malleability makes the stone easy to
carve and facilitated the lush detail
characteristic of Hoysala temples. The
Hoysaleshvar Temple is known for the
quantity of lush detail, which surpass-
es other Hoysala temples. See also
Hoysala dynasty.
Hrshikesha
(“Lord of the Senses”) Epithet of the god
Vishnu, particularly in his avataror
incarnation as the god Krishna. See
Vishnuand Krishna.
Hsuan Tsang
(605–664) Chinese Buddhist scholar and
translator, whose account of his extend-
ed stay in India (629–645) provides one
of the few reliable sources for Indian life
in that period.
Hsuan Tsang’s purpose in coming
to India was to find reliable copies of
the Buddhist scriptures, which had
become severely garbled and corrupt-
ed during their transmission to China.
He was a highly learned man and dur-
ing his stay spent years studying in
Buddhist educational institutions,
particularly the Buddhist university at
Nalanda. He traveled all over northern
India and because of his piety and
learning was honored by the kings he
met, including the Emperor Harsha.
For further information see his Si-yu-
ki: Buddhist Records of the Western
World, Samuel Beal (trans.), 1969.
Huhu
In Hindu mythology, Huhu is a partic-
ular gandharva, or celestial musician.
He has the misfortune to displease a
Hindu sage, when his amorous water
play with some celestial damsels
breaks the sage’s meditation. The sage
curses Huhu to become a giant croco-
dile, and he remains in this state for
many years. The crocodile preys on the
creatures in the lake, and one day
seizes the leg of a giant elephant. This
elephant is really King Indradyumna,
who has also assumed this form as the
result of a curse. The elephant and the
crocodile struggle for one thousand
years, so evenly matched that neither
can best the other. Huhu is finally
released from his curse when the god
Vishnu himself comes down from
heaven and kills him. See also
Gajendramoksha.Human Sacrifice
The practice of human sacrifice was
uncommon in the history of Hindu
religious life, but not unknown. One of
the common mythic motifs in the wor-
ship of certain fierce and powerful
deitiesis for devotees (bhakta) to offer
their own heads to the Goddessas the
ultimate sacrifice and act of devotion,
but experts are uncertain how fre-
quently this rite was performed. One
mythic example of this is the demon-
king Ravana, who cuts off nine of his
ten heads before the god Shivagrants
him divine power. The resolve to com-
mit this action is also attributed to the
Bengali saint Ramakrishna, although
the goddess Kaliintervened before he
could carry it out.
The one place where human sacri-
fice was undoubtedly a regular prac-
tice was at the temple of the goddess
Kamakhyain Assam. This temple is
one of the Shakti Pithas, a network of
sites sacred to the Goddess that
spreads throughout the subcontinent.
Each Shakti Pitha marks the site where
a body part of the dismembered god-
dess Sati fell to earth, taking form
there as a different goddess. In this
case, the body part was Sati’s vulva,
and the presence of such a highly
charged part of the female body made
Kamakhya a very powerful goddess.
When the new temple was dedicat-
ed in 1565, she was reportedly offered
the heads of 140 men, and this prac-
tice continued until the British halted
it in 1832. The men offered as human
sacrifices were reportedly volunteers,
who believed that they had been
called by her to do this; in the time
between announcing their intentionHrshikesha