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Studies in Indian Art c8: II. Indus Valley Art

Studies in Indian Art c8

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II. Indus Valley Art

4. Indus Valley Art

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The earliest material of Indian art is found in the Indus Valley. This forms a part of a civilisation extending from the valley of the Sarasvati-Sutlej, along the Indus, upto Saurashtra. It was an extension of over fifteen hundred miles with about a hundred sites clustered in three chief sectors, with a uniform culture from the point of view of religion, life and arts. This is termed proto-historic, coming after the pre-historic ages as known under palæolithic, microlithic and neolithic with their respective stone tool industries mostly in the principal river valleys of the Deccan, south of the Vindhyas. The proto-historic phase was at one time assigned to the millennium, C. 3500-2500B.C., but now generally shifted to C. 2500-1500 B.C. as inclining towards a relationship with historical beginnings of early India. The Indus Valley people have much greater importance as holding the key to the patterns of Indian civilisation than perhaps has been realised upto now. In religion and art many a form of Indian culture owes their origin to them. Those people seem to be intensely creative, capable of evolving a highly civilised urban life in which both beauty and order occupied a prime place. Almost one third of India covering about half a million square miles stretching from Rupar in Ambala District to Bhagatrao on the Kim river (midway between the Narbda and Tapti) the southernmost settlement known so far, was the arena of origin and growth of the Indus Valley civilisation. Wheeler rightly calls it the most extensive pre-classical civilisation.

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The sites of this culture are dispersed along three routes, viz. Dvārāvati-Ānarta route, Sind route and Sarasvati route. There were both villages and big towns of which Harappa¹ on the Ravi was the capital of the Sarasvati-Parushṇi province in the north, and Mohenjodaro on the Indus, in the centre, was the capital of the other province of an equal size. These two capital-towns were fortified citadels, each of about three miles perimeter, and were the seats of strong monarchy, feeling secured within defence walls and leading a life of luxury with rich nobles and middle men fed by a toiling population. The number of richmen's houses and the two granaries, one at Mohenjodaro inside the citadel and the other at Harappa out side it with workmen's quarters, point to the pattern of life lived there. Along the banks of the Sarasvati about 25 Harappan sites have been found. It seems that their penetration reached up to the fringe of the Gangatic basin as shown by the Harappan site of Ukhlina, 19 miles west of Meerut. In the Sind sector the site of Mohenjodaro is just towards the west of the Indus. Eighty miles below on the east of the Indus is Chanhudaro. On the west the farthest site is Sutkagendor near the coast in Baluchistan.

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¹ Harappa has been rightly identified with Hariyūpīyā, RV. VI. 27.5.

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The Indus people were using both land and sea routes as shown by the latest discovery of their sites. There was a land route starting from Dvārāvati and going through Hālar and Ānarta between the Sarasvatī and the Māhī touched Nagarī (ancient Madhyamikā near Chittor) and through the desert of south Rajasthan connected with the Indus at a point by the Mīrpurkhas Stūpa of later times. On this route in the desert is the Harappan site of Āhar. It is expected that such remains may be exposed at Nagarī itself¹. The Harappan also took advantage of the sea-route lying at their feet along the eight hundred miles of coast line. In Saurāṣṭra the site of Lothal at the head of the Gulf of Cambay in Ahmedabad District was a sea-port with a dock-yard. Other sites are Rangpur (Dist. Jhālāwar, Saurāṣṭra, twenty miles to the south-east of Līmbḍī), Gop and Somnath, the two settlements of Mehgam on the right bank and Telod on the left of Narbada estuary and the third one of Bhagatrao, carry the migration of these pople 500 miles south-east of Mohenjodaro, a distance equal to the north-east arm upto Harappa.

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¹ For the Dvārāvatī-Ānarta-Sauvīra-Sarasvatī route see Petavatthu commentary Paramattha-Dīpanī, II.9.1,p.84; Bhāgavata, I.10, 34-35 and X.71. 21-22.

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The Indus Valley people seem to have exploited to the utmost the possibilities of these twofold approaches by land and sea. In India they obtained the yellow stone from Jaisalmer; the fine green amazonite not from the Nilgiries as was once thought but from the Hirapur plateau north of Ahmedabad (as pointed out by Wheeler); amethyst from the Deccan trap; copper from Khetri mines in Rajasthan; tin for making bronze from Hazaribag, the only Indian source with extant old workings. Lapis lazuli used by them had its source in Badakhshan mines in north-east Afghanistan; turquoise in Khorasan in north-eastern Persia; and jadeite (hard jade) in the Pamirs and eastern Turkistan. The supply of lime-stone for carving images etc. was obtained from Sukkur; gypsum for making lime-mortar from the Kirthar hills; and marble from Rajputana. Gold used for ornaments, fillets and beads came probably from South India, or in the form of washed gold from Central Asia through trade channels. Silver used for vessels and ornaments may have been obtained from Afghanistan and Persia where it is seperated from lead. They were thus in contact with south India, east India, Rajputana, Gujrat, and western Afghanistan through the Bolan Pass, and with Persia through the Makran desert in Baluchistan. Their contact with Mesopotamia is proved by the discovery of seals with pictographic script at Ur, Kish, Susa, Lagash and Tell Asmar, together with several art motifs, as knobbed pottery, vessels with mat-pattern, small boxes with compartments, and some special kinds of beads, etc.

Town Planning and Architecture

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Harappa and Mohenjodaro are brick-built capital cities with rampart walls and gateways. The explored remains at both places demonstrate the acropolis to be a parallelogram of 400—500 yds. north-south by 200—300 yds. east-west. The remarkable thing is the defence wall, 45 ft. wide at Harappa tapering upwards and built of mud bricks with a revetment of baked bricks 4 ft. wide on the outside. The rampart wall had gateways of which the one on the west was explored revealing a re-entrant side and a system of guard-rooms. The wall was punctuated at frequent intervals by bastions or towers projecting in some cases higher than the wall. In the description of the planning of historical towns the defence wall appears as a regular feature raised on wide foundations (वप्रस्योपरि प्राकारम्) and both mud-brick ramparts (पांसु प्राकार) and baked brick walls (इष्टका प्राकार) are mentioned. The later texts also make mention of a surrounding moat (परिखा) but the excavations at Harappa and Mohenjodaro have not yet reported the presence of such an important feature, which seems to have been absent owing to the proximity of the rivers.

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The town inside the citadel was divided by broad streets into a grid system of which the regularity is amazing and found nowhere else in the ancient world, for example at Ur where the streets are winding like village lanes. The streets in the Indus Valley cut at right angles running east-west and north-south dividing the city into blocks. A very noteworthy feature is that this regularity of plan conceived at the outset was maintained with great fidelity even later, which shows that a civic authority enforced strictly its building laws and that the people on their part seem to have offered willing obedience to both town-planning and municipal sanitation. There were no encroachments on public roads by the builders of houses and subsequent structures were raised on earlier foundations well observing the original alignment. This entracts admiration at least for the early settlers who were more prosperous, better organised and more mindful of the laws than those who came later.

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The main street at Mohenjodaro cleared over half a mile is 33 ft. wide permitting several rows of wheeled carriages to pass up and by down. It is intersected by some similar broad streets, dividing the city into blocks, and by roads nine to twelve feet in width, and these again by lanes and alleys four feet upwards. None of the streets was paved with bricks. The height of brick-built walls as preserved along the streets is about eighteen feet whereas in the lanes it is upto twenty-five feet since the houses there are better preserved. The houses in the blocks were compactly built with common walls but sometimes two houses were separated by small intervening spaces about a foot wide. The entrance to the houses was generally placed in the lanes to ensure security and privacy. Many houses were two-storied, to accommodate an over-crowded population, the upper storey being reached mostly by a staircase in the courtyard, but sometimes also straight from the street. The walls are plain without any recessing, jambs or decoration. Windows are rare, only a few alabaster and pottery grills being found. Lime-stone although plentiful in the Sukkur quarries is used rarely. An average house measured 27' to 30' and a large one double this size. The ceiling was supported most likely on wooden rafters for which square and round holes were provided in the walls at proper height. The roof consisted of a rush mat below and a layer of rammed clay above. Rain water passed through pottery drains opening on the streets. Doors to the houses ordinarily measure 3'4" in width with about double the height which were closed with shutters; but larger doors upto 7'10" width also exist. The columns were built of bricks and were either square or rectangular in section; only in one case it was tapering. But no round column was found. In one doorway a corbelled arch has been used to close the space, otherwise wooden lintels seem to have been used like those used in villages until recently.

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The rooms had unpaved floors of beaten earth except in the bath-rooms and latrines which were made impervious by the use of very finely joined masonry made of rubbed bricks. In some of the rooms there were big pottery storage-jars (Kumbhā) the like of which in Sind are used even today (called Godī). The houses had kitchens with chūlhās made of bricks. But much more frequently round ovens with an aperture below either made of brick or clay were used like the tandūr of the present day used all over Sind and Punjab and similar to those in Mesopotamia in ancient days. The bathrooms were generally placed on the street-side on the ground floor but in rich men's houses on the upper floor with arrangement for spill-water to flow in a channel built through the width of the wall and connected with the drain outside.

Drainage

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The matchless drainage system, not found anywhere in the ancient world, is a credit to the genius of the Indus Valley people and a proof of their developed sense of domestic and municipal sanitation. Each street and lane was provided in the centre with a brick paved channel with bricks on two sides finely jointed with mud mortar or lime or gypsum. The bigger drains were about one and a half foot wide covered generally with loose stones and the smaller half in size covered with bricks. They were connected with tributary drains from each house, and care was taken to lead the water pass through a cess-pit which retained its solid contents before overflowing plain water entered the public drain. Both were regularly cleaned by a fastidious observance of sanitary laws. This accords quite well with the superior hygienic sense of the people as indicated by their bathrooms, pottery-pipes, sumps, closed drains, brick-lined wells and above all the Great Bath. Indeed the cleanliness of the body seems to have been developed as a religious cult with these people. If the rich finds of jewellery, beads of semi-precious stones and decorative pieces of ivory and shell be added to this picture, it would be permissible to infer about their belief that the body is the SELF (Ātmā) which should be worshipped and beautified in this life and preserved in burials after death. That this was an Asura belief and custom is stated in the Chhāndogya Upanishad.¹

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¹ असुराणां ह्येषोपनिषत् । प्रेतस्य शरीरं भिक्षया वसनेनालंकारेणिति संस्कृत्वन्ति । —Chhāndogya Upanishad 8.8.5.

Wells

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The supply of plentiful fresh water depended on wells which were found in almost every big house, ranging in diameter from 2' to 7', more usually 3', built with wedge-shaped bricks and having a small coping and paved steening.

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A. Great Bath. Mohenjo-daro.

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B. Jewellery. Indus Valley.

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C. Painted Pottery. Indus Valley.

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4. INDUS VALLEY ART

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An idea of the architectural attainments of the Indus Valley people, maybe obtained from the contingent of important buildings found within the citadel or the so-called Stūpa mound at Mohenjodaro, e.g. the Great Bath, an Assembly Hall, the so-called "College Building" with numerous paved rooms, a courtyard and a grand staircase, all pointing to its character as a royal palace, and last of all a Granary recently explored by Wheeler corresponding to the elaborate Granary of Harappa, the latter having round brick platforms for crushing of grain and also workmen's quarters. The Assembly Hall, raised on twenty pillars arranged in four rows of five each, is a spacious building, 85' square, and must have been used for an important public purpose. Mackay takes it to be a market hall, and Marshall a place for religious congregation; but perhaps it was of a multi-purpose character, being used both as a Sabhā and a city-guild office, corresponding to the Samthāgāra of later times.

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The most impressive monument left behind by the Indus Valley people is the Great Bath (Mahā-Kunda) (39' long, 23' wide, 8' deep) reached by flights of steps on two sides and forming the core of a big hydropathic establishment (180' × 108') surrounded by several rows of double-storied rooms for changing clothes etc. and also some bath-rooms. It was supplied with fresh water from the adjoining well. Great care was taken to make it impervious in the floor paved with bricks on edge, and by three parallel vertical brick-walls, the first plastered on the inside and plugged on the outside by 1" thick coat of bitumen after which ran the second and the third wall separated by mudfilling, all made compact as several parts of one whole enclosing device. It must have been frequently refilled as indicated by the emptying outlet in one corner connected with a big corbelled drain. An institution of this elaborate nature must have had special significance for the builders most probably used for religious ablutions.

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The polity of Mohenjodaro giving shelter inside a citadel to an aristocratic population with an authoritarian ruler is in full accord with the granary of massive construction (150' × 75') divided into 27 blocks of solid masonry with attached loading and unloading platforms. The blocks supported a timber superstructure for storage proper and were regularly arranged so as to ensure perfect ventilation. It appears that both at Mohenjodaro and Harappa were granaries of similar dimensions, but the one at Harappa comprising six units had been excavated earlier. The agricultural wealth of a toiling peasantry flowed forth into royal coffers for the maintenance of a well provided urban population.

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The several monuments peculiar to the citadel throw light on the political and social organisation, the granary corresponding to the Koshthāgāra, the Assembly Hall to the Sabhā or Samthāgāra, the "College" to the Prāsāda or Royal Palace, the Great Bath to the Royal Pushkarinī zealously guarded. Each one of these institutions and their emplacement within fortified walls agrees quite well with what we know of similar institutions in historical times associated with a centralised kingly authority with the capital town and palace across the road. What remains to complete this picture is a religious establishment which it is expected lies below the Buddhist stūpa.

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The copious art material offers firm proof of the refined taste of these people. They had developed the arts of stone sculpture, casting bronze figurines, making wheeled pottery finished with painted designs, modelling human and animal clay figurines, carving ivory and shell pieces for inlay work, cutting semi-precious stones for a variety of beads, turning gold and silver into ornaments and making various objects of copper such as tools, weapons and domestic utensils. The three major items of civilized life, viz. agriculture, weaving and writing were also fully developed.

Sculpture

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Sculpture, though pieces are limited in number (11 from Mohenjodaro), is enough to show that the plastic medium of stone was handled with adequate skill by the Harappan artists. The steatite head and bust (7" ht.) of a person, with a fillet fastened to the hair, wearing a trefoil patterned shawl and having pruned beard and a shaven upper lip as in Sumer figures and peculiar slanting eyes similar to those of deities at Kish and Ur, points to the probable identification that this was also some divine image (Fig. 21). Scholars have generally taken it as a priest or Yogī, but in the Indian tradition the Yogī type suits very well as the model of a divine figure, and there is much less probability of a human priest being depicted as a god. Taken together the group of stone images from Mohenjodaro has a style of its own as shown by the receding forehead, larger face, narrow eyes, not found in contemporary Mesopotamia or in the historical sculpture of India. On the other hand, the sturdy neck, inlaid eyes and the shaven upper lip have similarity with figures in Mesopotamia.

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In contrast to the formal and stiff style of the above, two pieces from Harappa found in by Vats and Sahni are of such outstanding aesthetic value and anatomical perfection that they have caused as much gladdening of heart amongst true art-lovers as flutter amongst stolid archaeologists, who look upon them with an uneasy eye against all evidence furnished by the find-spot, material, technique and unique style. The one, a male torso (3·75") of red coloured fine lime-stone (Fig. 20), and the other, a female dancer (3·9") of dark lime-stone having soft effiminate charm show a rare sensitiveness and skilful modelling unparallel in the stone art of the ancient world (Figs. 14 a & b). The sealed levels in which they were exposed with other associate finds of protohistoric age cancels all doubt about their being exotic, as confirmed by Vats and Marshall. The particular stone of which they are made was being imported in the Indus Valley from an unknown source and used for many other objects found there, but not a single figurine or object of the same material has been found in historical art. The evidence of technique is even more forceful as being in favour of the two statues being indigenous to the Indus Valley, e.g., the holes in the shoulders and neck for attaching moveable arms and head and the use of a tubular drill to make them, not known elsewhere. Their style also is distinctive and incomparable with any other thing that we know either in the East or in the West. This solid evidence about their origin accords well with the fact that the excellence of carving observed in these two figurines was well within the competence of the master engravers who have created wonderful figures of bulls on the steatite seals.

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Fig. 13. A Seal

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Fig. 14 (a). Torso of a dancer from Harappa

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Fig. 15. A Seal

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Fig. 17. Dancing girl from Mohenjodaro

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Fig. 14 (b) Reconstruction of Fig. (14) a according to Marshall

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Fig. 18. Mother Goddess Mohenjodaro

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The male torso, with its developed muscles and stout limbs depicted in a frontal position is explicit in expression. But the figure of the dancer standing on the right leg with the left one thrown towards the proper right in a delicate pose presents some difficulty of identification as to its sex. It is taken as a male figure. But, as Marshall noticed its ‘soft and effeminate’ built, no one can fail to be impressed with the rythmic animation in the various limbs and pose as peculiar to a female body (*Fig. 14 b*). This is writ large in the broad hips (पृथुश्रोणि), contracted waist (मध्ये संग्राहा) *and* somewhat narrower region between the shoulders (विम्वष्टान्तरंसा; these epithets are applied to the beauty of a woman, *ŚB*.1.2.5.16, 3.5.1.11). The breasts with nipples attached in the holes are certainly not so prominent as in the clay figurines but compare favourably with those of the girl in bronze.

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Copper was the chief metal with the Indus Valley people and by mixing tin they prepared an alloy of bronze for making some important articles. The process of casting bronze by the *cire perdue* process, viz., making a model of wax and using it as the core inside a clay mould and then pouring molten metal for casting the desired figure of solid metal. This technique has been followed throughout the long period of the history of Indian bronzes, and its earliest specimens are works of decided merit not only for a full mastery of the technique but also for their realistic sytle. The bronze dancing girl (ht. 4.5") is a matter of fact example in which the rather longish legs and arms and the slightly tilted head bespeak the rhythm of her movements (*Fig. 17*). The right arm, flexed at the elbow, is placed on the hip (कटि-हस्त) and the left, profusely loaded with bangles (खादयः; RV.I.166.9, VII. 56.13 and खादिहस्त V. 58.2) is suspended and touches the left thigh (लताहस्त). She appears to be the model of *Nṛtū*, a female dancer with whom Uṣā is compared in the Ṛigveda, wearing an embroidered garment and opening her breasts (*Adhi peshāṃsi vapate Nṛtūr-ivā-porṇute vakṣaḥ*, RV. I.92.4; *Nṛtū=Nṛtyantī Yoṣit*, Sāyaṇa). Another similar figure but of poorer quality was also found. Amongst the eleven animal figures in bronze those of a buffalo and a ram are noteworthy, the former with the muscular modelling of the body and massive uplifted head shows the reserve strength of the wild beast and is a study in realism. A toy cart on two solid wheels with a driver gives proof of the use of wheeled conveyances by the Indus Valley people for transport of men and goods as until recent times. The solid wheels resemble those in use in Sind even today.

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The vast number of terracotta figurines from the Indus Valley both human (*Figs. 18, 19*) and animal are of a unique style different from that of the Mesopotamian figures. They are generally made of solid clay and modelled by hand except in the case of human masks and a few hollow animal figurine, for which moulds were used. The figurines were baked to a light red colour and were afterwards painted red. Some of the animal figurine show ventholes for escape of air or ashes of the burnt core.

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Fig. 19. Mother Goddess from Harappa

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Fig. 20. Male torso from Harappa

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Fig. 21. Divine Image-Mohenjodaro

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Fig. 22. A Seal

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Fig. 23. Black painted red vase-Harappa

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Fig. 24. Terracotta Bull Mohenjodaro

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Stylistically the figurines are realistic and in the case of a moulded bull the general effect is very pleasing (*Fig. 24*). The human masks having horns seem to have been used as apropiatic figures. The epithet *Viśāṇin* is found in the Ṛigveda (VII.18.7) as the name of one of the five tribes who massed to battle against the forces of the Aryan king Tṛitsu. The other names of this confederacy, viz., Bhalanas (people of the Bolan), Śivas (same as the Sibis), Pakthas (Pathans) point to the fact that the Viśāṇinas also belonged to the same region. The discovery of over 1000 steatite seals with unicorn motif points to the importance of the horn symbol in the religious belief of the Indus people.

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A large number of animal figurines in clay were found used as toys for children and showing in order of popularity such animals as the short-horned bull, humped or Brāhmaṇi bull, ram or goat, rhinoceros and dog. The wide choice of toy animals, rodents, birds, reptiles etc. also includes monkey, pig, hare, elephant, tiger, buffalo, mongoose, snake, armadillo, turtle, dove, domestic fowl, peacock, squirrel, goose, pigeon, sparrow, parrot, owl, grasshopper etc. This variety is similar to the pottery figurines of animals of the historical period. It was found that a good number of animal figurines were hollow inside being made on a core of some combustible material.

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A remarkable technique was developed in the making of faience paste used for fine moulded objects as toy figurines, ornaments like bracelets, studs, beads, amulets, buttons, finger-rings, and miniature pottery (*Fig. 23*), balls and marbles, gamesmen, inlay pieces, seals (*Figs. 13, 15, 22*), plaques, spindle whorls, weights etc. of extremely fine quality. Faience was prepared from powdered quartz, or sometimes steatite also, with a binding material and after being moulded to the desired form was coated with a glaze. The use of faience was known in Egypt prior to the Indus Valley and possibly the technique was borrowed from there.

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Some of the objects of faience (कांचली मिट्टी) showing a high degree of artistic skill include a knibbling squirrel, a crouching ram and a figurine of coalescing monkeys.

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