Shivling
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What is a Shivling?
Devdutt Pattanaik on its history
Devdutt Pattanaik, May 18, 2022: The Times of India
Orientalist academicians love describing the Shivling as a “phallic symbol”, primarily, because it irritates the Hindus, who prefer to see the object of their devotion as something spiritual, not sexual. For the Orientalist — i.e. Western and Westernised scholar — such descriptions are, at one level, a way of thumbing the nose at the religious establishment that views sex as sin. At another level, such descriptions reinforce Hinduism’s pagan polytheistic nature.
In colonial times, Hindu reformers were embarrassed by this description of the Hindu god. But they were caught in a conundrum between the abstract explanations of Shivling found in the Agamas that co-existed with the highly erotic stories of Shiva found in the Puranas.
Basically, one could cherry-pick whatever one wanted to explain what the Shivling actually is. Currently, for politicians and their massive troll armies, it is proof that Hinduism is the “timeless faith of Indians” before the Mughals arrived. No one can argue with the horde. But for those who care for sensible information, we must understand that the Shivling has multiple origins and explanations.
Iron Age Shivling
Take for example, South India some 3,000 years ago. This was the Iron Age, before the rise of Buddhism, Jainism or Puranic Hinduism. In the upper Gangetic plains, the Vedic hymns were being compiled and classified, attached to rituals.
Meanwhile, in the Deccan and far south, tribal communities were forging iron, burying their dead in pots, and raising stone monuments in their memory. We call this ‘dolmen’.
Thousands of dolmens are found across Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh even today. These raised stones, also known as menhir, were meant to commemorate the dead. They were probably forerunners of the elaborately carved hero-stones we find across India in medieval times, raised in honour of warriors killed while fighting raiders and thieves.
It has been argued that the oldest Shivling were actually polished pillars raised to mark the spot where ancient Tamil kings were killed or cremated or buried. Thus their power was anchored for the benefit of the clan and the wider community. Hence, the close association of Shiva with ghosts (bhuta-gana). By raising the menhir, the guardian king was connected with a formless god, the mighty Shiva, who leads the ghosts. He is linked with a fierce goddess, known as Kotravai in Tamil Sangam poetry, who wanders in battlefields at night and feasts on the dead. Her son, the virile youth Murugan, is the crown prince, the next king. These ideas are alluded to in the oldest Tamil Sangam poetry, which are about 2,000 years old, a time when the South was getting exposed to Buddhist, Jain and Hindu ideas from the North.
In Tamil Nadu, there are ‘pallipadai’ shrines built to honour kings. These can be easily mistaken for a Shiva temple, but they are in fact royal burial or cremation sites marked by a Shivling. The old menhir and rocks have given way to more polished structures, perhaps under influence of new Brahmin immigrants who were enterprising and adapting old Vedic ways to local needs. A thousand years ago, as per some historians, Shivling was raised at Udayalur village in Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, to mark the spot where Raja Raja Chola was cremated or buried. He was a patron of Shiva. He invited Shaiva priests from the North to establish grand temples in the South, including the famous Brihadeshwara temple. In his campaigns, he brought images of Bhairava from Odisha and Bengal. But even locally, Shiva was a great deity.
Around the eighth century, the 63 Nayanars sang praises of Shiva, and eventually overpowered the popularity of Jain monks. Like Jain teachers, Shiva was a naked ascetic. But unlike Jain teachers who advised giving up the material world, Shiva embodied restrained virile energy, a contained power that enabled worthy royal disciples to conquer the material world. This made Shiva and his priests very popular among kings of medieval India. Not just Indian kings, even kings in faraway Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia, until Brahmins forbade sea travel.
Even today, most people from the South, and increasingly leaders of the Dravidian movement, prefer being buried, their final resting place marked by stones. They reject the Vedic ritual of cremation that encourages the spirit of the dead to go away to a faraway land of ancestors, the Pitr-loka, beyond the mythical river Vaitarni. Shivling of royalty and rebels .
In Karnataka, the Shivling took a very different form two centuries after Raja Raja Chola. A new movement took place that rejected the casteist ways of Brahmins and spoke of Shiva as the embodiment of the soul. Shivling became the form of the formless soul, to be adored and worshipped and carried around the neck in a silver amulet.
This is what we see in the Virashaiva and Lingayat community who also bury their dead. It was a movement spearheaded by Basava, whose name means bull, reminding us of Shiva’s Nandi. It competed with Jains for royal patronage and eventually became a powerful political force that shapes the fortunes of 21st century politicians seeking power in Karnataka.
In Odisha, the temples of Shiva, dated to the seventh century, found in Bhubaneshwar, are perhaps the oldest in India. They were not built by kings, but by local communities. What is striking is that within the shrine is the aniconic linga, the form of the formless. But on the walls of the temple are images of Shiva that tell his story. The most popular image is of Shiva with his family seated on a mountain that Ravana, the rakshasa-king, is trying in vain to carry southwards to Lanka. South is the direction of Yama, god of death. The image evokes kingship, royal arrogance and death.
See also
Shivling
