The most horrible and grotesque images are carved in the stone of the grottos, stand in rude, block-like statues in the temple, or are coarsely painted on the walls.
Figures of men with heads of elephants or of other animals, or with six or seven human heads,--sometimes growing in a pyramid, one out of the other, sometimes with six hands coming from one shoulder,--grisly and uncouth monsters, like nothing in nature, yet too grotesque for symbols,--such are the objects of the Hindoo worship.
Sec.3.Helps from Comparative Philology.

The Aryans in Central Asia.
We have seen how hopeless the task has appeared of getting any definite light on Hindoo chronology or history.

To the ancient Egyptians events were so important that the most trivial incidents of daily life were written on stone and the imperishable records of the land, covering the tombs and obelisks, have patiently waited during long centuries, till their decipherer should come to read them.

To the Hindoos, on the other hand, all events were equally unimportant.

The most unhistoric people on earth, they cared more for the minutiae of grammar, or the subtilties of metaphysics, than for the whole of their past.