Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 592

SYMBOLISM OF THE TRIMURTI
552
who
subsequently became identified with
it.
Most
idola-
trous nations have, I am quite aware, made the elements
But this confirms
the actual objects of their worship.
rather than contradicts the opinion that the Hindus gave
t hemselves up to this absurd material idolatry, and that they
invented their Trimurti in order to perpetuate it by symbols.
For I persist in my belief that the three great divinities,
Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, were originally nothing else but
the three elements personified.
The Trimurti, as we have seen, signifies at the same time
the three bodies and the three powers. These three bodies,
symbolical of the thre? great agents of Nature, were at
first simply allegorical, just as are most of the religious
and political institutions of India. This decided taste for
allegory, which is characteristic of the founders of the
Hindu religion and polity, has proved the source of many
errors in the case of a people who are invariably guided
simply by the impression of their senses, and who, accus-
tomed to judge things only by their outward appearance,
have taken literally that which was represented to them
under symbols, and have thus come to adore the actual
image itself instead of the reality.
This system of explanatory symbolism has always been,
and is even now, so familiar to Hindu writers, that they
often describe their three great divinities by the allegorical
designations peculiar to each.
have seen, too, that
they recognize in men three sorts of dispositions or qualities
which they call satva, rajas, tamas. Satva is the gentle and
insinuating disposition rajas, the irascible, furious, passion-
ate
tamas, the dull, heavy, and lethargic.
They attribute one of these qualities to each of the
divinities which compose the Trimurti.
Thus Vishnu is
We
;
;
endowed with
satva,
Siva with rajas, and
Brahma with
tamas.
Again, these same qualities are also applied to the
three elements.
The earth, like Brahma, is heavy and in-
different by nature
the water, like Vishnu, is insinuating
and penetrating the fire, like Siva, is capable of destroying
;
;
everything by
its violence.
quality tamas is so inherent in the earth that Hindu
astronomers often confound the two. Thus in a lunar
eclipse, when the darkness of the earth intercepts the rays
The