The Many Identities of the Pashupati Seal

0:00You're listening to a podcast right now, driving, working out, walking the dog. If you're in a podcast, chances are you have something to say too. With RSS.com, starting your own podcast is free and easy. Upload an episode and we distribute it to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and more. Track your listeners, see where they're from, and start earning from ads just like this. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast, this is your sign. Start your new podcast for free today at RSS.com. I want you to start off today by closing your eyes just for a second. Imagine an object that is incredibly small. Like really small? Yeah, exactly. We are talking about something that is precisely 3.56 centimeters by 3.53 centimeters. So basically a tiny square. Right. And it is a mere 7.6 millimeters thick. If you are trying to picture that, it is actually smaller than a standard matchbook. Clearly the size of a postage stamp, honestly. Yeah. But yet this tiny, unassuming little square has managed to spark almost a century of intense,

1:04sometimes downright fiery academic debate. Oh, absolutely fiery. It is fundamentally influenced how we understand the historical development of a major world religion. And it even became a literal geopolitical prize. Which is wild, a point of serious contention between two newly formed nations. Welcome to today's deep dive. Our mission today is to thoroughly explore this tiny 4,000-year-old carving known as the Pashabadi Seal. Also known as the Mahayokir, the Proto-Shivaseel. Exactly. It was uncovered in the ancient ruins of the Indus Valley civilization city of Mohenjadaro. And we are going to examine the physical artifact itself, trace its rather dramatic modern history, and really dig into the fiercely debated and, frankly, completely contradictory interpretations of what exactly the figure on this stone represents. And as we get into this, I want you to imagine the visual backdrop for our conversation today, transitioning from the dusty, ancient, sun-baked brick ruins of the Indus Valley to the towering, endlessly complex bookshelves of modern academic institutions.

2:05I love that image. Because for you, the listener, understanding this seal is deeply relevant. I mean, we live in a world of constant information overload. We are bombarded with data every single day. Out to data. Right. The seal serves as an absolute masterclass in how different people looking at the exact same piece of evidence can come to entirely contradictory conclusions. It is a phenomenal case study in human perception, bias, and the stories we tell ourselves. OK, let's unpack this. Let's start with the physical artifact itself, because the amount of detail squeezed into this tiny piece of stone is, frankly, mind-boggling. It really is a masterpiece. It dates back to around 2,200 BC, and it is made of steatite. Which is a type of easily carved soapstone? Right, soapstone. So carved right in the center is a human figure. This figure is seated on a dais or a raised platform facing straight forward. And the posture is incredibly specific. The legs are bent at the knees, the heels are touching, and the toes are pointing straight

3:07downward. It's a very deliberate pose. Very. The arms are extended outward, resting very lightly on the knees with the thumbs facing away from the body. And the dorments, the arms are completely covered in bangles. Like, entirely covered. Yeah, eight small ones and three large ones. The chest is draped in what appear to be elaborate necklaces, and there's a double band wrapping right around the waist. But the most striking feature has to be the headdress. Oh, the headdress is iconic. This is tall, intricate fan-shaped structure right in the middle, flanked by two massive striated animal horns. The level of craftsmanship required to carve those details into a piece of steatite that small is remarkable. And you really have to look at the periphery to understand the full scope of the image. There's more going on than just the central figure. Way more. Surrounding the central figure are four very distinct wild animals. On one side, you have an elephant and a tiger. Okay. On the other side, a water buffalo and an Indian rhinoceros. So, a whole menagerie. Exactly.

4:07And just below the platform the figure is sitting on, there are two smaller animals, deer or ibexas, and they are looking backward over their shoulders so that their curved horns almost meet in the center. That is so specific. It is. Finally, squeezed in at the very top of the seal, there are seven distinct symbols of the indescript. The final symbol is actually slightly displaced. Oh, right. Pushed downward. Yeah, pushed down seemingly because the carver just ran out of horizontal space. It is like an ancient, high-stakes game of tetris trying to fit all that in before you hit the edge of the stone. That's a great way to put it. Now, fast forward a few millennia, how did this thing actually see the light of day again? Well, the discovery takes us to 1928 or 1929. The seal was uncovered by an excavation team directed by Ernest McKay in Mohenjo Darrow, which is located in modern day Pakistan. Deep underground. Quite deep, yeah. At a depth of 3.9 meters below the surface, they documented it and numbered it 420 in McKay's official report, which is why you will sometimes here refer to simply as seal

5:10420. But the story gets incredibly tense after it was pulled from the earth. The finds were initially moved to the archaeological survey of India headquarters in Nideli. But as we know, the partition of India was approaching in 1947. A hugely turbulent time. Extremely. And a massive, logistical and cultural dispute arose over who got to keep what? Right. Because Pakistan naturally requested the return of the Harappan artifacts, excavated on their territory. But the collection had already been moved to Delhi. How do you even begin to divide up a collection of that magnitude? It was an arduous process. They had to negotiate an agreement to split roughly 12,000 excavated objects equally between the two new countries. 12,000 objects. Yeah. And I want you to really picture how literal this division was. It wasn't just you take this crate, we'll take that one. It was so strictly enforced that in some cases, individual bead necklaces and girdles were literally taken apart. Wait, really? Yes. The beads separated into two piles, one for India, one for Pakistan.

6:11That is wild to think about. A 4,000 year old piece of jewelry being dismantled, bead by bead, just to satisfy modern borders. It highlights how much cultural weight these artifacts carry. When it came to the most celebrated sculpted figures from the excavation, they couldn't just cut them in half so they had to make hard choices. Who got what? Pakistan asked for and received the famous priest king figure. India, in turn, retained the bronze dancing girl statue and they kept the Pashupati seal. It resides today in the National Museum of India in Delhi. So the artifact itself survives the split intact. Hmm. But let's dive into the core of the debate, the interpretation. Because for generations there was essentially one theory that absolutely ruled the academic landscape. It's the paradigm. Right. This theory came from John Marshall, the director general of the archaeological survey of India. He looked at this seal and declared it an early prototype of the major Hindu god Shiva, specifically his Vedic predecessor Rudra. What's fascinating here is how methodical Marshall's argument was.

7:14He built a very compelling case resting on four main pillars. Bring those down for us. First Marshall looked at the face. He argued the figure was three faced with the possible fourth face implied in the back. In historical portrayals, Shiva is commonly depicted with three or five faces. Okay. Second, he pointed to the horned headdress. He saw a resemblance there to the trisila or trident, as well as to bull horns, both of which are classic emblems of Shiva. Okay. Three faces and a trident like hat I get. But how does sitting cross-legged immediately jump to a definitive identification of Shiva? That brings us to Marshall's third pillar, the posture. It is a highly specific, typical yoga attitude. After scholars like Thomas McGeevely, specifically identified it as Mula Buntasana. Mula Buntasana? Yes. This is critical to the argument because Shiva is traditionally revered as the Mahayogi, the absolute prince of yogis. Finally, the fourth pillar revolves around the animals. The central figure is completely surrounded by wild beasts.

8:18Right. The tiger, the rhino, the elephant. Exactly. One of Shiva's primary epithets is Pashupati, which literally translates to the Lord of animals. So, Marshall puts the faces, the horns, the yoga pose, and the animals together, and concludes this is definitively a proto-Shiva. But Marshall also pointed out something else that sparked a whole separate debate regarding the anatomy of the figure. The anatomical ambiguity. Yeah. He observed that the figure appeared to be ethyphalic, meaning it had an erect phallus. This creates a very strong connection to Shiva, who was deeply associated with the linga in later Hindu traditions. Though, to be fair to Marshall, he did concede a bit of doubt here. He did? He admitted that what looked like a phallus could potentially just be a tassel hanging down from that double waistband we mentioned earlier. Despite that slight anatomical ambiguity, his overall theory became the absolute paradigm. For at least two full generations, this interpretation was universally accepted. It was essentially treated as fact.

9:19It deeply influenced scholarly understanding of the historical development of Hinduism. Any subsequent scholar writing about the religion of the Indus Valley civilization basically had to start their work by referencing Marshall's proto-Shiva theory. It was the definitive lens through which this entire ancient culture was viewed. Here's where it gets really interesting, because in academia, paradigms are made to be challenged and of the skeptics, bringing a wave of entirely competing interpretations. And the first major rebellion flips the entire script on its head. Oh, completely. We move into what we could call the anatomical skeptics. Herbert Sullivan came along and argued that the figure isn't a male god at all. He proposed it as actually a female goddess. Sullivan zeroed right in on that anatomical ambiguity he just mentioned. He argued that the so-called erect phallus is unmistakably just the dangling end of a waistband or girdle. Just a tassel. Just a tassel. And his reasoning was comparative. He pointed out that this exact same feature is found on many terracotta figurines from

10:20the region that are undoubtedly female. That's a strong point. Furthermore, in the art of the Indus Valley civilization, male figures are almost exclusively depicted nude. But our figure on the seal is covered in heavy jewelry those bangles and necklaces. In the context of Indus art, that kind of heavy ornamentation is highly characteristic of female figures. Not male ones. A goddess. That's a massive pivot from the supreme male yogi. But the anatomical scrutiny doesn't stop there. By the 1970s, Doris Fernivasin brings a whole new perspective. She takes a much closer look at those three faces Marshall saw. And she sees something entirely different. She essentially says, wait a minute, those lateral projections on the sides aren't human faces at all. Those are cow-like ears. She argues that the central face itself has incredibly predominant bovine features. Serena Vossin built an excellent iconological assessment. She didn't look at the seal in isolation. She connected it to the broader material culture. She drew parallels between the figure on seal 420 and a horned mask discovered in Mahanjodaro,

11:23a terracotta bowl from Kalabangan and a water picture from Kat Diji that also depicts a horned deity. Looking at the wider context. Exactly. The conclusion was that this central figure is not a human god or goddess, but a divine buffalo man. A buffalo man. Which naturally leads us straight into another layer of this debate. Where scholars start looking at the cultural and linguistic roots. Because Alphilt de Bidle expanded on this buffalo imagery and suggested something fascinating. The demon theory. Yes. He argued this figure might be a prototype of Mahishasura, the famous buffalo demon who is the arch enemy of the Hindu goddess Durgha. Alphilt de Bidle's logic relies on a very keen observation of the local fauna. He is emphatic that the people of the Indus Valley civilization were intimately familiar with both bulls and water buffaloes. They knew the difference. They weren't just drawing generic horned animals. No, not at all. The horns carved onto the headdress of our figure are definitively buffalo horns. They are sweeping and striated, not the horns of a bull.

12:24Why does it matter so much if it's a bull or a buffalo? That seems like such a minor distinction to hang a whole religious theory on. It matters immensely because it is a massive blow to Marshall's proto-Shiva theory. Shiva's traditional mount, his Vahana, is Nandi, the bull. If this is an early Shiva, why would he be wearing the horns of a buffalo? I see. Hilt de Bidle argues it would require too many logical leaps to retain credibility. Furthermore, he points out the prominent tiger on the seal, which could very well relate to the goddess Durgha herself, who is classically depicted, writing a tiger or a lion. So if it's not a god, not a goddess, and maybe not even a demon, what else could it possibly be? Did anyone look outside of religion entirely? Actually, yes. This is where we see scholars attempting to decode the seal through a secular or purely linguistic lens. The American Archaeologist Walter Fair Service viewed the script on the seal as an early Dravidian language. Okay. Focusing on the text. Yes. And he interpreted the central figure not as a deity, but as a paramount human chief named

13:25Uniel. According to Fair Service, the four wild animals simply represented four distinct clans that this chief ruled over. That brings it completely down to earth, a political leader, rather than a religious icon. Then you have the Finnish endologist Asco Parpola, who offers yet another Dravidian interpretation. Parpola suggested that the yogic pose itself might not be native to the region, but rather an imitation of the proto-Elamite way of representing seated bulls in art. So borrowing artistic styles. After attempting to translate the inscription, Parpola concluded the figure represents a servant of an aquatic deity. He noted that the animals shown best resemble those associated with the Hindu god Varuna, aligning with the prominent aquatic themes we know existed in the Indus religion, given their massive public baths. Okay. We have to mention one more theory. The Vedic interpretation by MV and Krishna Rao, because it is just quite the mental gymnastic routine. It really is something. It's like a modern day conspiracy theorist standing in front of a cork board connecting

14:26random photos with red string. Rao looked at the seal and decided it represents the Hindu god Indra. But to make this work, he essentially had to edit the physical evidence on the fly. Just ignore what doesn't fit. Exactly. He argued that we should just ignore the tiger because it is carved much larger than the other animals. Then he said we should also ignore the two deer at the bottom because they are sitting under the table. So convenient. Right. And arbitrarily removed three of the animals from the equation. He took the first phoneme, the starting sound, of the remaining animals, combined them with the word nara, meaning man, and spilled out makhanasana, which happens to be an epithet for Indra. It is a textbook example of confirmation bias, you have a theory, and you selectively prune the data until it fits your desired outcome, discarding whatever contradicts you. You can't just ignore the giant tiger in the room because it ruins your acronym. It is not how archaeology works. So what does this all mean? How are you the listener supposed to make sense of a male god, a female goddess, a divine

15:31buffalo demon, a human gland chief, and an aquatic servant all supposedly existing within the exact same three and a half centimeter carving? If we connect this to the bigger picture, it requires us to pause and listen to the more cautious voices in modern academia. There's like the American endologist Wendy Doniger have pointed out a crucial reality check. We need one of those. Yes, there are undeniable general resemblances between the figure on the seal and much later Hindu images of Shiva. And yes, the Indus people might have had a symbolism of the divine phallus, but as Doniger writes, we simply cannot know it. Because the distance in time is just too great. Exactly. A visual resemblance does not automatically mean the Indus images are the historical source of those later Hindu images. What is it guarantee they held the same cultural meaning? It's like finding a modern stop sign 4,000 years from now and assuming it was an object of religious worship simply because it's red and octagonal and placed across roads. The context is entirely missing. And the scholar Jeffrey Samuel hits the nail completely on the head.

16:34When looking at this massive pile of competing theories, he plainly states that they certainly cannot all be right. Obviously not. There is no obvious objective method for choosing one interpretation over the other. Because we know so little with absolute certainty about the actual religious practices of the Indus Valley civilization, interpreting this seal has become an exercise in projection. As Samuel warns, the evidence is so dependent on modern viewers reading later practices backward into the ancient material that it makes constructing a definitive factual history nearly impossible. It's essentially a century long academic Rorschach test. A scholar trained in Vedic traditions looks at the seal and sees a Vedic God. A feminist historian looks at it and sees a goddess. A linguist sees a linguistic puzzle. They're all projecting their own expertise onto this blank slate of a stone. This raises an important question for anyone trying to learn about history or really anyone analyzing data in their daily lives. For nearly a hundred years, brilliant, dedicated scholars have looked into that tiny piece

17:37of carved steatite and seen their own academic backgrounds reflected back at them. The seal absorbs it all. A mirror for the academics. Truly. It shows us that when the context is lost, the human mind will inevitably rush in to fill the vacuum with its own stories, its own biases, and its own desired outcomes. It really is a fascinating testament to human curiosity and our desperate need to find patterns in meaning, even when the data is incomplete. A massive thank you for joining us on this deep dive into the Paschupati seal. We've explored the incredible artistic detail of the Indus Valley civilization, the chaotic history of its modern discovery, and the passionate, sometimes completely contradictory nature of how we try to understand our past. But I want to leave you with one final, provocative thought to mull over on your own. Something to keep you awake tonight. We just spent all this time debating the faces, the horns, the posture, and the specific animals. We created cow ears versus human faces and bull horns versus buffalo horns. But remember, those seven indescript symbols squeezed at the very top of the seal.

18:40The ones the Carver had to squish down just to fit them in. That entire language, that script, remains completely undecided to this very day. What if, after almost a century of experts projecting their own beliefs, their own complex theories, and their own cultural biases onto this tiny stone, the actual creator of the seal carved the definitive simple answer right there at the top, and we just don't know how to read it. Thank you for listening, and we'll catch you on the next deep dive. Thanks everyone. You're listening to a podcast right now, driving, working out, walking the dog. If you're into podcasts, chances are you have something to say too. With rss.com, starting your own podcast is free and easy. Upload an episode and we distribute it to Apple podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and more. Like your listeners, see where they're from, and start earning from ads just like this. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast, this is your sign. Start your new podcast for free today at rss.com.