Among the thousands of steatite seals unearthed in the excavations of the 7 Rivers civilization, one motif returns with remarkable insistence: a tree with broad round leaves, before which a figure in a posture of devotion sometimes stands, or inside which a deity resides. This tree is recognizable — botanists and archaeologists agree on this point — it is Ficus religiosa, the sacred fig tree, the pipal.
Five thousand years later, this same fig tree is the sacred tree of India. It is found in every Hindu village, often surrounded by a circular brick platform, adorned with offerings of flowers and ghee. It is under a fig tree of the same species that Siddhartha Gautama attained enlightenment and became the Buddha. It is the aśvattha of the Upaniṣads, the tree whose roots are above and whose branches are below — a metaphor of the inverted cosmos.
This five-thousand-year continuity is one of the most eloquent pieces of evidence of the direct link between the 7 Rivers civilization and contemporary Hinduism.
The fig tree in the seals: what archaeology documents
The most well-known motif is the “fig tree seal” of Mohenjo-Daro: a divine figure — half-human, half-animal — depicted inside or under the branches of a fig tree, before which a prostrated worshipper faces it.
The presence of a human worshipper facing a figure in the tree is a clear iconographic structure: it is a scene of devotion, a religious act. The tree is not mere background. It is the locus of divine presence.
Other seals depict the fig tree alone, framed by the characteristic border of steatite seals, treated with the same iconographic care as the unicorn bull or the Paśupati figure. It has the status of an autonomous religious symbol — recognizable, meaningful, worthy of being engraved on an object of trade and cult.
In The Civilization of the 7 Rivers, I note that the seals were not simple commercial stamps. They were worn around the neck as sacred objects. To engrave the fig tree on a seal is to carry the sacred tree on oneself — as a talisman, as protection, as a declaration of spiritual belonging.
The aśvattha in the Rig Veda
The sacred fig tree is present in the hymns of the Rig Veda, where it bears the name aśvattha — “where horses rest,” which says something about its social as well as sacred function: the tree under which one stops, under which one gathers, under which one deliberates.
In hymn 10.97.5 of my translation: Your seat is in the sacred fig tree. Your dwelling is made in the leaves.
This verse is addressed to medicinal plants — the healing plants whose dwelling is the fig tree, the anchor point. The aśvattha is not only a tree. It is the place where healing forces reside, the crossroads between the human world and the world of vegetal powers.
In the Vedic tradition, great deliberations — the sabhā, the assemblies — were often held under trees. The sacred fig tree is the tree of governance by consensus: the open space, the generous shade, the presence of the divine as guarantor of just speech.
From the 7 Rivers civilization to Hinduism: an unbroken continuity
In The Civilization of the 7 Rivers, I document how the transition between the Indus civilization and Hinduism is not a rupture but a gradual transformation. When the Sarasvatī dries up and the great cities are progressively abandoned from 1900 BCE, the populations do not disappear. They migrate — to the Ganges, to Gujarat, to Punjab — carrying with them their practices, their symbols, their gods.
The sacred fig tree is one of the symbols that survived this migration without losing any of its significance. It crosses the millennia with remarkable semantic coherence: tree of divine presence in the Indus seals, tree of knowledge in the Upaniṣads, tree of Awakening in the Buddhist tradition, tree of daily devotion in the Hindu villages of today.
The aśvattha in the Upaniṣads and the Bhagavad Gītā
The Kaṭha Upaniṣad takes up the image of the cosmic aśvattha: This eternal tree whose roots are above and branches below — that is the Pure, that is the Brahman.
The Bhagavad Gītā reprises this image in Canto XV: There is an eternal fig tree whose roots are above and whose branches are below… Its branches extend upward and downward, nourished by the guṇas.
Kṛṣṇa — who is the Puruṣa of hymn 10.90 in his personal manifestation — uses the aśvattha as the central metaphor of his description of the cosmos. The same tree that the inhabitants of Mohenjo-Daro engraved on their seals five thousand years ago.
The pipal today: living continuity
In every village of contemporary India, the pipal is protected. It is not cut down. It is surrounded by a brick platform — the chabutra — on which flowers, sindūr and oil lamps are placed. Women walk around it praying for their family’s health. Men gather there to deliberate.
In cities, when a construction project encounters a sacred fig tree, it still sometimes happens that the work stops, that negotiations take place, that the tree is skirted rather than cut. The reverence before the pipal is stronger than urban planning.
This reverence has exactly five thousand years of documented memory. And probably much more.
