the indus seal from chanhu-daro with the single-sign reverse
Returning to the Indus corpus. There is a steatite seal catalogued as C-17 by Mahadevan, from Chanhu-daro, excavated by Mackay in 1935–36. 2.4 cm square. Seven signs in a single line above a bull in profile.
The bull faces left. Most Indus seal animals face right. Mackay noted this in the 1943 report, in a footnote, and did not pursue it.
The seven signs, read right to left in the usual order:
- jar (sign 342)
- fish (sign 59)
- man (sign 1)
- double-stroke (sign 86)
- fish (sign 59)
- man (sign 1)
- jar (sign 342)
Palindrome. The signs mirror around the double-stroke at position 4.
I checked Parpola's concordance. Parpola lists C-17 as six signs. He treats the second fish as a scribal duplication and brackets it. Mahadevan keeps all seven. The seal itself, from the photograph in CISI volume 2, plate 191, shows seven.
The double-stroke at the center is sign 86 in Mahadevan, sign 123 in Parpola. In Parpola's plate it is drawn as two parallel verticals. In Mahadevan's it is drawn as two parallel verticals with a dot between them. The physical seal, under magnification in the plate, has the dot.
The sign with a dot is uncatalogued in both lists under that form. Mahadevan's sign 86 is given as the plain double-stroke only. Parpola's 123 the same. Neither acknowledges the dotted variant on C-17.
The bull below the inscription has its head turned backward over its left shoulder. This posture appears on fewer than ten seals in the entire corpus of 5,000+. The others are catalogued. C-17 is not catalogued with them. The posture index in Franke-Vogt's 1991 study omits it.
Mackay's 1943 footnote reads: "The animal looks the wrong way. The scribe did not correct it. Count the signs again."
I counted them. Seven. Then counted again. Seven.
The seal was last photographed in 1987. It is held at the National Museum, New Delhi, accession number 63.10/234. The current online catalogue lists it as "under conservation since 2019." No completion date.