of Brahmā with four heads took the place of the Creator.[1]
The Nandi shrine is connected by another bridge with the front porch of the main temple through which the worshipper can pass through the great assembly-hall and circumambulate the holy of holies, where Siva's symbol, the Lingam, is enshrined, passing by the five smaller shrines grouped round it on the terrace. They are now empty, but the first on the north side belonged to Ganēsha, the god of reason and worldly reason, who must always be first invoked before the Divine Spirit is addressed. Next, at the north-east corner, was the shrine of Bhairava, or Rudra—Siva in his tamasic aspect as the Universal Destroyer. The third, immediately behind the holy of holies, was dedicated to Parvati, Siva's sakti, or nature-force, personified by Himālaya's fair daughter who once in spring-time, when the snows melt and the mountain side begins to blossom, drew by her prayers the Great God from meditation in His icy cell and became His bride.
The fourth cell belonged to Chanda, the scavenging deity, who purifies the foulness caused by the processes of involution, and thereby prepares the way for another turn of the wheel of life. Lastly came the shrine of the Sapta-Mātris, the seven Mothers, or Powers, of Creation.
The pyramidal tower of the central shrine, as will be seen in Pl. XXVI, is similar in design to the five-storied temple on the sea-shore at Māmallapuram (Pl. XXII), but more elaborately sculptured. The roof of the antarāla, the vestibule before the shrine reserved for the priests, rises above the terraced roof of the assembly-hall, and, as is usually the case with the sikhara type of temple also, its gable is filled by a
- ↑ See Pl. LX, b.
