Śiva and Śaiva Traditions

Lesson 23 took the Vaiṣṇava stream. This lesson takes the other great one, and it begins with two words.

The lexicon gives śiva first as an adjective, not a name: auspicious, propitious, gracious, favourable, benign, kind, benevolent, friendly, dear, attested from the Ṛgveda onward. It is an ordinary word of good omen.

And it gives rudra as, probably, crying, howling, roaring, dreadful, terrific, terrible, horrible — attested in the Ṛgveda and Atharvaveda, and applied there to several deities including Agni, Indra, Mitra and Varuṇa. The entry records alternative derivations too: "red, shining, glittering", or "strong, bestowing strength".

So the tradition's great ascetic deity is known by a word meaning kind, and stands in continuity with a Vedic figure whose name suggests terrible.