The Dance That Holds the Universe: Shiva Nataraja

Shiva Nataraja — “Nataraja” means “king of dancers” — is the form of Shiva shown dancing inside a ring of flame, one foot pressing down on a small crouching figure, the other lifted free. It is one of the best-known images in Hindu art, and at the temple of Chidambaram in Tamil Nadu it is the main object of worship. Behind the image is a story about proud sages, a wandering beggar who was not what he seemed, and a dance that the tradition says has never stopped. This article tells that story, explains what each part of the image is usually taken to mean, and points to where the tradition comes from.

Who Nataraja is

Shiva is one of the principal gods of Hinduism, and for Śaivas — devotees for whom Shiva is the supreme reality — he is the source, sustainer and dissolver of everything. He is often pictured as a still, ash-smeared ascetic seated in meditation. Nataraja is the other side of the same god: the one whose activity is the movement of the universe itself.

The dance he performs at Chidambaram is called the Ānanda Tāṇḍava, the dance of bliss. Tāṇḍava is a vigorous, powerful style of dance associated with Shiva; ānanda means bliss or joy. Not every tāṇḍava in the tradition is joyful — there are also tellings of a fierce dance of destruction — but the Chidambaram dance is the dance of bliss.

The sages of the Tillai forest

There is a story told in the Tamil country about a forest called Tillai, which stood where the city of Chidambaram now rises. It was a forest of sacred trees, and in it lived ten thousand sages who had grown proud of their learning. They had convinced themselves that they could master the divine through the accumulation of knowledge and ritual.

They performed elaborate rituals. They memorised every syllable of the Vedas, the oldest sacred texts of the tradition. They conducted great sacrifices. And over the long years of their practice they made a quiet but serious mistake: they came to believe that the knowledge was theirs, and that the power their rituals generated belonged to them by right of their effort.

Shiva came to them disguised as a wandering mendicant — a holy beggar — beautiful and careless, his matted hair hanging loose, his body smeared with ash, a playful smile on his lips that might have warned them, had they been less sure of themselves.

The sages’ wives were drawn to him in devotion. Their husbands were enraged. They tried to drive the stranger away with mantras, sacred formulas believed to carry power. When the mantras did not work, they conjured a tiger out of their sacrificial fire and sent it to kill him. Shiva killed it with his thumbnail and wrapped its skin around his waist, still smiling. They sent a great serpent. He wound it around his neck like a garland. Finally they sent a demon named Muyalaka — the spirit of ignorance itself — huge, powerful and meant to crush him.

What happened in the forest

Shiva stepped onto Muyalaka’s back, and he danced.

What the sages saw silenced their pride more completely than any argument could have. The dance was not a performance put on for them. Shiva danced the way the universe exists — with no audience in mind, no beginning intended and no end in view. He danced because dancing is his nature, and the rhythm of his movement was the same rhythm that turns the seasons, moves the stars and keeps a heart beating.

The sages fell prostrate. The tradition is careful to say this was not fear. They had been released from the burden of their pride by the beauty and completeness of what they were seeing. Their rituals and their thousands of memorised verses had been a finger pointing at something that now stood in front of them, dancing.

Where the story comes from

The Nataraja tradition has two main roots, and they are worth keeping apart.

The first is a Sanskrit story found in several Purāṇas — the large collections of myth and religious teaching compiled over many centuries — in which Shiva, disguised as a naked or near-naked beggar, visits a forest of proud sages and their wives, provokes their anger, and humbles them. In many Sanskrit tellings this forest is called Dāruvana, the forest of deodar trees, and is placed in the Himalaya rather than in the Tamil south.

The second root is the temple tradition of Chidambaram itself, which locates the event in the Tillai forest and makes the dance the founding moment of the temple. Temple accounts written for Chidambaram tell of two devotees who longed to see the dance: Patañjali, who is pictured as half-serpent, and Vyāghrapāda, “tiger-foot”, a sage given tiger’s feet so that he could climb trees to gather flowers for worship without slipping. In these accounts the dance is performed at Tillai for them, and it continues there.

Shiva as the dancer of Tillai is also a constant presence in Tamil devotional poetry. The hymns of the Tamil Śaiva poet-saints, collected in the Tēvāram, and Māṇikkavācakar’s Tiruvācakam return again and again to the Lord who dances in the hall at Tillai.

Details vary between tellings — the number of sages, the creatures sent against Shiva, and whether the goddess or other gods are present. What follows about the image is how it is commonly read within Śaiva tradition, not a single fixed doctrine.

Reading the four hands

The classic Nataraja image, best known from the South Indian bronzes, shows Shiva with four arms.

In his upper right hand is the ḍamaru, a small two-headed drum shaped like an hourglass. Its sound is often read as the sound of time itself — the arising and the passing away, the first beat and the last. Every sound in the universe is said to be contained in its rhythm, and it is associated with creation.

In his upper left hand is fire. Not the fire that warms or cooks, but the fire that transforms: that burns away what is no longer needed and clears the ground for new growth. It is the same fire that, in Hindu cosmology, consumes the universe at the end of an age and makes space for the next creation.

His lower right hand is raised in the gesture called abhaya, which means “fear not”. In the middle of cosmic fire, drumming creation and the crushed figure of ignorance underfoot, a hand says simply: do not be afraid. Many devotees find this the most moving part of the image — that at the centre of creation and dissolution, the message is reassurance.

His lower left hand stretches across his body and points down toward his raised foot — the foot that is not planted on the demon’s back, the one that swings free. That gesture is read as a teaching: here is the way. Take refuge at this foot.

The ring of fire

Shiva is encircled by a ring of flame, called the prabhāvalī. It is usually understood as the universe itself — the circle of manifestation, everything that exists — turning around a still centre, which is Shiva dancing. His matted locks fly outward to the edges of the ring, showing the speed of the dance, while his face remains completely calm.

What the name carries

Nataraja means Lord of Dancers, but in the tradition it means something more specific: the one whose dance is the very activity of the cosmos. Creation is not something Shiva does between dances. Creation is the dance. Every moment of time is a step in the Ānanda Tāṇḍava. A galaxy turning, a wave rising, a flower opening, a child’s first step — all of it can be seen, in this way of looking, as part of the dance.

In the golden hall of Chidambaram, devotees say, the dance is happening now — not was, not will be, but is. The hall is called the Chit Sabha, the hall of consciousness, and what it expresses is the idea that consciousness itself is the dancer, the universe we perceive is the stage, and the whole of it runs on ānanda — bliss. This is not happiness in the ordinary sense, but the delight that belongs to existence in its very nature.

The five acts in one movement

Read together, the elements of the image are not a collection of separate symbols but a single scheme. Śaiva theology calls it the pañcakṛtya, the five acts of God:

• Creation — from the drum;
• Preservation — in the raised palm that says “fear not”;
• Dissolution — in the fire;
• Concealment — in the foot that presses down, the veiling that keeps souls bound for a time;
• Grace — in the foot that is lifted, the release that frees them.

Every Nataraja bronze can be read as an argument that these five are one continuous motion performed by one dancer — which is why the face at the centre of it all is calm.

The figure underfoot

The demon Muyalaka beneath Shiva’s foot is a teaching too. In Sanskrit sources this figure is often called Apasmāra. He stands for ignorance — the basic mistake of identifying the self with what is limited, and forgetting one’s own divine nature.

It is worth noticing that ignorance is not destroyed by the dance. It is stepped upon, held down and kept from rising while the dance goes on above it. One common reading is that ignorance is the ground from which liberation leaps: the raised foot of grace needs the planted foot to push against.

Nataraja in worship today

At Chidambaram, Nataraja is worshipped in the Chit Sabha, and the temple’s festivals centre on the dancing god. The best known is Ārudrā Darśanam, when devotees gather to see the image of the dancer brought out in procession. Beyond Chidambaram, Nataraja images stand in Shiva temples across South India, and dancers of Bharatanāṭyam and other classical forms often honour him as the patron of dance before performing.

The image has also travelled far beyond temples. Nataraja bronzes are among the most admired works in museum collections, and the figure is widely recognised as a picture of the idea that the universe is movement, rhythm and change held within a still centre.

Looking at the image

Find a picture of Nataraja and look at it for a long time. Look at the drum and the fire, the hand that says “fear not”, and the circle of flame. Then look at the face — its complete composure, the expression of someone doing exactly what they were always meant to do, in exactly the place they were always meant to be.

In the tradition’s own terms, this is what the universe looks like when it is running as it should. The dance has never stopped, no one stands outside it, and the lifted foot of grace is always there, pointing the way.

Read on AdiVeda

• Shiva Tandava Stotram — a celebrated hymn in Sanskrit describing Shiva’s tāṇḍava dance.
• The Half-Being Who Contains Everything — Shiva as Ardhanarishvara, half male and half female.
• The Blue-Throated One: Why Shiva Drank the Poison — another story of Shiva’s care for the world.
• The Pillar of Fire Without Beginning or End — Shiva revealed as the infinite column of light.
• Shiva texts on AdiVeda — stotras, ashtakams, mantras and more.