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Re: REQUEST : statue of the God Siva coiled with Serpent
Mani Varadarajan wrote:
> Siva is always depicted as having a serpent
> around his neck. The story is as follows.
> The devas and asuras were churning the ocean
> in search of the nectar of immortality. However,
> they were unprepared for some of the other things
> that came out of the ocean. One of the first
> that came out was hala-hala, a deadly poison
> that began affecting the devas and asuras.
>
> At the devas' and asuras' request, Siva drank all
> the poison to alleviate their suffering. His consort
> Parvati, however, was taken aback that he had decided
> to do this. So she took a snake and tied it around his
The story as I remember is that Parvati used her hand and stopped the
flow of the poison at the neck. Thus the poison is at the neck of shiva
always and hence the blue neck, which leads to the name niilakaNTha.
> neck to prevent the poison from going down his throat.
> Siva's throat, full of poison, then took on a dark-bluish
> color. This is why Siva is also called 'nIlakaNTha'.
My understanding is that the snake represents the mind, and the snake
around the neck (he is also portrayed with snakes on the hair sometimes,
infact he is described as such in the R^ig veda) is a symbolism that the
devotee should submit his mind to him and remain as pure consciousness.
I have also seen interpretations in some tantra texts that he is the
lord of the Kundalini (represented by a snake) and so on.
Ramakrishnan.
--
http://yake.ecn.purdue.edu/~rbalasub/
