Beneath Shiva's planted foot lies a small figure, the dwarf Apasmara (also called Muyalaka), who personifies ignorance, forgetfulness and the delusion that binds beings to suffering; the god dances upon him, holding down the force of ignorance without destroying it, since ignorance too has its place in the ordered whole. The whole figure is enclosed in a circle of fire, the prabhamandala, understood as the cosmos itself, the boundless cycle of creation and dissolution through which the dance moves.
The image thus compresses a complete cosmology into a single form: the same god, in one dance, creates with his drum, sustains with his gesture of protection, destroys with his fire, veils reality by treading on the dwarf, and offers liberation with his raised foot, the five acts that Shaiva theology assigns to Shiva. The great temple of Chidambaram in Tamil Nadu is the home of Nataraja, where the dancing Shiva is the central deity. Widely admired as one of the supreme achievements of Indian art, the bronze Nataraja is above all, for those who worship him, a vision of the divine activity that upholds and dissolves the universe.