ally attached to certain Hindu temples. For a god's temple is the earthly copy of his celestial abode, reproducing the paradise wherein the pious devotee hopes to share, after death, the beatitude of the deity's presence. A divine corps de ballet-a celestial troupe of damsels serving as dancers, singers, and actresses-will be one of the chief entertainments at the kingly court; and on earth, in the deity's temples, their counterparts are the nautch or dancing girls, the deva-dāsīs. It is apparent that in this little bronze the same realism has been achieved as in the modeling of the stone of the male dancer discussed above. The statuette is notable particularly for its treatment of the slim back and the long legs, and for its alert resiliency and refined force. The body of the graceful, slender girl is full of the dynamism of life, the same hidden energy welling from within that constitutes one of the most characteristic features of classic Indian art. Moreover, there is a provocative tilt to the hip joint that foreshadows a conventional posture highly typical of the later figures, particularly those of female divinities. There is a late bronze from southern India, dating from c. A.D. 1200. It represents the consort of śiva, the goddess Devī, as Pārvatī, the daughter of the Mountain King, Himālaya. The resemblance of the form and posture to those of the Indus Valley dancing girl suggests a continuity of at least four thousand years for this particular ideal of feminine grace.

The historian has to bear in mind when estimating the probable role of the early Indus cities, firstly, that a connection existed with Mesopotamia. In fact this connection is what supplied our clue for the dating of the remains. Obviously, however, as shown by the comparison of the art styles, the connection was not one of cultural identity but a consequence of commercial intercourse. Secondly, the cult of the Mother Goddess indicates that the Indus cities were part of a widely diffused neolithic culture that extended from the Adriatic to the Far East and was focused chiefly in the valleys of the Nile, Euphrates, Tigris, Helmand, and Indus. Thirdly, the Indus cities harbored a number of basic elements of Indian religion, art, and symbolism that disappear from the historian's view following the arrival of the Aryans, but become visible again the moment stone monuments reappear (i.e., in the Maurya Buddhist art of the third to first centuries B.C.). Furthermore, the same elements became increasingly conspicuous when certain aspects of the pre-Aryan religious traditions returned to view in Buddhism, Jainism, and later Hinduism. And finally, the best of the figures on the Indus seals, as well as the few statuettes preserved to us, are distinguished by a feeling for form and a broadness of treatment unequalled in the contemporary glyptic arts of the neighboring civilizations of