Shaivism

The damaru is one of Shiva Nataraja's two fixed hand attributes in Shaiva iconography.

Kashmir Shaivism is a family of Shaiva schools, and its nondualism is defined against the dualist Shaiva Siddhanta that shares the wider tradition with it.

The Nath Sampradaya developed within the Shaiva tantric milieu, tracing its teaching to Shiva through Matsyendranath and Gorakhnath.

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The ice formation in the cave is venerated as a self-formed lingam, and the pilgrimage to it is made in a short season each summer.

The shrine to Murugan in the limestone caves is the centre of Tamil devotion in Malaysia and the destination of the annual Thaipusam procession.

Danced as temple service in the Tamil Shaiva temples until the practice was outlawed in 1947 and rebuilt as a concert form, so what survives is the repertory and not the service.

The eleventh century temple at Thanjavur is the greatest surviving monument of Chola Shaivism and remains in worship.

Camphor is lit at the close of the offering and burns away completely, leaving nothing, which is the point being made.

The small waisted drum is held in Shiva's hand in the dance, its beat standing for the sound at the beginning of things.

The resin is burned in temple and household offerings and is used as much in the medical tradition as in the ritual one.

The temple at Varanasi holds one of the twelve shrines in which Shiva is worshipped as a column of light, and it has been destroyed and rebuilt repeatedly.

One of the twelve shrines of the column of light, and the highest of them, closed by snow for half the year.

The aniconic column set in its base is the form in which Shiva is worshipped in temple and household alike.

Recited over the sick and the dying, addressed to Shiva as the three-eyed one.

The mountain is held to be the abode of Shiva, and the circuit around it is made without ascending, since climbing it is not attempted.

The consecrated image is treated as a guest and a sovereign, woken, bathed, fed and put to rest on a daily cycle.

Five syllables counted without the Om, which stands outside the count.

The temple holds one of the twelve shrines of the column of light and the longest pillared corridor in India.

Sandalwood paste marks the forehead and the wood is burned before the image, and the tree's scent is treated as cooling in a tradition that reads heat as the problem to be settled.

The thousand names of Shiva, transmitted in several versions of which the best known stands inside the Mahabharata.

Chanted in the temples with the Chamakam following it, and among the oldest Shaiva liturgy still in daily use.

The first of the twelve shrines of the column of light, sacked repeatedly and rebuilt as recently as the middle of the twentieth century.

The trident is Shiva's weapon, it is set on the finial of a Shaiva temple, and its three horizontal lines are drawn in ash across the forehead as the mark by which a Shaiva is known.

Shaiva temple observance is timed by the traditional almanac, which makes the astrological reckoning part of the ordinary running of a temple.

Worn by initiated men of the communities that perform the ceremony, alongside the ash marks of Shaiva practice.

An acharya is the initiating guru of Shaiva Siddhanta and related Shaiva lineages, transmitting mantra and ritual authority to a disciple.

Tamil Nayanar poet-saints made bhakti to Shiva a central devotional practice, later canonized as the Tirumurai, Shaivism's own devotional scripture.

Shiva is the ishta-devata of Shaivism, worshipped as the supreme reality behind the other gods rather than as one deity chosen among equals.

Shaivas keep a strict fast and an all-night vigil, pouring water, milk and bilva leaves over the lingam through four watches of the night while chanting Om Namah Shivaya; it is solemn where most Hindu festivals are festive.

Shaiva puja is offered most often to a lingam rather than a figure, and the offering is poured: water, milk, curd, honey and ghee bathe the stone, with bilva leaves and ash rather than the fuller table of a Vaishnava rite.

Shaiva tantra runs from the nondual Kashmir schools, which read the world as the play of one consciousness, to the Nath and other yogic orders, and it supplies the Agamas that govern much ordinary Shaiva temple worship.

The Tevaram, hymns of the Tamil Nayanar poet-saints to Shiva, is canonical devotional scripture within Shaivism, part of the Tirumurai.

The Tiruvasagam, Manikkavacakar's Tamil hymns to Shiva, is canonical devotional scripture within Shaivism, part of the Tirumurai.

Shaivism claims Shiva himself as the first yogi and lord of yoga, and its Nath and tantric orders developed hatha yoga and the subtle-body practices of the coiled energy, which is the ancestry of most posture-based yoga taught today.

Non-injury is held across the Shaiva schools, with the ascetic orders holding it more strictly than the householder traditions.

The self is held across the Shaiva schools to be real and conscious, and its bondage is described as an obscuring of its own nature rather than as a mistake about it.

Ignorance is held across the Shaiva schools, and the Siddhanta treats the primary bond as an innate impurity rather than as an error that argument could correct.

Giving is held across the Shaiva schools, and the support of renunciants is its characteristic form.

Dharma is held across the Shaiva schools.

The teaching lineage is held across the Shaiva schools, and initiation from a qualified teacher is required in the tantric Shaiva traditions rather than optional.

Karma is held across the Shaiva schools, and in the Siddhanta it is one of three bonds, alongside impurity and the material principle, that Shiva's grace removes.

Liberation across the Shaiva schools is release into Shiva, and the schools divide over whether the released soul becomes equal to him, is absorbed into him, or remains distinct and dependent.

Merit and demerit are held across the Shaiva schools.

The indwelling supreme self is held across the Shaiva schools.

Periodic dissolution is held across the Shaiva schools, and Shiva's role at the dissolution is one of the current's defining images of him.

Collected absorption is held across the Shaiva schools.

Transmigration is held across the Shaiva schools.

Latent impressions are held across the Shaiva schools.

Being, consciousness and bliss are held across the Shaiva schools as descriptions of Shiva.

Ascetic heat is held across the Shaiva schools, and Shiva as the great ascetic is the model for it; the Shaiva renunciant orders are among the most visible carriers of the practice in India.

The three strands are held across the Shaiva schools as the constitution of the material world.

Shri Vidya theology draws on the non-dual Shaiva systems associated with Kashmir; the two traditions have historically overlapped in practitioners and texts.

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