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182 "O Lord of the Dance, Who calls by beat of drum all who are absorbed in worldly things; and dispels the fear of the humble and comforts them with His Love divine: Who points to His uplifted Lotus-foot as the refuge of salvation: Who carries the fire of sacrifice and dances in the Hall of the Universe, do Thou protect us!"

There is a simple and natural reason, apart from philosophy and metaphysics, why the Nātārāja as a symbol of the Universal Lord appealed more to the people of Southern India, who never saw the eternal snows, than the image of the Mahā-Yogi of the Himālayas. In the dawn of Indian civilisation the great mountain chain which stretches along the western coast was to the people of the adjoining low-country what the Himālayas were to the non-Aryan people of the Indus and Ganges valleys. It was up there, in the cool heights overlooking the vast expanse of the Indian Ocean, that their Aryan teachers and lawgivers lived, the Brahmans who taught them the science and art of the Vedas, and the Kshatriya warriors under whose protection peaceful villagers were safe from the savage marauders who had their lairs in the heart of the jungles. And in the pellucid air of the Western Ghats, washed clean by monsoon storms, the Brahman at his evening prayers heard day by day Siva's drum, the time-beat of the ocean, thundering along the shore, and saw the golden sun throbbing on the western horizon as it sank slowly into the jaws of the mysterious dragon of the nether world. So the Brahmanical art of Southern India is a true interpretation of Indian history and, like all true art, holds the mirror up to nature in revealing to us the beatific vision of the Universal Lord in his mystic