An Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology v1.c9.s9.29

v1.c9.s9.29

Terracotta animal figurines are plentiful, representing mainly the bull, but also the elephant, rhinoceros, dog, monkey, pig, etc. Except a few stray examples, say from a late level of LOTHAL, the horse is by and large absent from the terracotta representations. The much debated terracotta animal from Mohenjo-daro (Mackay, 1938, 2, pl. LXXVIII, p. 11) is indeed a dog, as clearly seen from the contours of its face, and not a horse. From the artistic point of view one cannot fail to observe the high degree of modelling represented by the terracotta bulls from Mohenjo-daro and KALIBANGAN. The other terracotta objects included toy-carts with solid wheels [16.19], cubical dice [6.7.1] with markings usually 1 opposite 2, 3 opposite 4, and 5 opposite 6, and a variety of ‘cakes’—flat-triangular, biconvex-circular, spheroid and oblong—whose exact use is still debated.