The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c17.37

c17.37

The terra-cottas may be considered in two main categories, those of human and animal figurines.⁵ Of the human figurines, one of the most remarkable is that of a man found in 1950 on the site of the granary in the citadel of Mohenjo-daro (pl. XVIII B): a flat-bodied representation seemingly of a definite (Semitic?) ethnic type, with long nose and receding, fleshy chin, beardless. The head-dress is incomplete. There is no reason to suppose that either this or other, more crudely modelled nude figures with pellet-eyes, slit or applied mouths and pinched-up noses represent religious types; but a horned figure from the DK Area¹ was presumably a deity, and a curious series of horned masks with oblique eyes, cast from moulds,² may have been suspended as apotropaic charms. A Janus-like double head, also impressed from a mould or moulds, was doubtless that of a divinity, and a squatting bearded figure³ may be significantly reminiscent of the seated stone statues which were probably those of deities. Occasionally male and female figures are deliberately grotesque,⁴ and are doubtless purely secular, though this appearance is not incompatible with a religious purpose.