Biribu held up the blue bead against the fire. The azure blue of the bead against the shimmering flames of the crackling fire was enchanting.

“You can keep it” said Khora the lame cattle grazer. The lanky sixteen year old smiled gratefully.

Khora’s band of cattle grazers would spend a few weeks each year in the pastures to the north of Biribu’s little settlement. Khora would make a visit during these weeks with his pack of mules. He brought with him metal shovels and some jewelry made of lapis, ivory or painted wooden beads and would exchange them for the greenish copper ore that Biribu and his family dug out of the hillside.

Biribu’s extended family including his parents, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts and cousins lived in a cluster of four or five mud plastered huts in an otherwise desolate region. The men would mine the green veined rocks with stone picks and a few metal shovels. The women cooked and cared for the children and weaved wicker baskets from the dried stems of the shrubbery growing sparsely near the settlement. One of his Uncles would often set out with his three mules on a two day trek to the nearest of the farming villages in the greener plains up north to exchange the ore and baskets for grain and other necessities. But they looked forward to Khora’s annual visits for the much valued tools and jewelry which he brought from the Great City up in the north-west.

That night they gathered around a fire in front of their huts. Khora regaled them with tales from his travels. His narration of the wonders of the Great City never failed to find a wide-eyed audience in this little settlement. Khora’s family of seven was part of a tribe numbering nearly forty who with their hundred or so cattle followed a south easterly trail each year along a corridor of grasslands from the plains near the Great City to reach the northern reaches of the arid hillocks where Biribu lived. They would spend a few weeks camping near some of the larger villages on the trail, trading in exchangeable goods, before moving on to the next one on their southerly path. This journey took them almost six months and as the days began to lengthen again, they would turn back and retrace their path to the outskirts of the Great City.

Biribu listened with a sense of awe and longing to Khora’s account of the riches and wizardry of the people who lived in the faraway city. He was fascinated by descriptions of the amazing things that they made there with the metal smelted from the ore that he dug out. For a couple of years now, he had toyed with the idea of making his way there. He made up his mind that night and much to his father’s disappointment, slipped away early in the morning with Khora to join his tribe at their camping grounds. Four months later, after a long staggered journey with the cattle grazers, he reached the eastern bank of the Indu River and made his way through the heavy mist into the Great City. The memories of the family and home that he had left recently brought a twinge of sorrow. But, a new life was beckoning him in the city of his dreams.

A misty morning on the bank of the Indus

(Source:http://www.mohenjodaro.net/mohenjodaromist1.html)

Biribu had been in the city for a year and a half now. After doing odd jobs for brick layers, bead makers and potters for the first few months, he had settled into this job as a metal craftman’s assistant. Biribu had taken to the job like fish to water. He was a willing student and with his keen sense of observation he quickly mastered the art of smelting copper ore and adding the right amount of tin to make the best bronze that his master Jagada was well known for. To Jagada’s and his own surprise, the unsophisticated lad from the distant village had shown a penchant for clay modeling which came in handy for making the moulds for the bronze figurines that Jagada specialized in. They made traditional bulls and bullock cart replicas which were popular in the city. In recent months they had also begun turning out fine lifelike human statuettes for which there was a great demand both within the city as well as elsewhere. Wealthy traders and clan chiefs tried to outdo each other in collecting these shining bronze and copper artifacts.

On this particular day though, Biribu’s mind was in an agitated state. He had seen her the previous morning at the bull-baiting in the square by the city citadel. It seemed as though the whole city was there for the fertility festival. The bull-baiting was the grand finale. Biribu had no stomach for it though. He found the whole idea of men throwing themselves at a raging bull and getting gored, kicked and trampled by it before killing the helpless creature too intimidating. So he stood at a safe distance on a low platform and watched it with a growing sense of uneasiness.

 

It was then that his eyes fell on her. She was standing with a few other women a short distance to his right under a canopied pavilion. She was tall, gangly and slightly wan in appearance. She stood there with her left foot on a small brick in front of her, her right hand on her hips. The left hand hung in front as though weighed down by the weight of the twenty or so wooden bangles that covered it almost entirely from arm to wrist. It was something about the carefree look with her chin jutting out as she peered over the milling crowds and her thick lips parted slightly in a look of mild amusement that enamored Biribu. His heart quickened and he felt a warm rush of blood unlike he had ever felt before. He could not take his eyes off her. He waited for the ghastly end of the bull-baiting and followed her discretely as she made her way back to her house with her companions. She entered a large house in the south of the city. Biribu did not miss the seal of the one-horned bull on the door of the house. That was the sign of one of the most powerful clans in the city.

An indus seal depicting a one-horned bull
(Source: http://www.accd.edu/sac/vat/arthistory/arts1303/India8.jpg)

It was her that Biribu was thinking about when Jagada found him in a sort of a trance with the lump of clay in his hand.

“Biribu! Are you dead? How long will you take to knead that clay?”

Jadaga’s screeching voice shook Biribu out of his reverie. His face reddened and he stammered an answer to his master. He just could not get her out of his mind. He hurried to place the lump of smooth clay in front of Jagada and turned his attention to the furnace. The bronze had to be melted and ready by the time Jagada finished making the moulds.

Over the next few weeks, Biribu often found excuses to linger around the house of the one-horned bull. He did manage to sneak an occasional view of the rawboned girl who had smitten him. With each furtive glance his sense of yearning strengthened. But he knew that this would go nowhere. He knew enough of the city by now to realize that she was out of his reach and that added to the melancholy. He would sit and brood over it in the evenings after Jagada had left the workplace.

On one such evening he was sitting in front of the furnace, tending it to smelt enough copper for the next day’s work. He had absently picked up a lump of wax and was mulling over how things could have been. A little while later, he suddenly realized that he had begun to shape the wax into a human figure - the figure of a lean girl. He continued in a restless frenzy, peering over the wax in the glowing light of the furnace. He had a vision in his mind which he translated into the wax figurine – a vision of a round faced, thick lipped girl with large drooping eyes standing with one arm on her hips and left leg placed casually in front. He worked through much of the night shaping the bangles and the exquisite trefoil shaped necklace that he remembered her wearing the first time he saw her. He then enclosed the delicate wax figurine in clay, pressing it hard against it on all sides except the base where he left an opening.

The next evening, after the day’s work he brought out the clay covered wax figurine and placed it on glowing embers and fired up the furnace to melt some bronze. An hour later, he picked up the clay mould and poured out the molten wax through the hole at the bottom, leaving a hollow mould. He then proceeded to carefully pour the molten bronze into the mould and put it away out of sight. After the metal had cooled, he broke open the clay mould to reveal the bronze statuette inside. Over the next few days, he spent his spare hours working on the figurine with a file and sandstone, sharpening the features and smoothing the surface. When he had finished with it, it was a shiny, stunning piece about the height of a handspan, with exquisitely detailed features and ornamentation. It would remain his prized possession for the rest of his life.

The bronze figurine
(Source: http://www.hp.uab.edu/image_archive/udc/statue02.jpg)

It was nearly four millennia later that this news report appeared in The Hindu

The ageless tale a potsherd from Bhirrana tells

Wednesday, Sep 12, 2007:

In a rare discovery, the Archaeological Survey of India has found at Bhirrana, a Harappan site in Fatehabad district in Haryana, a red potsherd with an engraving that resembles the ‘Dancing Girl,’ the iconic bronze figurine of Mohenjodaro. While the bronze was discovered in the early 1920s, the potsherd with the engraving was discovered during excavations by the ASI in 2004-05.

The potsherd with the engraving
(Source: http://www.hindu.com/2007/09/12/stories/2007091255372200.htm)

A few hundred kilometres separate Mohenjodaro, now in Pakistan, and Bhirrana. The potsherd, discovered by a team led by L.S. Rao, Superintending Archaeologist, Excavation Branch, ASI, Nagpur, belonged to the Mature Harappan period. Mr. Rao called it the “only one of its kind” because “no parallel to the Dancing Girl, in bronze or any other medium, was known” until the latest find.

… Mr. Rao says, “... the delineation [of the lines in the potsherd] is so true to the stance, including the disposition of the hands, of the bronze that it appears that the craftsman of Bhirrana had first-hand knowledge of the former.”

Click here to read the full newspaper report

Disclaimer: This is a fictional tale set in the times of the Indus Valley Civilization. While a sincere effort has been made to make the descriptions of the way of life and surroundings of the characters realistic, by the very nature of the limited evidence that is available, they remain speculative.