Dance of Creation and Dissolution. And in like manner the calm serenity of those majestic peaks of the Himālayas in the still moonlit nights, when every sound is hushed and all nature lies asleep, gave to the northern artist his inspiration for the image of the Lord upon His exalted Lotus-throne, the Great Spirit "brooding over the face of the waters" who is the Cause everlasting of the cosmic rhythm.
The Tanjore Nātārāja is distinguished by being the largest of South Indian images yet discovered, the figure being nearly four feet high, excluding the pedestal and the halo of fire.
Siva's dance is also represented on a larger scale and with tremendous vigour in the mutilated sculptures of Elephanta and Ellora. The benign aspect of Siva's cosmic energy is that which is generally worshipped in Southern India, and for that reason Saiva temples there generally face the rising sun. But Siva's place in the Trimūrti, the Three Aspects of the One, represented at Elephanta, is determined by his tāmasic or destructive aspect in which the sculptor, instead of giving him the gracious gesture, dispelling fear, shows him with a boar's tusks and a terrific mien holding a sword and a cup made from a human skull, with other symbols of the dread powers of involution manifested in nature. This is the view which appeals most to the Saiva ascetic, who keeps strictly to the jnāna-marga; it is analogous to the pessimistic attitude of the early Buddhist who followed the path leading to Nirvāna.
A superb fragment among the sculptures of Elephanta shows Siva in his tāmasic aspect as Bhairava, the Terrible (Pl. LXVI, a). From a similar sculpture in the temple of the Ten Incarnations at Ellora, where the subject is treated with great dramatic
