🦁Śarabha on the 🧼Sandal Soap

The popularity of ancient Indian fantasy creatures has soared in recent years. Thanks to advances in computer-generated imagery, fantastic beasts - real and mythical -  are taking over comics and mobile games.

🚿Turns out, there is one mythical creature you meet every day. This one has a lion’s body with an elephant’s head and appears on every bar of India’s all-time favourite Mysore Sandal soap.

The OG Mysore Sandal Soap is undoubtedly one of the most enduring images of Indian bath-time nostalgia. There’s a lot written about the soap’s legendary status, the savvy marketing campaigns and that unmistakable festive, sandalwood aroma. But take a closer look at that engraved mascot on the soap box.

🦁Known as Śarabha, the motif was used by KSDL (the company that makes Mysore Sandal Soap) from the Mysore Royal Coat of Arms - designed by a certain Robert Taylor during the colonial era. The coat of arms depicts a ‘Gandabherunda’ and is held up by two ‘Śarabhas’. And it makes perfect sense for these two creatures to be together, courtesy of a fascinating Puranic legend.

🤔Except that Śarabha is in fact a half lion-bird, not a lion-elephant! The lion-elephant is a Vyala or Yali.

So why did the Royal coat of Arms (and the soap) depict a Yali, instead of a Sarabha? Is it a case of mistaken identity? Or a naughty colonial-era distortion? A design error, perhaps? Or was meant to be a Yali after all❓

📚Katha Time...

You probably know the story of Narasimha who splintered Hiranyakashipu’s neck like a twig and dug into his intestines, roaring his lungs out in rage. All because the Asura king forbid his son Prahlad from singing the glories of Narayana and was consumed with the nefarious thought of murdering the innocent child.

But do you know what followed this spine-chilling episode?