Lord Who Is Half Woman, The

Cover and Front Matter

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Contents

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pp. vii-

List of Illustrations

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pp. ix-x

Introduction

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pp. 1-6

The influence of Ardhanārīśvara on Indian society has never been thoroughly studied. My hope in this book is that a more sustained and focused examination of one of the most popular images of śiva in various modalities of Indian culture and history will inspire other such investigations. The iconographical...

1. Ardhanārīśvara in Indian Iconography

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pp. 7-56

This chapter is particularly concerned with an analysis of the mūrti (image) and rūpa (form) of Ardhanārīśvara¹ in the canons of Indian iconography and point outs, through various emblems and traditional ornamentation, the gender implications of the diagnostic features used by the Indian...

2. Ardhanārīśvara and Haṭhayoga

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pp. 57-90

Haṭhayoga¹ maintains that the nature of reality is ultimately advaita or nondualist (Śiva Saṁhitā (SS) 1:85–88; Haṭhayogapradīpikā (HYP) 4:7; Gheraṇḍa Saṃhitā (GS) 3:37–42, 7:12–13). That is, in language and symbol, the tradition of haṭhayoga portrays ultimate reality as the union...

3. Ardhanārīśvara in Devotional Poetry

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pp. 91-112

In this chapter I show that Śaiva bhakti poetry provides us with fundamental images of Śiva in the aspect of Ardhanārīśvara. As evidence for this we first look at several poems written by Tamil poet saints. Indian character of Naṭarāja by scholars such as ...

4. An Indian and a Feminist Perspective of Androgyny

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pp. 113-132

In this chapter we consider the image of Ardhanārīśvara, the divine androgyne, in the context of two sustained studies on androgyny. Wendy Doniger’s (1980) study looks at the androgyne in India and (1992) investigates androgyny in Western culture from the perspective f feminist theory. Both of these works have significantly influenced...

5. Śakti and Pārvatī: A New Interpretation

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pp. 133-154

This chapter proposes a new reading and interpretation of the relationship between Śiva and Śakti/Pārvatī. In many ways, their symbolic union in the form and figure of Ardhanārīśvaraa presupposes a fusion of the mutuality and oneness of the universal and the particular, or the transcendence and immanence of divine reality, and the kind ...

Notes

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pp. 155-172

Bibliography

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pp. 173-186

Index

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pp. 187-193