Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/72

 HISTORY OF INDIAN ARCHITECTURE. Avatar takes us back to Rama, who, if our chronology is correct, may have lived B.C. 2000 ; the fourth Narasimha, or the man lion may possibly point to the time the Aryans entered India. The three first deal with creation and events anterior to man's appearance on earth. In this respect the Vaishnava list differs from the other two. They only record the exist- ence of men who attained greatness by the practice of virtue, and immortality by teaching the ways of emancipation from rebirths. The Vaishnavas brought their god to earth, to mix and interfere in mundane affairs in a manner that neither the earlier Aryan nor the Buddhist dreamt of, and so degraded the earlier religion of India into the monstrous system of idolatry that now prevails in that country. No attempt, so far as I know, has been made to explain the origin of the .Saiva religion ; it was, however, most probably an aboriginal superstition assimilated by the Brahmans. The earliest authentic written allusion to it seems to be that of the Indian ambassador to Bardisanes (cir. A.D. 220), who described a cave in the north of India which contained an image of a god, half-man, half-woman. 1 This is beyond doubt the Ardhanama form of Siva, so familiar afterwards at Elephanta and in every part of India. The earliest engraved representations of this god seem to be those on the coins of Kadphises II. (about 80 to 90 A.D.), where the figure with the trident and the Bull certainly prefigure the principal personage in this religion. 2 Besides all this, it seems now tolerably well ascertained, that the practice of endowing gods with a multiplicity of limbs took a much greater development in Tibet and the trans-Himalayan countries than in India, and that the wildest Tantric forms of Durga and other divinities or demons are more common and more developed in Nepal and Tibet than they are even in India Proper. 3 If this is so, it seems pretty clear, as the evidence now stands, that Saivism is an aboriginal or northern superstition possibly introduced into India by some of the northern hordes who migrated into India long before the Christian Era. It is also only too true that no attempt has yet been made to ascertain what the religion of the Dravidians was before they adopted either the Jaina or the Vaishnava or Saiva forms of religion. It is possible that among the Pdndu Kallus, and other forms of ' Rude Stone Monuments ' that are found every - 1 Stobseus, ' Physica,' Gaisford's ed. p. 54 ; see also Priaulx, ' India and Rome,' p. 153; Burgess, 'Rock-Temples of Elephanta,' 8vo ed. p. 67. 8 Wilson's ' Ariana Antiqua,' plates 10, 1 1 ; P. Gardner's ' Coins of the Greek a.nd Scythic Kings of Bactria and India,' pp. 124-128, plate 25, and introd. p. 50. 3 Compare Griinwedel's ' Mythologie des Buddhismus in Tibet and der Mongolei. ' Buddhist figures have been subjected to the same treatment as the gods : to make them demoniac,