49 Fun Facts About Shiva

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

The Destroyer is only half the story: Shiva is said to end each cycle of the universe so that it can be created anew, which is why Hindus see his destruction as constructive.

What does the Sanskrit name Shiva literally mean?

The Auspicious One began as a compliment: the Rig Veda uses 'shiva', meaning kind or gracious, as an adjective for several gods, and only later did it become the name of one.

Who is Shiva's wife?

Parvati, born a daughter of the mountains, won the ascetic Shiva's affection only after she took up severe austerities of her own.

Which demon king tried to uproot Shiva's mountain home, only for the god to pin him beneath it with one toe?

Ravana, the ten-headed king of Lanka, is said to have stayed trapped under the mountain for a thousand years, and sculptors made the scene a favourite of Indian temple art.

Which sacred river flows from Shiva's matted hair?

The Ganga, the story goes, would have shattered the earth had she fallen straight from heaven, so Shiva caught the river in his matted hair and let her trickle out gently.

What is the name of the pronged spear that Shiva carries in most images?

Trishula has a fiery origin in the Vishnu Purana: the gods' craftsman Vishvakarma ground the excess brilliance off the sun on his lathe and forged Shiva's trident from the filings.

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

Nandi is placed facing the inner shrine so that he can gaze on his master for ever, a model of the devotee whose attention never leaves the god.

Which serpent king served as the churning rope in the myth where Shiva drinks the ocean's poison?

Vasuki let the gods and demons wind him round a mountain and haul him to and fro; in some tellings the strain made him vomit the very poison that Shiva had to catch in his throat.

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

Damaru beats are said to sound the first rhythm of creation, which is why the little drum is held aloft in one of the god's raised hands in his best-known images.

Shiva is usually worshipped in which aniconic form?

The lingam recalls a myth in which Shiva appeared as an endless pillar of fire: Brahma flew up as a bird and Vishnu dug down as a boar, and neither could find where it ended.

Which temple of Shiva did Mahmud of Ghazni sack in the 11th century?

Somnath was rebuilt after that raid, then torn down and raised again several more times over the centuries, which is why the temple on the Gujarat coast today is a twentieth-century building.

Which mountain is traditionally held to be Shiva's home?

Mount Kailash gave its name to the Kailasa temple at Ellora, which eighth-century craftsmen cut downward out of a single mass of rock instead of building it up from blocks.

Which poison, thrown up during the churning of the ocean, turned Shiva's throat blue?

Halahala was a poison fierce enough to destroy creation; Shiva caught it in his throat so that the gods could go on churning for the nectar of immortality they were really after.

Shiva's epithet Neelakantha means what?

Blue-throated is the mark of a rescue: Shiva is said to have held a world-threatening poison in his throat instead of letting it spread, and it stained his neck for good.

Shiva as Nataraja is the lord of what?

The dance is said to have been performed at Chidambaram in Tamil Nadu, and worshippers at the great temple there treat the spot as nothing less than the centre of the universe.

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

A dwarf demon of ignorance, called Apasmara, lies crushed beneath Shiva's planted foot, while the god's other foot, lifted clear, is read as an offer of release to his worshippers.

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

The Cholas wanted gods who could leave the temple: the stone images in the sanctum were too heavy to move, so portable bronzes were cast to be carried through the streets at festivals.

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

CERN in Geneva received the statue as a gift from India, marking a partnership that began in the 1960s; the choice was apt, since writers on physics had likened the figure to the restless motion of subatomic particles.

Shiva is called Adiyogi, meaning what?

The first yogi is the god as ascetic: he gives up every comfort to sit in meditation on his mountain, which is why yogis take him as their patron.

Disguised as a mountain hunter, Shiva fought which hero of the Mahabharata before rewarding him with a divine weapon?

Arjuna and the stranger shot the same wild boar at the same instant and came to blows over whose kill it was; only when the great archer could not win did he realise he was fighting a god.

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

Pashupati was the title the excavator John Marshall borrowed for the seal, seeing an early Shiva in its horned figure; later scholars have called that reading overconfident.

Shiva's form Ardhanarishvara shows him as what?

Half man, half woman: in one legend the sage Bhringi would bow only to Shiva, so the goddess merged with her husband, and the sage turned into a beetle and bored a path between the two halves.

Which fierce form did Shiva take to cut off one of the god Brahma's five heads?

Bhairava paid for the deed: Brahma's skull stuck fast to his hand and served as his begging bowl through long wanderings, until at last it fell away at a holy city.

Shiva the ascetic is usually shown wearing or sitting on the skin of which animal?

A tiger was conjured up by jealous forest sages to kill him, in one telling of the story; Shiva made short work of the beast and kept its skin.

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

Rudraksha means 'Rudra's eye', Rudra being an old name for Shiva, which is why his devotees count prayers on its seeds while worshippers of Vishnu use beads of holy basil.

In the mantra Om Namah Shivaya, what does the word 'namah' express?

A bow of homage: 'namah' is the word behind namaste, 'I bow to you'. The mantra is also called the Panchakshara, 'five syllables', because the opening Om is not counted among them.

Shiva's epithet Tripurantaka records his destruction of what?

Three cities of the Asuras, built of gold, silver and iron, could fall only to a single arrow, and only at the one moment in a thousand years when they lined up; Shiva did not miss.

On which island in Mumbai's harbour do rock-cut caves hold a colossal three-faced bust of Shiva?

Elephanta owes its name to Portuguese sailors, who found a large stone elephant there; the elephant itself now stands in a Mumbai garden.

Which Indian holy city is held to be especially sacred to Shiva?

Varanasi is where devout Hindus hope to end their days, because it is counted among the holy cities where death is said to bring release from the cycle of rebirth.

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

Late winter, in February or March, brings the great night: devotees fast through the day before and then stay awake until morning, keeping vigil with prayers and stories of the god.

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

Daksha paid dearly in the best-known telling: after Sati threw herself into his sacrificial fire, Shiva's furious attendants wrecked the rite and beheaded him, and he was revived with the head of a goat.

Which prince won his bride by stringing a giant bow that had once belonged to Shiva?

Rama won Sita by the feat: the god's bow had been left in her family's keeping, her hand was promised to whoever could string it, and in the Ramayana the prince bends it until it snaps.

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

Kartikeya was nursed, one story goes, by the six stars of the Pleiades, and grew six heads so that he could feed from all six of his foster mothers at once.

Whom did Shiva burn to ashes with his third eye for disturbing his meditation?

Kama, the god of desire, had been sent by the other gods to stir the meditating Shiva to love; in many tellings he has had no body ever since, and works unseen.

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

Manasarovar, a freshwater lake some 4,600 metres above the sea, is more than scenery on the way: pilgrims to the holy mountain also bathe in its sacred waters.

Why is there still no recorded ascent of Shiva's sacred mountain in Tibet?

Climbing is banned for religious reasons: Reinhold Messner turned down a Chinese invitation to try in the 1980s, and when a Spanish team sought a permit in 2001 the protests led Beijing to rule out every attempt.

The 369-foot Shiva unveiled in Rajasthan in 2022 is called the Statue of what?

Belief was the world's tallest statue of Shiva when it opened in 2022, the dream project of a local businessman, Madan Paliwal; visitors ride lifts to viewing galleries high inside the seated figure.

Which temple compound on Java is the largest in Indonesia dedicated to Shiva?

Prambanan is known on Java as Lara Jonggrang, the 'Slender Maiden': villagers gave the name to a statue of the goddess Durga in the main temple, which legend took for a princess.

Which Kashmir cave shrine draws summer pilgrims to a pillar of ice revered as a form of Shiva?

Amarnath's pillar of ice waxes and wanes, and the pilgrimage is timed to it: the cave opens to pilgrims for only some weeks each year.

In goddess-centred Hindu traditions, Shiva's equal partner and creative energy is called what?

Shakti means power, and a famous hymn to the goddess opens by saying that Shiva can create only when joined with her: without her, it says, he cannot so much as stir.

Shiva's name Mahadeva means what?

The great god, word for word: 'maha' is the 'great' in maharaja, and 'deva' is an ancient cousin of the Latin deus and the Greek Zeus, the same root that gives English 'divine'.

Which ornament does Shiva wear in his piled-up matted hair?

A crescent moon was one of the treasures thrown up when the gods and demons churned the ocean of milk, and Shiva claimed it as an ornament for his hair.

Which Asian capital has a great temple of Shiva on the Bagmati River among its World Heritage monuments?

Kathmandu's temple is also a place of last rites: Hindus are cremated on the riverbank beside it, because the sacred waters of the Bagmati are held to purify them.

In the ocean-churning myth where Shiva drinks the poison, which mountain served as the churning rod?

Mandara began to sink into the sea bed as the churning started, so Vishnu took the form of a giant tortoise and held the whole mountain up on his shell.

Which goddess is often shown standing on Shiva as he lies stretched out beneath her feet?

Kali, in a popular telling, was rampaging so wildly after a battle that Shiva lay down in her path to stop her; her outstretched tongue is read as shock at finding her husband underfoot.

Which hero of India's great epics is regarded in Shaiva tradition as an incarnation of Shiva?

Hanuman is the wind god's son in most tellings, but Shaiva tradition makes him a form of Shiva himself, born after a childless monkey couple prayed to the god for a son.

Which Sanskrit poet's epic Kumarasambhava tells of the ascetic Shiva's courtship, wedding and the birth of his son?

Kalidasa, often ranked as India's greatest classical writer, is thought to have written only the first eight cantos; the other nine are put down to a later imitator.

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

Khandoba is honoured with turmeric: at festivals his worshippers throw so much of the yellow powder over the temple and each other that the place is known as 'golden Jejuri'.

Which deity is described as the son of Shiva and Vishnu's female form Mohini?

Ayyappan's pilgrims prepare for weeks before visiting his hill shrine at Sabarimala in Kerala, keeping vows of celibacy and abstinence, and then make the final climb barefoot.