And, However Difficult, And Even Impossible May
Seem The Exact Representation Of All These Abstract Ideas, Idealistic,
Pantheistic, And, Sometimes, Purely Material, In The Condensed Shape
Of Allegorical Symbols, India, Nevertheless, Has Known How To Express
All These Teachings More Or Less Successfully.
She has immortalized
them in her ugly, four-headed idols, in the geometrical, complicated
forms of her temples, and even in the entangled lines and spots
on the foreheads of her sectaries.
We were discussing this and other topics with our Hindu fellow-
travellers when a Catholic padre, a teacher in the Jesuit College
of St. Xavier in Bombay, entered our carriage at one of the stations.
Soon he could contain himself no longer, and joined in our
conversation. Smiling and rubbing his hands, he said that he
was curious to know on the strength of what sophistry our companions
could find anything resembling a philosophical explanation "in
the fundamental idea of the four faces of this ugly Shiva, crowned
with snakes," pointing with his finger to the idol at the entrance
to a pagoda.
"It is very simple," answered the Bengali Babu. You see that its
four faces are turned towards the four cardinal points, South,
North, West, and East - but all these faces are on one body and
belong to one god."
"Would you mind explaining first the philosophical idea of the
four faces and eight hands of your Shiva," interrupted the padre.
"With great pleasure. Thinking that our great Rudra (the Vedic
name for this god) is omnipresent, we repre-sent him with his face
turned simultaneously in all directions.
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