50 Fun Facts About Shiva

Within the Hindu Trimurti, Shiva is known by which title?

Brahma creates and Vishnu preserves; Shaivas see Shiva as all three at once.

What does the Sanskrit name Shiva literally mean?

The word is used as an adjective in the Rig Veda for several gods, including Rudra.

Who is Shiva's wife?

His epithet Umapati, 'husband of Uma', uses another of her names.

What happens when Shiva opens the third eye on his forehead?

He famously used it on the god of desire who disturbed his meditation.

Which sacred river flows from Shiva's matted hair?

The epithet Gangadhara means 'bearer of the Ganga'; he broke the river's fall from heaven with his locks.

What is the name of Shiva's weapon, a three-pronged spear?

The Pinaka is his bow; the trishula, or trident, is what he carries in most images.

Which bull serves as Shiva's vehicle and sits facing him in his temples?

The Mahabharata and Puranas name the bull as Rudra's mount too, which links the two gods.

Which serpent king is coiled around Shiva's neck?

The same serpent served as the rope when the gods and demons churned the ocean.

Shiva's small hourglass-shaped drum is called what?

Its beat is said to have produced the sounds of the Sanskrit alphabet.

Shiva is usually worshipped in which aniconic form?

The most sacred lingams across India are the Jyotirlingas, 'lingas of light'.

How many Jyotirlinga temples are there in the great Shaiva pilgrimage tradition?

They are scattered across India, from Somnath in Gujarat to Rameshwaram in the far south.

Where in the Himalayas is Shiva's traditional abode?

The real mountain, in Tibet, has never been climbed and pilgrims circle it rather than ascend.

Shiva's throat turned blue after he swallowed what during the churning of the ocean?

He drank it to save the three worlds, and the churning went on to yield the elixir amrita.

Shiva's epithet Neelakantha means what?

Neela is blue and kantha is throat in Sanskrit.

Shiva as Nataraja is the lord of what?

His cosmic dance creates and destroys the universe; the Chidambaram temple in Tamil Nadu is its home.

In Nataraja images, what does Shiva trample beneath his foot?

The dwarf is Apasmara, and the dancer is ringed by flames on a lotus pedestal.

The best-known Nataraja bronzes were cast under which South Indian dynasty?

They emerged in Tamil Nadu around the 8th to 10th centuries and are typically under four feet tall.

A two-metre statue of the dancing Shiva was unveiled in 2004 at which scientific institution?

India gave it to celebrate the laboratory's long association with the country.

Shiva is called Adiyogi, meaning what?

He is the patron of yoga, meditation and the arts, usually shown meditating in a yoga pose.

Shiva is associated with which Vedic storm god, from whom he may partly derive?

In the Rig Veda 'shiva' was merely a flattering epithet applied to Rudra and others.

The Mohenjo-daro seal of a horned seated figure among animals was named after which epithet of Shiva?

It means 'lord of animals'; scholars still argue over whether the figure has anything to do with Shiva.

Shiva's form Ardhanarishvara shows him as what?

It fuses him with his consort to show that the female and male principles are inseparable.

Shiva's fierce form associated with annihilation, whose name means 'terrible', is called what?

Medieval sculptures give him flaming hair, like the fire god Agni.

Shiva is often shown seated on the skin of which animal?

The ascetic god of the mountains sits on the pelt in meditation.

Shiva's rosary beads are typically made from the seeds of which tree?

The name means 'Rudra's tears'.

Shiva's five-syllable mantra is what?

His body is said to consist of five mantras, the pancabrahman.

Shiva's epithet Tripurantaka records his destruction of what?

He shot the flying cities down with a single arrow.

Shiva's five-faced form, whose faces correspond to his five cosmic activities, is called what?

The five activities are creation, preservation, destruction, concealing grace and revealing grace.

Which city is considered specially loved by Shiva and one of the holiest in India?

Its Kashi Vishwanath temple houses one of the Jyotirlingas.

Maha Shivaratri, 'the great night of Shiva', falls in which season?

There is a Shivaratri every lunar month; the great one comes in February or March, and devotees stay awake all night.

Shiva's first wife Sati was the daughter of which king, who snubbed the couple at his fire sacrifice?

Humiliated, she gave up her life, and was reborn as the daughter of the mountains.

Vishnu cut Sati's body into pieces that fell at how many places, each now a goddess shrine?

He used his discus to stop the grief-maddened Shiva's destructive dance.

Shiva's two sons are Ganesha and which god of war?

Kartikeya is also called Skanda and Murugan.

What did Shiva reduce to ashes with his third eye when it disturbed his meditation?

The epithet Tryambakam, 'three-eyed', occurs in many scriptures.

Which lake lies close to Shiva's sacred mountain and forms part of the pilgrimage circuit?

Pilgrims trek to the lake and then circumambulate the mountain, which is sacred to Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Bon.

Why has Shiva's sacred mountain in Tibet never been climbed?

The Chinese government prohibits ascents; there is no recorded successful climb.

The world's tallest statue of Shiva, the 369-foot Statue of Belief, stands in which Indian state?

It is at Nathdwara and ranks fourth among all statues worldwide.

In Java and Bali, Shiva is popularly known by what name?

It comes from the Sanskrit Bhattaraka, 'noble lord'.

In Vajrayana Buddhism, Shiva appears as which dharma-protecting figure?

In Theravada he is Ishana, a deva of the sixth heaven.

Shiva is worshipped as the Supreme Being in which major Hindu tradition?

Shaivas hold that Shiva is 'All and in all', the one who creates, preserves and dissolves alike.

In the goddess-oriented Shakta tradition, Shiva's equal partner and creative energy is called what?

The idea is made visible in the half-woman form Ardhanarishvara.

Shiva's name Mahadeva means what?

Hara, another common name, means 'the remover'.

What does Shiva wear on his head, borrowed by his son Ganesha in some images?

It sits in his piled-up matted hair alongside the Ganga.

Shiva's name that appears in Nepal's great Pashupatinath temple is translated as lord of what?

It is especially an epithet of Rudra, and early excavators applied it to a famous Indus Valley seal.

In the churning of the ocean, Shiva's serpent served as the rope and which mountain as the churning rod?

It sank until Vishnu, as the tortoise Kurma, propped it up on his back.

Shiva's epithet Candraśekhara refers to what feature of his iconography?

The name combines candra, 'moon', with śekhara, 'crest', and the motif dates to the period when Rudra rose to prominence.

In the Hanuman Chalisa, Hanuman is identified as which avatar of Shiva?

Vaishnava texts also call the sage Durvasa a portion of Shiva, and some medieval writers dubbed Adi Shankara an incarnation of the god.

Which text of 400-200 BCE first shows Rudra-Shiva raised from minor Vedic god to supreme being?

Gavin Flood sees it as the earliest seed of theistic devotion to Rudra-Shiva as creator of the cosmos and liberator of souls.

Which regional deity of Maharashtra, centred on Jejuri, has been assimilated as a form of Shiva?

Khandoba is patron of farming and herding castes and is worshipped there in the form of a lingam.

Shiva's union with Mohini, Vishnu's female avatar, produces which deity, identified with Ayyappan?

The story makes Ayyappan, hugely popular in Kerala, a son of both Shiva and Vishnu.