438 ANNUAL EEPOET SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1932 



In addition to the pottery figurines of the mother-goddess, enor- 

 mous numbers of model animals are found, some obviously no more 

 than children's toys, and often so roughly made as to have been the 

 handiwork of the children themselves. But some are better made, 

 especially seA'eral bulls whose modeling is really very striking in its 

 spirit and efficiency; and these were very probably votive figures 

 associated with the religious ideas outlined above. 



By far the most arresting, however, of the statues and figurines so 

 far unearthed is one of cast bronze — a dancing girl, posed in most 

 realistic attitude, with scornful mien, and quite unforgettable in 

 faithfulness of representation. 



But the seals are unquestionably the most striking feature of the 

 small finds. Made of steatite, white, gray, or black, they are mostly 

 square in shape, with a divided boss upon the back, through a hole 

 in which a cord was pa&sed, so that the seal could be worn at 

 neck or wrist. Oblong seals, with curved back and flat obverse bear- 

 ing a row of pictographic characters, and perforated from side to 

 side, are also found in considerable numbers; and, more rarely, small 

 square stamp seals with geometrical designs. The uniformity of de- 

 sign of the typical square stamp seal — the line of pictographs above 

 the animal, the cult-sign — is only paralleled by the uniformity of 

 style throughout the whole period during which the city was occu- 

 pied. And it seems likely that, although the city was rebuilt and re- 

 occupied several times, its total duration was not long enough to 

 allow of much change in the mode of writing or the accepted canons 

 of art. 



Of the animal devices, the so-called unicorn was by far the most 

 popular. It is a sti'ange beast, rather bull-like in body ; and there is 

 the possibility that the one horn really represents two, one hiding the 

 other. The mangerlike cult object before it appears to have been 

 made of basket work — as are many of the mangers in the modern 

 villages round about the ancient site — or of leather work, but why 

 there should be upper and lower parts to it remains, for the present, 

 a mj'stery. Other animals especially favored were the short-horned 

 and Brahmani bulls. The frequent appearance of the elephant, rhi- 

 noceros, and tiger suggests that there was a rather larger rainfall 

 in ancient Sind than now, for they are forest-loving animals and 

 at present quite unknown in the Indus Valley. It is noticeable also 

 that the lion, a denizen of dry open country, has never yet been found 

 upon a seal, though these animals still exist in Kathiawar to the 

 south of Sind. 



It is on the seals that the dating of Mohenjo-daro largely depends ; 

 though there is ample evidence from the close similarities between 

 large numbers of the small objects found in the three cities, from 



