The Indus Civilization

by Gregory L. Possehl

  CONCLUSION

  There seems to be a certain amount of impatience on the part of some researchers working on the Indus script. So many scholars who have ventured into this area of Indus scholarship have been captured by their own work and have moved quickly from an initial hypothesis to a series of conclusions and readings. This has meant that the patient, somewhat dreary work that would increase our understanding of the internal workings of the script and its cultural environment has been neglected. A more methodical, deliberate approach to the decipherment program, with a kind of team spirit (as with the Finns and Soviets), would almost certainly increase the chance for progress on this important subject. As it is now, researchers barrel ahead in their own directions, showing little evidence that they can, or even care to, draw on the work of their colleagues. There is some congenial give and take, and occasional critical asides noting disagreement with the conclusions of others, but entire books can appear with the author paying almost no attention to anyone else’s research. It is sad, but true, with the exception of the concordances of the Indus script, that we are no nearer a decipherment than G. R. Hunter was with his groundbreaking work in 1929.

  NOTES

  1 This chapter draws liberally on Possehl 1996b.

  2 Goody 1978.

  3 Possehl 1999b.

  4 Mahadevan 1977; Koskenniemi and Parpola 1982; Joshi and Parpola 1987; Shah and Parpola 1991; Franke-Vogt 1991; Parpola 1994a.

  5 Mahadevan 1977: 9.

  6 Fairservis 1976: 24—30.

  7 Possehl 1996a: 59—60.

  8 Rissman 1989.

  9 Franke-Vogt 1992.

  10 Summarized in Franke-Vogt 1992: 104—5.

  11 Franke-Vogt 1992: 104.

  12 Mackay 1931i: 380.

  13 Joshi and Parpola 1987: 379, no. M-66; 380, no. 238; 386, no. M-375.

  14 Possehl 1998.

  15 Mahadevan 1977: 793.

  16 Grigson 1984.

  17 Marshall 1931e: 68; Mackay 1931i: 382.

  18 McCrindle 1882: 2.

  19 Mackay 1943: 157, pl. LV, nos. 10, 11, 13—15 and pl. LVI, no. 2; Rao 1985: 482, 494, pl. CCVI, c.

  20 Hunter 1932: 483.

  21 Fairservis 1976: figs. 15a and 15b.

  22 Mackay 1937—38: pl. XCIV, 405.

  23 Langdon 1931a; Fairservis 1992: 82.

  24 Mahadevan 1977: 789; Koskenniemi, Parpola, and Parpola 1973: sign no. 380.

  25 Mahadevan 1977: 32—35.

  26 Mahadevan 1977: 17.

  27 Possehl 1990, 1998.

  28 Lal 1992.

  29 Khatri and Acharya 1995.

  30 Schmandt-Besserat 1979.

  31 Vats 1940: 324.

  32 Wheeler 1968: 107.

  33 Franke-Vogt 1992.

  34 Pande 1973, 1974, 1985.

  35 Mackay 1931i: 398—401; 1937—38: 363—69.

  36 Possehl 1996b: 59—62 for illustrations.

  37 Gadd 1931.

  38 Marshall 1931i: nos. 100, 233; Mackay 1937—38: no. 68.

  39 Parpola et al. 1969: 18.

  40 Marshall 1931i: pl. CIX, no. 247 and pl. CXV, no. 555.

  41 Marshall 1931i: pl. CIX, no. 247.

  42 Possehl 1996b: 59—62.

  43 J. Baines, 1994, personal communication.

  44 Marshall 1931d: 42.

  45 McAlpin 1981.

  46 K. Zvelebil, personal communication.

  47 Zvelebil 1970: 195—96.

  48 Zvelebil 1990: 96—97.

  49 Possehl 1996b: 90—101 reviews the story of the workers who proposed a relationship between the Indus and Easter Island scripts.

  50 Possehl 1996b: 163—64 for documentation.

  51 Possehl 1996b: 163 for documentation.

  52 Zvelebil 1990: 97.

  53 Zvelebil 1970: 195.

  54 Zvelebil 1990: 97 for comments on Mahadevan’s method.

  55 Zvelebil 1990: 97.8 for discussion.

  56 For example, Fairservis 1992: 82.

  57 Zvelebil 1990: 93.

  58 Zvelebil 1990: 93, 97.

  59 Pande 1973, 1974.

  60 Franke-Vogt 1989.

  CHAPTER 8

  Indus Religion

  INTRODUCTION

  Considerable attention has been given to the religion of the Indus Civilization, and not only from trained archaeologists.1 The best early study of the religion of the Indus peoples was that done by Marshall.2 The term religion in the context of the Indus Civilization must be broadly defined as “an institution devoted to the world of deities, the premise(s) of which are believed to be true by the adherents, but cannot be either proved or disproved.” It includes the system of belief in the otherworld as well as in gods and goddesses. Indus mythology and astronomy/astrology are also included, in part because the nature of the evidence makes it so difficult to disarticulate them.

  Ideologies have a similarity to religion. Both are based on institutions founded on principles, or beliefs, that can be neither affirmed nor falsified. They are just “believed.” The differences between them lie in the fact that by definition religions are concerned with “gods” and a “spiritual world” and ideologies are part the world of politics and economics. But they both rest to no small degree on notions of belief and faith.

  INDUS RELIGION: SOME POSSIBLE CONFIGURATIONS

  Marshall’s comments on Indus religion were perhaps the most sophisticated of his thoughts on these ancient peoples. His commentary has been called “brilliant.”3 While there are parts of Marshall’s syntheses that are no longer tenable, many of the fundamentals are sound. This is especially true for the great divisions of this institution into the domains of a Great Mother Goddess and a Great Male God.4

  The Great Female Goddess

  The Great Mother Goddess was made manifest in female figurines and other iconography. Some of the female figurines manufactured by Harappans were toys, but others were possibly votive offerings or perhaps cult images for household shrines (see figures 6.9, 10.9, and 10.10).5

  Marshall hypothesized that the terra-cotta female figurines are of three general types: toys, objects of sympathetic magic, and mother goddesses. He saw broad parallels in the mother goddess cult in Baluchistan, the Northwest Frontier, extending as far as the Aegean.

  The evidence for mother goddesses in Indus religion is not terribly robust. just which functions the terra-cotta female (and male) figurines played in Indus life is open to question. It might well be that some of them were multifunctional. Based on the material record in general, female sexuality is deeply engrained in Indus religion and ideology, and attention is paid to this point as this exploration of ancient beliefs progresses. The evidence for a Great Male God is a bit less ambiguous.

  The Great Male God: Marshall’s Proto-Siva

  Perhaps the best-known part of Marshall’s comments on Indus religion is the identification of a seal found by Mackay as a “Proto-Siva,” thought to have been a forerunner of the consummate Hindu deity (see figure 3.2).6 The seal was discovered during the 1928—1929 field season in DK-G Area, Southern Portion, Block 1, at minus 3.9 meters below datum.7 Mackay ascribes it to the Intermediate I Period. It is steatite and 3.56 by 3.53 by 0.76 centimeters. This is seal number 420 in Mackay’s report, and it is sometimes referred to as simply “seal 420.”8

  Marshall properly describes this figure as being in the attitude of a practitioner of yoga. McEvilley agrees with this determination.9 The male sits on a dais with legs bent double beneath him. The heels are together, the toes down. His arms, covered with bangles, are outstretched with hands resting lightly on his knees, thumbs out.10

  There is a claim that this figure on seal 420 is three-faced and that “the lower limbs are bare and the phallus . . . seemingly exposed, but it is possible that what appears to be the phallus is in reality the end of the waistband.”11 The head is surmounted by a pair of large horns, meeting in a high central headdress. These horns are those of a water buffalo, with the ribbing clearly depicted. Four wild animals surround the figure: an elephant, rhino
ceros, water buffalo, and tiger. Beneath the dais are two quadrupeds: antelopes or ibexes, animals presented in a style that is paralleled on other Indus seals. Seven Indus pictographs are included on the seal, but one of them, a simple human stick figure, is out of place, and it may have been put there ”for lack of room at the right-hand top corner.“12 On the other hand, this character could have been placed there for some special purpose, and until we have a decipherment of the Indus writing system, we probably will not be able to resolve this issue.

  Marshall finds some connection with the historical Siva, although the name Siva, for a god does not appear prominently before 200 B.C.13 The Vedic god with Siva’s powers was Rudra, who possessed vigor and the ability to punish. He is something of an ascetic and a controller of destinies. In time Rudra and the new god Siva became one.

  Marshall saw three faces on this seal, and this was one of the reasons he saw it as a Proto-Siva. But it is not entirely clear that the three faces are there.14 Marshall is on safer ground when he addresses the more obvious yogi features of this seal. He draws on the connection with Siva as ”pre-eminently the prince of Yogis—the typical ascetic and self-mortifier, whence his names Mahatapah, Mahayogi . . . in the course of time the yogi came to be regarded as a magician, miracle-monger and charlatan.“15

  Siva is not only the Mahayogi but also Pasupati, the lord of the beasts. In historical times this was thought of as the lord of cattle, but in the Vedas pasu signified a beast of the forest, thus the presence of wild animals on the seal appropriately follows the more ancient usage. “Rudra, the Vedic God, whose cult was amalgamated and identified with that of Siva, also bore the title of Pasupati, and this might conceivably have been one of the reasons for identifying him with Siva.”16 Marshall draws attention to the “master and mistress of animals” of Minoan Crete, but this is surely irrelevant in today’s view of ancient religion.

  Rai Bahadur Ramaprasad Chanda has noted that the famous priest-king image from Mohenjo-daro seems to have his eyes concentrated at the tip of his nose in the attitude of a yogi.17

  Marshall next deals with the animals beneath the dais on which his Proto-Siva sits. “Two deer in a like position are portrayed on many medieval images of Siva . . . and a deer . . . held in one of his hands is a frequent attribute of the god in other manifestations.”18 Deer are a frequently used image in Indian religious art, employed by both Hindus and Buddhists. (The Buddha’s first sermon was at the Deer Park at Sarnath.) But the animals on this seal are more probably antelopes or ibexes.

  Marshall’s position on his identification of this seal can be summarized as follows:

  My reasons for this identification are four. In the first place the figure has three faces and that Siva was portrayed with three as well as with the more usual five faces, there are abundant examples to prove. Secondly, the head is crowned with the horns of a bull in the form of a trisula, and both the bull and the trisula are characteristic emblems of Siva. Thirdly, the figure is in a typical yoga attitude, and Siva was and still is, regarded as the Mahayogi—the prince of Yogis. Fourthly, he is surrounded by animals, and Siva is par excellence the “Lord of Animals” (Pasupati)—of the wild animals of the jungle, according to the Vedic meaning of the word pasu, no less than that of domesticated cattle.19

  Many authors have expressed a favorable view of Marshall’s identification of the figure on this seal as a Proto-Siva. 20 I. Puskas has proposed that the central figure is a Proto-Brahma, a great Creator, rather than Proto-Siva,21 Marshall’s position has also been the object of a number of critiques.

  A Critique of Marshall’s Proto-Siva

  Three scholars dispute Marshall’s position on his Proto-Siva seal. One of the first is Sullivan.22 He disagrees with Marshall on almost every point, including the possible presence of a phallus and the three faces. Sullivan submits that the figure is, in fact, female: There is no phallus and so on.

  Srinivasan has two important papers reviewing seal 420.23 The first is a fine review of the history of the problem. She holds that there are many “non-proto-Siva” images with the horned headdress; the figure is not “three-faced,” moreover, there are no other tricephalic images in Harappan art; the posture of the yogi is indeterminate; her survey of Rudra in the Vedas indicates that this aspect of Pasupati does not protect wild animals, and Rudra’s predominant trait with respect to all animals is wrath, rather than protection, compromising the notion that the Lord of the Beasts is a protector.

  An interesting and provocative paper has been published by A. Hiltebeitel, who drew heavily on the work of B. Volchok, one of the Russian scholars who worked on their attempted decipherment of the Indus script.24 Hiltebeitel’s critique is much like Srinivasan’s, but he makes much of the fact that the horns on the central figure are those of a buffalo. Indian tradition is rich in mythology and symbolism concerning Mahisha, the Buffalo God. Water buffalo also seem to occur in various contexts in the Indus Civilization (figure 8.1). For example, there is seal 279 showing a man hurling a spear at a buffalo.25 “This has been regarded as depicting a mythic scene: a prototype of Skanda killing Mahisasura, the ‘Buffalo Demon,’ with a spear (sakti; Mahabharata 3: 221, 66, Poona Critical Edition) or Valin killing the buffalo Dundubhi ( Ramayana 4, 11, 7—39; Baroda Critical Edition), or as the prototype of a Dravidian style buffalo sacrifice.”26

  Turning to other iconography on seal 420, Hiltebeitel begins to deal with the surrounding animals: the elephant, rhinoceros, tiger, and buffalo. In a long presentation he tries to associate these animals with the “vehicles” (vahanas) of later Indian tradition, particularly those of the deities of the four quarters, the dik- or lokapalas, or “World Regents.” This was first suggested by Marshall, but relegated to a footnote and never pursued in his commentary.27 This proposition between the animal iconography on the seal and vahanas remains interesting but not proved.

  Figure 8.1 Seals with humans combating water buffalos (from Indian Archaeology A Review 1962—63)

  A Revision to the Proto-Siva Hypothesis

  There is considerable merit in the contemporary critiques of Marshall’s hypothesis on the Proto-Siva seal. He seems to have taken his thought on the significance of this figure one or two steps too far. The same is true, to some degree, with notions that the animals surrounding the central figure can be seen as “proto-vahanas” and that there was a sacrificial cult in the Indus Civilization. But there is something significant about this seal and other objects with similar figures, and it would be wrong to abandon the idea that in the Proto-Siva seal we have an insight into the Harappan system of belief, even later Indian tradition. There are three points, discussed in the following sections, on which I believe there is reasonably safe ground.

  The Central Figure on Seal 420 Is a Deity

  The pose, demeanor, and dress of the figure all combine to suggest that the central figure on seal 420 is a god of some sort. The buffalo horn headdress is especially important, given the other cultural contexts for this imagery. Also, the figure is not intelligibly human; there is even a slight chance that it is three-faced. There is ultimately no proof for the contention that this figure is a god, but the look of the figure elicits an irresistible conclusion for me—it is a god because it looks like a god!

  The Headdress on the Deity of Seal 420 Is Derived from the Water Buffalo

  There is a clear association between the god and the buf falo based on the headdress. These are clearly buffalo horns in both the sweeping curve and the fact that the artist who carved this seal attempted to indicate the distinctive ribbing of buffalo horns.

  The importance of the buffalo to the Indus peoples is revealed in two contexts. The number and frequency of remains of this animal demonstrate its importance to the subsistence economy. Combat between humans and the buffalo is also a part of Indus iconography (see figure 8.1).

  The buffalo horn motif first appears in the Early Harappan—Mature Harappan Transition. The famous pot from Kot Diji is undoubtedly the best and clearest represent
ation of this motif (see figure 3.12). From the Mature Harappan at Kalibangan there is the famous horned figure incised on the broken triangular terra-cotta cake (see figure 6.18). A more recent discovery comes from the site of Padri in Saurashtra, where there is a large, complete storage jar with a human figure in a horned headdress.28 The horns in this case seem to be those of a buffalo, based on the ribbing that the artist has portrayed. The Padri figure is flanked by a motif that is more plantlike, but retains the ribbing of the buffalo horns (figure 8.2). This is important documentation of the fact that these two sweeping motifs, one animal the other plant, might travel together and be combined on a single object.