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thinks that the courtyard and terraces of Rāni Gumphā constituted an open air theatre in which during fairs the scenes mentioned were acted, like the so-called devil dances in Tibetan monasteries.
Finally, the gods inhabit the sacred men's house behind the village in the woods with which it is sometimes even identified. The forest is represented by a tree, the divine tree of life, the Banaspati in Hindu-javanese art which being the lord of the forest of initiation is identical with the demon of initiation. His head appears on the gable of the kutågara and what goes back to it as Rāhu- or Kirtimukha, Garuda, Kāla' or Naga – in Nepal and Burma also on columns in front of temples and monasteries. Jungle animals are found on the wayang kekayon as well as on the gables of buildings. Among these, aquatic creatures such as shellfish and makaras remind us of Varuņa, the god of death and the seas, for to initiation largely belongs enlightenment about the nature of death as a birth to something new.
* Cf. Bhagavadgitā 11,71f., esp. 25 where Arjuna compares Vişnu's mouths with their terrible tusks to the devouring fire of Time: danştrā-karālāni ca te mukhāni / drstvậiva kālânala -samnibhani and W.D. O'Flaherty's discussion of this passage in her Dreams, Illusion and other Realities. Chicago, 1984, p. 110