Page:Footfalls of Indian History.djvu/220

172 FOOTFALLS OF INDIAN HISTORY slaughter must have killed the sacrifices, and the Brahmans of Benares would take to cherishing a system of theology in which the great God was represented as remote, solitary, and meditative. The right of all classes to interest themselves in religious philosophy was indisputable, in face of the work done by the Buddhist Orders, and Vedantic theories and explanations were given freely to all comers, and by them carried back over the country to their distant homes.

We may suppose, meanwhile, that the memorial stupas continued to be placed in the sacred city, as at other scenes of Buddhist memory, by pious pilgrims. Little by little the stupas changed their shape. At first plain, or simply ornamented, they came to have the four Buddhas on them, looking North, South, East and West. Some were then made, by a natural transition, with four large heads instead of four seated figures. According to the Brahmans, the God of the Aryans was Brahma, the personal aspect of Brahman. According to the thought of the world at that period, again, God, or Brahma, was "the Ordainer, with face turned on every side." Hence the four-headed stupa was first, perhaps, regarded as the image of Brahma. But it could not long be so taken. The new conception of God was growing, and presently, with the post in the middle, it came to be regarded as Mahadeya, and then as Shiva.

There was a good deal of hesitation at this period. Anyone who has seen the bathing ghat