MAHADÉO, OR MAHĀ-DEVA.
Shivŭ appeared on earth in the form of a naked mendicant, with one head, two arms, and three eyes, and was acknowledged as Mahadēo, the great god: when he was about to be married to Pārvatī, the daughter of the Himalaya, her friends treated the god in a scurrilous manner, and cried out, “Ah! ah! ah! this image of gold, this most beautiful damsel, the greatest beauty in the three worlds, to be given in marriage to such a fellow,—an old fellow, with three eyes, without teeth, clothed in a tiger’s skin, covered with ashes, encircled with snakes; wearing a necklace of human bones; with a human skull in his hand; with a filthy jŭta—that is, hair matted about his head in form of a tiara; who chews intoxicating drugs, has inflamed eyes, rides naked on a bull, and wanders about like a madman. Ah! they have thrown this beautiful daughter into the river!” The asoca is a shrub consecrated to Mahadēo, and is planted near his temples. The biloa, otherwise called Malura, is also sacred to him; he alone wears a chaplet of its flowers, and they are offered in sacrifice to no other deity; and if a pious Hindū should see any of its flowers fallen on the ground, he would remove them reverently to a temple of Mahadēo. The Hindū poets call it Srīphul, the flower of Srī.
I have a beautiful image in white marble, highly gilt and ornamented, representing Mahadēo as a white man, young and handsome, sitting on a platform, with Pārvatī on his left knee. His hair is braided into the shape of a conical turban around his head, about which a serpent is twisted; and from the top of his head flows Gunga, in a heavy stream, to the ground. His moustache is brilliantly jet black, and his forehead adorned with the triple eye in the centre of a crescent. Below Mahadēo in the centre of the platform, is a small image of his son Ganesh, on whose right is the Nandi, the white bull couchant, and on his left, below Pārvatī, is a yellow tiger. Mahadēo is represented with four hands, one bearing the tri-forked flame, another a warlike weapon, a third a short rosary of beads, the fourth, the hand-drum, the form of which is like an hour-glass. His hands and feet are dyed with hinnā; his dress is yellow; a large snake is around his neck, and his body profusely adorned with jewels.