Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India

by William Dalrymple

Many scholars believe that just as the Sufi fakirs of Sehwan Sharif model their dreadlocks, red robes and dust-smeared bodies on those of Shaivite sadhus, so the dhammal derives from the damaru drum of Shiva, by which, in his form of Nataraja, or Lord of the Dance, the Destroyer drums the world back into existence after dancing it into extinction.

the destroyer

“There is no fire in hell,” he reported. “Everyone who goes there brings their own fire, and their own pain, from this world.”’

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