The Indus Civilization c9: VI. Arts and Crafts
The Indus Civilization c9
- Language
- English
VI. Arts and Crafts
c9.2
THE people of the Indus valley had a large variety of pottery, both decorated and plain. Practically all the ornamented wares are coated with an opaque, red slip, upon which various designs and motifs are painted with a thick black pigment. The clay used for both the plain and painted pottery appears to have come from the adjacent river, and was tempered with sand, generally containing a large percentage of mica, or lime in the form of fine particles, though quite large grains of this material were sometimes included. The pottery made in Mohenjo-daro differs very little in shape and mode of decoration from that of Harappa, and only in a comparatively few cases would it be possible to say definitely in which city a specimen was made.
c9.3
The regular striations inside practically every vessel show that they must, almost without exception, have been shaped on the potter's wheel. To judge from the customs prevailing in a village near Mohenjo-daro to-day, it seems likely that the men performed this process, while the women gave the finishing touches to the pottery and also painted the designs.
c9.4
Although, being wood, no potter’s wheels have yet been found, the kilns in which the pots were baked have survived; they are round structures, between six and seven feet in diameter, with a perforated floor upon which the vessels were laid. A wood fire was kindled in a space below this floor, fed from outside, and the smoke was carried away through a hole in the domed roof—though no kiln is sufficiently well preserved to retain this upper portion. The heating was well controlled, for much of the pottery is most efficiently fired; a few over-baked vessels have come to light, but these had retained their shape sufficiently to be put into use.
c9.5
The slip used for so much of the painted ware is red ochre, which substance may have come from somewhere in the country or from Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, which at the present day exports an excellent variety of this material to India. After a jar had been shaped on the wheel, the ochre was painted thickly over it, and when dry was carefully polished with a piece of bone or a pebble. This process resulted, after firing, in a beautiful, highly burnished vessel, which in first-class work has the sheen, colour, and appearance of red Chinese lacquer. The designs, some which also occur on the pottery of other ancient countries, although others are peculiar to the Indus valley, were painted on this red surface with a brush before firing, the material used being a thick, black, or purplish-black, paint made from manganiferous hæmatite. The most popular design comprises a series of intersecting circles (Pl. O, 4), a pattern which does not appear on the wares of any other ancient civilization and which, it must be confessed, is somewhat bewildering to the eye when it forms the only decoration on a jar. Occasionally the circles are carefully drawn, the jar being first marked out with squares to ensure regularity; in the majority of cases, however, the pattern had obviously been drawn freehand, with the result that it sometimes became so confused that, were it not that perfect examples exist, the origin of the design would not be apparent at all.
c9.6
Another favourite device is the tree pattern which is generally placed in metopes, or panels, alternating with other motifs. Here again, some of the patterns are well defined, while others have so degenerated that they consist merely of vertical lines drawn at intervals to represent the trunks, while horizontal wavy lines between them denote the branches. A very common motif resembling a large comb occurs with solar signs and other devices, some of which are difficult to identify; another well-known design is the chess-board pattern formed of squares, black alternating with the red colour of the underlying slip. Triangles set in single, double and, more rarely, triple rows, some in alternate colours of red and black, form a very effective decoration when not repeated too often. Hatching, as a means of distinguishing one triangle, square, or other motif from another is very common, and appears perhaps to the best advantage in the scale pattern which is particularly well known at Mohenjo-daro. Thin borders or ribbon designs frequently run right round the jars to relieve the main decoration, while linked ovals, sometimes with hatched interiors, evidently copied from beads, ornament the necks of some of the vessels. Thicker borders are also well known, the interior of these being cross-hatched or decorated with roundels or oblique strokes, the slope of the latter being reversed at intervals to avoid monotony.
c9.7
Figures of animals, birds, snakes, or fish occur much more rarely than the conventional designs; the last two are especially uncommon. Panels containing other motifs alternate on a jar with those depicting animals like the ibex and the antelope, or various birds, the bodies being filled in with cross-hatching rather than entirely painted over, possibly to avoid a heavy effect. Figures of animals are generally associated with natural objects such as grass or leaves, while birds sometimes appear perched on trees, sometimes merely in association with them; an especially charming scene of this type shows two jungle-fowl, the ancestors of the modern domestic species, arranged in a setting of bushes. Only one painted jar has been found with animals *en file*, a scheme of decoration which was well known in both Elam and Sumer; but this single specimen is different in shape and in the type of clay used from any other vessel that has come to light, and is quite likely to have been an importation. No human figures occur on pottery from Mohenjo-daro, but a sherd discovered at Harappa has the figures of a man and child painted upon it.
c9.8
It was seldom that the whole of a jar was ornamented in the manner described. As a rule, about a quarter of the larger vessels is undecorated, this being the part round the base which was probably concealed by the jar-stand or by the earth in which the jar was set. The smaller specimens frequently have a wide band round the middle or the shoulder, framed above and below by narrower painted lines, while other vessels, especially the very large ones used for storage purposes, are ornamented solely with broad horizontal bands of black or reddish-black, set in couples, which usually fill up the whole of the surface of the jar except for a small portion at the base.
c9.9
The thick, lustrous red slip already described was not only used for decorative purposes, but also served to seal the pores of the pottery, and so to prevent undue evaporation. As the larger jars were mainly used for storing water, some process had to be adopted to prevent waste, and large vessels have been found which appear to have been water-proofed inside with a preparation containing a bituminous basis.
c9.10
A somewhat rare type of painted vessel is decorated with manganese paint, the background being either a cream slip or the natural light red, or buff, surface of the jar itself. Sometimes this paint has a distinctly reddish tinge, but for some reason unknown a pure red colour, other than that used for slips, was not favoured as a paint for monochrome pottery. Small vessels painted in polychrome occasionally come to light, but the colours used—red, black, green, and, very rarely, yellow—are, with the exception of the first two, very friable, and they were undoubtedly applied after the jar was baked. This kind of decoration occurs most often on a white slip, but sometimes white is used as a separate colour and the whole design is painted on the natural surface of the ware. Polychrome pottery is, however, very rare, and, apart from two badly damaged vessels, the specimens recovered are all in the form of small sherds, while the only devices now extant are the intersecting circle, the trefoil, and one or two plant designs, none of which resembles in any way the polychrome designs on the pottery of Elam or Sumer.
c9.11
Poly-chrome pottery has, however, been unearthed at other sites in India, for Mr. Majumdar, in the course of excavations at Amri, a site about eighty miles south of Mohenjo-daro, found beneath a stratum of Indus Valley date numerous wares where red and black paints had been applied on a pink or cream-coloured ground, while at Nal in Baluchistan, about one hundred and ten miles north-west of Mohenjo-daro, Mr. Hargreaves discovered painted wares in polychrome, in which one of the colours used was the same kind of green as was sometimes used by the Indus Valley people. The date of this ware has not yet been definitely established, for Mr. Hargreaves considers it to be earlier, and Sir Aurel Stein regards it as later, than that of the Indus valley, while a third authority, Professor Childe, declares it to be roughly contemporary with that of Mohenjo-daro. The polychrome wares from both Nal and Amri, particularly those from the latter site, provide some evidence that this type of pottery was made in India before the rise of the Indus Valley civilization, although the craft seems to have almost disappeared during the time of its prosperity. The polychrome wares found at Mohenjo-daro were certainly not used for ordinary purposes, and the Nal pottery was, it is thought, used solely for burial purposes, like the early painted pottery of Susa in Persia.
c9.12
Before turning to other types of pottery, mention should be made of the fact that in a village close to Mohenjo-daro painted ware is still being made for which the same colours and slips are employed as those used in the ancient Indus valley, although the actual shapes of the jars are quite different. In this village the potter uses an up-to-date type of wheel worked by the foot, in contrast to the primitive one spun by hand which still serves the purpose in many parts of India to-day and was almost certainly used in Mohenjo-daro, but it is interesting to note that he bakes his pottery on the open ground covered with fuel, whereas a very efficient kiln was in common use in the Indus Valley city.
c9.13
Plain, undecorated pottery is more common at Mohenjo-daro than the painted ware, although the clay used for both kinds is the same. In fact, painted ware is more frequent in the lower than in the upper levels, showing that the craft was tending to disappear. As a rule, the plain pottery is covered with a cream or pinkish slip and, though a red slip was sometimes used, the ornamentation consists of plain black lines. A chocolate-coloured slip was occasionally employed on the upper parts of a certain type of jar.
c9.14
Another kind of ware, which is rather more uncommon, is made of a grey clay that burns the same colour and is generally coated with a thick black slip. This clay, unlike the ordinary type, rarely seems to have required a *dégraissant*; it has a peculiar soapy feel and, whether coated with a slip or not, is always carefully polished, the marks left by the polisher being usually in a horizontal direction. Although pottery of a very similar colour is known in Sumer, the date of the levels in which it is found is earlier than that assigned to Mohenjo-daro.
c9.15
A type of pottery which is distinctly rare is always thin and unusual in shape, and is made of a compact, light pink clay which is not so porous as the ordinary red ware. It is still uncertain whether this ware was imported, or whether it was manufactured by carefully levigating the clay used for the ordinary ware in order to produce a finer paste.
c9.16
There is nothing primitive about the pottery of the Indus valley, for the shapes are very varied and the technique advanced; indeed, the specimens are, almost without exception, obviously the work of people trained in a long and well-established craft. Few of the vessels, however, can really be compared with those of Elam or Sumer, although the tall offering-stand which has a base of trumpet form and a shallow dish at the top resembles some found at Kish, Ur, and Fara in Babylonia. The Indus Valley stands, like those of Sumer, are made in two pieces carefully luted together, but certain bowl-shaped jar-lids with a projecting handle in the centre that occur at Mohenjo-daro have only appeared at Jemdet Nasr—a site antedating the Early Dynastic Period of Babylonia, which latter was contemporary with the Indus civilization.
c9.17
Handles on the pottery are very rare; they appear either as a flat perforated lug or as a loop over the top, the former being found on small cups and the latter on beakers. This lack of handles must not, however, be regarded as primitive; handled vessels are known in very early times in both Egypt and Babylonia and, after falling out of use for a considerable period, they reappeared at a much later date. The spouted pottery of Babylonia does not occur in the Indus valley except for several feeding-cups with spouts obviously intended for small children; similar cups of the same date and shape have also come to light in Sumer. Little jars with very narrow openings were undoubtedly made to hold black eye-paint, and were made in bronze as well as pottery.
c9.18
A very curious kind of pottery jar is one ornamented on the outside with knobs in rows set closely together (Pl. O, 3). It is uncertain whether jars of this kind were actually made at Mohenjo-daro, as only a few have been unearthed; Dr. Frankfort has found similar ware at Tell Asmar in Babylonia which he regards as imported, and, what is still more interesting, the Tell Asmar examples come from a level of approximately the same date as that assigned to Mohenjo-daro and Harappa. Such discoveries as this have now occurred often enough to convince most authorities that our dating of Mohenjo-daro is correct within one or two centuries.
c9.19
Another somewhat peculiar type of vessel is one which varies in height from one and a half inches to as much as twenty inches, and is usually in the form of a cylinder irregularly perforated all over with small holes. For some time no use could be assigned to these objects, but as Sir Aurel Stein has lately discovered one in Baluchistan which was filled with ashes, it is now obvious that they were intended to be heaters or braziers. Perhaps the very small specimens were used to warm the hands, in the same way as two oyster shells with a live coal between were used not so long ago in England.
c9.20
The visitor to the museum at Mohenjo-daro is always struck by the number and beautiful workmanship of the many miniature vessels found on the site, which in some cases are less than half an inch high. Although pottery specimens are quite numerous, the majority are made of faience, and it has been suggested that they once held rare and costly scented oils. This is quite a tenable theory, although the presence of an exceptionally well-made miniature offering-stand with a top too flat to hold anything suggests that some of these minute vessels may have served as toys; but even in this case it is quite likely that the stand may have been used to distribute the scent.
c9.21
Several small partitioned trays are too shallow and porous to be used for liquids, and there seems to be no doubt that they were cruets for the condiments and relishes of various kinds which are still served in India. A few of these trays have small handles to facilitate their being handed round.
c9.22
Patterns incised on the pottery are definitely rare, and are found only on the inside of the base of certain deep pans and on the dishes of offering-stands; in the former case they must have had a utilitarian rather than a decorative purpose, and sometimes they appear to have been impressed rather than scratched. A particular type of ware in which the light slip was partially removed with some instrument like a comb, so that the darker surface of the pottery showed through, may have been an importation. In any case the presence of this "reserved slip ware" at Mohenjo-daro is distinctly interesting, as it precedes the Early Dynastic Period at both Ur and Tell Asmar, which may explain its discovery only in the lower levels of the Indian site.
c9.23
Small flat sherds cut with triangular incisions seem to be fragments of pottery boxes or stands, and this type of ornamentation occurs on some of the earliest ware of Egypt, Sumer, and Elam. The examples from Mohenjo-daro are, unfortunately, very small, but when this decoration is found at other sites it is mainly confined to the stems of offering-stands. It certainly has the effect of reducing the weight of the latter, and the theory has been advanced that the high Sumerian stands, which are of stone as well as pottery, were copied from the reed-stands of identical shape now often to be seen supporting the trays of sweetmeat-sellers on Indian railway stations and, more likely than not, were used in the market places of the Indus valley.
c9.24
Pot-marks are not common at Mohenjo-daro, although more frequent at Harappa, and when found on the former site are scratched on the shoulders of large jars. In this case the marks take the form of characters on the seal-amulets, but, strangely enough, no potsherd is known with any long inscription upon it, unless very soluble ink was used that has vanished in the course of centuries. One sherd has, however, come to light at Mohenjo-daro on one side of which is roughly scratched the picture of a boat, and on the reverse a couple of pictographic characters.
c9.25
The pottery of Mohenjo-daro almost without exception has plain flat bases, though some are very narrow. The few ring bases discovered are always associated with handmade pottery, specimens of which are all small and, from their finish, appear to have been made and baked in the home. As before mentioned, most of the floors were made of hard earth or laid with brick, and were consequently quite unsuited for vessels with a rounded or pointed base. Where such bases do occur, as on some of the large storage jars, it is probable that special supports of wood or pottery were provided; pottery stands, which closely resemble those found in other countries, are not, however, very common in the Indus valley. Some of the storage jars, as we know, were partially buried in the earth.
c9.26
The contents of some of the large jars described above make it obvious that these vessels were frequently used as larders, their smooth, polished outer surface being an effectual barrier against rats. Other jars discovered under the floors in various houses served as receptacles for the family treasures, a very common way of storing jewellery in the East to-day; and, as before mentioned, the poorer people constantly employed large vessels as cess-pits when they were unable to afford a brick structure. Although jars have been found in Mesopotamia laid on top of one another to serve as vertical drains, this method of drainage never occurs at Mohenjo-daro, and the use of pottery pipes for this purpose, although not universal, was obviously found to be simpler and more adaptable. Even broken pottery had its uses, for sherds were used as scrapers, cut into round pieces for draughtsmen, and occasionally laid down as a porous layer beneath the floors of bathrooms.
c9.27
It has been suggested that some of the smaller pottery jars may have served as drinking-vessels and have been broken after use, according to the custom of some castes in modern India. There is, however, no evidence that the caste system existed in that country at the time of the Indus Valley civilization, and, moreover, only one type of jar has been found broken in large numbers. Jars of this kind average about six inches in height, have a pronounced, pointed base and deeply scored belly, and are certainly too large to be grasped comfortably in one hand. Though there is no direct evidence that the water-wheel was known to the people of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, the shape and make of these jars certainly suggest that they were used on water-wheels; and this would, of course, explain why such a number were made and broken. Large heaps of this type of pottery, all badly fired as well as damaged, have been found close to the site of some of the kilns, and are undoubtedly throw-outs.
c9.28
Only one specimen of a theriomorphic jar has come to light, and this is in the shape of a couchant ram with a deep hollow in the back, which may have served as an ink-well. Dual vessels, tripod jars, or those bearing figures of animals in relief, are all conspicuous by their absence, a state of affairs which the lover of unusual pottery cannot but regard as unfortunate.
c9.29
The wares of the Indus valley possess in a marked degree that utilitarian aspect which is such a dominant feature of the architecture, and if the mentality of a people can be correctly gauged by the pottery they make, the people of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa must have been singularly lacking in imagination.
c9.30
Clay was also used for other purposes besides making jars. Two traps, one of which was first shaped on a wheel, afford proof that small animals were caught by this means; probably the housewives of Mohenjo-daro were troubled by mice. A pottery cage containing a recess for food held some small animal or bird, and a description has been given in another chapter of the small model cages that have been unearthed, which seem to prove that both singing insects and birds were kept as pets.
c9.31
The pottery drain-pipes already alluded to were made entirely on the wheel, as were the pottery wheels, spindle-whorls, and certain pottery bracelets. The great majority of the figures of deities, human beings, and animals were also manufactured of clay, a suitable material which was easily procurable near either city and which had the advantage of being ready for use when mixed with water. The employment of clay for many household purposes besides pottery-making is always to be observed among those ancient peoples living near a great river which annually irrigated their land. Wood was no doubt extensively used as well, but all the objects made of it have perished, and, in any case, it requires a certain amount of skill in working, whereas even a small child can turn out quite presentable toys of clay, while the adult could make articles, not only for the use of himself and his household, but also for votive and other purposes.
c9.32
With the exception of the beads and seal-amulets, which are beautifully made and carved, the standard of the stonework is not nearly so high as that of the pottery and metal-work, probably because stone was very little required, owing to the abundance of copper and bronze that was used in the Indus valley. No carved stonework of a purely ornamental nature has yet come to light; perhaps wood which has perished took its place.
c9.33
Copper, if not bronze, seems to have been used from the time of the foundation of Mohenjo-daro, but whether this was the case with earlier cities of the Indus valley remains to be proved, and this can only be done when other sites, built on higher ground and out of the reach of water, have been examined from top to bottom. It is, however, significant that no worked stone tools or implements, beyond simple ribbon flakes of flint (Pl. K, 3) and several roughly chipped objects resembling celts, also of the same material, have been unearthed at Mohenjo-daro. If stone implements had been in general use at the time of the foundation of the city, some specimens would almost inevitably have been carried up to a higher level, but so far no Neolithic remains have come to light at either site.
c9.34
Stone vessels are remarkably scarce, and, in addition, very few have been found undamaged. The majority take the form of shallow bowls, which are simple in shape, clumsy in workmanship, and carved out of the softer stones, such as alabaster, sandstone, limestone, or slate. A few more complex pieces, nearly all of which are alabaster, imitate the pottery, but their interiors are so badly bored that they cannot have been of much use as receptacles. A flat-based tumbler, a little over four inches in height, which was found with a hoard of copper and bronze, is made of the very rare, jade-green crystalline stone called fuchsite, a material at the present time to be found no nearer to Mohenjo-daro than Mysore. In spite of the rarity of the stone, no special care seems to have been taken with this specimen, for it is definitely out of shape and bears quite plainly inside it the marks of the drill that was used to bore it.
c9.35
The drill used for boring and shaping the interior of these bowls was very much the same shape as the flint drill used in early times in Egypt, being shaped somewhat like a Boeotian shield in form, with the upper face nearly flat and the reverse convex, while the two rounded ends are pronouncedly bevelled. A forked stick, fitted into recesses on each side of the drill, permitted it to be twirled round and round, while sand or emery served as an abrasive. It is possible to drill quite hard stones in this way. The interiors of the stone vases were drilled with a tubular drill, which has often left marks inside the vase itself; the cores drilled out of these vessels have frequently come to light.
c9.36
The steatite statue described in another chapter is a creditable piece of sculpture, but it must be remembered that this particular stone is so soft that it can be cut with a knife. Other figures made of slightly harder stones, like alabaster and limestone (Pl. H, 1a), are not quite so well finished, though they show more artistic merit, three of the best preserved statue heads from Mohenjo-daro being quite as fine as anything of the same date from Mesopotamia, although falling much below the standard of the Egyptian statuary of the Old Kingdom.
c9.37
The eyes of all the stone statues made by the Indus Valley people were inlaid with stone or shell, a technique which also prevailed in both Egypt and Sumer. The arms of two of the best preserved statues, both of which are in a crouching posture with one knee raised, are shown as bent, with a hand resting on each knee. In one figure the arm has been partially freed from the body, a feature which is also to be observed in some of the Sumerian statues. Apart from these points of resemblance, however, and the fact that the waves of the hair are indicated, as in contemporary Sumerian sculpture, by chevron lines (Pl. H, Ib), the statuary of the Indus valley resembles that of Sumer very little. The nose, for instance, unlike that of the Sumerian statue, appears normal in size, and so does the mouth, which in the best examples is rendered quite expressive. The ear, however, proved a stumbling-block to the Indus Valley sculptor, for in most cases it is a travesty of nature, although it was always carefully portrayed in Sumer. Another defect is the rendering of the forehead, which is much too low in all the statues, even if allowance be made for the possibility that a low, receding forehead was a racial characteristic of the inhabitants of Mohenjo-daro, which the evidence of the skulls by no means substantiates. Three of the heads are, at any rate, decidedly superior to any contemporary statue from Sumer, and certainly convey the impression that a greater demand for work of this kind would have led to excellent results. Two of the heads have enough character and expression to suggest that they were actual portraits.
c9.38
A few of the stone figures of animals in the round, principally models of a short-horned bull, are of good, if not remarkable, workmanship, although the same animal made in clay is sometimes much more spirited and lifelike. A small figure of a mastiff in steatite is, however, extraordinarily realistic, the folds of skin on the head and neck being perfectly portrayed. The smaller stone figures are, in every case, superior to the larger specimens, probably because the steatite of which the former was made was far easier to work than the inferior limestone and alabaster employed for the latter.
c9.39
The seal-amulets are, however, the most successful artistic achievement of the inhabitants of the Indus valley, and the numbers of them which have come to light make it fairly certain that they were carried by practically the entire population of both cities. These amulets (Pl. M), which are invariably made of steatite, range in size from half an inch to just over two and a half inches square, although the most common sizes run from 0·7 to 1·2 inches. There are two main types, the first square, with a carved animal and inscription, the second rectangular, with an inscription only; and while the former have a small perforated boss at the back to take a cord, the latter are convex on the reverse side, with the hole running through the seal itself at right angles to its length.
c9.40
The seals were cut into shape with a saw, then finished first with a knife or chisel, and finally with an abrasive. The carving of the figures and signs was done with a small chisel, a triangular burin being sometimes used for the inscriptions; and for certain details a small drill was employed (Pl. M, 5, 13), although it was never necessary to commence a design with this tool, as was the case with the harder Sumerian seals. After the seal-amulet had been completed, it was coated with an alkali and then heated, which gave it its attractive, dead-white appearance and slightly lustrous surface. Apart from two cylindrical steatite specimens (Pl. M, 10, 11), both of Indian workmanship, the stamp seal was exclusively used at both the Indus sites.
c9.41
Although "seal-amulet" is the most convenient name, it is uncertain whether these objects were much used for the former purpose, as sealings made from them are extremely rare. The particular specimens which have come to light are all of burnt clay, but it is possible, of course, that the majority of the sealings were made of mud, which has disappeared in the course of time in the same way as the mud-plaster has disintegrated on the burnt-brick walls of Mohenjo-daro. The pictographic inscriptions on the seals do not refer to the animal underneath, but seem to denote names and perhaps titles as well, although these are at present undecipherable.
c9.42
Some of the animals on the larger and finer seals are beautifully portrayed, and though their conventional attitudes provide little scope for the expression of movement, much care was lavished on the modelling. A specimen bearing the figure of a humped, or Brahmani, bull (Pl. M, 1) is a very good example of the fine work that could be produced. The muscles ripple under the skin in a most realistic fashion, and the well-nourished hump drooping at the back is also extremely well engraved, especially when it is remembered that all the work had to be done on so small a scale. A fragment of a larger seal with just the head and shoulders of a tiger is also a splendid piece of work, the open mouth, tongue, bared fangs, and careful placing of the double stripes being indicated with great fidelity.
c9.43
Few of the smaller seal-amulets show such good workmanship, not on account of their size, but because objects of this type seem to have belonged to almost everyone, a fact which would necessitate a certain amount of mass-production. Even the more elaborate scenes, some of which have already been described, are not executed with particular skill; they convey the impression that the engraver was principally concerned with the task of portraying these religious episodes correctly.
c9.44
Two boxes of steatite, one of which bears an incised chevron decoration, are divided into compartments, and from their shape appear to be of foreign workmanship and probably importations from Elam or Sumer.
c9.45
The use of powdered steatite to mould beads and other small objects is a practice that appears to be confined to ancient India, for it seems never to have been known in Egypt, and no objects made in this way have yet come to light in Sumer, although they perhaps found their way to the latter country, in view of the close trading relations that certainly existed between it and the Indus cities.
c9.46
Considerable care was taken over the manufacture of some of the clay figurines and model animals, for though the former are primitive in appearance (Pl. I, J, 1), great attention had been paid, in many cases, to detail and finish. Both human and animal figures are covered with a red wash, or even with a smooth, polished red slip, this colour obviously having the same magical significance as it had in other countries. With the exception of some small clay masks, which were made in a mould and seem to have been intended to be sewn or attached to something, all the clay figures were modelled entirely by hand. The noses of the human figurines were made by pinching them out of the clay, the eyes were two small pellets of the same material, while the mouth consisted of a small strip applied to the face and then deeply indented to indicate the lips (Pl. I). Dress and jewellery were portrayed by strips and pellets of clay which were sometimes slightly tooled to give a more realistic effect. The eyes of the animals are, perhaps, the best executed of all, for in this case a small cut in the head was widened very slightly, and in the incision a round pellet was inserted for the pupil, while the lashes were marked with a pointed tool; this last touch is only found on very well made figures. The rhinoceros was a favourite subject for the modeller, who placed strips of clay in appropriate places to represent the immensely thick skin with its horny bosses which is so characteristic of that animal. Some of the clay figures of animals are very poor, and may have been made by children, but the excellent workmanship of a great many seems to indicate that they were intended for votive offerings.
c9.47
The extensive use of glazed and vitreous pastes in the manufacture of small ornaments and animal figures is a prominent feature at both Mohenjo-daro and Harappa (Pl. J, 2, 4). Steatite, both as the natural stone and also in the moulded form, was coated with a glaze which in many cases has lost its colour owing to the salts in the soil, but which was originally blue or green. True faience is also well known, and consists of a base of powdered quartz mixed with some binding material, perhaps natron, and coated with a glaze. Another common material was a vitreous paste composed of quartz and a glaze mixed together and fired at a high temperature. This process results in a material with a firm, smooth surface and interior, which, though not possessing the glassy surface of faience, is stronger and more compact in every way. Disc-beads of glazed crystal or quartz, similar to some found in the early graves of Elam and Sumer, have also come to light, but whether these particular specimens were made in India or imported, as their rarity suggests, is not yet known.
c9.48
It would be interesting to know where the manufacture and use of glaze first originated, for the former is a very elaborate process. It was almost certainly the invention of one country which later spread to others. India cannot, at present, claim to be the birthplace of this craft, for glazed beads and other objects, all of much earlier date than those found in the Indus valley, have been discovered in Elam, Sumer, and Egypt.
c9.49
Fragments of pottery whose surface had been glazed, not polished, have come from very early levels at Mohenjo-daro, which is interesting in view of the fact that no glazed vessel of so early a date has yet come to light in Egypt, Sumer, or Elam, although a glazed pottery handle of Early Dynastic date has been found at Kish. Much more skill is needed, however, to apply glaze effectively on pottery than on the moulded ground quartz which forms the core of faience, and the surface of the pottery probably needed a certain amount of preparation before this could be done. Glass, as distinguished from glaze, is quite unknown at either Harappa or Mohenjo-daro.
c9.50
Objects of extraordinarily fine workmanship made in faience and vitreous paste have been unearthed in the Indus valley. Among them must be mentioned two monkeys, the first a squatting figure with hands on knees (Pl. J, 2), which in modelling and finish has almost a Chinese appearance, the second an animal holding its young, which, although unglazed and in an incomplete state, promised to become a real work of art (Pl. J, 4). None of the moulds, by means of which the paste beads and some of the animals were made, have yet been found. Many of the animal figures, which seem to have served as amulets, appear to have been first roughly modelled by hand and then shaped with a knife or similar tool, the glaze being, of course, the final process.
c9.51
It has been mentioned in another chapter that the use of shell for inlay and small objects as in Sumer was a craft commonly practised at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa also. Curiously enough, mother-of-pearl was not at all popular in these two cities, and articles made of it are extremely rare, perhaps because it is such a brittle material to work, although the early Sumerians seem to have surmounted this difficulty. Several varieties of conch shells were worked in the Indus valley, the interior parts of the shell and the walls being employed in various ways; this hard material was first divided up with a saw, then the patterns for the inlay were first fretted out with a drill and finally finished with a chisel and file. The complete specimens present very much the appearance of ivory and are far better preserved, for they have not suffered nearly so much from the effects of salt in the soil. Ivory was, however, indispensable for certain articles such as tabular dice, hairpins, and the like, for which shell was too brittle and, moreover, not long nor straight enough.
c9.52
A piece of ivory which once formed either the base or the top of a very fine vase has been found at Mohenjo-daro, and is ornamented with a design of intersecting circles in low relief, in which traces of the original red paste inlay still remain. The discovery of this fragment certainly indicates that ivory was used for larger objects, although it is, of course, impossible to say whether the whole of the jar was of the same material. Ivory was actually worked at Mohenjo-daro, for not only have a couple of tusks come to light, but several half-sawn blocks have been unearthed. It is strange that no animal or human figure made of this material has yet been found, for the fact that the elephant commonly appears on the seal-amulets (Pl. M, 6) shows that it was well known in the Indus valley and that ivory should have been easy to procure.
c9.53
It has already been mentioned that cotton was used as a textile in Mohenjo-daro, and presumably over the whole area inhabited by the Indus Valley people. As markings on the robe of one of the statues seem to indicate embroidery (Pl. H, 2), it is probable that this handicraft was commonly practised, the period being much too early for printed cotton cloth of the type made in Sind to-day. Needles of copper and bronze, sometimes with pierced eyes, sometimes with eyes formed by looping over the top of the needle itself, are well known, though in comparison with modern specimens they appear too clumsy to have been used on closely-woven material. A set of three gold needles, the largest two inches long, found with a hoard of jewellery by Mr. Dikshit, may have been employed in a special kind of embroidery; they all have cylindrical handles which terminate in a sharp point containing the eye. Two of these needles seem to have been held frequently between the teeth, to judge from the marks on the handles.
c9.54
Awls of bone, ivory, and copper are quite common and, like the needles, doubtless had a variety of uses. They may have been used for fine matting, but none of this material has been preserved. A coarse matting, as I have said, was placed upon the beams of a room to form the ceiling.
c9.55
Very few agricultural implements have survived, no doubt because they were almost entirely of wood. One or two roughly chipped objects of chert, not unlike unfinished celts in appearance and averaging in size 11 × 4½ × 3 inches, have been discovered. These have double-sloped edges, and as they are much too heavy to have served as weapons they are probably ploughshares, and were very likely quite efficient in the stoneless, alluvial soil of the Indus valley. Flint flakes, set in a wooden handle, such as the specimens found on early Egyptian and Sumerian sites, seem never to have been used, perhaps because copper was so plentiful and cheap. Two incomplete curved blades of this material from Mohenjo-daro are probably sickles.
c9.56
Agriculture must have been one of the chief industries, for many large cities had to be supplied with food, as well as numerous smaller settlements. There is undoubted evidence that cotton, wheat, barley, melons, and dates were cultivated; seeds of the last four have been found and identified, and mention has already been made of the fragments of cotton cloth found with one of the hoards of jewellery. A great many other plants must also have flourished—for example, the lotus, whose seed capsules serve as a motif on pin-heads, and whose root is still eaten in parts of India to-day. The country seems to have depended on the annual floods for its irrigation, but there are no traces of canals through which the water could have run. This apparent lack of any preparations for dry seasons, together with the representations of forest-loving animals on the seals, seem to point to the view that the rainfall in Sind and the Punjab must have been very much heavier than it is at the present day.
c9.57
Boat-building must also be included among the crafts of a people whose chief interest was trade and who had, in Mohenjo-daro, a prosperous city close to a large and navigable river. A boat carved on one seal-amulet has no mast, a sharp, upturned prow and stern, a cabin in the middle, and a steersman seated in the stern. Certain markings on the hull of the vessel suggest that it was made of reeds bound together, a method of building which was used for quite large boats in ancient Egypt. Another representation of a boat is roughly scratched on a pottery sherd and resembles the first in that it is high at both ends and holds a steersman, but instead of the deck cabin in the centre, it has a mast with apparently two yards. The first type of vessel may have been exclusively used for river traffic and the second for both river and sea, but there is no evidence at present forthcoming that the inhabitants of the Indus cities were a maritime race, and such trading as took place between India and Sumer may have been carried by ships belonging to a third nation.