"Siva" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of these temples is called 'Kailus,' and is dedicated to Siva the Destroyer. It has a great court, in which are ponds, obelisks, figures of the Sphinx, and other ornaments, whilst in the middle stands an immense group of elephants. Above these huge creatures, rows of stately columns, in four tiers, one above the other, ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... Mal, at the time when conquered by the Raja of Gorkha, had divided into three branches, governing Kathmandu, Lalita-Patan, and Bhatgang. During the government of these chiefs a good many of the Newars had rejected the doctrine of Sakya, and adopted the worship of Siva, but without changing their manners, which are chiefly remarkable for a most extraordinary carelessness about the conduct of their women; neither have they adopted the Brahmans as their priests. Some of themselves, ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... thunderbolt. But with the churning still going on, the poison Kalakuta appeared at last. Engulfing the Earth it suddenly blazed up like a fire attended with fumes. And by the scent of the fearful Kalakuta, the three worlds were stupefied. And then Siva, being solicited by Brahman, swallowed that poison for the safety of the creation. The divine Maheswara held it in his throat, and it is said that from that time he is called Nilakantha (blue-throated). Seeing all these wondrous things, the Asuras were filled with despair, and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... gods and tenets; and Mahadeo, the "great god," whose home had been the Kailas of the Himalayas, now finds himself domesticated in the mountains of Central India. In the Mahadeo mountain is still a shrine of Siva, which is much visited by ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... showing that Christian belief had in some pious minds gone through substantially the same cycle which an earlier form of belief had made ages before in India, when the Supreme Being was represented with one body but with the three faces of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... milk-white bullocks of the Druid, garlanded with flowers, heading the procession that entered the dark groves in search of the sacred mistletoe-bearing oak; the processions of Pan and Odin, and Siva and Vishnu and Baal, and Venus and Bacchus. Nymphs and fauns and dryads and hamadryads called from the depths of the forest, and youths and maidens and shepherds with vine-wreathed brows danced in the sunlit glades and on the hills where the white ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... antiquity, whom (if the writers of antiquity may be trusted) it is not possible to identify with every other—Saturn, Jupiter, Mercury, Pan, Hercules, Priapus, Bacchus, Bel, Moloch, Chemosh, Taut, Thoth, Osiris, Buddha, Vishnou, Siva, all and each of these may be shown to be one and the same person. And whether we suppose this person to have been the Sun, or to have been Adam, or Seth, or Enoch, or Noah, or Shem, or Ham, or Japhet, the conclusion will be still the same, each of them, it may be shewn was worshipped ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... three names of Selesumano, Samastakuta, and Samanila. "There is an indentation on the top of it," a superficial hollow, 5 feet 3 34 inches long, and about 2 12 feet wide. The Hindus regard it as the footprint of Siva; the Mohameddans, as that of Adam; and the Buddhists, as in the text,—as having ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... might have run so exalted a career, we must say one word as to the fate and fortunes of his old friend Undy Scott. This gentleman has not been represented in our pages as an amiable or high-minded person. He has indeed been the bad spirit of the tale, the Siva of our mythology, the devil that has led our hero into temptation, the incarnation of evil, which it is always necessary that the novelist should have personified in one of his characters to enable him to bring ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... the road to see before you a temple of Siva or any other God, having first made a salutation, respectfully enter inside ...
— The Siksha-Patri of the Swami-Narayana Sect • Professor Monier Williams (Trans.)
... husbands and wives have experienced this truth in their bereavement; their love not decaying, but passing into resurrection. The Hindus have a fine parable of Kamadeva, the eastern Cupid. He shot Siva, who, turning on him in rage, reduced the mischievous archer to ashes. All the gods wept over his ashes. Then he arose in spiritual form, free from every physical trait or quality. Literature, both eastern and western, ancient and modern, ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... and mother of Maricha. Rama, by command of Viswamitra slays her. Viswamitra is exceedingly pleased with the deed and invokes and gives to Rama the heavenly weapons with all their secrets of discharge and dissolution. The sage recommends Kusadhwaja to invite the bow of Siva for Rama's present trial, and consequent obtaining of Sita. The bow arrives, self-conveyed, being, as the weapon of so great a deity, pregnant with intelligence. Rama snaps it asunder, in consequence of which feat it is agreed that Sita shall be wedded ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... in bondage to their tyranny, and who have ever been inclined to sensuous worship,—multiplied their sacrifices and sacerdotal rites, and even permitted a complicated polytheism. Gradually piety was divorced from morality. Siva and Vishnu became worshipped, as well as Brahma and a host of other gods ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... believing that the emblem of fecundity might be rendered more energetic by combining the organs of both sexes, did so unite them, giving to this double symbol the name of Pulleiar, confounded by some writers with the Lingham itself. This pulleiar is highly venerated by the sectarian worshippers of Siva (the third god of the Trimourti), who hang it round their neck, as a charm or amulet, or enclosing it in a small box, fasten it upon their arm. The Indians have also a little jewel called taly, worn, in like manner, by females round their necks as a charm. It ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... ever there had been from so called 'heathen' nations in calling them to turn from their idols. Indeed, Mammon is a much more potent idol, it is more cruel, smeared with more human blood, than Kali of Siva. They sacrifice goats to Kali and we shudder; we sacrifice men to Mammon and justify our 'rights.' In simple fact, though they are not worthy of mention, I have met with more opposition and misrepresentation, ten times over, in 'Christian' America, than I ever met in fifteen ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... unsolved problem. Its monuments were mainly built between 600 and 1200 A.D., the oldest being in Orissa, at Bhuwanesevar, Kanaruk, and Puri. In northern India the temples are about equally divided between the two forms of Brahmanism—the worship of Vishnu or Vaishnavism, and that of Siva or Shaivism—and do not differ materially in style. As in the Jaina style, the vimana is their most striking feature, and this is in most cases adorned with numerous reduced copies of its own form grouped in successive stages against its sides and angles. This curious system ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... incessantly modifying and superseding the old scholastic interpretations of the mysteries, for Hindus, like Asiatics everywhere, are still in that condition of mind when a fresh spiritual message is eagerly received. Vishnu and Siva are the realistic abstractions of the understanding from objects of sense, from observation of the destructive and reproductive operations of nature; they represent among educated men separate systems of worship which, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... Ephthalites.—In the beginning of the sixth century the White Hun, Mahirakula, ruled the Panjab from Sakala, the modern Sialkot. He was a worshipper of Siva, and a deadly foe of the Buddhist cult, and has been described ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... standing before all, wait upon and worship the illustrious lord of treasures. The illustrious Nandiswaras, and Mahakala, and many spirits with arrowy ears and sharp-pointed mouths, Kaksha, Kuthimukha, Danti, and Vijaya of great ascetic merit, and the mighty white bull of Siva roaring deep, all wait in that mansion. Besides these many other Rakshasas and Pisachas (devils) worship Kuvera in that assembly house. The son of Pulastya (Kuvera) formerly used always to worship in all the modes and sit, with permission obtained, beside the god of gods, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... derived from him. His mission is recorded in a barbarous poem called the Ramayana, wherein he is figuratively represented as allying himself with monkeys. He is worshipped all over the country under the appellations of Siva, Kamadeva, Kali, Gautama Buddha, and ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... considerably and for the better. How infinitely nobler is his idea of uniting the maiden with her divine lover on the flaming pyre from which both ascend to heaven! It may also be observed that Goethe substitutes Mahadeva, i.e. Siva, for Dewendre[90] and assigns to him an incarnation, though such incarnations are ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... related at length the life of Rama, as well as of Rama's ancestors and of his twenty-four successors. This poem abounds in striking similes, as does also the same poet's Kumarasambhava or Birth and Wooing of the War God Siva. There are, however, sundry cantos in all these poems which are too erotic to meet with favor among modern readers. Kalidasa is also the author of an epic in Prakrit, wherein he sings of the building of the bridge between India and Ceylon and of the ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... over the vistas opened by the telescope may hide his diminished head! Their other conceptions are of the same crushing magnitude, Thus, when the demons, on a certain occasion, assailed the gods, Siva using the Himalaya range for his bow, Vasuke for the string, Vishnu for his arrow, the earth for his chariot with the sun and moon for its wheels and the Vedas for its horses, the starry canopy for his banner with the tree of Paradise for its staff, Brahma for his charioteer, and the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... qualities of her race and blood, and, as the present volume shows us for the first time, preserving to the last her appreciation of the poetic side of her ancient religion, though faith itself in Vishnu and Siva had been cast aside with childish things and been replaced by a purer faith. Her mother fed her imagination with the old songs and legends of their people, stories which it was the last labour of her life to weave into English verse; but it would seem that the marvellous faculties of Toru's ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... lived very happily. Few poor or unenlightened or wicked persons were to be found in the country. But the great and good king had not a son. This was an intense sorrow to him—the one dark cloud that now and again overshadowed his otherwise happy and glorious life. Every day he prayed earnestly to Siva to grant him an heir to sit upon the throne after him. One day Siva appeared to him in the garb of a yogi,[FN401] and bade him ask a boon and it should be granted. "Take these four fruits," said Siva, "and give them to your wife to eat on such a day ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Bacchic mysteries were very generally celebrated throughout Greece, and were a wild nature-worship; partaking of that frenzy which has in all nations been considered a method of gaining a supernatural and inspired state, or else as the result of it. The Siva worship in India, the Pythoness at Delphi, the Schamaism of the North, the whirling dervishes of the Mohammedans; and some of the scenes at the camp-meetings in the Western States, belong to the same class as ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... philosophers to pile up his political in majestic consistency with his ecclesiastical creed, but he had also to pay back the mad French liberalism with something more mad if possible, and more despotic. And if also Danton, and Mirabeau, and Robespierre, and other terrible Avatars of the destroying Siva in Paris, had raised his naturally romantic temperament a little into the febrile and delirious now and then, what wonder? Shall the devil walk the public streets at noon day, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... to the Himalayas. The Hindoos call it the "City of a Thousand Palaces;" they say it was built by the genii on the very spot where Vishnu had reposed himself for a few weeks, after one of his mystic transmutations, in which he had conquered Siva, or Sahavedra, the spirit of evil. Though not so well known, Hurdwar is a place still more sacred than Benares; people assemble there once a year from all parts, and consecrate several days to their ablutions in the purifying waters of the Ganges. In this noble city is also held ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... greatly modified. Monotheism has been supplanted by a gross Polytheism, by the corruption of symbolism. At the head are the Triad Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the preserver, Siva the destroyer. Fourteen more principal deities may be enumerated. To them must be added their female Consorts. Many of the Gods are held to be incarnations of Vishnu or Siva. Further, there is a vast host of spirits and demons, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... kindly, than I have been observing the gods. "Where is your babagee?" I inquire. No one seems to comprehend my question; the gravity of each dark face remains unrelaxed. Yet I would have liked to make an offering unto Siva. ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn |
