Sharabhaशरभ

Sharabha is the strangest thing in this encyclopedia, and it is worth being clear about why: it is a form of God invented to defeat another form of God.

After Narasimha had torn apart Hiranyakashipu, his rage did not stop. The world could not bear it. In the Shaiva account, Shiva took a form for the purpose — Sharabha, part lion, part bird, with wings, a beak, talons and eight legs — and went, and subdued the Man-Lion, and the rage ended.

As a theological move this is about as aggressive as Hinduism gets. The Lingodbhava page, written with this one, describes a Shaiva claim of supremacy made politely: Vishnu searches honestly, fails, and is honoured for his truthfulness. Sharabha is the same claim made with talons.

The Vaishnavas answered it. In their texts Narasimha is not subdued: he produces Gandabherunda, a two-headed bird, which destroys Sharabha — and Gandabherunda went on to become the state emblem of Karnataka, which is on the state's buses and its government letterhead to this day.

So the argument is in the record twice, from both sides, and both versions were carved in stone by people who meant them.

He is rare. A handful of temples, a handful of bronzes, one Upanishad, and — at Thirubhuvanam near Kumbakonam — a Chola temple built for him in the twelfth century, where he is still in the shrine behind the sanctum.

And there is an older Sharabha underneath all of this: a real animal, or a believed one, in Sanskrit literature long before any of the theology — an eight-legged beast of the mountains, stronger than a lion, that the Mahabharata and the poets knew about.

The animal first. Before the deity there is a creature. Sanskrit literature from the epics onward describes the śarabha as a beast of the high mountains with eight legs, capable of killing a lion, and used as a standard of ferocity in poetry. Whether it began as a distorted account of a real animal — a yak, a camel, a Tibetan antelope have all been proposed — or as pure invention, it is in the language before it is in the theology, and the theology then picked it up.

The Sharabha Upanishad, a minor Atharvan text, is the compact source: Shiva takes the Sharabha form and subdues Narasimha. It is short, sectarian and unambiguous.

The Linga, Shiva, Kalika and Vamana Puranas give fuller narratives, with variations — in some, Sharabha carries Narasimha into the sky; in some, he tears the skin, and Shiva afterwards wears it; in some, Narasimha recognises Shiva, is calmed, praises him and asks to become Sharabha's own devotee, which is the gentlest available ending and is the one most Shaiva temples use.

The date and the politics. These texts belong to the period of sharpest Shaiva–Vaishnava competition in South India — roughly the ninth to the thirteenth centuries — when temples, land grants and royal patronage were genuinely at stake. Sharabha is a polemical image produced in a contest, and reading it without that context makes it incomprehensible.

The Vaishnava reply. Gandabherunda — the two-headed eagle — appears as Vishnu's answering form, in Vaishnava texts and in Vijayanagara and Mysore iconography. It survived the argument and became the emblem of the state of Karnataka, used by its government and, formerly, by the Mysore royal house. A sectarian counter-image on a bus is an unusual fate for a theological polemic.

Thirubhuvanam. The Kampahareswarar Temple, built by Kulottunga Chola III in the late twelfth century, has a separate Sharabha shrine and is the only major temple where the form is a principal focus. Its very existence is evidence that this was not a marginal idea in the Chola country.

Pratyangira. In the later Tantric development, Sharabha is accompanied by — or has as his wings — the fierce goddesses Shulini and Pratyangira, and Pratyangira acquires her own substantial and rather secretive cult, particularly in Tamil Nadu.

There is nothing else shaped like this.

The body. A lion's or beast's body, eight legs — four pointing down, four pointing up in the fullest versions — a bird's beak and head or a lion's head with a beak, and two enormous wings. Sometimes a tail; sometimes the mane.

The arms. Where he is given human arms in addition, they carry Shiva's attributes: axe, deer, fire, drum, trident, noose. This is how you know the animal is a god and not a monster.

Narasimha, beneath. In the narrative reliefs the Man-Lion is held in the talons, carried, or pinned. The best-known version is at Thirubhuvanam.

The two goddesses as wings. The developed form has Shulini as one wing and Pratyangira as the other — two goddesses functioning as the flight surfaces of a third deity. This encyclopedia knows of no comparable arrangement anywhere in Hindu iconography, and the image is genuinely startling when you first meet it.

Gandabherunda. The Vaishnava counter: a two-headed bird, often with Sharabha or elephants in its claws. On Vijayanagara sculpture at Hampi, on Keladi temple ceilings, on Mysore coinage, and on the emblem of Karnataka.

Where to see it. Thirubhuvanam; Darasuram; a few Chola bronzes; scattered panels in the Tamil and Telugu country; and in the Shilpa texts' prescriptions.

Distinguishing him. A winged, beaked, eight-legged creature with Shiva's attributes is Sharabha. A two-headed bird is Gandabherunda, and it belongs to the other side.

Sharabha / Sharabheshwara / Sharabhesamurti. The Shaiva form; the last is the name the Shilpa texts use.

Sharabha the animal. The pre-theological beast of Sanskrit poetry — eight-legged, mountain-dwelling, lion-killing. Still the word's primary sense in some literary contexts.

Shulini-Durga and Pratyangira. The goddesses of the wings. Pratyangira — also Atharvana Bhadrakali — develops a substantial independent Tantric cult, largely in Tamil Nadu, much of it concerned with the reversal of harm. That material is initiatory and this encyclopedia does not reproduce it; readers should also know that the commercial fringe around it is considerable and that money changes hands.

Gandabherunda / Berunda. The Vaishnava counter-form of Vishnu; the two-headed bird; the state emblem of Karnataka.

Narasimha. The subject of the encounter, with his own page, where the Vaishnava account is given its proper weight.

Veerabhadra. Shiva's other created destroyer, made to wreck Daksha's sacrifice. The pair make the point: when Shaivism needs something stopped, it makes a being for the job rather than sending Shiva.

Not the Buddhist or Jain sharabha. The animal appears in both traditions' art with no relation to this theology.

The rage that would not stop. Prahlada's page carries the Bhagavata version, in which the boy himself calms Narasimha and the gods need do nothing further. Note that: the Vaishnava canon has its own solution to the problem, and it does not involve Shiva.

The Shaiva Puranas take the same problem and answer it differently. The Man-Lion, having killed Hiranyakashipu, remains in a state the world cannot survive. The gods appeal to Shiva, who sends Virabhadra, who fails — and then comes himself as Sharabha.

The subduing. The accounts differ and the differences are the whole of the sectarian content:

— Sharabha seizes Narasimha in his talons, carries him up, and the rage breaks. Narasimha recognises Shiva, praises him, is calmed, and asks to remain as his devotee. The Shaiva mainstream, and the version most temples tell.

— Sharabha tears the lion-skin, which Shiva thereafter wears. Harsher; in some Puranas.

— Narasimha, pressed, produces Gandabherunda, the two-headed bird, which kills Sharabha. The Vaishnava reply, and there is a state emblem on the strength of it.

Both are in the sources. This encyclopedia does not adjudicate between them, and would like readers to notice what it means that it cannot: two of the largest traditions in Hinduism wrote down, and carved, incompatible accounts of a fight between their gods, and then went on sharing towns, patrons and stonemasons for a thousand years without either side being suppressed.

What the quarrel was actually about. Land, temples, royal patronage and the order of precedence in processions. The Nayanmars and the Alvars were singing at the same time in the same country; the Chola and later courts had to decide whose temple got the grant. Sharabha and Gandabherunda are the theological surface of a material competition, and both traditions produced, alongside them, the Harihara image, which says the two gods are one body. All three were made by the same civilisation in the same centuries.

A modern note. These stories are occasionally revived online as evidence of one tradition's superiority over another. They are twelfth-century polemic. Neither Shaivas nor Vaishnavas in India today organise their religious life around who won, and using a medieval sectarian argument to pick fights between living communities is a misuse of the material that this page declines to assist.

Very limited, and concentrated.

Thirubhuvanam. The Kampahareswarar Temple near Kumbakonam has the principal living Sharabha worship: a separate shrine behind the sanctum, with its own priest, its own offerings and its own days. It is a functioning temple on the Kumbakonam circuit and is straightforward to visit.

Sharabha homa and the Sharabha Upanishad are used in Shaiva ritual, largely in Tamil and Andhra contexts, in rites concerned with protection and with the removal of hostile influence. DharmSetu records these as observed religious practice and makes no claim whatever about their effects.

Pratyangira worship. Far more widespread than Sharabha's own, particularly in Tamil Nadu, and this is where the encyclopedia has something practical to say. Rites of this class are frequently advertised — online and by intermediaries — as a way of dealing with enemies, with litigation, with business rivals and with abhichara. Fees are often very large. A reader should know that these are commercial transactions taking place in a religious frame, that nobody can promise an outcome, that legal disputes are settled by lawyers and courts, and that a demand for escalating payments is the standard shape of a fraud. The tradition is old and the practitioners are not all dishonest; the encyclopedia's point is simply that money and vulnerability meet here more than almost anywhere else in Hindu practice.

In Shaiva recitation. The Sharabha stotras and the Upanishad, in sectarian contexts.

Almost nowhere else. He is not in the standard puja of any household, and most Hindus, including most Shaivas, have never heard of him.

Kampahareswarar Temple, Thirubhuvanam (Thanjavur district, Tamil Nadu) — the principal one. Built by Kulottunga Chola III, late twelfth century, the last of the great Chola temples, with a dedicated Sharabha shrine. Twelve kilometres from Kumbakonam and easy to reach, and the temple is worth the visit on its own merits.

Airavatesvara Temple, Darasuram (Thanjavur district) — a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with Sharabha panels among its extraordinary sculpture.

Sharabheswarar shrines at a number of Tamil temples, usually small and behind the main sanctum.

Simhachalam and Ahobilam (Andhra Pradesh) — Narasimha's country, where the other side of the story is told. Visiting both in one trip is the most instructive thing a reader of this page can do.

Hampi and the Keladi temples (Karnataka) — Gandabherunda in Vijayanagara and Keladi sculpture, including the celebrated Keladi ceiling panel.

The Vidhana Soudha, Bengaluru, and every Karnataka state vehicle and document — where Gandabherunda is the state emblem, adopted from the Mysore arms.

The geography of the argument is neat: Sharabha in the Chola country, Gandabherunda in the Kannada country, and the two traditions' principal temples a few hundred kilometres apart.

A god made to stop a god. Nothing else in this encyclopedia is quite this. Avatars descend to kill demons; Sharabha was made to subdue another tradition's supreme form, and the Vaishnavas made Gandabherunda to subdue him back. Read as theology it is startling. Read as history it is exactly what it looks like: a patronage war, fought in stone and verse, in South India, over several centuries.

And nobody won, which is the interesting part. Both accounts survive. Both were carved. Neither tradition was suppressed, neither text was destroyed, and the same dynasties endowed temples to both gods — sometimes in the same complex. The Harihara image, which fuses the two into one body, was being made in the same period by the same civilisation. Hinduism argued at full volume and did not resolve it, and that is a more accurate picture of how the tradition works than any account in which one side is orthodoxy.

An emblem that outlived the argument. Gandabherunda is on the buses in Bengaluru, on the Karnataka police uniform and on the state's official documents. A twelfth-century Vaishnava rebuttal to a Shaiva polemic is now a piece of administrative furniture used daily by sixty million people, nearly none of whom know what it is arguing.

Two goddesses as wings. The iconography's oddest detail and its most beautiful: Shulini and Pratyangira, fierce goddesses in their own right, are the wings of this form. Not attendants, not consorts — the parts of him that fly. There is nothing else like it.

And the animal in the language. Underneath all the theology there is a mountain beast with eight legs that Sanskrit poets used to mean unstoppable. Hinduism found it in its own vocabulary and gave it to a god. That is how most of this encyclopedia's more startling forms came to exist — not invented from nothing, but picked up from what people already said.