Photos of Indian Gods

Sai baba of Shirdi


Lord Krishna & Radha


Lord Tirupati Balaji


Lord Rama with Wife Sita


Lord Shiva


Lord Ganesha


Lord Hanuman


Lord Vitthala With Wife Rukmai


Goddess Durga


Lord Jesus Christ

Bhagwan Mahavir

Lord Brahma

The story of Brahma is one of the most puzzling aspects of Indian religious evolution, for a god who had bid fair for supreme status, and seemed poised to achieve it, suddenly fell in the regard of men and has almost no worshippers today. He has not suffered oblivion like the other Vedic gods who were his contemporaries. He has just shrunk into insignificance, the god who was once great and is now living off past glories. Brahma is the god who used to be. His place in the myths of India is pan-Indian, he is a constant presence in all of them but almost always he is merely the opening act for the cosmic crisis that will follow. It is for other gods to perform heroics and save the universe; other gods bring meaning and value to the lives of the faithful, not Brahma. Not any more at least.

This was not always the case. Brahma is perhaps unique in all the gods of India for never losing his primary function as the God of Creation. Every other god has evolved, changed, been assigned a different cosmic role but Brahma in all his various aspects has always been a God of Creation. This is an unchanged belief system for at least five thousand years in India now; India has never looked to any other god to bring forth creation. Other gods and goddesses may be nominally superior to him, but their part in Genesis stops once they produce Brahma. The real business of ordering and structuring the universe is always and forever Brahma's. I believe this to be a unique myth structure in the entire world. No other Godly-function myth has endured so strongly with almost no change at all thus.

In the Veda he is known as Prajapati, the All-Father, which is what Odin was called in Norse mythology too. He comes to our notice when he begins to people the universe with life forms engendered by an act of cosmic incest he is committing with his daughter. They take many animal and organic shapes and all the offspring take on the shape of the moment of copulation. Which is how a barren universe fills up with vegetable and animal life. This myth is not shocking by the standards of ancient cultures, many of which had as a Primal Cause an act of incest. However the other Vedic deities are not entirely comfortable with this action, but they are powerless to punish the All-Father. It is then that Brahma is overcome by the foe that will pursue him throughout the ages and will finally vanquish him - Rudra-Shiva, the dark outsider god, peculiar, outside the ambit of Vedic ritual, fearfully respected because grimly powerful. Rudra shoots his irresistible arrow at the Prajapati and wounds him into weakness, a punishment that reduces his stature. In this primary myth is already encapsulated Brahma's fall from grace into an object of derision and the replacement of his values by the wilder and freer norms of Shiva.

By the time the Upanishads and the Brahmanas were being written, Prajapati was having trouble controlling his offspring who did not want any part of his mission to create, and instead chose to remain immersed in meditation. These were the Dakshas as well as the divine sage Narada, mind-born son of Brahma. In a fit of frustration Brahma curses Narada to fall and undergo the travails of human existence, for refusing to get married and raise a new race of humans. But Narada is a god too, as well as a great rishi, and he retaliates by cursing Brahma to lose his worshipers for this entire Cycle of Creation. It is only in the next Yuga that Brahma will again be worshiped. In this myth is given the first explanation for the loss of Brahma's status, a matter that has lurked as an unacknowledged trauma in the Indian Psyche, for there are many stories which seek to explain away this totally unthinkable fact. He was the God of Creation, the All-Father and if he could fall, then what certainty was there in the universe. The second noteworthy aspect of this myth is the first acknowledgement in Indian thought that celibacy is superior to the expression of sexuality. With retrospective effect this notion served to tinge the original act of incest that Prajapati committed in even darker hues.

There was a time when Brahma seemed to have climbed out of this downward spiral. This was the time between the 3rd century to the 10th century. He was even part of the Buddhist pantheon at the time, as great as Indra, and the god who persuaded the Enlightened One to risk teaching what the Buddha regarded as a difficult doctrine that might confuse people. There were many temples built to him and I am reasonably certain there were some lost Puranas too. But once his decline was certain there was no incentive to preserve the texts and they died out. The Brahma Purana that survives today is named after him but it does not in any sense indicate his supremacy as a god. The only halfhearted exceptions are the Padma Purana and the Markandeya Purana. It was at this time that a key template in the perception of Brahma was created. This is the standard Brahma myth after stories of creation. There is a bellicose demon who performs great austerities and gains many boons from Brahma. Puffed up with this divine strength he assaults all creation and ascends to a temporary position of supreme dominance. The gods are cast out of heaven and hell is let loose on earth. At this stage one of the other gods - Shiva, Vishnu, the Great Goddess or any of their many variants take a hand and after some gory adventuring they destroy the demon. So typical had this become that Ravana, Hinduism's Uber-villain, is actually the grandson of Brahma and always in good standing with him.
In the Pauranic period, Brahma, as befits a God of Creation, was granted Saraswati the goddess of learning as his wife. (See our section in Saraswati He is supposed to perform his manifold tasks of creation while sitting on a lotus that grows out of Vishnu's navel. This is a great degradation from his formal status as one of the Great Trinity, but Hinduism being an instinctual faith rather than an intellectual one, nobody seems to have realized what has happened. The conflict with the Shiva cult remained and Shiva is constantly visiting punishment upon the creator. Once he cuts off the fifth head of Brahma for his disrespectful and lustful behavior. In another version he acts just in time to prevent Brahma from acquiring supreme status. At one time Brahma did become the Supreme God. His fifth head began to glow with a luster that proved unbearably scorching for all the Worlds of Gods and men because it was shining with the light of understanding of the Vedas that it had heard from the other four heads of Brahma. Shiva therefore, to save the universe as well as to check such presumption, cut off this glowing head. .) Brahma survived as an object of some respect by being aligned to Vishnu, albeit with a distinctively inferior status.Shiva is supposed to have pronounced the final curse that caused Brahma to fall forever from worship, an indication of the total triumph of the Shiva faction over the votaries of Brahma.

The story is that Vishnu and Brahma were debating which if them was superior when Shiva manifested himself as a great pillar of fire with no end in either heaven or the nether world. Vishnu took the form of a boar and burrowed down for countless ages to seek the source of this strange fiery pillar. He failed to do so and recognized that Shiva was not only the pillar, he was superior to him. He gave up the quest therefore. Brahma however, flew up as a swan and came back many aeons later with the report that he had seen the summit. An angry Shiva curses him for claiming credit for achievements not his own. He is cursed with perpetual old age and the total desertion of all worshippers. That explains why Brahma is always depicted nowadays as a senile old man who is so decrepit you wonder if he is not going to expire instantaneously. But as our illustrations show that was not always the case with Indian art.

The furious Shiva is popularly supposed to have relented and allowed Brahma one spot on all the earth where he has a temple dedicated solely to his worship. This is the famous Pushkar temple situated in the middle of a lake and an unusually serene spot. However the common perception of there being only one temple to Brahma is untrue. There are at least four major temples to him still in use today. They are Pushkar in Ajmer, Rajasthan; Dudhai in the state of Madhya Pradesh; Khed Brahma at Idar, also in Madhya Pradesh and Kodakkal in the Malabar region of Kerala-Karnataka. Remember you heard it here first! I would not be in the least surprised if more temples came to light tucked away in remote and obscure spots. Brahma worshippers are not desirous of the limelight. In vindication of this hunch just recently, July 2004, I came to know of a fifth Brahma temple in the state of Andhra Pradesh. This temple is part of a group of predominantly Shiva shrines at Kaleshwaram, 130 kilometers from Karimnagar, and is in the middle of nowhere in particular, so that explains its anonymity. I am certain more temples exist to Brahma and will be discovered in due time.

Brahma is depicted as a four or five-faced man with four hands. He is the epitome of Vedic learning and hence has the Vedas in one hand, prayer beads in another, the sacred water pot in the third hand and a ladle for the Vedic fire sacrifice in the fourth hand. In some versions he is depicted with a bow. This would be consistent with mythology as the supreme weapon is a missile called the Brahmastra, and it is a much sought after boon of Brahma. His vehicle is the swan, like that of Saraswati, and his complexion is supposed to be red. The Male Trinity too are a Red, Black and White (primary colors of spirituality) trio like the goddesses are. A day of Brahma is a span of creation and lasts for 2,160,000,000 human years! Creation is in abeyance during the night of Brahma, which lasts for the same length of time and then the Cycle is repeated. Brahma lives for a hundred years thus, and then he too dies and all creation is finally dissolved. Only Shiva, Vishnu or the Goddess, depending upon your cult affiliation are eternal and bring about the next Cycle of Creation. His various epithets represent his ancient creative role. Amongst them are Sanat, the Ancient One, Adi-kavi, the first poet and Srashtri, the creator.

Lord Hanuman

Hanuman is undoubtedly one of the most popular gods of Hindu India, where all you need to open a shrine to him is a little hump of red or saffron rock with vaguely simian features carved onto it. There are gazillions of such shrines all over the land and they multiply in geometric proportion every day. The simian features are the most obviously striking aspect of Hanuman and people have been too quick off the mark to describe him as a Monkey-god. Hanuman is not a monkey but a Vaanara, a special class of semi-magical, semi humanoid beings with sorcerous powers but having developed a civilization and culture which were, if truth be told, at a higher state of social advancement than the human societies of the time. The Vaanaras are usually larger than humans, with simian features and tails but they are not monkeys. Monkeys represent Hanuman, and are accorded far more tolerance than their nuisance value warrants, but they are not worshipped or considered divine.

In any case Hanuman is as much above the average human as the human is to the monkey. He is one vast compendium of virtues, with nary a flaw or fault in him. He does not have the usual Vaanara weakness of jumping to conclusions, as he is the epitome of the wise counselor, preaching moderation and temperance in all things. Hanuman is perhaps the most intelligent and knowledgeable being in Indian mythology. His intelligence and wisdom are part of his divine status and he must be the only god in existence who is a favorite amongst the eggheads as well as amongst the jocks, for Hanuman is also the exemplar, the veritable pinnacle of strength, both physical and spiritual. He is a great musician and singer, a formidable scholar of the scriptures and the ultimate diplomat - entrusted with all missions that require charm and panache. His powers of askesis and spiritual discipline are unmatched and his speech so melodious and impactful that even Rama, God Himself, announced that his speech revealed a perfect being. He is also immortal and destined to be the next Manu or proto-Adam in the next Cycle of Creation. Hanuman, as can be seen from all this is not the ape of popular misrepresentation.

His birth took place in unusual conditions. His mother was an apsara (see our glossary) named Punjikasthala, who fell foul of the powers of heaven and was punished by being reborn as a Vaanara female named Anajana. The God of the Wind, Vayu, observed her walking on a hill and rather like Jupiter enveloping Io, he swiftly impregnated her. Gods will not be denied in such matters, but he was essentially a decent god and made it up to her by explaining to her husband that she was not to be blamed and showering the child with magical powers, chief of which were the ability to fly and titanic strength. The boy was called Anjaneya after his mother and his Vaanara father was Kesari, one of the more unusually evolved beings judging by his classy behavior to this unexpected child. The little child soon became a formidable force in the universe. Once he felt hungry, and with the imperious will of all babies, he decided to reach out for the biggest fruit in his vision. That unfortunately happened to be the Sun, who was led a harrowing chase by this swiftly flying baby. Indra, King of the Gods, hurled his weapon at him and smashed his jaw, earning him his famous name, Hanuman, 'The Broken-Jawed'. Vayu went on strike and the worlds began to choke to death because the air had become stale and stultified. The panicky gods covered Hanuman with a torrent of blessings, amongst which was invulnerability to all weapons, (hence his famous name Bajrangbali, or to be precise Vajra anga Bali - thunderbolt-body-hero!) and an ability to be always the best at whatever he took a turn to.

Naturally a little boy with so much power would become a hellion. Hanuman became the terror of all who passed by his impish gaze, until one day he made the mistake of trying pranks on the Sapta Rishis, or great sages. Realizing that the boy was a menace they decreed that he would lose knowledge of his strength and superhuman abilities until they were needed for the world - and until he had learnt some wisdom! Hanuman calmed down and he rapidly became a favorite at the court of the Vaanara Kingdom of Kishkinda, where his father was a courtier. He very soon established himself as the right hand man of Sugriva, the king's brother, and it was his advice to flee that saved that unfortunate prince when his brother, King Vali, attempted to kill him. Hanuman displayed his famous loyalty in preferring the miseries of exile with his master instead of the rewards of defection, for nobody would have been foolish enough to turn him away. While grimly waiting for a turn in fortunes, the Vaanara exiles saw Rama and Laxmana wander into their turf searching for the kidnapped Sita. It was the upturn of fortune for all of them.

Hanuman goes to determine if the visitors are friends or assassins but the shining virtues of Rama soon clear away any doubts. From that moment onwards, it is Rama who has the heart of Hanuman. So great is his devotion that he is referred to as the junior servant of Hari, (Vishnu) the senior servant being Garuda, the mount of Vishnu. Rama helps Sugriva in removing his brother from the throne and the Vaanara armies set out in search of the kidnapped Sita. In this endeavor, Hanuman is clearly the best hope of success for he has been everywhere and knows all lands. Rama entrusts him with his signet ring so that Sita would have no doubts about his credentials. In the Valmiki Ramayana, Hanuman becomes the real hero of the epic from that point onwards. Rama becomes a leader and is active only when there is a deed to be performed that is impossible for anybody else.

At the seashore beyond which lies Lanka, where they learn Sita is captive, the Vaanara remind Hanuman of his long suppressed strength and abilities. He grows to colossal size and his body blazes like the sun while he emits roars that cause all living things to flee. Valmiki rises to a frenzy of inspiration as he describes that awesome transformation and then Hanuman makes the most famous leap in Indian myth, a spectacular jump across the water into the demon city of Lanka. He has finally come into the full stature of his Hero destiny. Typical of the mythic structure is his first encounter with the supernatural. A giant female water dragon looms in front of him with colossal maw open and a request that he please enter! Hanuman, always courteous to women, but never a fool, instantly diminishes his size, flies though the open mouth and tells the abashed water dragon that he has kept his word. She blesses him with success for having dealt out defeat in such a gentlemanly manner. Another female dragon tries to kill him outright by her power of being able to clutch onto shadows and drag the owners of the shadow to their deaths. Hanuman is not amused and he loses his temper, rending the monster into many tiny pieces.
In this context it is worth noting that Hanuman is eternally celibate and his many encounters with threatening female energy are triumphs for him precisely because he does not get beguiled like most men would. His lack of a sexual predatory gaze has made him one of the heralds of the goddess Kali, who has very low tolerance for males around her. His huge reservoir of creative spiritual energy as a result of this unbroken celibacy has made him a Tantrik icon too; they practice sexuality too well not to understand the immensity of his achievement. There has always been a sneaking regret in the Indian mind however, conditioned as it is towards progeny, that Hanuman has no children. Some versions of the story, written much later actually have a peculiar episode connected with his flight. A beauty of the nether world had risen to the surface of the sea to witness the spectacular flight of the Vaanara. The hot sun had caused him to perspire and driblets of sweat were dropping into the water. Realizing that an eternal celibate's secretions are potent at all times she swallows it and becomes pregnant! Thus she gets the stature of being the mother of Hanuman's child, a boy he meets up with only many years later in a minor series of adventures when he descends to the underworld. The tale and tradition are not really authentic, but it is revealing as to mindsets.

Landing in Lanka, he encounters the female (again!) guardian spirit of the city and answers her threats and rudeness with one backhanded blow that sends her sprawling. This was theoretically impossible and she realizes that the destiny of the Demon city was on the down turn and abandons them. Hanuman meets up with Sita and offers comfort that she will soon be rescued. He could have taken her back himself but she wanted her husband to do it. He then proceeds to destroy the royal gardens of Ravana and single-handedly kills thousands of demons before he lets himself be captured. Ravana is impressed and infuriated with this amazing being. He asks Hanuman if Rama's glory can compare to his and Hanuman makes his famous reply that Ravana is indeed a full moon as compared to the new moon of Rama. The full moon depletes while the new moon grows in stature so the compliment was an elegant putdown. Ravana wishes to punish him and orders his tail to be set on fire. That is one of the greatest blunders ever made as Hanuman is invulnerable to fire and he reciprocates by burning down the whole golden city. This action has become proverbial for the comeuppance of pride and belief in riches.

Hanuman flies back, and soon returns with Rama and the Vaanara army. He performs many deeds of valor and slaughters many demon heroes. One of his more endearing tricks was to inflate his body and then perch Rama on his shoulder so that the great archer got a dominant position to let his shafts fly. When Indrajit, son of Ravana, uses magical weapons to render Rama and Laxmana unconscious, he flies to the Himalayas in search of the Sanjeevani, the universal panacea for all ills and wounds. Unable to identify the specific plant, the great hero uproots the mountain itself and flies back with it, an action that is much beloved of Indian art to this day as a theme for depiction. He has a run-in before that with Kalanemi, uncle of Ravana, who disguises himself as a hermit and advises Hanuman to wash in a nearby lake before he touches the magical plant. He is attacked by a crocodile that has just made the biggest mistake of its life. The slain crocodile turns out to be an apsara, the female tempter motif again, who is thus released from a curse. Warned by her against Kalanemi, he hurls the demon back to Lanka before setting off himself. On the way he is reputed to have established three Shiva-lingams in Kerala, which grew to be the famous temples of Ettumanoor, Kaddathirithi and Vaikom. They are all exactly eleven Indian miles from each other in a dead straight line with Kaddathirithi in the middle, supposedly planted by Hanuman with his mouth, as both his hands were full and the auspicious time for the establishment of the icons was swiftly passing by. We also get to understand that his wingspan was a good 22 miles!

The rest of the Ramayana has Hanuman take on the familiar role of Rama's man for all seasons. He has become an ideal now, the wise epitome of strength, and in most cases he is too well known for there to be any trouble, he merely has to turn up for it to be defused. In one famous instance he rashly promises assistance to a king who has insulted Rama's guru and finds himself opposing his master in battle. Incredibly Rama loses as he uses weapons and Hanuman merely repels all attacks with the divine name - which is "Rama!" His great love for Rama has resulted in a tradition, which states that wherever the Ramayana is read, Hanuman is the invisible participant. His being immortal sees him pop up in ages and times that are not his own, the most famous being his encounter with his half brother Bhima in the Mahabharatha, also a son of Vayu and another epitome of strength. Hanuman was distressed to observe that Bhima, usually the most humble of men was developing a swollen head and demonstrated, rather humiliatingly, that the concepts of strength Bhima held were feeble by his standards.

In India today Hanuman is greatly popular but he is never regarded as the Supreme God. One tradition states that he is actually an emanation of Shiva, being his Eleventh Rudra. As already mentioned he is a Tantrik favorite too. In the popular imagination he is best known as Sankat Mochan, the destroyer of danger and trouble and he is much called upon to save the faithful from ghosts and spells and other things that go bump in the night. He is also the patron of wrestlers, traditionally regarded as the opposite of intellectuals. Such effortless blending of opposites is not least amongst the powers of Hanuman.

Lord Shiva

His name means The Auspicious One. He is Pure Consciousness, Chidanandaroopa - the form of joy that pure consciousness takes. He is the oldest god known to mankind, and more interestingly is perhaps the oldest living god, tracing a genealogy of worship that is easily five thousand years old. Naturally, therefore, he is described as the God with no lineage. Like Yahweh, who may be his only contemporary, his name was not to be taken in vain. In fact his name was not to be uttered at all. He is the howler, Rudra, when he first appears to us in the Rig Veda. He is Raudra Brahman, the wild God of the Hymns. He is also Nataraja, the elegant King of the Dance, and in fact of all the fine arts. He is the Lord of yoga, the culmination of the universe, the cause of its dissolution - yet always transcending such petty events.

To attempt an overview of Shiva in one essay is an act of extreme idiocy. I shall therefore seek to communicate some of the flavors that are associated with Shiva, trusting that time will be vouchsafed us to explore him in detail as we grow as a web-site. Shiva has been around for so long that entire encyclopedias on him are necessary to get just a bird's eye view. This god is perhaps the single most important influence on the arts and culture of the Indian subcontinent. In a very real sense, you find Shiva all over the country, he is in fact the country, so closely interwoven are the myths of his actions with the culture and geography of the land. So strong is Shiva's hold on the imagination that all local area gods which seek to gain in prestige, or are sought to be subverted to the main body of the Hindu religion, end up being described as various manifestations of Shiva. If the god lives on a hill, a forest or a cave then there is no way he escapes being but one more aspect of Mahadeva - the great god who loves to linger in hills, forests and caves. This is what has happened to Khandoba in Maharashtra, Skanda in Tamil Nadu and Ayyapan in Kerala to give the three most common examples. In fact another manner of accommodating these local religions was to decree the gods to be sons of Shiva.

The Rig Vedic Shiva was known as Rudra. He was a grim mysterious god, living on the fringes of Vedic society, a god who was so much of an outsider that he was not even entitled to a share in the fire sacrifices. Yet the Vedic pantheon was clearly in awe of this self sufficient Hunter-God. The hymns praise him in all-too-visible anxiety that his strange powers may be aroused, and his name as mentioned was never to be invoked. "We live in dread, and pray that you pass us by", quavers the Rig Vedic verse. Yet it immediately goes on to add that He is the Awakener, who when touched by pleas, grants a thousand kinds of balm that heal.

In a sense Rudra was too much a part of the Life-Force, too acutely felt to be just a god. Rudra punishes Prajapati for the first primordial act of incest and in a sense he is the defender of Dharma ever since. He is also a slayer of a brahmana, Prajapati, in the service of a higher morality, a fact that has caused much anguish to medieval commentators who were busy trying to show brahmanas were gods on earth as well as in heaven. Rudra-Shiva is thus always about living an authentic life, with utter disdain for convention.

This Vedic manifestation of Shiva was thought to be the earliest known(1500 B.C.) before he became the great God of later Hinduism. Then came the discovery of a few seals from the Harrapan civilization (2750 B.C.) and the picture changed completely. The seals show a figure who is so manifestly Shiva that it had to be acknowledged as such, even though it smashed the nice theory that was emerging of invading Aryans destroying the cities of the Indus valley. It is known as the proto-Shiva seal. However, for those who can read the signs and can decode the evidence, this figure is far more important.

He is surrounded by animals, which directly links him up with the Rudra-Pashupatinatha of the Vedas. The tiger, the elephant, and the bull depicted here, all play prominent parts in the Shiva mythology. Even more importantly he is shown in a typical yogic posture, which would indicate the knowledge of the ancient art.

This posture is the Udharva Linga posture (and not the ithyphallic posture as is so easily assumed) and it indicates the triumph over the sexual impulse.. The balls of the feet press into the sacral region behind and beneath the testicles as is shown. The lingam is erect and it presses into the navel, signifying the complete conquest of the sexual energy. He is now Udharva Retas, "he whose semen flows upwards". In the yogic system when you do not dissipate semen through ejaculation, it transforms itself into a food for the brain called ojas, vital energy, and is the source of the creative force that alone can provide you with the fuel to break through into enlightenment. This posture is commonly practiced even today and the udharva linga experience is not uncommon for many spiritual practitioners. Even the founder of Kriya yoga has left an account of precisely this linga entering the navel and the subsequent freedom from all thoughts and desire of lust.

Inevitably, Shiva the Conqueror of Lust and Desire is also known as the erotic ascetic! The Tantrik tradition uses the Shiva Energy very heavily and many of the texts of Tantra are lectures that Shiva gives to his spouse who may be Kali or Parvati, but actually is a representative of all the Divine Feminine energy in the world. Shiva's sexuality inevitably brings us to the Shiva lingam, the supposedly sacred phallus. Contrary to popular perception, the Shiva lingam has a world of meaning attached to it and it is not just the obvious one of phallic symbolism. Most lingams are representations of Shiva who is never worshipped in the form of an image. Popular mythology holds that he was cursed so by an enraged rishi. The lingam is an abstract stand-in for the Howler who must never be named. The entire process is an elaborate avoidance of naming the dread name by substituting something else, which is also a creative and generative force. Under Tantrik influence, the lingam placed in a yoni base - which means exactly what it sounds like - became a frank avowal of the ultimate origin of new life, it was fertility symbolism at its best. Educated Hindus tend to be over-apologetic about this aspect, though the average Hindu lives in a curious innocence about the nature of the Lingam. This was typically expressed in Gandhi's naïve confession that he had to read foreign authors before he realized that there might be anything sexual about the lingam. According to Swami Vivekananda, not just the lingam but also the entire external image of Shiva is an elaborate symbolical construct. In his view, Shiva is a personification of the entire Vedic fire sacrifice. Thus the ash with which his body is smeared is the ash of the sacrifice. (Ash is also what's left when everything is destroyed and it does not decay. So too with god, what is left when everything is gone. Shiva covers himself with ash because he is the only life form in the Universe who is aware of this truth at every moment.) The white complexion of Shiva is indicative of the smoke of the sacrifice. The animals He is associated with indicate the animals tied to the sacrificial posts and so on. The Shiva linga, in Vivekananda's view is actually a feebly recalled Yupa Stambha, the Cosmic Pillar that is the center and support of the Universe, The Axis Mundi, in fact. This yupa stambha is always represented in all fire sacrifices and it is permanently installed in temples in the form of the linga. If prayers could not be offered to images of Shiva, then the temples could be covered with depictions of scenes from his ancient life. So great was the Shiva factor in Indian art forms that it almost obscures the other gods. The temples and their sculptures run riot. Khajuraho, Ellora, Elephanta, Rameshwaram, the Chola temples, the Bhuvaneshwar and Madhya Pradesh temples, and the great dancing Shiva temple at Chidambaram, it's a universe drunk on the creative energy, fertile and fecund with originality and beauty that is not as well regarded as it should be, merely because there is too much of it. If there were only one such temple in India the world would have gone mad with appreciation. As such, you can actually overdose on beauty, the Beauty that is the transcendent state of the Truth that is Shiva, expressed in the famous formulation Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram. The mythologies surrounding Shiva are immense. It must be remembered that the Shiva story has been going on for five thousand years now and they only too obviously reflect the concerns of people at the time they were being composed. Shiva Himself is a composite god today, involving many local area gods and little tradition mythologies into his all-embracing grasp. Shiva is more or less what you want Him to be, as in Him all contradictions casually coexist. The notion of Shiva as exclusively a Wild Man of the forests and mountains, traveling with a band of ghosts and ghouls as their leader, Bhoothnath, is a recent phase of his worship. For while He was always capable of peculiar behavior, Shiva used to live outside of society not because He had rejected it but because He had transcended it. Shiva is repeatedly described as the Supreme Master of all the Arts, and that indicates a highly socialized being, the Nagarika of ancient India, not a rustic. To those who did not understand this aspect of the lord, to those who still had on their defensive shell of sophistication and cynicism, Shiva was Bholenath, the Simpleton God. Yet, traditionally India has regarded Shiva not as any of these roles but as Vishwanatha - the Lord of the Universe. That is why in all the old temples you find him represented as a king, decked out in lordly robes with crowns and jewels. This homeless-wanderer recent incarnation of Shiva was perhaps a reflection of a culture that had lost its moorings and was reeling under alien domination. Yet even at this much reduced level, Shiva seems to appeal the most powerfully, of all the gods of India, to the collective unconscious. Since most Goddess worshipers also acknowledge Him as the divine spouse of the Goddess, Shiva may easily have the most devotes in sheer number alone. He is laughed at as an old man by devotees with the affection that comes only with comfort. Yet in some corner of the old limbic brain he lurks, Rudra-Shiva, the old god of India, the source of the songs of the Rig Veda.

Of all who are born You are the greatest Of all the powers, you are the most compelling Lustre itself becomes pale and outshone by you O Rudra! Protect us from the hordes of sins that assault us Stand between us and them Repel them with the thunderbolt of your arm O Rudra! Lead us to the other bank Let us cross with ease.