Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c12.156

c12.156

Two groups of patterns are of common occurrence: the geometric or abstract forms include the distinctive intersecting circle motif repeated as an overall pattern, and a smaller but significant group employs naturalistic motifs of plant and animal designs. It is difficult to make comparative comment on the first group of patterns, except to note that a certain kidney-shaped motif is common to Harappā shell inlays and gold jewellery as well as to pot ornament, and that the intersecting circle pattern is found on a vessel from the Nal cemetery, though there painted on to a buff background. The naturalistic designs are interesting. They are usually painted in a sprawling, slapdash technique which covers all the available area of the vessel in an irregular mass of foliage and tendrils, among which birds (sometimes peacocks) and less frequently animals take their place. It is an untidy, luxuriant style, and has nothing of the formalism and sense of precise patterning found in so much of the Baluchistan pottery; one almost feels that the hard, arid hill-country produced a taut, muscular style of painting, but that down in the humid plains a lush jungle style grew up.