Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/74

44 HISTORY OF INDIAN ARCHITECTURE. present in the temples of the Jains, and pervades the whole religion of the Vaishnavas. 1 In the great act of creation the Naga performs the principal part in the churning of the ocean, and in almost every representation of Vishnu he appears either as supporting and watching over him, or as performing some subsidiary part in the scene. It is, in fact, the Naga that binds together and gives unity to this great group of religions, and it is the presence of the Tree and Serpent worship under- lying Buddhism, Jainism, and Vaishnavism that seems to prove almost incontestably that there existed a people in the north of India, whether we call them Dasyus, Kolarians, or by any other name, who were Tree and Serpent worshippers, before they adopted any of the later Hindu forms of faith. Nothing can be more antagonistic to the thoughts and feelings of a pure Aryan race than such forms of worship, and nothing more completely ante-Vedic than its rites. 2 We seem, then, almost forced to assume that it was an aboriginal superstition in the north of India, and it was the conversion of the people to whom it belonged that gave rise to that triarchy of religions that have competed with each other in the north during the last two thousand years. This solution of the difficulty has the further advantage that it steps in at once clearly to explain what philology is only dimly guessing at, though its whole tendency, as well as that of ethnology, now seems in the same direction. If this view of the mythology be correct, it seems certain that there existed in the north of India, before the arrival of the Aryans, a people whose affinities were all with the Tibetans, Burmese, Siamese, and other trans - Himalayan populations, and who were not Dravidians, though they may have been intimately connected with one division at least of the inhabitants of Ceylon. Both the pre- Aryan races of India belonged to the 1 Snake worship may have been intro- duced into the south from the north ; and it has been remarked that snake images are very frequent about Jaina temples in Mysore and Kanara. At Negapatam is a temple dedicated to Naganath, and at Subrahmanya in South Kanara, at Nagarkoil, at Manarchal in Travankor, and elsewhere, are also snake temples much resorted to. No Brahman ever officiates in a Naga temple. See also Thurston, ' Ethnographic Notes in Southern India,' 1906, pp. 283-293. 2 Though .Siva is always represented with a black snake as one of his symbols there does not seem to be any very close connection between Snake worship and .Saivism, though there are some coinci- dences that may point that way ; in Kanara, Naga images are set up facing the east, under the shade of two pipal trees a male and female growing together and married with proper rites. Beside them grow a margosa and bilva tree as witnesses ; now these latter trees are more or less consecrated to Siva. On the other hand no trace of Tree-worship seems to be mingled with the various forms of adoration paid to this divinity. The tulasi or basil is sacred to Vishnu.