FW: Deepa Mehta's _Fire_

[Samar Abbas]

On Sat, 9 Jan 1999, Paul Kekai Manansala wrote in reply to the 2-Siva
theory,
> Among Siva's dark manifestations are
> Mahakala "The Great Dark One,"  Asitanga "black-limbed," Nilalohita
> "blue-red" and Babhru "brown."

Thanks, Paul. Could there be any connection between these manifestations
and African `Siva-like' gods ? As far as I know, the Guineans worship the
mother-goddess and practice matriarchy, while the Bantu and Sudanic
traditional religions involve a `Siva-like' god and are male-dominated
societies. Do you have any thougths on this ?

> Many Puranas state that Siva at the creation was in the form of a red
> and blue, or simply red colored boy who appeared before Brahma.  In the
> Brahmananda Purana it states:
>
>         "Many years ago, Brahma desired to create a son who would
> be             just like him in appearance.   While he was thus
> pondering ,
>          a boy suddenly appeared on his lap.  The boy was partly
> blue          and partly red in complexion and was known as
>          Nilalohita (blue-red)...'Please give me a name,' said the
> boy.          "The word 'rud' means to cry and since you have been
> crying.  I          give you the name of Rudra," said Brahma."

 Your nice quote proves what has been evident all along.  The
identification of Rudra with Siva was made in an attempt to subsume the
non-Aryan gods into the Aryan pantheon. This identification is highly
ddubious, and the attempt failed. From the above quote we see that Rudra
was blue-red, the Tibetic Siva white and the Old Dravidian Shiva black.
They were separate gods.

Samar