Greatness of Shiva : Mahimnastava of Pushpadanta with commentary

i) LS)

MAHIMNASTAVA.

Who art both the minutest of the minute! And yet the greatest of the great? Reverence to Thee Oh Three-Eyed One? Who art ancient*

And yet very youthful®

Reverence to Thee Who art all things And art yet beyond all things®

1 The Brahmaz» is not bound by and transcends all forms whether gross or subtle. The form or non-self is determined and must of necessity remain such as it is serving the same purpose at all times and under all circumstances. But Consciousness or the Self is free to lend at Its choice relative existence to all or any as the objects of Its knowledge. The Jiva is bound by the form in so far as he identifies himself with it. The Knower being free of such error can assume any form great or small equally because they do not affect the knowing. Therefore is Brahman called the greatest of the great, and the smallest of the small because He is completely free to take any form such, as here, the atomic (the paramanu).

2 His body is huge manifesting in the great mountains and waters, the earth, the universes and the infinite spaces in which they revolve (J. C.). As Upanishad says Anoraniyan mahato mahiyan “more minute than the atom ; greatest of the great.”

3 For He has the third or central eye of wisdom ( Jnanachakshu or because He is Father of the Three (Trimurti).

4 He was before all things (J. C.) the “ Ancient of Days.”

5 For He knows not old age and infirmity, but is ever fully strong and capable of all work (J. C.).

6 Visible and invisible. He is not only immanent in the worlds, but transcends them. It cannot be too often repeated that Indian doctrine is not pantheistic in the ordinarily understood western meaning of that term. Brahmawz in Itself (Svariipa) is not the form though It exists both rea/iter and effective in it but is as Shangkara says “the infinite peace, the undual Bhuma apart from all name and form.” It is as the verse says beyond all things that is beyond all categories of time space and causality and is the “ Absolute” only in the sense of a perfectly unrelated and independent self-identity and not in the Hegelian sense of the highest concrete or monadic synthesis of unity in difference,