Page:History of India Vol 9.djvu/225

 A LEGEND OF KAMA'S TEMPLE 185 ordered, the figure became petrified all at once. Rama likewise gave very minute instructions regarding the building of the temple and its peristyle, the cutting of the trees of four different kinds, the astrological determination of the favourable moment for the erec- tion of the shrine, and the celebration of the rites due on such an occasion. Furthermore, he ordered that servants and priests should be nominated from differ- ent classes of the people to minister to the idols. " To the idol of Vishnu are devoted the class called Bhaga- vata; to the idol of the Sun, the Maga; to the idol of Mahadeva (Siva), a class of saints, anchorites with long hair, who cover their skin with ashes, hang bones of dead people on their persons, and swim in the pools. The Brahmans are devoted to the Eight Mothers, the Shamanians (Buddhists) to Buddha, and the class called Nagna (i. e. the naked Jains) to the Arhant. On the whole, to each idol are devoted certain people who constructed it, for they best know how to serve it." Our object in mentioning all this is to teach the reader the accurate description of an idol, if he happens to see one, and to illustrate what we have said before, that such idols are erected only for uneducated low- class people of little understanding; for the Hindus never made an idol of any supernatural being, much less of God/ Al-Biruni in a later chapter, the seventy-third, de- scribes the various ways in which the bodies of the dead were disposed of in India and elsewhere, and he men- tions certain ideas associated with these rites. The