N. Gopala Pillai, M. A
from the Proceedings of the All-India Oriental Conference
Vol. IX (Trivandrum: Government Press, 1937), pp. 955-997
We are now going to tread on more controversial ground. Dionysus is said to be the son of Zeus and Skanda is the son of Siva. Could it be that the very word Siva itself is an Indianization of Zeus and imported from outside? The word Zeus has a long history behind it. Philologists are agreed that agreed that Zeus is the Greek form of the Sanskrit word “dyaus” which means sky, and we have the form “divas pitr” corresponding to the western from Zeus-pater or Jupiter. But the word Siva in the sense of a god, we do not come across in the Vedas. We are familiar with Rudra, the Vedic counterpart of the Puranic Siva. We meet Siva in some Upanisads, the chronology of which is questionable. Pānani is familiar with Siva, and Patanjali too. That is to say, earlier than the 4th Century B.C., the usually accepted date of Panini, three is no authentic mention of Siva. It is not proposed here to claim Siva to be a thorough-bred foreigner. The excavations at Mohenja Daro have brought to light a seal (Plate XII of Sir John Marshall’s work) representing a prototype of Siva Paśupati, and it reveals the hoary antiquity of such a conception. As so often happens in the history of religion, new names and new notions were overlaid on the old. But a question might naturally arise. If the word Siva has come from Greece, how could Pānini be aware of him in the 4th Century or thereabout? India had come into contact with the western world, long before the conquest of Alexander. From the days of Xerxes who invaded the North-West, India had frequent intercourse with the West. Contingents of Indian troops had served in the armies of Xerxes and Darius in their expeditions against Greece. Trade and commerce might have helped the process of the diffusion of religion and culture. But it is rather a hazardous venture to hang on the frail form of a verbal resemblance in matters like this. But the parallelism does not stop with the word.
Attributes of Siva with which we are familiar in Indian religious literature are discernable in the case of his Greek counter-part Zeus. We note Zeus as Jupiter triophthalmos the triple-eyed god.[71] Siva as triambaka is worshipped throughout India; and triambaka is always explained as three-eyed. We become aware, for once, of the fact, that there is a word amba or ambaka in Sanskrit which means an eye. It is suspicious.
In Egypt we encounter the Solar god variously called Atin, Atys, or Attin,[72] who was both male and female (Macrobius-Saturn I, 26). We meet the double-sexed god again in Europe. Says Rawlinson, “Macrobius (Saturn III.7) speaks of a bearded Venus in Cyprus and She is called by Aristophanes ‘Aphroditos’, apparently according with the notion of Jupiter being of two sexes, as well as of many characters and with the Egyptian notion of a self-producing and self-engendering deity. This union of the two sexes is also found in Hindoo mythology, and similarly emblematic of the generative of productive principles.” [73] Of course, the double-sexed Zeus of Hindu Mythology is Siva, Ardhanārīśvara. It is a striking similarity.
Herodotus speaks of a Jupiter Stratius worshipped by the Carians.[74] “He was also called Jupiter Labrandeus, either from his temple at Labranda or from the fact that he bore in his right hand a double-headed battle-axe (‘Labra’ in the Lydian language). Such a representation of Jupiter is sometimes found upon Carian coins. And a similar axe appears frequently as an architectural ornament in the buildings of the country.” [75] We are naturally reminded of Siva as Khanda paraśu figuring so frequently in Sanskrit literature.
It is an admitted fact that the word ‘Tues’ of Tuesday is derived from the name of the old German God Zio, (Zeus) or Tius.[76] The Indian names of the days of the week are exactly corresponding to the western names. These names assuredly, had a common origin. Dion Cassius[77] expressly states that the seven days were first referred to the seven planets by the Egyptians. The ‘tues’ of Tuesday appears as Cevva in Dravidian languages. That is as much as to say that the Dravidian word Cevva corresponds to the western word Zeus. Now in Tamil, the alleged root of the word Cevva may be spelt either way as ‘Civ’ or ‘Cev’, and C is pronounced as Ś. If this process of reasoning is sound, it would follow that, while directly through Vedic and Sanskrit, various forms of the word ‘dyaus’ became current in India, it reached India again through the Greek form Zeus, after circuitous migrations in diverse lands, passing through diverse tongues. This fact explains the absence of the God Siva in the Vedas, and probably South India hugged to her bosom this new-come god with fervid devotion. Of course, there were gods and goddesses too before the arrival of Siva. But again, they paled into insignificance before the impetuous new-comer. The conception of Siva as astamurti is a bold attempt at an all-embracing symposium of diverse allied cults of the worship of Zeus, as the sun, the moon, etc. Even the practice of the devotees of Siva daubing themselves with white ashes (bhasman) is analogous to the orphic rite of the worshippers of Zeus besmearing their bodies with dust or ashes or gypsum which the ancients called ‘titanos’. Archbishop Eustathius commenting on the word Titan says, “we apply the word titanos in general to dust, in particular to what is called asbestos, which is the white fluffy substance in burnt stones”.[78]
It is claimed by some that Skanda is purely a South Indian God and there are no Skanda temples in the north. It might be so or not now. But even during the days of Kalidasa, we come across great Skanda Shrines of note in the north. Cf. ‘Tatra skandum niyatavasatim’ – Meghadūta. Sānkarācārya invokes him as the God of the Indus region.
Cf. Subrahmanya Bhujanga:
“Iti vyañjayan sindhutīre ya āste
tam īde pavitram parāśaktiputram.”
“namas sindhave sindhu deśāya tasmai
punas skandamūrte namas te namo’ stu”.
Before the introduction of the Skanda or Kārttikeya cult from the north, under the name of Subrahmanya, South India was paying for her divine homage to Muruka, amongst other local primitive deities. Amongst Dravidians it was a very ancient worship. But even here, palpable affinities could be traced to similar religious rites elsewhere. Muruka, like Skanda, is the God of War. He was also the God of Hunting. We are told of a Babylonian and Cushite God of Hunting and of War under a name variously spelt as Murik,[79] Mirukh[80] and Mirikh. Murik is really the original Cushite and it is still applied by the Arabs to the planet Mars which has always represented the God of War: and does even today represent Skanda in India. The word occurs still in this vernacular form in Ethiopian inscriptions. The worship of the same god with the same functions under the same name by apparently different races is a problem for ethnologists to tackle. But the fact remains. Either the Cushites and Dravidians might both belong to the same race, or one might have adopted the practice from the other. The former is the more probable hypothesis.