The Development of Hindu Iconography c12.2

Language: English

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Like the numismatic remains of ancient India, her glyptic ones also throw a flood of light on the mode of representing her divinities in different periods. The innumerable varieties of seals and similar objects that have been unearthed in various parts of Northern India and that can be dated from the third or fourth millenium B.C. to the late Gupta period and afterwards contain numerous figures, many of which have been assumed with a great deal of justification to stand for various divinities in their anthropomorphic, theriomorphic and sometimes therio-anthropomorphic forms. On many seals of the Kushan and the Gupta periods, most of these gods and goddesses as also their emblems can be definitely recognised as belonging to one or other of the different religious creeds that were current in the period when they were manufactured. I have already drawn the attention of my readers, in the previous chapter, to the Sirkap bronze seal of Śivarakṣita, that gave me the necessary clue for the identification of Śiva in certain coin-devices of Maues. Mention has also been made by me there of a few other metal and terracotta seals of the Kushan and the Gupta periods, which supply us with characteristic representations of such Hindu gods as Viṣṇu and Śiva, as well as a few of their emblems.

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I shall presently draw the attention of my readers to a good many seals of the Gupta period (a few amongst them going back to the Kushan age), that were unearthed at such old sites of India as Bhita, Basarh, Rajghat, etc. But before I begin a systematic study of some of these seals and seal-matrices, from the iconographic point of view, it will be necessary for me to refer briefly to the many hundreds of sealings that were discovered in the course of excavations at the pre-historic Indus Valley sites of Mohenjodaro and Harappa. Whatever might have been the particular purpose that was served by them, there is little doubt that the figures which very frequently appear on their surface had some connection with the religion that was practised by these pre-historic Indians. The very interesting seal unearthed at Mohenjo-daro, which bears a three-faced horned figure ‘seated on a low Indian throne in a typical attitude of Yoga, with legs bent double beneath him, heel to heel, and toes turned downwards’, has previously been noticed by me. This particular sitting posture clearly corresponds to the Yogic āsana known as kūrmāsana, where the heels are placed under the gluteals in a manner exactly similar to the mode described above. It will be of interest here to give a fuller account of the device, so carefully studied by Sir John Marshall. The two arms of the figure, which are covered with bangles, are outstretched, and his hands, with thumbs to front, rest on his knees;

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on his neck and breast is placed a series of necklaces or torques in a manner similar to that of the graiveyaka ornament placed on the neck and breast of the Yakṣa figures of the Śuṅga and the post-Śuṅga period; the lower limbs seem to be bare and the figure appears to be ithyphallic; his head is crowned by a pair of horns meeting in a tall head-dress. To either side of the god are four animals, an elephant and a tiger on his proper right, a rhinoceros and a buffalo on his left. Beneath the throne are two deer standing with heads regardant and horns turned to the centre. Just below the trunk of the elephant on the top left corner and above the tiger is the crude outline of a human figure (Pl. VII, fig. 1). Marshall is justifiably sure about the divine character of the figure, and from its peculiarly distinctive attributes, such as three faces, the Yogic āsana, its association with animals, as many as five or six in number, its deer-throne and its horns, he concludes that the figure is a prototype of the historic Śiva-Paśupati.¹ The seal just noticed at length is the same as No. 420 in Mackay's list of seals discovered by him at Mohenjo-daro. Two other seals (Nos. 222 and 235) in the same list, contain different representations of apparently the same deity, though many of the details of Mackay's No. 420 are omitted. The figure on seal No. 235 bears only one face, and the head, adorned with a pig-tail hanging down on one side, is shown in profile.

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The head-dresses of the figures in these two seals (Nos. 222 and 235) are very simliar, ‘ but surmounted by a plant motif with three branches in the one case and only a single branch on the other.’ Mackay remarks about this head-dress, ‘The larger figure on seal 420 lacks this spray of foliage, but has instead the fan-shaped ornament commonly associated with the pottery female figurines.’¹