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juhavaha ). A troop of Ribhus in consequence spring up, who put Shiva’s followers to flight. Shiva is filled with wrath when he hears of the death of Sati (sect. 5). From a lock of his hair, which he tore out, a gigantic demon arose, whom he commended to destroy Daksha and his sacrifice. This demon proceeds with a troop of Shiva’s followers, and they all execute the mandate. How they executed the mandate is described in the Bhagvat Purana [1] in the following terms :
“Some broke the sacrificial vessels, others destroyed the fires, others made water in the ponds, others cut the boundary-cords of the sacrificial ground ; others assaulted the Munis, others reviled their wives ; others seized the gods who were near, and those who had fled.... 19. The divine Bhava (Siva) plucked out the beard of Bhrigu, who was offering oblations with a ladle in his hand, and who had laughed in the assembly, showing his beard. He also tore out the eyes of Bhaga, whom in his wrath he had felled to the ground, and who, when in the assembly, had made a sign to (Daksha when) cursing (Siva) He moreover knocked out the teeth of Pushan (as Bala did the king of Kalinga’s), who (Pushan) had laughed, showing his teeth, when the great god was being cursed. Tryambaka (Siva, or Virabhadra, according to the commentator) then cuts off the head of Daksha, but not without some difficulty. The gods report all that had passed to Svayambhu (Brahma), who, with Vishnu, had not been present (sect. 6). Brahma advises the gods to propitiate Siva, whom they had wrongfully excluded from a share in the sacrifice. The deities, headed by Aja (Brahma), accordingly proceed to Kailasa, when they see Siva “bearing the linga desired by devotees, ashes, a staff, a tuft of hair, an antelope’s skin, and a digit of the moon, his body shining like an evening cloud”. Brahma addresses Mahadeva “as the eternal Brahma, the lord of Sakti and Siva, who are respectively the womb and the seed of the universe,— who, in sport, like a spider, forms all things from Sakti and Siva, who are consubstantial with himself, and preserves and reabsorbs them” (A similar supremacy is ascribed to Vishnu in sect. 7). Brahma adds that it was this great being who had instituted sacrifice, and all the regulations which Brahmans devoutly observe and entreat him, who is beyond all illusion, to have mercy on those who, overcome by its influence, had wrongly attached importance to ceremonial works, and to restore the sacrifice of Daksha, at which a share had been refused to him by evil priests. Mahadeva partly relents (sect. 7)”
There can be no better evidence to prove that Shiva was an anti-vedic God than his destruction of Daksha’s Yajna.
1 Quoted in Muir IV. p. 383-84.