Mythological Creatures and Plant Forms Seals 9

[Original 1931 text] "The three-headed beast on seal 382 appears to be a composite of three animals. The heads and horns seem to be those of antelopes and the body of a unicorn. The heads have been joined to the body very carefully. One is eating, the second looks straight ahead, and the third is looking backward in apparent alarm. In any of the two heads wee removed and the tail shortened, quite a normal animal would be left. . . . The representation of plant forms on the seals is rare; they occur on only twelve seals . . . On only two seals is a plant form the central motif (Nos. 387 and 527). The plant on the former has been identified as a pipal tree, which in India is the Tree of Creation. The arrangement is very conventional and from the lower part of the stem spring two heads similar to those of the so-called unicorn." [Marshall, Vol. III, p. 389]