The earliest representations of symbols are noted in Indus Valley seals. The seals bear on them several religious signs, human and animal figures and pictographic legend. They simplify popular religious beliefs. Unfortunately, the efforts are ongoing but the script’ has not yet been deciphered, hence the religious system of the Indus Valley people is not fully known.
The Indian tradition has an unbroken continuity. The legacy handed down to us through a long stretch of time is helpful in translating the meaning of these symbols. A study of tribal cultures and iconography may throw some interesting light on pictography of Harappan seals.
Introduction
A vast number of seals in clay, faience metal and semi-precious stones have been discovered at Indus Valley sites with miniature carvings. A narrative art is evident in the pictographs and seals of Indus Valley. These reveal the earliest visual expression of the people of India. A living ritual and technology that telescopes the five thousand years is manifest, linking rites and symbols with contemporary art and rituals of villages and tribes. This gives to the rural art of today, a free time perspective within which the past and present coalesce in a great convolving continuity.
Woman’s numerous forms dwelling in neem tree in mysterious dialogue with a tiger, composite form of man and animals, immortal and ancient are timeless symbols that were later to find powerful expression in literature and pictography. Rites and rituals that anticipate the later forms of the goddesses are distinguishable. Symbols also change with a sacral presence. These recurrent symbols nourish the Indian unconscious mind, the source roots of the classical as well as the little traditions of field and forest. In later centuries, these symbols were translated in the hand of the artisan into cult images and icons. A living ritual and technology that telescopes five thousand years in Harappan seals is manifest linking rites and symbols with the contemporary art and rituals of the village and the tribes.
The importance and power of the series of seals and mysterious relationship of a lady to the tiger is revealed in a continuing tradition of Kalibangan, where the horned-lady, the tree and the tiger appear on a seal as almost identical composition and in another seal where the tiger and the lady have merged into a composite form.
Seal – A dialogue with tiger
Harappa Kalibangan Mohenjo-daro.
A ritual scene that repeats itself in endless variation on the seals of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa is the spirit of the tree in mysterious dialogue with the tiger. In the seals a woman figure is seen sitting erect, her body held in perfect equipoise, on a branch of a neem or acacia tree. The long linear body of the tree spirit has no separate entity. It is part of the tree and its branches. The arm of the tree woman is stretched, moving out of the trunk of the tree. The tiger stands below the tree, motionless, in a still moment of listening and his head is turned to face the figure within the tree, to catch the sound of the rustling leaf.
The intimate relationship of primitive man to the earth, to plants and animals and their use as catalyst for initiating the secret mysteries of the metamorphosis is evident in many of the rituals revealed on the Indus Valley seals. The ritual scenes project fluidity and a free changeability of form and identity between plant, animal and human. The magician priests must have had access to secrets of the highly developed plant chemistry and alchemy.
The quality of listening and of silence, in which sounds of vast forests are contained, is the clue to the woman and the tiger seals of transformation. The form of the tree, the long-armed gesture of the woman, the posture of the tiger and the stillness of the wild and fierce animals of the forests imparts fluidity, a dimension and, dissolves barrier and prepare the ground for a metamorphosis.
Seal of a Buffalo woman
Harrapan Seal
In this seal, tiger and woman have become one. The tree buffalo-woman retains her horns. She stands erect with a long pigtail, her arms stretched sideways, her waist curved indicating flesh and substance. From the spine, at an angle to the standing figure springs the tiger marked with stripes. The massive body of the tiger has now assumed the fragile, linear elegance of the lady on tree. It is the lady who lifts her head and rides the tiger. The tree has disappeared. Its place on the seal has been taken by a mysterious diagram. The mutation is complete.
On the head of the lady rests a pair of wide buffalo horns between which a vertical shaft, identified as sprouting corn or matted hair, projects. continuous spiral – suggesting the coil dynamism of contained energy and also providing an enclosing breast plate for protection. The headdress of the bison-horned yoi of Maria, Bastar reveals astonishing similarities. Both have identically balanced buffalo horns between which projects an elaborate peacock feather ornament. In the wood carving of Gonds of Bastar dances with drums are depicted wearing the horns of divinity with the peacock feather. In another wood carving, the horns are placed alone to suggest the sacred presence. Buffalo-headed theomorphic menhir figures made of wood are also created by the Gonds of Mandla.
A primitive man, wearing of buffalo horn establishes the sanctity of ritual. The power that vests in the ancient Gods is invoked by the officiating magical priest, who, potent with energy, in trance and dream, establishes the visual kernel of power. This spirit or god rarely takes shape or form. It is the magician -priest, vested with ancient authority, who stands between man and dark, terrifying forces of nature. It is not likely, then, that the horned and masked figures of the Indus Valley are the ancient magician priests, the channels or temple or shine. The absence of icons in bronze and clay of this horned personality is significant and would support the view that these images represent the magical-priest possessed with divine power.
Earth Mother
The Earth Mother travelling along the primitive tracks, the prehistoric roots of migration the thrusting power of the goddesses met and mingle and gain common identity. In the journey across the great land of masss, the forms of the sacred ones had undergone continuous transformation, as they absorbed their identity in the massive earth matrikas, virgin, yet mothers, the water and vegetal spirits, the apsaras and yakshies, the serpent head nagins, the female ghosts, the bhutnis, the blood thirsty dakinis, yoginis or jogan, the practitionerof magic. A composite form of the female energies emerged as mata or Devi with power and mystery intimately linked with earth, water, vegetation holding within her sacred auspicious being the secrets of fertility and death.
Nagarjuna, the Buddhist sage and Mahayana philosopher, and a master of alchemy, reveals in his Rasa Ratnakara in 3rdto 4th c., the process through which he gained access to the secrets of alchemy. For twelve years he worshipped a yakshi, the mysterious female spirit, who dwelt in the asvastta tree. Nagarguna also affirms an ancient knowledge of alchemy wherein plants were used on rituals of transformation (P C Ray History and Chemistry in Ancient and Mediaeval India).
Tiger
The rampant tigers are the guardian of initiation and protect the mysteries and the immense magic of creation. In ancient magic, tiger is the guru of initiation. In the great birth of seal, he guards the mysteries. In the Indus Valley pictograph, the tiger is never visualized as violent, he never kills. His role is protective He is in communion with the energy sources of nature.
The tiger was known to the singers of the Rigvedic hymns, but the lion does not appear on the Indus Valley seals. Among the forest shrines of the Bhils of Gujarat, there is a wooden palia, a menhir pillar in a shape of a two-armed woman riding a tiger. Clay offering of horse, bull and tiger are made to her. Her image suggests the Puranic goddess Amba or Durga. The Bhils refers to her as hura pura, the old ancestress. The lady astride the tiger appears also in several tribal metal icons from Mandla, Madhya Pradesh. In the Matsya Purana, there is a legend wherein Brahma is pleased with the tapasya of Parvati and grants her a boon. She asked that the tiger be the chief of her gana as Vyaghrapada.
The horned tiger is familiar in Baiga myth. When the Baiga Gunia call on all tigers of the world by name, the horned bagh is one of them. The tiger is the phallic symbol of the wildness and grandeur of the virile, heroic male. In Nepal, Bhairava is worshipped in the image of the tiger and in the paintings of the Mithila women of Bihar, the tiger mask covers Sivas loin.
There is a Tamil Nadu legend that Subramaniam, the son of Siva and the forest mother, loved an original virgin, Valli. To win her love he turned himself into a vangai. Vangai is the Tamil word of tiger and also the name of the neem tree in the male aspect before it flowers. (K Krishnan in Hindustan times 29th March 1970) The association of both male neem tree as well as the tiger with Subramaniam is of great interest. Is the Indus Valley virgin, the tiger and the neem tree an illustration of the ancient legend memories of which survive in the Subramaniam story?
Magician priests
The representatives of ancient magicians, who, like the Baiga priest, had special intimacy and control over tiger, who had the power to summon them from the forest, to catch them by the ear and whisper to them their secrets, and the capacity to transform themselves into tigers at will.
The magician priest among primitive men, the Gunia and the Bhopas, drew their authority from their ancestors. They claim power over the potency of bridegrooms, the malevolence of witches, and the ferocity of tigers. Their magic is derived from the original guru-preceptor Nanga Baiga, whom the Baigas named as the first magician. A myth recounts Nanga Baiga’s pact with tigers, by virtue of which only he could bind their mouths. To call their ancestor Nanga Baiga, the Gunia make two images, one of pap or sin and other of Vanaspati, plant symbol of Earth Goddess, He then calls all tigers by name. A man in audience is filled with the spirit of bagh, the tiger, and devours the image of sin. The Baiga then hammers nails into four trees to guard and invoke the image of Vanaspati, or Earth Goddess informing that Nanga Baiga had fixed the boundaries of the village and made the village safe from tiger. The antiquity of these rites is manifest in an identical spell of the Atharvaveda charms in which the charm binds the mouth of the tiger.
Coiling on clay
The arms and bodies of some of the human figures and the necks of animals etched on Harappan seals are suggestive of the core coiling of wax on clay images, to be found in the lost wax process of casting metal, practiced by primitive ghassias or blacksmiths. In tribal Bastar, where the lost wax process of casting is still extant, potters mount the clay horses that are offered at forest shines by coiling clay strips around the necks and bodies of the animals, creating the identical visual effect to that found in the ritual seals of the Indus Valley.
Ancient literature
Rigvedic hymns contain very archaic elements and possibly the earliest record of beliefs and the imagery, the rituals and the worship. The Atharvaveda established ways of communication between man and gods. Through his magic powers sages discovered the means of overcoming the malevolent and the hostile. The Atharvaveda compiled by singing sages is probably the first record of the beliefs, the imagery, the rituals and worship of the people of India.
Mantras, Mudras and Mandana are in a sense incipient in the Atharvaveda hymns. They form the sacral energy charged base against which and from which the numerous forms emerge. A Mantra has two characters–energy release and energy transformation. Mantra is a spell and incarnation using abstract sound, repetitive alliteration and is energy releasing and energy transforming. Mudra is energy generating gesture to evoke the act of protection and destruction. Action or ritual, keyed to the source of energy is manifest in the sun and earth, trees and animals. They are believed to evoke the act of protection and of destruction. Mandala, as enclosed sacred place, holds the surcharged energy and power. The making of a picture and an effigy to do evil and to protect are integral to many of the rituals. Later, many of these magical rites were to be translated to many vratas practices and cults that were the key to mysteries and energy resources, held and kept secret by women.
Mysterious people, the gandharvas, yakshas, apsaras, and the pisachas pervade the Atharvaveda. There is awareness that these unfamiliar beings were mighty magicians with intimate knowledge of plant chemistry and its use in healing, destroying and granting, extended god like vision. They could transform themselves in any form.
The faces of the mighty pervading goddess and the many elements that went to build later composite forms are incipient of the Atharvan hymns. Born of the fragrant earth and their home in waters, apsara bears the names of sweet smelling herbs and exude the fragrance of the lotus. Their mysterious association with the water and with trees was recognized and so is their power to destroy the minds of men with their incandescent beauty. The apsaras dance, sing and play on musical instruments. They are eternal virgins.
Summing up
Ancient people used a high symbol vocabulary, both literary and imaginary, to represent the association of Gods with some specific natural phenomena. This is because people viewed humans, nature and supernatural being, as a part of a single universe. God and goddess were often represented as half human and half animals or were associated with plants (specific) and animals. These symbols quite often found expression on Harappan seals.
Although the religion of each of the Indus societies developed independently, they nevertheless reflected many common concerns and aspirations. In each society people were in close association with nature and may explain aspects of their religious views. In all cultures people viewed themselves as part of the natural order of things and, they made no distinction between the natural, and the supernatural. They believed that these possessed human like attributes.
Rural roots projecting back into the distant past and the heritage of the later ages were collected in the hymns of the Atharvaveda. A sense of mysterious sacredness and of wonder, a recognition of the earth as the life-giving fragrant mother, prevails the Atharvaveda hymns. It focuses on earlier Vedic beliefs and shift from sky to earth, how to plant in their sacred presence on earth were praised as healers, having magical power and deified make manifest the forms of things. They were used as weapons against the malevolent and hostile. The ideological contents remain the same, but the symbol seems to be changing during time. Later many of these magical rites of Atharvaveda hymns were translated into thousands of vrata practices and the cults. These were kept the mysteries and energies, held sacred by woman in villages.
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