[Advaita-l] Dog Headed God

[Venkatesh Murthy]

Namaste
On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 9:08 PM, Vidyasankar Sundaresan
<svidyasankar at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Reference Book - Shankara and Indian Philosophy page 88
>
> Is this the book by Natalia Isayeva?


Yes

> Not sure about Ujjain, but there is a strong association of dogs with
> Mallari/Malhari/Mailari/Mallanna and Khandoba, forms of Siva-Rudra
> very popular in central India, Maharashtra, northern parts of Karnataka
> and Andhra. TThere is a Wikipedia entry on Khandoba.
>
> Dattatreya is also often depicted in the company of dogs. In any case,
> the quoted statement is one of those legendary activities attributed to
> Sankaracharya, which are not historically accurate.
>
> Throughout India, over the centuries, we see evidence of conversion of
> the ways of worship of folk deities and change from "left-handed" ways
> to acceptable methods of worship. A lot of these changes get attributed
> to Sankaracharya, quite unnecessarily and quite inaccurately.
>
>> Which temple in Ujjaini has dog headed Siva ? Why Adi Sankara stopped
>> worship of this God? How can Dog be God?
>>
>
> In the namaka praSna, we have namaS SvabhyaS SvapatibhyaS ca vo
> namaH! Of course, we also have aSvebhyaH, mRgayubhyaH etc, and it
> does not mean that there were temples where Siva was worshipped in
> the form of a horse, jackal, dog etc. On the other hand, we could also
> ask, how can elephant or lion or monkey be God, and question the
> worship of Ganesa, Narasimha and Hanuman too ...
>


If Dog worship has Sruti Pramana why say it is left handed?  People
can worship in God in many forms. He will be pleased. The Geeta Sloka
is -

Yo Yo Yam Yam Tanum Bhaktaha Sraddhayarchitumicchati
Tasya Tasyachalam Sraddham Tameva Vidadhamyaham


People  build temple for Dog

http://news.oneindia.in/2010/04/10/people-build-a-temple-for-dog-in-karnataka.html

-- 
Regards

-Venkatesh