Shiva
Shiva South and Central AsiaThe name of Shiva is unknown in the ancient scriptures, but Rudra, ‘the Howler or Roarer, the Terrible One’, another name for this deity, and almost equally common, occurs frequently. Early in the evolution of the Hindu triad Shiva absorbed the Vedic Rudra, a personification of the implacable powers of destruction. Shiva was ‘he who takes back or takes away’. In appearance Shiva is fair, has four arms, four faces, and three eyes. The third eye, situated in the centre of his forehead, possesses a fiery glance from which all created things shrink: it is sometimes represented by three horizontal lines, a mark worn today by his devotees. Shiva wears the skin of a tiger and has a snake twined round his neck, two items of attire he acquired in defeating these beasts when they were sent to destroy him by jealous rishis, or sages. He is the arch-ascetic, the Divine Yogi, who sits alone on Mount Kailasa, high in the Himalayas. At...
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