Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/416

364 from time to time. Thus, he is worshipped as a monster, half-man, half-lion, tearing open the bowels of a giant; as a boar, rooting up the earth when sunk beneath the waters of the deluge; as a dwarf, so small that he mistook a cow's foot-mark, filled with water, for a river; as Krishna, a beautiful and licentious young man, &c. &c.

The Sivites maintain that Siva is the Supreme God, while the Vishnuvites as stoutly maintain that Vishnu is supreme. Different Purannas (sacred books) take opposite sides of the question, and the controversy has at times led to bitter enmity, and even to war. One Puranna says, “By even looking at Vishnu, the wrath of Siva is kindled, and through his wrath, men fall into a horrible hell; let not, therefore, the name of Vishnu ever be pronounced.” In another sacred book (the Bagavat) we are told, on the other hand, that “Those who are devoted to Siva, and who worship him, are justly esteemed heretics and enemies of the true shasters." One Puranna tells us that a worshipper of Siva overthrew Vishnu and all his partisans, another, that Vishnu is the greatest of gods and lord of the world. Juggernaut, the famous idol of Cuttack,