SAIVA-SIDDHANTA

THE bVETAbVATARA UPANISJIAT.
I IT
Rishi (vide some of Ravi Vanna s pictures). Dr. W. W.
Hunter remarks that Saiikara in espousing Saivism combined
in the system the highest Philosophy
most popular form of Religion.
of the ancients and the
Regarding the conception of Siva and its growth from
Vedic times, scholars love to tell us that Rudra was nowhere
called Siva in the Rig Veda and that he merely represented the
stoj-m God, with his thunder, lightning and the rains, rushing
down from the snow-capped hills ;
and that this Rudra slowly
grew into Siva of the Hindu Triad, and scholars have not
failed to remark about His composite and contradictory
aspects.
There is considerable truth in this, and we can clearly
trace that in His person is slowly built up the conception of the
various Vedic Deities, Indra and Agni, Varuna and Vayu,
Surya and Soma, Vishnu and Brahma, and by the time the Vedas
were arranged into Rig, Yajur, Saman and Atharvan, Rudra s
position as the God of gods had become assured ; and by the
time of the earliest Upanishats, when the purely sacrificial
Yajnas were being given up, the worship
of Rudra-Siva
supplanted the worship of the Vedic Deities, and instead of
a blind worship of the elements, a marked distinction was
drawn between the Supreme God who dwelt in these elements
and gave them special power and glory, and this conception was
stereotyped later on by Siva being called the Ashtamurti, the
God who had for his body, the five elements, earth, air, water,
fire and akas, sun and moon and the soul; and Siva has temples
dedicated to him, in which He is
worshipped in these eight
forms.
Rudra is derived by Sayana from the roots, Rudra vayita,
meaning he who drives away sorrow. And consistant with
this derivation, Rudra is called in the Rig- Veda itself, as the
bountiful 1
and the
Healer
later Vaidyanath) benign
1
1
possessed of various remedies (the
and gracious
. And the term Siva
clearly appears in the following text of the Rig Veda (X. 92-9.)