RECENT TRENDS IN INDIAN ARCHAEOLOGY 5 antiquity of the hypothetically assumed kernal of the text and to establish the historicity of Krishna and other heroes of the Mahahharata. The excavations at Hastinapura (1950-52) brought to light a five-fold sequence of cultures with gaps between all of them. Period I yielded an insignificant deposit of Ochre-Coloured Ware (OCP). Period II represented a substantive settlement distinguished by the discovery of the Painted Gray Ware (PGW), slag of iron (in the uppermost levels), evidence of horse, rice, glass, etc. in a non-urban context, with evidence of writing, coins, standard weights and measures and hierarchy of structures. The settlement was destroyed by a heavy flood in'the Ganga. The cultural period was dated by B.B, Lal to between, c. 1000 B.C. and 800 B.C. Encouraged by the discovery of a pre-Buddhist (pre-NBP period) occupation of the P.G.W. culture in course of exploration at Mathura, Panipat, Kurukshetr-a, Achichchhatra, Purana Quila, sites locally known to be associated with the story of the Mahabharata, B.B. Lal correlated the PGW culture with the age of the Mahabharata heroes. He sought to substantiate his thesis by relating the evidence of a flood marking the end of PGW settlement at Hastinapura to the Puranic flood. He saw the coincidence of the occurrence of a late PGW period settlement at Kausambi near Allahabad as confirmation of the Puranic tradition of the shifting of the capital by king Niqhakshu from Hastinapura to Kausambi as a consequence of the flood. Being conscious of the limitations of the evidence for establishing the historicity and antiquity of the Mahabharata story, he, however, remarked "that the evidence is entirely circumstantial and until and unless positive ethnographic and epigraphic proofs are obtained to substantiate the conclusions they cannot but be considered provisional." B.B. Lal based his conclusions on certain specific assumptions, which may be listed as follows: (i) There is a kernal of truth in the Mahabharata story; (ii) Krishna and other heroes of the epic are historical figures and cannot be placed later than the Buddha; (iii) some of the sites bearing names mentioned in the epic or locally known to be associated with the epic story (today) were in existence in the 'epic period*; (iv) the pre-Buddha (PGW) cultural levels at these sites represent the age of the earliest portion of the Mahabharata story; and (v) the flood which destroyed Hastinapura according to the Puranas is the same flood which is evidenced at the end of P.G.W. levels at Hastinapura. The above assumptions are faulty because (i) B.B. Lal has not stratified the Mahabharata text to work out the (earlier) component which could be correlated with the PGW culture (c. 1000-800 B.C.). It is not the names of heroes, and places and events that constitute the relevant historical element in the original story. This element has to be located in the socio-cultural milieu inferred from the text. The portion of the epic, its culture, as also its chronology, needs to be established by external and internal criticism of the text independently of the archaeological evidence before that evidence can be compared with what the spade has brought out. (ii) The use of the