The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c18.30

c18.30

Though a Siva temple, Elephanta is, as I have said, the Indian Parthenon; for in the Trimûrti sculpture Brahmâ's place is taken by Parvati, as Creatrix, just as in Mahâyâna Buddhism it is taken by the Buddha. The legend of the marriage of Siva and Parvati—the springtime of the Himâlayas, whose loveliness lures once a year the Great Ascetic from his meditation on the snow-clad mountain peak—as told by Kalidâs in the poem of the Birth of the War-God, fills one of the sculptured panels in an adjoining aisle; and her head in the Trimûrti, mistaken by archæologists for Vishnu, is the one on the right of the spectator, or facing west.