The Indus Script: Texts, Concordance and Tables c4.s3.10

c4.s3.10

The interpretation of the iconography of the Indus seals and tablets constitutes a major scholarly challenge. Various comparisons have been made with the ancient West Asian glyptics as well as with the later art of classical India.³⁵ Although it is impossible to go into detail here, one further example may be briefly mentioned because of its intrinsic interest and also in order to point out that these two kinds of comparisons need not be mutually exclusive. Sir John Marshall's identification of a "Proto-Siva" in the buffalo-horned deity of a famous seal from Mohenjo-daro (M-304)³⁶ may well be correct, and so may be Alf Hiltebeitel's even more convincing identification of this figure as "Proto-Mahiṣa"37, although this deity and his "yogic posture" have close counterparts in the earlier glyptic art of the Proto-Elamites.³⁸ Comparative studies thus suggest that the Indus Civilization may have been an integral if marginal part of the West Asian cultural area and that there is an unbroken cultural continuity in South Asia from the Harappan times until the present day.