Ancient Art Beyond the Mediterranean

The Indus Valley civilization, flourishing at sites such as Mohenjo-daro and Harappa in present-day Pakistan and India from roughly 2600 to 1900 BCE, produced large numbers of small carved steatite seals, typically showing an animal, such as a bull or unicorn-like creature, alongside a short inscription in an undeciphered script. The best known of these, the so-called 'Pashupati seal', depicts a horned figure seated in a cross-legged pose that some scholars have linked, cautiously, to later Hindu iconography of the god Shiva. Many centuries afterward, the spread of Buddhism produced the great stupa, a domed reliquary mound; the Great Stupa at Sanchi, in central India, was originally founded under the Mauryan emperor Ashoka in the third century BCE and later enlarged, its stone gateways, or toranas, carved with dense narrative relief scenes from the life of the Buddha.