The broadest artistic license required in bringing the Indus Valley civilization to the cinema, inevitably, would be costuming. Because although "undisputed traces of cotton cloth have survived at Mohenjo-Daro" and the Indus culture is believed by archaeologists to have pioneered the cultivation of cotton for clothmaking in the ancient world, no actual samples of finished clothing or other organic matter have survived over these four thousand years, due to the "damp alkalkine soil" prevailing at the Indus sites. Thus, the only reference material is the relative handful (compared with the broad abundance of seals found, or commercial items such as weights and measures) of terracotta humanoid figurines or small stone statues found at various excavations, which are mostly only partially intact and of mostly unknown purpose—but male or female, are mostly naked. Some of the female figures, for instance, wear elaborate headdresses and jewellery but little else. Explained the director in an interview, "I cannot make a movie with so much nudity, obviously. So I had to create and imagine a costume which will be away from all the different styles that we have seen in other movies, and yet be special for this civilization."