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by Jayaram V
Siva is one of the most ancient gods of Hinduism, known by many
names,
forms and aspects some of which have been lost to us. At one time he was worshipped in various parts of the world with
different names and methods. He was the lord of the underworld as well
as heavens. He
was the lord of both men and animals. He was associated with death, fertility
cults, worship of bulls and serpents, magical cures, funeral rites,
warrior cults, battle field rituals and human sacrifices. Revered equally by the
ascetics as the highest and supreme being and the masses as the
giver of boons, children and virility, his more benign forms emerged with the changes in our
consciousness and civilization. The vedic people feared and revered Siva.
They addressed him as Rudra, the howler and weeper and the fierce storm
god. They distrusted and hated those who worshipped him
and at the same time sought his protection
through invocations against death and disease and his own wrath. Historically the worship of Siva is rooted in
prehistoric
religious beliefs and precedes the advent of vedic religion in
northwestern India. By the time the vedic religion gained a foothold in
the Indian subcontinent, Lord Siva was already a popular god, worshipped by
many people outside the Brahmanical fold.
The Prototype Siva of the Indus Valley Civilization
The Indus people (6000 BC to 2000 BC) probably worshipped a prototype
of Siva, but we are not sure whether the male deity depicted in the
Indus seals had any connection with him. The seals show a
male figure with three faces and a pair of horns over his head, seated on
a pedestal in a yogic posture with animals on each side. The presence of
animals, the horns over the head, the three faces and the yogic posture
do remind one of
Siva who is considered as Pasupathi or lord of the animals and whose
vehicle is bull. The ancient
Sumerians, who lived in the southern Mesopotamia during the same period
as the Indus people,
worshipped a deity who was also called lord of the animals and they had
a goddess who was called the lady of the mountains. She reminds us of
Parvathi, the consort of Siva, popularly known as the daughter of the
mountains. Excavations at Indus sites also revealed polished stone images in the
form of male (ling) and female (yoni) sexual organs, which indicate that
the Indus people practiced some fertility cults in which they worshipped
Father God and Mother Goddess. That the Indus people might have
practiced some primitive form of Saivism is also evident from the bull
or bull like images found in the Indus seals.
The Sivan, Chempu and Sembu or the Dravidian Traditions
According to historians several features of Saivism, some popular
names of Siva including the name Siva itself and worship of Siva came to
us from non-vedic traditions, especially ancient Dravidian traditions. The Dravidians, known as Dramilas,
Dramiza or Termilois1 came to the Indian subcontinent from
eastern Mediterranean around 7000 BC. They settled first in northwestern
India and then gradually moved inland towards the east and the south.
They spoke agglutinative languages, some of which survived in southern
India, parts of central Asia2 and
Europe3 . According to some scholars, the
Dravidians were originally Lemurians who came from a submerged continent
known as Lemuria4 or Atlantis during prehistoric times and settled down
in some parts of the world such as Greece5 , Mediterranean, India, parts
of Europe and probably the Americas6 .
The ancient Sumerians7 and Indus
people were probably Dravidians. Based on some anthropological
similarities, some historians believe them to be Semitic in origin while
according to some the Dravidian came from nowhere but were indigenous
inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent.
The Dravidians worshipped Siva, whose name seems to have been derived
from the Tamil root word shivan meaning the red one. So is the word
Shambhu, an epithet of Siva, from chembu or shembu meaning copper or the
red metal. The Dravidians had a written language which they used to
record their compositions on Palmyra
leaves and create books by binding them together. They housed their
deities in temples called ko-ils and invoked them by the traditional Indian method of worship known as
pooja or puja, which is the most popular form of worship of gods in
Hinduism today, in which water, incense, flowers etc, are offered to the
divinities, seeking their help and blessings. Apart from Siva, they also worshipped Murugan who is equated with Kumara
or Skanda, the elder son of Siva. They worshipped snakes, eagles,
several village deities (grama devatas) and the monkey god who later
became famous as Hanuman.
Sibu, the Tribal God
Siva in ancient India was also known as Sibu, the tribal god of Sibis,
an ancient Indian tribe, who lived in the area comprising of present day
Punjab. Some places in Punjab allude to their ancient connection with
Siva such as Sivapura. The Sibis were an ancient
warrior tribe. They wore animal skin, carried clubs and wandered from
place to place. Probably the
Sibis constituted one of the earliest band of aggressive and virulent
ascetics, like the modern day Nirankaris of Sikhism, a
tradition that was later on revived by Lakulisa and continued by some sects of Saivism, such as
the Kapalikas and in recent times by the Virasaivas. Apart from Sibis,
we have indications that many tribes of the vedic period also worshipped
Siva, or aspects of Siva, some of which were
subsequently identified with the Rudras of the Vedas and integrated into
Saiva Mythology. The vedic texts8
address Rudra also as Sarva and Bhava, cheat and lord of the thieves,
which probably allude to his connection with some neighboring tribes
whom they distrusted or feared.
The Rudras of the Vedic religion
There is no mention of the word Siva in the Vedas referring to a
particular god, but only a quality of the gods meaning purity. The vedic
people disliked those who worshipped lingas and called them derogatorily
as phallus (sisna) worshippers. They however worshipped a fierce god,
known as Rudra, the father of Maruts, or Rudras or destructive
storm-winds, the healer and giver of medicines, the protector of cows
from snakes, who was later equated with Siva. In this aspect he was
closely associated with Indra and Agni. The Rigveda
contains three hymns addressed to Rudra, which extol his virtues and
also reflect the ambivalent attitude of the vedic people towards him. According to the
early vedic hymns, Siva
was both an inflictor of evil and rescuer from evil and described in
contradictory terms possessing many holy and unholy attributes. The vedic priests
beseeched him not to harm them, their heroes, their children or their
cattle and also save them from the evil inflicted by others because he
alone had the ability to meet evil with evil. They addressed him as lord of sacrifice, the lord of heroes
with braided hair, the physician, the giver of medicines, the impetuous
Rudra, the perfector of sacrifice, the wild boar of the sky, the red one
, the bounteous one and the ruler of valiant people. They prayed to him
for joy, shelter, medicines, health, strength and protection
from sickness and anger of gods. Uttering his very name required
performance of oblations and purification ceremonies. We can see this
conflict of attitude very evident in the Satarudriya, or the hundred
names of Rudra, found in the Vajasaneyi samhita of Yajurveda, about
which Monier Monier-Williams9 , writes thus
"In this hymn—a hymn which is of the greatest
interest, because constantly used in the present day—he is described
as possessing many contradictory, incongruous, grotesque, and wholly
ungodlike attributes; for example, he is a killer and destroyer; he is
terrible, fierce ( ugra), inauspicious ; he is a deliverer and saviour;
he causes happiness, and prevents disease ; he has a healing and
auspicious body (siva tanuh); he is yellow-haired, brown- coloured,
copper-coloured, ruddy, tall, dwarfish; he has braided locks (kapardin),
wears the sacred thread, and is clothed in a skin ; he is blue-necked
and thousand-eyed; he dwells in the mountains, and is the owner of
troops (gana-pati) of servants who traverse the earth obeying his
orders ; he is ruler and controller of a thousand Rudras who are
described as fierce and ill-formed (virupa); he has a hundred bows and
a thousand quivers; he is the general of vast armies; he is lord of
ghosts, goblins, and spirits; of beasts, horses, and dogs; of trees,
shrubs, and plants; he causes the fall of leaves ; he is lord of the
Soma-juice; he is patron of thieves and robbers, and is himself a
thief, robber, and deceiver; he presides over carpenters,
chariot-makers, blacksmiths, architects, huntsmen; he is present in
towns and houses, in rivers and lakes, in woods and roads, in clouds
and rain, in sunshine and lightning, in wind and storm, in stones,
dust, and earth."
During the later
vedic period Rudra became a popular and more benevolent deity as is evident
from the later vedic hymns and the Upanishads like the Svetasvatara
Upanishad in which he is described as the highest and supreme Being. His
unholy qualities were confined to the background, as expressions of an
ignorant past, and his principal name became Siva, the holy and auspicious
god, the destroyer and cosmic dancer of the Hindu Trinity, who to the
pure and holy manifested as the Supreme Being or Mahadeva and to the
wicked as Kalabhairava, the fearsome one, or Kali, the dark goddess. As
time passed by the auspicious names of Siva grew in number, as is
evident from 1008 names mentioned in the Sivapurana, suggestive of his
increasing popularity and mass appeal, and the sivalingas and siva
temples were erected all over the subcontinent as a mark of respect
and devotion and to counter the growing influence of ascetic religions
like Jainism and Buddhism. When Buddhism declined
in southern India, many Buddhist caves and monuments were converted into
places of Siva worship.
Siva of Foreign Traditions
According to James Talboys Wheeler10 , "Siva was a mystic deity of
Turanian origin, and described as half-intoxicated with drugs, and
associated
with ideas of death and reproduction". According to Peter Berresford Ellis11, the ancient
Celtic god Cerunnnos, the lord
of the animals and a major god in the Celtic pantheon, was Siva. So was Dagda, the good God of the Irish mythology.
They appear frequently in the
images as seated in the classic lotus position, reminiscent of the images of
lord of the animals of the Indus Valley seals. In some images Dadga carries a
club, like the ancient Sibis, with which he can both destroy and
restore people to life. The Celts also believed in mother goddess, just as the
followers of ancient Saivism.
Siva is often compared with Dionysus or Bacchus, the Greek god of
wine, ecstasy and vegetation, born to Zeus and the Theban princess
Semele. Dionysus incurred the wrath of her rival, Hera, the jealous wife
of Zeus, when he traveled to the underworld to rescue his mother. She
inflicted madness upon him and made him wander the earth in a state of
enchanted madness. During his wanderings he met Rhea who not only cured
his madness, but also, for the benefit of his followers, taught him the
secrets of happy afterlife. Dionysus continued to roam the earth,
accompanied by his enthusiastic followers who clashed cymbals,
inflicting madness upon those who opposed him or doubted his divinity.
Some European historians erroneously believed that the worship of Siva
evolved out of ancient Dionysian cults, where as the opposite is true. About the antecedents of Dionysus, Madame
Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophical Society, writes thus12 :
"Bacchus, as Dionysus, is of Indian origin. Cicero
mentions him as a son of Thyone and Nisus. Dionusos means the
god Dis from Mount Nys in India. Bacchus, crowned with ivy, or kissos,
is Christna, one of whose names was Kissen. Dionysus is preeminently the
deity on whom were centered all the hopes for future life; in short, he
was the god who was expected to liberate the souls of men from their
prisons of flesh. Orpheus, the poet-Argonaut, is also said to have come
on earth to purify the religion of its gross, and terrestrial
anthropomorphism, he abolished human sacrifice and instituted a mystic
theology based on pure spirituality. Cicero calls Orpheus a son of
Bacchus. It is strange that both seem to have originally come from
India. At least, as Dionysus Zagreus, Bacchus is of undoubted Hindu
origin. Some writers deriving a curious analogy between the name of
Orpheus and an old Greek term, orphos, dark or tawny-colored, make him
Hindu by connecting the term with his dusky Hindu complexion."
Conclusion
In ancient India three religious traditions rose to prominence,
namely Saivism, Brahmanism and Jainism, of which Saivism was the most
ancient. Brahmanism or Vedism, assimilated the best of both these
traditions and transformed itself into a religion of great complexity
and diversity. While both Vaishnavism and Buddhism grew partly out of
Brahmanical and partly out of Jain traditions, Saivism grew entirely by
itself. From Saivism Hinduism derived concepts such as monism,
Samkhya, Yoga and Prakriti, while from Jainism it assimilated concepts
such as karma, nonviolence and transmigration of souls. Over a period
time Saivism became part of Hinduism, where as Jainism maintained its
status as a separate religion. Siva, whom the vedic people revered and
feared, became an important deity of the Hindu pantheon and one of the
Trinity gods of Hinduism. Saivism continued to enrich the philosophic, religious and
temple traditions of Hinduism for centuries, while its more serious
followers grouped themselves into several sects and continued to worship
Siva in specific ways, enriching in the process both Hindu mythology and
philosophy.
Suggested Further Reading
Footnotes
1. Herodotus called them Termilois. Isidore (sixth century BC) of
Seville referred them as Garamantes. The Lycians of Asia Minor referred
themselves as Trammili in their inscriptions.
2. Brahui, an ancient Dravidian language is still spoken in some part
of Baluchistan, on the Iranian border.
3. The Georgian, Basque and Peuhl languages of Europe are considered
to be Dravidian languages.
4. Sadguru Sivaya Subramanyaswami, read the Lemurian scrolls from the
Akashic records and translated them for the benefit of mankind. You can
get a copy of these scrolls from here or read the online version from
here.
5. The Pelasagi of pre-Hellenic Greece were probably Dravidians
6. The languages of American Indians are agglutinative. Their blood
group is predominantly O positive like that of the Basques whose
language is also agglutinative and Dravidian.
7. The Ancient Sumerians worshipped mother goddess, known as the Lady
of the Mountains and father God known as the Lord of the Animals. The
Sumerian were called Black Faces, just as the followers of Kalamukha
(black face) sect of Saivism are called even today.
8. The Satarudriya of Yajurveda
9. Religious Thought and Life in India: An Account of the Religions of
the Indian Peoples, By Sir Monier Monier-Williams.
10. James Talboys Wheeler, The History of India From the Earliest Ages.
11. The Celts : a history. By:, Peter Berresford Ellis. Type:, English
: Book : Non-fiction. Publisher:, New York : Carroll & Graf, 2004
12. Isis Unveiled by H. P. Blavatsky -- Chapter 2, Part 2, Vol. 2 --
Theosophical University Press Online Edition
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