Lord Śiva’s Song: The Īśvara Gītā by Andrew J. Nicholson (review)

The Īśvara Gītā, translated by Andrew J. Nicholson in Lord Śiva’s Song: The Īśvara Gītā, is a quintessentially Hindu post-Vedic devotional text. Extolling Lord Śiva as the highest Truth, it sets out to establish its credentials in ways typical of the devotional traditions: it is located in one of the Purāṇas, already considered to be the fifth Veda by the time of the Chandogya Upaniṣad (VI.1.2), thereby appropriating the paramount sacrosanctity of the Śruti tradition. It adopts the setting of Sūta’s address to the sages of Naimiṣāraṇya, made famous by the Bhāgavata Purāṇa for its own outer narrative frame. It engages the great sage Vyāsa as its primary narrator, thereby invoking the cachet of the foremost authority and author or compiler of almost the entirety of the Śruti and Smṛti (according to tradition, Vyāsa divided the single Veda into the four; composed the Vedānta Sūtras; compiled a Purāṇa Saṃhitā, or ur-Purāṇa text, which was then subdivided by his disciples; authored the 100,000-verse epic Mahābhārata; and is even assigned the role of the primary and canonical commentator of the Yoga Sūtras). And Vyāsa then repeats an older narrative spoken by Lord Śiva with Nārāyaṇa in attendance along with all the great sages known to tradition. The text has left no stone unturned in striving to cement its credentials.

What is fascinating about the Īśvara Gītā is the extent to which it molds itself on the Bhagavad Gītā—more so than other Gītās such as the Devī. There are a number of associations with the Upaniṣads and the Yoga Sūtras, but those familiar with the Bhagavad Gītā will find it underpinning almost the entirety of the text. Numerous verses are clear appropriations, sometimes with synonyms or slight paraphrasing of individual words or phrases, but with a good number of lines or couplets repeated completely verbatim (Nicholson lists about sixty-five concordances). There is the vision of the Cosmic Śiva, paralleling the Gītā’s chapter 11; Śiva as the foremost of all prominent entities along the lines of chapter 10 (“among birds, Garuda,” etc.); and on and on throughout. Nicholson rightly instructs us not to view such explicit ‘interpolations’ with the same lens that we use today. Where interpolation occurs in the modern context to boost the author’s credentials, much of the composition in the Smṛti corpus seeks to boost the credentials of the text and erase the presence of human composition (any human involvement is as transmitter of existing truth). We must keep in mind that these teachings are considered eternal truths, even as they may be transmitted through the great sages, in this case Vyāsa. Additionally, since the text takes some pains to insist that Śiva and Viṣṇu are one and the same being, from a traditional point of view there is a certain logic and appropriateness to having that being deliver a consistent set of teachings through the two Gītās. Indeed, the text explicitly makes this connection: “Viṣṇu himself … gave this supreme teaching to Arjuna in person” (11.131).

The syncretic aspect of the Īśvara Gītā is its most endearing feature. This, of course, is fairly typical of post-Vedic Hinduism in general, but the Īśvara Gītā is exceptionally gracious in this regard, even as it clearly promotes Śiva as the Supreme. The Bhagavad Gītā’s monotheism is far more exclusivist; there is nothing that parallels the tenor of a number of verses in the Īśvara Gītā that take pains to note that “those who see no difference between him [Viṣṇu] and me [Śiva] should be granted the highest wisdom” (11.111...