From the dance of creation to the dust of death

Depictions of Hindu gods are immensely interesting. Observe the iconography of most gods (or goddesses) in the Hindu pantheon, and you’ll begin to detect patterns emerge: most are impeccably outfitted, prized finery in place, lyrically holding a favourite flower or a defining weapon, the downward arm at a very precise parallel distance from the divine partner alongside or casually resting upon a musical instrument and a vahan strategically placed at the feet. 

This is why, each time I came upon a picture of Shiva, it fascinated and perplexed me in equal measure. Here was a god — the primordial one at that — who had none of the frills and jazz of his counterparts. And yet millions of devotees paid obeisance to the ash-smeared deity with matted hair, blue neck, known to smoke weed and drink bhang. A foreigner would surely mistake such a being for a hipster. Before you grimace at that thought, ponder what these elements in Shiva’s iconography truly represent. 

Writer Namita Gokhale says that as the perpetual outsider, Shiva symbolises a philosophy and worldview that is terrifying and yet life affirming. “The divine ashes, the Bhasma, with which his body is smeared are at the same time both essence and substance. Shiva, as the god of the dark side, the Lord of the cremation grounds, seeks to conserve the mysteries, or Rahasya, of esoteric knowledge from all but the initiated and the true seekers of transcendental knowledge,” says Gokhale. 

“Living in a crematorium and smearing ash speaks of smashan vairagya — aloofness from materialism — and the constant understanding that one has to die and be reduced to ashes,” explains Professor Anita Rane-Kothare, who heads the Ancient Indian Culture department at St Xavier’s College, Mumbai. 

And when Shiva consumes opium, or afeem, by way of bhang or chillum, it leads to ecstasy “wherein one sees beyond the materialistic world”, says Professor Rane-Kothare. “Yet the sages have a capacity to be present in the materialistic world. These are all different ways of attaining enlightenment or moksha.” 

Gokhale adds that all the paradoxes of human existence are encompassed in the figure of Lord Shiva. “Destroyer and protector, supreme ascetic and Lord of the universe, he is also Ardhnarishwara, carrying the polarities of the masculine and feminine within him. As Neelkantha, he swallowed the poison thrown up in the churning of the Amrit Manthan to save the three worlds. Yet, crazed with grief by the death of his consort Sati, he set about destroying the three worlds,” says The Book of Shiva author. 

This aspect is also manifest in the lingam and the yoni, which represents the birth or the creation of the universe, and Shiva’s avataar Natraja’s Tandava. “The dance of death that heralds pralaya, the dissolution of the universe, with its primordial rhythm, asserting both the beginning and the end of all life,” says Gokhale, pointing out the words of physicist Fritjof Capra, who described the Tandava as the “pulsating process of creation and destruction”.