Ardhanarishvara is Shiva and his consort Parvati shown as a single body divided down the vertical axis, the right side male and the left side female. The male half carries the marks of Shiva: the matted hair, the ash, the tiger skin, a broad chest, and often the bull Nandi beside it; the female half carries those of the goddess: an earring, a rounded breast, a curved hip, coloured henna on the foot, and softer form. The image is one of the most philosophically loaded in Hindu art, and it is understood less as a distinct deity to be worshipped than as a statement about the nature of the divine. It asserts that the god and the goddess, consciousness and its energy, Shiva and Shakti, are not finally two but one, inseparable aspects of a single reality; the active power of the goddess is not external to the god but constitutive of him.
The form appears from at least the early centuries CE and is explained in the Puranas through stories in which the goddess merges into Shiva's body or is created as his other half. Ardhanarishvara has drawn particular attention in modern discussion for the way it holds the masculine and feminine together in one divine person, but its traditional meaning is the metaphysical unity of the two principles whose interplay, in Shaiva thought, generates and sustains the whole world.