Śiva and Vishṇu are not in their nature different from other Indian ideas, high or low. They are the offspring of philosophic and poetic minds playing with a luxuriant popular mythology. But even in the epics they have already become fixed points in a flux of changing fancies and serve as receptacles in which the most diverse notions are collected and stored. Nearly all philosophy and superstition finds its place in Hinduism by being connected with one or both of them. The two worships are not characteristic of different periods: they coexist when they first become known to us as they do at the present day and in essential doctrines they are much alike. We have no name for this curious double theism in which each party describes its own deity as the supreme god or All-god, yet without denying the god of the other. Something similar might be produced in Christianity if different Churches were avowedly to worship different persons of the Trinity. Śiva and Vishṇu are sometimes contrasted and occasionally their worshippers quarrel.[396] But the general inclination is rather to make the two figures approximate by bestowing the same attributes on both. A deity must be able to satisfy emotional devotion: hence the Tamil Śivaite says of Śiva the destroyer, "one should worship in supreme love him who does kindness to the soul." But then the feature in the world which most impresses the Hindu is the constant change and destruction, and this must find a place in the All-god. Hence the sportive kindly Kṛishṇa comes to be declared the destroyer of the worlds.[397] It is as if in some vast Dravidian temple one wandered through two corridors differently ornamented and assigned to the priests of different rites but both leading to the same image. Hence it is not surprising to find that there is actually a deity--if indeed the term is suitable, but European vocabularies hardly provide one which meets the case--called Harihara (or Śankara-Nârâyaṇa), that is Śiva and Vishṇu combined. The Harivaṃsa contains a hymn addressed to him: fairly ancient sculptures attest the prevalence of his worship in the Deccan, especially at Badâmi, he was once the chief deity of Camboja and he is still popular in south India. Here besides being worshipped under his own name he has undergone a singular transformation and has probably been amalgamated with some aboriginal deity. Under the designation of Ayenâr (said to be a corruption of Harihara) he is extensively worshipped as a village god and reputed to be the son of Śiva and Vishṇu, the latter having kindly assumed the form of a woman to effect his birth.