70 - Discourses on Tantra Volume One

Chapter 18

An Introduction to Shiva (Discourse 1)(1)

When I spoke regarding Krśńa(1), I said that His life can be divided into two main parts: the first part is Vrajagopála and the second part is Párthasárathi. I also said in that context that Párthasárathi was not as easily accessible as Vrajagopála was. I further said that the Mahábhárata(2) was brought about by Krśńa but it certainly did not encompass the whole of Krśńa’s life. Krśńa exists without the Mahábhárata, but the Mahábhárata does not exist without Krśńa.

Regarding Shiva, we should say that His life cannot be divided in this way into two parts. From the very beginning, He was an omnipresent entity. Whenever, in the undeveloped and simple human society of those days, any need arose, Shiva was there to help; whenever any knotty problem developed, Shiva was there to solve it. So we cannot divide and analyse His life and personality into fragments, nor can we write the history of those times in that way. At the same time I feel constrained to state that, considering His unique role in building human culture and civilization, this culture and civilization cannot stand without Him. But Shiva can stand very well, shining in His own glory, quite apart from human culture and civilization. So to write history in the true sense of the term, for the sake of human society at present and in the distant future as well, Shiva cannot be neglected.

Let us first analyse the meaning of the term shiva. In trying to find the meaning of the word shiva, we must know whether or not the Sanskrit language was used in those days. Some people say that the Sanskrit language was imported to India from Central Asia, but this does not seem to be correct. Rather it is more reasonable to say that in those days one almost identical language was current all the way from Central Asia and Eastern Europe to Southeast Asia. The branch of that language that was popular in the southeastern part of that expanse was called Sanskrit, while the language that was spoken in the northwestern parts was Vedic.

The Aryans migrated to India from outside, no doubt, but the Aryan influence was not so discernible in the southeastern as in the northwestern parts of India. The Vedic language came to India with the Aryans, but the Sanskrit language is an indigenous language of India; it did not come from outside. I have stated this fact clearly in my recently-published book on Ráŕh.(3)

It is not at all possible to trace the exact antiquity of the Vedic language, because the only book that is available in that language is the ancient Rgveda, and the Rgveda was not in written form in those days either. The people of those days did not know how to read and write; they had no knowledge of any alphabet. They were not at all acquainted with the letters a, á, ka, kha,(4) etc.

The alphabet – the Bráhmii script, the Kharośt́hi script, and the subsequent scripts born out of them – were invented some time during the last five thousand to seven thousand years. The Sáradá, the Náradá, and the Kut́ilá scripts were variants of the old Bráhmii script, and the Shriiharśa(5) script is a variant of the Kut́ilá script. The script in which modern Bengali is written is the Shriiharśa script.

The composition of the Rgveda [began] about fifteen thousand years ago. Scripts were totally unknown in those days. It would not be incorrect to say that although the human race came onto the earth about a million years ago, its civilization started only about fifteen thousand years ago. This shows that human civilization and human culture are not very old in relation to the antiquity of the human race. We should not belittle civilization for being so recent, but neither can we venerate it as being very old.