Shiva

Ash-smeared and serene on a Himalayan peak; dancing in a ring of fire; seated silent under a banyan tree; present as a smooth dark stone washed with milk in a village shrine. Few divine figures hold so many opposites. His name, Śiva, means simply “auspicious,” “kind,” “benign.” For his devotees he is not one god among many but the Lord himself — Paramaśiva, the highest — and, in the Tamil country and among Malaysian Tamils, the God whom children first learn to call சிவன், Civaṉ.

This page tells his story from the Vedas to the temple. On how one divine reality and its many forms fit together, see One and Many; on Shiva alongside Brahmā and Vishnu, The Trimurti.

From Rudra to Śiva

Shaiva view For Shaiva tradition, Shiva is eternal, the source of the Vedas and the Āgamas alike; the Vedic Rudra and the Lord of the temples are one and the same, revealed more and more fully.

Historians trace a development. In the Ṛgveda, Rudra, “the roarer” or “the red one,” has only a handful of hymns. He is a fierce archer of the wild places, feared for his arrows of disease — and, in the same breath, praised as the greatest of healers, holding a thousand remedies. Worshippers beg him to spare their children and cattle, and call him śiva, “kind,” almost as a plea. One Ṛgvedic verse to him, as Tryambaka, the “three-eyed” or “three-mothered,” is still recited daily as the great prayer against death:

The Yajurveda’s great litany, the Śrī Rudram, praises Rudra in hundreds of forms — lord of thieves and of kings, of forests and of fields — and there, perhaps for the first time, appears the phrase namaḥ śivāya. It is quoted on The Four Vedas.

The next step is the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad, probably composed in the last centuries BCE, which historians regard as the first theology of Shiva. Here Rudra-Hara is no longer a dangerous outsider but the one Lord, creator and inner controller of all, the Brahman of the Upaniṣads seen as a personal God:

The same Upaniṣad speaks of devotion (bhakti) to God and guru, quoted on Bhakti Yoga. From there the line runs through the epics, the early ascetic Pāśupata order, the Śaiva Āgamas and Purāṇas such as the Liṅga and Śiva Purāṇas, to the Tamil saints and the great temple traditions of the first millennium CE. Historians also note that the Purāṇic Shiva gathered in many local and tribal gods and goddesses along the way — one reason he is at home in mountain, forest and cremation ground as much as in the palace temple.

Names and epithets

The Śiva Purāṇa and Mahābhārata each give a Śiva Sahasranāma, a thousand names. A few of the most beloved:

• Mahādeva — the great god. Maheśvara, Īśvara — the great Lord.
• Shankara — maker of peace and joy. Śambhu — source of happiness.
• Paśupati — lord of creatures (in Shaiva Siddhanta, lord of bound souls, paśu).
• Nīlakaṇṭha — the blue-throated. Gaṅgādhara — bearer of the Gaṅgā. Candraśekhara — crowned with the moon.
• Hara — the one who takes away (sin, and finally the world). Bhava — being, existence.

The many faces

Shiva is worshipped in forms that seem at first to contradict each other. To devotees they are one Lord, playing different roles for the world’s sake (his līlā). Tap each:

The liṅga

In most Shiva temples the inner sanctum holds not a human-shaped image but a liṅga: a smooth, rounded pillar rising from a base. The Sanskrit word means “mark” or “sign” — the sign by which something is known. For worshippers the liṅga is the sign of the formless: Shiva present but not confined to any shape, a meeting point of nirguṇa and saguṇa. The base (pīṭha) is understood as Śakti, so the whole is Shiva and Śakti together, the source from which all form arises.

Honesty needs two further points. Some early liṅgas, such as the one at Gudimallam in Andhra Pradesh (around the turn of the Common Era), are clearly naturalistic, and historians connect the liṅga with very old symbols of fertility and generative power. But reducing it to that — as many 19th-century colonial and missionary writers did, often with contempt — tells us nothing about what the liṅga means to the people who worship it, who see in it a column of light without beginning or end.

That vision has its own sacred story. In the Liṅga and Śiva Purāṇas, and other Śaiva Purāṇas, Brahmā and Vishnu are quarrelling over which of them is supreme when an endless pillar of fire blazes up between them. Brahmā becomes a swan, his own mount, and flies upward to find its top; Vishnu becomes a boar and digs down to find its root. Neither succeeds. Vishnu admits it; in many tellings Brahmā falsely claims success, bringing a falling ketakī flower as his witness, and is rebuked. Shiva then appears from the pillar and declares that Brahmā will not be worshipped — one of the Purāṇas’ answers to why the creator has so few temples. This is Liṅgodbhava, “the emergence from the liṅga,” carved on the west wall of the sanctum in Tamil temples, in Malaysia as in India, and remembered at Tiruvannamalai, where the hill itself is the column of fire and a great flame is lit each Kārttikai. Vaiṣṇava tellings, naturally, differ.

Reading his symbols

Each part of Shiva’s image carries meaning — some told in sacred stories, some in devotional interpretation. Tap each:

• 1त्रिनेत्रThird eyeThe eye of fire and higher vision, which burned Kāma to ash; sun, moon and fire as his three eyes.
• 2चन्द्रCrescent moonWorn in his hair: the moon, cursed to wane, found refuge with him. Time and its rhythm, held lightly.
• 3गङ्गाGaṅgāWhen the heavenly river descended at Bhagīratha’s prayer, Shiva caught her in his locks so her fall would not shatter the earth (Rāmāyaṇa, Bāla-kāṇḍa).
• 4नागSerpentsCoiled at his neck and arms: the powers of nature and of death, tamed and worn as ornaments.
• 5त्रिशूलTridentOften read as mastery over the three guṇas, or over creation, preservation and dissolution.
• 6डमरुDrumThe small hourglass drum: the first sound, the rhythm of creation. Grammarians said the fourteen Śiva Sūtras of Sanskrit came from its beats.
• 7नन्दीNandiThe bull, his mount and doorkeeper, who sits facing the sanctum — the model devotee, waiting with his whole attention.
• 8नीलकण्ठBlue throatWhen the gods and demons churned the ocean, a deadly poison rose first. Shiva drank it to save the worlds; it stayed in his throat, staining it blue.
• 9भस्मSacred ashVibhūti, smeared in three lines on the forehead by Shaivas: what remains when all is burned — the one thing that does not change.

The churning of the ocean is told in the Mahābhārata and in Purāṇas such as the Bhāgavata (book 8). In many tellings Pārvatī holds his throat so the poison goes no further. Meanings for the trident and serpents vary between teachers.

The five syllables

The heart of Shaiva prayer is the pañcākṣara, the “five-syllable” mantra na-maḥ śi-vā-ya, “salutation to Shiva.” With Om before it, it becomes the six-syllable form used in japa by millions. Tradition reads the five syllables as the five elements, or as the five acts of the Lord; Shaiva Siddhanta sees in them the whole of its theology — God, grace, the soul, and the bonds that grace removes.

In Tamil the mantra is நமச்சிவாய, namaccivāya, and the Tiruvācakam of Māṇikkavācakar opens with it: நமச்சிவாய வாஅழ்க, “Long live namaccivāya!” Siddhānta teachers also speak of a reordered “subtle” form, சிவாயநம, civāyanama, which places Shiva first. The best-loved Tamil hymn on the mantra belongs to Appar. Hagiography In the Periya Purāṇam’s telling, the Jain-favouring Pallava king had him tied to a stone and thrown into the sea; Appar sang of the five syllables, and the stone floated him ashore. The same hagiography also celebrates violence against Jains — the Madurai impalement after Sambandar’s victory — legend to historians, but telling of how rivalry was remembered. Each verse of his hymn ends:

Sacred places

Shiva is worshipped in thousands of temples, but some groups of shrines are famous across India.

The twelve jyotirliṅgas, “liṅgas of light,” where Shiva is believed to have appeared as a column of light. A popular Sanskrit hymn lists them: Somnath and Nageshvara in Gujarat; Mallikārjuna at Srisailam (Andhra Pradesh); Mahākāleśvara at Ujjain and Omkāreśvara (Madhya Pradesh); Kedarnath in the Himalaya; Bhīmaśaṅkara, Tryambakeśvara and Ghṛṣṇeśvara (Maharashtra); Kāśī Viśvanātha at Varanasi; Vaidyanātha (claimed by Deoghar in Jharkhand and by Parli in Maharashtra); and Rāmeśvaram in Tamil Nadu. For several, more than one town claims the honour.

The five element liṅgas (pañcabhūta-sthalas) of South India, each linked to one element:

• Earth — Ekāmbareśvara, Kanchipuram.
• Water — Jambukeśvara, Tiruvanaikaval, near Tiruchirappalli, where water seeps around the liṅga.
• Fire — Aruṇācaleśvara, Tiruvannamalai.
• Air — Kāḷahastīśvara, Srikalahasti (Andhra Pradesh), where a lamp flame is said to flicker though no breeze reaches it.
• Space — Naṭarāja, Chidambaram.

Chidambaram is, for Tamil Shaivas, simply kōyil, “the temple.” Its sanctum holds Naṭarāja and, beside him, an empty space hung with a garland of golden leaves: the “secret of Chidambaram,” the Lord present as pure space, without any form at all.

Mahā Śivarātri

The “great night of Shiva” falls on the fourteenth night of the dark fortnight in the month of Māgha or Phālguna (February–March). Devotees fast, keep vigil through the night, and bathe the liṅga with water, milk, curd, honey and bilva leaves in four watches (kāla), chanting namaḥ śivāya. Stories told for the night vary: it is the night of the Liṅgodbhava, or of Shiva’s marriage, or of the hunter who stayed awake in a bilva tree, dropping leaves on a liṅga below without knowing it, and was saved. Community practice In Malaysia, Shiva temples hold all-night pūjās with Tēvāram singing, and many families keep the fast at home. Customs vary from temple to temple.

Tamil Shaiva devotion

Devotion to Shiva took one of its most passionate forms in the Tamil country. The sixty-three Nāyaṉmārs, from the 6th to the 9th centuries, walked from shrine to shrine singing to the Shiva of each place; their hymns, the Tēvāram and Tiruvācakam, are gathered in the Tirumurai (see Tamil Sacred Literature). Among them were kings and potters, a hunter who offered Shiva his own eyes, and Kāraikkāl Ammaiyār, the earliest poet of all, who sang of the Lord dancing in the cremation ground and whom Shiva called “Mother.” The philosophy that grew from this devotion and the Āgamas is told on Shaiva Siddhanta; Kashmir’s very different non-dual Shaivism on Kashmir Shaivism. The 64 “sacred games” Shiva played at Madurai appear on Maya & Lila.

Community practice Most Malaysian Hindus are of Tamil descent, and much of their worship is Shaiva in flavour even where the temple’s main deity is Murugan, Mariamman or Ganesha: Shiva and Pārvatī have shrines in most temples, the ōtuvār or a devotee sings Tēvāram at the evening pūjā, and Pradōṣam — the twilight hour on the thirteenth day of each lunar fortnight, when Nandi is bathed and worshipped — draws regular crowds. Families differ, and all are authentic.

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Questions people often ask

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Sources & further reading

• Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton (trans.), The Rigveda: The Earliest Religious Poetry of India (Oxford University Press, 2014) — the Rudra hymns and 7.59.12.
• Patrick Olivelle (trans.), Upaniṣads (Oxford World’s Classics, 1996) — the Śvetāśvatara.
• Stella Kramrisch, The Presence of Śiva (Princeton University Press, 1981).
• Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, Asceticism and Eroticism in the Mythology of Śiva (Oxford University Press, 1973).
• David Smith, The Dance of Śiva: Religion, Art and Poetry in South India (Cambridge University Press, 1996).
• Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, The Dance of Shiva (1918; many reprints).
• Indira Viswanathan Peterson, Poems to Śiva: The Hymns of the Tamil Saints (Princeton University Press, 1989).
• Gavin Flood, An Introduction to Hinduism (Cambridge University Press, 1996), chapter on Śaiva traditions.
• Tamil texts: Project Madurai editions of the Tēvāram and Tiruvācakam.