The art and architecture of India - Buddhist, Hindu, Jain (Art Ebook)

THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA . 51
for later Hinduism and Buddhism are the means
for avoiding this retribution that were already
formulated in this period: the attainment of
magic powers and escape from reincarnation
through the practice of extreme asceticism and
self-mortification ; the science of yoga or ecstatic
meditation, already directed to the practitioner's
attainment of superhuman spiritual strength in
overcoming the process of samsara. The goal of
life after death as absorption into a changeless
and timeless state, more familiar to us by the
Buddhist term Nirvana, was already accepted
by all sects of Hinduism.
The term Hinduism may perhaps properly be
applied to this religious system at the moment
when, probably no earlier than the beginning of
the Christian Era, the Vedic gods were superseded
by the worship of the Trinity or Trimurti
of modern Hinduism: Brahma, Vishnu,
and
Siva. 5 Their personalities are already defined in
the Mahdbhdrata, the great epic of the post-
Vedic period. Brahma may be described as the
soul and creator of the universe, the self-created
father of the world and indwelling spirit of the
cosmic system. The first person of the Brahmanic
Trinity has always been such a vague and
nebulous deity that most modern Hindus are
divided in their allegiance between devotion to
Siva and Vishnu.
Vishnu is a mild and benevolent divinity who
offers salvation through personal devotion rather
than the practice of ritual. This deity is believed
to have had his origin in one of the Vedic sungods.
He is the preserver of the world. According
to the eschatology of Hinduism, at the end
of each great cycle of time or kalpa the universe
is destroyed. Brahma is then reborn of Vishnu,
and recreates the world-system for him. In each
of these great cycles in which he has rescued the
cosmos, Vishnu has appeared in a different form
or avatar. Among the popular subjects of Hindu
art are representations of Vishnu in the form of
the boar that saved the earth-goddess from the
waters of the flood, or, in the form of a lion, when
he struck down an impious king who dared to
question his universal divinity. One incarnation
of Vishnu is in the shape of the hero Krishna,
who first appears in the great Indian epic, the
Mahdbhdrata, and in that most remarkable of
devotional and mystical hymns, the Bhagavad
Gitd, in which he offers salvation through union
with the world-soul or Brahma. The fact that
Krishna is frequently referred to as dark in
colour has led some authorities to think of him
as a divinity of Dravidian origin, and this racial
distinction is maintained even in the iconography
of Indian painting in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. The legends of the god's
youthful exploits rival those of Herakles, and
in his amours with Radha and the milkmaids he
surpasses the amorous prowess of Zeus himself.
The loves of Krishna are generally interpreted
as an allegory of the soul's yearning for union
with the divine. More than any other member
of the Hindu pantheon, he extends to his
devotees the possibility of salvation through
devotion to him.
The third member of the Hindu Trinity is
Siva. He is a severe and terrible god of destruction
who moves his devotees by fear rather than
love. He is generally regarded as a divinity
of Dravidian origin,
perhaps stemming from
the Rudras, who were deities of destruction
personified in the whirlwind, although the evidence
of archaeology suggests that he may have
been a deity worshipped by the Indus people in
the third millennium B.C. Siva came to symbolize
the powers of destruction which are the
bases of re-creation. He is the symbol of death,
but only of death as the generator of life, and
as a source of that creative power ever renewed
by Vishnu and Brahma. The representations of
Siva as the Lord of the Dance are personifications
of his enactment of the end of the world,
when the universe falls into ruin and is recreated
by Brahma and Vishnu. Siva in his procreative
aspect is worshipped in the shape of a lingam
that is the phallic emblem and, by symbolic