23. Salvation or sexuality ?
An Indus sign showing spirituality of an ascetic to lead to salvation has been utterly misinterpreted by some of the alleged decipherers. They regard this sign as depicting a woman. As said before, Indus was a highly evolved and advanced culture, as is evident from its city lay-outs, architecture, water storage system, trade over land and by sea and its seaports, its record keeping, arts, astrology and other things. Some German scholars who know something about Jainism could understand what I am showing in the texts ahead in support of my point of view. Several seals show single, twin and triple mountains as the pilgrimage sites for penance and the pancham gati sites from which salvation is reached, and which are revered by Jains . All these nine seals shown below including the last two, carry very special Jain metaphysical signs of salvation from single mountain peaks. Seals nrs # 190 and 365 or 286 here show a pichhi of a Jain ascetic hanging with the cross sign being pierced through its center denoting pancham gati, confirming the explanation of the sign as meaning salvation as given earlier.
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They do not symbolize gender, but celibacy, having a pichhi with ratnatraya while performing panchachar fighting the eight karmas, by the Jain ascetics. The twin mountain peaks as pilgrimage sites are shown in seals below:
where the twin hill site itself has become the kayotsargi ascetic possessing nothing. In the last seal, # 427, one can see the hill as well as the ascetic becoming the hill and giving out a fluttering flame towards the west. Such a sign is also visible in the ceiling of the natural part of King Kharavela’s cave in red color in Khandagiri of the Kumari Hills of Bhuvaneshvar, like the paintings seen in the Bhimbetika rock shelters near Bhopal. The figure is that of a monk achieving the 4th Shukla Dhyan. On this pattern only the 18 meter high monolithic granite statue of Sri Gommateshvar at Sravana Belagola was later cut from the rock mountain of Vindhyagiri some 1100 years ago.
The triple mountain peaks alleged to be those of Shikharji are very well known to be an eternal tirth or holy place for salvation, as shown in the next seals. Seal #197 shows the pichhi of the Jain monks. This denotes that this pilgrimage site is always occupied by Jain ascetics. Seal # 526b displays that this triple hill peak is associated with rise in spirituality.
One more seal, #23b is misconceived as an expression of sexuality while in fact it is a seal of penance where the ascetic is protected by the celestials in #24b rightly, but a scratch is drawn by neglect in such a way that it conveys the meaning of the seal wrongly. The seal carries the first symbol of the Jain Triloka followed by the animal, plant, celestial and human creatures living in it.
In the other, identical seal the scratch is absent and the ascetic sallekhi is guarded by two celestials holding sugarcane plants in the same way as is in accord with the Jain concept. The sallekhi has been given shoulder support by two attending yakshas whose hands are holding a tree.
Next issue: 24. Mind and soul in the Indus texts