Dwelling Place Of Lord Shiva Digital Art by Anand Swaroop Manchiraju

Dwelling Place Of Lord Shiva

by Anand Swaroop Manchiraju

Canvas Print

Framed Print

Art Print

Poster

Metal Print

Acrylic Print

Wood Print

Greeting Card

Title

Dwelling Place Of Lord Shiva

Artist

Anand Swaroop Manchiraju

Medium

Digital Art - Digital Art

Description

DWELLING PLACE OF LORD SHIVA DIGITAL ART

"The Himalaya is a great devatatma, a great spiritual presence, stretching from the west to the eastern sea like a measuring rod to gauge the world's greatness."

The creativity of this genius was that he was able to see it as a single unity this overwhelmingly powerful image of the mighty Himalayan range.

A very beautiful and charming description of the Himalayas is contained in the Kumarasambhava, which describes the snow-clad mountain range as the treasure house of innumerable precious stones, minerals, important herbs, trees, plants, creepers with delightful flowers; as the abode of the Siddhas, ascetics, Yakshas, Kinnaras, Kiratas and various types of animals and birds; as the source of the Ganga and several other rivers.

Even the mention of mountains in India brings the word Himalaya immediately to the mind. The Himalayan range as a whole is sacred because it is in the north, which for Hindus is the direction of wisdom and spiritual rebirth. It also includes the highest peaks in the world, which are a sight to inspire awe and wonder in people of any race or creed. Even Mount Olympus in Greek mythology would pale in front of the reverence shown to the Himalayas in the Hindu stories. Neither is Mount Fuji as significant to the Japanese as the Himalayas to Hindus. From times immemorial, the Himalayas have given out speechless invitations to sages, anchorites, yogis, artists, philosophers et al. The western Himalayas teems with esteemed pilgrimages so much so that the entire Kumayun range can be called Tapobhumi or land of spiritual practices. Where else apart from Kailash and Manas-sarovar in the Himalayas could an all-abnegating Shiva roam with his bull?

"The Himalaya is a great devatatma, a great spiritual presence, stretching from the west to the eastern sea like a measuring rod to gauge the world's greatness." - wrote Kalidasa, Ancient Indian poet.

For more on Kalidasa, refer to chapter on Sanskrit.

Western man's dominion over the Earth? when the British scaled earth's highest peak, the exploit was widely hailed as the "conquest of the Mt Everest."

It was not realized and is often not realized still, that the word "conquest" was totally out of place in the context of the peak which is considered an object of reverence by many. One does not "conquer" nature. Nature humors at times, man's curiosity. Conquest is, therefore, an irreverent word."

***

From the Himalayas has originated so many life-giving perennial rivers that have sustained such a rich civilization.

Of these the Ganga is the most respected one. Shankaracharya (788-820), who propounded the Mayavad doctrine, referred to the holy river as the goddess of divine essence, and established one of the four cardinal hermitages in the Garhwal Himalayas.

Scientist J C Bose (1858-1937), also ventured into the Himalayas, as expounded in his sagely philosophical essay Bhagirathir Utsha Sandhane, to explore how the Ganga flows down from the "matted locks of Shiva".

Apart from being a natural heritage, the Himalayas is a spiritual heritage for the Hindus. The most visited places of pilgrimage in India are located in the Himalayas. Prominent among them are the Nath troika of Amarnath, Kedarnath and Badrinath. There are also three seminal Sikh pilgrimage spots in the Uttarakhand Himalayas. All sages and prophets have found the Himalayas best for spiritual pursuits. Swami Vivekananda founded his Mayavati Ashram 50 km from Almora. The Mughul emperor Jehangir said about Kashmir, the westernmost extent of the Himalayas: "If there is a paradise on earth, it's here".

As the loftiest mountains on Earth, the Himalayas have come to embody the highest ideals and aspirations. The sight of their sublime peaks, soaring high and clean above the dusty, congested plains of India, has for centuries inspired visions of transcendent splendor and spiritual liberation.

Invoking such visions, the Puranas, ancient works of Hindu stories, have this to say of Himachal, or the Himalayas:

"In the space of a hundred ages of the Gods, I could not describe to you the glories of Himachal; that Himachal where Siva dwells and where the Ganga falls like the tendril of a lotus from the foot of Vishnu. There are no other mountains like Himachal, for there are found Mount Kailas and Lake Manasarovar. As the dew is dried up by the morning sun, so are the sins of mankind by the sight of Himachal."

The Himalayas are sacred for followers of five Asian religions--Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism and the indigenous Bon tradition of Tibet. These religions revere the mountains as places of power where many of their most important sages and teachers have attained the heights of spiritual realization. Himalayas are often refered to as devatma or God-souled. Giri-raj or the King of Mountains, as the Himalayas is often called, is also a deity by itself in the Hindu pantheon. Hindus view the Himalayas as supremely sacred, as a corollary to seeing god in every atom of the universe. The mighty altitude of the Himalayas is a constant remembrance to the loftiness of the human soul, its vastness. a prototype for the universality of human consciousness. Mt Everest being the highest spot on earth has been truly recognised as the crowing glory of the Himalayas. It is the mother goddess for Sherpas, who worship it as Chomolungma while the Nepalese call it Sagarmatha.

Hindus, by far the largest group in India with more than 800 million adherents, regard the entire range as the God Himalaya, father of Parvati, the wife of Siva.

King of the mountains, Himalaya lives high on a peak with his queen, the Goddess Mena, in a palace ablaze with gold, attended by divine guardians, maidens, scent-eating creatures and other magical beings. His name, composed of the words hima and alaya, means in the Sanskrit language of ancient India the "abode of snow."

As a reservoir of frozen water, the body and home of the God Himalaya is the divine source of sacred rivers, such as the Ganga and Indus, that sustain life on the hot and dusty plains of northern India.