The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c17.s10.76

v1.c17.s10.76

Nor is any useful light shed on Rudra’s nature by the endeavour to deduce from the account of the mad Muni in the Rigveda⁶ the picture of Rudra as the god of an orgiastic cult, whose epithet of *vyuptakeça*, ‘with disordered hair’, in the Yajurveda⁷ hints at his exploits as a lord of the orgiastic dance. The fact is that the Rigveda tells us merely that the Muni drinks poison from a cup with Rudra, and the rest of the hypothesis is as baseless as the suggestion that the cup was really a skull. The orgiastic traits of Çiva in the later mythology are doubtless due to the amalgamation with Rudra of a vegetation deity, an Indian Dionysos.