ELEPHANTA—THE SYNTHESIS OF HINDUISM
At a great moment in the history of India the caves of Elephanta were carved out of the hving rock. A moment of synthesis it was that ages had prepared; a moment of promise that would take milleniums to fulfil. The idea that we now call Hinduism had just arrived at theological maturity. The process of re-differentiation had not yet begun. The caves of Elephanta mark perhaps its greatest historic moment. In all religious sects the conflict of opinion is determined more by the facts of history and geography than by opposing convictions. What then were the sources, geographic and historic, of the elements that make up Elephanta?
The caves themselves were meant to be a cathedral. So much is apparent on the face of things. Traces of palace, fortifications, and capital city must certainly be discoverable in their immediate neighbourhood. On another island several miles away is the Abbey of Kenheri with its chaitya hall and its 108 monastic cells, each two of which
have their own water-supply; its bathing tanks, and refectory or chapter floors on the mountain
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I'lioto: Johnston and Hofftnann CAVES OF ELEPHANTA top. Kenheri was a university : Elephanta was a cathedral : and both were appanages of some royal seat.
How splendid is the approach through pillars to the great reredos in three panels that takes up the whole back wall of the vast cell! And in the porch, as we enter this central chamber, how impressive are the carvings to right and left! On the left, in low relief, is a picture representing Shiva seated in meditation. The posture is that of Buddha, and it requires a few minutes of close examination to make sure of the distinction. The leopard-skin, the serpents, and the jata, however, are clear enough. There is no real ground for confusion. On our right is another low relief of Durga, throwing herself into the universe, in God-intoxication. Behind her the very air is vocal with saints and angels chanting her praises. The whole is like a verse from Chandi. And we hold our breath in astonishment as we look and listen, for here is a freedom of treatment never surpassed in art, combined with a message like that of mediaeval Catholicism. The artist here uttered himself as securely as the Greek. It was only in the thing said that he was so different. And for a translation of that into terms European, it needs that we should grope our way back to Giotto and Fra Angelico and the early painters of missals.
Our astonishment is with us still as we penetrate the shadows and find our way amongst the grey stone pillars to that point from which we can best see the great central Trimurti of the reredos. How softly, how tenderly, it gleams out of the obscurity! Shadows wrought on shadows, silver-grey against the scarcely deeper darkness ; this in truth is the very Immanence of God in human life. On its right is the sculptured panel representing the universe according to the Saivite idea. Shiva and Parbati ride together on the bull, and again—as in the carving of Durga in the porch—the heavens behind them are like a chorus of song. On the left of the Trimurti, finally, is the portrayal of the world of the Vaishnavite. Vishnu the Preserver has for consort Lakshmi the Divine Grace and the whole universe seems to hail Him as God. It is the heads of Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu, grouped together in one great image, that make up the Trimurti which fills the central recess between these panels.
A ledge for offerings runs along below this series of pictures. The altar itself, where actual consecration took place, is seen to the spectator's right, in the form of a little canopy-like shrine or Shiva chapel, which once doubtless held the four-headed Mahadev that may to-day be seen outside the caves, and now contains the ordinary image of bhiva, as placed there at some later date. We may assume that lights and offerings, dedicated here, were afterwards carried in procession, and finally placed before the various divisions of the great reredos. The pillared hall held the congregation, and stands for the same thing as the nave in a Christian church, or the courtyard in a modern temple like Dakkhineswar.
So much for the main cave. The plan of the entablature is carried out, however, in the architecture, and there are wings—consisting of cells built round courtyards enclosing tanks—to right and left of the great central chamber. And here the carved animals and other ornaments, that support short flights of stairs and terraces, are all eloquent of a great art period and a conception of life at once splendid and refined.
Elephanta, then, perpetuates the synthesis of Hinduism. How royal was the heart that could portray no part of his people's faith—even though it held his personal conviction and worship—without the whole ! Not Saivite alone, but Saivite, Vaishnavite, and the still remembered worshipper of Brahma, go to make up the Aryan congregation. All alike, it is felt, must be represented. Nay, when we recall the older Kenheri, we feel that not the churches alone but also the monastic orders outside all churches; not society only but also the supersocial organisation, denying rank and all that distinguishes society, had a place here. In the architectural remains within a certain area of the Bay of Bombay, we have a perfect microcosm of the Indian thought and belief of a particular period. The question that presses for determination is, what was that period.
The first point to be noticed is the presence of Brahma in this synthesis of Hinduism. In the Mahabharata, similarly, we are constantly startled by the mention of Brahma. He is there called the grandsire, the creator, and sometimes the ordainer, with face turned on every side. This last attribute is perhaps derived from some old mysticism, which gave the Romans Janus—from which our own January—and found expression amongst the Hindus in the four-headed image, and the weapon with four heads called Brahma's head, as mentioned in the Ramayana. While constantly referred to in the Mahabharata, however, Brahma is nowhere there invested with new functions. He does not appear as a growing concept of the divine. He plays rather the part of one receding from actuality who must constantly be held in memory. In the Puranic stories of Krishna, similarly, no one goes to Brahma with any prayer or austerity, as they do to Shiva. He is no dynamic factor in the life of men. Yet He is the Creator, beyond all argument. He is chief and eldest of Hindu post-vedic deities. His position needs no proving. It is accepted by all. Nor does Brahma in the Puranas require to be convinced that Vishnu is the equal of himself : Krishna, as the presentment of Vishnu, is new to him, but Vishnu himself He takes for granted. At the same time, while indisputably supreme, Brahma is by no means a spiritual reality. That place, as other stories and the whole of the Mahabharata show, is filled by Shiva, with whom are associated all those philosophical ideas nowadays described as Vedantic. And yet, if the story of Krishna had been written in the twentieth century, Brahma would have had no place in it at all. Partially forgotten as He was then, He is wholly forgotten now. From this evidence then, we may infer that the personality of Brahma was the first, and that of Shiva the next, to be developed as concepts of Supreme Deity.
Thus there was a period in Hinduism when the name of Brahma the Creator was held in reverence—having dominated the theology of a preceding age—and used in conjunction with those of Shiva and Vishnu to make the specification of deity complete. Hinduism at that time deliberately preached God as the Three-in-One, the Unity-in-Trinity. This theological idea we find expressed in its purity in the Caves of Elephanta, and perhaps slightly later in the Ramayana of Valmiki.
The poet Kalidasa also, writing both the Kumara-savibhava and the Raghuvamsa, would appear to have been under the inspiration of this Hindu idea of the Trinity. He shared the desire of the power that carved Elephanta to represent the synthesis of Hinduism by doing something to concretise both its popular aspects.
But the form under which Vishnu appears in Elephanta is purely theological. It is Lakshmi-Narayana, the idea that to this day is more familiar to the West and South of India than to Bengal. This theological concept — or divine incarnation, as it is called — was fully formulated before the Ramayana was written, and is referred to there much oftener than in the Mahabharata; though that also was meant to prove the identity of a certain hero with Vishnu. Sita-Rama are from the very beginning argued as the bodying-forth of Lakshmi-Narayana in human form. Krishna in the later epic seems to be consciously a second attempt to paint the mercy of God in incarnation.
The ideas that succeed in India are always firm-based on the national past. Thus that idealism of the motherland which is to-day the growing force intellectually can go back for foundation to the story of Uma, wedded in austerity to the great God. Similarly it would be very interesting to see worked out by some Indian scholar the root- sources in Vedic literature of these conceptions of Shiva and Vishnu. One can hardly resist the conclusion that each was elaborated independently in its own region.
We have to think of the Mother Church as the expression of a people who, between 500 B.C. and A.D. 500, were intensely modern and alive. Indian civilisation has educated its children from the beginning to the supreme function of realising ideas. And ideas grew and succeeded each other, taking on new forms with amazing rapidity, in the period immediately before and after the Christian era. The impression that the chief formative impulse here was the life and character of Buddha is extremely difficult to resist. On one side the stern monastic; on the other, the very projection into humanity of the Infinite Compassion—the Blessed One was both of these. His character was the world's proof that God was at once Preserver of His children, and Destroyer of their Ignorance, even while He was but a name for the Supreme itself. Hence in men's dreams of Shiva we see their effort thenceforth to realise the one, while Narayana is their personification of the other of these attributes.
Just as Buddha may have been the radiant centre whence diverged the popular religions, so Benares may have been the spot where the idea of Shiva was first conceived and elaborated. Many causes may have contributed to this. The Deer Park seven miles away must have been a monastic university before the time of Buddha. Its undisputed pre-eminence is shown by the fact that He made his way to it immediately on attaining enlightenment, because it was there that his theory, or discovery, must be published to the world. From this we can see that the monk, although a little apart, must always have been an impressive figure in Benares, which was itself, at this particular period, mainly a commercial and industrial centre, associated with a great Brahmanic wealth of Vedic memory.
After the time of Buddha, while his name still reverberated throughout the length and breadth of the land, Benares would doubtless become a place of pilgrimage, rendered doubly sacred by his memory and by its Vedic altar. The growing opinion that the Deity could take no delight in slaughter must have killed the sacrifices, and the Brahmans of Benares would take to cherishing a system of theology in which the great God was represented as remote, solitary, and meditative. The right of all classes to interest themselves in religious philosophy was indisputable, in face of the work done by the Buddhist Orders, and Vedantic theories and explanations were given freely to all comers, and by them carried back over the country to their distant homes.
We may suppose, meanwhile, that the memorial stupas continued to be placed in the sacred city, as at other scenes of Buddhist memory, by pious pilgrims. Little by little the stupas changed their shape. At first plain, or simply ornamented, they came to have the four Buddhas on them, looking North, South, East and West. Some were then made, by a natural transition, with four large heads instead of four seated figures. According to the Brahmans, the God of the Aryans was Brahma, the personal aspect of Brahman. According to the thought of the world at that period, again, God, or Brahma, was "the Ordainer, with face turned on every side." Hence the four-headed stupa was first, perhaps, regarded as the image of Brahma. But it could not long be so taken. The new conception of God was growing, and presently, with the post in the middle, it came to be regarded as Mahadeya, and then as Shiva.
There was a good deal of hesitation at this period. Anyone who has seen the bathing ghat at Baragaon, between Behar and Rajgir, will be in a position to judge in how many different directions the emblem of Shiva might have been evolved. The four-headed stupa, for instance, was sometimes made to refer to Parvati. Finally, however—with the perfecting of the theological idea of Maheswara—the modified stupa was taken as Shiva. This particular phase must have occurred just as the Rajputs began to settle in Rajputana, and this accounts for the prevalence of the four-headed Shiva in that country. The family-God of the royal line of Udaipur is said to be a four-headed Mahadeva. In Benares again there may be more, but there is certainly one temple in the Tamil quarter behind the monastery of Kedar Nath, where a Shiva of the period in question is worshipped to this day. When first erected this temple was doubtless on a level with the street. Owing to the accumulation of debris in the interim, however, it is now some eight or ten steps down. This fact alone gives us some notion of the age of the building.
The image of Mahadeva has gone through many further phases of simplification since the day we speak of, but this Shiva of Benares and the other of Elephanta belong to a single historic period, and the small four-headed stupa outside the caves is one of their most precious relics.
Hinduism throbs with the geography and history of India. In every image of Shiva speaks the voice of pre-Gupta Benares. In that complex conception of Krishna which blends in one the Holy Child of Brindaban, the Hero of the Gita, and the Builder of Dwarka, we celebrate the vision of the royal house of Pataliputra. In the Ramayana we unravel the earlier dream of Kosala. And here in Elephanta on the extreme West, we are confronted with a rendering of the great synthesis that comes after the formulation of Shiva. Whence did Elephanta take her Lakshmi-Narayana? And what must have been the solidarity of the country when the dream dreamed in Benares finds expression here a thousand miles away!
Wherever we turn we are met by the same phenomenon of the marvellous and effective unity of pre-mediaeval India. The Narayana, who is constantly worshipped in Madras, is the same whose images were wrought in Behar so long ago as the fifth century. A single style of architecture characterises a single period, from Bhubaneshwar to Chitore. Every child knows the names of the seven sacred rivers; and the perfect tirtha, for every province of India, has taken a man these many centuries to the Himalayas, to Dwarka, to Cape Comorin, and to Puri.