Indian Art: A History of Indian Art from the Earliest Times up to the Third Century A.D. c7.s2.16

c7.s2.16

The identification of the two figures should draw our attention. The male adipose stoutly built youth seems to be rather extraordinary. It represents the type of Nude God referred to in the Atharva Veda as Mahā-Nagna, the eternal Nude Man. Rudra-Śiva as *Digambara* (sky-clothed) typifies the same conception. Happily the female consort of Mahā-Nagna, Nude Lord, is described in the same verse as Mahā-Nagnī, the Female Nude or the Eternal Woman both striding one after the other as a pair (AV. *Mahā-Nagnī Mahānagnaṃ dhāvantam anudhāvati*, 20.136.11). The rendering of the two primeval Nudes in such an emphatic form is consistent with what we know of other Harappa sculpture. For example, the conception of the Male Deity Rudra-Paśupati was certainly known in that culture, and even more so that of the Great Mother Goddess is seen in many clay figurines. It seems as if the artist, an unusual genius, tradscended in one sweep the diversified formality of repretenting male and female figures and visualised of the primal Man and Woman without intervening ornaments and drapery. Of the two figures one is static showing high concentration of physical power as in the later Yakshas; whereas the female dancer shows a spirit of movement and vivacity which typifies the characteristic movement and dynaminism associated with the female half of the Creator's energy and such figures of later times. That the figures are of divine import seems to be writ large in the lines of their body.