Shiva and his consort Uma or Parvati, the supreme divine couple, sit united in an everlasting embrace; the image, recurrent in the art of medieval India, bears the canonic name of Umamaheshvara (literally �Uma and the Great Lord�, that is Shiva). Together, the god and the goddess constitute the Absolute, the Whole. He embodies the immutable, the eternal; she is the energy (shakti), the dynamic aspect, the time in which the world unfolds. They symbolise the opposites and their overcoming, the multiplicity of things and the return to the One. In this relief, coming from more westerly regions, the theological concept is possibly expressed with rigour. Here the god�s bearing is imperturbed, motionless, while all the initiative and tension is concentrated in Uma�s figure, and the expression of her face seems to convey her serene awareness of it. The characteristic animals of the two gods, the bull and the tiger, couch at their feet, the arrangement in niches evokes the pomp and gaudiness of a celestial palace as well as the order of a firm divine control over the universe.