Religion of the Indus Valley Civilization

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Female figurine. Mature Harappan period, 2700–2000 BCE. Indus civilization. National Museum, New Delhi.
Indus Civilization pottery figure of horned deity.[1]

The religion and belief system of the

Hindu perspective.[4]

Early and influential work in the area that set the trend for Hindu interpretations of archaeological evidence from the Harappan sites was that of

linga) and vulva (yoni); and, use of baths and water in religious practice. Marshall's interpretations have been much debated, and sometimes disputed over the following decades.[6][7][6][8] Geoffrey Samuel, writing in 2008, finds all attempts to make "positive assertions" about IVC religions as conjectural and intensely prone to personal biases — at the end of the day, scholars knew nothing about Indus Valley religions.[9]

In contrast to contemporary Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations, Indus Valley lacks any monumental palaces, even though excavated cities indicate that the society possessed the requisite engineering knowledge.[10][11] This suggests that religious ceremonies, if any, may have been largely confined to individual homes, small temples, or the open air. Several sites have been proposed by Marshall and later scholars as possibly devoted to religious purposes, but at present only the Great Bath at Mohenjo-Daro is widely thought to have been so used, as a place for ritual purification. [12][13] The funerary practices of the Harappan civilization are marked by fractional burial (in which the body is reduced to skeletal remains by exposure to the elements before final interment), and even cremation.[14][15]

Contemporary scholars (most significantly

formation of Hinduism; others remain ambivalent about these results.[16][3][17][note 1] In reviewing a book by Parpola in 2017, Wendy Doniger wrote: "I have supported the thesis that there is some form of continuity between the IVC and later Hinduism. I am now more than ever persuaded that IVC culture survived the destruction of its cities and that later Hindu imagery, having entered Hinduism after the Vedic period, may well be derived from the IVC. But I remain skeptical about Parpola's reconstruction of the IVC's religion."[22]

Background

Main article: Indus Valley Civilisation

The Indus Valley civilisation was a

Indian Republic.[24][note 3] It flourished in the basins of the Indus River, which flows through modern-day republics of India and Pakistan along a system of perennial, mostly monsoon-fed, rivers.[23][25]

In these other civilizations, large temples were a central key element of cities, and religious imagery abounded. Once the scripts had been deciphered, the names of deities and the characteristics attributed to them became fairly clear. None of this is the case for the IVC.

Seals

The imagery on the great majority of

Indus seals
centers on a single animal; generally, various attempts to attribute religious significance to these have not been widely accepted. But a minority are more complicated and prominently feature figures with a human form, and there has been much discussion of these.

Pashupati seal

Main articles: Pashupati and Pashupati seal
Pashupati seal
Mohenjo-Daro. Circa 2350-2000 BCE.[26][27]

Many discussions of religion in IVC center around the most famous of the

Indus seals; though interpretations of it have varied greatly, almost all do accord it some religious significance. The broken seal given the find number 420 shows a large central figure, either horned or wearing a horned headdress and possibly ithyphallic as well as tricephalic,[28] seated in a posture probably reminiscent of the Yogic Lotus position, surrounded by four wild animals – elephant, tiger, buffalo, and rhinoceros.[29][8] Marshall concluded the figure to be Pashupati (Lord of Animals; epithet of the Hindu deity Shiva the Rudra) and it remained a piece of unassailable evidence in favor of IVC influencing Hinduism for a few decades.[30][31] This identification (and terminology) is now rejected by modern scholars – Jonathan Mark Kenoyer notes that the figure cannot be linked to later icons without deciphering the script: even if they look apparently similar, conveyed meanings might have been radically different.[32]

In 1976, Doris Meth Srinivasan mounted the first substantial critique of Marshall's identification.[33] She accepted the figure to be indicative of cultic divinity, that people bowed towards such a posture (on other seals) but rejected the proto-Shiva identification: Pashupati of Vedic Corpus is the protector of domestic animals.[8] On comparison to facial particulars from horned masks and painted vessels, Srinivasan went on to propose the central figure to be a Buffalo-man, who had a "humanized bucranium" and whose headdress imparted powers of fertility.[8] Gavin Flood, about two decades later, noted that neither the Lotus position nor the anthropomorphic form of the central figure was deducible to any certainty.[34] Alf Hiltebeitel rejects a proto-Shiva identification; he supports Srinivasan's thesis with additional arguments, and hypothesize the Buffalo-man to have formed the legend of Mahishasura.[35][note 4] Gregory L. Possehl concluded that while it would be appropriate to recognise the figure as a deity, its association with the water buffalo, and its posture as one of ritual discipline, regarding it as a proto-Shiva would be going too far.[21]

Triangular prism sealing, depicting a male cult figure seated in a yogic posture on a throne, a bull-like animal, and five characters in the Indus script. From Mohenjo-daro, Mature Harrapean period, c. 2600-1900 BC. Ashmolean Museum.[37]

Some scholars of Yoga – Karel Werner, Thomas McEvilley et al – have since used it to trace back the roots of Yoga to IVC. However, Geoffrey Samuel, writing in 2008, rejects Marshall's theory as mere anachronistic speculation and goes on to reject that yoga has its roots in IVC, as does Andrea R. Jain (2016) in Selling Yoga.[9] Paleontologist-cum-Indologist Alexandra Van Der Geer, in her 2008 survey of Indian mammals in art, comments the figure to remain "unknown" until the script is deciphered.[38] Samuel as well as Wendy Doniger had taken a similar stance.[9][39] Kenoyer (as well as Michael Witzel) now consider the image to be an instance of Lord of the Beasts found in Eurasian neolithic mythology or the widespread motif of the Master of Animals found in ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean art, and the many other traditions of horned deities.[32][40][note 5]

Procession seal

pipal tree with one-horned attendants and bull figure. 2000-1900 BCE. Islamabad Museum.[42][43][44][45]

Another seal from Mohenjo-daro (Find no. 420, now Islamabad Museum, 50.295), also called the "sacrifice" seal, of a type with a few examples found, is generally agreed to show a religious ritual of some kind, though readings of the imagery and interpretations of the scene vary considerably.[46][47] It shows signs of wear from heavy usage. At top right, a figure with large horns and bangles on both arms stands in a pipal tree; it is generally agreed this represents a deity. Another figure kneels on one knee in front of this, also shown as horned and perhaps with plumes in a headdress. This is interpreted as a worshipper, perhaps a priest. Beside this figure there is what may be "a human head with hair tied in a bun", resting on a stool. Behind this a large horned animal, usually agreed to be a ram, perhaps with a human head, completes the top tier of the images.[46][48]

In a lower tier, seven more or less identical figures, shown in a line in right-facing profile (on the seal, so left-facing on impressions), wear plumed headdresses, bangles, and dresses falling to around knee-level. What seems to be their hair is tied in a braid and comes down to waist level. Their gender is unclear, though they are often thought to be female. Groups of seven figures are seen in other pieces,[49] and a number of IVC seals show a variety of trees, that may have a religious significance, and do so in later Hinduism – banyan, pipal, and acacia.[46][50]

Swastika seals

The swastika, which is seen on artifacts from the Indus Valley civilization, is an important symbol in Indian religions
Main article: Swastika

The swastika is a symbol sacred to multiple Indian religions – Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.[51] Since the icon has been located in IVC artifacts, a continuum has been posited by a few scholars but it is a fringe view – Possehl finds such suppositions to be not "sound".[52][21] Jonathan Mark Kenoyer notes that these artifacts were utilized by political and religious leaders of the subcontinent to claim ties of Hinduism with IVC.[53]

IVC Swastikas were primarily engraved in button (and square) seals.[51][54] Manabu Koiso and other scholars classify the signs as "geometric motifs"[note 6]; these types became extremely predominant at the end of the Mature Harappan Phase and the relative sizing of these seals might have reflected socio-economic, political, and religious hierarchy.[54][55][56] E. C. L. During Caspers found the Swastika Seals to have served "mercantile purposes" in certain trade routes; Gregory Possehl has separately documented relevant trade-circulation.[57] Kenoyer notes the IVC Swastika to be an abstract "decorative motif" that might have reflected contemporary ideology; he also posits a possible usage in trade – the seals either denoted the owners involved in a commercial transaction or were proto-bureaucratic certifications.[53][52][50]

Overall, the precise purpose of these seals in the IVC continues to remain inconclusive but it is unlikely that they served any religio-ritualistic purpose.[52][55] Also, the swastika had developed in multiple cultures of the world contemporaneous to or even pre-dating the IVC.[51][52] Since the swastika has been recorded in early Andronovo culture, the roots of the Hindu swastika might easily lie in the Indo-Aryan migrations.[58]

Other peculiar seals

Kalibangan cylinder seal, with horned human-tiger, and two nude men fighting over a woman. Indus Valley Civilization.[59]

Most Indus seals depict a single animal, without obvious narrative meaning. Several are more complex, with possible symbolic designs, as well as human or semi-human figures in action.

Master of animals.[62][63]

The

Ishtar.[59]

  • Unicorns emerging from a tree trunk. Mohenjo-daro.
    Unicorns emerging from a tree trunk. Mohenjo-daro.
  • Unicorn emerging from a star-shaped object. Mohenjo-daro.
    Unicorn emerging from a star-shaped object. Mohenjo-daro.
  • Bull-man or bull-woman fighting a horned beast.[60][61]
    Bull-man or bull-woman fighting a horned beast.[60][61]
  • Man in a tree seating on a branch, while a tiger looks up at him. Mohenjo-daro.
    Man in a tree seating on a branch, while a tiger looks up at him. Mohenjo-daro.
  • Man holding tigers. Mohenjo-daro.[62][63]
    Man holding tigers. Mohenjo-daro.[62][63]
  • Mohenjo-daro three-faced seal, with swastika (top) and standing deity in pipal tree (bottom).[64]
    Mohenjo-daro three-faced seal, with swastika (top) and standing deity in pipal tree (bottom).[64]

Sculptures

Terracotta figurines

Terracotta figurines excavated from Indus Valley Civilization.[26][27]

A common class of terracotta statuettes have been identified as figurines of a "

Grāmadevatā tradition, finds pre-Hindu roots but declines to explicitly identify it with IVC.[70] Kenower remains ambiguous — the figurines might have been worshipers or deities — and does not mention of any links with Shaktism.[50] Yuko Yukochi, in her "landmark publication" on Shaktism,[71] refuses to discuss IVC influences — the undeciphered script did not allow integrating the archeological with the literary.[72]

Peter Ucko had challenged the very identification as early as 1967 but failed to make any noticeable dent.[66] In the last three decades, the identification has been increasingly rejected by a newer generation of scholars — Sharri Clark, Ardeleanu-Jansen, Ajay Pratap, P.V. Pathak, and others.[66][67] In 2007, Gregory Possehl found the evidence in favor of such an identification to be "not particularly robust".[21] Shereen Ratnagar (2016) rejects the identification, as being based on flimsy evidence.[65] As does Doniger.[19] Clark, in what has been described as a ground-breaking work on terracotta figurines of Harappa,[73] emphatically rejects that there exists any bases for the Mother Goddess identification or hypothesizing a continuance into Hinduism.[74]

  • Harappan mask of a bearded horned deity, National Museum, Delhi.[75][76]
    Harappan mask of a bearded horned deity, National Museum, Delhi.[75][76]
  • Harappan seated and praying figurines, National Museum, Delhi.[77]
    Harappan seated and praying figurines, National Museum, Delhi.[77]

Priest King

The so-called Priest-King
Main article: Priest-King (sculpture)

This, though broken off at the bottom, is agreed to be the best of a handful of small stone sculptures of male figures found at Mohenjo-daro. Mackay, the archaeologist leading the excavations at the site when the piece was found, thought the statuette might represent a "priest".[78] John Marshall agreed and regarded it as possibly a "king-priest", but it appears to have been his successor, Sir Mortimer Wheeler, who was the first to use the designation of Priest-King in support of his proposition that the urban complexities had to necessarily result from a ruling class.[78][79][80][note 7] One of the "seven principal pieces of human sculpture from Mohenjo-daro",[81] Parpola has even hypothesized that it resembles later Indian traditions of priesthood.[3]

The terminology is not preferred in modern scholarship

Oxus river.[80][86]

Miscellaneous

A broken stone sculpture — after reconstruction of missing limbs — has been proposed to assume a dancer's pose, thus being evocative of Nataraja.[33] Another broken clay figurine has female breasts and male genitals, bearing some similarities with Ardhanarishvara.[33]

Architecture

Buildings

Great Bath, Mohenjo-daro, found in 1926. Behind is the later Buddhist stupa
, whose base has not been excavated.

Kenower notes that certain large structures might have been used as temples but their precise function cannot be determined; Possehl asserts there is a total absence of temples.[50][21] Hiltebeitel and a few other scholars suggest that the elevated citadel complex might have served sacred functions — Possehl rejected such arguments.[17][21]

Great Bath: Water and Cleanliness

Main article:
Great Bath, Mohenjo-daro

Some scholars, deriving from Marshall, propose the Great Bath of Mohenjo-daro to be a forerunner of ritual bathing, central to Hinduism.[87][17][17] Doniger rejects the hypotheses; to her, the Great Bath is only suggestive of Harappans having a propensity for water/bath.[19] Possehl finds Marshall's theory of a ritual purpose to be convincing.[21]

Elaborate sewage networks suggest to Hiltebeitel and Parpola an excessive concern with personal cleanliness, which is correlated to the development of caste-pollution theories in Hinduism.[17][19]

Stones

Yonis

A hypothetical lingam from Mohenjo Daro

Marshall proposed certain ovular limestone stones to be the symbolic representation of yonis, thus drawing links to the cult of phallic worship in Hinduism.[88][8] Mackay, in his summary reports, rejected Marshall's view: they were architectural stones, probably from a stone pillar.[88][8] Despite this, Marshall's hypothesis went on to propagate in mainstream scholarship notwithstanding multiple critiques.[17] Modern scholars have come to largely reject the hypothesis.[89]

George F. Dales chose to outright reject the hypothesis about sexual aspects in Harappan religion — if such stones served cultic functions, they would be spread over all Harappan sites and Marshall's findings were untenable on an overall review of excavation finds — and Srinivasan as well as Asko Parpola agreed with his specific rebuttals; yet in light of other evidence, Parpola cautioned against ruling out Marshall's broader hypothesis in totality.[88][8] Later excavations have since vindicated Mackay's assumptions.[87][89] Dilip Chakrabarti continue to support Marshall's identification.[90]

Lingams

To a similar effect, Marshall argued certain cone/dome-shaped stone-pieces to be abstract representations of lingams, as seen in modern-day Hinduism.[8] Despite significant critiques, Marshall's view had propagated into scholarship.[8]

H. D. Sankalia rejected these identifications, too; he raised the issue of these stones being typically found in streets and drains, which ought not house objects with a sacred connotation.[8] Srinivasan rejected Marshall's arguments, as well: (a) the more old a linga was, the more realistic (and non-abstract) was its appearance thus contradicting presentation expected from Harappan era, and (b) the sculpts of ancient lingams are found in the Brahminical heartland of India but not in IVC/post-IVC sites.[8]

Mesopotamian parallels

"Master of Animals" and
"Bull-man fighting beast"
Indus Valley civilization
seal.
See also: Indus–Mesopotamia relations

Various authors have described parallels between the religious iconography of Mesopotamia and the depictions on the seals of the Indus Valley civilizations.[92]

Gilgamesh epic, suggesting that "some aspects of Mesopotamian religion and ideology would have been accepted at face value is a reasonable notion".[62] Some Indus seals have a "Gilgamesh" motif of a man fighting two lions, well known in West Asia as the Master of Animals motif (2500-1500 BCE).[62][63][93]

Several Indus Valley seals also show a fighting scene between a tiger-like beast and a man with horns, hooves and a tail, who has been compared to the Mesopotamian bull-man Enkidu, also a partner of Gilgamesh, and suggests a transmission of Mesopotamian mythology.[60][94][61]

Other seals of the Indus Valley Civilization, which appear to depict horned deities in ceremonial scenes, seem to have iconographical parallels in the horned deities, priest and royal figures of Mesopotamia, who used to wear horned crowns.[95][44][45]

These shared designs may point to a "common stratum of tradition between Mesopotamia and India".[96][97]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Reviews of Parpola's works have been fairly critical.[18][19][20][21]
    This notion of IVC-traces, says Hiltebeitel, is deemed as the "substratum theory" by scholars in opposition.[17] Compare linear versus synthetic development in the origins of yoga.
  2. ^ Wright: "Mesopotamia and Egypt ... co-existed with the Indus civilization during its fluorescence between 2600 and 1900 BC."[23]
  3. ^ Wright: "The Indus civilization is one of three in the 'Ancient East' that, along with Mesopotamia and Pharaonic Egypt, was a cradle of early civilization in the Old World (Childe, 1950). Mesopotamia and Egypt were longer-lived, but coexisted with the Indus civilization during its fluorescence between 2600 and 1900 B.C. Of the three, the Indus was the most expansive, extending from today’s northeast Afghanistan to Pakistan and India."[24]
  4. ^ Mahishasura is a Sanskrit word composed of Mahisha meaning buffalo and asura meaning demon, thus meaning Buffalo Demon. Mahishasura had gained the boon that no man could kill him. In the battles between the Devas and the demons (asuras), the Devas, led by Indra, were defeated by Mahishasura. Subjected to defeat, the Devas assembled in the mountains where their combined divine energies coalesced into Goddess Durga. The newborn Durga led a battle against Mahishasura, riding a lion, and killed him. Thereafter, she was named Mahishasuramardini, meaning The Killer of Mahishasura.[36]
  5. ^ Witzel: "It is known from internal evidence that the Vedic texts were orally composed in northern India, at first in the Greater Punjab and later on also in more eastern areas, including northern Bihar, between ca. 1500 BCE and ca. 500–400 BCE. The oldest text, the Rgveda, must have been more or less contemporary with the Mitanni texts of northern Syria/Iraq (1450–1350 BCE); ..." (p. 70) "a Vedic connection of the so-called Siva Pasupati found on some Harappa seals (D. Srinivasan 1984) cannot be established; this mythological concept is due, rather, to common Eurasian ideas of the “Lord of the Animals” who is already worshipped by many Neolithic hunting societies."[41]
  6. ^ Other "geometric motifs" include concentric circles, knots, and stars.
  7. ^ The absence of palatial structures meant that typical kings were not a good fit. So, the idea of a military-theocratic state was borrowed from Mesopotamia.
  8. ^ For an example, see Hermann Kulke and Dietmar Rothermund referring to the statuette as "so-called Priest King" in the latest edition of their classic introductory text for undergraduates, A History of India.

References

  1. ^ Mackay, Ernest (1935). Indus civilisation. p. Plate J.
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  3. ^ a b c Parpola 2015.
  4. ^ Wright 2009, pp. 281–282.
  5. ^ Ratnagar 2004.
  6. ^ a b Marshall 1931, pp. 48–78.
  7. ^ Possehl 2002, pp. 141–156.
  8. ^
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  10. ^ Possehl 2002, p. 18.
  11. ^ Thapar 2004, p. 85.
  12. ^ Possehl 2002, pp. 141–145.
  13. ^ McIntosh 2008, pp. 275–277, 292.
  14. ^ Possehl 2002, pp. 152, 157–176.
  15. ^ McIntosh 2008, pp. 293–299.
  16. ^ Flood 1996, p. 24-30, 50.
  17. ^ a b c d e f g h Hiltebeitel 1989.
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  23. ^ a b c Wright 2009, p. 1.
  24. ^ a b Wright 2009.
  25. ^ Giosan et al. 2012.
  26. ^
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  27. ^ a b Mackay, Ernest (1935). Indus civilization. p. Plate I.
  28. ^ Kenoyer, Jonathan Mark. Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1998.
  29. ^ For a drawing of the seal see Figure 1 in: Flood (1996), p. 29.
  30. ^ Sullivan 1964.
  31. ^ Steven Rosen; Graham M. Schweig (2006). Essential Hinduism. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 45.
  32. ^ a b Kenoyer, Jonathan Mark (2010). "Master of Animals and Animal Masters in the Iconography of the Indus Tradition". In Counts, Derek B.; Arnold, Bettina (eds.). The Master of Animals in Old World Iconography. Archaeolingua Alapítvány. p. 50.
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  41. ^ Witzel 2008, pp. 90.
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  48. ^ Aruz, 403; Harappa.com, with good photo; Possehl (2002), 145-146
  49. ^ Aruz, 403; Possehl (2002), 145-146
  50. ^ a b c d Kenower, Jonathan Mark (2006). "Cultures and Societies of the Indus Tradition". In Thapar, Romila (ed.). Historical Roots in the Making of the 'Aryan'. National Book Trust.
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  63. ^ Mackay, E. J. H. (1937). Further excavations at mohenjo-daro-vol.ii. p. Plate LXXXII.
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  68. ^ Kinsley(a), p. 217.
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  83. ^ Possehl, 115 (quoted); Aruz, 385; Singh (2008), 178
  84. ^ Kenoyer 2014, p. 424,b "The most famous of these stone figures was originally referred to as the “Priest-King” (Fig. 1.25.8) based on similar images from Mesopotamia, but there is no way to confirm this identification without the aid of written texts."
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