Of the “Laying” of Shiva
After spending a good two hours on my feet, reading various books, I finally alighted on a small story. It was told as an aside in one book, but the implications were so humorous that I had to delve further to learn the whole story.
We begin the story with Brahma, the god who gave out gifts for austerities, regardless of who may be requesting, so long as the inquiring party had shown their resolve. A demon named Tarama came to him after great acts of austerities asking for the boon of invulnerability to any god. Brahma, intrigued, asked him how, pray tell, he might be killed. Tarama replied that he could only be killed by the son of Shiva. Brahma granted him his request. Smugly thinking he had gamed the system, Tarama immediately went on the rampage, eventually turning the god’s heaven into a place of fear. Even mighty Vishnu, grand warrior, fought him for thirty thousand years before giving up.
The gods were in a pickle. For the idea of Shiva having a son seemed exceedingly remote. Shiva had, after the death of his first wife, effectively cloistered himself upon Mount Kailasa the Himalayas, meditating to cleanse all worldly desires from himself. In fact, even though the sage Narada prophesied to the mountain god Himavan that his daughter Parvati would marry Shiva, Shiva himself seemed to pay it no mind. Himavan had arranged for her to wait upon him, however he paid her no greater heed than to complain to her father that she was ruining his ability to meditate effectively. In time, he grew to ignore her like she did not even exist. Given that this is the father of the eventual savior of the gods, the gods needed a devious plan to save their skin sooner rather than later.
The gods approached Brahma for guidance. Brahma explained what he had done and how Tarama could be killed. Striking upon an idea, Indra called upon Kama, the god of love and desire (and origin of the cupid character), and tasked him with making Shiva fall madly in love with Parvati so as to produce a son. Kama accepted this assignment and spirited off to Mount Kailasa. After slipping past Nandi, Shiva’s bull familiar, Kama found his target in still meditation. He drew his bow and waited. For sixty million years, so says the legend; I assume, being “immortal,” the gods were not as pressed for results as they seemed to put on. After his long wait, Shiva stirred and Kama let his arrow fly. Instantly Shiva noticed the beautiful Parvati. But he was suspicious of treachery. Looking about, he found the god of love and instantly deduced what has transpired. His third eye sprung into action, spewing forth a fire that reduced Kama to ash; which has the rather bad side effect of causing love to cease existing as well.
Shiva then turns to Parvati and asks her if there is anything she wishes. In an amusing display, she tells him that there is nothing he can give her now that love is dead. He presses, asking her if she wishes for a gift. And to this she requests that Shiva bring back Kama, so that love may flourish once again. Shiva agrees, but stated that he cannot restore his vaporized body. Kama is thus allowed to reincarnate and return.
However, even after all that has transpired, the two did not become one. Instead, Shiva settled back into meditation and things return to how they were. Parvati, thoroughly frustrated, left to meditate and become an ascetic that Shiva will recognize. While she meditated in a cave, an old man visited her, questioning why such a beauty would waste herself in the pursuit of meditation. She informed him that she is pursuing Shiva, and wishes him to recognize her. The old man scoffed, and then heaped insults upon Shiva. Parvati argued and defended Shiva, but the old man continued without abate. Finally, she could take no more, told the man so, and rose to leave. The guise of the old man fell away, showing that it had been Shiva all along. He told her that he was testing her, that he had been moved by her devotion, and that if her father allowed, he wished to marry her. And with that, the two are married.
Still, even in marriage, the pair had not produced a child. In fact, Shiva’s powerful bedplay actually threatened to shake the universe apart. One can only guess at Parvati’s feelings on this matter. Faced with the double issue of getting a son from the pair and keeping the pair from wrecking the universe, the gods continued to pay visits to the couple, often interrupting them in the act. There are variations on the exact players involved, but overall the idea is the same. Agni, god of fire, is sent by Indra to check upon the pair. After walking in on the pair, he asked if they have had a son yet. Angry at the whole matter, Shiva tossed some of this seed on the ground. Agni, after taking the form of a bird, gobbled it up and left to report to Indra. However, Shiva’s seed was too powerful and Agni could not contain it, coughing it up into the river Ganges. The river too could not hold it, and spat it upon the shore in the moonlight, where it became a boy. Six nymphs come to him, and argued over who will suckle the beautiful child. Sprouting five more heads and ten more arms, the child settled the matter and allowed them all to satisfy the child. Eventually the child reached his parents and was raised up to become the god of war, leader of the celestial army, and slayer of the demon Tarama, all while riding a peacock named Paravani.
I’ve omitted some details, some of which might be important, and tried to condense some of the various tellings. There is a lot of supporting details that explain things, and I will see where and how I can incorporate them. At present, I’ve already gone down the rabbit hole on a few things, following many various threads to try to find and understand the whole frame that this story exists in. There’s a lot of contradiction and refinement of the various gods and their roles, and it will take some consolidation and thought to decide which tracks to follow.
Overall, my goal is to create a version of this story that is modern, while retaining some of the more mystical aspects and feel of the Hindu mythic tradition. In the process, I will remove the more odd bits, such as the insanely long time frames and the improbable amount of heads and arms. The characters and situations already have a great deal of humanity to them, however I will be injecting a bit of informality to them. The idea is to play up the absurdity of the situation while trying to maintain some semblance of realistic cause and effect.
As for the form of the project, it is to be that of a comic book. Intended to be done in the style of the highly prepared and presented graphic novels, the goal is to be lavishly detailed in presentation, without limit on the length of the work or the level of visual detail. However, due to the length of the story needing to be told and the timeframe in which to create it within, I am unsure of the level of finish that the entire piece will reach. I hope to reach at least a fully finished pencil rendering, ready for inking and cleanup. The idea of coloring the entire work is intriguing, but unlikely to be finished in any satisfactory form within the five weeks I have. I plan to keep my options open, and attempt to reach goals loftier than I believe I can reach, while maintain a healthy amount of realism as to what can and cannot be accomplished.