1. Aja" (goat), "Matsya" (fish) etc. (Macdonell and Keith, 1912 a,b). Thus, these animal-centric Indus iconographies arguably denoted the "guilds" or oligarchic authorities that issued the inscribed seals and tablets. Since the iconographic symbols such as the "unicorn" were found in different stratigraphic layers of Indus locations (spanning over a long time period), and in far-flung Indus locations, it could not have signified a single king, chieftain, or a single royal family. Moreover, the existence of several seal-impressions on single sealings, sometimes having different iconographies for each seal (Sealing #1625 has 3 seal impressions with separate iconographies of bull, unicorn and tiger), proves that the issuing authorities of each seal had some agreement with one another, and hence the issuing authorities are more likely to be symbiotic "merchant guilds" rather than competing royal families. This forms the basis of my hypothesis that the iconographies represented guilds or oligarchic authorities. Another strong corroborative support of this theory comes from the punch-marked coins of prehistoric and early-historic era;of the Indus iconographies are animal-centric, depicting bulls, unicorns, tigers, elephants, crocodiles, and various anthropomorphic figures. Interestingly, certain ancient Indian tribes were actually named after animals
2. ) to show the use of the ancient word;Supplementary-File-1: An image of a news in an online Bengali News Daily