Identifier: cyclopediauniver1950ridp (find matches)
Title: Cyclopedia universal history : embracing the most complete and recent presentation of the subject in two principal parts or divisions of more than six thousand pages
Year: 1895 (1890s)
Authors: Ridpath, John Clark, 1840-1900
Subjects: World history Ethnology World history
Publisher: Boston : Balch Bros.
Contributing Library: UMass Amherst Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries

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f later times.Some of the statues, however, have beentolerably well preserved. • -^ EfEgies of the In the center of the cavern Hindu gods in ,1 1 11 j_rj_i the cavern. IS the colossal bust of the Trimtirti, or TTindn TrinitA: lirahma. / m m iiiiiiiiiiiii MARRIAGE OF SIVA AND PARVATI.-From the cave of Elepha: to the island by the Portuguese navi-gators. A short distance from the hugeefifigy is the entrance to the cavern.The same is about sixty feet in widthand eighteen feet high. The pillars ofsupport are cut out of the native rock.In the sides of the cavern are hewnmany compartments which were dedi-cated as shrines to the old Hindu gods.47 Vishnu, and Siva. Some scholars, how-ever, have in recent times decided thatthe triune figure is not intended forBrahma and Vishnu at all, but only toexpress the threefold aspect of Siva, the Destroyer. The heads of the effigy aresix feet in height, and the features havemuch of the majesty and repose peculiarto the sphinxes of Egypt. Critics, how-
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THE IN Die A NS. —ARCHI TE CTURE. 731 ever, have noted an unpleasing expres-sion of the underlip, which seems to betoo animal or faun-like for the deity.Egyptian analogies are also discoverablein the headdresses, which are ornament-ed. In the hand of one of the gods is acobra de capello, and on the cap are seta human skull and an infant. Doubt-less here we have an allegory of life anddeath in the infant and the skull and ofthe destroying agent by which the onebecomes the other, in the serpent. Sivawas the destroyer. Perhaps the cobrawas his principal abettor. On either side of the Trimurti standsthe figure of a man leaning on a dwarf.To the right is a cavity hollowed in thewall, in which are a great number ofmythological figures, the principal onebeing a double image of Siva and Par-vati, an effigy half male and half female.To the right also is the four-faced statueof Brahma reclining on a lotus. It isone of the rare images of the supremeHindu deity now preserved in India.Perhaps th

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