The Indus Civilization
Page 33
There is an interesting reversal of the proportion of female to male figurines. From Period IV to the beginning of Period VII the emphasis is on female features, large, prominent breasts, and broad hips. Male figurines begin to be found early in Period VII: Their chests are flat, the genitals are represented, arms and legs are stiffly held. But, by VIID, the proportion of female to male figurines is reversed, the latter then accounting for up to 85 percent of the human representations.6
In a neolithic context, the idea of a fertility goddess is . . . (not) improbable in a society where reproduction plays an all important role. . . . As in many other developing cultures, this preoccupation with fertility is expressed in the exaggerated pelvis of the figurines, which results in their typical biconic shape. From Period IV onwards . . . certain features are emphasized to draw attention to the idea of fertility, e.g. broad hips, voluptuous bosoms, and motherhood. . . . [But, by the end of Period VII] male figures are shown with babies in their arms, while females lack any feature which could be related to the idea of fertility.7
Figure 10.6 Male figurine holding a baby from Mehrgarh VII (after Jarrige, Jarrige, Meadow, and Quivron 1995)
This may well reflect important changes in gender-based roles in the Early Harappan and the Early Harappan-Mature Harappan Transition. Just what is heralded here, and what it has to do with the rise of the Indus Civilization, is not quite clear. But Jarrige’s data set seems to tell us that there are interesting things to be known.
THE SOCIOCULTURAL FUNCTIONING OF THE FIGURINES
It is not known what these figurines were used for. Jarrige notes that they are most frequently found broken, even smashed, sometimes burnt, in secondary trash deposits. Once they were used, for whatever purpose, their disposition does not seem to have been a concern to the people of Mehrgarh. Archaeologists have a long history of thinking of figurines such as this in rather simplistic ways—mother goddesses, Venus figurines, and other thoughts along those lines. In our own culture this would be akin to thinking of every Barbie doll as a representation of a goddess, an object of ritual and religious adoration. Figurines without gender markings, some of which look quite male, are often classed as “female” based on the theory that there was a universal “Neolithic mother goddess cult” in Europe and Asia. This model has serious limitations.
The ethnographic record, and our own life experience, suggests that some figurines in some cultures were toys or playthings, made for the kids and entertainment. On the other hand, many cultures use facsimiles of humans, animals, and plants in their ritual lives, as religious, magical, and mythical representations. They provide a focus for consciousness during worship and can be objects for sympathetic magic. Some people believe that such physical objects become the gods, not just representations of them. They might represent humans and animals as cultural “ideals,” models for young and old to try to emulate.
There is then a range of activities or representations for figurines—from gods to toys. In some cultures they could be both simultaneously. Or they might be gods at some point, and once used, could be recycled into the toy arena, perhaps to be resuscitated to divinity by the uttering of a culturally loaded incantation. In some cultures they might be neither, as in objects used for storytelling or as mnemonic devices. There are many other mixings and matchings within this cultural arena also possible. The archaeologist should therefore be conscious of the fact that human figurines of the type found at sites of the Indus Age should not be thought of simply as either “religious” or “toys.” Some of the figurines might serve one purpose, and others, another.
There is little to go on to determine what the inhabitants of Mehrgarh used their “little women” for, especially before Period VII; but two or three points tip the scales slightly in one direction. Prior to Period VII, when gender is indicated, it is wholly in terms of females. It is not possible to say that no male figurines were made, but of those found, none was demonstrably male. When gender was shown, it represents the feminine, but in a special way. The pubic region does not receive attention in these figurines; it is the breasts and hips that mark the women.
When the Mehrgarh figurines carry something, it is a small human. It is not a rabbit, or a dog, or a sheaf of grain; it is a human infant. This establishes a connection to the gender markers and fertility. It should be emphasized that it is a tentative connection, but a connection, nonetheless. This seems to indicate that the figurines were meant to represent human fertility and reproduction, possibly “motherhood,” in some abstract sense.
If this hypothesis is correct, why did some of the inhabitants of Mehrgarh choose to represent motherhood? For a start, human fertility is an important part of survival. Representing a culturally “ideal” physical type for reproduction offers a model to everyone. In this sense, the Mehrgarh figurines do share something with the Barbie dolls of American culture. They are, after all, not just toys, since they also represent a kind of ideal cultural type. The Barbie doll is slim, blond, blue-eyed—an attractive young woman to be admired, even imitated. At Mehrgarh the ideal type seems to have been quite different. These women had hips built for childbearing and breasts to feed the young, to make them strong, healthy members of society. Rather than Barbie (the American ideal), the female figurines of early Mehrgarh are reproducers (the Indus Age ideal). The figurines may have also represented a kind of sympathetic magic or wish fulfillment. By creating a figurine of a mother and a baby, the people of the Indus Age might have believed this could bring motherhood to someone.
Thus, the balance of evaluation of the Mehrgarh human figurines tips slightly toward the concept of motherhood, fertility, reproduction. It does not seem to favor religion, ritual, and goddesses quite as much; although there can be elements of magic and wish fulfillment.
There is an important change at Mehrgarh VIII also apparent at neighboring Nausharo I. The emergence of males and males holding human infants suggests a shift in society. This change is doubly interesting since it seems to come within the Transitional Stage, when South Asian urbanization was in the making. The only coherent thought about what might have been going on at Mehrgarh—Nausharo is something that parallels our own society in recent years. That is, increased sharing of the birthing experience and a greater involvement of males in the parenting process. Today, this has been stimulated in part by the increased involvement of women in careers outside the household. It is certain that the ancient Indian experience and that of modern America were very different, but it could be that during the Transitional Stage there were forces at work in the society of Mehrgarh—Nausharo that brought males closer to the process of creating and raising children.
Jarrige has emphasized the cultural continuity between the figurines of the Transitional Stage at Mehrgarh-Nausharo and those of the Indus Civilization: “These figurines, recovered principally from the pre-Indus period levels at Nausharo, already incorporate in embryonic form all the elements of the Indus Civilization figurines with their elaborate hairstyles, loin cloths and applied ornaments .”8
FIGURINES OF THE INDUS CIVILIZATION
Indus figurines are significantly more varied than those of Mehrgarh. A quick scan of the site reports from Mohenjo-daro and Harappa substantiates this observation. But this diversity is rooted in the Transitional Stage and even earlier.
The gender of the human figurines from Indus sites is not always obvious. The presence of a prominent beard helps to distinguish males from females. Beards are also often indicated on the steatite and limestone sculpture from Mohenjo-daro (figure 6.6). Male genitalia are also commonly built into the figurines. Some of these men appear to be nude, but wear hats and jewelry (figure 10.7). Beardless figurines with very prominent breasts seem to represent females. But males can have indications of breasts, too (figure 10.8). It seems that the figurine makers of Mohenjo-daro sometimes chose to show breasts in ways that lead the modern observer to wonder which sex they were attempting to portray. For example, the breasts on the bronze dancing girl from
HR Area at Mohenjodaro are not particularly prominent, but the figurine is definitely that of a female (see figure 6.5).
The ambiguity of gender markers in the figurines brings up the distinct possibility that some Indus figurines may represent beings that were both male and female, or androgynous. Or the figures may represent possibly a male or female who portrayed themselves as the opposite sex (as in figure 10.8). The figurines portraying individuals combining two sexual markers may not represent the realities of Indus life, although cross-dressing is a common enough feature of cultures around the world. Sexual ambiguity is very much a part of Hinduism, as in one of the aspects of Siva Ardhanarisvara, half-male, half-female.
Figure 10.7 Figurine of a naked man in a hat (after Marshall 1931i)
While female breasts are a prominent feature in the corpus of Indus figurines, portrayal of the female pubic region is not. The only figurine with clear representation of this gender marker is the superb copper—bronze dancing girl. On the other hand, male genitalia are commonly shown. It seems possible that the display of male genitalia for the Indus peoples was mature, even dignified—simply a nude male, as in the red jasper torso from Harappa (figure 6.1).
Figure 10.8 Representation of a possible androgen from Mohenjo-daro (after Mackay 1937—38)
Women carrying children are a feature of the figurines at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa.9 Mackay lists four examples from his excavations (figure 10.9). This illustration may well show the suckling child at a woman’s breast. None of the sources mentions males holding children at either site.
A real treasure of a figurine, with clear female gender markings, is the woman either kneading bread or grinding grain (figure 10.10). She comes from Mound F at Harappa, where the Granary is located. By inspecting the original, Vats believed that she is kneading bread.10 This is good evidence for the involvement of women in food preparation. We do not know if males also kneaded bread, but this shows that women did it. It is also interesting to see that the figurine is all dressed up, with the hair fan, panniers, and head cone. Could this portrayal of Indus daily life show that at least some of the Indus women actually dressed this way?
EVIDENCE OF GENDER FROM INDUS CEMETERIES
Figure 10.9 Woman holding a child (after Mackay 1937—38)
The cemeteries at Lothal and Harappa have information on gender. Recall the series of double burials at Lothal discussed earlier. There is some disagreement about the sex of the skeletons in the three joint burials. Sarkar says that one of them has two males and that two of them have a male and another individual of indeterminate sex, or possibly a male.11 Kennedy has also examined this skeletal series and reports that, in two cases, these double inter-ments each contained one male and one female skeleton, while the third consisted of two males.12 Although there is a difference of opinion here, it does seem that at least one of these joint burials has two males, and it is wise to rely on the careful work of Kennedy.
Figure 10.10 Figurine from Harappa of a woman kneading bread or grinding grain (after Vats 1941)
CONCLUSION
While this small foray into gender in the Indus Age has a severely limited scope, it does demonstrate that there are data on this aspect of life in ancient South Asia. Much more productive research could be done on the figurines in terms of gender issues as well as the ethnic diversity that dress and hair treatment seems to indicate. The data that the physical anthropologists bring forward from analysis of the interments, especially at Harappa, are extraordinarily promising, and archaeologists working on the Indus Civilization must devote attention to the discovery of more cemeteries, using subsurface prospecting and other techniques.
NOTES
1 Jarrige 1991.
2 Jarrige et al. 1995.
3 Jarrige 1991: 89.
4 Jarrige 1991: 90.
5 Jarrige 1991: 91—92.
6 Jarrige 1991: 92.
7 Jarrige 1991: 91—92.
8 Jarrige 1991: 92.
9 Marshall 1931i: pl. XCV, no. 20; Vats 1940: pl. LXXVII, no. 31.
10 Vats 1940: 296.
11 Sarkar 1985.
12 Kennedy and Caldwell 1984: table I.
CHAPTER 11
Mohenjo-daro
INTRODUCTION
Mohenjo-daro is arguably the most impressive, best-preserved Bronze Age city in the world (see figure 5.1). The city was constructed of baked brick, and when it was abandoned, no widespread destruction took place there. It was simply left to deteriorate.
I have come to think of Mohenjo-daro as a kind of ideological center of the Indus Civilization. This is because the Indus ideology seems to be best, and most expansively, expressed within its urban landscape. This city was probably founded on virgin soil, as a “new city,” a kind of ancient “Alexandria,” thus expressing both Indus nihilism and the urban nature of the Indus ideology. Wasserluxus is wonderfully displayed there, and in a diversity of ways. It was also, at least in its later years, a place of technological vigor and innovation.
The name of the city is derived from the Sindhi language and is commonly written “Mohenjo-daro.” Some claim that this implies a connection to Mohan, the Hindu divinity, one of the avatars of Krishna.1 Sorley believes that it should be written “Muyan-jo-Daro” or “Moenjo-Daro,” moen or muyan being the inflected, objective plurals of the past participles of the verb maran, “to die.” Muo, the singular form, means “the dead man.” Daro is the Sindhi word for “mound” or “heap.” The Sindhis clearly intend to convey “Mound of the Dead Men” when they refer to the ancient city, and this is “Moenjo-daro” in their language.
The revised spelling of Mohenjo-daro as “Moenjo-daro” is widespread and perfectly appropriate. I happen to like the older spelling, one that has been recognized as a standard since at least 1931, when Marshall’s Mohenjo-daro and the Indus Civilization appeared, especially since there is no evidence that anyone, other than Sorley, has made a connection to Mohan.
GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE SITE
The layout of Mohenjo-daro is quite distinctive. There is a high mound to the west that is roughly 400 meters by 200 meters (8 hectares) in size. This mound has had several names. Marshall refers to it as the “Stupa Mound.” It was Wheeler’s “Citadel.” In The Indus Civilization it is the “Mound of the Great Bath.” This artificial daro is separated from the Lower Town to the east by open space, which excavation and boring have shown to have been unoccupied. The Lower Town at Mohenjo-daro measured from the ground plans using the contour line 160 feet above mean sea level as the limit of the mounds is approximately 1,100 by 650 meters, or 71.50 hectares.2
Some archaeologists believe that Mohenjo-daro was larger than the settlement that can be seen above ground today. Subsurface prospecting has detected remains in at least two, possibly three, places (figure 11.1). One of them is a large area, two or three times the size of the city itself, located a little over a kilometer south of the ancient city where the remains of brick buildings and pottery can be detected to a depth of 18.3 meters. Two other areas were discovered in 1987 and 1988 just below ground surface, to the east of the Lower Town, on the river side of the city. These are in the vicinity of “Spur Number 3,” a bund intended to protect the site from floods (figure 11.2).3 Well-preserved building foundations of baked brick associated with Indus pottery and square stamp seals were found there. Finally, Dikshit noticed Indus pottery and baked bricks 1.5 kilometers southwest of the Mound of the Great Bath, as well as about a kilometer from Mohenjo-daro on the road to the village of Hasanwahan.4 Thus, there are Mature Harappan remains around Mohenjo-daro, but these seem to be separate from the mounded area we see today. The size of Mohenjo-daro is therefore given here as 100 hectares, with the thought (as elsewhere in this book) that it will be revised, if new facts warrant a change.
THE MOUND OF THE GREAT BATH
The Mound of the Great Bath is an artificial daro. Marshall put in a deep trench to the north of the stupa. From this work, we learn that there were signs of Indus people at or near the or
iginal plain level.5 These would seem to date from the very earliest years of the Indus Civilization or the Early Harappan—Mature Harappan Transition. Above this was fill of earth and broken bricks to the level of the stupa, providing the people of Mohenjo-daro with a high platform on which to place their special buildings, among them the Great Bath and Warehouse. The platform was held in place, and erosion checked, by stout retaining walls of baked brick built all around it. This gave the Mound of the Great Bath the appearance of a “citadel,” but that was not its function. The walls around the Mound of the Great Bath were to hold the earthen filling in place, not protect priest-kings.
Figure 11.1 Mohenjo-daro and sites around it (after van Lohuizen-de Leeuw 1974)