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Revision as of 03:23, 13 December 2005

Hinduism, rather the ancient Hindu civilization view Ardhanareswarar (Shiva and Shakti - feminine form) as the force that governs the uinverse. Shiva depcits the infinity of being. Shiva had no beginning, no end both in terms of time and space and very well depcits the universe. It would be right to say Shive is the universe.

"Siva is no more a name for G-d than the Holy Spirit" ---

Except of course, that a lot of christians do think that 'Holy Spirit' is a name for G-d.

Indeed. See the entry for the Athanasian Creed for the historical understanding of the Trinity held by Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and many Protestant Christians.. It's not at all clear to me what the author means by saying the Holy Spirit is a 'facet' of God, or by saying that Christ 'developed' Christianity from Judaism.

my goodness. This is an exceptionally inaccurate treatment of Christianity, which makes me wonder how accurate a treatment of Shaivism it can possibly be! 'Facet'-language for the Holy Spirit is modalist, I think the author to mean. In which case it is not a correct presentation of orthodox Christian theology, but some sort of reinterpretation. And by the way history of religion folks are DEEPLY divided on the origins of religion in animism - lots of them (based on study of religion in remaining hunter/gatherer groups) like to talk about a kind of primitive monotheism. Not that I think much of anthropologists in general when they talk about religion before the invention of writing, but it's worth noting that this article asserts something that is not simply accepted by everryone. --MichaelTinkler

These last few sentences are either inaccurate (modalism applied to the Trinity - not accurate Christian theology) or gratuitous (the Buddha bit - what's it doing in a Siva article?):

Siva is no more a name for God than the Holy Spirit--Siva is a facet of atman just as the Spirit is a facet of the HolyTrinity. Buddha developed Buddhism from Hinduism in an analogous fashion to Christ developing Christianity from Judaism.

Shiva is supposed to be anaadi (with no beginning) and ananth (with no end), i.e. without birth or death. Vishnu on the otherhand was born as Parasurama, Rama, Krishna. Where does Ammavaru fit in?

BTW most of the hits at http://www.google.com/search?q=ammavaru are for the Telugu word (Ammavaru/Ammavari). Amma means mother in many Indian languages. Varu/vari is a Telugu term of respect. Ammavari usually refers to Parvathi or Lakshmi. -- Paddu 09:25 Mar 22, 2003 (UTC)

Note the Page titled Cannabis has a reference that states: History The use of cannabis is thought to go back at least 5000 years. Neolithic archaeology grounds in China include cannabis seeds and plants. The first known mention of cannabis was in a Chinese medical text of 2737 BC. It was used as medicine throughout Asia and the Middle East to treat a variety of conditions. In India particularly, cannabis was associated with Shiva.

Should the Shiva page reflect this surprising connection? zzzz 08:06 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)

For interst, six-headed war god Skanda was son of Shiva. Trekphiler 04:28, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

In the first line, the article states "Shiva (...) is form of God in Hinduism." I assume that this should either be "Shiva is a form of God in Hinduism", or "Shiva is a god in Hinduism." The current version is ungrammatical.
Also, the part in brackets is ungrammatical: "Shiva (also spelt Siva, and referred to as Lord Shiva has many names)...". Either "has many names" should go outside the brackets, or should just be removed entirely. --Asbestos 21:37, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

axe

on Labrys, we say that Shiva carries a double-headed axe. Is this at all true? dab (ᛏ) 22:33, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Aghora

Why the hell does Aghora redirect to Shiva? Aghora is the Hindu god of evil. He's not even mentioned in this article. → JarlaxleArtemis 02:59, May 12, 2005 (UTC)

Looks like the redirect was created by User:TUF-KAT. You could ask him, or, better, create a stub for Aghora. — Asbestos | Talk 07:24, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

Aghora is not necessarily evil, nor is Shiva seen as only good. Especially in views where he is an absolute, Shiva can appear even as Bhutisvara, lord of the nature demons, and so forth. Shiva appears to all creatures, regardless of good or evil in many views, and as such has forms both benign and wrathful. Aghora is listed as one of these. -- Hidoshi 07:32, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

the name

What is the meaning of the statement that the name Shiva "may be interpreted" as "One who purifies everyone by the utterance of His name"? That's completely arbitrary. It can also be interpreted as "One who smiles a lot, and likes yellow butterflies" with the same justification. Shiva means "kind", or "auspicious", and the interpretation of the name ends there (unless the interpretation is attributed to some authority, and explained). I'm not saying "One who purifies everyone by the utterance of His name" is wrong, it's just that it's a theological interpretation of the name and needs some context. I suggest we give "auspicious" as the meaning of the name in the intro, and save the interpretations for the article. dab (ᛏ) 12:37, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

That's not arbitrary. The meaning of the name was explained by the great philospher Sankara in his interpretation of Shiva, the 600th and 27th name in the Vishnu sahasranama. You consistently mock other's interpretations when they are not yours! Raj2004 02:30, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

Although he may have been irreverent, it is important to remember that this is an encyclopaedic article, and not a religious tract. Interpretations of the name are significant, but the beginning of an article should be a summary, and therefore the interpretations should be moved. We need to balance having respect for everyone's religions, but at the same time the articles need to be readable to those unfamiliar with the subjects. As this article stands, it's not wikified, and on a personal note, it's indecipherable to me. It needs to look more like Ganesha's.

Yes, I think the interpretation of the names need to move out of the introduction and into the main body of the text. The intro, IMHO, should be a consise summary without interpretations or theological explanations. I'm thinking about creating a section, "Meaning of the name" or some such. Maybe it can go into another main section, along with the current "Names of shiva". Of the current intro, I only see the first sentence and the "Destroyer" sentence as belonging in the intro. I don't want to lose the other info, just move it into the body. In response to Dab, I would actually suggest that we not define the name in the intro at all, because there seems to be too much theological interpretation to it. Ziroby 17:28, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Siva or Savi?

The Sanscrit text was edited by some Vandalist Sivam means "eternal" and "Savam" means dead body. Some Vandalist had edited the Sanscrit text from Siva to Savi .

Changing...

Changed back. The change was made to make sure that Siva displays properly in web browsers which support Devanagari script in Unicode correctly. To fix your browser or operating system to see Devanagari correctly, see Misplaced Pages:Enabling_complex_text_support_for_Indic_scripts

To be specific, after your change Siva was displayed on a web browser which correctly supports Devanagari as: ि श व (without spaces between the characters.), which is wrong.

For proper display of Devanagari script on Linux, you might want to try finding a copy of the Mozilla webbrowser which supports complex text layout (CTL). Or install libxindic, a library I wrote to transparently add support for the Devanagari, Tamil, Bengali, Gujarati script, Oriya, Gurumukhi, and [[Malayalam script|Malayalam]] scripts, for applications running in X Windows, including Mozilla.

64.62.190.55

TOC

The table of contents for this article occurs remarkably late in the article - perhaps it should be reorganized so that the TOC is after a briefer introduction, and then the current introduction is split into one (or more) sections? Stillnotelf 04:55, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Siva names and origin

I have added a new section called Names of Siva and have added a few names and their significance. To reflect this change, I have moved the single line at the beginning of the article related to Mahadeva to this list and have modified the line to go with this list.

Also have added some more information regarding the birth of Siva and how eight names were given by Brahma because of his crying. The male-female division at the time of Siva's birth indicate the origin of the concept of Ardhanarishvara and have mentioned so, including a link to Ardhanari.

Cleaned up links to Kailash. Several of them were pointing to links which were redirect links. Have cleaned them up to point to the actual Mount Kailash page.

Mrhyde 16:09, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Are there 108 names of Siva like most Hindu deities? If there are then is there someone who can find all of them? It might be better to put it on a separate page linking to this one. DaGizza 22:33, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Actually there are a 1008 names - as listed in the Shiva Purana. I guess you're right about putting them on a separate page and interlinking the two pages. Anyone who feels otherwise?? Mrhyde 13:55, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Moved section titled Video Games

I have moved the section titled Video Games which talks about Shiva as a Final Fantasy character. The contents of the entire section has been moved to a new article Shiva in Final Fantasy Series. Mrhyde 17:47, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Some Cleanup

I went over just about the entire article and cleaned it up as best I could. If there's anything else I can do or that I might have messed up, let me know. -- Hidoshi 07:30, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Additional

This from the part about Sati:

"The grief stricken Shiva carried Sati's body over the entire universe. Wherever pieces of her body fell,a Shakti Peeth was formed. Her genitals fell in Kamakhya, her eyes at Naini Tal."

I removed this because it doesn't fit with the Sati immolation tale (immolation would reduce the body to ashes, thus logically it would not follow). I think for consistency's sake, a second version of the story should be offered in completion, explaining the falling of body parts and such. Otherwise it becomes a confusing paragraph.

Controversy

text below moved from article:

The renowned Nepali rationalist Vivek Thapa fled to India in 1968, shortly after completing his work 'A History of the Cult of the Lingam.' In this piece, Thapa drew a direct link between lingam worship and Shiva's castration - Shiva's penis is worshipped in compensation for this sacrifice - and stated that during his later years Shiva obtained sexual gratification from seeing the lingam revered by his male and female followers.

Further controversy was generated by his compilation of excerpts from a number of ancient Indian religious texts in which he claimed Shiva is portrayed as deficient in character and morality. These provided the basis from which he developed his final conclusion: Shiva is unworthy of worship.

In Nepal, a nation in which Hinduism is the state religion, public outrage was considerable, and Thapa fled to India. In India he ran a small but flourishing school of rationalism in Maharashtra, until this was destroyed and he was murdered by self-confessed RSS activists in 1982.

Due to concerns about the notability of these allegations and the accessability of this book or informations regarding it, this section has been removed. Please feel free to provide alternate sources or other informations here. Sam Spade 03:23, 13 December 2005 (UTC)