Why This Story is Told

Long ago, in a great forest called Naimisha, a group of sages sat together by a fire. They had finished their day’s work and wanted to hear stories. Among them was the bard Suta, who had learned the great tales from his teacher Vyasa.

“Tell us the stories of Lord Shiva,” they said. “We have heard parts of them, but we want them whole. Tell us where he came from, how he was married, who his sons are, what battles he has fought, and where his shrines stand today.”

Suta sat back and smiled. “There is no end to the stories of Shiva,” he said. “But I will tell you the ones that matter. I will tell them as they were told to me — simply, without leaving anything important out.”

He explained why he was going to tell the stories at all.

“Shiva is not a god you hear about once and forget. He is the great ascetic on the mountain, and the loving father with two boys at his feet. He is the dancer at the end of an age, and the lord who saves the world from poison. He is calm and he is fierce. He blesses with one hand and dissolves with the other. To know him you have to hear all of him — not just the part you like.”

“Listening to these stories,” Suta added, “is itself a way of reaching him. The wise have said that to hear the name of Shiva once with attention is worth more than a year of empty rites. So sit. Listen. There is nothing to do but receive.”

The sages settled themselves. The fire was steady. The forest was quiet.

“I will begin,” Suta said, “with the day Shiva first showed himself to the other two great gods. Brahma the creator and Vishnu the preserver were arguing over who was greater. They did not know that the answer to their argument was about to appear between them, in the shape of a column of light that had no end.”

That story is the next one, and the whole Shiva Purana begins from there.

This is the frame the Purana puts around itself, and it is worth keeping in mind throughout. Forty stories follow. They are not in strict order of time — Sati and Parvati are different lives of the same goddess; the Jyotirlinga stories are scattered across many ages — but they tell the same Shiva. The thread to hold is simple: each story shows you one face of him, and at the end you have met them all.

So begin where Suta began — with two gods arguing in the dark, and a pillar of fire that comes up between them and goes higher than they can see.