Indian Art: A History of Indian Art from the Earliest Times up to the Third Century A.D. c7.s4.2

c7.s4.2

The male figures are marked by a long nose, beardless chin, receding forehead, long slit eyes, appliqué mouths gashed, crudely modelled bust, pointing to an indifferent interest of the modeller in the making of such figures which may have been either secular or religious types. There is a horned figure and some horned masks, cast in a mould with oblique eyes which may have been used for apotropaic purposes to ward off evil (*Arakṣārtha*). The use of mould howsoever limited is noteworthy. A Janus-like (*ubhayataḥ śīrṣṇa*) figure was pressed from a double mould. The idea is known in the Rigveda mentioning a two-headed Supreme Deity (*Dviśīrṣā mahodeva*, RV. IV. 58.3). Although the material is limited the ethnic character is emphasised as in the case of a man, found by Wheeler in 1950 on the Granary Site of Mohenjo-daro, its skull cap and sturdy built with the usual features of the long nose and receding forehead treated in one line seem to establish a definite type in the population probably of the peasantry.