The Ardhanarinatesvara (Ardhanarisvara) Stotra
Hymn to the Lord of Dance who is Half Woman
( extracts from "The Lord who is Half Woman: Ardhanarisvara in Indian and Feminist perspective/ Ellen Goldberg, 2002-)
The Ardharinatesvara
Stotra is
a devotional poem attributed to Adi Sankara, the principal expounder of the advaita school of Indian Philosophy. Stotras, or hymns of praise, to a
particular deity are typically eulogistic (a speech or writing in praise of a
person or thing, especially a set oration in honor of a deceased person) in
nature and, as Jan Gonda (1977) suggests, trace their roots in uninterrupted
continuity from the Vedic age to the present. Bruce Long (1983) agrees, and he
claims that the invocation of the pantheon of deities though such hymns of
praise was “common practice” in Vedic Period….
…
The arhanarinatesvara stotra in which the emblems, attributed, and qualities of
Siva-Siv`a (Siva-PArvathi) are praised by its (anonymous) author is of
particular interest here. Averall it provides an excellent illustration of the
strotra tradition and the doctrine of Bhed`abheda (unity-in-difference) and is
a rich primary source of poetic iconography embellishing our typology and
diagnostic features that informs the image of Ardhanarisvara.
The
strotra is a simple formulaic device recited or chanted by the worshipper as an
integral part of ritual puja… It involves a string of simple epithets declaring
obeisance to the deity, Below is a transliteration of the Ardharinatesvara
stotra from the devanagari script, a translation, and a brief analysis of the
hymn.
The Ardhanarinatesvara (Ardhanarisvara) Stotra:
1. 1. Cāmpeya
gaurārdha śarīrakāyai
Karpūra gaurārda śarīrakāya.
Dhammillakāyai ca jaţadhrāya
Namah Śivāyai ca namah Śivāya.
Her
body is fair like campā flower
His body
is like camphor
She
has a braided hairstyle ornamented with pearls
And he
has matted hair
2. 2. Kastūrikā
kumkumacaricitāyai
Citārājahpuna vicarcitāya
Kŗtasmarāyai vikŗtasmarāya
Namah Śivāyai ca namah Śivaya
Her
body is sprinkled with the musk-vermillion powder,
His body
is besmeared with a collection of ash from the funeral pyre
She
has the power of, and he is adverse to, sexual desire
I bow
to Śivā and I bow to Śiva
3. 3. Calat
kvaņat kańkananpūrāyai
Pādābharājataphaninūpurāya.
Hemāńgadāyai bhujagāńgadāya
Namah Śivāyai ca namah Śivaya
From
her you hear the movement of tinkling anklets and bracelets,
His lotus
feet have shining anklets of snakes
Her body
is adorned with golden armlets
And his
body has armlets of snakes
I bow
to Śivā and I bow to Śiva
4. 4. Viśālanīlotpalalocanāya
Vikāsipańkeruhalocanāya.
Sameksanāyai visameksanāya
Namah Śivāyai ca namah Śivaya
Her
eyes are like large blue lotuses
His eyes
are like the red lotus
Her eyes
are even, his eyes are uneven
I bow
to Śivā and I bow to Śiva
5. 5. Mandāramālākalitālakāyai
Kapālamālānkitakādharāyai
Divyāmbarāyai ca digambarāya
Namah Śivāyai ca namah Śivaya
She is
wearing a garland made from the mandar tree in her hair
He is
wearing a garland of skulls on his neck
The
fabric she is wearing is divine, he is sky-clad
I bow
to Śivā and I bow to Śiva
6. 6. Ambodharaśyāmālā
kuntalāyai
Taditprabhātāmrajatādharāya
Narīśvarāyai nikileśvarāya
Namah Śivāyai ca namah Śivaya
Her
hair is dark like clouds
His matted
hair is like the luster of lighting
She
is not the Lord, he is the Lord of all
I bow
to Śivā and I bow to Śiva
7. 7. Prapańcasŗśtyunmukhalāsyakāyai
Samastasamhārakatāņdavāya
Jagdjjananyai jagadekapitre
Namah Śivāyai ca namah Śivaya
Her
body is dance preparing for the creation of differentiation,
His is
the dance of destruction that destroys everything.
I bow
to Śivā, mother of the Universe
I bow
to Śiva, father of the Universe
8. 8. Pradīptaratnojjvalakundalayai
Sphuranmahāpannagabhūs aņāya
Śivānvitāyai ca Śivanvitāya
Namah Śivāyai ca namah Śivaya
Her
ear ornaments are radiant precious stones giving the light,
His adornments
are hissing snakes
He is
embracing her, and she is embracing him
I bow
to Śivā and I bow to Śiva
Analysis
of the stotra
The hymn attests to the iconographic, mythic and
philosophical tenets of Ardhanarisvara, which suggest the ideals of bhedābheda
philosophy. It consists of eight short verses, with nine oblations (offerings) by
the author in the form of the repeated eleven-syllable mantra “Namah Śivāyai ca
namah Śivaya” echoed at the end of each verse…. Overall tone of these mantras
appears symmetrical as the author propitiates (appeases) the female and male
halves of the divine androgyne equally by following a rhythmic pattern at the
end of each verse that is consistently employed throughout the hymn.
… the first line begins by defining the bipolar body
of Ardhanarisvara as half female and half male, recalling the brahmasutra (line
of demarcation, axis mundi) running through the midpoint of the physical body
on the temple murtis. The author draws our attention to female attributes
first, then to his male half. Each unpretentious verse is patterned
symmetrically on similar comparison between Siva’s feminine and masculine form.
In the first line Sivā’s complexion is
compared to campa flower. Campa has a delicate golden hue, whereas camphor
(karpūram), the metaphor used to convey the shade of Siva’s complexion, is
opaque white in color…
One of the most popular attributed of Siva
in iconography is his matted hair (jata, usnīsa), as it typically depicts this
persona as the great ūdhvareta acetic and yogi. In sculpture, the matted locks
are arranged as a crown adorned with a crescent moon, snakes and the goddess
Gangā flowing from the top. Sivā is described as wearing dhamilla, a
traditional braided hairstyle for women usually ornamented with pearls and
other gems. .. At the end of the first verse and each verse thereafter, the
author bows twice, first to Ardhanarisvara’s female side, and then to male side…
as part of Indian hymnal literature, the context of this stotra is personal
devotion of Ardhanarisvara.
In the second stanza, the fragrance of musk
and the vibrancy of vermillion powder identify Śivā. The mark or dot of red vermillion (kumkum)
indicates her marital status as the wife of Śiva which, as Susan Wadley
suggests, is a normative role for an Indian woman and constitutes a necessary
requirement for her liberation (Wadley 1975, 158; Wadley 1992). Śivā is also
portrayed in this verse as having the power of sexual desire, - an attribute
that must be contained though marriage (Wadley 1975, 28; Wadley and Jacobson 1992,
White 1996, 219ff). By using imagery associated with householder stage of life
(grhasthasrama), conveyed in this verse by the metaphors kumkum and
krstasmarayai. Śivā personifies the creative energy of sexuality (bhoga,
bhogavati, kundalini) and fertility. Vermillion (kumkum) is used as a ritual
paste or substance to pay homage and obeisance to the goddess and it is used in
this stotra to refer to Śivā’s auspiciousness and fecundity (fruitfulness) and
creativity. According to White (1996) it is precisely this aspect of female
fertility that poses such peril for male seed and virility particularly in the
context of the more orthodox monastic and ascetic schools of yoga over which Śiva
is Lord (218). Accordingly, Śiva turns Pārvatī away because of her “femaleness”
(O’Flaherty 1980, 141, Khandelwar 1997, 83).
Śiva is deicted thoughout the stotra as the yogi
par excellence who has transcended or sublimated bhoga (or bhogavati,
kundalini) though his internalized and ūrdhvareta yoga prowess. This is reveled
in the second verse by the image of Śiva assmasānavāsin. Consequently,
his appearance with his ghoulish body besmeared with ashes (bhasma) from the
funeral pyre and burning cremation grounds where he sports is the embodiment of
the dissolution, as he has purified himself of his creative powers though an
ashen bath (bhasma-snāna, ūrdhvaretas). . Like Agni-Soma, Prajāpati, and others
in Indian tradition, the symbolic use of ash identifies and attests to Siva’s
transcendence through his ability to sublimate desire.
However, it is important to recall that in
iconographic representation, Śiva and Śivā are not two separate deities but
rather a two-in-one form (bhedābheda)… This power or gift of creativity to
propagate lineage is possible precisely because Śiva is always half Śivā. In
this verse, the spontaneously arising complementarily divinized in the singular
form of Ardharinatesvara gestures to the fusion of these two seemingly polar
aspects of creation (life and death) as one interpenetrating iconographic
symbol of primordial unity.
In the third stanza… the devotee hears Śivā’s adornments,
specifically her tinkling anklets and bracelets (kavanat kankana nūpurāyai),
precisely because the female part is portrayed as moving (calat), creative and
active (karma). Śiva’s anklets, on the other hand, just like his body, are
decorated with snakes. Here, the
association with snakes at Siva’s feet could be the reference to the hooded,
coiled snake positioned at the right of Śiva’s foot in dance of the ānanda-tāndava.
Symbols in Indian tradition are often
multivalent and they suggest alternative or parallel explanations. According to Śivaramamūrti,
the snake symbol was associated with the healer or physician (Sivaramamurt
1976, 38). Like Sākyamuni Buddha, another epithet of Śiva’s is the divine
physician, and the desease that Śiva cures in this aspect is bhava, that is ,
the attachment to, or craving for, coming in to existence or rebirth (samsāra)…
Snakes, skulls, ash and so on also are symbols used frequently in ancient Tamil
poetry to indicate Śiva’s ultimate transcendence of birth and death (Yokum
1982, 146)….
The two colors of lotus, blue and red,
denote different sides of Śivā and Śiva in verse five of the stotra. Śivā’s
eyes are the color of the blue lotus (nilotpala locaniyai) ,whereas Śiva’s
resembles the red lotus (panke ruha locaniyai).. his eyes do not convey the
balance and symmetry (sameksanayai) that Śivā’s do, but are uneven (visameksanāya).
The goddess is portrayed with two eyes, whereas Siva has three eys, usually
equated in hatha yoga with triad moon (candra), sun (surya) and fire (agni).
This points to a potential power imbalance between the goddess and the god in
the stotra, since his third eye is typically associated with the divine eye of
wisdom (jnanetra). As well, Śiva’s eyes do not attract, instead they burn with
the color of fire (or the union of sun and moon).
In the next verse Śivā wears a mala
(garland) in her hair made from the
flowers of mandar tree and the fabric of her royal dress impresses the hymnist
as divine or extraordinary. It is important here to refer to Hart’s (1975)
explanation that flowers are important in South Indian Society, past and
present. Married women, for exmplae, wear flowers in their hair as it
represents sign of fertility. Śiva on the other hand wears a necklace of skulls
around his neck and he is dressed simply in four directions (sky-clad,
digambara). Śivā is fully clothed in the ornaments or emblems of the earth's
fertility, whereas Śiva has renounced all materiality, he is clothed only with ākāśa
(space) or void (śūnyatā), thus he is naked (digambara). As Marglin (1985)
contends “nudity conveys ascetism”, or the detachment of the ascetic from the
world. ..
Similarly, in verse six, Śivā’s dark hair
resembles the coulds. This simile evokes stock reference to the rain clouds at
the time of the monsoon, the season of anticipated fertility and growth. Śiva’s
jatā has the luster of lightning. The jatā is a hairstyle worn by ascetics and
signals the sublimation of sexual energy, and the luster of lightning emanating
from it is a specific reference to various forms of Śiva’s yogāgni, which is depicted
as both flame and light… Siva’s yogagni
(yogic heat) is linked to his sublimation or eros (kama) and generally derives
from his third eye….
In verse seven, creation and destruction ,
portrayed though images of their different dances, are gendered as feminie and masculine,
respectively. Ardharinatesvaram being compraised of Siva and Sakti, is the
cosmic dancer, who brings forth the creation (prakrti) and dissolution… as in
temple iconography, Indian dance delineates the left side Parvati (lasya) and the right side as tadava
(siva)….
As the mother of the universe, Śivā is
creative and dances the lāsya. As the father, Śiva is responsible for death and
dissolution of prakriti (feminine, nature) though tandava. ..
In the final stanza, Śivā’s and Śiva’s
differences are once again signaled by their ear ornaments… Sakti wears
earrings produces from wealth of the earth (i.e. precious stones) while Śiva’s
are the emblems of yoga (e.g. snakes). Here a connection between Śivā as
creation, nature, or materiality and Śiva as transcendence is conveyed. In
other words, the universal cultural dialectic between matter/nature and
culture/spirit, articulated earlier by Ortner, is projected in Indian tradition
upon the dual-gendered deity Ardhanarinateswara.
The hymnist, like Ortner also makes the significant claim that the
boundaries between these two human constructs (i.e. natural and spirit), are not
as clearly demarcated as culture would have us believe, in that Śiva is Sakti
and Sakti is Śiva, they constitute one inseparable, rhythmic, cosmic dance of
coming into being and passing away… The
single body of the androgynous divine speaks not only to the interpenetration
of theses cultural ideals and their very real human manifestations, but also
gestured to the ambivalence and difficulty
involved in attempting to separate them, However, if by associating
Sakti with lesser-valued roles, tasks and ideals, the male half of the
androgyne and his human counterparts are perceived as dominant and superior,
then an assymetrical status is rendered. This is seen most evidently in verse six
by the epithets: “she is not the lord, he is the lord of all”. As such, the
stotra no longer operates as simply a subtle mystification for the notion for
divine unity but can indeed be seen as an expression of subtle patriarchal
social norms.
To illustrate, Jagadep (1989) investigates
the condition of Tamil women in pre-British India only to reveal that the
entrenched domination of women was “the norm”. As above, men are the so-called “lord
of all”, particularly in the family, and women observed the rules and codes of
behavior deemed proper by male-constituted family law or, as Rangaswamy suggested
earlier, icons such as Umāpati and Ardhanarisvara. Women as mothers are no
doubt held in high regard , and often for women this is a significant locus of
power and agency. However, for many feminists, the ideal of motherhood also
necessitates rigorous rules regarding female chastity, child marriage,
restricted remarriage of widows, claims over reproductive rights and , as
Jagadep suggests, evidence of matricide (Jagadep 1989, Jeffery 1998, Basu
1998).
Moreover, according to Jagadep, religion
can play a substantive role in the systematic subordination of women, for
example, in less valued roles, including exclusion fom religious iniciation,
performance of public lithurgy, omission as functionaries at ancestral funerary
rites, and so forth. This religious status finds its parallel in economic and
political life as well in terms of patriarchal, patrilineal lines of
inheritance, access to resources , and so on, However, Basu (1998) rightly
argues that religion can also provide positive images for women, and can affirm
women’s membership and sense of belonging in the community (Basu 1998, 9)….
In the final image of the stotra, and as a
final expression of the doctrine of the ultimate inseparability of prakrti and
purus, the hymn’s closing verse presents Śivā and Śiva in mutual embrace of
love.
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