Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 4.djvu/453

Rh Indian story had greater facilities for the acquisition of this reserve of power, in that their lives lasted for centuries or even aeons. It may be imagined that three centuries of penance increased the performer's strength to a degree not expressible in modern figures! In this case, the gods had viewed with alarm a penance which Siva had begun, and which threatened to make him master of all creation. In spite of a few grotesque attributes, the mythology lends to Siva a character at once terrific and awe-inspiring. When his third eye was closed on one occasion, the universe was involved in darkness, and the legend under discussion presents a solemn picture of the god, sitting with his rosary in sackcloth and ashes, immersed in his unending penance. Kāma was deputed to break the spell. Accompanied by his nymphs, he sported before the recluse, taking all shapes that could 'shake the saintship of an anchorite,' till this oriental St. Anthony, but too thoroughly aroused, opened his tremendous frontal eye, and, with a flashing glance of rage, consumed the rash intruder on his solitude. Such is the legend which supplies the closing scene of the life of Kāma, a life that is celebrated, as March begins, with several days' rejoicing in every town and village of Southern India. The writer had seen the heap of bricks that support the Kāma pillar in a village which he visited a few months after first landing in India. As March came round, he saw them in whatever village his work brought him, and the legend was impressed on his memory by a case in court, in which the momentous word 'Kāmadakshinasivalingamedai' (or the high place of the emblem of Siva who consumed Kāma) was pronounced by the various witnesses. It was not, however, till the spring of 1900 that an opportunity presented itself for