Jinamanjari 1996 04 No 13

Author(s): Jinamanjari
Publisher: Canada Bramhi Jain Society Publication

Page 53

females, Atre postulated, were representations of vestal virgins who guarded the sacred fires in Harappan households. 16 The vestal virgins formed the order of priestesses who served the Goddess.
My own studies of Harappan culture have led me to the conclusions that, 17 in large part, concur with Sullivan and Atre; the all-important deity of Harappan civilization was the Great Goddess who manifested in various epiphanies related to plants and animals. She was the wellspring of all life, the source of abundant and continual supply. Harappan culture was first and foremost an agrarian society. As is typical in early farming cultures, the fertility of the earth was linked with feminine fecundity. The Great Goddess gave birth by herself, through parthenogenesis, and the mystery of the Earth's creation was mirrored in the life-creating capacities of women. Not only had women domesticated plants and initiated horticulture, 18 they were linked with the harvests in religious mystery that connected them to the origin of life and its corollary death. Undoubtedly, the Goddess of Harappan civilization was served by ministering priestesses who were lined to her by virtue of their biology. Those processes that led to the birth of offspring (sex and menses) could well have been regarded as the source of mystical states as well. In a study on the relationship between shamanism and menses Marilyn Nagy notes, "It is not the physical child which is conceived at menstruation, was so long thought, but the spiritual child. The figure of the shamaness appears in the legends of women at the menses because she represents the inherent possibility of the woman not only to bear children, but also to understand, to teach, and to heal." 19
Harappan culture had much in common with other contemporary cultures far to the north and the west. A comparative study of the Neolithic finds of old European cultures and Harappan culture reveals surprising correspondence: virtually all of the patterns and symbols
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