Bhikṣāṭana

Bhikṣāṭana is one of the most surprising faces of Śiva: the Lord of all the worlds as a beggar. He walks barefoot but for his sandals, naked, smeared with ash, beautiful beyond words, holding out a skull for alms. Temple bronzes show him mid-stride, as if he had just come round the corner of the village street.

Two stories meet in this form. The skull in his hand comes from the story of Bhairava: when Brahmā's fifth head spoke in pride, Bhairava cut it off, and the skull stuck to his hand. Śiva told him to carry it and to wander the worlds on the vow of the skull-bearer, begging for his food, until the sin left him. The Śiva Purāṇa tells how he went begging even at Viṣṇu's door, and how the skull finally fell from his hand at Kāśī, at the place called Kapālamocana.

The other story is that of the Dāruvana, the forest of the sages. In the Śiva Purāṇa, Śiva comes into that forest naked and ash-covered to test the sages; their wives are drawn to him, the sages are bewildered and angry, and the story turns into the account of how the liṅga came to be worshipped. In the telling loved in South Indian temples, he comes as the beautiful beggar, the sages' wives follow him with offerings, and Viṣṇu comes beside him as Mohinī to bewilder the sages in turn.

Tradition reads the begging bowl as the heart of the form. The Lord who needs nothing holds out his bowl, and what he really asks to be given is the ego — the pride of the sages who thought their rites bound the universe, the pride of Brahmā who thought himself highest. To fill his bowl is to give oneself. That is why the women of the forest, who forgot everything and followed him, are remembered not as foolish but as the ones who saw.

Devotees meet Bhikṣāṭana above all in South Indian temples, in bronze and in stone. Seeing him, worshippers are reminded that God may come to the door as the least expected guest, and that giving to a mendicant, done with reverence, is a way of giving to Śiva himself.