When I try to explain the Shiva Nataraja’s impact on me, I stumble. It’s hard to put into words a sense of the force that emanates from this sculpture. Since I don’t fully understand it, I fall back on the approximation of metaphor: it’s as if the figure that’s depicted possesses its own inherent voltage. I find it electrifying; it seems charged with an otherworldly beauty that’s suffused with something mysterious and alluring. If I had to choose a single word to sum up what the Shiva Nataraja conveys it would be “energy,” a choice that resonates with a comment made by one of this artwork’s most perceptive commentators, Ananda Coomaraswamy. He describes it as “an image of that energy which science must postulate behind all phenomena.”

Before I knew the name “Shiva Nataraja”—which simply means Shiva, Lord of the Dance—before I had any idea of its history or the meaning of the intricate symbolism it embodies, before I’d read Coomaraswamy and other experts, this sculpture was something that moved me. There was an immediate effect when I first saw it. It stopped me in my tracks and left me transfixed. The lithely potent dancing figure suggested a sense of precisely controlled yet untamed movement that was almost hypnotic.

I’ve sometimes wondered if sheer exoticism might have played a part in the impact of my early, uninformed encounters—the appeal of something wholly alien. Growing up amidst the insular certainties and antagonisms of Northern Ireland, I was raised in a milieu that was Christian, conservative, unimaginative, and almost wholly lacking in cultural diversity. The religious aesthetic I was used to was Presbyterianism’s stark minimalism. The portrayal of a four-armed god dancing within a circle of flames, a cobra coiled around one wrist, hands laden with unfamiliar devices, one foot raised, one foot crushing a figure lying on the ground beneath it, was something very different from what I was used to. But far from feeling the magnetism of what was strange, it felt more familiar than foreign; it gave me a profound sense of inner homecoming rather than the feeling that I’d journeyed to some exotic destination.

I know now that the Shiva Nataraja is regarded as one of the triumphs of Hindu art, conveying in its essential simplicity of form a wealth of symbolic detail. Its aesthetic merits have not gone unnoticed in the West. Rodin praised its beauty. Titus Burkhardt suggested that it is perhaps “the most perfect fruit of Hindu art.” It moved Heinrich Zimmer, that great commentator on Eastern art and philosophy, to write some of his most lyrical interpretative passages. As I’ve learned more about the Shiva Nataraja, I’ve come to a more finely textured appreciation. But this is underlain by the realization that its initial impact happened quite independently of such knowledge. When I first encountered the Shiva Nataraja, I knew nothing about Hinduism or India, still less Indian art. Yet these sculptures spoke to me with an immediacy and authority that was arresting. I like to think this is a small example of how great art is not confined to any niche of history, locality, or belief. Instead, it has a universality about it; a quality of relevance that’s timeless. It leaves those who encounter it feeling vivified.

One of my favorite Shiva Nataraja’s is in the St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art in Glasgow, Scotland. It’s a large, South Indian bronze dating from around 1800. Shiva is depicted as a human-scale figure, close to six feet in height. This sculpture is displayed on its own, dominating a side-room off the main gallery. I like to go there every now and then and just stand before it, feel its energy run through me, watch other visitors become stilled before it.

The Shiva Nataraja has been in existence for millennia. There have been—continue to be—countless examples of it as artists repeatedly attempt to express what it represents. Whether ancient or modern, each attempt follows the same defining motifs—but different regions, materials, artists, and periods of history have acted to impose a slew of variations on the basic underlying design.

What meanings do the elements of that design convey? Shiva’s multiple arms denote power and, taken singly, each one expands on this key theme. The upper right hand holds a drum on which the god beats out the rhythm of his dance,which is the rhythm of the universe. His upper left hand bears on it a naked flame, testimony both to Shiva’s destructive prowess and the creativity with which it’s tempered. The lower right hand is held in a gesture meaning “fear not,” inviting humankind to approach without dread what appears terrifying. The lower left hand points to the prostrate figure of Apasmara—whose name means “ignorance”—trampled by the god’s dancing feet. Shiva dances within a ring of flames, the prabhamandala, representing the flickering vitality of life. Asymmetrical earrings show that Shiva transcends the dualism of gender, a point emphasized in some images by the inclusion of a single female breast. Neither “he” nor “she” is appropriate in referring to this deity. The crescent moon, the miniature figure of the goddess Ganga, the skull and flowers in Shiva’s unshorn hair, the god’s third eye, the figures at the base of the pedestal and the lotus flower engraved into it, the trailing scarf—all these features add further symbolic significance.

But though I find it instructive to unravel the symbolism, I rarely think about it when I’m standing in front of the Shiva Nataraja in the St Mungo Museum. The way this sculpture strikes me doesn’t rely on such details for its impact. This is a form that speaks directly to the heart. It possesses an aesthetic and, I think, a spiritual charge that requires no specialist knowledge to conduct it. The current jumps from sculpture to onlooker without the need of specialist knowledge as intermediary. The Nataraja addresses us in a way that’s immediate; its fluency transcends the limiting specificities of language, culture, and religion. We are all part of the dance of being it depicts.

Notes:

There are many pictures of the Shiva Nataraja readily available online. Alas, the one referred to in the essay – in Glasgow’s St Mungo Museum – is not among them.

A comparable (albeit much smaller) Shiva Nataraja can be seen in London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. See: http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O25011/shiva-nataraja-lord-of-the-bronze-sculpture-unknown/.

For images in the public domain that can be reproduced freely, without copyright restrictions, see Wiki Commons. For example, a Nataraja from the Musée Guimet (Paris) is given here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shiva_Nataraja_Mus%C3%A9e_Guimet_25971.jpg 

References 

Ananda Coomaraswamy, The Dance of Shiva: Fourteen Indian Essays, New Delhi 1976, p.78

Titus Burkhardt, Sacred Art in East and West, tr Lord Northbourne, Middlesex, 1967, p.38

Heinrich Zimmer, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, New York 1946, pp.151, 174; The Art of Indian Asia, New York 1955, pp.122-4