Book Title: Development of Hinduism
Author(s): M M Ninan
Publisher: M M Ninan

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Page 457
________________ 17. SAIVISM Satarudriya, or the hundred names of Rudra, found in the Vajasaneyi samhita of Yajurveda, about which Monier Monier-Williams, ( of the Boden Chair of Sanskrit at Oxford University) writes thus: "In this hymn-a hymn which is of the greatest interest, because constantly used in the present dayhe is described as possessing many contradictory, incongruous, grotesque, and wholly ungodlike attributes; for example, he is a killer and destroyer; he is terrible, fierce (ugra), inauspicious; he is a deliverer and saviour; he causes happiness, and prevents disease; he has a healing and auspicious body (siva tanuh); he is yellow-haired, brown- coloured, copper-coloured, ruddy, tall, dwarfish; he has braided locks (kapardin), wears the sacred thread, and is clothed in a skin ; he is blue-necked and thousand-eyed; he dwells in the mountains, and is the owner of troops (gana-pati) of servants who traverse the earth obeying his orders; he is ruler and controller of a thousand Rudras who are described as fierce and ill-formed (virupa); he has a hundred bows and a thousand quivers; he is the general of vast armies; he is lord of ghosts, goblins, and spirits; of beasts, horses, and dogs; of trees, shrubs, and plants; he causes the fall of leaves; he is lord of the Soma-juice; he is patron of thieves and robbers, and is himself a thief, robber, and deceiver; he presides over carpenters, chariotmakers, blacksmiths, architects, huntsmen; he is present in towns and houses, in rivers and lakes, in woods and roads, in clouds and rain, in sunshine and lightning, in wind and storm, in stones, dust, and earth." Some do believe that there are strong indication that Siva was a Dravidian god and was the god of the Indus Civilization. Shiva in Cave Rock Drawings ! नावड़ा टोडो Does these look like god Siva? In a hunter gathering community we should expect these depictions 453

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