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I'm here in the temple at four in the afternoon-couldn't be here before, because the gods were asleep, and what I'm hearing now is the music played every day to waken them up.
我是在4點左右抵達這座神廟，現在的時段謝絕訪客，音樂響起，喚醒眾神。
They are woken up now, and so I'm allowed to go and engage with them. It's rather obvious I suppose, but to interact with a god in this intimate way, we need to be able to recognise them-but how are they to be identified?
眾神已經醒來，因此我現在可以允許進行接觸。我想,很明顯，但是與神進行這樣親密的接觸,我們需要進行辨認,但如何能夠辨認呢?
Well, I've already found the great gods Shiva and Vishnu, because I'm familiar with them from the British Museum. Here's Shiva, with his wife Parvati and his trident, and here is Vishnu, sitting with his four arms, holding discus and lotus flower.And on a pillar nearby is a god who was particularly important for the Gupta kings-Shiva's son Kumara. All these Hindu gods began to assume the shapes we recognise today in the brand-new temples built by the Gupta kings.
濕婆與毗濕奴很容易辨認，前者我在大英博物館已經再熟悉不過，與自己的妻子雪山神女在一起，后者則端坐著，四條手臂拿著鐵餅與蓮花。附近通常還有一個對笈多王朝十分重要的神，即濕婆的兒子鳩摩羅，現在又叫卡爾凱蒂耶。在北印度笈多國王修建的新神廟里，所有的印度神都開始以我們如今熟悉的形象呈現。
The Gupta Dynasty began a little after the year 300, and it rapidly expanded from its base in northern India, until it covered a good deal of the subcontinent. So that by 450, the Gupta Empire-along with Iran and the Eastern Roman Empire, Byzantium-was one of the world's three superpowers.
笈多王朝始于公元300年后不久，以北印度為中心迅速開始擴張，占領了印度次大陸的大部分領土。公元450年，王朝成為該地區的超級勢力，與伊朗及東羅馬帝國（拜占庭）比肩。
Not long after Constantine in Rome had established Christianity, the Gupta kings in North India set many of the enduring forms of Hinduism-creating the complex apparatus of faith, with temples and priests, and commissioning the images of the gods that we know now.
不久以后羅馬的君士坦丁大帝承認基督教合法，其后不久，北印度的笈多王朝便制定出印度教許多流傳至今的形式—復雜的宗教結構、廟宇、僧侶，以及我們今天能看到的眾神形象。
Why does this happen at this point in history? As with Christianity and Buddhism, which around the same time portray both Christ and Buddha in human form, it seems to be to do with empire, wealth and the power of art.
為什么硬幣上的形象是馬而不是國王？這源自印度教誕生之前就已存在的一種古老的祭祀儀式，之前的印度國王一直奉行，笈多的國王也將其繼承了下來。這似乎與帝國,財富和藝術有關。
