Lord Shiva. The water flowing from his locks is a depiction of the River Ganga considered to be a goddess in Hinduism. In Hindu mythology, when Ganga descended from the heavens, the Earth could not bear her flow so Lord Shiva agreed to bear it. Lord Shiva's skin turned bluish as he drank the Halahala poison that came out of the churning of the oceans.

Shiva / Siva (Sanskrit: शिव, and written Úiva in IAST transliteration) is a form of God in Hinduism. Adi Sankara interprets the name Siva to mean "One who purifies everyone by the utterance of His name" or the Pure One, that is, one who is not affected by the three gunas (characteristics) of Prakrti (matter): Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas. Additionally, Siva can also mean, "the Auspicious One." He is often depicted as the husband of Uma.

 

Shiva is the third form of God as the Destroyer, one of the trimurti (popularly called the "Hindu trinity"). In the trimurti, Shiva is the destroyer, while Brahma and Vishnu are creator and preserver, respectively. However, even though he represents destruction, he is viewed as a positive force (The Destroyer of Evil), since creation follows destruction. Worshippers of Shiva are called Shaivaites. For Shaivaites, however, Shiva is the only Ultimate Reality.

Shiva is not limited to the personal characteristics as he is given in many images and can transcend all attributes. Hence, Shiva is often worshipped in an abstract manner, as God without form, in the form of lingam (or linga). This view is similar in some ways to the view of God in Semitic religions such as Islam or Judaism, which hold that God has no personal characteristics. Hindus, on the other hand, believe that God can transcend all personal characteristics yet can also have personal characteristics for the grace of the embodied human devotee. Personal characteristics are a way for the devotee to focus on God.

Hindus believe that if we can hear the voice of God in the way Judaeo-Christian religions believe that God communicates, then it is not neccessarily wrong to view a form of God so long as it is recognized that God is not limited to a particular form. Shiva is aadi (without beginning/birth) and ananta (without end/death).

According to the Bhagavata Purana, Lord Shiva appeared from the forehead of Lord Brahma. When Lord Brahma asked his sons (the four kaumaras} to go forth and create progeny in the universe, they refused. This angered Lord Brahma and in his anger a crying child appeared from his forehead. As the child was crying he was called Rudra, and became Lord Shiva. Lord Shiva was asked to go forth and create progeny, but when Lord Brahma observed his power, as they shared the qualities of Lord Shiva, he asked him to observe austerities instead of creating progeny. A slightly different version is told in the Shiva Purana: in the Shiva Purana, Shiva promises Brahma that an aspect of his, Rudra, will be born and this aspect is identical to Him.

Some of his chief attributes are signified by his hundreds of names, such as:-
Mahabaleshwar (Great God of Strength)
Tryambakam (Three-Eyed One, i.e. All-Knowing)
Mahakala (Great Time, i.e. Conqueror of Time)
Nilakantha (The one with a Blue Throat), etc.

Shiva is the supreme God of Shaivism, one of the two main branches of Hinduism today (the other being Vaishnavism). His abode is called Kailasa. His holy mount (called vahana in Sanskrit) is Nandi, the Bull. His attendant is named Bhadra. Shiva is usually represented by the Shiva linga (or lingam). He is generally represented in Hindu tradition as immersed in deep meditation, on Mount Kailash (reputed to be the same as the Mount Kailash in the south of Tibet, near Manasarovar Lake) in the Himalaya, which is supposed to be his abode.

Shiva's consort is Devi, God's energy or God as the Divine Mother who comes in many different forms, one of whom is Kali, the goddess of death. Parvati, a more pacific form of Devi is also popular. Shiva also married Sati, daughter of Daksha, who forbade the marriage. Sati disobeyed her father and Daksha held a Yajna (ritual sacrifice) to Vishnu, but did not invite Shiva. In disgust, Sati sacrificed herself in the same fire Daksha used in his sacrifice. Shiva arrived at the scene, angry at the death of his wife, and killed many of the guests, as well as decapitating Daksha, though he later replaced his head with that of a goat. Shiva created the monster Virabhadra during his quarrel with Daksha, and he was the leader of Shiva's men who came to prevent Daksha from conducting the Yajna. According to legend (Shivpurana, Ramcharitmanas and other Hindu scriptures), this same Sati was reborn in the house of Himalaya (who is almost certainly the mountain-range personified) and performed a great tapa (sequence of austerities, culminating in sustained meditation on the object desired, which in this case, was the Lord Shiva). This tapa caused Shiva to break his Samadhi (State of deep, usually ecstatic meditation) and accept Parvati as his consort.

Siva gave Parashurama his axe. Shiva's great bow is called Pinâka and thus he is also called Pinaki. Most depictions of Siva show the three-pointed spear Trishula in the background.

According to the foundation myth of Kalism, Kali came into existence when Shiva looked into himself; she is his mirror image.

In another version, Kali had gone out to kill demons but she went on a rampage. To stop her, Shiva went and lay down on the ground in front of her path. When Kali stepped on him, she looked down and realized that she had just stepped on Shiva. Feeling ashamed, Kali stuck out her tongue, and the rampage ended.

As Nataraja, Shiva is the Lord of the Dance, and also symbolizes the dance of the Universe/Nature, with all its delicately balanced heavenly bodies and natural laws which complement and balance each other. At times, he is also symbolized as doing his great dance of destruction, called Taandav (Pronounced with a soft 't' and a hard 'd'), at the time of pralaya, or dissolution of the universe.

Some Hindus (non-Saivaites), especially Smartas, believe Shiva to be one of many different forms of the universal Atman, or Brahman, a monistic entity to which all things (essentially), and Shiva, as form of God are identical. Others see him as the one true God from whom all the other deities and principles are emanations, essentially a monotheistic understanding usually related to the bhakti sects of Shaivism.

Although he is defined as a destroyer (or rather recreator), Siva, along with Vishnu, is considered the most benevolent God. One of his names is Aashutosh, he who is easy to please, or, he who gives a lot in return for a little.

Traditionally, unlike Vishnu, Shiva does not have any avatars. However, several persons have been claimed as avatars of him, such as Shankara. Some people consider Hanuman to be an avatar of Shiva.

 

This 14th century statue depicts Shiva (on the left) and his wife Uma (on the right}. It is housed in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

Nayanars (or Nayanmars), saints from Southern India, were mostly responsible for development of Shaivism in the Middle Ages.

The important Shaivite sects were Kashmir Shavaites from Northern India, Lingayats and Virasaivas from Southern India. Saiva Siddhanta is a major Shaivite theory developed in Southern India.

Shiva is an aspect of God or Saguna Brahman,(i.e. God with form) who Hindus pray to. In trimurti belief, he is the aspect of God (i.e., God as the Destroyer) of the trimurti (also called the Hindu Trinity), along with Brahma and Vishnu.

Aspects of God such as Shiva or Vishnu are personal attributes of the impersonal Nirguna Brahman, God without attributes, the type of God similar in Semitic religions such as Islam or Judaism (i.e., God without form or without personal characteristics.) The term "Hindu god" should not be equated with Shiva and is confused with Devas. Devas or demigods, are celestial beings similar to angels as discussed in Judaeo-Christian traditions. Devas in Sanskrit literally means "shining beings".

Siva does not occur in the Vedic hymns as the name of a god, but as an adjective in the sense of "kind", or "auspicious". One of his synonyms, however, is the name of a Vedic deity, the attributes and nature of which show a good deal of similarity to the post-Vedic god. This is Rudra, the god of the roaring storm, usually portrayed in accordance with the element he represents, as a fierce, destructive deity, terrible as a wild beast, whose fearful arrows cause death and disease to men and cattle. He is also called bapardin (wearing his hair spirally braided like a shell), a word which in later times became one of the synonyms of Siva. The Atharva Veda mentions several other names of the same god, some of which appear even placed together, as in one passage Bhava, Sarva, Rudra and Pasupati. Possibly some of them were the names under which one and the same deity was already worshipped in different parts of northern India. This was certainly the case in later times, since it is expressly stated in one of the later works of the Brahmapa period, that Sarva was used by the Eastern people and Bhava by a Western tribe. It is also worthy of note that in the same work, composed at a time when the Vedic triad of Agni, Indra-Vayu and Surya was still recognized, attempts are made to identify Siva of many names with Agni; and that in one passage in the Mahabharata it is stated that the Brahmins said that Agni was Siva.

It is in his character as destroyer that Siva holds his place in the triad, and that he must, no doubt, be identified with the Vedic Rudra. Another very important function appears, however, to have been early assigned to him, on which much more stress is laid in his modern worship, that of destroyer being more especially exhibited in his consort, viz, the character of a generative power, symbolized in the emblem representing Him, (linga) and in the sacred bull (Nandi), the favorite attendant of Him. The non-Aryans have worshipped the linga as a phallic symbol. This feature, however, is entirely alien from the nature of the Vedic god, it has been conjectured with some plausibility, that the linga-worship was originally prevalent among the non-Aryan population, and was thence introduced into the worship of Siva. On the other hand, there can, we think, be little doubt that Siva, in his generative faculty, is the representative of another Vedic god whose nature and attributes go far to account for this particular feature of the modern deity, viz. Pushan.

Siva, originally, no doubt, a solar deity, is frequently invoked, as the lord of nourishment, to bestow food, wealth and other blessings. He is once, jointly with Soma, called the progenitor of heaven and earth, and is connected with the marriage ceremony, where he is asked to lead the bride to the bridegroom and make her prosperous (civatama). Moreover. Lie has the epithet bapardin (spirally braided), as have Rudra and the later Siva, and is called Par upa, or guardian of cattle, whence the latter derives his name Parupati.

Parupa is a strong, powerful, and even fierce and destructive aspect god, who, with his goad or golden spear, smites the foes of his worshipper, and thus in this respect offers at least some points of similarity to Rudra, which may have favored the fusion of the two gods into a monotheistic conception of God, into Shiva.