[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [Archaeology, epigraphy and coins](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.epigraphy) › [The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume)](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.epigraphy.wheeler-1953) › c19 # The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c19: The Indus religions The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c19 - **Language:** English ### The Indus religions ### [c19.1](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.epigraphy.wheeler-1953.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. ### [c19.2](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.epigraphy.wheeler-1953.c19.2) Moreover, a religion such as we may expect to encounter amongst the Harappans is more likely than not to be a loosely knit complex of accumulated beliefs and observances, elaborately if implicitly graded, in which the lower grades may in fact have a greater hold upon the popular mentality than the higher. That is so in India to-day, where the crudest animism and demonism still underlie the semi-philosophical and ethical concepts of the educated few; where the symbols of the higher thought are the awesome physical realities of the peasantry. Something of this duality or multiplicity would appear to have been present already to the Harappan society of the third millennium, as it was still present to the more evolved societies of the classical world. In particular the numerous terra-cotta figurines of an almost nude female, which have been supposed to represent a Mother Goddess (above, p. 68), have no clear counterpart in the seals or major sculptures and may more easily be related to a household cult than to a state religion. Such a cult was widespread in time and space; its ultimate embodiment may be recognized in the little pipeclay "Venuses" of Roman Gaul, and its representations go back to an undetermined antiquity in western Asia.¹ Terra-cotta figurines of pregnant women or of women with children may reflect the same preoccupation with fertility. At the other end of the scale a hieratic cult may be represented by the seated male figures of the stone statuary (p. 65), though an absence of surviving emblems makes this uncertain. No uncertainty at least attaches to the divinity of the seated "Śiva" of the seals (p. 79), a figure which, even in these small-scale representations, is replete with the brooding, minatory power of the great god of historic India. Here if anywhere may be recognized one of the pre-Āryan elements which were to survive the Āryan invasions and to play a dominant role in the so-called Āryan culture of the post-Vedic period. Another such element was phallus-worship, a non-Āryan tradition which appears to have obtained amongst the Harappans, if certain polished stones, mostly small but up to 2 ft. or more in height, have been correctly identified with the \*liṅga\* and other pierced stones with the \*yoni\*. The likelihood that both Śiva and \*liṅga\*-worship have been inherited by the Hindus from the Harappans is perhaps reinforced by the prevalence of the bull (the vehicle of Śiva) or of bull-like animals amongst the seal-symbols; although the veneration which, on the same showing, was paid in less degree to the tiger, elephant, rhinoceros and crocodile prevents us from assuming any specific association of the proto-Śiva and the bull as early as Harappan times. Composite, sometimes man-faced, animals and "minotaurs" presumably indicate on the one hand the coalescence of initially separate animal-cults and, on the other other hand, their progress towards anthropomorphism. The representation of the image of a "unicorn" carried in procession (p. 77) might recall the animal-standards which represented the \*nomes\* of Egypt, but that the widespread occurrence of these signs in the Indus valley seems to militate against their association with particular districts or provinces.¹ ### [c19.3](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.epigraphy.wheeler-1953.c19.3) ¹ See generally Marshall, I, 49 ff. ### [c19.4](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.epigraphy.wheeler-1953.c19.4) ¹ Mackay in Marshall, II, 384. ### [c19.5](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.epigraphy.wheeler-1953.c19.5) Other types suggesting links with Mesopotamia or with a common source have already been cited: that of a semi-human, semi-bovine monster attacking a horned tiger, a scene reminiscent of the semi-bovine Sumerian Eabani or Enkidu, created by the goddess Aruru to combat Gilgamesh, but fighting afterwards as his ally against wild beasts; and of a human figure gripping two tigers after the fashion of Gilgamesh and his lions. The astral trefoil (p. 64) may be another link between East and West. Indeed, it would be easy to show that, as manifested in the monuments, the Indus religion was a mélange of much that we already know of third-millennium Asiatic religious observance, augmented by specific anticipations of the later Hinduism. Even the Babylonian Tree of Life may have had its counterpart at Mohenjo-daro and Harappā, where seals display the sacred tree enshrining a three-horned deity (tree-spirit?) or springing from conjoined "unicorn" heads (p. 79), or standing alone, sometimes protected apparently by a wall or railing,² in the fashion of the sacred bodhi-tree of Buddhist India. And finally the importance—not necessarily the deification³—of water in the life of the Harappans is stressed by the Great Bath on the citadel of Mohenjo-daro and by the almost extravagant provision for bathing and drainage throughout the city, and may provide yet another link with the later Hinduism. The universal use of "tanks" in modern Indian ritual, and the practice of bathing at the beginning of the day and before principal meals may well derive ultimately from a usage of the pre-Aryan era as represented in the Indus civilization. ### [c19.6](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.epigraphy.wheeler-1953.c19.6) ² Marshall, I, 65. ### [c19.7](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.epigraphy.wheeler-1953.c19.7) ³ Although the deification of rivers is a feature of the Vedic religion. --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.epigraphy.wheeler-1953.c19](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.epigraphy.wheeler-1953.c19) · Pramāṇa