SIVA

also spelled Siwa, or Shiva, one of the main deities of Hinduism, worshiped as the paramount lord by the Saiva (Shaivite) sects of India (see Saivism). Siva (Sanskrit: Auspicious One) is one of the most complex gods of India, embodying seemingly contradictory qualities. He is both the destroyer and the restorer, the great ascetic and the symbol of sensuality, the benevolent herdsman of souls and the wrathful avenger. Though some of the combinations of roles may be explained by Siva's identification with earlier mythological figures, they also arise from a tendency in Hinduism to combine complementary qualities in a single ambiguous figure. Siva's female consort is known under various manifestations as Uma, Sati, Parvati, Durga, and Kali (Siva is also sometimes paired with the supreme goddess, Sakti). The divine couple, together with their sonsthe six-headed Skanda and the elephant-headed Ganesaare said to dwell on Mount Kailasa in the Himalayas. Siva's mount and animal image is the bull Nandi; a sculpture of Nandi sits opposite the main sanctuary of every Siva temple. In temples and in private shrines Siva is worshiped in his fundamental form of the linga (q.v.), or phallus. Siva is usually depicted in painting and sculpture as white or ash-coloured, with a blue neck (from holding in his throat the poison thrown up at the churning of the cosmic ocean, which threatened to destroy humankind), his hair arranged in a coil of matted locks (jatamakuta) and adorned with the crescent moon and the Ganges (according to legend he brought the Ganges River to earth by allowing her to trickle through his hair, thus breaking her fall). He has three eyes, the third eye bestowing inward vision but capable of burning destruction when focused outward. He wears a garland of skulls and a serpent around his neck and carries in his two (sometimes four) hands a deerskin, a trident, a small hand drum, or a club with a skull at the end. Siva is represented in a variety of forms: in a pacific mood with his consort Parvati and son Skanda, as the cosmic dancer (Nataraja), as a naked ascetic, as a mendicant beggar, as a yogin, and as the androgynous union of Siva and his consort in one body, half-male and half-female (Ardhanarisvara). Among his common epithets are Sambhu (Benignant), Sankara (Beneficent), Pasupati (Lord of Beasts), Mahesa (Great Lord), and Mahadeva (Great God).