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Society & Culture Around Town Book Excerpts Vigyapanti The Dating Story

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Opinion National Interest PoV 50-Word Edit

ThePrint On Camera Videos In Pictures

Society & Culture Around Town Book Excerpts Vigyapanti The Dating Story

More Judiciary Education YourTurn Work With Us Campus Voice

Was the ‘Dancing Girl’ from Mohenjo-Daro really a dancer?

The interpretation of this bronze statuette was shaped by the colonial officers who viewed the past through the lens of their own assumptions about Indian society and the role of women.

Excavations at Harappan sites in the early 1920s yielded a corpus of artefacts that came to define our understanding of one of the earliest societies in the Indian subcontinent. These objects, recovered from sites such as Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, were not merely documented but were also used in understanding the society they belonged to. And so, contemporary society became the yardstick through which the past was understood, allowing these interpretations to stand the test of time for over a hundred years.

Among the most celebrated of these finds is the steatite figurine of a bearded man, adorned with an intricately trefoil-patterned garment, with a composed, almost meditative expression. Popularly known as the “Priest King”, this figure has, for nearly a century, been taken to represent a statesman or a religious head, shaping broader assumptions about the political and social structure of the Harappan society. The name was heavily influenced by the role of religious heads in ancient societies, such as in Egypt, where monumental architecture, burials, and inscriptions substantiated the role of the pharaohs. The existence of such a figure in the Harappan context, however, remains unverified. The title persists, even as its foundation remains uncertain. It was named as per a colonial-gendered gaze, and a century later, it is still misinterpreted.

While this demands a separate discussion, it is worth noting that a similar interpretative approach was applied to another artefact — one that has perhaps been even more enduring in its mischaracterisation.

A small bronze statuette of a young girl, measuring just over eleven centimetres, is standing with one hand resting on her hips and another loosely hanging on the side, called the “Dancing Girl”. She is completely nude but is adorned with a series of bangles and a necklace. For over a century, the name was her identity. Despite the absence of clear evidence to support this claim, the name has remained unquestioned. We still have not dared to go beyond this title, to make an honest attempt to answer the simple questions of who she is and why she continues to occupy such a contested place in our understanding........

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