Animals of the Indus Seals

The Indus Seals are the most fascinating cultural artifacts that the Ancient Harappans have left behind. They are best known for bearing the as-yet-un-deciphered Indus script but they are also works of art in their own right and through them archaeologists and historians have gained great insights into the world of the Indus Civilization. Most of these seals have pictures of animals on them. And through the animals displayed one can learn quite a bit about both the culture of the Harappans as well as the ecology of Northwestern South Asia at that time.

3,500 years ago, during the Mature Harappan Age, the Lower Indus Valley was a very different place than what it is today. The climate of the Indus Valley did not range from semi-arid to arid as the intensity of the Southwest Monsoon was far stronger. Thus the Indus Valley may have had a climate similar to that of Bihar today but with the added benefit of the winter rains from the Western Disturbances. Because of this climatic factor many of the animals depicted on the seals are no longer found in the region today. Among them are the tiger, Asiatic elephant and one-horned rhinoceros. As a reminder of the fact that this luxuriant subtropical valley was indeed located at the edge of the dry Central Asian highlands, two ungulates which represent the most awed fauna of that ecological zone, the markhor and ibex, also feature prominently on the Indus Seals and other Indus artwork. Many domestic animals, such as various types of cattle, as well as mythical beasts including a horned tiger and an animal that is referred to as the Indus Unicorn, are also common.

Before advanced climate science was able to deduce that the Indus Valley did indeed become drier around 2000 BCE, archaeologists including the great John Marshall deduced that Sindh must have been greener in that epoch as – unlike other civilizations based in arid regions, such as Egypt and Mesopotamia – there was no evidence of large scale agricultural irrigation networks. Furthermore the bricks found at Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa were fired ones, meaning that they would have been baked in large kilns that required an immense amount of biomass, most probably wood, to fuel the fires. Riverine jungles still exist in Sindh today close to the banks of the river but back then they would have extended for hundreds of kilometers beyond. This would have been the realm of the elephant, rhinoceros and tiger. Picturing Sindh as having a climate and ecology similar to the Nepal Terai is intriguing. Although the elephant and rhinoceros seem to be missing in Sindh from the early historical era onwards, the tiger did survive in the riverine forests and scrub jungles until the days of the British Raj. The tiger features prominently on many Indus Seals and it may have been a revered animal in Harappan religion. There are seals which show a scene in which a tiger is looking up to a person sitting on a peepal tree. This has been interpreted as either a depiction of an Ancient Indus folk story or religious symbolism. Many fanciful creatures based partially on tigers, including horned tigers and a creature that is half tiger and half human female, also appear on the seals. Another scene depiction is that of a man battling two tigers. This is similar to Mesopotamian representations of a man battling two lions and may be a clue of Sumerian cultural influence in the Indus Valley – or vice versa.

This brings us to the enigmatic Indus Unicorn. This creature was first described as the Unicorn of Mohenjo-Daro and shows a side profile of an animal that seems to a cross between a horse and bull with a single forward-curving horn. It is always shown with a raised dais, probably a ceremonial altar, below its head. Many interpretations for this animal exist: ranging from it being simply the side profile of a revered breed of cattle to a portrayal of the long extinct elasmotherium, a horse-like rhinoceros which went extinct 20,000 years ago! What sets this animal apart is the ceremonial altar. This shows that whatever this animal was, it was indeed a special creature for the Harappans. Depictions of cattle never include this altar.

As mentioned earlier, the ibex and markhor are also found in Indus artwork. These creatures would have been far more plentiful in Sindh Kohistan, Balochistan and the Sulaiman Range in Harappan times than they are today. The presence of these animals has an interesting connotation in that it shows that the Indus Civilization was a culture composed of both South and West Asian elements. These wilds goats are very often portrayed in Paleolithic and Neolithic rock art from the region and this ancient veneration was maintained by the Indus Civilization.

Of the crocodilians both the mugger crocodile and the gharial are present. The mugger crocodile only appears in other artwork and not on the seals but the gharial does make an appearance on the seals. The mugger is still found in the waters of the Indus today. But sadly – much like the rhino, elephant and tiger – the gharial is now extinct in the Indus Basin.

Perhaps the most intriguing of the Indus Seals is one with a man appearing to have two faces wearing a bison-horn headdress, similar to that worn by the Koya Adivasis today, sitting in a yogic posture surrounded by animals including a tiger, elephant, rhinoceros, wild water buffalo and ibex. John Marshal called it the Pashupati Seal and it is considered to be an early representation of the Hindu deity Shiva. The animals seem to be venerating the deity in the middle showing that the Indus religion may have believed that animals were sentient. Although the origins of the Vedas and thus Hinduism itself are linked to the spreading of the Indo-European languages in the Iron Age, some deities and ideas may have been borrowed from the Harappans when the Ancient Aryas reached the Indus Valley.

The animals of the Indus Seals tell the story of that long-lost civilization. It is up to us to conserve their descendants who still live in South Asia today, especially as the world is once again facing climate change – just like the Harappans did.

The author is the ceremonial Mehtar of Chitral and can be contacted on Twitter @FatehMulk