Archaeological discoveries sometimes help to unfold the undereamto of aspects of a culture. The geological researches enable us to stretch back the history of Man on this planet by millions of years and pave the way of moulding our minds in such way as to be more and more receptive to scientific formulations. There is a limit to what an unscientific mind can persist in. Ultimately the scientific way of looking into phenomena has to prevail. And an unscientific mind, willy nilly, will sink himself in to oblivion of swim ashore with those who are equipping themselves with newly found faith in the laboratory truth.

The excavations of Mohen-jo-Daro and Harappa have unfolded before us the city life of a people and the extend to which the idea of municipal control had developed.

So the first definition of Sindhi culture can be arrived at by way of discussing its pre-Aryan past. It relates to the period around 3,000 B.C. which we would like to introduce as the period when the urban civilization in the Indus Valley was at its height. Sir Mortimer Wheeler in his book "Civilization of the Indus Valley and Beyond" says "Civilization, in a minimum sense of the term, is the art of living in towns, with all that the condition implies in respect of social skills and disciplines". This is by no means the only definition or the all comprehensive one but there is no doubt that when we speak of civilization we have to concern ourselves, mainly, with the material and concrete side of human habitation of which culture is only the essence, the superstructure.

So the present day sind, alongwith the Northern part of Indus Valley Civilization, around 3,000-2,500 B.C.-prided on its urban civilization. It was a civiliztion where the aesthetic utilization of leisure was craved for a freely indulged. What is so evident from the excavations of sites dating back to 3,000 B.C. is also true some 1,200 years ago when Jaina Dakshiniya Chihna (778 A.D.) described the distinguished features of the Sindhis in this way: "elegant, with a lovely, soft and slow gait, they are fond of the art of gandharvas (i.e. songs, music and dancing) and full affection towards their country". Much of the arguments still hold and the Ying (i.e. maternal) ingredient doesn't seem to have been diluted much.

But it doesn't mean that the Sindhis were only fun-and-frolic loving people. They were a sea-faring people and their spirit of adventure aroused in them yearnings for exploits in distant lands. Among the discoveries in Mohen-jo-Daro is a seal with the representation of a mastless ship proving thereby that not only the River Indus was used for riverine transport but the ships went down the delta into the open sea. There is no doubt that most of the accounts of ancient India's contacts with the Achaemenian, Sassanian or Greek governments are in fact contacts originating from Sind or passing through it. In any case the trail lay blazing. It is a sheer irony that we don't have any record of travelogues or treatises by a Sindhi counterparts of Yaun Chuangs and Fa Hiens through thousands of Sindhis might have visited Central Asia and the Middle East in the course of their trading and travel adventures.

Sind has seldom been allowed by foreign aggressors to develop its own culture in peace, free from aggressors to develop its own culture in peace, free from outside influences. And hence it is no wonder that we have in Sindhi culture the acknowledgement of many influences which the aggressors imparted. One of the influences came to be instinctive yearning for non-violence and toleration.

Secondly, the impact of Sind's subjugation at the hands of the Aryans around 2,500 B.C. was great and the subsequent changes imprinted on the psyche of the sindhi people should be judged in the light of the changes which they had undergone at the hands of the Aryans. The Aryans where nomadic and the Mohen-jo-Daro had been enjoying for a long time the fruits of urban life. The Aryans were thus overawed. They had little to offer to Sind except their fondness for the supernatural and abstraction. Though hunting the prey absorbed quite a lot of their time, their Rishis managed to solicit favours from the gods. The Aryans, in exchange for their supernatural tendencies, borrowed from the Dravidians their god of Shakti, later on connonised as Shiva in place of Aryan god Rudhra and thus the Hindu trinity was completed. With the sway of the Aryans the Sindhis underwent a big change. The adversity of subjugation made them a bit fatalistic. Much of their martial fervour was gone while the Aryans perfected, rather embellished their religion, after their contact with the indigenous population and by along Siva they gave them the impression that they, too, were the partners in faith.