The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c19.1

c19.1

Buildings, sculptures, terra-cottas and seals have already introduced the complex problem of the Harappan religion or religions, and the salient features of the available evidence may now be brought together. At the outset, however, two reminders are advisable: first, as to the notorious incapacity of material symbols to represent the true content and affinity of a religion or belief, and secondly as to the indivisibility of religious and secular concepts in ancient times. Thus on the one hand the symbol of a mother and child may range through a whole gamut of ideas from the simplest physical to the most transcendentally metaphysical; and on the other a “king” may combine the virtues of a god with those of a priest and the presidency of a senate. Modern terminology and modern habitude have constantly to be discounted in any consideration of the *disjecta* of an ancient religion or an ancient polity.