Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c11.s1.17

c11.s1.17

The pottery of RG III, on which we have already touched, is a consistent development from the ‘Bull’ wares of RG II. At Sur Jangal we find open bowls on a high pedestal foot painted with grouped vertical strokes; the interior of the bowl is painted with a frieze of humped cattle whose fantastically elongated legs and tails trail down to the centre of the area. This pattern often degenerates until its origin in animal forms becomes only faintly recognizable, and its original significance must have been forgotten by the painters of the more extreme examples of these abstract patterns.