Seven secrets of Shiva

by Devdutt Pattanaik

Shiva does not seek to defy or deny the value of cultural rules, rites and rituals. He is simply ignorant of them. He is not a rebel; he is simple and pure. This is most evident during the marriage of Shiva and Parvati. Parvati insists that Shiva come to her house like a groom and ask her father for her hand in marriage. When her mother, Mena, and her sisters, step out to welcome the groom, the sight that awaits them horrifies them. Unlike normal grooms who come on a mare, Shiva comes on a bull. Instead of being draped in fine cloth and sandal paste, he comes wrapped in animal hide and smeared with ash. Instead of garlands round his neck, he has serpents. Instead of bearing a sword, he holds in his hand a trident. Music is created not by flutes but by rattle-drums. His attendants are demons and ghosts and goblins and witches, Ganas and Pramathas and Yakshas and Bhutas. They have claws and fangs and bloodshot eyes. Everyone, Shiva included, drinks bhang, narcotic hemp, not from cups but from skulls.

To domesticate a bull, he has to be castrated. The absence of gonads deprives the animal of male hormones that make him aggressive. He then becomes the gentle bullock, a beast of burden, who can serve society by pulling ploughs and carts. A bullock may be domesticated, but he is unable to father children. To father children, one needs to keep the bull intact. An intact bull is wild and aggressive. It will copulate with cows so that they can give birth to the calf and provide milk. An intact bull cannot be tamed. It must be allowed to roam free for the sake of human prosperity. Nandi the bull represents Shiva’s autonomy and capability. Though Parvati sits beside Shiva, he cannot be fully domesticated. His power comes from his being wild. Through Parvati, Shiva engages with the world but never quite assimilates with it.

Shankara is not Vishnu. Shankara merely engages with Prakriti while Vishnu seeks to establish Sanskriti, a culture that is not based on fear. Vishnu participates in worldly affairs, takes mortal forms, and is part of culture.

Vishnu stories are therefore located in time and space, in particular eras or yugas, in particular cities (he is Ram of Ayodhya in Treta yuga and Krishna of Gokul in Dvapara yuga), whil...

Amongst Shiva’s followers are mendicants who seek to emulate Shiva’s inability to be bound by anything cultural. Like Shiva, they stay in crematoriums. Like Shiva, they eat anything that comes their way, even human flesh. While cannibalism is taboo in culture, it is not so in nature. Many animals eat members of their own species and so Aghoras, as they seek complete disruption of social rules, indulge is such practices. They even indulge in sexual activities with the dead, and follow habits that society considers vile and inappropriate. The word ghora means frightening while Aghora means one who is not frightening. From a cultural point of view, the Aghoras behave in a frighteningly subversive way as they reject all notions of propriety and auspiciousness. But the Aghoras do this not to frighten anyone. They seek to be indifferent to the cultural gaze. They are on a quest to break all social conditioning that divides the world into appropriate and inappropriate, auspicious and inauspicious. They seek to be as transcendental as Shiva.

Ravana is the king of Rakshasas. Rakshasas are considered demons because though they have the intelligence and discriminatory powers that humans possess, they willingly choose to follow the law of the jungle and deliberately seek to dominate and control everyone around them. Ravana’s father is Vaishrava whose father was Pulatsya who is another mind-born son of Brahma. Thus, Ravana is a descendent of Brahma. Metaphorically speaking, Ravana then is a form of Brahma created when imagination is crumpled and knotted by several layers of fear.

Ravana cuts these heads off and offers them to Shiva. He uses one of his heads and one of his hands to create a lute or veena. The head serves as the gourd of the lute while his hand serves as its beam and his nerves serve as its strings. This is the Rudra-veena, the lute that is offered to Shiva. It is also known as Ravan-haath, the hand of Ravana, and it is the inspiration for all stringed musical instruments of the world.

Ravana is a devotee, but he is not a wise devotee; rather, he is a clever devotee. He seeks from Shiva freedom from fear, not through faith, but through power. When Shiva asks Ravana to build a house for Shakti, Ravana uses his knowledge of Vastu-shastra, or the occult understanding of space, to build a grand palace. It turns out to be the most beautiful palace on earth. After building it, Ravana, becomes attached to it and covets it. So when Shiva says, ‘How can I reward you for building such a good palace?’ Ravana asks for the palace itself as his fee, and the simpleton Shiva says, ‘So be it.’ Shakti, who loves the palace and looks forward to turning it into her home, cannot believe it when Ravana declares that Shiva has gifted it away to him. Very cheekily Ravana invites the Goddess to stay in the palace as a guest or tenant.

Taking advantage of Shiva’s gullible nature, the incorrigible Ravana once makes a request to Shiva, ‘I want your wife to be my wife.’ Shiva replies, ‘If she wants to go with you, she is free to do so.

Shiva’s apparent naïveté stems from great wisdom. He knows that power does not take away fear; it only fuels more fear.

Culture by its very nature makes room for some practices and some people, and excludes others. Thieves and criminals and ghosts and goblins have no place in culture. But they all find refuge with Shiva. Shiva is surrounded by all manner of creatures that society deems to be demons. He sits with them, dances with them, and includes them. It is not that he excludes members of society, but members of society find it difficult to connect with a divinity who does not discriminate like them.

Once a fish overheard a conversation between Shiva and Parvati. The wisdom enabled him to break free from his animal form and be reborn as a human. He became known as Matsyendranath. He taught the Tantras to his students, the Naths and the Siddhas. That is why the Tantras are often written in the form of Shiva-Shakti conversations.

One day, Parvati covers Shiva’s eyes with her palms. The world is plunged in darkness. To get the sun to shine again, Shiva opens his third eye. So fiery is the glance of this eye that it causes Parvati’s palms, placed over the left and right eye, to sweat. From this sweat is born a child called Andhaka, the one born in darkness. This child is given to a childless Asura. When Andhaka grows up he invokes Brahma and secures a boon, that he should not be defeated in battle unless he looks upon his own mother with eyes of lust. Andhaka, who does not know how he was created, goes about conquering the world. No one can defeat him in battle. He finally reaches Mount Kailasa and challenges Shiva to a duel. Shiva is however lost in meditation and does not pay heed to the challenge. Andhaka climbs the mountain and sees Parvati sitting beside Shiva. He is filled with lust, little realising that he desires his own mother. Parvati begs Shiva to open his eyes and stop their son from doing the unthinkable. Shiva opens his eyes; with his trident he impales Andhaka and keeps him alive and impaled for a thousand years, draining him of blood until he is reduced to a bag of bones. Thus tortured Andhaka realises that the woman he lusted for is actually his mother and that Shiva is his father. He apologises to the divine couple and is allowed to live as a Gana in Kailasa. It is significant that Andhaka is born when the third eye is opened. The story draws attention to the limitations of the tra...

culture, by definition, is based on distinctions, demarcations and hierarchies, where some aspects of nature are included and others excluded. In culture, rules transform a woman into a wife, and a man into a husband. The transcendental gaze looks at all rules as artificial and hence delusions. Such a gaze is unable to distinguish between woman and wife. That is why Shiva does not feel awkward offering his wife to Ravana. That is why the child born of the third eye is unable to recognise his mother and overpower his incestuous designs.

Shiva, they say, is so innocent that he does not know the difference not only between woman and wife, but also between man and woman. And so when Vishnu takes the form of Mohini, he intimately hugs Mohini right in front of his wife. Both Vishnu and Parvati do not know how to tell Bholenath that such a display of affection is inappropriate in culture.

As Mohini, Vishnu was female, so Shiva hugged a woman.

The scriptures state that every living creature is obligated to produce children to repay the debt they owe to their ancestors who gave them life. This is Pitr-rin.

Through marriage, the Goddess has managed to open the eye of Shiva. Shankara observes nature, but does not feel responsible for nature. The only way he will feel empathy for the world, is when he creates something in it. A child is therefore necessary.

Since Shiva refuses to give her a child, Parvati decides to create a child on her own. She anoints her body with a paste of turmeric and oil, then scrapes it off, collects the rubbings which have mingled with her sweat, and moulds out of it a doll into which she breathes life. This is her son who she calls Vinayaka, the one born without (vina) a man (nayaka).

Ganesha is worshiped with his mother, Gauri. She is the earth and he is the vegetation born of her that sustains life on earth. Both festivals of Ganesha involve making of clay statues of Ganesha. These are worshipped with blades of grass for ten days and then immersed in water. Ganesha’s image thus comes and goes in a cyclical way, a reminder of nature’s cycles, of the seasons of sowing and harvest, of life and death.

Ganesha’s association with wisdom is endorsed by his association with the Muladhara Chakra in Tantra. Tantra is the technology for the finite Brahma to reach the infinite Shiva with the help of Shakti.

Like Murugan, Ayyappa stands on a hill. He is a very masculine god who shuns female company. So does Hanuman, who serves Ram. Celibacy and ascetic practices are closely associated with Shiva. It indicates nivritti-marga, withdrawal from the world.

In Haryana, in Pahowa, Kurukshetra district, is a temple dedicated to Kartikeya. No woman is allowed to enter this temple as the deity here is a bachelor and because the deity is the god of war and death. The deity, identified with Kartikeya, has no skin. He gave it to his mother so that no woman would find him attractive and so not marry him and risk becoming a war widow. Oil is poured on the body of this war-mongering deity to calm him down and to please all soldiers who have died in battle. It is said that Yudhishtira was advised by Krishna to visit this shrine and pour oil on the image of Kartikeya after the Mahabharata war where eighteen million warriors were killed, so as to seek the forgiveness of the dead.