Candraśekhara

Candraśekhara means “he whose crest is the moon”. The crescent is on Śiva in almost every image of him, so in one sense this is not a separate form at all but his most constant mark. In South Indian temples, though, Candraśekhara is also a particular image: a gentle, standing Śiva with axe and deer in his upper hands, often cast in bronze to be carried in procession.

The Śiva Purāṇa tells the story at Somanātha, the first of the twelve Jyotirliṅgas. Dakṣa married his twenty-seven daughters to the Moon, but the Moon loved only Rohiṇī. Dakṣa asked him twice to treat his wives equally; when he would not, Dakṣa cursed him to waste away. As the Moon shrank, the gods and sages went to Brahmā, who sent him to Prabhāsa to worship a liṅga with the Mṛtyuñjaya mantra. The Moon stayed there six months in penance. Śiva appeared and gave him a boon: in one fortnight you will lose a digit each day, and in the other you will gain them back. Then, at the gods' request, Śiva stayed at that place as Someśvara, the Moon's Lord.

The chapter itself does not say that Śiva then set the moon on his head; that is how popular telling joins the two. But the Purāṇa knows him as moon-crested throughout: his thousand names call him Candrāpīḍa and Candramauli, “who wears the moon as his crown”, and as he sets out to marry Satī the crescent is among the things that become his ornaments. Other Purāṇas tell how the moon came to him from the churning of the ocean.

Tradition finds much in this small sign. The moon measures time, night by night, and Śiva wears time as an ornament. The moon is also linked with the mind — the Vedic hymn of the Cosmic Person says the moon was born from his mind — so the crescent on the crest is the mind at rest in Śiva. And the Somanātha story shows grace of a particular kind: the curse is not erased, it is turned into a rhythm, so that loss is always followed by return.

Devotees approach Candraśekhara for healing and for calm. Monday, Somavāra, is Śiva's day for this reason, and many keep a Monday fast. Pilgrims bathe and pray at Prabhāsa, where the Purāṇa says worship of Someśvara takes away wasting diseases. And the hymn Candraśekharāṣṭakam, which tradition puts in the mouth of the boy Mārkaṇḍeya, calls on him by this name again and again as protection against death.