the
crude stone implements recovered
from the terraces of the Soan
carry the saga of human toil and
labor in this part of the world to
the inter-glacial period. These
Stone Age men fashioned their
implements in a sufficiently
homogenous way to justify their
grouping in terms of a culture
called the Soan Culture. About
3000 B.C, amidst the rugged
wind-swept valleys and foothills
of Balochistan, small village
communities developed and began to
take the first hesitant steps
towards civilization. Here, one
finds a more continuous story of
human activity, though still in
the Stone Age.
These pre-historic men established
their settlements, both as
herdsmen and as farmers, in the
valleys or on the outskirts of the
plains with their cattle and
cultivated barley and other crops.
Red and buffer Cultures Careful
excavations of the pre-historic
mounds in these areas and the
classification of their contents,
layer by layer, have grouped them
into two main categories of Red
Ware Culture and Buff Ware
Culture. The former is popularly
known as the Zhob Culture of North
Balochistan, while the latter
comprises the Quetta, Amri Nal and
Kulli Cultures of Sindh and South
Balochistan. Some Amri Nal
villages or towns had stone walls
and bastions for defence purposes
and their houses had stone
foundations. At Nal, an extensive
cemetery of this culture consists
of about 100 graves. An important
feature of this composite culture
is that at Amri and certain other
sites, it has been found below the
very distinctive Indus Valley
Culture. On the other hand, the
steatite seals of Nal and the
copper implements and certain
types of pot decoration suggest a
partial overlap between the two.
It probably represents one of the
local societies which constituted
the environment for the growth of
the Indus Valley Civilization.
The pre-historic site of Kot Diji
in the Sindh province has provided
information of high significance
for the reconstruction of a
connected story which pushes back
the origin of this civilization by
300 to 500 years, from about 2500
B.C.. to at least 2800 B.C.
Evidence of a new cultural
elements of pre-Harappan era has
been traced here. Pre-Harappan
Civilization When the primitive
village communities in the
Balochistan area were still
struggling against a difficult
highland environment, a highly
cultured people were trying to
assert themselves at Kot Diji, one
of the most developed urban
civilizations of the ancient world
which flourished between the years
2500 and 1500 B.C. in the Indus
Valley sites of Moenjodaro and
Harappa. These Indus Valley people
possessed a high standard of art
and craftsmanship and a well
developed system of quasi
pictographic writing, which
despite continuing efforts still
remains undeciphered. The imposing
ruins of the beautifully planned
Moenjodaro and Harappa towns
present clear evidence of the
unity of a people having the same
mode of life and using the same
kind of tools. Indeed, the brick
buildings of the common people,
the public baths, the roads and
covered drainage system suggest
the picture of a happy and
contented people. Aryan
Civilization In or about 1500
B.C., the Aryans descended upon
the Punjab and settled in the
Sapta Sindhu, which signifies the
Indus plain. They developed a
pastoral society that grew into
the Rigvedic Civilization. The
Rigveda is replete with hymns of
praise for this region, which they
describe as "God
fashioned". It is also clear
that so long as the Sapta Sindhu
remained the core of the Aryan
Civilization, it remained free
from the caste system. The caste
institution and the ritual of
complex sacrifices took shape in
the Gangetic Valley. There can be
no doubt that the Indus
Civilization contributed much to
the development of the Aryan
civilization. Gandhara Culture The
discovery of the Gandhara grave
culture in Dir and Swat will go a
long way in throwing light on the
period of Pakistan's cultural
history between the end of the
Indus Culture in 1500 B.C. and the
beginning of the historic period
under the Achaemenians in the
sixth century B.C. Hindu mythology
and Sanskrit literary traditions
seem to attribute the destruction
of the Indus civilization to the
Aryans, but what really happened,
remains a mystery. The Gandhara
grave culture has opened up two
periods in the cultural heritage
of Pakistan: one of the Bronze Age
and the other of the Iron Age. It
is so named because it presents a
peculiar pattern of living in
hilly zones of the Gandhara region
as evidenced in the graves. This
culture is different from the
Indus Culture and has little
relations with the village culture
of Balochistan. Stratigraphy as
well as the artifacts discovered
from this area suggest that the
Aryans moved into this part of the
world between 1,500 and 600 B.C.
In the sixth century B.C., Buddha
began his teachings, which later
on spread throughout the northern
part of the South-Asian
subcontinent. It was towards the
end of this century, too, that
Darius I of Iran organized Sindh
and Punjab as the twentieth
satrapy of his empire.
There are remarkable similarities
between the organizations of that
great empire and the Mauryan
empire of the third century B.C.,
while Kautilya's Arthshastra also
shows a strong Persian influence,
Alexander of Macedonia after
defeating Darius III in 330 B.C.
had also marched through the
South-Asian subcontinent up to the
river Beas, but Greek influence on
the region appears to have been
limited to contributing a little
to the establishment of the
Mauryan empire. The great empire
that Asoka, the grandson of
Chandragupta Maurya, built in the
subcontinent included only that
part of the Indus basin which is
now known as the northern Punjab.
The rest of the areas astride the
Indus were not subjugated by him.
These areas, which now form a
substantial part of Pakistan, were
virtually independent from the
time of the Guptas in the fourth
century A.D. until the rise of the
Delhi Sultanate in the thirteenth
century. Gandhara Art Gandhara
Art, one of the most prized
possessions of Pakistan,
flourished for a period of 500
years (from the first to the fifth
century A.D.) in the present
valley of Peshawar and the
adjacent hilly regions of Swat,
Buner and Bajaur. This art
represents a separate phase of the
cultural renaissance of the
region. It was the product of a
blending of Indian, Buddhist and
Greco-Roman sculpture. Gandhara
Art in its early stages received
the patronage of Kanishka, the
great Kushan ruler, during whose
reign the Silk Route ran through
Peshawar and the Indus Valley,
bringing great prosperity to the
whole area. Advent of Islam The
first followers of prophet
Muhammad (Peace be upon him), to
set foot on the soil of the
South-Asian subcontinent, were
traders from the coast land of
Arabia and the Persian Gulf, soon
after the dawn of Islam in the
early seventh century A.D.