Some preliminary comments can be offered in the context of efforts to unravel the Indus writing system: 1. The author does not identify the object often shown in front of the animal in the corpus of indus script inscriptions. Hence, the significance of the combined pictorial motif of both the animal and the 'object' shown in front of the animal has not been explained. 2. An alternative view on Nandipada symbol is that it represents the tails of two fishes, as seen in soma aayaagapattas of Jaina tradition. 3. The author's explanation for the 'pannier' on the animal is that 'it may indicate fleshy but tight wrinkles of a healthy animal'. He also adds that the neck of the 'unicorn' bears some similarity to that of a horse or an ass.
Kalyanaraman
Unicorns in Ancient India and Vedic Ritual
Gautama V. Vajracharya
The art of the Indus Valley civilization is famous for diminutive steatite seals representing bull like unicorns. Did such unicorns really exist in ancient India? This question may not receive scholarly attention because most of the archeologists believe that the creatures are mythical. Our recent investigation, however, indicates that a forest animal with a single horn did exist in ancient India. The name of the animal is Rs'ya (Rshya in classical Sanskrit), which is mistakenly
identified by previous scholars as a male deer or antelope thus blocking the path for further investigation. In order to explain our finding we first carefully observe the artistic representations of the unicorn bull, mainly its single horn, delineated in the seals. Then we will compare the representations with the textual descriptions of the !"ya and its horn found in the epics and Buddhist literature. This will be followed by evidence derived from two different unexpected sources, material used for making Vedic ritual implements and the symbolic representation of the bifurcated bovine hoof in ancient Indian art.
Representations of Unicorns in the Indus Seals Despite the diminutive size, most of the Indus Valley seals depict the animals naturalistically; hence, viewers have no difficulties in distinguishing various species of animals. In fact, the
characteristics of various animals such as short or long bushy tails, divided hooves, dewlap, arched, twisted or spiral horns, standing posture, attitude of lifting the head, and many other features of different animals are rendered in the seals so distinctively that a markhor never looks like a deer and a water buffalo does not resemble a bull. Besides, some of the seals are so well preserved they seem as if they were chiseled only yesterday.
Fig. 1 (Mohenjo-daro HR 743) is one of the well-preserved seals depicting a unicorn bull. Characteristically, the unicorn is shown here standing immediately below the inscription, facing the unidentified bulbous object. According to some archeologists this object is eiincense burner, or a ritual offering stand. Characteristically, it surmounts a post, which is erected on the ground. Note the fact that delineation of the ground is non-existent in the artistic vocabulary of Indus valley art, as well as in the pre-historic art of other ancient traditions...
...Conclusion
Presented here are multiple sources, both visual and textual, to demonstrate that the unicorns of the Indus seals are Rsyas:
1. The unicorn’s curvilinear horn, almost in S-curves, is emphatically delineated in many Indus seals.
2. The Mahabharata states that just like the male animal Rsya, the mythical figure Rsyasrnga had a single horn. He is mentioned in Buddhist texts as Ekasrnga, or “unicorn.”
3. Vedic people made a pair of tongs out of two objects called par'"&sas; hence, the implement was known to them as paris'aasau.
4. Paris'aasa (single in number) is described in the Atharvaveda as an object protruding above the skin of a rsya.
5. This object cannot be other than the single horn of the male animal, because, except the horn, other organs that protrude from the body of an animal are not sturdy enough to make a pair of tongs.
6. Pali literature tells us that characteristically, a !"ya’s horn was curvilinear. This information corresponds with the shape of the horn of the unicorn shown in the Indus seals.
7. We created an image of the Vedic ritual implement crossing two horns of the different unicorns shown in the seals. More or less, the image appears like a Nandipada symbol.
8. In fact, we know for sure that the pair of tongs did look like a Nandipada because the implement was also known as s'aphau, a Vedic word for Nandipada.
More importantly, our findings indicate that Vedic Aryans were familiar with some ecological aspects of the Indus Valley civilization, such as the animal habitats that existed around them. In our earlier work, we demonstrated that the popularity of the pipal tree in the Indus seals as a most important symbol of the civilization correlates with the significance of the tree mentioned in Vedic texts as a harbinger of monsoon. Vedic word for the pipal tree is a"vattha, which was also the name of the early month of monsoon in the everyday language of ancient India, mainly in the upper Indus Valley.
Such correlation prods us to develop a research methodology based on the ecologically linked cultural aspects of the Indus and Vedic civilizations.
Read on...http://www.ejvs.laurasianacademy.com/Unicorn-compressed.pdf