Among the most fascinating objects that excavations of the Seven Rivers civilisation have brought to light are the seals. Thousands of small squares or rectangles of steatite — a soft stone, easy to engrave — covered with animals and signs that no one has yet managed to decipher. Some were found in Bahrain and Mesopotamia, which says something essential about the commercial networks of this civilisation.
Steatite and technique
The seals were made of steatite, a soft rock that is easy to engrave and that, once fired, becomes as hard as faience. The craftsmen of the Sapta Sindhu mastered this technique perfectly. The engravings are of remarkable finesse — precise lines, carefully rendered anatomical details. One can see that these objects were not ordinary mass productions: they required time, skill, and probably a certain social status.
The seals accompanied commercial expeditions, probably identifying the merchant or the goods. But according to some researchers, notably Rekha Rao, they may also have had a religious function — worn around the neck as memory aids for apprentice priests, or used in the context of Vedic sacrifices.
The unicorn: a composite animal
The most common animal on the seals is what archaeologists call the “unicorn” — a quadruped seen in profile with a single horn on its forehead. But my book on the Seven Rivers civilisation gives a more precise description: it is an animal composed of three animals — the body of the bull, the head of the horse, and the horn of the antelope.
This is therefore not a unicorn in the Western sense — a fantastical horned horse. It is a syncretic creature, assembled from the most symbolically charged animals of the Vedic world: the bull (strength, fertility, Indra), the horse (speed, sacrifice, nobility), the antelope (purity, lightness — the Maruts with their spotted antelopes). A symbolic condensation, engraved in a few millimetres of steatite.
The zebu: strength and abundance
The zebu — the characteristic humped bull of India — is one of the most frequently represented animals. Among the toy figurines found in houses, it was the bull that predominated. It symbolised strength and fertility. In the Rig Veda, the bull is a constant image of Indra and Agni — virile power, the energy that fertilises.
The representation of the zebu on commercial seals is probably no accident. It links the commercial act to a cosmic force — as if each commercial transaction were placed under the sign of divine abundance and fertility.
The elephant and the others: a living animal world
The seals also represent elephants, rhinoceroses, tigers, crocodiles, and buffaloes. This is an entire tropical and subtropical animal world — which says something about the environment of the Sapta Sindhu, far more forested and humid than it is today. These animals were present, observed, known.
The figure of Paśupati — “the master of animals” — also appears on certain seals, in a meditative posture, surrounded by animals. Indian researchers see in it a representation of Shiva in his archaic form. This is one of the most striking cultural continuities between the Sapta Sindhu and Hinduism: four thousand years, and the same god sitting in the same posture, surrounded by the same bestiary.
The writing that no one reads
What always accompanies the animals on the seals is a row of signs — a writing that no one has yet managed to decipher. Dozens of researchers have attempted it over two centuries: some see a proto-Dravidian language, others an alphasyllabic system, others a logographic notation. All attempts have failed, and the inscriptions remain silent.
This silence is frustrating, but it is also fascinating. The animals speak — their symbolism is legible. The writing stays silent. The Seven Rivers civilisation looks at us from its thousands of seals without surrendering its last secret.
The breath of the seals
The yogis engraved on the seals — seated in Baddha Koṇāsana, a posture that only accomplished practitioners can hold — bring me directly back to the Rig Veda and its ascetics “girded with wind.” The Vedic wind, Vāyu and Vāta, is vital breath, the prāṇa that the yogi masters in the silence of his posture. On the seals of Mohenjo-daro, that same breath is engraved in steatite — silent, motionless, and yet alive. I develop these gods of wind in [my article on rigveda.blog].
