Seals

Seals and tablets with inscriptions from the ancient Indus Valley Civilization.

Seals and Sodalities

"Thus the main motifs of the seal tablets emphasize two cultural phenomena. The first is that there was a rich mythopetic basis for the use of these motifs. The second is that the main motifs emphasize pan-settlement relationships, i.e. something held in common by the society at large, namely, the sodality to which the individual belonged. In contrast, we can assume that the Harappan writing identifies the indivudual who bears the seal tablet since the sign order is rarely duplicated. Here then is a clue to the meaning of the writing as it appears on seal tablets.

A Toponym in Chanhu-daro?

Can potential place-names in Indus inscriptions be isolated? Dr. Asko Parpola, in by far best single book on the subject, Decipering the Indus Script, after discussing how place names survive in people's names in Dravidian-speaking South India today, where "the name of the ancestral village often forms the first element of a person's proper name," continues by saying that "a similar survival of Harappan place-names in the Greater Indus Valley is not at all unlikely (§ 9.4).

Rare Three Animal Seal from Mohenjo-daro

J.M. Kenoyer describes it as a "square seal with animal whose multiple-heads include three important totemic animals: the bull, the unicorn, the antelope. All three animals appear individually on other seals along with script, but this seal has no script. The perforated boss on the back is plain, without the groove found on most seals." (Ancient Cities, p. 194). E.J.H. Mackay wrote that "a possible explanation of this unusual devices is that its owner may have sought the protection or assistance of three separate deities represented by the heads of these three animals" (Further Excavations,

Yogic Deity M-305

"Astronomy, including the use of a star calendar, played an important role in ancient Mesopotamia, and deeply influenced its religion: all the main gods were symbolized by particular stars or planets. In West Asia, one or two "star" symbols placed near the head distinguished divinities in pictorial representations. The practice seems to have been borrowed by the Indus civilization, for a seal from Mohenjo-daro depicts an Indus deity with a star on either side of his head enclosed by a pair of curved horns. (Asko Parpola, The Roots of Hinduism, p. 272). Elsewhere he writes: "Indus signs

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