Petra, Jordan – Is it an ancient Shiva Temple complex? (cont.)
By Bibhu Dev Misra (IIT, IIM)
It is extremely
improbable that two ancient cities located on the Silk Route,
and worshipping deities that are culturally related, would
happen to build some of the finest rock-cut temples of the world at
around the same time, without having any cultural contact between
them. Petra and Ajanta must be connected; and since the rock-cut
architecture of India represents the highest achievements of
engineering and aesthetics of that period, it can be supposed that
the Silk Route acted as a conduit for the westward transfer of the
Shiva-Shakti cult and rock-cut architectural skills, across the
Arabian Peninsula, during the 3rd – 2nd
centuries BC. However, since Petra stood at the crossroads of the
trade route between the east and the west, there has been an
amalgamation of various influences in its architecture. The
Greco-Roman influence is apparent in the facades of many structures,
which strengthened even further after the Roman occupation of Petra.
Egyptian influences are also evident due to the presence of obelisks
and funerary tombs throughout the city.
The Nabateans built a
few other cities in the desert, one of which is the archaeological
site of ‘Shivta’ built in the 1st
century BC on the 'Perfume Road' between Petra to Gaza. Like Petra,
Shivta too was abandoned by the 8th – 9th
century CE, after the ascendancy of Islam. A few kilometers from
Shivta is located the ancient, biblical city of ‘Tel Sheva’,
an archaeological site in southern Israel, which derives its name
from a nearby ‘well’ or ‘water source’. The
phonetic and symbolic similarities between these cities and ‘Shiva’
are obvious. In fact, the cult of Shiva-Shakti was widespread across
the entire Middle East and West Asia, and penetrated deep into the
farthest corners of Europe in the centuries before Christ. The
biblical kingdom of ‘Sheba’ (Hebrew: Sh’va)
believed to be in present day Yemen, as well as the archaeological
site of ‘Shibham’ (Sanskrit: Shivam) located in
Yemen, hint at the fact that entire kingdoms and cities were named
after this deity.
It is unfortunate that
these symbolisms and associations have been either overlooked or
ignored by historians till now. What is even more regrettable is the
fact that the Shiva Linga, and, in fact, any Pillar or Dolmen cult,
has been uniformly interpreted as a form of phallic worship, when the
information from the ancient sources clearly specify that the
‘pillar’ represents the ‘Cosmic Mountain’,
the symbolic axis-mundi of the cosmos, around which the heavens
revolve. It is a powerful cosmic symbol, fusing the divine masculine
and feminine principles, whose meaning was universally understood by
the ancient cultures, but whose real import has been lost to us now.
Unless we begin to acknowledge the widespread presence of the
Shiva-Shakti cult in large parts of the ancient world, and make a
sincere attempt to understand the vast array of symbolisms associated
with this ancient faith, we will continue to concoct a version of
history that is illusory, fragmentary, and ultimately meaningless.
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