The balance of trade appears to have been in favor of India; more items were exported from India than imported from the Gulf and Mesopotamia.” - Swaraj Prakash Gupta

Unfortunately, the horse has become a bone of contention between two groups of historians dealing with the 'Aryan Problem' in India, the so-called Nationalists and the so-called Marxists. The former, basing their views on the archaeological findings, maintain that the people of the Indus-Sarasvati Civilization may have been the Vedic Aryans who are known in history for their chariots driven by horses, while the latter hold that the archaeological findings are 'minor', ' limited', and 'marginal', and hold onto the age-old view that the people of the Indus-Sarasvati Civilization were not horse- users, hence could not be the Vedic Aryans. To say the least, this is a strange logic. For the scientists, Indus-Sarasvati people were definitely horse-users, whether they were Vedic Aryans or not hardly concerns them. But Marshall certainly erred gro.55ly when he observed that the Indus people could not be Vedic Aryan because they were not familiar with the horse, let alone its users. Incidentally, in the Vedas the people are never called a.Warohis, that is, horsemen, they are credited only with chariots driven by horses. They ate sheep, etc. but not horse meat or camel meat. Hence, it is not surprising that the horse and camel bones are only rarely found in excavations.

The Indus-Sarasvati Civilization is found extending for more than 1600 km from north to south and equally from east to west, covering an area of about 2.5 million sq. km and more. The northernmost site known to us so far is Manda, located on the River Beas near Jammu; the southernmost site is Bhagatrav on the RiverTapti in Gujarat; the easternmost site is Bhorgarh in east Delhi and Alamgirpur in district Meerut; and the westernmost site is Sutkagendor, located on the ancient shore of the Arabian Sea, near the eastern border of Iran. The Indus-Sarasvati Civilization was, therefore, around four times more in area coverage than any contemporary civilization, including the Egyptian and the Mesopotamian.

This led to a serious debate amongst all the archaeologists, of the world who were dealing with the Indus-Sarasvatj Civilization, directly or indirectly, What one group called ‘Pre-Harappan’, the other group called ‘Early Harappan’. Why this controversy cropped up? It is all a question of ‘approaches’ in archaeological Studies which are primarily two—the ‘culture-historical’ and “culture- processual’.