Stories 6
Tradition: Shaiva · clear
Shiva as great time
Shiva is named Mahakala, great time, the one beyond time who ends all things.
The Elephanta bust: Trimurti or Sadashiva?
A seven-metre three-faced bust fills the south wall of Elephanta's Cave 1.
The five faces and the five acts
Shiva's eternal form is pictured with five faces turned to the quarters and upward.
The silent teacher under the banyan
Shiva sits under a banyan tree facing south, one foot on the dwarf of ignorance.
The so-called Trimurti cave at Mahabalipuram
Three Pallava shrines on one platform: Shiva in the centre, Vishnu on the right, and a disputed left shrine read as Brahma by Vogel but as Subrahmanya or Brahmasasta by later scholars; a Durga panel stands beside.
The three gods together on the Kailasa temple, Ellora
Genuine three-god scenes carved on Ellora's Kailasa: Lingodbhava with Brahma and Vishnu searching the pillar, Tripurantaka with Brahma as charioteer and Vishnu as arrow, and Harihara with Nandi and Garuda.