Siva
சிவன் शिव
Also Mahadeva, Sankara, Nataraja, Rudra, Pashupati, Neelakantha, Dakshinamurthy.
SaivaSmarta
Who this is
Siva is the god who is approached as an absence rather than a presence: the linga in the sanctum is a mark and not a likeness, and the Tamil Saiva tradition reads that as the whole teaching. He is the ascetic on Kailasa smeared with ash and the householder with Parvati and two sons at once, and the tradition does not treat that as a contradiction. He is Neelakantha, the blue throated, because he drank the poison churned from the ocean and held it in his throat rather than swallow or spit it. Of the five great elements he has a temple for each in the Tamil country, and of the twelve jyotirlingas he has one in almost every region of India.
How to recognise them
Most often the linga, aniconic, set in the yoni base with the water vessel dripping above it. In form he is ash smeared, with matted hair holding the Ganga and a crescent moon, a third eye, a snake at the neck, a tiger skin, the trident and the damaru drum. Nandi the bull faces him in every Siva temple, and the devotee looks at the linga between his horns.
Family and companions
Husband of Parvati, who is Sati reborn; father of Ganesha and Murugan, and in the southern telling of Ayyappa by Vishnu as Mohini. Nandi is his vehicle and his gatekeeper. His ganas are the rough attendants Ganesha leads, and Bhairava and Virabhadra are forms of his anger rather than separate gods.
How they are worshipped
Monday; Pradosham on the thirteenth of each fortnight; Masa Sivarathri each month.
The abhishekam is the central act: milk, curd, ghee, honey, sugar and water poured over the linga, with bilva leaves offered after. Monday is his day and the thirteenth tithi, pradosham, is his hour, kept at dusk. Vibhuti, the white ash, is worn in three lines, and the five syllables of Om Namah Sivaya are the mantra a Saiva child is given first.
The stories
As they are told, with the disagreements left in
The poison in the throat
When the gods and the asuras churned the ocean for the nectar, what came up first was halahala, a poison that would have ended the world. Nobody would take it. Siva drank it, and Parvati caught his throat with her hand so that it would go no further, and it stayed there and turned the throat blue. The story is told as what a protector actually does: not the destroying of the danger but the holding of it, in the body, for good.
The pillar of fire
Brahma and Vishnu quarrelled over which was the greater, and a pillar of fire appeared with no top and no bottom. They agreed that whoever found an end would be the greater. Vishnu went down as a boar and Brahma up as a swan. Vishnu returned and admitted he had found nothing. Brahma brought a falling ketaki flower and said he had reached the top, and the flower bore false witness for him. Siva appeared from the pillar and cursed Brahma to have no temple of his own, and the ketaki never to be offered in worship again. Annamalai at Thiruvannamalai is held to be that pillar cooled into a hill.
Why the hunter was forgiven
Kannappa was a hunter who knew no mantra and no rite. He brought the linga at Kalahasti water carried in his mouth, meat he had tasted first to be sure it was good, and flowers in his hair, which by every rule of the shastra defiles an offering. When blood began to flow from one eye of the linga he gouged out his own and set it in place, and when the second eye bled he put his foot on the linga to mark the spot and reached for his other eye. Siva stopped his hand. The Tamil Saiva canon puts the hunter among the sixty three saints and keeps the story for what it says about the rules.
Where the regions differ
- Tamil
- Kerala
- Telugu
- Kannada
- North
- Maharashtra
- Bengal
- Punjab
- Assam
- Sri Lanka
- Nepal
- Gujarat
- Odisha
- Mithila
- Kashmir
- Tulu Nadu
- manipur
- rajasthan
- konkani
- sindhi
- jharkhand
- himalayan
- kodava
- Tamil Nadu
- The Pancha Bhoota Sthalams, one temple for each element, are all in the Tamil country, and the sixty three Nayanmars are its own canon of saints; Chidambaram holds the akasa linga, which is empty space.
- Kerala
- Vadakkunnathan at Thrissur is the great shrine, and the Siva temples keep the Thiruvathira of Dhanu as the women’s festival.
- Kashmir
- Kashmir Saivism reads him as pure consciousness rather than a person, and Amarnath and the Shankaracharya hill above Srinagar are its places.
- North India
- Twelve jyotirlingas are the circuit, Kashi the chief of them, and the month of Sravana is given to him with the kanwar walk to fetch Ganga water.
- Nepal
- Pashupatinath is the national shrine and the name of the god the kings of Nepal ruled in the name of.
Their days
Every one of these has a page of its own
Where to see them
From the temple directory
- Thillai Nataraja Temple Chidambaram, Cuddalore, Tamil Nadu
- Arunachaleswarar Temple Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu
- Jambukeswarar Temple, Thiruvanaikaval Thiruvanaikaval, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu
- Ekambareswarar Temple, Kanchipuram Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu
- Kashi Vishwanath Jyotirlinga, Varanasi Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh
- Ramanathaswamy Temple, Rameswaram Rameswaram, Ramanathapuram, Tamil Nadu
- Somnath Jyotirlinga Prabhas Patan, Gir Somnath, Gujarat
- Mahakaleshwar Jyotirlinga, Ujjain Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh
- Brihadeeswarar Temple (Peruvudaiyar Koil) Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu
What is said
From the mantra library
In the almanac
Their nakshatras