UNREASON AND ARCHAEOLOGY 17 but he picked up c.950 B.C. given by F.E. Pargiter for no better reason (as stated) than that the average reign-periods assigned to the lists of the.Puranic rulers by the latter seemed moderate! (See p.149 and n.). Characteristically, 950 B.C. became for Lal the date of the Mahabharata battle, so that he could in the end rhetorically ask: "Is it a mere chance that the date of the Mahabharata battle falls within Period II of Hastinapura"? (pp. 150-1). 'Period IF being that of PGW, Lal made some very special pleading to push it back to the period 1500- 600B.C. (p.150), assigning the PGW phase at Hastinapura to c.l 100-800 B.C. (p.23). To do so, he gave very high time-values to the accumulation of deposits below the NBP levels, which themselves could not be dated beyond 600 B.C. (if that, at all). These estimates were doubted by D.H. Gordon (The Prehistoric Background of Indian Culture, Bombay, 1958, pp. 151-2) on the ground that the PGW was technically so akin to NBP that, with his own upper limit for NBP set%at 400 B.C., the presence of PGW could not be put beyond c.650 B.C. And then Mortimer Wheeler, Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka, London, 1959, p.28, thought that the 4-7ft. deposit of PGW at Hastinapur could not be made to carry the beginning of the ware to beyond 800 B.C. These objections still concerned subjective interpretations of objective data. The question of iron at Hastinapur was, however, altogether of a different nature. Professor B.B. Lal claimed in a controversy with me in the columns of the Times of India in 1991 that he had found iron in PGW culture levels at Hastinapur; and in the recent official A.S.I, publication, Excavation at Bhagwanpura 1975-76, ed. Jagat Pati Joshi, New Delhi, 1993, p. 24, it is stated for a fact that "the PGW culture, at sites like Hastinapura, Atranjikhera, etc., is known to be associated with iron". If such was really the case then one can only say that Professor B.B. Lal suppressed the fact in the original Hastinapur Report only too well. On p. 13 he said, under the heading of 'Period II, PGW', that "no iron objects were found, although in the uppermost levels of the period lumps of iron slag were met with". On p. 16 he stated: "It was in Period III (NBP) that the regular use of iron was observed for the first time". It must be remembered that when Lal was composing his report, the earliest known occurrence of iron in India was dated c.500 B.C. based on Marshall's excavations at Taxila (Bhir mound). (See R.C. Gaur, Excavations at Atranjikhera^ Delhi, 1983, p.xiii). If Lal had really found iron at PGW levels, dated by him to 1100-800 B.C. is it conceivable that he would not have found himself compelled to foresee the objection that the dates were far too early for an Indian iron-age civilization? The objection would not have to be encountered only if all iron as slag was dismissed to the uppermost levels, and the