Indian Art: A History of Indian Art from the Earliest Times up to the Third Century A.D. c9.s2.7

c9.s2.7

The next group belongs to the four great animals (Mahā-Ajāneya Paśu) which were held sacred much anterior to Buddhism and of which the earliest traces are found in the Indus Valley and the Ṛigveda. They include the bull, elephant, lion, and horse rarely. Another symbol is that of a crescent-topped mount which is associated with the Mauryan dynasty. Amongst other interesting signs are the wheel, tree in railing with and without birds, tank with fish, hare, peacock, frog, tortoise bow and arrow, combinations of taurines, squares with a Svastika inside, intersecting triangles, caduceus, Chakradhvaja (Chakra-topped standard in railing), elongated dice-pieces (*Śalākā*), triskeles (*Triphaṇa*), flowers, beetles, Pañjaka (hand-impression in a square), and a group of three human figuring of whom two are male and one female. An interesting symbol is the triangle-headed standard of which there are several variants, but it appears to have been an ancient symbol having a link with the Indradhvaja or Vaijayantī standard sacred to Indra. If we look before and after the symbols on Punch-marked coins are tell-tale, furnishing links with the preceding ages when the Vedic people left behind a trail of animal and geometrical figurines as part of their religious symbolism to which we have drawn attention earlier (ante pp. 45-47). On the other hand the corpus of Punch-marked symbols is transmittel to succeeding generations and the cue is taken up by the tribal coins and sealings (c. 2nd century B.C.—2nd century A.D.). No doubt is left that the people and the authorities who were issuing the seals and the coins were saturated with a belief in the sacred meaning of these numerous symbols. The broad area from Taxila to Ujjain and from Nagari near Chittor to Bihar comes before our eyes as concentrating on the continuity of these symbols. In the Tribal period besides the earlier signs some new ones were added, e. g. *Svastika* and a pair of *Nāgas* (*Nāga-mudrā*) as well as four balls round the four arms of a *Svastika*, sometimes having shorter *Svastika* signs within them. The story of the signs and symbols as gathered from coins, sealings, pottery and beads manufactured during this long period of about 800 years is a commentary on the visual representation and meaning of Indian art.