Concept and Images of Sadasiva in Ancient India

Abstract

Sadasiva is one of the famous form of Siva with five heads and ten hands. This body of Siva is self created. The five heads are also known as ‘Mahadeva', ‘Bhairava', ‘Nandivaktra', ‘Umavaktra' and ‘Sadasiva' or ‘Isana'. The ten hands of Siva represents ten directions holding various attributes. Several texts give details about Sadasiva. The artists also depicted several Sadasiva images which generally belong to tenth-twelveth century A.D. These images have local differences too. These images represent the philosophy and popularity of Sadasiva worship. In this paper an attempt has been made to show the popularity of Sadasiva form of Siva with the help of images found in different parts of Ancient india.