In today's post I am beginning a brief series on contextualized visual art in India. You might call it a collection of "highlights." A major source of information for the series is the new book
Christian Themes in Indian Art from Mughal Times to the Present (I own a copy that I am practically drooling over).
However, we should begin at the beginning, with the Indus Valley Civilization. This was the first "great" civilization of India that built cities and left some form of material culture and art, though tantalizingly little. Its religious beliefs, though still largely unknown, appear to have had at least some
influence on one of India's subsequent major religions, Hinduism.
Patheos.com
writes that
relatively little is in fact known about the details of the religious world of the Indus Valley civilization. Based on archaeological remains, however, it seems that this was a religious world that was particularly focused on ritual bathing and animal sacrifice, elements that may be the source of later Hinduism's attention to the purifying qualities of water and the centrality of sacrifice. Furthermore, a great many female figurines have been discovered in the ruins of the cities that date to this period. These seem to have been goddesses, and may have been particularly associated with fertility rituals.
Scholars have speculated that these figures are origins of the many goddesses who populate the vast Hindu pantheon. Male figures have also been found on stone seals. Some of these seals depict a seated figure surrounded by a variety of animals, including bulls. These images lead some scholars to label these "proto-Shiva" figures, since the great god Shiva is generally associated with animals (he is sometimes called "Pashupati," the Lord of the animals) and more particularly linked with the bull, which later becomes his special "vehicle."
