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

52 PREHISTORIC AND EPIC PERIODS
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inference, the tree and axis of the universe
itself. An inevitable attribute of Siva, especially
in all late Hindu art, is his vehicle, the bull Nandi,
presumably another survival of the cult of
Siva going back to the period of the Indus civilization.
In the codes of later Hinduism, the
Puranas, each god has assigned to him a sakti or
female 'energy' who complements his power, as
the ideal wife in the Mahabharata is described
as 'half the man'. These saktis are worshipped
in the so-called Tantric or 'Left-Hand' ritual:
chief among them is Parvati, the consort of Siva,
more usually worshipped with bloody and obscene
rites in her terrible form of Kali or Durga.
Following the association of all ritual with
the cosmic forces worshipped in the Vedic
Period, the Hindu gods came to occupy the
position of regents of the points of the compass,
formerly dominated by the Devas. The essential
aspects or personalities of Vaishnavism and
Saivism are already established in the post-
Vedic period, a system in which Siva presides
over East and West - the points of the sun's
birth and death - and Vishnu reigns as Lord of
Life and Eternity at North and South. This is
essentially a symbolical statement of the difference
between the nature of these deities, with
Siva as both creator and destroyer, and Vishnu
as eternal preserver. It is important to note that
these stations of the cosmic cross are later appropriated
by Buddhism, both in the circumambulation
of the stupa in a sunwise or clockwise
direction from the East, and in the assignment
of events from Buddha's life to appropriate
points of the solar round; i.e. his birth to the
East, his Nirvana to the North.
The one feature of Hinduism with which
most Westerners are dimly familiar is the idea
of caste. The caste system probably originated
sometime during the Vedic period. It consisted
in the beginning of a division into three classes
or social groups : the Brahmins or priests, 6 the
Kshatriyas or warriors, and the Vaisyas or cultivators.
To this classification the Aryans added
a fourth class ; namely, the Sudras or serfs, the
descendants of the aboriginal black inhabitants
who were not admitted within the pale of Aryan
society. Originally, of course, this was a system
based on a natural distribution of functions. It is
perhaps the one distinguishing feature of Indian
society which has survived with little or no loss
of vitality to the present day. Although in certain
respects it was a system that exhibited a
certain strength by imparting solidarity to the
separate groups, and in its occupational division
could be said to resemble the guilds of medieval
Europe, it has been fundamentally a source of
weakness : its very organization has made for a
hopeless division of the Indian people. It is easy
to see how, with the population sealed off in
water-tight compartments in which every loyalty
is directed towards the caste, the emergence of
anything resembling a national spirit has been
almost impossible until the present political
unity.
From a study of the life of the modern Hindu
we can see that every action in life is governed
and dedicated by religious practice :
the tending
of the household altar, the sacrifices to the great
gods ; the construction of temple and house are
determined by immemorial ritual and laws of
geomancy intended both to stabilize magically
the structure and ensure the happiness of its inhabitants.
The whole life-plan of the Brahmin
followed an inexorably fixed course: boyhood
novitiate with a guru, the years as a householder,
and, in the end, retirement to the life of a hermit
or sannyasin. The ceremonies accompanying
birth, puberty, marriage, and death all have
their rituals designed to bring about the favour
of the great gods. All these occasions necessitated
the officiation of a member of the Brahmin
priesthood.
Indeed, by the sixth century B.C. Hinduism
had developed into an intellectual cult in which
salvation could be attained only by a complicated
and secret ritual administered exclusively
by the Brahmins. Corruptions in the encourage-