Doris Meth Srinivasan's The So-Called Proto-Siva Seal from Mohenjo-Daro is itself a scholarly challenge to a long-standing popular and academic identification, arguing against the common reading of the famous Indus Valley seal as an early depiction of a proto-Shiva figure in yogic posture surrounded by animals. Srinivasan's authority rests on close iconographic analysis questioning specific visual details earlier interpreters had relied on. Because the seal's own script remains undeciphered and its original religious meaning is fundamentally unrecoverable from the image alone, the proto-Shiva identification Srinivasan critiques was always an inference rather than a certainty, and her article should be cited as a serious scholarly counter-argument within a genuinely unresolved identification debate, not as having settled what the seal actually depicts.
Facts
Assessment
Reliability Tier1
Doris Meth Srinivasan's The So-Called Proto-Siva Seal from Mohenjo-Daro, published in Archives of Asian Art (Asia Society), is a peer reviewed iconological study challenging the popular proto-Shiva identification of the Indus Valley seal, treated at the top tier as peer reviewed journal scholarship, notwithstanding that the seal's own undeciphered script leaves the underlying identification an open scholarly question her article argues within rather than settles. NotesPublicationYear left NULL: the article is of 1975-76 and the exact year of the volume was not verified. Srinivasan reads the lateral projections as bovine ears rather than faces and the figure as a divine buffalo-man.
Citation
AuthorDoris Meth Srinivasan
PublisherArchives of Asian Art (Asia Society)
Volume 29, pages 47 to 58. The publication-year facet is dismissed separately: volume 29 is a combined 1975-76 volume and no independent record pinned down which of the two cover years is the correct single one, so it is left rather than guessed. Source Typepeer-reviewed article
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Shiva, Deities This source names Shiva directly: "seal as an early depiction of a proto-Shiva figure in yogic posture surrounded by animals."
Claims Backed By This Source (16 claims)
This source backs 16 claims across the atlas. As facts: 10 well-attested, 1 open question. As cited relationships: 1 holds. Plus 4 entities citing it as a general reference with no single fact or relationship attached.
Disposition By Topic
- Sources, 7 claims: 6 well-attested, 1 holds.
- Open Questions, 4 claims: 3 well-attested, 1 general references.
- Regions, 2 claims: 1 open question, 1 general references.
- Articles, 1 claims: 1 well-attested.
- Deities, 1 claims: 1 general references.
- Denominations, 1 claims: 1 general references.
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