The Indus Civilization

by Gregory L. Possehl

  Figure 8.2 Padri horned human in association with a “horned” plant motif (after Shinde 1991)

  There is evidence for a “buffalo cult” in ancient India, at least as old as the Puranas of the first millennium B.C., and it was especially prominent in south India, where the Dravidian languages are spoken.29

  The Posture of the Deity on Seal 420 Is a Form of Ritual Discipline, Suggesting a Precursor of Yoga

  The posture of the central figure on Seal 420 is clearly not “naturalistic” as claimed by Sullivan.30 Who sits “naturally” with their heels together?—only someone who has practiced the art sufficiently for it to have become cultural, a nonbiological adaptation. The structural biology of humans is not such that we take to such a position naturally.

  There is an excellent article by T. McEvilley, a scholar who knows the Indian tradition of yoga, that evaluates the pose of the god on seal 420.31 He concludes that the pose is the same as one used in yoga and can be taken as early documentation of a tradition of physical and mental discipline that emerges as yoga in the first millennium B.C.

  According to B. Walker, yoga in later Indian tradition is said to have been founded by the sage Yajnavalkya and was later codified by Patanjali in his Yoga Sutra.32 It is a form of mental and physical discipline, a code for ascetics. There are several forms: karma-yoga, salvation through works; bhakti-yoga, salvation through faith. Hatha yoga, the one most familiar to Westerners, is salvation through physical culture. Thus, while the origins of yoga are sometimes said to be pre-Aryan, it should be emphasized that the Hindu tradition has its own origin myth, as well as a story for the codification of the system of belief. If yoga as yoga goes back to the Indus Civilization, these latter points must be dealt with and not simply brushed aside as irrelevant.

  Figure 8.3 Plant and animal motifs from Kalibangan

  There are several other yogi images in the corpus of Mature Harappan materials. A catalogue of those that have come to my attention is given in table 8.1. These diverse images suggest that the Indus pose of ritual discipline was used in more than one way and that their buffalo god did not have exclusive access to it. Taken as a whole, it appears that the pose may have been used by deities and humans alike, possibly best seen in the Ashmolean prism. This presents an interesting possibility: Some of the Harappans were devoted to ritual discipline and concentration, and this was one of the preoccupations of at least some of their gods.

  Parpola has observed that this pose of ritual discipline may also occur in the West.33 There is, for example, a potsherd with a sitting personage in this attitude from Tepe Yahya IVa in southeastern Iran (c. 2400—1800 B.C.).34

  Horns and Plants in the Indus Age

  The Indus Age is filled with imagery relating to bulls and buffalos. Seal 420 is one that is clearly a buffalo. But there are others that seem to be zebus, and these are not restricted to the stamp seals. Many examples of the latter come from the Early Harappan occupations at sites in the Gomal Valley. There is also a very fine example of a Kot Dijian vessel found at Burzahom in Kashmir, with the motif, which may date to the Late Kot Dijian, contemporary with the Mature Harappan (figure 2.10).

  There are some “human” terra-cottas with horns.35 The example in Mackay’s plate LXXII has no sign of breasts, which are usually placed on female figurines, and so it might tentatively be identified as a male, as the central figure on seal 420 must be.

  The Early Harappan period at Kalibangan is rich in imagery, and here we have the evidence for the broadening of this theme into motifs that are definitely plantlike and may represent a synthesis or merging of a plant/animal theme during the Indus Age (figure 8.3). There is a formal similarity in these various motifs. It is evident that the sweep of the lines, whether of a water buffalo’s horns or those of a bull, is paralleled by the portrayal of stems and leaves of plants. The kind of plant motifs from Kalibangan I type are also found at Kulli and Mundigak IV.3, contemporary with the Mature Harappan.36

  Table 8.1 Yogi glyptics from the Indus Civilization

  This duality of motifs, with broad sweeping lines either as horns or plants or even indeterminate in these terms, is incorporated into the iconography of the Indus Civilization. There are numbers of sites in Saurashtra with a plant motif that document this ideographic element there during Sorath Harappan times. A fine example of the combination of motifs is found on a Period II pot from Lewan.37 It has both the horns of a bullock, probably the zebu, and those of what appears to be a water buffalo. In the space between the horns of each of these beasts are stylized pipal leaves, seemingly growing out of the head of the animal.

  The motif from Kulli, and others like it from Kalibangan, appears to be a representation—stylization is a probably a better description—of a water plant resembling the lotus, with its central bulblike flower and streamers. The shape of the bulb can also be seen as a play on female genitalia, giving us some reason to think of the plant motif as “female” and the animal, male, as in the Mahayogi seal, extending Marshall’s male-female dichotomy.

  Shaktism

  Fundamental to the Marshall synthesis of Harappan religion is that it marks the beginning of a later Indian sect called Shaktism: “The underlying principle of shaktism is a sexual dualism, which has been aptly described as ‘duality in unity.’ ”38

  According to Walker, “Sakti, or ‘energy,’ is the term applied to the role of a god, and signifies the power of a deity manifested in and through his consort. The deity and his wife represent the dual aspect of the divine unity, and together symbolize the power of the godhead.”39

  In Marshall’s view this primitive mother worship led to the transformation of the goddess into a personification of female energy (shakti) and the eternal productive principle, which was in turn united with the eternal male principle to become the creator and Mother of the Universe.40 Support for the presence of this duality has been proposed here in the form of the plant/animal motifs. It came to Marshall in the form of cult objects representing human sexuality: phallic, baetylic stones, as well as the female, yoni ring stones.

  Seven Attending Figures on the Seal of Divine Adoration (Seal 430)

  One of the most famous of the Indus seals is seal 430, with what seems to be a narrative scene, possibly a mnemonic of some sort. It shows a goat and a kneeling human in front of a tree with a human inside it. Below that is a row of seven attending figures (see figure 3.4). This is not the only representation with seven attending humans, as seen in figure 8.4.

  Seven is an important number in Indian culture, and in the Rgveda in one of the “Sarasvati Hymns,” the river is venerated as one of seven sisters:

  She hath spread us beyond all foes, beyond her Sisters, Holy One. As Surya spendeth out the days.

  Yea, she most dear amid dear streams, Seven-sistered, graciously inclined. Sarasvati hath earned our praise.

  Guard us from hate Sarasvati, she who hath filled the realms of earth. And that wide tract, the firmament!

  Seven-sistered, sprung from threefold source, Five Tribes prosper, she must be invoked in every deed of might.41

  The geography of the Rgveda is centered on the Punjab, and we know that the reference to seven sisters is to the Sapta Sindhava, the “seven rivers” of the region which include the Indus on the west and moves to the Ghaggar-Hakra to the east. Given the continuities in belief marking ancient India, that this notion of the “seven river sisters” came to the Vedic pundits from an Harappan source is at least as possible as the idea that they made it up for themselves.

  Figure 8.4 Indus glyptics with seven standing figures (after Vats 1941)

  Allchin and Allchin note that the seven figures have been “identified with the seven Rishis (seers) and with the seven Mothers of recent times.”42 Parpola has proposed that they represent the children of Brahma and Sarasvati, the seven sages of the constellation Ursa Major. Or, he notes, it could represent the Pleiades.43

  Zoolatry

  There is widespread evidence for the place of animals in Indus
ideology. Two Indus sealings, in fact, show small figures carried above the crowd in a procession (figure 8.5). One of them is a bull, or cow, just another small observation that supports the idea that cattle were a source of wealth for these people and entered their ideological world as well.

  There are many portrayals of composite animals, some with three heads on one body; or tigers entwined; human torsos on four-legged bodies (see figure 6.20), “minotaur-like”; tigers with horns (see figure 6.17); unicorns with elephant trunks (see figure 6.15); and unicorns growing out of trees (see figure 6.16). At least one authority has suggested, with some reason, that the unicorn of the stamp seals is a mythical creature and not a bull at all.44

  Mesopotamian Themes in Indus Iconography

  Two iconographic themes appearing on Indus seals have parallels in Mesopotamian mythology; both are related to the Gilgamesh epic. The first is shown on a seal from Mohenjo-daro (see figure 6.17).45 It shows a half-human female, half-bull monster attacking a horned tiger. This Indus seal may be construed as portraying the story of the Mesopotamian goddess Aruru, who created Ebani or Enkida as a bull-man monster to do combat with Gilgamesh, but who ultimately became his ally and fought with Gilgamesh against the wild animals.46 The second motif is the well-documented Mesopotamian combat scene, with Gilgamesh fighting off rampant animals on either side (figure 8.6). The presence of this theme in objects associated with the Indus Civilization is perfectly in keeping with the notion that the Indus region and Mesopotamia were in contact with one another. That some aspects of Mesopotamian religion and ideology would have been accepted by the Indus peoples is a reasonable notion at face value, given the many historical examples of this sort of cultural exchange around the world. This theme has been further developed by A. Parpola.47

  The Important Place of Water in Harappan Ideology

  Figure 8.5 Sealings with processions, possibly in Mohenjo-daro (after Marshall 1931i)

  Marshall deals briefly with the importance of water to the Harappans.48 Of the sanctity of water in the abstract, no tangible evidence has yet been found. But that water was held in great reverence and played a highly important part in the daily lives and practice of religion of the citizens of Mohenjo-daro is demonstrated by the Great Bath as by the universal arrangements made throughout the city for drainage, wells, and bathing facilities, a theme very nicely developed by M. Jansen.49 Indeed, it is safe, I think, to affirm that in no city of antiquity was so much attention paid to this matter of bathing as in Mohenjo-daro; and we can hardly believe that the practice would have been so ubiquitous and firmly rooted there had it not been regarded in the light of a religious duty. That such emphasis should have been placed on bathing—even in this remote age—is not a surprise given the importance the Indian has attached to ceremonial ablutions in sacred tanks, pools, and rivers since time immemorial.

  Figure 8.6 The “Gilgamesh” seal from Mohenjo-daro (after Mackay 1937—38)

  F. R. Allchin’s Interpretation of a Seal from Chanhu-daro

  Mackay found an extraordinary seal in his excavations at Chanhu-daro.50 It shows a short-horned bull, Bos gaurus, above a prostrate human figure (figure 8.7). He thought that the scene depicted an attack by the bull, and the human on the ground was attempting a defense against the trampling animal. In an essay on this seal, F. R. Allchin explains that the gaur is standing on his hind legs, slightly elevated above a human figure; its front legs are shown in excited motion. The bull’s erect penis is shown in correct anatomical position. The figure below the gaur is less clearly shown and consequently more difficult to interpret. Allchin and Mackay see a headdress to the far right bottom of the seal impression.51

  Seen from Allchin’s perspective, the scene is very dynamic and excited; the bull is about to take a female goddess in an act that might be seen as sexual violence, and yet the clear appearance of her open, exposed genitals tells us that she is a willing partner in this deed.

  Allchin rightly rejects the notion that this scene has any serious connection to the ancient Indian horse sacrifice ( Asvamedha). Instead, he turns to the Vedas and forms an interesting hypothesis. This argument must be read in the original to gain a full sense of the detail, but it concludes:

  In the Chanhu-daro seal we have a representation of Heaven, the Bull, who is at once the consort and father of Earth; and of Earth who is at the same time the consort of the Bull, Heaven, and the mother of the Bull, her calf; and that these themes can be understood by reference to the Creation myths found in the Rgveda and Atharvaveda. It would be fascinating, but beyond the scope of this paper, to trace these themes through into the mythology of later periods of Indian thought. There is unquestionably prolific and rich material to use, both from textual and from modern ethnographic sources.

  But for our understanding of the Indus civilization and its religion the discussion appears to be pregnant with suggestive meaning. We are led to wonder whether the omnipresent “bull,” whether unicorn, bison or zebu, may not be the symbolic representation of the Heaven Father, just as the deity with the plant sprout emerging from head or genitals may not be the Earth Mother. How well the Vedic epithets Earth Mother (Mata bharni), mother of plants (Mate osadhñam) Aditi uttanapad (Aditi with the extended legs) and Aditi of the people (Aditi jananam) seem to fit the Indus representations! How suggestive that Sayana commenting on the word uttanapad should have linked it with vegetation and the whole creation of upward germinating plants!52

  Figure 8.7 Gaur ravaging a female on Chanhu-daro seal number 13 (after Mackay 1943)

  Allchin takes this a step further, using the work of M. Eliade concerning the widespread theme of “Heavenly Father and Earth Mother.” He seems to have given us good reason to see one possible contribution of the Indus Civilization to the concepts of heaven and earth as propounded in the Vedas.

  Summary Thoughts

  With the ethnic and cultural diversity that seems so clearly implied by the Early and Mature Harappan remains, there is still a chance that there never was a single Indus religion, but simply the sum of the belief systems of the peoples we see united within the archaeological context, as suggested in Wheeler’s use of the term Harappan religions.53 However, in the Indus Civilization, there was a high level of intense communication throughout the Greater Indus region that would have promoted a corresponding amount of change, adjustment, synthesis, and sharing of the older, diverse beliefs of the Early Harappan Stage. The emergence of an Indus religion would not be out of place, assuming the validity of these observations. It can be seen in the iconography that the religious aspect of ancient life in the Greater Indus region was exceptionally complex and that the surface has been barely scratched here.

  Some insights into the nature of Indus religion, or perhaps religions, can be gained through an examination of the various architectural remains considered in this context. They were a poorly developed part of life during the Mature Harappan.

  INDUS RELIGIOUS ARCHITECTURE

  One of the more interesting observations about the Indus Civilization is that no temples have been found. Nor is there much to be said of monumental architecture with a religious function or monumental architecture of any kind. The temples and pyramids of Dynastic Egypt and the ziggurats of Mesopotamia have no parallel in the Indus Valley. Even if a crisp definition of the Indus religious institution or institutions eludes us, it is clear that religion was there; but they expressed this institution in a totally different way from that of their neighbors to the west. Constructing these kinds of huge, physical monuments to their gods and goddesses was apparently inappropriate to their belief systems. There can be little doubt, given the large Mature Harappan urban centers, that the capability—in both engineering skills and the ability to mobilize a workforce—was there to build such edifices. That this was not done is an important element in understanding the nature of this civilization.

  Another contrast between Egypt and Mesopotamia and the Indus Civilization is the absence of palaces, the large abodes of the heads of g
overnment and their powerful associates charged with managing the fortunes of the political apparatus. It is possible that there was no single personage on whom the Indus political system focused.

  The tension and competition between the religious and political institutions of Egypt and Mesopotamia were a source of creativity. The construction of ever larger temples and ziggurats, funerary monuments, palaces, and city walls was fueled by this rivalry. Without suggesting that this competition was the only source of inspiration for the construction of such monuments, it is an important focus. The absence of such monuments in the Indus Civilization suggests that the fundamental organizing and operational principles there were different from those of Egypt and Mesopotamia. It does not necessarily mean that the Indus Civilization was any less complex or less developed in a sociocultural sense. The absence of temples and palaces and other forms of monumental architecture should not be seen as an indication that the Harappan Civilization was a lesser development, a chiefdom, for example.54 It is simply a good example of an alternative way in which a civilization, or a form of highly complex sociocultural system, has expressed itself.