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Rh Mahābhārata); or of the wife to her husband (as in the Rāmāyana); or of two lovers to each other (as in later Vaishnava poetry), belongs essentially to the Kshatriya religious tradition embodied in the epics of ancient Aryan royalty, like the sikhara which formed the spire of the royal chapel and bore upon its summit the Kshatriya king's ensign of universal sovereignty. The Saiva cult borrowed the bhakti idea, but took the Brahmanical standpoint that the nearest way to salvation was the jnāna-marga, the way of knowledge. In this respect, as well as in its ascetic tendencies, it is closely allied to Hīnayāna Buddhism.

Siva, as distinguished from Brahmā and Vishnu, represents the tāmasic or destructive power of the cosmos, and has the setting sun and the waning moon as his emblems. But Siva's followers do not always observe the rule of the Silpa-Sāstrās that his shrine shall face the west, but give it the benign aspect towards the rising sun, because he is regarded by them as representing all three of the cosmic gunas. Image-worship on the whole, with all its elaborate temple ritual, was the almost inevitable concomitant of the bhakti-marga, a response to the human impulse which craves for the sight of the object of hero-worship, whether it be human or divine. Only the philosopher, or those who are under the compulsion of a stern hierarchical decree, can resist the craving. Vedic religion tried to satisfy it by using the sun and moon and nature elements as its symbols, but the Rishis who taught divine wisdom were worshipped as equal to or sometimes even greater than the gods. Vaishnavism made the person of the king, the son and representative of the deity, the object of devotion. The early Buddhists, forbidden to worship the graven