Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Deities

Shiva

SHIH-vah
Also Known As Nilakantha The blue throated, from the myth in which Shiva holds the poison of the churned ocean in his throat.
Hindu Deities

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Shiva is one of the two great gods of classical Hinduism and the supreme reality for Shaivas. He is the ascetic of Mount Kailasa, ash-smeared and matted-haired, holding the Ganges in his hair and a crescent above it, and equally the householder with Parvati, Ganesha and Kartikeya. He destroys within a scheme in which destruction precedes renewal, and he is worshipped overwhelmingly not in human form but as the linga, an aniconic shaft set in a yoni base. His Vedic antecedent is Rudra. John Marshall read a seated horned figure on a Mohenjo-daro seal as a proto-Shiva in 1928 and again in 1931; Doris Srinivasan takes the lateral projections for bovine ears rather than faces, and the identification is not established.

Facts
Status
Status Within the Tradition
The teaching of one school or lineage within the tradition 2
Identity
Gender
Male 1
Cult
Principal Cult Centre
Varanasi (Kashi Vishwanath), Mount Kailasa, and the twelve Jyotirlinga shrines 1
Attributes and Iconography
Nandi the bull, and the linga 1
Attributes and Iconography
The ash-smeared ascetic with matted hair 1
Attributes and Iconography
The crescent moon and the Ganges in his hair 1
Attributes and Iconography
The third eye, the trishula, the damaru drum, a cobra and a tiger skin 1
Attributions
Mythic Association
Shiva is worshipped both in image form and as the aniconic linga, and Puranic myth casts him as the ascetic of Mount Kailash whose dance, the Tandava, can both create and destroy. 2
Attestation
Era of Attestation
1500 BCE to 2026 CE 1
Veneration Today
Actively venerated in a living tradition 1
Meaning in the Attesting Source
Shiva, meaning the auspicious one, is widely held by scholars to have absorbed the fierce Vedic storm god Rudra, whose name and epithets Shiva inherits in later Hindu scripture. 3
Historicity
Legendary: known from narrative tradition, not the historical record 2
Belief
Theology
Monotheistic: one God 2
Function
Domain / Function
Fertility and generation 1
Domain / Function
Cosmic order and truth 1
Domain / Function
Magic and sorcery 1
Domain / Function
Dance and theatre 1
Domain / Function
Destruction and dissolution 1
Disputed
Origin of the Name
Shiva's name is traditionally glossed as the auspicious one, though scholars debate whether this began as a euphemistic title for the fiercer Vedic Rudra rather than an original name. 1
Shiva's name is traditionally glossed as the auspicious one. Scholars debate whether this is itself a later euphemistic title layered onto the more fearsome Vedic Rudra rather than an original meaning of the name, and the question of priority between the epithet and the god it came to name is unresolved.
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The Linga, and What It Is and Is Not

The overwhelming majority of Shiva worship is directed not at an image of a god with a face and limbs but at the linga: a smooth vertical shaft, usually stone, set into a circular or squared base called the yoni. It stands in the sanctum of every Shaiva temple. Milk, water, honey and bilva leaves are poured over it continuously, and at the great sites the stone has been worn visibly concave by centuries of that pouring.

The word linga means mark or sign. The classical theological reading is that it is precisely a sign and not a portrait: Shiva is held to be beyond form, and the linga is the minimum shape that can stand for a presence without describing it. The Lingodbhava story makes this explicit. Brahma and Vishnu argue over which of them is supreme, and a column of fire appears with no visible top or bottom; Brahma flies up as a goose and Vishnu digs down as a boar, and neither reaches an end. The point of the story is the failure.

The anatomical reading, that the linga is a phallus and the yoni a vulva, is not an invention of outsiders: the Sanskrit words carry those senses, some texts develop them, and the association of Shiva with generative power is old and real. But Shaiva devotees very largely do not experience the object that way, and a good deal of colonial writing treated the anatomical sense as the whole truth and the theological sense as an embarrassed later cover story. Both readings are present in the tradition, they are weighted quite differently by different schools, and the atlas does not adjudicate between them.

Twelve jyotirlinga, lingas of light, are the principal Shaiva pilgrimage sites, from Somnath in Gujarat to Rameshwaram at the southern tip. At Amarnath in Kashmir the object of pilgrimage is not carved at all: it is a stalagmite of ice that forms and melts each year.

Rudra, the Indus Seal, and the Problem of Origins

Shiva has no single point of origin that scholarship can identify, and the honest account of where he comes from is an account of several unresolved arguments.

The clearest thread is Rudra. The Rigveda gives Rudra only three of its one thousand and twenty-eight hymns, and treats him with an anxiety it uses for no other god: he is asked to spare people, cattle and horses, to strike somewhere else, and he is called shiva, kindly, in what reads plainly as placation rather than description. The Shatarudriya of the Yajurveda salutes him in a hundred aspects, including thieves, hunters and men of the wilderness, and the Shvetashvatara Upanishad takes the further step of treating him as the single god behind everything. That is a traceable line from a marginal Vedic figure to a supreme one.

The other claimed thread is not traceable. In 1928, and at greater length in 1931, John Marshall identified a seated horned figure on a seal from Mohenjo-daro as a prototype of Shiva, on four grounds: three faces, horns, a posture he read as yogic, and surrounding animals matching Shiva's epithet Pashupati, lord of animals. The identification entered popular writing and has stayed there. It has not held up well. Herbert Sullivan questioned the male reading in 1964. Doris Srinivasan argued that the lateral projections are bovine ears rather than faces and that the figure is better read as a divine buffalo-man. Asko Parpola compared the pose to Proto-Elamite seated bulls. Gregory Possehl accepted a deity in a ritual posture but held that calling it proto-Shiva goes too far, and Wendy Doniger has written that whatever the resemblances, we cannot know.

The Indus script is undeciphered. Until it is read, no religious identification of any Indus image can be more than a proposal, and this atlas states Marshall's claim as his and not as fact.

Dionysos of the Indians: An Ancient Identification and a Modern One

Greek writers who came east with and after Alexander described an Indian god they called Dionysos, and ancient texts of that period call Shiva the Indian Dionysos and Dionysos a god of the Orient. The grounds offered for the identification were the bull, the snakes, the dancing, the ecstatic following and the freedom from ordinary restraint. This is interpretatio graeca: the habitual Greek practice of naming a foreign god by the nearest Greek one rather than learning a new name, and it is evidence about Greek habits of mind before it is evidence about Shiva.

Two distinct claims get confused here and should be kept apart.

The first is that the ancient identification was made. That is well attested and is a fact about the Hellenistic period. Megasthenes, whose Indica survives only through later writers, principally Arrian, gave the Indians a Dionysos who founded cities, gave them laws, taught them to sow seed, and stood at the head of a list of a hundred and fifty-three kings running down to Chandragupta. That is a civilisational founding-myth in Greek dress, and it is doing chronological work as much as religious work.

The second claim is that the identification reflects a real historical relationship, whether a shared Proto-Indo-European inheritance or a later borrowing. Roger Woodward has noted parallel phallic symbolism across Indo-European religions and suggested a connection; others argue for indigenous and tribal origins for Shiva that owe nothing to Europe. That argument is open.

The same care applies to the Herakles the Greeks reported. Arrian places him among the Surasenians, in a territory containing Methora and Cleisobora on the river Iobares. Mathura on the Yamuna is the Krishna heartland, and Edwin Bryant has argued on that geography that the Greek Herakles is Krishna-Vasudeva. Others have proposed Balarama or Indra. The reading remains debated, and the atlas attributes it rather than asserting it.

Correspondences & Relations

Archetypes

Pantheons

Cross-Tradition Connections

Addressed By

Later Shaiva reception identifies the three-eyed power with Shiva.

The panchakshara, na mah shi va ya, is central to Shaiva theology and practice.

Source An Introduction to HinduismGavin Flood
Source The MahabharataVyasa (attributed)
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Associated With

Abhaya, Mudras
Source A Sanskrit-English DictionaryMonier Monier-Williams

Why this is disputed. Adams Peak is one of Asias few genuinely multireligious pilgrimage sites, and the footprint mark at its summit is claimed by four traditions at once. Hindus read the mark as Shivas own footprint, left where the god once stood; Buddhists read the same mark as the Buddhas, and Muslims and Christians read it as Adams, left when he first set foot on earth after the fall. No independent physical evidence adjudicates between the readings, and each community continues to climb and venerate the mountain on its own terms.

Source The Princeton Dictionary of BuddhismRobert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.
Akka Mahadevi, Figures

Every vachana she wrote is signed with the name Chennamallikarjuna, the lord white as jasmine, a local form of Shiva.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)
Annapurna, Deities

The story attached to Annapurna's temple at Varanasi has Shiva himself come to her with a begging bowl, having taught that the world is illusion, and been answered that hunger is not.

Ashtami, Tithis

This source names Shiva directly: "and its presiding deity is Rudra (Shiva)."

Source Muhurta ChintamaniRama Daivajna

This source names Shiva directly: "the festival stages the Hindu myth of Shiva roused from yogic sleep by Shakti, who then dances the universe and time into being, with performances read as tracing the soul's passage through the..."

This source names Shiva directly: "Parva festival's Shaiva mythology, Shiva roused by Shakti and the four cosmic ages, its solar calendar spring timing, and its bond with Seraikela Chhau."

Chaturdashi, Tithis

This source names Shiva directly: "beginnings, and its presiding deity is Shiva (Rudra) in fierce form, or Kali."

Ganga, Deities

Because Ganga's fall from heaven would have shattered the earth, Shiva caught her descent in his matted hair, which is why she is shown streaming from his head.

Shiva received the falling river in his matted hair so that the impact would not shatter the earth, and Kashi is his city.

Source Banaras: City of LightDiana L. Eck

This source names Shiva directly: "hatha manuals, and its claim that Shiva taught eighty four, not for whether those numbers or techniques are historically older than this specific text."

Source Gheranda SamhitaGheranda (the text's own attribution)
Indus Valley, Regions

What is not known, and what would settle it. John Marshall read a seated horned figure on a Mohenjo-daro seal as a forerunner of Shiva in 1928 and again in 1931. The Indus script that would let the seal be read on its own terms has never been deciphered, and Doris Srinivasan's own iconological re-assessment finds the proto-Shiva identification unsupported by the seal's own details, reading the lateral projections as bovine ears rather than a second face. Whether the figure represents an early form of Shiva cannot be settled without a decipherment that does not yet exist.

Source Mohenjo-Daro and the Indus CivilizationJohn Marshall
Kali, Figures

This source names Shiva directly: "Later Puranic and Tantric retelling casts her as Shiva's fierce consort, dancing in the cremation ground in a rage checked, in one widely told scene, only when Shiva throws himself beneath her..."

Source Devi Mahatmya (Durga Saptashati)Anonymous
Kamadeva, Deities

The gods send Kamadeva to break Shiva's meditation so a son can be conceived to kill the demon Taraka; Shiva opens his third eye and burns Kamadeva to ash on the spot.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)

This source names Shiva directly: "holds to have been revealed by Shiva, and it is counted among the earliest and most authoritative of the group."

Source Hindu Tantric and Sakta Literature (Goudriaan and Gupta)Teun Goudriaan and Sanjukta Gupta

Shaiva cult, expressed in the linga installed at the summit of the temple mountains, was the dominant royal religion for most of the empire.

Source The Civilization of AngkorCharles Higham

This source names Shiva directly: "(an Ashtami), presided over by Rudra (Shiva)."

Source Muhurta ChintamaniRama Daivajna

This source names Shiva directly: "(a Chaturdashi), presided over by Shiva (Rudra) in fierce form, or Kali."

Source Muhurta ChintamaniRama Daivajna

This source names Shiva directly: "with the Pradosha worship of Shiva at dusk."

Source Muhurta ChintamaniRama Daivajna

This source names Shiva directly: "presented as a dialogue between Shiva and the Goddess Parvati on the philosophy, ethics and ritual framework of Kaula practice."

Lalleshwari, Figures

Her vakhs teach the non dual Shaivism of Kashmir, in which Shiva is the single consciousness the world expresses.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)

This source names Shiva directly: "Tantra presented as a dialogue between Shiva and the Goddess in which she asks how liberation is to be attained in the present, degenerate age (Kali Yuga), and it is unusual among Tantras for its..."

This source names Shiva directly: "figure as a prototype of the Hindu god Shiva, first proposed in 1928, is a report-era interpretive claim that later archaeology and Indology have not confirmed."

Source Mohenjo-Daro and the Indus CivilizationJohn Marshall

This source names Shiva directly: "cut down by the goddess Kali after Shiva rules that a woman falls outside the boon's protection."

Source Mudiyettu (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

Pashupati, the lord of animals, is the form of Shiva the temple is for.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)

The tallest of the three main shrines is his.

Source UNESCO World Heritage ListUnited Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

This source names Shiva directly: "Hindu gods including Durga, Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma as she pursues the demon lord Mahabalasura."

Source Raji: An Ancient Epic (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
Shakti, Deities

A saying captures the relationship: Shiva without Shakti is shava, a corpse, since pure consciousness without its energy is motionless; Shakti gives Shiva the capacity to create, sustain and dissolve.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)
Shani, Deities

Shani is regarded as a form and a devotee of Shiva, and his hardships are understood as the just reward of deeds ripening under Shiva's own law of karma.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)
Shashthi, Tithis

This source names Shiva directly: "Kartikeya (Skanda), the warrior son of Shiva."

Source Muhurta ChintamaniRama Daivajna

This source names Shiva directly: "This bronze sculpture depicts Shiva as Nataraja, the Lord of Dance, performing the anandatandava, the dance of bliss, one of the most recognized images of Hindu sacred art and the form under which..."

This source names Shiva directly: "scholarly translation and study of the Shiva Sutras, a foundational text of nondual Kashmir Shaiva yoga."

One of the twelve jyotirlingas.

Source Somanatha: The Many Voices of a HistoryRomila Thapar

This source names Shiva directly: "creator deity, identified with Rudra-Shiva, as the single highest reality behind the impersonal Brahman of earlier texts, making it a foundational document for later theistic Vedanta and for..."

The shrine is a Shiva temple and its linga was the object destroyed.

This source names Shiva directly: "seal as an early depiction of a proto-Shiva figure in yogic posture surrounded by animals."

Trayodashi, Tithis

This source names Shiva directly: "and is associated with the worship of Shiva on Pradosha."

Source Muhurta ChintamaniRama Daivajna

Worn coiled around Shiva's neck as a garland; Shiva swallows the poison Vasuki vomits during the churning.

Source Bhagavata PuranaAnonymous

Children

Ayyappan, Deities

Ayyappan's own description: "held to be the son of Shiva and of Vishnu in the female form Mohini." Source already cited on the entity.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)
Ganesha, Deities

Ganesha's own description: "He is the son of Shiva and Parvati." Source already cited on the entity.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)
Kartikeya, Deities

Kartikeya's own description: "second son of Shiva and Parvati." Source already cited on the entity.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)

Depicted In

Confirmed card in the deck's corrected multi-pantheon scope (Hindu); jrriveracorner.wordpress.com full card list, corroborated independently for this figure.

Source Gods and Titans (official deck site)Stacey Demarco and Jimmy Manton

Derived from This

Mahakala, Deities

Why this is disputed. Mahakala's name and much of his form are taken from Shiva, recast by Buddhist tantric texts as a worldly deity subdued and bound to oath. This is a Buddhist claim about a Hindu god, made by Buddhist authors, and Shaivas do not concede it.

Source The Princeton Dictionary of BuddhismRobert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.

Held to Be the Same Figure

Ardhanarishvara is Shiva and Parvati in a single body divided down the vertical axis, the right side male with matted hair, ash and the bull.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)
Bhairava, Deities

Bhairava is Shiva in his terrifying aspect; the Puranas explain him as arising when Shiva severs the fifth head of Brahma.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)
Dakshinamurti, Deities

Dakshinamurti is Shiva as the teacher, seated beneath a banyan facing south, teaching the identity of the individual self and the absolute in silence.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)
Nataraja, Deities

Nataraja is Shiva as lord of the dance, the standing bronze form developed in the Tamil south under the Cholas.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Married To

Parvati, Deities

Parvati's own description: "the consort of Shiva." Source already cited on the entity.

Sati, Deities

Sati's own description: "the first wife of Shiva." Source already cited on the entity.

Opposed By

Daksha, Deities

Daksha excludes his son in law Shiva from his sacrifice, the insult that draws Virabhadra to destroy the rite and behead him.

Source Bhagavata PuranaAnonymous

Related To

Mala beads of rudraksha seed carry an association with Shiva.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)
Rudra, Deities

Why this is disputed. Rudra is the Vedic god out of whom Shiva develops, but the two are not simply one figure under two names. Whether Rudra is a single deity who evolved into Shiva or several older figures gathered under one name is disputed among scholars.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Sacred to This Deity

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)

Lingayatism is a Shiva devotional tradition centered on the ishtalinga worn on the body.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
Varanasi, Cities

Shiva is held to be present in Varanasi as Vishwanath, lord of all, and to have founded the city.

Source Banaras: City of LightDiana L. Eck

Symbolized By

Source An Introduction to HinduismGavin Flood

Worshipped In

Hinduism, Religions
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Sources
1. Encyclopedia of Hinduism
Denise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.), Routledge, 2008s.v. ShivaView the Source
2. An Introduction to Hinduism
Gavin Flood, Cambridge University Press, 1996View the Source
3. Vedic Mythology
Arthur Anthony Macdonell, Karl J. Trubner, Strassburg, 1897Vedic Mythology, p. 4, A.A. Macdonell
Quote, Vedic Mythology, p. 4, A.A. Macdonell
the first appearance of an old god of the Rigveda under the new name of Siva
View the Source
Mohenjo-Daro and the Indus Civilization
John Marshall, Arthur Probsthain, 1931On the seated horned figure of the Mohenjo-daro seal
Quote, On the seated horned figure of the Mohenjo-daro seal
Marshall identifies the figure as a prototype of Shiva on four grounds: three faces, horns, a posture he reads as yogic, and the surrounding animals answering to the epithet Pashupati. The atlas states this as Marshall's claim, not as fact.
The So-Called Proto-Siva Seal from Mohenjo-Daro: An Iconological Assessment
Doris Meth Srinivasan, Archives of Asian Art (Asia Society)On the reading of the lateral projections
Quote, On the reading of the lateral projections
Srinivasan argues the projections are bovine ears rather than faces and that the figure is better read as a divine buffalo-man. The Indus script is undeciphered and no religious identification of an Indus image can yet be more than a proposal.
Indica
Ctesias of Cnidus, Bloomsbury Academic (Bristol Classical Press), 2011Arrian on the Indian Dionysos
Quote, Arrian on the Indian Dionysos
Greek writers of Alexander's period call Shiva the Indian Dionysos. That the ancient identification was made is attested; whether it reflects a real historical relationship, Indo-European or otherwise, is a separate and open question.
View the Source
Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005View the Source
Open Questions (1 open question)
Whom does the horned seated figure on the Indus Valley seals represent?

The Indus script that labels these seals has never been deciphered, so the horned seated figure on seal M-304 and its kin cannot be read against a text that would say who or what it depicts. The proto-Shiva reading popularized in early twentieth century scholarship rests on visual resemblance to later Hindu iconography (the seated posture, the horns, the surrounding animals), not on any legible caption, and Srinivasan's own iconological re-assessment finds the identification unsupported by the seal's own details.

What would resolve this A decipherment of the Indus script that survives scholarly scrutiny, or an independently datable bilingual inscription pairing Indus signs with a known language, would let the seals be read on their own terms rather than through later Vedic or Hindu iconography projected backward onto them.
Indus Valley archaeology, epigraphy and comparative iconographyDoris Meth Srinivasan, The So-Called Proto-Siva Seal from Mohenjo-Daro: An Iconological Assessment

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