OM NAMAH SIVAYA

In the long tussle for supre¬macy among the main gods of the Hindu pantheon (certain¬ly not instigated by the divine personages but by their followers and worshippers), Vishnu and Siva have finally emerged as the two top con¬tenders to assume the role of the Refuge. Vishnu comes to us either as Himself with his conch and discus or in the form of Krishna and Rama. Siva remains aloof, keeping his distance as a destroyer but assuring us of a renewal of life through decay and death. Indeed, if one were too closely wedded to family traditions, Hinduism appears split bet-ween the Vaishnavite and Saivite cults. Somewhere, in the midst of it all appears the impressive figure of the Buddha and, slightly out of focus, the Jain thirthankaras. To an extent, this is the wide vista one readily obtains from scanning the spiritual pano¬rama of India from the essen¬tially Hindu point of view.