The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c9.68

v1.c9.68

Again, after commenting on what he describes as the "ancient, fantastic, polytheistic belief of Brāhmanism, which by its spiritless formula, its mechanical hypocrisy, and depressing creed of an everlasting migration of souls, had corrupted to the utmost the national mind of the Hindu people," Professor Lübke observes: "The feeling of the people however, did not create these sacred images from distinct conceptions, nor from pure human notions, but from dreamy fantastic ideas, and from mystical speculations. Art is here not merely the handmaid of religion, but the handmaid of a worship which finds approach to the idea of God in symbols of a monstrous kind. Wherever, therefore, the forms of the gods, or the history of their wonderful destiny, were to be portrayed, wherever deep and mysterious awe of the unapproachable was to be manifested, the accessories were only outwardly symbolic, and the vague attempt at effect is produced by heaps of wings, hands, arms and legs, or quaint combinations of animal and human bodies".²³