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History Optional PYQ Master Pack · Model answer

Evaluate the significance of seals and sealings in the reconstruction of socio-economic and religious life of the Harappan people.

  • UPSC 2012
  • Indus Valley Civilization

With the Harappan script still undeciphered, historians reconstructing this civilization's inner life are denied the one kind of source — connected narrative text — that illuminates Mesopotamia or Egypt so richly. Into that gap step the seals and sealings: several thousand small carved objects that, precisely because their inscriptions cannot be read as language, must…

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What the full answer covers

  • Form and Corpus
  • Seals and Sealings as Evidence of Trade and Exchange
  • Windows into Social Hierarchy and Political Organization
  • Religious Content: Deities, Sacred Trees and Composite Beasts
  • The "Proto-Shiva" or Pashupati Seal
  • Mother Goddess, Sacred Trees and Composite Animals
  • …and 2 more sections, with a conclusion

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