The art and architecture of India - Buddhist, Hindu, Jain (Art Ebook)

THE INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION 39
The animal seals are among the world's greatest
examples of an artist's ability to embody the
essentials of a given form in artistic shape. These
are not portraits of any individual bulls, but
universal representations of a species. The
carver has imbued his subject with an alive
and vital character by his intuitive ability to
define everything that is important for the
nature of the animal he is portraying. The
abstract organization of the folds of the skin and
the muscular and bony structure are completely
expressive of the massiveness and weightiness
of the bull. It is this realization of the essential
structure and character of the species that makes
9. Storage jar from Chanhu-daro.
Boston, Museum of Fine Arts
for the universal character of the work of art
which transcends the mere imitation or portrait
of a single real animal, such as a painting of
a bull by Paul Potter.
The pottery of the Indus civilization has provided
a special problem to archaeologists, largely
by reason of its separateness from the wares
of contemporary civilizations in Mesopotamia
and Iran. The vessels, for the most part intended
as storage jars, were all kiln-fired and covered
with a red-ochre slip which was polished to a
lacquer-like finish. The designs, which were
applied in a black pigment before firing, consist
of intersecting circles with occasional examples
of foliate and beast patterns that bear little or no
relationship to the designs of western Asia [9].
This type of pottery seems to have been made
in all parts of the geographical limits of the
Indus culture and, it has been pointed out, wares
of a similar sort are still made in the village
potteries of western India today. 16
Under the heading of pottery we may include
not only actual vessels but the figurines in the
shape of toys or cult images that have been
found in enormous numbers in all the sites inhabited
by the Indus people. They belong more
definitely to a popular, folk-art tradition than
the sophisticated objects we have already examined.
By far the most numerous in this collection
are crude female effigies which have been