father-in-law Daksha’sinsulting remarks—
that Shiva was an ascetic with no money,
job, or family, and was unfit to join
respectable society—finally resulted in
the destruction of Daksha’s sacrificeas a
sign of Shiva’s supremacy.
Shiva has retained this ambivalent,
sometimes marginal quality in his
iconography, his mythology, and his
character. Perhaps his most basic and
important characteristic is that he is a
divinity whose nature allows him to
move beyond the opposing forces (or
dualities) within himself and the world
by being at all times the possibility of
both forces at once. Shiva can represent
both the wild and dangerous side of life
and the respectable and refined side. On
the one hand, he is the typical ascetic,
with matted hair, ash-smeared body,
and a home on Mount Kailasin the
remote Himalayas. On the other hand,
he is Hindu society’s ideal for the good
husband, who dotes upon his wife
Parvati. His body is adorned with
snakes and clothed with a bloody ele-
phant skin, but he also wears the
GangesRiver and the crescent moon,
which are associated with beauty, purity,
and auspiciousness. His mythic deeds
stress his overwhelming power, against
which no enemy can stand, and his sud-
den and sometimes impetuous temper,
seen best in the destruction of Kama,
the god of love; yet this sudden violence
contrasts with his grace and favor
toward his devotees (bhakta), by whom
he is given the name “quickly satisfied”
(Ashutosh) and to whom he will give
almost everything. Although he is por-
trayed as simple and without deceit (as
Bholanath, the “simple lord”), he is also
traditionally described as the expositor
of the tantras, the most secret and
hidden religious practice of all. This
transcendence of all opposites can be
seen in the images that commonly
represent him: in his form as Nataraja,
in which many of these contrary attrib-
utes are shown, or as Ardhanarishvara,
in which the image is half male and half
female. This transcendence of duality
is also visible in the linga, the
pillar-shaped object that is his symbolic
form, whose base and shaft are inter-
preted as symbolizing male and female
reproductive organs. Finally, one can
see this transcendence in the tantric
conception of the subtle body (the
system of psychic centers, or chakras,
that run throughout the human body),
in which religious practice aims for the
union of Shiva and Shakti. As Wendy
Doniger O’Flaherty points out, through
his actions Shiva embodies all the
contradictory possibilities for human
experience, and in mythic form provides
a resolution that one ordinary human
life can never provide.
In medieval times Shiva’s devotees
developed a doctrine of avatars(incar-
nations of Shiva who take the form of a
variety of saints, sages, and minor
deities who appear on earth to restore
balance and perform other necessary
acts), probably in response to the older
and better developed notion of avatars
of Vishnu. Unlike Vishnu’s avatars,
Shiva’s do not seem to have been a way
to create a place for smaller existing
deities in the larger pantheon. Of Shiva’s
twenty-one avatars, the most important
one is Hanuman, who is the only one
with a well-established independent
cult. The others were sages (such as
Durvasas) and important beings, but
the worship of Shiva’s avatars has never
upstaged the worship of Shiva himself,
as has often happened with Vishnu. For
further information on the mythology of
Shiva, see Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty
Shiva, 1981; and Stella Kramrisch, The
Presence of Shiva, 1981. See also Shaiva.Shivaga-Sindamani
By far the latest of the three Tamil epics,
written perhaps in the late sixth century.
The story describes the adventures
of Shivaga, a man who excels at every
possible manly art, who with each
new challenge wins a new wife for
his harem but in the end renounces
everything to become a Jain monk.
Although the story clearly has a Jain
bias, the Shivaga-Sindamani paints aShivaga-Sindamani