Pandaveshwor Mahadev

To get the Hindu imagination in the past detached itself from the cycle of physical beauty, to seek its maximum satisfaction in subtler mind spaces. This fact is very evident in Kalidas' composition of "The birth of the War-Lord, " where he depicts the wooing of Mahadev by Alguma, the Himalayan princess. Right here the poet places his heroine at the very acme of maidenly elegance, kneeling in worship to lay flowers at the feet of the Great God, and having as her background the woods of plum and cherry wood and almond, all instantly burst into blossom, because to them comes Springtime, as the comrade of Love. And then, with just one sweep of the brush, the style is blotted out: the fantastic Goodness has vanished from below his cedar; Eros is burnt to ashes; and the royal maiden kneels alone, while the poisonous wailing of Desire, the gorgeous wife of Love, floods the full woodland. Uma's victory is reached, and the Divine Spouse drawn to her side, only when, in the midst of unheard-of austerities, she provides supreme evidence of bravery and devotion as hier and worshipper rather than girl and lover. This touch lies far beyond the range of the Ancient.
A similar tendency to use physical symbolism as a system of explication merely, rather than seeking in it the direct and enough expression of psychic conceptions, as did the classical genius of European countries, is to be found throughout the whole getting pregnant of Siva or Mahadev, the Great God Him or her self. The tiger-skin through which this individual is clad, and some of the names of this deity, induce Tod in his "Annals of Rajasthan" to regard him as simply a new version of the Ancient Bacchus. It is a great deal more likely that behind the two, in the dim North, and in the isolated past--in some Lake Manasarovar of thought, to offer Max M? ller--there may loom up one common ancestor. But this possibility only makes more significant the divergences between the two conceptions.

Any one who visits Northern India must desire to understand the meaning of the little black stones under every conspicuous tree, which are so evidently set up for worship. They are really said by Europeans to be of phallic origin; but since so, Hindus are no more conscious of the fact than we of the similar origin of the maypole. Wherever one goes, one finds them, by the roadsides in cities and villages, on the river-banks, or inside the access to a garden, it there is also a forest that stands alone. Pertaining to in such places is glad to feel that the truly great God, begging His several rice from door to door, may have sitting Himself to bless all of us with His meditation.