io6 FOOTFALLS OF INDLN HISTORY
written in the fact. He rose upon the horizon as the third member of a trinity — reflecting the Buddhist trinity, of Buddha, Dharma, Sanga — a conception which is recorded in the large cave at Elephanta. At Ellora and at Elephanta he is almost passionately revered, so absorbing is his hold on the artistic imagination, and such is the wealth of illustration that they lavish on him. In Magadha, however, creative art is playing with two different ideas at this time. They are the Mother — later to become the occasion of an alliance between Brahmanistic and Mongolian ideas — and Vishnu or Narayana. At Ayodhya, indeed, the second member of the Trinity had already given rise to a humanised reflection of Buddha in the notion of a human incarnation, which had been preached as a gospel in the Ramayana. The poet Kalidas had written the romance of both branches of Hinduism in his Kuviara Sambhava and Kaghuvamsa. And through-out all the works of this period the attempt is constantly made to prove the identity of Rama with Shiva. This is satisfactory evidence that the wor- ship of Shiva was elaborated as a system earlier than that of Vishnu or his incarnations. It also shows the intense grasp which the Indian philosophy of unity had gained over the national mind. The stupa continued even now to reflect the changing phases of thought. Hence it is doubtless to this time that we may ascribe those Shiva-lingams covered with the feet of the Lord that are to be met with occasionally in Rajgir.
