Indus Valley Seals: Navigate Sunderbans Tiger

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Tiger king worshiped as Dakshin Raya is cohort of the goddess of Sundarbans and the Muslim saints who nurtured early settlements in lower Bengal. In the animistic religion folklore and oral epic is conservatory of medieval epic literature. Tiger is invincible soul of Asia. Through art and literature Sengupta unravels the history of the tiger in the East-West encounter. Tiger at the center of obsessive funerary cult appears in the Indus Valley seals and on the patterned silk of Central Asia and Han China. In the context of flame-striped tigers on the inscribed Gilgamesh seals the new evidence of birch bark manuscripts written in Indus Valley hieroglyphs help logical restoration of the past. There is a reason for it; from the Bay of Bengal the tiger crossed the Silk Road and reached Caspian Lakes, Mediterranean East, Sicily and Britain. Capture and transportation of the tigress and the tiger cubs in the Dionysus and goddess cult is recorded in Roman mosaics.

ArputhaRani Sengupta, Professor of Art History, previously at the National Museum Institute, New Delhi and Stella Maris College, Chennai, specializes in the cultural history of early India with a particular interest in the Greco-Buddhist reliquary cult intersecting Imperial Cult of Rome and funerary cult across Central Asia and Han China. Besides contributing to peer-reviewed publications, Sengupta has written/ edited three books on cult and cultural synthesis in early Indian art. She has authored Art of Terracotta (2004), Manimekalai: The Dancer with Magic Bowl (2005), Kailasanatha Temple: The Realm of Immortals (2009) and Buddhist Art and Culture: Symbols & Significance (2 vols. 2013).

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