Page:Picturesque Nepal.djvu/80

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38
THE PEOPLE

many-armed and many-headed apparition, symbolizing all that is restless and terrible in a faith which rules by fear.

All this may be read in the religious art of the Newars—and their buildings palpitate with emblems of the two creeds—the Restful and the Restless. But interwoven with these is a third form of worship—a mysterious and obscure belief, signs of which are discernible throughout the art of the land, but the actual ritual is fortunately veiled from the eyes of all but the initiated. Peering from under the broad eaves of the temples in the form of wood-carving, leering in lurid colours from the red walls of the shrines, fitted in skilfully so as not to really obtrude, but cunningly represented in many of the architectural efforts of the Newars, the Tantric element of Nepal Buddhism holds its unhallowed sway. Who and what are the devotees to the Tantric system, which has been described as a "diseased excrescence borrowed from the Hindus and based upon the worst part of Sivaism," is never divulged, but that it has a firm hold on a large community is proved by the frequency with