From The Hindu, July 2, 1975: Soil fertility ritual in Indus civilisation

The Hindu

01-07-2025

Chandigarh, July 1: Rituals of worship of Mother Goddess and fertility cult in various parts of India and other parts of Asia were inseperably connected. This is revealed from a study of excavation in the Indus Valley according to Prof. Himansu Bhusan Sarkar of Midnapore in West Bengal. Some terracotta figurines discovered in Southern Sind bore remarkable affinity to those from Mohenjodaro and Harappa and from pre-Harappan sites of northern and southern Baluchistan. Many of the figurines from Mohenjodaro were painted with red slip or wash and those from Harappa even retained the traces of paint, the red being the fertility symbol, he said in a paper presented at the All India Oriental Conference held at Kurukshetra. Prof. Sarkar said the magical rites to preserve the fertility of the soil belonged to the special competence of women, whose child-bearing capacity was comparable to the productive nature of earth. The clan life, in which the mother headed every family, created Mother Goddess and raised her to the supreme position. In primitive conception such Goddesses needed human sacrifice among other things. Prof. Sarkar said in this context, some seals from the Indus Valley appeared to be quite interesting. One such seal from Harappa showed a nude female figure, with legs stretched upwards, head downwards, with a plant issuing from the womb. On the other side was found a female figure with dishevelled hair and arms upraised in fright, with a male figure threatening her with a shield-like object in one hand and sickle-like object in the other. 'It seems to me that both the nude female figurines refer to the same victim before her sacrifice to the Mother Goddess,' he said and added that Vedic religion did not appear to include human sacrifice in its rituals to propitiate Mother Goddess or Mother Earth.