The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c17.28

c17.28

These two statuettes, just under 4 ins. in height as preserved, are male torsos exhibiting a sensitiveness and vivacity of modelling entirely foreign to the works considered above.³ So outstanding are their qualities that some doubt must for the present remain as to the validity of their ascription to the Indus period. Unfortunately the technical methods employed by their finders were not such as to provide satisfactory stratigraphical evidence; and the statements that one, the dancer, was found on the granary site at Harappā and that the other was “4 ft. 10 in.” below the surface in the same general area do not in themselves preclude the possibility of intrusion. Attribution to a later period is also not free from difficulty, and doubt can only be resolved by further and more adequately documented discoveries of a comparable kind. Meanwhile it will suffice here to observe that one of these statuettes (pl. XVII c), in spite of an element of "frontality", is a realistic rendering of a somewhat adipose youth, in which the muscular forms are indicated with observation and restraint and with—be it noted—the breadth of style which is a notable feature of the engraved seals (p. 76); whilst the other, less accomplished in the rendering of detail, is nevertheless a lively figure with no affinity to the dead formalism of the Mohenjo-daro statuary. Incidentally, the figure appears to have been ithyphallic, and the suggestion that it may represent a prototype of the familiar dancing Śiva Naṭarāja is a plausible one.