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1 That this form was current contemporaneously in varied sub-types and fabrics is best illustrated by Dr Negahban's recent excavations at Marlik, where we ha've channel-spouted vessels in black burnished ware-one vessel having a very broad spout, without handle-and also in red ware, but more long or high than wide.
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Hence no longer should we regard the occurrence of so many channel spouted bowls from Phase III-IV at Navdatoli as accidental.
A strong Iranian influence possibly represented by a definite group ethnic or religious of people was certainly responsible for its introduction there as well as for its spread all over Malwa.
The use made of this bowl was for a ritual purpose, for pouring libations at a sacrifice or so. This is suggested by its form, for it must be held in the palms of both the hands and the liquid slowly tipped into the fire (?). An exactly similar vessel, with the channel spout further extended by placing it on a stand with a long channel, is currently used for cffering libations in sacrifice in the Kanyakumari Sthan at Sakaori, in Ahmednagar District, in Maharashtra.
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This inference is further supported by the fact that the vessel was painted on the inside base with the figu,re of a man, with dishevelled hair, and holding a long , spear-like object in his hand.
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b
Such figures occur of pottery at Sialk, Susa, Bakun "and Musyan, and the nearest parallel to the Navdatoli figure comes from Musyan (Archeologie Vivante, P. 20), though I have no means of saying at present in what context it appears at Susa. Possibly the dancing figure motif from Navdatoli has a similar significance. And the journal cited above figures all such human motifs. Running Dor or Dog-like Animals
Comparable too are the striking running animal (dog from Giyan ana Bakun) and the similar motif from chandoli and Nevasa.
Theriomorphic Vessels
1 These vessels are found in Iran and elsewhere, and attention had earlier been drawn to a vessel from Hissar III, but an identical terracotta figure of a bul! on wheel was found in the ruins of the Temple A at Nuzi (Richard F. Starr, 1137, II, pl. 103).
From the ruins also came the breast and an eye of the goddess Ishtar, and figures of the lion and the boar,
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and other objects all indicating some ritualistic significance. Of the greatest importance are two terracota plaques overlaid with a geometric and conventionalized tree of life design (Ibid. p. 131). An almost similar design is found on a pot at Daimabad, and described as a symbolized version of a human pair in copulation (Sankalia, Artibus Asiae. Vol. XIII, 1960, Fig. 19).
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The Temple A was dated to 1475 B. C., as clay tablets bearing a letter from Saushshattar, king of the Mitanni, were found, (Starr, I, p. 122).
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Further a figure of the mother goddess, more or less identical with the one from Nevasa, is found in the excavation at Tall-I-Bakun (Langsdorff and McCown, Oriental Institute Publication, Chicago, Vol. LIX, pl. 6, 23, and pl. 7).
From the two objects found in cult association at Nuzi, Yorgan Tepe, near Kirkuk in Iraq, and the figure of the mother goddess at Hissar, Bakun and elsewhere, and from similar objects found at Nevasa, Chandoli, Daimabad, all in Northern Maharashtra, we might say that the kind of cult followed in Western Asia was also practised in prehistoric Maharashtra.
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Since the source of the Iranian influence was not direct but very distant and spread over a long time, something like a thousand years, what we see today is a feature here and a feature there; though as I have shown elsewhere, we can associate certain features with Eastern Rajasthan, footed cups with Naydatoli, and highly carinated pots with vertical spouts with the Godavari Valley, and this from as early as 2000 B. C.
The substartum of these cultural regions might be ethnic, party indigenous tribes and party variuos foreign tribes which might have enterd India at various times during u long prehistorie past.
What was the nature of this Iranian influence? Though we have no evidence except the archeological, which at best is frogmentary, we might say it was something like that of the Mauryan and the Mughal times during the historical period †23. The former was undoubtedly inspired by the Achaemenian emperors' monumental architecture and the excellent polish and the method of proclaiming the emperor' conquests, but this Iranian inspiration was completly Indianized, as witness the Asokan edicts with the beautifully polished
23. This fact has been dealt with more in detail by R. E. M. Wheeler in Ancient India 4.
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