Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c11.119

c11.119

A most interesting and attractive feature of the Kulli Culture, and one which marks it off from the other regional groups we have studied, is the frequent presence of baked clay figurines of women or of cattle. It must be confessed at the outset that we have no certain knowledge of the use or purpose of these little figures, and in some instances at least they can be regarded only as toys, but the female figurines at least have some claims to be thought of as deities in household shrines. The use of such clay figures as votive offerings or as the constituent deities of rural shrines is common in contemporary popular Hinduism, whose roots strike back into the prehistoric past: once in the Dekkan I remember finding remote from any village a shrine consisting of a shelf of rock on which stood a dozen or fifteen clay figures of horses and elephants, which constituted the sole visible evidence of sanctity save for the grease of libations over the rock face.