| Dances Of India - Dances Of Shiva - Chapter [II] |
| By : Ajit Hari Sahu | Previous | Next |
| Posted on : 29 Aug, 2005 | Total Views : 302 |
Whatever is best and highly esteemed has been offered to the gods and given divine origin by the Indian wisdom. The divine origin of dance can be regarded as the highest possible homage ever paid to the art. The Gods and goddesses not only take great delight in dancing, drama and mime, but many of them are great dancers themselves. Right from Shiva, Vishnu, Krishna, Kali and through Indra, Ashvins to Apsaras and men can be traced the long tradition of this spontaneous and rhythmic force dance. Man has been dancing since times immemorial, both in tragedy and ecstasy, before his gods and goddesses as an act of worship, devotion, homage and offering. The concept of rhythmic body movements as an all-powerful symbol has always given Indian mind and imagination as incomparable flight and height. For instance, by performing Tandava, Shiva accomplished the dissolution of the world Tandava as a cosmic dance represents symbolically the destruction of the illusory world of maya of nescience.
Dances of Shiva
Shiva or Mahadeva, the third god of the Hindu Trinity represents the destructive aspects and the third guna, the tamas. The other two gods of the Triad are Brahma and Vishnu. Shiva is Mahadeva and Ishvara in his creative aspect. His supreme powers are enshrined in the form of lingam or phallus. Of all the divine expression, lingam is the most representative of the power regeneration and procreation & is offered worship everywhere in India Regeneration and dissolution are two sides of the same coin.
One presupposes the other. As Nataraja, he is the Supreme Lord of dance and drama. Tandava reflects Shiva’s violent nature as a stern judge and upholder of justice and righteousness. He dances both in joy and sorrow as the god of rhythm and movement. But he performing his dance in the cleansed of ego and illusion by means of fire of knowledge, enlightenment and severe austerities.
Shiva is shown dancing either alone or with his consort Parvati or Devi. He goes to Himavat’s house to seek his daughter Parvati’s hand in marriage disguised as a dancer for fun. He approaches Mena, Parvati’s mother clothed in red rags, carrying a horn in his left hand and a drum in the right and dances merrily in courtyard. All the people of the town collected there at once to see him dance so beautifully. They all get infatuated with his enchanting dance and sweet melodies. Mena, delighted beyond measures, shower on him precious gifts, but he is not satisfied until Parvati is bestowed upon him in alms.
One of Shiva’s most remembered dances were performed at Tillai, now known as Chidambaram in Tamil Nadu. There lived in the forest of Taragam ten thousand heretic rishis who did not believe in the existence of God and propagated that performance of work alone was sufficient to attain salvation. With the view to convert them to faith, Shiva went there disguised as a yogi and accompanied by Vishnu disguised as his beautiful wife, and the great Serpent Shesha. When they reached there the heretic rishis got infatuated with the yogi’s beautiful wife. The rishi’s wives were seized with a passionate desire for the Yogi, and it caused chaos. The rishis suspected some foul play and sensing the danger they prepared a sacrificial fire, and from it created a fierce tiger which sprang upon Shiva to devour him. But without much effort he killed the tiger with his little finger, pulled off its skin and threw it around his waist as a mantle. Then the rishis created a huge serpent, which Shiva wore round his, neck for a garland with a smile and began his famous dance. The rishis continued with their invocations and incantations and created a malignant dwarf Muyalagam with a huge club. Shiva crushed the hideous creature under one of his dancing feet and reduced it to a writhing pulp. He continued his victory dance on the back of the vanquished dwarf and all the gods and goddesses appeared there to witness the bewitching performance. The rishis overawed by shiva’s dance, and Shiva’s true identity being revealed to them, they threw themselves at his feet and became his ardent devotees.
Ati-shesha, the great serpent, was so enchanted with the mystic dance of Shiva that he longed to see it again. He retired to forest to practice austerities and severe penance to obtain Shiva’s blessing and boon of witnessing the same mystic dance again. Shiva appeared before him with Parvati on their Nandibull; Pleased with his devotion and ascetic practices Shiva said, "Go and reside at Tillai in human form born of mortal parents and there shall come a time when the ceaseless and eternal dance shall be revealed to thee."
Commenting on this episode sister Nivedita and Ananda Coomaraswamy in their book Hindu and Buddhists say, " The above is but one of many legends of Shiva’s dance. The dance itself represents the activity of Shiva as the source of all movement within the universe and especially his five acts, creation, preservation, destruction, embodiment and release; its purpose is to release the souls of man from illusion. It is frequently emphasized that the place of dance, the sacred shrine of Tillai or Chidambaram, is in reality within the heart; the human soul attains release when the vision is beheld within itself. It will be seen that Shiva has many forms, "evil" as well as "good". This must ever be so if we are not to postulate a separate "devil". As dances in the burning ground, the most terrible and unclean of places, he is essentially a pre-Aryan demon; he is also "The Terrible" and "The Destroyer". Later Shaivate thought makes effective use of this dramatic imagery, not merely arguing that demons also must be a portion of God, nor simply transferring the place of the dance to the sacred shrine at Chidambaram, but accepting the dance as it is, and finding a new meaning in the cremation ground, the heart of the devotee, waste and desolate, the place where the self and its deeds are burnt away, and all is destroyed but the dancer himself."
As promised to Ananta, the Ati-shesha, shiva set out again for Tillai. There Ananta and shiva’s other numerous devotees longed for his vision and mystic dance, but he was stopped on the outskirts of the town by Kali, his consort. She had installed herself in his place and refused him entry. Finally, a way out was found and it was agreed to hold a dance competition and that only the conqueror would remain on the scene. The competition began but both remained unvanquished. They thrilled and transported the spectators with their enchanting dance poses, postures and recitals, but then Shiva resorted to a prank to outwit his so formidable a rival. He adopted a dancing stance, so outrageous in modesty that she could hardly bear to look at it let alone performing or emulating it. Consequently, she withdraws from Tillai. The temple of Nataraja at Chidambaram still bears witness to these two dances, known as Ananda and Urdhva Tandava, in the form of sculptured Karana, the very alphabets of Indian classical dance. The South Indian bronzes of Nataraja are replica of dancing Shiva at Chidambaram.
Commenting on this image of the King of the Dance Grousset beautifully writes -
"Whether he be surrounded or not by the flaming aureole of the tiruvasi (prabhamandala)-the circle of the world which he both fills and oversteps-the King of Dance is all rhythm and exaltation. The tambourine, which he sounds with one of his right hands, draws all creatures into this rhythmic motion and they dance in his company. The conventionalized locks of flying hair and the blown scarf’s tell of the speed of this universal movement, which crystallized matter and reduces it to powder in turn. One of his left hands holds the fire, which animates and devours the worlds in this cosmic whirl. One of the god’s feet is crushing a Titan, for "this dance is danced upon the bodies of the dead, yet one of the right hands is making the gesture of reassurance (adhayamudra), so true it is that, seen from the cosmic point of view and sub specie aeternitatis, the very cruelty of this universal determinism is kindly, as the generative principle of the future. And, indeed, on more than one of our bronzes, the King of the Dance wears a broad smile. He smiles at death and at life, at pain and at joy alike, or rather, if we may be allowed so to express it, his smile is both death and life, both joy and pain…From this lofty point of view, in fact all things fall into their place, finding their explanation and logical compulsion. Here art is the faithful interpreter of the philosophical concept. The plastic beauty of rhythm is no more than the expression of an ideal rhythm. The very multiplicity of arms, puzzling as it may seem at first sight, is subject in turn to an inward law, each pair remaining a model of elegance in itself, so that the whole being of Nataraja thrills with a magnificent harmony in his terrible joy. And as though to stress the point that the dance of the divine actor is indeed a sport of creation and destruction, at once infinite and purposeless-the gesture of gajahasta (hand as the elephant’s trunk). And lastly as we look at the back view of the statue, are not the steadiness of these shoulders which uphold the world, and the majesty of the Jove-like torso, as it were a symbol of the stability and immutability of substance, while the gyration of the legs in its dizzy speed would seem to symbolize the vortex of phenomena?"
