Indologists:
Nataraja wears a female earring in his left ear (kundala)
while his right ear, though pierced, is bare. One can explain this by child like
stories which say that his right earring fell off while dancing. The truth of
the matter is that Nataraja is an ardhanirshvara and therefore must express his
feminine aspect. This is stylised by the kundala. Nataraja cannot be in a
state of ananda (bliss) without a dynamic harmony of purusha and prakriti, Shiva
and Parvati, male and female. This is the foundational doctrine of Kashmir
Shaivism.
The image of the ardhanarisvara is a visual paradigm of
Kashmir Shaivism epistemology (see my Parvatidarpana, Motilal Banarasidass,
1997). So is the marriage of Shiva and Parvati
Harsha V. Dehejia
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