leveled by devotion. In short poems
known as bharudshe speaks in a variety
of voices, including those of untouch-
ables, Muslims, and women. Traditional
accounts of his life describe him as
treating untouchabledevotees (bhakta)
as his equals, and even eating
and drinking with them. Such flagrant
transgression of social boundaries
brought trouble from more orthodox
brahmins—who are portrayed as the vil-
lains in these traditional accounts—but
on each occasion Eknath managed to
escape being outcasted by them, often
through divine intervention. For further
information see G. A. Deleury, The Cult
of Vithoba, 1960; Justin E. Abbott, The
Life of Eknath, 1981; and Eleanor Zelliot,
“Chokamela and Eknath: Two Bhakti
Modes of Legitimacy for Modern
Change,” in Journal of Asian and African
Studies, 1980, Vol. 15, Nos. 1–2, 1980. See
also Sanskrit.
Ekoddishta
“Intended for one [person].” A particular
type of shraddhaor memorial service
for the dead, which is performed for the
benefit of a single person. An ekoddishta
shraddha can be performed as a series
of sixteen offeringsperformed during
the first yearafter the person’s death.
These sixteen offerings are more com-
monly collapsed into a single rite per-
formed on the eleventh dayafter death,
the day after the ten-day period of ritual
impurity (maranashaucha) has come to
an end.
Elements
Traditional Indian cosmologyholds that
there are five basic elements, four of
which are similar to those found in
medieval European conceptions: earth,
fire, water, and wind(as moving air that
is perceptible to human beings). The
fifth element, akasha, has no readily
understandable correlate to European
ideas. It is generally translated as
“space” and is considered to pervade
the environment around us, filling the
empty spaces. An unusual feature in
Indian cosmology is that each of these
elements is associated with a particular
sense: earth with smell, fire with sight,
water with taste, wind with touch, and
akasha with hearing.
Elements, Subtle
The subtle elements (tanmatras)
are one of the stages in the evolution
of the world and the human being in
the Samkhya philosophical school.
The subtle elements are the basis for
the formation of the five gross elements:
earth, air, fire, wind, and akasha.
See tanmatras.
Elephant
In ancient India, one of the emblems
of royalty, in part because an elephant’s
prodigious appetite would soon
bankrupt any individual pretending to
have the wealth of royalty. Elephants
also appear in the Hindu pantheon:
The divine elephant Airavata is the
animalvehicle of Indra, and the god
Ganeshhas an elephant’s head on a
human body, a souvenir of his conflict
with Shiva.
Elephanta
Island in the harbor outside the city of
Bombay, most famous for its temple to
Shivaby the same name. The date of the
temple’s construction is disputed, but is
generally ascribed to the seventh or
eighth century C.E. Elephanta is a rock-
cut cave temple, in which the sandstone
hillside was carved away to form the
temple itself, and the images of the
deities. This follows the general pattern
of the rock-cut temples at Ellora in
Maharashtraand required careful plan-
ning, since carving errors could not be
corrected. The Elephanta shrine dis-
plays images of Shiva in his various
forms: as Lord of the Dance(Nataraja),
as the Lord of Asceticism(Yogishvara),
as Bearer of the Ganges(Ganghadhara),
as the pillar-shaped form known as the
linga, and as the combination of male
Ekoddishta