Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 589

EARTH, WATER, AND FIRE
549
meaning for a Brahmin
and for a European.
The rage for deifying everything has spread even to the
mountains and to the forests. The savage tribes who
inhabit these places do not worship any of the gods of the
country they have one special deity of their own it is
a big root, a sort of potato, which grows abundantly in
the forests, and forms their principal staple of food. Know-
ing nothing more useful than this vegetable, they make it
of one's belly bears quite a different
:
;
the object of their worship. In its presence they celebrate
their marriages, and in its name they take their oaths.
Probably the Trimurti owed its origin to this mode of
viewing objects. Earth, water, and fire were the types
The earth is the
of the three divinities which compose it.
common mother of all things, animate and inanimate.
Either they spring from her bosom, or they live upon her
productions.
It is through her that everything subsists
in nature.
She has, therefore, been regarded as the divine
creator, and holds the first rank in the opinion of the
Hindus, who have made her their Brahma.
But what could the earth do without the help of water ?
Without the dews and the rains which develop the seeds
of her fertility she would remain barren, and would soon
It is water
find herself bereft of every living creature.
which gives life, preserves, and causes to grow everything
that has life or vegetates. It was, therefore, regarded as
the divine preserver, that is to say, Vishnu.
Fire, in penetrating the other two elements, communi-
cates to them a portion of its energy, develops their pro-
perties, and brings everything in nature to that state of
growth, maturity, and perfection which would never be
But, should it cease to act upon
arrived at without it.
created things, every one of them perishes. When it is
in its free and visible state, this active agent of reproduc-
tion destroys by its irresistible power the bodies to whose
composition it had before contributed and it is to this
formidable power that it owed its title of god-destroyer,
that is to say, Siva.
By uniting the three elements in a single body with three
heads the founders of the Hindu theogony wished it to be
understood that the harmony of these three primal elements
;