The Indus Script: Texts, Concordance and Tables c4.s8.t3.7

c4.s8.t3.7

Usually only one type of composite animal is represented in the seals. It has the horns of the zebu, the face of man, the tusks and the trunk of the elephant, the neck and front legs of the goat, the middle body of the 'unicorn', the hind legs of the tiger, and the snake for a tail (cf. M-299 to M-302).80 But in the incised copper tablets of Mohenjo-daro, one can distinguish several composite animals. The composite nature of most of the animals depicted on these copper tablets has rarely been recognized so far.81 The "mastiff" of the excavation reports, for example, is actually a composite animal put together of the zebu (horns), tiger (head and front part of the body) and rhinoceros (back part of the body). In this fashion, we distinguish the following composite animals on the copper tablets (given separate Roman numerals when occurring after one another): buffalo + man + deer (?) + snake (M-504 to 506) / markhor + unicorn (M-543 to 549) / two-headed zebu + tiger (?) + unicorn (M-550) / markhor + camel + buffalo (M-551 to 566) / zebu + tiger + buffalo (M-567 to 570) / zebu + elephant + rhinoceros + snake (M-571) / zebu + tiger + rhinoceros (M-572 to 574) / zebu + camel + rhinoceros + snake (M-575 to 581).