Talk:Pashupati seal

Contemporary? Pathak (2011)

Right: "Yajurveda and Atharvaveda (AV 2.34) hymns that are contemporary with the seal-engraving period, the Pashupati seal (and other seals)" - are you kidding? The Yajurveda (ca.1200-1000 BCE) and the Atharvaveda (1200-1000 BCE) are contemporary with the Indus Valley Civilisation (2600-1900 BCE)? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 21:45, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

Poorly paraphrased from PP Pathak, 2011, Rig Veda, Indus Culture and the Indo-Iranian Connections, Iranian Journal of Archaeological Studies, who's only got his own publications as a refernce here:

The motif on the well-known IC Pashupati seal appears in varied forms at many IC sites. A male figure of a central deity sitting cross-legged is the central image on all these seals (fig. 1). The large number of such seals indicates their importance. The Rig Vedic god Rudra is known as Pashupati in both YV and AV. There is a complete hymn devoted to Lord Pashupati in Atharva Veda (AV 2.34). The seal depicts the visual embodiment of the hymn (Pathak 1991a, 1991b). The fact that the hymn is in the present tense establishes that it is contemporary with the seal-engraving period. There are other seals, as well, which can be understood as pictorial representations of AV and RV hymns (Pathak 1992, 1997a, 1997b).

Compare IP's contribution, who writes "the appearance of Pashupati seal motif, a typical central male figure sitting cross-legged, in a large number in various forms on many IVS sites shows its importance." Not the seals, but the motif, is presented as important; that's not what Pathak writes.

Anyway, it is Pathak who states that "The seal depicts the visual embodiment of the hymn (Pathak 1991a, 1991b). The fact that the hymn is in the present tense establishes that it is contemporary with the seal-engraving period. There are other seals, as well, which can be understood as pictorial representations of AV and RV hymns (Pathak 1992, 1997a, 1997b)."

Pathak (1991a), Lady of the Beasts or the Lord of the Beasts: An Assessment has been cited three times since 1991, two of them by Pathak himself. Not WP:RS. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:04, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Copy-vio?

@Diannaa: These edits diff by User:Caestabi seem to contain copy-vio's from Srnivasan; see here. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 10:42, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

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The National Museum in Delhi

Johnbod I've been to the National Museum in Delhi once. It has a decidedly late-50's nationalistic Indian style. I doubt that the building itself was ready in 1949 or any time immediately thereafter. Pakistan has several times petitioned the powers-that-be to have the Pashupati seal and the Dancing girl returned there (and to be exhibited in the National Museum of Pakistan set up by Wheeler in 1950), but the Indians have refused to even consider the idea. In any case, I don't think we should give a rationale for the seal's presence in Delhi, especially not one that suits the Indian POV. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:14, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

What on earth has the building got to do with it? Read the history of the museum (and the National Galleries in DC and London while you are at it). You obviously know nothing about the subject. What "Indian POV". I don't know if the location of the piece was previously suppressed because it was considered "sensitive" - I suspect this is the case as it astonished me that this was nowhere mentioned in a longish article, but this is completely unacceptable. Johnbod (talk) 13:46, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

OK, I just read the history in National Museum, New Delhi. It says, "One of the members of the Committee was Sir Mortimer Wheeler, then heading the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), who is often cited as chief initiators of the National Museum as he advocated for the museum's development although reports indicate that he was concerned with unifying ASI site museums under the umbrella of a Museum's branch rather than setting up a new museum."

It also says, "Grace Morley was the first Director of the National Museum, New Delhi who earlier played instrumental role of the founding director (1935–58) of the San Francisco Museum of Art (now San Francisco Museum of Modern Art).[11] She joined the National Museum on the 8th of August, 1960 and continued to hold its charge for six more years." So I was right about the late-50s style. What was it before Grace and after Mortimer? It wasn't a national museum, only some exhibits in the State Rooms of India's Government House. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:37, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

As I say, you clearly don't realize how institutions work. Except where former (usually royal) collections are concerned, you set up the institutional body, and then assemble a collection, while planning and constructing a building to house it, which, as in London, Washington and Delhi, often takes some decades. Meanwhile it is displayed somewhere handy, if you can find it. The museum was founded in 1949, and seems to have had objects, no doubt including the seal, continuously on public display ever since. Johnbod (talk) 14:48, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

It is not about "sensitive;" the Indians stole it. The Please read the last paragraph of my section Indus_Valley_Civilisation#Discovery_and_history_of_excavation. Wheeler spent the last 20 years of his life working in Pakistan, not only in setting up the National Museum in Karachi, but also restoring Mohenjo-daro. It is hardly likely that he would have proposed a national museum for the post-partition Dominion of India and allowed the major Indus exhibits to go there instead of Pakistan. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:03, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

On the other hand, if Wheeler had proposed something at a time when partition was not on the horizon, then how did these artifacts remain in India and during the partition of assets (see my lead of Partition of India) not go to Pakistan? It is not the 1949 bit; it is the sequence from 1946 to 1949 Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:09, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

An interesting question, to which neither of us know the answer. The objects for the 1947-48 Royal Academy exhibition (which I think included the seal) were presumably shipped around the summer of 1947, probably from Bombay, & the British presumably just sent them back the same way in 1948. Perhaps the Pakistani bureacracy had other things on their minds & let transfers of art "assets" fall off the agenda, if it was ever on it. Usually museums are tenacious in holding on to assets - see the last section of Prehistoric Ireland. No transfers at any point there. Johnbod (talk) 15:24, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

In that case, it is best to simply state it is in India and not make the connection with the Raj. The current phrasing seems to confer inevitability even plausibility to its remaining in India. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:36, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Or say something like the Dancing Girl (sculpture) lead, another artifact from Indus in India, which says, "held in India, disputed by Pakistan." or somesuch, if a source exists for the dispute Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:40, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

@Johnbod: I'm glad you found (linked on academia.edu) Kavita Singh's other article with the same name. Both were referenced on the National Museum, New Delhi page, when I read the history there last week. I did read the India International Centre Quarterly article, but it was very poorly written; besides, it didn't have anything about the seal or the Dancing girl.

So, I'm not entirely sure about the "agreement" story in her chapter in the 2015 Routledge book edited by her. Singh is a well-known art historian, but she is a nonentity in the field of Indus Studies, even Indus/Ancient India Museum studies as someone like Himanshu Prabha Ray is (see Buddhism and Gandhara: An Archaeology of Museum Collections, Routledge, 2018).

We have a field, IVC, in which many of the major excavators were still very much alive in 1947 (or the period soon thereafter): Although Earnest Mackay (the excavator of the Dancing Girl) had died in 1943, John Marshall the director of ASI in 1920, died in 1958 and Mortimer Wheeler director of ASI from 1944 to 1947 died in 1976. Post-1947 Indus studies have generated its own scholars: George F. Dales, Mark Kenoyer, Ahmad Hassan Dani (the famous Pakistani Indus scholar), Gregory Possehl who wrote much about the Dancing Girl, Rita P. Wright author of Ancient Indus, much referenced in out IVC article; Shereen Ratnagar famous archaeologist of Indus at JNU; Irfan Habib (Indian historian who has written a book on IVC), Robin Coningham (who of all things held the UNESCO Chair in Archaeological Ethics and Practice in Cultural Heritage at Durham). Not a peep was heard by any of these.

I'm bemused that this revelation has to await a coffee-table creative non-fiction style chapter by Singh in a book edited by Singh which has a contribution by Bernard Cohn who had died of 12 years earlier. What are the chances that the post-colonial archaeologists in India really really cut up necklaces and split the beads, 90 years after the founding of ASI. We should treat the story with an abundance of caution and write along the lines: "An Indian art historian has suggested in an article published in 2015 that ... This has been disputed in Pakistan (and reference: Ref1, Ref 2. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:24, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Bullshit! I've previously commented on your compulsive and insulting rubbishing of RS that happen to produce something that goes against your POV, and this example is ridiculous. "Cutting up" the necklaces was not necessary - do you really think the strings had survived nearly 4,000 years? Singh is a top youngish academic one of whose specialisms is museology, so she is exactly the right source here. Do you have an alternative narrative, other that of than Dawn, or the wild personal view that India "stole" the seal? Have you looked at the source Singh refers to, "Partitioning the Past"? That the episode was a rather undignified can of worms that your experts preferred to skirt round seems not unlikely. Johnbod (talk) 12:18, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

I didn't see this silly reply. Of course, I have. I've cited Nayanjot Lahiri in topic areas (such as the Brahmi Script article) where she has expertise. I'm dubious of that story too written in preparation for Independent India's 70 years. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:34, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

And, as for your even sillier outburst about necklaces, here is what your vaunted source says, "several necklaces and girdles were taken apart with half the beads sent to Pakistan, and half retained in India." and it is cited to your other vaunted source (8 See Nayanjot Lahiri, ‘Partioning the Past’, in Marshallingthe Past: Ancient India and its Modern Histories,Ranikhet:Permanent Black, 2012) I've been to Permanent Black's HQ in Old Delhi; I know what sort of peer reviews they conduct. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:42, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

As I say, "do you really think the strings had survived nearly 4,000 years?" As with other ancient jewellery, the archaeologists find the beads loose (except if metal chains etc are used) and reconstruct the piece with modern thread. My wording carefully accomodated this. Johnbod (talk) 12:47, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

What the heck is your problem Johnbod? Where did I say they survived 4000 years? I said cut up necklaces. How else were they "taken apart?" It doesn't matter that they had metal wires or replacement threads; they were cut up. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:50, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

You are the one with the "problem" and "outbursts" - you said above "What are the chances that the post-colonial archaeologists in India really really cut up necklaces and split the beads, 90 years after the founding of ASI." To any curator or archaeologist, cutting a 4,000-year old thread or wire is an outrage, damaging an ancient artefact. Cutting or just rethreading a 20-year old one is fine. The source, and my text, does not specify whether scissors were involved. You just jumped in with a big fat assumption. Johnbod (talk) 18:01, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Again, it doesn't matter how old the thread is; it is the integrity of the artifact. My aside meant that the ASI had a 90-year-old history by then. What were the chances that with that history of preservation and training of personnel the integrity of these artifacts would have been compromised? It is an unlikely coffee table story that WP should not be repeating in any version. Besides, the 800-pound gorilla here is not whether the thread was 4500 years old, 20 years old, or brand new, but whether there was an agreement between India and Pakistan about the division of art artifacts. When I said the Indians stole it, I meant that based on the evidence in the sources I have examined, there is no evidence for this agreement. Handwaving by an art historian of Rajput art (Ms Singh), using words such as "eventually" does not constitute such evidence. There were plenty smart people around, Kenoyer (whom I've known in the past, absurdly fluent in South Asian languages and ways) and Possehl who has written reams on the Dancing Girl who've both excavated in Pakistan, neither of whom have said a peep about this India-Pakistan agreement. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:13, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

And girdles? Ms Singh couldn't find pictures of the half girdles? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:54, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Why would she look? Johnbod (talk) 18:01, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Because if a girdle from IVC was split (or "taken apart") and one half sent to Pakistan, the other would have been left at the ASI. Where is that exhibit, that label: "The half-girdle from Mohenjo-daro, returned from the Royal Academy exhibit in London, cruelly partitioned in Delhi, the other half put on an evacuee train to Pakistan?" It would have been a runaway bestselling news story around the world. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:13, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Of a piece with defensive Indian reconstructions about Indus, except, of course, by the real internationally known archeologists such as Ratnagar. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:57, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Says the top youngish Ms Singh: "At the time of Partition some 12,000 objects from Mohenjo Daro were with the Archaeological Survey of India in Delhi. The Pakistan Government asked for these to be turned over to them. The issue of ownership was complicated; neither country was willing to give up the objects, and no museum had clear title to them. Eventually the two countries agreed to share the collections equally ..." Eventually? When Ms Singh? Where is a copy of that agreement, that primary source, that any historian would cite from the National Archives of India? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:28, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Continues Ms Singh in footnote 9: Although inaccurate in its details, Hafeez Tunio’s article ‘With King Priest “in hiding”, Dancing Girl yet to take the road back home’, The Express Tribune, Karachi, 17 June 2012, expresses some of these sentiments.

Inaccurate in the details? That story says Indira Gandhi gave Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto the Priest King statue at the time of the Simla Agreement of 1971 or 2 when she was also holding 100,000 Pakistani POWS. That's what he meekly came away with. No agreement, let alone of 1947, 8, 9, 50s, or 60s? is mentioned. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:40, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Good work, by the way @Johnbod: in locating that article. I'd be interested in what Kristina Phillips has to say in her A Museum for the Nation: Publics and Politics at the National Museum of India (Minnesota PhD thesis) if you can locate it in full view. It does seem to have something about the Dancing Girl. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:21, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

I've managed to get hold of the thesis by Kristina Phillips, Frederick Asher's student at Minnesota. I can't say I've read all the pages but I've skimmed them. The dancing girl is mentioned; the Indus collection and the evolving nationalistic ideology around it are mentioned, but nothing about any agreement with Pakistan, nothing about a post-partition award of Priest-King to Pakistan and Dancing girl to India; Pashupati seal is not mentioned, at least "Pashupati" is not. Although Phillips's aims are different, an India-Pakistan agreement would have been important enough to be footnoted somewhere in a 380-page book on New Delhi's National Museum. I'm now more doubtful about Ms Singh's coffee table claims. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:43, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Even though it is a PhD thesis, it has been cited by other fairly reliable sources. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:56, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Thus far

I'm noting where things stand. Johnbod has added a number of sentences cited to Kavita Singh's publication of 2014. I have received Kristina Phillips Minnesota thesis on the National Museum in Delhi, but it doesn't have anything about an India-Pakistan agreement. I am also shortly to receive Nayanjot Lahiri's essays, which I'll take a look at. Meanwhile here is what Singh says,

When Mohenjo Daro was excavated in the 1920s, archaeologists deposited its important finds first in the Lahore Museum, and then moved these to Delhi in anticipation of the construction of a Central Imperial Museum there. At the time of Partition some 12,000 objects from Mohenjo Daro were with the Archaeological Survey of India in Delhi. The Pakistan Government asked for these to be turned over to them. The issue of ownership was complicated; neither country was willing to give up the objects, and no museum had clear title to them. Eventually the two countries agreed to share the collections equally, although this was sometimes interpreted all too literally: several necklaces and girdles were taken apart with half the beads sent to Pakistan, and half retained in India. Of the two most celebrated sculpted figures found in Mohenjo Daro, Pakistan asked for and received the steatite figure of a bearded male, dubbed the ‘Priest King’, while India retained the bronze statuette of the ‘Dancing Girl’, a nude bejewelled female. Both choices aligned well with the kind of heritage that each country was to choose to foreground."

My own interpretation based on what I've read thus far and my general intuition about South Asian history is that whereas the Pakistani newspaper story about Indira Gandhi and Bhutto is likely apocryphal (see the section above) there was nonetheless no agreement, that Indian officials after independence were very likely so aggressive (they were similarly aggressive in a number of international venues 1945 onward (the fledgling UN, for example)) that not just the Pakistanis, but also the British found their plans for enforcing any equity frustrated. That is essentially what I mean by "stole."

Also, there was enough training at ASI in 1947 that the physical division of an artifact would not have been done by officials who interpreted the imperative all too literally as Singh recounts for the coffee table chuckles. If they did this, and I'm not sure as yet that they did, the orders had to come from the very highest levels. That is my intuition. I will now let this article and the others where Johnbod has made similar edits slide back into oblivion to await newer and better sources. Good night. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:55, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

"My own interpretation based on what I've read thus far and my general intuition about South Asian history...". Indeed. Here we go by WP:RS, and we have one of those. Curious readers might care to look at the whole history of the last week or so at this article, edits, edit summaries and talk posts, & note what happened to F&F's former certainty over the origins of the New Delhi National Museum..... Singh's account does at least explain why there are large numbers of Mohenjo Daro artefacts in Pakistan, as well as India. But I'm happy if the barrage of "general intuition" is over. Johnbod (talk) 02:34, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

This is Wikipedia folks. I am the main author of the Indus Valley Civilisation, Partition of India, British Raj, India and History of Pakistan and Company rule in India, (written their leads and contributed most of the maps) and I'm being told "Here we go by [[WP:RS]]" Anyway, I maintain that Singh's coffee-table story-telling (based on secondary sources) does not constitute RS for this purpose. It is better at this stage to say nothing about how India was allowed to keep the Dancing Girl or the Pashupati seal, for Singh's accounts puts a sheen of equity on what happened. My intuition remains that the Indians meddled with plans the British might have had in place for the distribution of artifacts. I've written to some South Asianists; let's see what I learn. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:25, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

I have received Aparna Megan Kumar's UCLA thesis, "Partition and the Historiography of Art in South Asia," (2018) She is now teaching at University College, London (See here). I will make a few notes in a subsection below, but will not add anything to the articles until her thesis is published as a book, book chapter(s), or journal article. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:20, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

F&f's notes on A. M. Kumar's Partition and the Historiography of Art, 2018

I'm quickly noting a few things from her thesis on the Lahore Museum from its founding to its post-Partition life. I won't paraphrase for fear of introducing POV. The thesis is based on very admirable archival work in the UK, India and Pakistan, which she was able to do as an American scholar.

• The Dancing Girl and Priest King, in particular, have been a recurring source of conflict for the Governments of India and Pakistan since the partition of 1947, when they were included among a collection of movable art and heritage controversially awarded to India. Pakistan had claimed these objects as its rightful inheritance too, in accordance with its custodianship of Mohenjodaro (p. 3)
• While Zulfikar Ali Bhutto eventually negotiated the return of the Priest King to Pakistan in 1972, as part of the Simla Agreement with India, that which ended the Indo-Pakistani war of 1971 and effectively gave rise to the state of Bangladesh, the Dancing Girl has continued to elude Pakistan’s grasp, but not for lack of sustained activism (p. 4)
• At 1947, in addition to its provincial responsibilities, the Lahore Museum was operating as a central storehouse for archaeological material from Mohenjodaro, Harappa, and Taxila, at the behest of Mortimer Wheeler and the Archaeological Survey of India, ... These collections required a separate arrangement at partition, as property of the Central Archaeological Department, and ultimately came under the purview of the Partition Council and its Arbitral Tribunal (p. 126)
• (p. 130) On October 29, 1947, the Partition Council, under the advisement of its Steering Committee, resolved to divide Central Government museums and their assets on a “territorial basis subject to the return to original museums of exhibits removed therefrom after 1st January 1947 solely for the purpose of temporary display at another place.”
• (p. 131) To Pakistan, this agreement also promised the return of a series of Taxila exhibits then located in India.93 With regards to the Lahore Museum collections, however, this decision gave rise to serious conflict. In January 1947, a large selection of Mohenjodaro artifacts had been transferred from the Lahore Museum to New Delhi on the occasion of the Inter-Asian Relations Conference, and corresponding Inter-Asian Exhibition of Art and Archaeology.94 Following partition, the nature of this transfer became a point of severe contention between India and Pakistan, with the rights to the objects effectively up for grabs in accordance with the Partition Council’s provision for “temporary loans” made after January 1, 1947. Eventually, this ballooned into a critical battle for ownership in 1948 footnote 92: It is unclear whether these Harappa exhibits were ever actually returned to the Government of Pakistan. While records of the Inter-Dominion Museum Committee in January 1949 suggest that Pakistan was granted ownership of “four sets of type collections” from a series of Harappa exhibits that were removed from the Harappa Museum to India in May 1947, N.P. Chakravarti later tells Lal Raj Kanwar of the Parliament of India in 1950 that: “No exhibits from Harappa which were brought to India were returned to Pakistan.”
• (p. 137) The division of the Lahore Museum’s archaeological section took place between May and November 1949, following the Inter-Dominion Conference at New Delhi in March 1949, and primarily involved the museum’s Mohenjodaro antiquities, amounting to 2049 artifacts.118 Mortimer Wheeler, then serving as Archaeological Advisor to Pakistan and N.P. Chakravarti, the newly-appointed Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India and Wheeler’s successor within the department, carried out the division of unique objects within the collections.119 Importantly, several of these “unique” items were neither in Lahore nor Delhi in 1949, but had been sent to London for inclusion in an exhibition sponsored by the Royal Academy of Arts."
• (p. 140–42) Thus two gold necklaces from Taxila, a carnelian and copper girdle of Mohenjodaro, and a Mohenjodaro necklace of jade beads, gold discs, and semi-precious stones came to be disassembled and dispersed “equitably” between India and Pakistan. A note, written by Wheeler on this occasion, specifies down to the number of beads, discs, and stones how these items were to be divided. It is important to emphasize at this juncture that Wheeler was not the only propagator of this “equitable” method of division. N.P. Chakravarti too appeared committed to this approach, offering his own suggestions on the fragmentation. ... Evidence of the destructive nature of this process of division goes beyond the archaeological record of the split. My archival work in both Lahore and Chandigarh has shown that paintings and manuscripts were also subject to this kind of fragmentation and dispersion in the name of equity.
• (p. 152–54) The Royal Academy’s initial plan to return exhibits to India and Pakistan took shape on or about May 19, 1948 after a meeting in London with key officials from the British and Indian Executive Committees. For the most part, it followed the “territorial” logic guiding the Partition Council’s October 1947 provision regarding the division of museum and museum collections. According to this initial proposal, exhibits in the possession of the Royal Academy were classified according to three categories. “Category 1” referred to exhibits from public museums in Karachi, Lahore, and Peshawar, institutions situated within the territorial jurisdiction of the Dominion of Pakistan. “Category 2” extended to exhibits from museums and other collections situated within the territorial jurisdiction of the Dominion of India, and “Category 3” was comprised of disputed exhibits. ... On the basis of these categories, the Royal Academy then recommended that exhibits in “Category 1” be sent directly to the Government of Pakistan at Karachi on the condition that the Government of India raised no objections to this course of action. ... The Royal Academy’s plan to divide exhibits between India and Pakistan was generally well-received among Pakistani officials. By contrast, the Royal Academy’s plan fostered mixed reactions among Indian officials, once notice of the Royal Academy’s intentions to divide the exhibits in their possession had reached New Delhi.174 Interestingly, N.P. Chakravarti raised no objections to exhibits in “Category 1” going directly to Pakistan, likely in light of the Partition Council’s October 1947 directive.
• (pp. 155-56)Most Indian officials, however, objected to the Royal Academy’s plan in its entirety, fearing that the Indian Government would open itself to legal action by the Indian Executive Committee ... Others still, like Dharma Vira, took their objections one step further and opposed any action by the Royal Academy in this matter on the grounds of incompetence. Vira, then serving as Joint Secretary to the Indian Cabinet, argued at a very early stage in the process that the Royal Academy was simply “not competent to divide the exhibits between India and Pakistan,” and that the only appropriate solution to the problem of exhibits still in London by 1948 was, therefore, to return all exhibits to India
• (pp. 160–61) "The inaction of the Indian Government had admittedly been a source of great anxiety for Wheeler and other officials in London in the months leading up to the division of the Royal Academy exhibits. In a letter to V.S. Agrawala dated September 30, 1949, Wheeler lamented: “At the present moment there is the difficulty that your Government has, if I may say so, most inadvisably refrained from carrying out the agreement of the Inter�Dominion Conference in April in regard to the dispersal of the collection still held here by the Royal Academy. There is, or should be, no difficulty whatsoever in this matter since every detail was agreed by your Director General and his Government and was equally accepted by Karachi. On one specious excuse or another your High Commissioner here, presumably on instructions from Delhi, has refrained from giving the ‘release’, although the Pakistan Government has in this case acted promptly and properly in the matter.”
• (pp 161–64) By and large, it appears that Wheeler and Chakravarti were “in complete accord in the whole matter” of the division of the Royal Academy exhibits. So in November 1949, when Wheeler finally received the necessary authorizations from both the Indian and Pakistani Governments to release exhibits in the care of the Royal Academy to their respective dominions, which by that point largely consisted of Wheeler cross-checking the lists provided to him by the Governments of India and Pakistan, he was able to do so “smoothly and easily,” (T)o his colleague M.A. Latif at the Ministry of Education in Pakistan, Wheeler wrote of the process’s conclusion in London: "“I feel that Pakistan, in the very difficult circumstances of the case, has come quite well out of the whole matter. We have now got a number of exceedingly important things which might well have been grabbed by India, including the finest piece of sculpture from Mohenjo-daro, which I was glad to see in Pakistani hands yesterday!” ... Wheeler, by this point in his illustrious career, had taken up the temporary position of Archaeological Advisor to the Government of Pakistan. In this position, Wheeler was not only entrusted with the responsibility of implementing the division of museum exhibits on behalf of the Pakistan Government, he was charged with “training, travelling, writing, excavating, and finally instituting the ‘National Museum of Pakistan’ at Karachi.”201 In other words, at stake in this division process was not simply the “salvaging of the vestiges of past achievement,”202 but also the future of entire cultural institutions then under Wheeler’s care. These included Pakistan’s new Department of Archaeology and, perhaps more importantly, the National Museum, Karachi, institutions of high symbolic and political value for a nation-state in its infancy.
• (p. 165)The division process actually remained pending on several counts over the course of the next several decades, mirroring in a way the continued uncertainty and controversy around India and Pakistan’s national borders.One issue complicating the process, for example, was a set of antiquities in the care of the Archeological Survey of India’s Archaeological Chemist in Dehradun. The exhibits included 1062 antiquities sent from Mohenjodaro on May 15, 1947 and 2 antiquities sent from Taxila on December 19, 1946. In a letter dated January 15, 1948, the Director of Archaeology in Pakistan explained that these objects had been “removed for purely chemical treatment and not for temporary display at any exhibition” prior to partition and were thus the subject of some uncertainty following partition. ...
• And so it goes. I've now read the first two-thirds of the thesis. The third chapter is less relevant. She doesn't really say if the so-called Priest-King, so-called Dancing girl and the so-called Pashupati seal were sent to London, but based on the logic above, they were not, unless they were not interpreted to be Category 1. In any case, all three were in India until 1972 when the imperious Indira Gandhi (no museum expert and the British long gone) gave the priest-king to Bhutto. The Pakistani newspapers are correct about the artifacts going to Delhi for a temporary exhibition in 1947 (Inter-Asian Relations Conference, and corresponding Inter-Asian Exhibition of Art and Archaeology) and one returning in 1972 as an aspect of a political barter. I'll await the book which all in all shows remarkable archival work. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:48, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

Discussion

So far, so completely compatible with Singh - "eventually", which you mocked, was rather a good choice of word it seems. Johnbod (talk) 17:51, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

Johnbod, please stop being silly. This is not about your edits. I have forgotten about them. I don't even know how many pages you have spammed with them, nor care. They are notes I'm making for myself until her book appears. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:12, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

You keep accusing me of being silly, and worse, but the more the evidence piles up, the more it supports the source I produced, and the less your outbursts of POV guesswork. Johnbod (talk) 18:50, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

By silly I simply mean attempting to score points in chat-room style conversations. I really have no interest in your edit, nor does my ridiculing that source constitutes any denigration of you. I respect you and in the past have had a warm relationship with you. I'm trying to find the best source. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:59, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

• At the risk of attempting to score points in a chat-room style conversation, Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus, By P. Matthiae, Carl Clifford Lamberg-Karlovsky, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.), N. Y.) Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York · 2003), has two of the divided necklaces, with photos, as Cat #s 280 and 281 - on google preview. Johnbod (talk) 21:25, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

References

The lead section reads,

The seated figure was once thought to be ithyphallic (having an erect penis), an interpretation that has been questioned by many critics and even supporters.

But the given reference doesn't discuss anything about whether or not the figure on the seal is ithyphallic. Yuyutsu-69 (talk) 11:59, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

Not sure why we have any ref in the lead section anyhow, but the statement is certainly correct and it can be traced to many reliable sources, as discussed in the body of the article. I've repeated a couple of them in the lead for now. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:43, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

Maybe it's just me, but doesn't saying that it "was once thought to be ithyphallic (having an erect penis)" sort of imply that it no longer is thought to be ithyphallic? Isn't there a better way to write that there isn't a consensus? Yuyutsu-69 (talk) 19:45, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

Well one could add ", an interpretation that has been questioned by many critics and even supporters" - although the last bit is a ltlle fuzzy. Johnbod (talk) 20:10, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

Indeed scholars no longer think so, that is correct. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:55, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

I don't think everyone is sure this is not the case - it's rather up in the air (so to say). Johnbod (talk) 23:57, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

Well, sort of. For decades, scholars took Marshall on trust. More recently, they've seen that his assumption of a link to Shiva, via the millimetric detail on this one seal, is totally unsafe as there are multiple alternative interpretations, and the only one that looks at all plausible and defensible is that it's a variant of the common Lord of the Beasts theme. Any (short) form of words that indicates this meaning will be fine for the lead; the article body is now detailed on the matter, and well-cited. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:06, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

References

FYI

Yesterday's Hindu carries a general interest History and Culture article, Pashupati and the Harappan seal. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:34, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

The Seal as Possible Evidence of Early Jainism in the Indus Civilization

The seal under discussion was unearthed at the Indus site known as Mohenjo-Daro and is thought to date to around 2350-2000 BC. It has been the subject of much discussion.

Interpretations of this seal are speculative in nature as the text appearing at the top of the seal has not been credibly deciphered.

Western Indologists and Hindu scholars claim it to be an image of the Hindu deity Shiva in the form of Pashupati, “lord of the animals”.

However, in the Vedas, Pashupati is associated mainly with cows, as well as with other domesticated animals such as horses, goats, sheep, and dogs (see Rig Veda and Atharva Veda), none of which appear on this seal.

Also, Pashupata Shaivism (the sect devoted to Shiva in the form of Pashupati) dates back only to the 1st cent. AD. This and the above would rule out a Shiva interpretation of the seal.

On the other hand, all of the animals shown on this seal (rhinoceros, water buffalo, elephant, lion, and deer) are wild, and each is an official symbol of one of the 24 Tirthankaras of Jainism. This may suggest a Jain meaning to the meditating human figure appearing at the center. In fact, the apparent squatting pose of the figure is similar to the Jain meditative position known as Godohika Asana or Ukadun Asana, "the cow-milking posture". 47.138.18.163 (talk) 05:36, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

What? Anyway, see WP:NOR. TrangaBellam (talk) 09:27, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Place

@Fowler&fowler: I did retain British Raj just adjusted it to a period/administration in the latest edit (which also did not reinstate British India), i.e., a mere grammatical fixture. Please do revisit the edit, as the edit summary in your revert states things contrary to what was actually being undone. This edit was not really controversial.

Noting for the prior edit (British India): Did that for standardization as followed in cats and ibs (had a similar discussion about Raj/British Indian Empire for ib with you at Mahatama Gandhi a while back which was accepted then; anyhow, if the same can't apply as to leads/bodies that is fine).

Also don't really think the POV allegations were warranted (AGF?).

Cheers Gotitbro (talk) 16:11, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

OK, I've accommodated it in a new edit. Apologies, I didn't realize you had changed your first edit. I think this new version is less ambiguous, especially to those unversed in the different meanings of "India," i.e. ancient South Asia minus Sri Lanka; South Asia under British rule; Dominion of India; and Republic of India. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:29, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Btw, what are cats and ibs? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:48, 28 August 2023 (UTC)