Page:Footfalls of Indian History.djvu/222

174 FOOTFALLS OF INDIAN HISTORY of Krishna which blends in one the Holy Child of Brindaban, the Hero of the Gita, and the Builder of Dwarka, we celebrate the vision of the royal house of Pataliputra. In the Ramayana we unravel the earlier dream of Kosala. And here in Elephanta on the extreme West, we are confronted with a rendering of the great synthesis that comes after the formulation of Shiva. Whence did Elephanta take her Lakshmi-Narayana? And what must have been the solidarity of the country when the dream dreamed in Benares finds expression here a thousand miles away!

Wherever we turn we are met by the same phenomenon of the marvellous and effective unity of pre-mediaeval India. The Narayana, who is constantly worshipped in Madras, is the same whose images were wrought in Behar so long ago as the fifth century. A single style of architecture characterises a single period, from Bhubaneshwar to Chitore. Every child knows the names of the seven sacred rivers; and the perfect tirtha, for every province of India, has taken a man these many centuries to the Himalayas, to Dwarka, to Cape Comorin, and to Puri.