The Goddess Kills the Buffalo in the Indus Valley

Abstract

The Indus Seal 420 depicts a three faced deity with buffalo horns seated in yogic posture and surrounded by animals: an elephant, a tiger, a rhinoceros, and a buffalo with a human between the former two. The six signs on the top include a battle horn, a fish and a jar. Identifying this deity as Mahiṣāsura, Alf Hiltebeitel proposes that these are animals sacrificed to the Goddess. On careful analysis of the episode as documented in the Devī Māhāṭmya, I propose that the three faces represent the three forms Mahiṣāsura takes during the battle: human, lion and elephant. The surrounding animals are part of his army. The fish and the jar signs represent the Goddess and her severing of Mahiṣāsura’s head. I render support to my observation by studying this seal with a similar one which contains both the deity in yogic posture and a person placing his or her foot on top of a buffalo and killing it with a barbed spear.

The Indus script is Dravidian. The theme of interior landscape in ancient Tamiḻ poetry connects various aspects of human love—union, elopement, waiting, unfaithfulness, and anxiety—with landscapes consisting of animals etc. The buffalo and the fish convey the idea of lover’s unfaithfulness suggesting that a noble Mahiṣāsura had turned hostile. This epigraphical evidence, embellished with a poetic theme, testifies to the literary excellence of a much ancient Tamiḻ—which I have named Mīṉtamiḻ—aided by an episode preserved in a Sanskrit text.