Shiva Dol -- the tallest Shiva Temple in India

Shiva Dol

Sixteen-armed Mother Goddess

Lord Vishnu in his boar-headed Avatar Baraha

Shiva Dol -- front view

A devotee performing AARTI with lighted lamps

Saraswati, the goddess of Learning

A Sadhu in front of Shiva Dol

A Sadhu at Shiva Dol

Sculptures on the wall of the main temple

Sculptures on the wall of the main temple

Sculptures on the wall of the main temple

Sculptures on the wall of the main temple

 

India is dotted with countless temples dedicated to Lord Shiva, the Cosmic Destroyer & one of the three trinities of Hinduism.  Some of these temples are famous, some very famous & others are relatively less known or unknown outside the locality where they are situated. These were / are constructed mostly by rich patrons like local landlords or kings in the past.

One of such very famous Shiva temples is SHIVA DOL, situated in the town of Shiv Sagar in upper Assam, the beautiful North –Eastern state of India.
Shiv Sagar was the ancient capital of the Ahom Kings who ruled Assam for six hundred years before the British dethroned them in the nineteenth century.
The town of Shiv Sagar boasts of several very large ponds constructed by the Ahom kings. In the centre of the town is one of such ponds named SHIV SAGAR, literary meaning “the sea of Shiva”. With an expanse of 129 acres, it is really big. On its southern shore is a temple complex containing three tall temples, dedicated to Lord Shiva, Lord Vishnu & Mother Goddess Durga. The temples are called Shiva Dol, Vishnu Dol & Devi Dol respectively.
Shiva Dol was constructed by  Queen  Madambika, the queen of King Shiva Singha in 1734.
The Shiva Dol is a huge temple with the main temple or the sanctum sanctorum (called GARVA GRIHA) rising to an imposing height of 180 feet. It  is the tallest of all Shiva temples in India.
Like any typical Hindu temple built in the Nagara-style, Shiva Dol consists of four parts – the NAAT MANDIR, the JAGMOHAN, the BHOG MANDIR & the GARVA GRIHA (the sanctum sanctorum containing the main deity).
The Naat Mandir is a large rectangular structure without any special decoration. It leads to the next portion Jagmohan, which is constructed in typical CHAAR CHAALAA style of Bengal temple architecture with a pyramidal roof. The small Bhogmandir with a simple design leads to the main temple or Garva Griha which is a huge structure (height 180 feet & perimeter 195 feet). It is constructed in the typical SHIKHAR style with a central spire rising to the heaven. There is a golden dom at the top, 7 feet high.
The ridged spire contains a large number of decorations including figures of deities of Hinduism, the most notable ones are of sixteen-armed Mother Goddess Durga;  Saraswati, the Goddess of Learning riding a swan;  Lord Vishnu in His the Boar-headed Avatar Baraha ; Ganesha the Elephant-headed god of Success & Lord Shiva in several Yogic postures.
Inside, the sanctum sanctorum contains the Shiva Lingam, the phallic symbol of Lord Shiva inside a small KUND, or circular depression.
The whole temple bears such an aura that all visitors, be they are devotees or tourists, become  mesmerized by the sublime atmosphere of the temple.
Shiv Sagar is easily approached  by road (National Highway 37) from other major cities of Assam. The nearest airport is at Jorhat, some sixty kilometers away.

Keesara Gutta Shiva Temple

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In the Outskirt of the Hyderabad city, down to Keesara village is located a Hindu temple dedicated to Lord Shiva. This temple is famously known as Keesaragutta Temple nad the main idols are Lord Shiva and his consorts Bhavani & Sivadurga.
The Keesaragutta Temple is located 13 kms from Hyderabad on to a hill rock in Rangareddy district. Shivaratri being the Lord Shiva festival, it receives a huge amount of visitors during that day. This temple is also known as Ramalingeshwara Swamy temple.
Among its legend Sri Rama installed Siva lingam here to amend the sin of killing the Ravana who was a Brahman. He selected this valley and ordered Hanuman to bring Sivlingam from Varanasi. But Hanuman was late in arriving and the auspicious hour was near. At that moment Lord Shiva appeared before Sri Rama and presented a Sivlingam for installation and the lingam in this temple is called Swayambhu Linga.
Hanuman returned with 101 lingams and he was angry when he saw lingam already installed. He then threw them all over the nearby area and those lingams are still found scattered in the surrounding areas. To calm the angriness of Hanuman Sri Rama precedent that it would be Hanuman who would be worshiped first here and he named the hill rock where this lingam was installed to be Kesarigiri i.e., the son of Kesari, Hanuman. But from the time evolved it was renamed as Keesaragutta.
The Keesaragutta Temple is famous place according to archaeologists as they called it as Gatika which serve as a great educational institution in third century. The Keesaragutta Temple has a great cultural backdrop as it has various ruined shrines dated of fifth and sixth century of Guptas architecture. There is also a lovely lotus pond on the hill side where white lotuses blossom in winter and rainy season.

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The best time to visit this temple is mahashivaratri, shiva kalyanam, Hanuman jayanti, Ramalingheshwara Brahmotsavan and also Sri Rama Navami. You can also visit during the auspicious days of Karthikh month and Magh month according to Hindu Calender.

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The place Dharmapuram is about 4 Kms from Karikal. The temple has a Raja gopuram of three tiers and two prakaram. This is One of 275 Siva Devara Sthalam.







Main Deity is Swayambu Lingam known as Yazhmoori Nadhar and his consort known as Theynamirtha Valli in a separate sanctum. Siva Lingam is seen with Silver kavacham in this temple. Vinayakar is known as Karpaga Vinayakar.



Sthala Vruksham is Plantain and Teertham of the temple known as Brahma teertham.



As we go around the prakaram we come across sanctum of Vinayalkar, Viswanadhar, Lingothbavar, Murugan, Gaja Lakshmi, Maha Vishnu, Durgai, and Chandikeswarar . Mahishasuran is seen at the back of Durgai.



Importance of the temple is Lord Siva played music in the instrument known as Yazh. Dakshina Moorthy other form of Lord Siva was listening to the music in slightly relaxed form. Here in this temple Dkshina Moorthy is seen slightly slanting to back.



Thiru Neelakanda Yazhpana Nayanar and his wife were great devotees of Lord Siva. They heard of service rendered by Thiru Gyana Sambandhar and joined him in visiting temples. Sambandhar used to sing Hymns on lord Siva, for which Yazhpanar used to play his instrument Yazh. He was feeling proud of his instrumental music perfection to all the Hymns of Sambandhar. Lord Siva wanted to teach him a lesson to bring down his ego.



Next day when they reached this place and Sambandhar sung Hymn on Lord Siva Yazhpana Nayanar was unable to tune with his instrument. He felt bad for his in- capability. He thought of breaking his instrument and suicide. At this hour Lord Siva revealed himself and played the instrument and danced for the same composition for which Yazhpana Nayanar was able to do in the morning. Listening to the music he got rid of the ego. Hence Lord Siva is known as Yazhmoori Nadhar.

Ambal sang when Lord Siva played the instrument and she did Abishekam for the Siva
Lingm with Honey and Amrutham(Nector) hence she is known as Theynamritha Valli.



Sthala Puranam Says, Yama lost his post, when he tried to take Markandeya’s soul by his pasam. Siva got angry and destroyed him, and he lost his post. Yama regretted for his act and requested Lord Siva to give back his post. Lord Siva said at appropriate time he will get his post once again. Yama came down and started visiting temples and penanced.



No one was there to do Yama’s job. There was no deaths occurring and Boodevi was feeling difficult. She prayed Lord to give life for Yama and help her. Yama when he came to this place he was given life again. Her he dug a pushkarani and worshiped Lord Siva and got back his post again. Teertham is known as Yama Teertham.


Thiru Gyana Sambandhar sang Hymns on Lord Siva of this place.

Shiva Lingam

Shiva is the third form of God as the Destroyer, one of the trimurti (popularly called the "Hindu trinity"). In the trimurti, Shiva is the destroyer, while Brahma and Vishnu are creator and preserver, respectively. However, even though he represents destruction, he is viewed as a positive force (The Destroyer of Evil), since creation follows destruction. Worshippers of Shiva are called Shaivaites. For Shaivaites, however, Shiva is the only Ultimate Reality.

 

Shiva lingam. Srinigar

Shiva is not limited to the personal characteristics as he is given in many images and can transcend all attributes. Hence, Shiva is often worshipped in an abstract manner, as God without form, in the form of lingam (or linga). This view is similar in some ways to the view of God in Semitic religions such as Islam or Judaism, which hold that God has no personal characteristics. Hindus, on the other hand, believe that God can transcend all personal characteristics yet can also have personal characteristics for the grace of the embodied human devotee. Personal characteristics are a way for the devotee to focus on God.
Hindus believe that if we can hear the voice of God in the way Judaeo-Christian religions believe that God communicates, then it is not neccessarily wrong to view a form of God so long as it is recognized that God is not limited to a particular form. Shiva is aadi (without beginning/birth) and ananta (without end/death).
According to the Bhagavata Purana, Lord Shiva appeared from the forehead of Lord Brahma. When Lord Brahma asked his sons (the four kaumaras} to go forth and create progeny in the universe, they refused. This angered Lord Brahma and in his anger a crying child appeared from his forehead. As the child was crying he was called Rudra, and became Lord Shiva. Lord Shiva was asked to go forth and create progeny, but when Lord Brahma observed his power, as they shared the qualities of Lord Shiva, he asked him to observe austerities instead of creating progeny. A slightly different version is told in the Shiva Purana: in the Shiva Purana, Shiva promises Brahma that an aspect of his, Rudra, will be born and this aspect is identical to Him.
Some of his chief attributes are signified by his hundreds of names, such as:-
Mahabaleshwar (Great God of Strength)
Tryambakam (Three-Eyed One, i.e. All-Knowing)
Mahakala (Great Time, i.e. Conqueror of Time)
Nilakantha (The one with a Blue Throat), etc.
Shiva is the supreme God of Shaivism, one of the two main branches of Hinduism today (the other being Vaishnavism). His abode is called Kailasa. His holy mount (called vahana in Sanskrit) is Nandi, the Bull. His attendant is named Bhadra. Shiva is usually represented by the Shiva linga (or lingam). He is generally represented in Hindu tradition as immersed in deep meditation, on Mount Kailash (reputed to be the same as the Mount Kailash in the south of Tibet, near Manasarovar Lake) in the Himalaya, which is supposed to be his abode.Shiva's consort is Devi, God's energy or God as the Divine Mother who comes in many different forms, one of whom is Kali, the goddess of death. Parvati, a more pacific form of Devi is also popular. Shiva also married Sati, daughter of Daksha, who forbade the marriage. Sati disobeyed her father and Daksha held a Yajna (ritual sacrifice) to Vishnu, but did not invite Shiva. In disgust, Sati sacrificed herself in the same fire Daksha used in his sacrifice. Shiva arrived at the scene, angry at the death of his wife, and killed many of the guests, as well as decapitating Daksha, though he later replaced his head with that of a goat. Shiva created the monster Virabhadra during his quarrel with Daksha, and he was the leader of Shiva's men who came to prevent Daksha from conducting the Yajna. According to legend (Shivpurana, Ramcharitmanas and other Hindu scriptures), this same Sati was reborn in the house of Himalaya (who is almost certainly the mountain-range personified) and performed a great tapa (sequence of austerities, culminating in sustained meditation on the object desired, which in this case, was the Lord Shiva). This tapa caused Shiva to break his Samadhi (State of deep, usually ecstatic meditation) and accept Parvati as his consort.Siva gave Parashurama his axe. Shiva's great bow is called Pinâka and thus he is also called Pinaki. Most depictions of Siva show the three-pointed spear Trishula in the background.
Shiva and Parvati are the parents of Karttikeya (also known as Murugan in South India) and Ganesh (Ganesha) (also known as Vinayagar in South India), the elephant-headed God of wisdom. He acquired his head due to the actions of Shiva, who decapitated him because Ganesh refused to allow him to enter the house while Parvati was bathing. Shiva had to give him the new head to placate his wife. In another version, Parvati showed the child off to Shani (The planet Saturn), whose gaze burned his head to ashes, which Brahma told Shiva to replace with the first head he could find, an elephant. Karttikeya is a six-headed god (thus called shadaanan, the one with six heads, Sanskrit: shad, six + aanan, head) and was conceived to kill the demon Tarakasura, who had proven invincible against other minor gods.According to the foundation myth of Kalism, Kali came into existence when Shiva looked into himself; she is his mirror image.
In another version, Kali had gone out to kill demons but she went on a rampage. To stop her, Shiva went and lay down on the ground in front of her path. When Kali stepped on him, she looked down and realized that she had just stepped on Shiva. Feeling ashamed, Kali stuck out her tongue, and the rampage ended.
As Nataraja, Shiva is the Lord of the Dance, and also symbolizes the dance of the Universe/Nature, with all its delicately balanced heavenly bodies and natural laws which complement and balance each other. At times, he is also symbolized as doing his great dance of destruction, called Taandav (Pronounced with a soft 't' and a hard 'd'), at the time of pralaya, or dissolution of the universe.
Some Hindus (non-Saivaites), especially Smartas, believe Shiva to be one of many different forms of the universal Atman, or Brahman, a monistic entity to which all things (essentially), and Shiva, as form of God are identical. Others see him as the one true God from whom all the other deities and principles are emanations, essentially a monotheistic understanding usually related to the bhakti sects of Shaivism.Although he is defined as a destroyer (or rather recreator), Siva, along with Vishnu, is considered the most benevolent God. One of his names is Aashutosh, he who is easy to please, or, he who gives a lot in return for a little.
Traditionally, unlike Vishnu, Shiva does not have any avatars. However, several persons have been claimed as avatars of him, such as Shankara. Some people consider Hanuman to be an avatar of Shiva.

 

Nayanars (or Nayanmars), saints from Southern India, were mostly responsible for development of Shaivism in the Middle Ages.
The important Shaivite sects were Kashmir Shavaites from Northern India, Lingayats and Virasaivas from Southern India. Saiva Siddhanta is a major Shaivite theory developed in Southern India.
Shiva is an aspect of God or Saguna Brahman,(i.e. God with form) who Hindus pray to. In trimurti belief, he is the aspect of God (i.e., God as the Destroyer) of the trimurti (also called the Hindu Trinity), along with Brahma and Vishnu.
Aspects of God such as Shiva or Vishnu are personal attributes of the impersonal Nirguna Brahman, God without attributes, the type of God similar in Semitic religions such as Islam or Judaism (i.e., God without form or without personal characteristics.) The term "Hindu god" should not be equated with Shiva and is confused with Devas. Devas or demigods, are celestial beings similar to angels as discussed in Judaeo-Christian traditions. Devas in Sanskrit literally means "shining beings".

Origin

Siva does not occur in the Vedic hymns as the name of a god, but as an adjective in the sense of "kind", or "auspicious". One of his synonyms, however, is the name of a Vedic deity, the attributes and nature of which show a good deal of similarity to the post-Vedic god. This is Rudra, the god of the roaring storm, usually portrayed in accordance with the element he represents, as a fierce, destructive deity, terrible as a wild beast, whose fearful arrows cause death and disease to men and cattle. He is also called bapardin (wearing his hair spirally braided like a shell), a word which in later times became one of the synonyms of Siva. The Atharva Veda mentions several other names of the same god, some of which appear even placed together, as in one passage Bhava, Sarva, Rudra and Pasupati. Possibly some of them were the names under which one and the same deity was already worshipped in different parts of northern India. This was certainly the case in later times, since it is expressly stated in one of the later works of the Brahmapa period, that Sarva was used by the Eastern people and Bhava by a Western tribe. It is also worthy of note that in the same work, composed at a time when the Vedic triad of Agni, Indra-Vayu and Surya was still recognized, attempts are made to identify Siva of many names with Agni; and that in one passage in the Mahabharata it is stated that the Brahmins said that Agni was Siva.
It is in his character as destroyer that Siva holds his place in the triad, and that he must, no doubt, be identified with the Vedic Rudra. Another very important function appears, however, to have been early assigned to him, on which much more stress is laid in his modern worship, that of destroyer being more especially exhibited in his consort, viz, the character of a generative power, symbolized in the emblem representing Him, (linga) and in the sacred bull (Nandi), the favorite attendant of Him. The non-Aryans have worshipped the linga as a phallic symbol. This feature, however, is entirely alien from the nature of the Vedic god, it has been conjectured with some plausibility, that the linga-worship was originally prevalent among the non-Aryan population, and was thence introduced into the worship of Siva. On the other hand, there can, we think, be little doubt that Siva, in his generative faculty, is the representative of another Vedic god whose nature and attributes go far to account for this particular feature of the modern deity, viz. Pushan.
Siva, originally, no doubt, a solar deity, is frequently invoked, as the lord of nourishment, to bestow food, wealth and other blessings. He is once, jointly with Soma, called the progenitor of heaven and earth, and is connected with the marriage ceremony, where he is asked to lead the bride to the bridegroom and make her prosperous (civatama). Moreover. Lie has the epithet bapardin (spirally braided), as have Rudra and the later Siva, and is called Par upa, or guardian of cattle, whence the latter derives his name Parupati.
Parupa is a strong, powerful, and even fierce and destructive aspect god, who, with his goad or golden spear, smites the foes of his worshipper, and thus in this respect offers at least some points of similarity to Rudra, which may have favored the fusion of the two gods into a monotheistic conception of God, into Shiva.
    Adapted with permission from
Shiva Gifts:
   
  Wikipedia.  This 14th century statue depicts Shiva (on the left) and his wife Uma (on the right}. It is housed in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.