Located on the eastern coast of Tamil Nadu, just between Chennai and Madurai, Chidambaram is a typical gateway town that developed around the Nataraja temple. The main statue of Nataraja, also known as the Cosmic Dancer, is said to represent Lord Shiva, who became the very rhythm of the universe at the Samadhi of his meditative dance.
The dancing Shiva is universally found in all India, but the form of the dancing Nataraja surrounded by a ring of fire created in Tamil Nadu during the Chola dynasty is a landmark in the history of Indian art as a pinnacle of bronze sculpture, a masterpiece with perfect balance and beauty that embodies a height of Hindu ideology.
Lord Nataraja has four arms: the drum in his upper right hand represents the creation of the universe, the flame in his upper left palm represents the destruction of the world, the left and right hands in front form a mudra on the right side of his body represent the maintenance of order, the dwarf stepped on by his right foot represents freedom from ignorance, and the ring of flame surrounding them all represents the dharma of the Universe, in which the repetition of creation, maintenance and destruction continues in an eternal cycle of Samsara.
Because of this worship of Lord Nataraja, Chidambaram is traditionally praised to as the ‘Centre of the Universe/World’ among Hindus.
In fact, I had also visited this temple once before, ten years ago. I was greatly fascinated by the beautiful statues of the deities and had high hopes for a second visit, but there was another reason for my visit this time. I thought that the design of the circle might have represented the Chakra=Wheel.
Shiva is worshipped throughout India as one of the two major deities alongside Vishnu. However, from what I saw and heard in India, Lord Shiva did not seem to have much to do with the idea of the Wheel=Chakra. In such a situation, only the circular design of Nataraja reminded me of Holy Chakra.
From what I have understood so far, the holy Chakra=wheel was a symbol of absolute divine authority in India. Buddha, Vishnu and the hidden supreme deity Devi Shakti were each firmly bearing for the ideation and design of the Holy Chakra. If Shiva is revered as one of the Supreme Deities, he must similarly bear the divine authority of the Chakras ‘in some way’. That was my hypothesis.
When I visited the Nataraja Temple, I happened to meet a Brahmin priest Senthil, and he guided me to the depths of its sanctum. Then I was confronted with many facts there that I had not noticed on my previous visit.
Inside the main shrine called Thillai Stara, there was, to my surprise, also a shrine where Lord Vishnu was worshipped right next to the Chit Sabha where Lord Nataraja is worshipped. And there, as in the Venkateshwara temple, the Sudarshan Chakra was prominently displayed.
In the core of this temple, which was supposed to be Shiva’s stronghold, Vishnu was enshrined side by side! That was pretty unbelievable for me.
According to Senthil, temples like this, where Shiva and Vishnu are worshipped next to each other as the principal deities of the same rank, are extremely rare in India.
The walls of the hall separating the Nataraja Shiva and Vishnu shrine rooms were even decorated with a half-Vishnu, half-Shiva fusion deity image called Shankara Narayana. On the same wall, there is also an image of the god Ardhanarishwara, a half-body fusion of Shiva and his consort Parvati.
This Nataraja temple, like the Venkateshwara temple, was a temple to the supreme deity of the universe, where Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva Trimurti were combined with the divine princess Devi Shakti.
According to Senthil, the drum in Nataraja’s upper right hand represents Brahma’s creation, the flame in his upper left hand represents Shiva’s destruction, and the mudras represented by his other left and right hands represent Vishnu’s maintenance, taking the form of the dancing Shiva as the supreme deity in appearance, who symbolizes the providence (dharma) of the Universe, in which the work of the integrated three gods can only unfold through the Goddess Shakti.
The Nataraja temple was largely built and expanded during the Chola dynasty, between the 10th and 13th centuries. The Chola kings were also known to be ardent devotees of Lord Venkateshwara. I guess that this Lord Nataraja must have been the Shaiva counterpart in the Tamil world to the Venkateshwara temple, which worshipped the same supreme deity of the Universe in Vishnu’s appearance.
If so, there must also be some motif in the Nataraja statue that somehow symbolises the union of the Goddess and the male Gods. When I was wondering about this thought in mind, Senthil showed me a piece of photo. It was a statue of Vishnu called Chakrat Alwar.
The figure was a deified Chakra, as seen in the Venkateshwara temple. Depicted as indwelling in the huge Sudarshan Chakra, Lord Vishnu had many arms and behind him was a clearly engraved hexagram “Shatkona”, signifying the union of the male and female deity.
If you look more closely at this statue, you will see that the forefront left-hand holds Vishnu’s sacred Gadar, while the opposite right-hand holds Shiva’s Trishula (trident spear). It means this is a fusion form of Vishnu and Shiva.
Vishnu with a hexagram on his back holding the Trishula of Shiva within the Chakra Ring… At this moment, Nataraja and Chakrat Alwar synchronised and overlapped in my brain…!
When the head, hands, foot and end of the belt flowing down the left side, of the dancing Nataraja, are connected by line, a six-pointed hexagram is revealed in all its splendour.
Furthermore, if you draw a diagonal line on that hexagram, it is the intrinsic of that Indus chakra letter at the same time, which of course can be seen as a six-spoke wheel too.
As if I were staring at a trompe l’oeil illusion and suddenly discovering a pattern with a completely new meaning, various new visions were intermingling in my mind.
I had no idea that this six-radiant circle design, which has been given special meaning since the time of the Indus civilization, was the basic motif of the statue of the Load Nataraja… It is said that the Dravidians were responsible for the Indus civilization… It was continued here in Nataraja…
I was stunned by the thought of 4,000 long, mind-boggling years of time.
Senthil looked at me with interest and whispered to me, as if he were talking in private, about the further meaning of the Mudra hand gesture.
According to his explanation, the right hand showing the palm and pointing upward symbolizes the male principle, while the left hand showing the back of the hand and pointing downward symbolizes the female principle, united together they form the mudra.
And on its right side, a cobra, symbolizing kundalini, is depicted as if it were popping out of the mudra (the junction of the left and right wrists). It was a vivid demonstration that the creation and maintenance of the universe are only possible when there was the interplay of yin and yang, the feminine and masculine principles.
The Nataraja dance which symbolises the rhythmic movement of the macrocosm, not only encompassed the trinity male deities Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva but also had the indispensable goddess, Devi Shakti, hidden behind it like a code.
Kolam, which invokes the goddess Lakshmi, and Shri Chakra, which represents the shakti of the goddess. And Balaji and Nataraja, which had a male deity in full view but actually had a hidden goddess. I have discussed various goddess beliefs centred in South India, and their origins can be traced back to the Indus period.
In general commentaries on the Indus civilization, only male figures such as male priests and seated meditators tend to be featured, and I had initially assumed that it was a male-centred society. However, It is becoming clear that the belief in a goddess (the deity of the mother of fertility) was very popular too.
The Indus seal carving above shows a central goddess fighting two tigers, which is interpreted as the original image of the Devi Shakti faith in the Indian subcontinent. But to my eyes, it looked like a very symbolic composition, where the goddess is interceding and separating the two fighting male tigers for peace.
Above the goddess’ head, that Chakra script, the symbol that was also inherent in the statue of the Load Nataraja, developed a radiant design as if it were a luminous wheel in the sky, Surya Chakra. The appearance reminded me of the saying ‘In primitive times, women were the sun’.
If one thinks about it, Dravidian communities such as Kerala and Tamil are traditionally matrilineal societies, and it is said that the female lineage is overwhelmingly strong. This was something that I myself felt much on a daily basis when I was a live-in practitioner at the Kalaripayattu Dojo in Kerala. This matriarchal society and the belief in goddesses are probably two sides of the same coin.
Only when Shiva is united with Devi Shakti can he begin to dance as the cosmic dancer Nataraja, and the great cycle of the universe begins to turn.
This kind of artistic representation and its ideology may be the essence of Dravidian culture, made possible only by the Tamils, who have inherited the belief in goddesses since the Indus period.
Here I would like to remind you of the Brahma Chakra = the wheel of the macrocosm or world creation, which I referred to in an earlier post.
There I had quoted the Vishnu hymn of the Rig Veda and the Shiva-Brahman verse of the Shvetashvatara Upanishad and then pointed out the following.
The creation and development of the cosmic world is attributed to and praised as the Great Work of the ‘Appearance of the Cosmic Wheel and its Rotation’ by the One Supreme God (Brahman).
This is the point I would like to stress here.
I understood this to be exactly in one line with the hymn to Vishnu in the Rig Veda 1.155.6. mentioned above, in which it superimposes the turning wheel on the movements of this universe in the same manner.
It seems that there was something “Chakra Cosmology” in ancient Vedic thought.
The Origins of Lord Vishnu and Surya Chakra
The basic motif of the Shiva Nataraja, which is reminiscent of a six-spoke wheel, may have its origin in the Shiva-Brahman-Chakra, the wheel of Universal creation.
Although Senthil did not give a clear answer on this point, there are some facts to support it. As shown below, there is a statue of Nataraja with wheel-like marks all over the ring. Is this not an obvious metaphor for the fact that this circular ring is the Cosmic Wheel?
As far back as the Shvetashvatara Upanishads around the 5th century BC, and even the Rig Veda around 1300 BC, there was indeed an idea in the Indian world of ‘seeing the unfolding and movement of this universe superimposed on a turning wheel’. But it was essentially a ‘male-dominated Vedic idea’.
A long time later, from the female-dominated Dravidian culture especially in South India, the idea emerged that the Cosmic Chakra=the Wheel of the Universe is a manifestation of the Goddess Devi Shakti. Its symbol is none other than the Shri Chakra introduced in the previous article.
The beautiful form of Shiva Nataraja may have been born as a true form of the universe in which the bias towards the Aryan male principle was corrected and the balance of the world was restored by the fusion of such Dravidian Devi Shakti philosophy.
I would now like to conclude that the dancing Shiva-Nataraja was firmly in charge of the symbolism of the converging chakra=wheel. He was a cosmic dancer, who is the chakra of the universe eternally spinning and dancing, and embodied a multitude of truly Indian ideas that can be traced back to the Rig Veda and the Indus period.
Like the mandalas known in Japan, motifs such as the sacred wheel, lotus chakra, yantra, and auspicious Kolam (or Rangoli) have traditionally played an important role in India, not only as symbols of religious thoughts but also as meditation objects.
The human spirit, which is scattered in secular everyday life, following in reverse a radiant design of Chakras, converges and concentrates on the centre of God. When the soul becomes one with that very centre, ‘something’ beyond the mundane would be fulfilled.
When a pious devotee worships in the depths of the Nataraja temple and gazes single-mindedly at the Dancing-Shiva=Cosmic-Chakra image, it would simultaneously become a deep meditation, guiding his soul to the abyss of the macrocosm.
~to be continued~
INDIA~The Land of Holy Chakra 