In the gaze of a 4,000-year-old monkey
Among many fascinating finds from Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, the diminutive monkey figurine is undoubtedly the most captivating object on display at the Indus Gallery, in the National Museum of Pakistan, Karachi
This seated monkey from Mohenjo-Daro is crafted with remarkable skill and attention to detail. This tiny 3cm-terracotta statuette is excellently crafted out of blue-green faience, and immediately captures the viewer’s attention and imagination.
Some archaeologists hypothesise that the presence of fractured feet may indicate they were part of a triple monkey figurine in the past. It has the character of projection, creating a regal presence in its surroundings with its piercing yet gentle gaze, the serene yet playful expression, and the poise and elegance it emanates all contribute to the figure’s inherent character.
Faience is a paste created from ground quartz and coloured with different minerals. The artists of Mohenjo-Daro created faience bangles, chains, pendants, miniature vessels, and figurines, such as those of monkeys and squirrels. Another distinctive skill was the production of stoneware bangles, which were rigid, high-fired bracelets. These were highly burnished red or grey-black, with a standard inner diameter of 5.5 or 6 cm, and typically engraved with minuscule characters.
John Marshall writes, “The monkey is now extinct in Sindh, but that it existed there in ancient times is suggested by the fact that models of it are found in Mohenjo-Daro made in faience, pottery, and steatite. It is always represented in a squatting position with a hand on each knee.”
Mohenjo-Daro’s seated monkey is the finest illustration of how the art of animal figurines is one of the fascinating discoveries of the Indus Valley Civilisation. Despite the allure of this ancient art form, our understanding of it is still in its infancy. However, being the culmination of centuries of artistic traditions, Indus Valley art is more familiar and extensive.
According to the archaeological definition, the seated monkey of Mohenjo-Daro marked the beginning of Indian sculpture in its legitimate sense. Rene Grousset, a French historian, curator of both the Cernuschi and Guimet Museums in Paris, and an honourable member of the prestigious Académie française, remarked while examining a figurine of a seated monkey that “it may well foreshadow the whole art of Indian animal sculpture, from the capitals of Asoka to the ratha of Mavalipuram.”
The findings of the seated monkey at Mohenjo-Daro have revealed a new dimension of a detailed art form that had yet to be explored in its true nature. Traditionally, the figurine art of the Indus Valley anticipates the subsequent development of Indian sculpture in forms beyond animals. Among the numerous small fragments of sculpture discovered thus far at these sites are figures of a dancer and a dancing girl, as well as a small clay torso. These statuettes attest to the skill and assurance with which the artists of the Indus Valley worked with various moldable materials, such as terracotta, ivory, bronze, and alabaster.
Mohenjo-Daro artisans, unlike their contemporaries in Egypt and Babylon, were not interested in the spectacular. They never developed a monumental art form. In the cities explored, no temples or palaces that indicate a dominant kingship or priesthood have been discovered. Perhaps social life and religious expression in the Indus Valley civilisation did not necessitate such art forms. However, public baths, granaries, well-built houses, broad thoroughfares, and an intricate drainage system indicate an expansive and dignified civic life.
Therefore, art in the Indus Valley was conceived on a scale that made it part of everyday life. The multitude of terracotta figurines, emblematic of matriarchal culture, represents a folk tradition and connects Mohenjo-Daro to prehistoric times. The majority of female figures emphasise reproduction. However, without attributes, whether they represent divinity or humans is still being determined.
The sites in Mohenjo-Daro have produced an abundance of terracotta such as animal figurines of bulls, buffalo, monkeys, and canines; toy carts with solid axles; male and a great variety of female human figurines. Harappan artisans also created terracotta bangles, while masks made of terracotta have been discovered in Mohenjo-Daro.
Visual representation
Among the terracotta animal figurines of the Indus culture, Mohenjo-Daro’s seated monkey is one of the most artistically modelled. In his book “Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilisation, An American archaeologist, Jonathan Mark Kenoyer mentions, “Figurines of monkeys were made of terracotta or glazed faience depicting one or more monkeys in various amorous or acrobatic poses. All the monkey figurines are of the short-tailed rhesus or macaque species. However, the long-tailed langurs would have been known to the Indus people living in Gujarat and northern Punjab because this species is quite common throughout these regions today. The fact that they did not depict any long-tailed monkeys is quite intriguing, and it is also odd that no monkeys are illustrated on the seals or narrative tablets. The Harappan bias against depicting monkeys in glyptic art is one of the more important differences with later Hindu art, where monkeys are a common motif, and the long-tailed langur is directly associated with the deity Hanuman.”
Though this animal does not figure on the seals, it has been modelled in steatite and faience. Terracotta monkey figurines have been found at Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro, and Chanhudaro in the Indus Valley, at Periano Ghundai in the Zhob Valley, and at Lothal, south of the Indus.
Of all the monkey figurines found at Indus sites, the monkey figurine from Lothal, one of the southernmost sites of the ancient Indus Valley civilisation, located in the Bhal region of the Indian state of Gujarat, interestingly, resembles a guerrilla and has a close affinity with the Mohenjo-Daro figurine. The monkeys are modelled in two different ways. Firstly, those with skin are treated in a naturalistic manner; secondly, the skin is indicated by incised lines.
One beautifully modelled monkey figurine is shown climbing a tree at Harappa. Incised lines indicate the hair on its body, spinal cord, and back, with the end of the tail turned down. Another interesting example of a monkey at Harappa depicts a ready-to-jump posture, with its front legs separated, hands resting on knees, and an upraised face. It is sitting with its hands on its knees and looking forward, ready to jump. Another monkey figurine was identified by Ernest John Henry Mackay as a she-monkey in a squatting posture, a dog collar around her neck, her hands on her knees. The dog collars around the necks of monkeys hint that they were kept as pets by the Harappans.
Creative artform
Excavations of Indus towns have uncovered abundant evidence of creative activity. Researchers have found a wide range of artistic specimens, including seals, ceramics, gold jewellery, terracotta and bronze figurines, steatite carvings, and depictions of animals that no longer exist in the world or region, such as unicorns and certain species of monkeys. These discoveries are invaluable, offering deep insights into the lives, beliefs, and imaginative worlds of the people who created them.
The huge volume and variety of animal, reptile, and bird remains found at the sites is staggering, and the stratigraphic analysis of the area in which they are discovered allows for a clearer discernment of how patterns of use and consumption may have changed throughout the Indus’s epochs.
The fact that Indus and Harappan art reflects some of the essentials of artistic traditions that appeared later in the subcontinent is possibly its most crucial qualitative feature. One finds it incredible that the intersecting-circle motif of some Indus and Harappan Pakistan clay tiles found at Ahladino, Balakot, and Kalibangan in India should appear on the top surface of the famous third-century BC Bodhi throne of Bodh Gaya. The appearance of the famous “priest-king” head and torso, down to the tip of his nose, and the way he is shown wearing a shawl are quintessentially subcontinental.
The figure of three embracing monkeys intricately carved on a copper/bronze pinhead and other monkey figurines from Mohenjo-Daro drew sharp praise from Sir John Marshall: “Small as they are, they demonstrate a thorough comprehension of both work-in-the-round and relief, and exhibit a spontaneity and truthfulness to nature, of which even Hellenic art might not have been ashamed.”
At all excavation sites in the subcontinent, the distribution of specimens is remarkably uneven, but Mohenjo-Daro occupying the centre stage, followed by Harappa. There is no positive explanation except the inference that the cultural ethos of these centres, despite a remarkable impression of uniformity, admits variations from place to place. The indisputably uneven distribution of art objects, even down to terracotta at Harappan sites, argues in favour of the view that their belief system was based on distinct categories.
Art tradition
As a group, the Indus and Harappan art traditions are unique and differ from the contemporary art traditions of central and western Asia. There was undoubtedly an understanding of some motifs of those regions; the motif of ‘Enkidu between lions’ on a Mohenjo-Daro seal comes readily to mind, and there may also be other, less prominent details. It was once argued that a small stone head found unstratified at Dabarkot in north Balochistan could be either an Early Dynastic Mesopotamian import or a local imitation of it. A closer interaction in the art domain with Bactria to the north of the Hindukush was indeed possible, and the same may be said to some extent about Iran and southern Afghanistan. It would, however, be wrong to try to understand Harappan’s protohistoric art in terms of West and Central Asian derivations.
Looking at the art assemblage, it becomes clear that the Indus–Harappan artistic tradition was far from monolithic. In many animal representations on seals, one notices a striking sense of strength expressed through muscular tension — an element not commonly seen in later Indian art. This feature reflects the civilisation’s interaction with contemporary Bronze Age Mesopotamia.
The sculptures —especially the classical Sramana figure and the two specimens from Harappa — are distinctly Indian in the way they convey inner strength through mass and volume. The Sramana figure embodies a yogic stance, withdrawn into deep contemplation. The red sandstone male torso from Harappa is so evocative of much later Kushan-period torsos that, for a time, scholars even questioned whether it belonged to the Harappan era or the historic period.
The Nataraja specimen from Harappa also remains archetypally Indian. This dancing posture is associated with the god Siva, who appears in both phallic and Pasupati forms in Harappan contexts, making it highly unlikely that the figure represents a female. Even the bronze image-making tradition — seen in the Mohenjo-daro bronze dancing figure and various animal pieces — reflects a craft based on the lost-wax technique, a copper–bronze method still widely used at the village level in modern India. Overall, it is reasonable to assert that the Harappan artistic tradition forms the foundational layer of the later artistic traditions of India.
Arshad Awan is a Lahore based author, educationist, local historian, and brand strategist, and can be reached at arshadawan@msn.com
All facts and information are the sole responsibility of the author