Stella Kramrisch

"Although the enthroned figure with its large head and sex organ defies identification, it is like figures shown—the other unidentified—in a yoga posture. On either side of the enthroned yogi and above his arms, a tiger and an elephant are on his right, a rhinoceros and buffalo on his left, and two antelopes are below, that is, in front of his throne. The composition of this steatite relief is hieratic. The horn-crowned and enthroned yogi forms an isosceles triangle whose axis connects the middle of the bifurcating horns, the long nose, and the erect phallus of the deity."

"The "time" of Prajapati, or Prajapati’s Time, allowed itself to be laid out spatially in a work of architecture. The time of Shiva flowed into the movement of the limbs of Shiva, the lord of the dance. Works of sculpture and architecture demonstrate, each in its own form, the time of which they are the symbols. The building of the Vedic altar, by the accompanying words of the sacred rite of architecture, is self-explanatory. Symbolically, time—the time of the seasons—was built into the altar. The form of the altar comprised time, conceived, as it were, in terms of space."

"The temple is the concrete shape (mūrti) of the Essence; as such it is the residence and vesture of God. The masonry is the sheath (kośa) and body. The temple is the monument of manifestation."