________________
211
guna; dark half (27th February).-This, in the estimation of the followers of Śiva, is the most sacred of all their observances, expiating all sins, and securing the attainment of all desires during life, and union with Śiva or final emancipation after death. The ceremony is said to have been enjoined by Siva himself, who declared to his wife Umá, that the fourteenth of Phalguna, if observed in honour of him, should be destructive of the consequences of all sin, and should confer final liberation. According to the Ísána Sanhitá, it was on this day that Śiva first manifested himself as a marvellous and interminable Linga, to confound the pretensions of both Brahma and Vishnu, who were disputing which was the greater divinity. To decide the quarrel, they agreed that he should be acknowledged the greater, who should first ascertain the limits of the extraordinary object which appeared of a sudden before them. Setting off in opposite directions, Vishnu undertook to reach the base, Brahmá the summit; but after some thousand years of the gods spent in the attempt, the end seemed to be as remote as ever, and both returned discomfited and humiliated, and confessed the vast superiority of Siva. The legend seems to typify the exaltation of the Saiva worship over that of Vishnu and Brahmá, an event which no doubt at one time took place.
OF THE HINDUS.
There is some difference of practice in respect to the day on which this festival is observed; according to some authorities, it is held on the fourteenth of the dark half of Mágha, according to others on the four
14*
