Lieut.-Colonel Tod on Sculptures in the Temples of EUora. 831 



he would restore Dacsha to life. The father of the gods cut off the head of 

 a goat, which he placed on the headless body of Dacsha, who instantly 

 started up and began to bleat like a goat, at which Mahadeva was deliglited 

 and laughed immoderately ; commanding, to commemorate the event, that 

 his votaries should bleat like a goat.* 



In this legend we have all the characters necessary to explain these 

 two fragments of antique sculpture ; Mahadeva, the tauriform Nanda, 

 and the goat-headed Dacsha. The bird which Mahadeva feeds out of 

 his cup,t formed of a human skull, is probably the Sarus,t sacred to him, 

 and emblematic of conjugal affection, — consequently alluding to the recent 

 sacrifice of Sati. 



In the compartment representing Vira-Bhadra, where a naked female 

 figure is in the distance, we probably have allusion to the regeneration 

 of the faithful Sati (a story precisely the counterpart of that of Atys and 

 Cybele), who again appeared, and was wedded to Siva, as the fascinating 

 mountain-nymph Mera, daughter of Hemachil. 



This curious fable of the origin of the Hindu Pan, or Dacsha Praja- 

 pdti, has considerable affinity to the Priapus of the Greeks and Romans, 

 even in name, and still more to what Herodotus relates of the Theban 

 Jupiter, to whom throughout the Mendesian territory goats were sacred, 

 and sheep sacrificed ; and it will strike the Orientalist as a singular coinci- 

 dence, that the word (niendes') from which this Egyptian Jupiter was 

 designated (from rams being offered to him) should be Sanscrit, in which 

 language mendd is ram. Herodotus thus explains its origin :§ " Jupiter 

 cut off the head of a ram, and covering himself with the skin, shewed him- 



* This is accordingly done, the cheeks are inflated, and beaten by the hands (gal bajaond) to 

 resemble the bleating of a goat. 



f Termed in the dialects cupra, and with which, as the God of war (Hun), he drinks the 

 blood of the slain, in which he is exactly the Scandinavian Thor. 



X The Phenicopteros. These birds are always in pairs, and afford continual metaphors to 

 the Hindu poet when describing domestic affection. 



§ Herodotus says, Mendes is alike the name of Pan and a Goat. Mendd is a ram in Sanscrit, 

 and the ram-headed divinity in the caves of Ellora is termed Mend-Iswara, or Ram-God. The 

 statue of Priapus was degraded into the scare-crow Terminus, as a land-mark, or territorial 

 boundary, by the Romans. In Rajputana we have the ass depicted on boundary-stones ; and 

 the gadha-glial to whosoever removes the land-mark, has a penal allusion, probably equally 

 obscene with that of the god Terminus, of the Romans. 



'2 U 2 



