156 Part III: South Asia
trade. If it was language, was that language an early form of Dravidian, or of
Sanskrit, or of some other language such as Munda? Each view has its parti-
sans, but there is no consensus.
When it comes to religious ideas, again we have to guess on the basis of
intriguing clues. The seals that bear the puzzling inscriptions also contain pic-
tures of animals that were important then: the humped bull, tiger, camel, ante-
lope, and elephant. Often animals are depicted tethered to an ornamented post
as if about to be sacrificed (or are these mangers from which they eat?), and
one shows a woman about to be sacrificed, her arms raised in supplication. A
frequent figure is the so-called horned god, a male sitting in a yogic pose with
his hands on his knees and wearing a headpiece of buffalo horns. In another,
two worshippers kneel beside him with hooded cobras towering over them.
This deity so resembles the later god Shiva that he is often referred to as the
Proto-Shiva. The frequency of religious themes on the seals could sustain a reli-
gious, rather than commercial, function.
Other hints of later Hindu practices are the many female images, possibly
goddesses, which far outnumber male images. They are often crudely made of
terra cotta, as if constructed for popular use or to be discarded after brief use at
a festival (as they would be now). These “mother goddesses” (if that is what
they are) are lavishly decorated with layers of necklaces, bangles, and belts,
have fabulous fan-shaped headdresses, and are bare-breasted. Perhaps this is
how women of IVC dressed. Or are they a forerunner of the primordial Shakti
who takes form in Kali, Durga, Saraswati, and other female deities? A few bet-
ter-made male images were also found, one assumed to be a priest, another
remarkably (but impossibly) Greek-looking from the realism of his torso.
Most puzzling of all is the question of how IVC was organized. Though it
spread across a vaster region than either Sumer or Egypt, a thousand miles from
west to east, with over 1,000 towns and two great cities so far excavated or
located, there is precious little evidence of a strong centralized government
beyond the indirect evidence of the well-laid out cities. No palace complex
exists where a great king might have lived and held court. No great temple com-
plex bears testimony to a cult of the divinities depicted on seals and suggested
by terra cotta statuettes. There is a large tank or bathing area, 40 feet long, 20
feet wide, and eight feet deep, that must have been used for collective bathing
(such tanks are now found in temple compounds). There is no evidence of
rivalry between states or of warfare, and there is little weaponry. The closest to a
structural center of power that has been discovered is a pillared hall with many
tiny adjacent rooms called by archaeologists an “assembly hall” or citadel
located at the highest points at Mohenjo Daro and Harappa. (A caveat: a Bud-
dhist stupa was built over a high point at Mohenjo Daro; no one knows what
lies beneath it.) So far, there is little to suggest the residence of a great king here,
but it just might be the center of a priesthood, whose monks lived in the cubicles
and functioned as a powerful oligarchy in worship of a god and goddess, order-
ing society through their ritual authority and enforcing a rational plan in the lay-