The Hindu Temple v2.c11.s9.2

v2.c11.s9.2

All the things indeed of “this wonderful world (saṃsāra)”,—its course and the passage that leads beyond it—“are described under the guise of the temple (Prāsāda) : the diverse shapes of all creatures, high and low, encaged in their bodies through their various actions, from the celestial beings (downwards).²⁰² Thus the kings are admonished in the above inscription, not to turn their minds to sin, but to see the Order of this world in the likeness of the temple and be guided by it, supported by it in the long ascent to the ground above, the High Altar, above which are the rays and the deathlessness of the Sun, the Brahman (‘Chāndogya Upaniṣad, III. 19.4; Taittirīya Āraṇyaka’, II. 2.2). Below it, all are in the power of death, who has given this residence on earth to sacrificial man so that he may ascend to its summit, and finally transcend it. All is order in the residence of God on earth, in the symmetry of the structure, and its plan. Square in shape, it is the Vāstupuruṣa, the place of all the gods. The Vāstupuruṣa, Existence, the Asura, the unruly, expansive, is kept in check, cosmic order covers it and makes it the time-table of its movement every day, every year, in all the cycles of the aeon. All the gods, those of the stars and the suns, face the Brahmasthāna, are turned towards the centre, they have their images placed on the body of the temple, adorning the folds of its robe, the buttresses of its walls and face the devotee. Viewed from above as much as from the Centre—which view no physical eye can take—they have their stations simultaneously, in rhythmic intervals on the body of the temple wrapt in its still mantle of carved stone. Viewed however from outside, and compelling circumambulation, they are the links of its closed body, unfolding its vestment in the many recesses, offsets and piers (Pl. XLIV), the pages in the book of all Time, a consolidated region where the South and the North have the same architectural profiles and only their images are as different as is their orientation.