SAIVA-SIDDHANTA

2$% THE 5AIVA RELIGION.
thus scare away
the Christians from
the Highest Conception of
the Supreme. Personal is
explained to mean Pure Being, the
absolute, by Emerson and Lotze and other Christian writers
and would correspond to our word Sat. And 1 have shown
therefore that God can be both Nirguna and Personal.
God neither has form nor is formless as air, ideas all
derived from matter, but He can assume any form suited to
the conception of his Bhakta and these Forms are not material
but as the text says, Form "His is produced out of Divine
Grace or Love." God is therefore not to be called SaguYia
simply because He is spoken of as Uma-sahaya, Nilakantha,
Sambhu, Umapati, Ambika Pati c., Lord of Kailas, as Siva,
Hara, Rudra.*
God is neither he, nor she, nor it, but He can be thought
of in all these forms, as male, female and neuter ;
and all specific
names of Siva are declinable in all the three genders without
* "It has been said, for instance, that the Svetatvatara Ufanishat is a
sectarian Upanishat, because, when speaking of the Highest Self or the
Highest Brahman, it applies such names to Him as Hara (I, 10), Rudra
(11, 17. Ill, 2, 4. IV, 12, 21), Siva (III, 14. IV, 10) Bhagavat (III, 14), Agni,
Aditya, Vayu &c., (IV 2).
But here it is
simply taken for granted that
the idea of the Highest Self was developed first, and after it had reached
its highest purity was lowered again by an identification with mythological
and personal deities. The question whether the conception of the High
est Self was formed once and once only, whether it was formed after all
the personal and mythological deities had been merged into one Lord (Pra japati),
or whether it was discovered behind the veil of any other names in
the mythological pantheon of the past, have never been mooted. Why
would not an ancient Rishi have said; what we have hitherto called Rudra
and what we worship as Agni, or Siva, is in reality the Highest Self, thus
leaving much of the ancient mythological phraseology to be used with a
new meaning
?
Why should we at once conclude that the late sectarian
worshippers of mythological gods replaced again the highest Self, after
their fathers had discovered it, by their own sectarian names? If we adopt
the former view, the Upanishats which still show these Rudras ot the
ancient temples, would have to be considered as more primitive even than
thobe in which the idea of the Brahman of the Highest Self has reached
its utmost purity."
Max Mnllcy,