Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c11.114

c11.114

The technique of painting is entirely in black, with a flexible brush, and within an outline the interior of the animals is filled by a pattern of thick stripes or by a neat diagonal cross-hatch of fine lines. The eye is always exaggerated and drawn as a full circle of white round a black disc, and the whole body is fantastically lengthened, though realistic detail is given to the legs and hoofs. In the more degenerate forms, however, the body becomes globular rather than elongated, and naturalistic details cease to appear. The cattle are the typical humped form (*Bos indicus*) which appears everywhere in the Western Indian prehistoric cultures. The goat figures, which so often accompany the cattle on the vase-paintings, are more stylized, and may equally well represent black buck or ibexes with curved, swept-back horns. Fishes are sometimes used to form a continuous band of design on shallow plates, where they follow one another head-to-tail in a narrow circular zone. The rather uncommon felines have clawed feet, but other distinctive features are hard to find. The heads show ears and the large circular eye in the manner of the cattle. There are various forms of the tree motif used, some certainly modified by Harappā contacts, and the birds shown on one fragment of pottery certainly seem of Harappā derivation.