Tripurāntaka

Tripurāntaka is Śiva as the archer of a single shot. Three brothers, sons of Tāraka, won a boon that seemed to make them safe for ever: three flying cities — of gold, of silver and of iron — that could be destroyed only when they stood in one line, and only by one arrow. When their power turned to cruelty, the gods came to Śiva.

The Śiva Purāṇa describes the chariot the gods built for him as nothing less than the universe itself. The earth is its body; the sun is its right wheel with twelve spokes and the moon its left with sixteen; the four Vedas are its horses and Brahmā holds the reins. Mount Meru becomes the bow, the king of serpents its string, Viṣṇu the arrow and Agni its blazing tip. When Śiva mounted it, even the Veda-horses fell to their knees under his weight.

Just before the battle, the Purāṇa adds, Śiva asked the gods to accept that they were all paśus — beings in bondage — and he their Lord; and he promised that whoever keeps his Pāśupata vow would be freed from that bondage. From then on he was known as Paśupati. Then, after he had first honoured Gaṇeśa, the three cities slid into one line. In the auspicious hour of Abhijit he drew the bow and loosed the arrow, and the cities burned in an instant.

Teachers in the Śaiva Siddhānta tradition read the three cities as the three bonds that hold every soul — āṇava (the sense of a small, separate self), karma and māyā. They seem to fly beyond reach, each on its own course; but when grace finds the moment they stand together, one arrow ends all three. Tamil devotion goes further: Śiva needed no arrow at all, and burnt the cities with a smile.

The victory is remembered on Kārttika Pūrṇimā, also called Tripurī Pūrṇimā, when lamps are lit in their thousands — in Kāśī the ghāṭs glow for Dev Dīpāvalī. In temple art, especially Chola bronzes, Tripurāntaka stands poised as if holding the bow, the moment before the release: a picture of patience that waits for the right instant, and of power that then needs only one act.