and female known as Ardhanarishvara.
The central image, and by far the most
famous, is the three-headed, eighteen-
foot-tall image of Shiva as Maheshvar,
the “great Lord.” The face on the left
shows his horrific and destructive facet
as Bhairava, the face on the right his
benevolent, creative facet as Uma,
whereas the center face shows him as
Tatpurusha—blissful, eternal, and tran-
scending the ephemeral affairs of the
world. Although the primary image is
virtually untouched, many of the others
sustained damage from Portuguese
imperialists who considered the images
idolatrous and used them for target
practice. For further information see
Pramod Chandra, Elephanta Caves,
Gharapuri, 1970.
Ellora
Historical site in modern Maharashtra,
about twenty miles north of Aurangabad.
It is world famous for a group of thirty-
three rock-cut temples, which were
sculpted between the fourth and tenth
centuries C.E. Twelve of the caves have
Buddhist images, and these tend to be
the oldest; four of the caves are Jain, and
the remaining seventeen are Hindu. In
each case, the caves were created by
excavating into the volcanic stone out-
crop of the hillside, carefully cutting
away the stone to leave finished images.
Several of the Hindu caves have images
of exceptional artistic quality. The most
famous is the eighth century
Kailasanatha Temple for which the
entire hillside was cut away, leaving the
temple behind, looking as if it had been
built there from the ground up.Endogamy
In an anthropological sense, a marriage
pattern in which members of a particu-
lar social group marry only members of
the same group. In northern India, tradi-
tional marriages tend to be endogamous
with regard to the jati(hereditary occu-
pational group), and exogamous with
regard to the village community and the
gotra(mythic family lineage).Eroticism
Although Hindu religious life is often
associated with detachment andEroticismStone columns carved into the entrance of a cave in Ellora.