SAN DIEGO MUSEUM of ART | The Binney collection

Shiva in Meditation in the Himalayas

In the clear air of the Himalayan peaks high on Mount Kailasa, Shiva practices control of his mind and body (tapas.) His legs are interlocked, his torso erect. His body is white with ashes from the sacrificial fire. His yoga is aimed at reintegration of the energy of breath and blood, of pain and desire, of the mind and the senses into the channels of his body, until their fiery heat melts all distinctions, and he obtains release. The primary manifestation of Shiva in Indian art is as "Lord of the Yogis."

Images of the Hindu god Shiva were not common in Central India (the Deccan) where Muslims had ruled since the 12th century. This painting, with its lingering stylized echoes of Persian landscape style in the pink and purple mountains built of clusters of rock dotted with foliage, omits many of the classic attributes of the

Shiva in Meditation in the Himalayas, ca. 1710
Opaque watercolor on paper, Bundelkhand
Edwin Binney 3rd Collection 1990:973

Lord of Yogis. Notably his hair is not shown matted and piled high; he has no third eye, no sacred cord appears across his chest. He does sit on a tiger-skin mat with the few implements of a yogi-a rosary, staff and begging bowl, and a vessel and cup for an inebriating substance believed to work with meditation to unfold time-bound existence into immortality. The landscape harbors peacocks, one in full display, and a pair of snakes. Both species are associated with desire in the broader context of Indian imagery, although classically Shiva wears snakes on his body as ornament, displaying even more intimately his relationship with sexual energy. This image alludes to but does not graphically display the powerful contradiction in Shiva as the erotic asectic.

The generalized iconography of this image suggests that it may also contain an unorthodox presentation of another of Shiva's attributes: his relationship to the Goddess Ganga. Ganga was born of the Milky Way, the great river in the sky that waters the earth from its celestial well. Ganga' descent to earth posed the prospect of meteoric impact and violent floods. Shiva offered to take the impact of the mighty torrent in his matted hair. Its cooling drench would also save the earth from the heat generated by his tapas. So Ganga plummeted to earth, shattered on Shiva's head, meandered through the labyrinth of his hair, fell over his beautiful face and shoulders into rivulets and streams that merged into a lake called Bindusaras, the Lake of Drops, and found her way to the sea as the River Ganges. Classically, Ganga is Shiva's constant companion. She is most often shown as a spray of water issuing from his hair, but perhaps here she is the cool blue garland of waterfalls that tumble through the landscape around him.

Shiva: Destroyer of Time Navigation

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