Mother Goddesses of The Indus Valley

Mother Goddesses of the Indus Valley

Rafi Samad

Key words: Female figurines, design features, fertility symbols, votive objects, fertility rites, disposable objects

Fertility cults were quite common in the prehistoric cultures of the Indus Valley and the adjacent regions. Invariably female figurines were involved, which are commonly referred to as Mother Goddesses.

 Female figurines begin to appear as early as 7500 BC in at Mehrgarh in the Bolan Plains of Eastern Baluchistan. The Bolan Plains are contiguous with the plains of the Lower Indus Valley, and the culture developed in the early settlements of the Bolan Plains was absorbed to a very large extent in the culture of the Civilization, which emerged in the Indus Valley in mid-third millennium BC.

Female figurines made in terracotta have been found from a large number sites related to the Indus Valley Civilization in Pakistan. These sites include Nausharo in the Kacchi Plains of Eastern Baluchistan, Nindowari in the Baluchistan Highlands, and Moenjodaro and Harappa in the Indus River Valley.

At all these places the figurines are heavily adorned with a variety of adornments including chokers and necklaces, armlets, bangles and headbands. Most of them wear a wide girdle round their waist and loin cloths. They have long hairs, which are neatly arranged. Some of them also wear heavy headdresses. Generally the artistic quality of these figurines was somewhat low. Unlike the highly refined technologies employed in the Indus Valley to manufacture intaglio seals and sophisticated pottery and vessels, less effort seems to have put into the manufacture of figurines.  

A number of features incorporated in the design of the figurines indicate that these figurines played the role of mother-goddesses in ancient fertility rituals. Most figurines have very large breasts and are nude from the waste upwards. A large number of them wear fan-shaped headdresses with cups on either side, which were probably filled with oil to light the wicks, or incense, which were employed in the religious ceremonies. Some of the figurines also carry infants closely attached to their breasts or sitting on their hips.

The figurines were commonly used as votive objects in religious ceremonies. The donation of these votive objects may have been made to express gratitude on birth of a child and to pray for the long life and happiness of the new born infant. They may also have been used in ceremonies in which the devotees sought divine help to increase the size of their family, or increase in their cattle holdings, or to ensure good harvests.

 Traditionally such fertility rites were performed at home as well as in public places. A devotee may leave a figurine with other votive objects at the base of a banyan or Pipal (fig) tree after making his or her prayers to the gods. Different levels of sophistication and variable sizes indicate that people from all sections of the population, the rich as well as the poor, took part in these rituals.

The large number of terracotta figurines found from different sites, and their somewhat crude design, indicates that these figurines were disposable objects. After the rituals these figurines were discarded and were probably used by the children as play objects.