Indian Sculpture c4.s1.8

c4.s1.8

The seals, inexplicable as long as their script remains undeciphered, show further that the trees were of much consequence. An aśvattha-tree on one of them is conspicuous by a linear stylisation, and the rendering of the leaves there is not wholly unrelated to those of the Bodhi-trees in Bhārhut, in the second century B.C.5 Other trees on these seals contain, in the sinuosity of their stems (Fig. 5), the swaying movement of growth peculiar to the rendering of trees and vegetation (lotus-creeper) throughout Indian plastic art. (See pp. 16, 37).