SAIVA-SIDDHANTA

"
"
86 SOME ASPECTS OF THE GOD-HEAD.
These lines will be found repeated often and often in the Tiruvachakam,
Tevararn and every other sucred writing in Tamil.
Can similar lines be quoted from writers of any other school ?
We dare say, not. But the older Upanishats contain similar
thoughts, and that only proves our contention that the Siddhanta
school but barely represents to day the oldest traditions, and is
the inheritor of the most ancient Philosophy. Of all Indian
preachers, it was the late matakhandana Venkatagiri Sastrin
that used to dwell on this universal aspect of the Siddhanta in
respect of naming Him as He She
,
and It ,
and he used to
point out that all names of Siva are declinable in all the three
genders without change of meaning, whereas other names do not
admit of this change, and even if
they do, the word is
meaning
less or means something else. We do not know why some
people prefer the neuter form to the masculine or feminine, when,
in fact, it stands to reason that the male and female represent in
each the perfection of organized and organic form, much more so
than the neuter forms. If by calling Him, t It ,
we mean to
emphasize that God is sexless, we must also insist that God is
genderless, and that he cannot be spoken of in the neuter gender.
And the phrase, He, She,
"^<3U6srjrgi
"Strlpunnapumsaka,"
It, *has become a technical phrase with us (see first sutra of
Sivajnanabodham) to mean the whole of the material manifested
universe and its various forms ;
and in naming God with
words and forms borrowed from matter, we cannot avoid using
these words. But then, the difference between principle (and
symbol, truth and dogmatism, has to be perceived. We tried to
make ourselves clear about this distinction about the Soham or
Tattvamasi" doctrine in our last; and in the subject we have
been elucidating above, a similar distinction has to be perceived.
One says, address God always as He ;
and if you call him,
It, he says you are addressing a cold abstraction. Another
j-The genius of the English Language, reflecting
as it does the
Christian Religion does not allow us to call God, except in the masculine,
though of course we have heard that they do not mean to say that God
is a male like a man.