matted in the ascetic way, and on it is the crescent moon, the Ganges, and one or more cobras, while wreathed about it is a garland of kondai (Cassia) flowers. He has four arms, though occasional representations show eight, but one body and two legs. Commonly he is seated on a grey-coloured bull. In colour he is reddish, but his body is smeared over with white sacred ash. He holds in his hands various things such as a battle-axe, a deer, fire, a trident, a bow. Round his neck, which is dark, hangs a long necklace, the beads of which are skulls. At his waist he wears sometimes an elephant's hide, sometimes a tiger-skin, sometimes only a very scanty loin-cloth. Generally his consort, Uma, is at his left side, but sometimes he is pictured as half man and half woman, the right half (Siva) being pink-coloured, and the left half (Uma) green or black. Siva's abode is said to be on Mount Kailasa in the Himalayas, but among his special haunts is the burning-ground, where bodies are cremated. One of the favourite manifestations of Siva is that as Nataraja, the dancer in the great hall at Chidambaram, of which we give a picture (see frontispiece). Here Siva has one face, four arms, and two legs, performing a spirited dance. His right foot rests on a demon named Muyalahan. He is sometimes represented as dancing along with Kali, not the Kali who in North India is identified with Uma, but a she-devil feared in the South.

Doubtless each of these features in the manifestation of Siva has its history, but that is unknown at present. The legends give fanciful explanations of most of them. The tiger's skin and the elephant's hide, for instance, are those which Siva stripped from the wild animals sent against him by the magic of his

enemies the rishis of Darukavana. But it is of more interest to find the religious ideas which these things suggest to a thoughtful Saivite devotee to-day. The hides remind him that Siva has all power, and all opposition to him is vain. That right foot of Nataraja set on Muyalahan means that God crushes down all evil. Those skulls in his necklace are the skulls of successive Brahmas, each of whom died after a life lasting many ages. This is a way of saying that while other gods at last come to their end, Siva is eternal and unchanging. Siva's dance suggests how easily, and how rhythmically, he performs his five functions of making, preserving, destroying, judging and purifying. And his dance in the burning-ground may sometimes carry the message that God becomes most real to men in the solemn hour when they part from their dead.

3. Four common legends and their meaning.

Of the many legends concerning Siva four are so frequently alluded to in our poems that they should be told here, to avoid repeated explanatory notes.