Seven Women, a Shaman, and a Wild Goat: Reading the M-1186A "Divine Adoration" Seal from Mohenjo-daro

Among the thousands of stamp seals recovered from the Indus (Harappan) Civilization, a small handful depart from the standard single-animal format to present dense, multi-figure narrative scenes. M-1186A from Mohenjo-daro is the most elaborate of these. In two registers it shows a horned figure standing within a pipal (sacred fig) tree, a kneeling worshipper, a large markhor goat, a human head resting on a low stool, and a row of seven identical figures below—all accompanied by an undeciphered inscription. This paper offers a plain-language iconographic reading of the seal, sets out what is securely known about its provenance, and surveys the competing scholarly interpretations, from Marshall's early "deity in a tree" reading to Parpola's Pleiades hypothesis and Naga Ganesan's shamanic interpretation. It accompanies a photorealistic visual reconstruction of the scene. Throughout, the aim is to separate what the seal actually shows from what a century of scholarship has proposed it means—two very different things, given that the Indus script remains unread.