At the time of the cosmic dawn, before the creation of man, he appeared as the divine archer, pointing with his arrow to the unrevealed Absolute. The world is his hunting ground. The universe resounds with his presence. He is both sound and echoes. He is intangible vibration as well as an infinitesimal substance. He is the rustling of the withered leaves and the glossy green of the newborn grass.

He is the ferryman who ferries us from life to death, but he is also the liberator from death to immortality. He has innumerable faces and eleven forms as described in the Vedas. The sky and the seasons vibrate with his intensity and power. He grips, supports, releases, and liberates. He is both the disease and the destroyer of the disease. He is food, the giver of food, and the process of eating. His divine majesty and power are depicted through symbolic, yet highly realistic descriptions of an awe-inspiring figure, far, distant, and cold in his remote Himalayan fastness as well as close, kind, and loving, a living, throbbing symbol of the Divine.

He was worshipped as the divine shaman by wild tribes that roamed across the subcontinent before the dawn of history. They contacted him by the use of certain psychoactive compounds and various esoteric rituals. Later we see him on the terra-cotta seals of the Indus civilization. There he is shown as Pasupati, Lord of beasts, surrounded by the wild creatures of the jungle. He is also shown as the yogi sitting in various meditative postures. The rishis of the Vedas looked up at the Himalayas and saw in them his hair; they found his breath in the air and all creation and destruction in his dance—the Tandava Nritta. The Rig Veda, the oldest religious text known to humankind, refers to him as Rudra, the wild one, who dwelt in fearful places and shot arrows of disease. Sacrifices were constantly offered to appease him.

At that time religion was dominated by female deities, so the cult of Shiva soon fused with that of the great Mother Goddess Shakti, who later came to be known as Durga, Uma, Parvati, and so on. Male and female are but complementary halves of the whole truth, and some images portray Shiva as Ardhanareeswara, a form half male and half female.

He is also mentioned as lswara, the enigmatic first emanation from the Brahman. Thus he is the Great Lord, Maheswara, and the Great God, Mahadeva. He is one of the Immortals, Unborn and Deathless. The Shiva Purana equates him with the Supreme Brahman of the Vedas.

3 - One-Faced Liriga (Ekamukhalinga)

• Gupta Dynasty
• Madhya Pradesh
• Fifth century
• Pink sandstone
• Height 6Vs" (/7.J cm)
• Collection Dr. Samuel Eilenberg, New York

Face and linga vary in their volumetric relationship from one ekamukhalinga to another. Equally conspicuous are the different shapes and expressions given to the divine face. The face of Siva, benign and free of any emotion in the previous example (no. 2), is here imbued with feeling. Compassion coupled with detachment hover over it, inscrutable in its combination of humanly contradictory attitudes.

Large, round earrings emphatically accentuate the transition from face to linga. The jatamukuta, or the ascetic's high coiffure, is a simplified version of that in no. 2, the small chignon here mediating between the volumes of linga and head.

4 - One-Faced Linga (Ekamukhaliriga)

• Gupta Dynasty
• Madhya Pradesh
• Sixth century
• Reddish sandstone
• Height 19V4" ($0.2 cm)
• Collection Mr. and Mrs. James W. Alsdorf, Chicago

Assimilated to the height of the Iinga by an elaborate, almost architecturally articulated jatamukuta (crown of piled-up strands of hair), the heavy-featured face, absorbed in meditation, communicates its indwelling power. The incisive intersecting planes ascending the steep angle of the brows and cutting into the flattened plane of the wide forehead convey the effort of concentration that the relaxed lips deny. The Brahmasfttras incised above the coiffure point to the phallic nature of the linga. A thin sickle of the moon hardly one-sixteenth of its orb—graces the god's hair on his left.

Koo App One-Faced Linga (Ekarnukhaliriga) Gupta Dynasty Madhya Pradesh Sixth century Reddish sandstone Height 19V4" ($0.2 cm) Collection Mr. and Mrs. James W. Alsdorf, Chicago Assimilated to the height of the Iinga by an elaborate, almost architecturally articulated jatamukuta (crown of piled-up strands of hair), the heavy-featured face, absorbed in meditation, communicates its indwelling power. View attached media content - Satyaagrah (@SatyaagrahIndia) 27 Aug 2022

Exhibition History

• New York, The Asia Society, The Ideal Image: The Gupta Sculptural Tradition and Its Influence, Oct. 5– Dec. 3, 1978, cat. 51.
• Philadelphia Museum of Art, Manifestations of Shiva, Mar. 29–June 7, 1981, cat. 4; Fort Worth, TX, Kimbell Art Museum, Aug. 1–Sept. 27, 1981; Seattle Art Museum, Nov. 25, 1981–Jan. 31, 1982; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Mar. 23–May 5, 1982.
• Art Institute of Chicago, A Collecting Odyssey: Indian, Himalayan, and Southeast Asian Art from the James and Marilynn Alsdorf Collection, Aug. 2–Oct. 26, 1997, cat. 5.

PUBLISHED

Pratapaditya Pal, The Ideal Image (New York, 1978), p. 101, no. 51

5 - One-Faced Linga (Ekamukhalinga)

• Eighth Century
• Eastern India, Bihar, Medieval period, Pala dynasty
• Chloritic schist
• Overall: 83.8 cm (33 in.)
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Purchase
• John L. Severance Fund 1973.73
• LOCATION - 244 Indian and Southeast Asian

The innermost sanctum of a Hindu temple dedicated to Shiva is called a womb chamber in which a stylized phallus called a linga is installed. Together, the chamber and linga represent the potentiality of creation. Artists depict the first stage of creation by a face emerging from the phallus, which embodies one aspect of Shiva. This face is of a powerful yogi, with long matted locks adorned with a crescent moon. He has a penetrating gaze with all three of his eyes. This icon would have been accessed primarily by Brahmin priests who would perform rituals honoring Shiva as the ultimate creator of the world.

In its near-perfect state of preservation, the linga is shown here as it left the sculptor's hands and not as it was meant to be seen, for the lower parts, a four-sided and an octagonal prism, were buried when the linga was set up for worship. Only the topmost, cylindrical part was meant to be seen; there, the stone was worked to a high polish, whereas the lower surfaces, which would not be visible, were left rough (see no. 2).

The head of Siva emerging from the linga shows the large features of the face and each strand of hair of the coiffure having a definite place in the geometric order of the design, and the crescent of the moon, by its asymmetrical position on the upper right of the god's hairdo, is given special emphasis. The representation of a single string of pearls (ekavali) with a prismatic bead in the center and the "classical" profile of the face assign the ekamukhalinga to a date not later than the eighth century. The large ears wear elaborate "sea-monster" earrings (makarakundala). Behind the earring on the left appears a lion's face; on the right, this portion is damaged, but it may have shown a boar's head.

Koo App One-Faced Linga (Ekamukhalinga) Eighth Century Eastern India, Bihar, Pala dynasty Chloritic Overall: 83.8 cm The Cleveland Museum of Art. Purchase John L. Severance Fund 1973.73 The head of Siva emerging from the linga shows the large features of the face and each strand of hair of the coiffure having a definite place in the geometric order of the design, and the crescent of the moon, by its asymmetrical position on the upper right of the god’s hairdo, is given special emphasis. View attached media content - Satyaagrah (@SatyaagrahIndia) 27 Aug 2022

Citations

PUBLISHED

"Art of Asia Recently Acquired by American Museums, 1973," Archives of Asian Art, vol. 28 (1974-75), P-118 - fig 15

References: 

Manifestations of Shiva - Kramrisch, Stella, 1898-1993 | Philadelphia Museum of Art