Ghazni; whilst another, representing Siva as _Visvesvara_, or "Lord of the Universe," is the chief object of adoration at Benares, the great centre of Siva-worship. The Saivas of southern India, on the other hand, single out as peculiarly sacred five of their temples which are supposed to enshrine as many characteristic aspects (linga) of the god in the form of the five elements, the most holy of these being the shrine of Chidambaram (i.e. "thought-ether") in S. Arcot, supposed to contain the ether-linga. According to Pandit S. M. Natesa (_Hindu Feasts, Fasts and Ceremonies_), "the several forms of the god Siva in these sacred shrines are considered to be the bodies or casements of the soul whose natural bases are the five elements--earth, water, fire, air and ether. The apprehension of God in the last of these five as ether is, according to the Saiva school of philosophy, the highest form of worship, for it is not the worship of God in a tangible form, but the worship of what, to ordinary minds, is vacuum, which nevertheless leads to the attainment of a knowledge of the all-pervading without physical accessories in the shape of any linga, which is, after all, an emblem. That this is the case at Chidambaram is known to every Hindu, for if he ever asks the priests to show him the God in the temple he is pointed to an empty space in the holy of holies, which has been termed the Akasa, or ether-linga." But, however congenial this refined symbolism may be to the worshipper of a speculative turn of mind, it is difficult to see how it could ever satisfy the religious wants of the common man little given to abstract conceptions of this kind. Mendicant orders. From early times, detachment from the world and the practice of austerities have been regarded in India as peculiarly conducive to a spirit of godliness, and ultimately to a state of ecstatic communion with the deity. On these grounds it was actually laid down as a rule for a man solicitous for his spiritual welfare to pass the last two of the four stages (_asrama_) of his life in such conditions of renunciation and self-restraint. Though there is hardly a sect which has not contributed its share to the element of religious mendicancy and asceticism so prevalent in India, it is in connexion with the Siva-cult that these tendencies have been most extensively cultivated. Indeed, the personality of the stern God himself exhibits this feature in a very marked degree, whence the term _mahayogi_ or "great ascetic" is often applied to him.