The German Indologist Heinrich Zimmer (1890-1943) saw the group as a transcendent Shiva linga, with the three figures one above the other on the central axis of the group also representing the trimurti of Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu, but here all as Shiva, as they are ultimately only different aspects of the same primordial energy-being. Zimmer wrote that The giant granite slab seems to be expanding, both vertically and sideways, with the life-force of the athletic organisms that throb and heave across its surface.