Pirak

Pirak (Urdu: پیراک‎) is an archaeological site belonging to the Indus Valley civilization located in Balochistan, Pakistan. It is 20 km south of Sibi east of the Nari River. The mound is 8m high and covers approximately 12 acres (49,000 m²). The site of Pirak was first reported by Robert Raikes in 1963. It was excavated, between 1968 and 1974, before the well known sites of Mehrgarh or Nausharo by the French archaeological mission team led by Jean Marie Casal. According to the excavator, this site was occupied from c.1800 BCE to 800 BCE.

Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
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A

• The evidence from Pirak is, till now, the best from any part of the whole Indus system during this period.
  • Raymond and Bridget Allchin, The Rise of Civilization in India and Pakistan (Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 234, on agricultural developments in the Indus valley during the second millennium BC

E

• The Indo-Aryan invasion doesn’t get farther than Pirak in Baluchistan.
  • Suffice it to quote Elst who has surveyed all the literature and says of B. Sergent's 1997 Genèse de l’ Inde, "the Indo-Aryan invasion doesn’t get farther than Pirak in Baluchistan”.
  • Elst K, quoted from Kazanas, N. (2002). Indigenous Indo-Aryans and the Rigveda. Journal of Indo-European Studies, 30(3-4), 275-334.

H

• In the case of Pirak, however, it must be admitted that the cultural innovations do not appear to be clearly Indo-European. Perhaps there was only indirect contact via other ethnic groups in Seistan.
  • Hock, H. H. (2002). Wem gehört die Vergangenheit?: Früh-und Vorgeschichte und indische Selbstwahrnehmung. (p. 244)

J

• [None of the transformations] can be explained in the context of invasions of semi-nomadic peoples coming from the [Central Asian] steppes. … How could this series of transformations be seriously attributed to Indo-Aryan invaders? … Nothing, in the present state of archaeological research … enables us to reconstruct convincingly invasions that could be clearly attributed to Aryan groups.
  • Jarrige J-F 1995 Du néolithique à la civilisation de l’Inde ancienne. Arts Asiatiques L 5–29 . Quoted in Danino, M. (2019). Methodological issues in the Indo-European debate. Journal of Biosciences, 44(3), 68. See also Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.

• The processes [at Pirak] are too complex to be attributed to the arrival of invaders who at the same time would have had to have introduced rice from the Ganges, sorghum from the Arabian Gulf, and camels and horses from Central Asia.
  • F. Jarrige, 1983. Quoted from Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. 227

S

• If Pirak… represents the start of Indian culture, there is in the present state of Indian archaeology no ‘post-Pirak’ except at Pirak itself, which lasted till the 7th century BC: the site remained, along with a few very nearby ones, isolated.
  • Bernard Sergent: Genèse de l’Inde, p.246-247., quoted in Elst, Koenraad (1999). Update on the Aryan invasion debate New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.