Udaya

Shiva Purana

शिवपुराणम्

Also Sivapurana, Shaiva Purana.

Purana Sanskrit Probably tenth to fourteenth century, with older layers

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What it is#

The Shiva Purana is the main puranic source for the stories of Siva: the pillar of fire, the marriage to Sati and then to Parvati, the births of Ganesha and Karthikeya, the twelve jyotirlingas and the taking of the poison. Most of what a Saiva household knows as narrative comes from here or from its Tamil equivalents. It is one of the eighteen mahapuranas and exists in recensions that differ so much that which text is the Shiva Purana is itself a question.

Its shape#

The commonly printed recension has seven samhitas, including the Vidyeshvara, Rudra, Kotirudra, Uma, Kailasa, Vayaviya and Dharma, running to about twenty four thousand verses. Other recensions give a different set, and the Vayu Purana overlaps with it substantially enough that some traditions count them as one. The Rudra Samhita, which holds the Sati and Parvati material and the births of the sons, is the part most read.

What it argues about#

These are not settled texts

Like every sectarian purana it is arguing for the supremacy of its own deity against the others, and the Vishnu Purana is doing the same for Vishnu with the same material arranged differently. The pillar of fire story exists to place Siva above both Brahma and Vishnu; the Vaishnava puranas have their own versions where the outcome differs. Reading one purana as a statement of Hindu belief rather than as one side of a very old argument is the commonest mistake made with the genre, and the puranas themselves do not pretend otherwise: they are partisan documents and were composed as such.

Episodes worth knowing#

The pillar with no ends

Brahma and Vishnu quarrelled over which was greater and a pillar of fire appeared with no visible top or bottom. They agreed that whoever found an end would win. Vishnu went down as a boar and Brahma up as a swan. Vishnu returned and said honestly that he had found nothing. Brahma brought a ketaki flower falling from above and claimed to have reached the top, and the flower bore false witness. Siva came out of the pillar, cursed Brahma to have no worship and the ketaki never to be offered. Thiruvannamalai is held to be that pillar cooled into a hill, and the Karthigai Deepam on its summit is the fire.

Why Sati left her body

Daksha held a great sacrifice and invited everybody except his daughter Sati and her husband Siva, whom he despised. She went anyway, uninvited, and was insulted to her face before the assembly. She gave up her body in the sacrificial fire rather than carry a form that came from him. Siva, told of it, created Virabhadra, who destroyed the sacrifice and beheaded Daksha, and then carried the body across the world refusing to set it down until Vishnu cut it away piece by piece. Every shakti pitha in India is where a piece fell.

Whose telling#

There is no single text

Printed recensions
The seven samhita text is the one usually printed; other recensions give different samhitas and the tradition does not fully agree on the contents.
Periya Puranam
The Tamil Saiva tradition took its narrative canon from the Nayanmar lives rather than from this purana, which is why Tamil Saiva stories differ.
Linga and Skanda Puranas
Cover much of the same ground with different emphases, and the Skanda Purana is the longest of all the puranas.

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
Where it is kept: 4 of the 23 traditions this app follows. The filled one is where it is from.
North India
The twelve jyotirlingas are its pilgrimage map, and the month of Sravana is kept for Siva with the kanwar walk.
Tamil Nadu
The Tamil Saiva narrative tradition runs through the Thevaram and the Periya Puranam rather than through this text.
Kerala
The Siva temples keep the puranic material in Malayalam retellings and in the Kathakali repertoire.
Nepal
Pashupatinath is counted in the Saiva pilgrimage and the Nepali tradition keeps its own recensions.

All the works