Fire, Earth And Water.
Brahma, Vishnu And Shiva All Represent These Elements By Turns,
In Their Different Phases; But Shiva Is Much More The God Of The
Fire Than Either Brahma Or Vishnu:
He burns and purifies; at
the same time creating out of the ashes new forms, full of fresh
life.
Shiva-Sankarin is the destroyer or rather the scatterer;
Shiva-Rakshaka is the preserver, the regenerator. He is represented
with flames on his left palm, and with the wand of death and
resurrection in his right hand. His worshippers wear on their
foreheads his sign traced with wet ashes, the ashes being called
vibhuti, or purified substance, and the sign consisting of three
horizontal parallel lines between the eyebrows. The color of Shiva's
skin is rosy-yellow, gradually changing into a flaming red. His neck,
head and arms are covered with snakes, emblems of eternity and
eternal regeneration. "As a serpent, abandoning his old slough,
reappears in new skin, so man after death reappears in a younger
and a purer body," say the Puranas.
In her turn, Shiva's wife Kali is the allegory of earth, fructified
by the flames of the sun. Her educated worshippers say they allow
themselves to believe their goddess is fond of human sacrifices,
only on the strength of the fact that earth is fond of organical
decomposition, which fertilizes her, and helps her to call forth
new forces from the ashes of the dead. The Shivaites, when burning
their dead, put an idol of Shiva at the head of the corpse; but
when beginning to scatter the ashes in the elements, they invoke
Bhavani, in order that the goddess may receive the purified remains,
and develop in them germs of new life.
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