A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c7.12

c7.12

but it is only when we come to the time of Śvetāśvatara that we find the doctrine of Śiva placed on a more or less philosophical foundation. We are told in this Upanishad that "it is the God Īśa who supports both the mutable and the immutable, the manifest and the unmanifest. As contrasted with Him is the powerless Ātman, who is bound on account of his being the enjoyer of the fruits of action; but that, when this Ātman knows the Īśa, he is relieved of his bonds, namely, the Pāśas" (S. 12. a). The philosophy of Paśu, Pati, and Pāśa is thus to be already seen in an embryonic stage in the Śvetāśvatara. "Rudra is the only Lord God. They do not maintain another God. He who rules these worlds by means of his powers, standing before every man's face, and destroying the created world in anger at the time of the Great End (S. 12. b)—He is the Lord Śiva, who, hidden in all beings, is the sole enveloper of the universe, who is like the very subtle film at the top of ghee, by the knowledge of whom alone comes freedom from the meshes of ignorance" (S. 12. c). "Verily does the God spread manifold the meshes in his hands, and move on the surface of this globe. He creates and recreates and maintains his sovereignty over all the worlds" (S. 12. d). In this fashion is the God Rudra, who is identified with Śiva or Īśa, magnified in the Śvetāśvatara as the only Lord God who is the Supreme Soul of Souls and who is the Governor of the universe, by the knowledge of whom alone the individual Soul, who is bound down in the meshes of ignorance, can attain absolution. This was the manner in which the Śvetāśvatara paved the way for later Śaivism, its theistic way of glorification, suffused with a trinitarian monism, becoming the pivot of the doctrines of Kāśmir Śaivism and Southern Śaivism.