inquiries of the pilgrim crowd as to the meaning of the image: it need not be taken to indicate the original intention of the artist. Siva, it is said, disguised as a Yogi, came to a public disputation and confounded all the assembled philosophers so that they, in a rage, tried to destroy him by evil mantras. Lighting the sacrificial fires they created a ferocious tiger, which Siva seized and, stripping off its skin with the nail of his little finger, wrapped it round his loins. The disappointed magicians next created a monstrous serpent, which the Great Yogi took and wreathed about his neck. Then he began to dance. At last an evil spirit in the form of a dwarf sprang out of the sacrificial flames and rushed upon him. But Siva trampled it under his feet, and as all the gods assembled he resumed his triumphal dance.
The artistic intention was doubtless more simple and more natural. Siva, as before stated, was the apotheosis of the Brahman ascetic, whose attempts to penetrate into the secrets of the Universe are summed up in the Upanishads. As the supreme deity of the Saivas and the incontrovertible exponent of the jnāna-marga, the way of knowledge, Siva was associated with the Vedic sacrificial cult of Sūrya and Agni, the sun and fire Spirits. When a Brahman artist wished to create an image of the sun-dance, which he witnessed every day at the time of worship, he naturally personified the sun as the Great Ascetic in his mystic universal dance.
The demon upon which the Sun-god is trampling is analogous to the powers of darkness which Vishnu defeated in the Churning of the Ocean, or the demon Vrita, whom Indra overcame with his thunderbolt. The tiger-skin is the usual wear of the Brahman ascetic. The drum which he holds in the right upper hand is
