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artistic remains of Mohenjodaro. This is illustrated by Sir Marshall on Plates exvi, fig. 29 and cxiii, 11, of the said work. This small faience sealing displays an ascetic in an attitude of meditation, and the ascetic is flanked by serpents (nagas) in reverential posture, with arms uplifted. It is quite possible that this figure is also of an ancient Jina. Pārsvanätha, whose characteristic emblem is a serpent or naga, is often sculptured with a serpent-hood. One such figure is preserved in the Mathura museum. The connection of Nagas with Jinas is too well known.
1
Among the eight auspicious signs, the aşta-mangalas, of the Jain iconography, the earliest traces of at least four signs are to be recognised in the letter-symbols of the script of Harappan culture. These are svastika, yugma-mina, and kalasa, the prototypes of which seem to be really existent among the pictographs and geometrical patterns of the oldest but enigmatic script of our country. Likewise, there are many letters in these inscriptions which resemble a crescent on ardhachandra, a trident, a goat, a caitya, and a leaf of ficus religiosa or pippal, That the pippal tree was a sacred tree in Pre-Aryan protohistoric India, is admitted by all scholars, and its specially religious character in Jainism and Buddhism and also in later Hinduism, is too well known. In early Buddhist art and iconography the Bodhi-Tree is the standard symbol of Buddha, 4
1. V.S. Agrawala, Catalogue of the Mathura Museum, Journal of the U.P. Historical Society, vol. xxiii, 1950, p. 61; there are numerous examples of this form in India, e.g. see H. Zimmer, op. cit. vol, 1, Plate B2b/c. 2. See John Marshall, op. cit. vol. 2, article on The Indus Script by Lagdon; B.M. Barua, "Indus Script and Tantric Code", in B.C. Law Volume, part ii, ed. by D.R. Bhandarkar and others, Poona, 1946, pp. 461-467 plates i-v.
3. B.M. Barua, op. cit. plates iii-iv.
4. vide I. Fergusson, Tree and Serpent Worship, 2nd ed. 1883; A. K. Coomaraswamy, Elements of Buddhist Iconography, London, 1935.
