Muruka would thus appear to be a deity in whom were amalgamated many legends and traditions, many aspects of religion and modes of worship, primitive and advanced, and to embody the Hindu ideal of God immanent in all things and manifesting himself wherever sought with love.

Muruka means tender age and beauty and is often represented as the type of perennial youth, sometimes as quite a child. There is in Vaithiswaran temple near Tanjore an exquisite figure of the child-god. He is also worshipped in the form of a six-faced god, the lengendary origin of which form I have already given. Verses 90-118 describe the part plaved by each face and each of his twelve arms and show that this form was a personification of various divine aspects and powers.

"One face spreadeth afar rays of light, perfectly lighting the world's dense darkness; one face graciously seeketh his beloved and granteth their prayers; one face watcheth over the sacrificial rites of the peaceful ones who fail not in the way of the Scriptures; one face searcheth and pleasantly expoundeth hidden meanings, illumining every quarter like the moon; one face, with wrath mind filling, equality ceasing, wipeth away his foes and celebrateth the battle sacrifice; one face dwelleth smiling with slender waisted Vedda maid, pure-hearted Valli." He is thus worshipped as the god of wisdom by those who seek spiritual enlightenment, as the god of sacrifice and ritual by ritualists, as the god of learning by scholars, as the giver of all boons, worldly and spiritual, to his devotees. In punishing the Titans, his divine heart (according to the commentator) seemed for the moment to deviate from the feeling of equality towards all his creatures. But the punishment was really an expression of his fatherly love for his children. In the same way the wedding of Valli by the god was to set to mankind a pattern of family life and duty.

III. Saivaism

The worship of śiva is said to be Dravidian in origin. Sir CHARLES ELIOT whose book Hinduism and Buddhism is a historical survey which, though published in 1921, retains its importance even today. The author traces the development of śaivaite religious thought in Volume I, from pages 211 to 215, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.

THE READER WILL perhaps have noticed that up to the career of śankara we have been concerned exclusively with northern India,