Sharabha

In a shrine of its own at Thirubuvanam, in the Kaveri delta, stone works out a problem that language keeps fumbling. A lion’s face, a lion’s body, a tail, and then four human arms fanned around the shoulders: one grips an axe, one a noose, one holds a small deer, one carries fire. Beneath the feet an eight-armed figure twists and does not get loose. Lamp soot has worked into the granite until the carving looks wet in the low light. The figure being pinned is also a god.

Long before any of that, the sharabha was simply an animal, and a bad one to meet. The earliest Sanskrit descriptions give a beast that roars in the hills and drives other animals out of the forest. The Mahabharata sharpens it: eight legs, eyes set on top of the head, a lion-killer that lived in the woods and ate its meat raw, sometimes placed on Mount Krauncha, sometimes wandering Gandhamadana among ordinary lions and tigers. The same epic also lists it among the mrigajatis, the deer and antelope and boar and hare that a host might reasonably serve a guest at dinner. So the creature that would one day flay an avatar started out as game.

Picture it on the mountain in the hour before light, weight shifting across eight legs, the eyes on the crown of its head catching movement in every direction at once. Something small breaks cover. The sound that follows carries down the slope and empties the treeline.

The species stayed unsettled for centuries. In the twelfth century Dalhana, commenting on the Sushruta Samhita, put the sharabha among the deer native to Kashmir, and the animal he describes has eight legs, the bulk of a camel and enormous horns, which reads less like a lion than a very large Himalayan goat. Later literature drifts the same way and calls it an eight-legged deer. The one thing every account keeps is the extra set of legs.

The Puranas took the beast and handed it to a god. In the Shiva Purana, Vishnu has descended as Narasimha, half man and half lion, to tear apart the demon king Hiranyakashipu, and the killing does not end the fury. The man-lion cannot come down from it, and the shaking reaches the three worlds. The gods appeal to Shiva. He sends Virabhadra first; Virabhadra fails. Then Shiva himself takes the shape: lion-faced, matted-haired, winged, eight-footed, and in that text a thousand arms.

The wings come down. Sharabha takes Narasimha the way a hawk takes something it has no intention of letting go, drives him into the ground and holds him there until the rage runs out of him. Several versions do not stop at holding. Sharabha beheads the man-lion and strips off the hide, and Shiva puts it on, wearing the skin and the lion head as a garment.

The Linga Purana and the Sharabha Upanishad, which gives him two heads, two wings, eight clawed lion legs and a long tail, both carry that mutilation, and both end with Vishnu resuming his own form, praising Shiva, and going home. It is from this that Shiva takes the name Sharabheshvara. The Skanda Purana is gentler and more interesting: there Narasimha is an irritation rather than a threat, and the real danger is that Vishnu might keep the lion body permanently and stop being Vishnu. Narasimha strikes Sharabha and it is Vishnu, not Sharabha, who groans, because Sharabha’s body is adamantine. Recognition follows, then praise, then a boon. The Vamana Purana declines to give Shiva the win at all: neither gets the better of the other, Narasimha subsides back into Vishnu, and when Narada turns to look, Sharabha has become a lingam. The Kalika Purana rewrites the target entirely, sending a black, eight-tusked, maned Sharabha with four feet down and four feet raised, leaping and crying out, against Varaha the boar and his sons, killing Narasimha first and Varaha after, so that Vishnu can reabsorb both energies.

This is a quarrel between two churches told as a quarrel between two animals. Vaishnava tradition has never accepted it. The sixteenth-century Dvaita philosopher Vijayindra Tirtha devoted part of his Śaivasarvasvakhaṇḍanam to demolishing the Sharabha legend along with ten other Shaiva claims, dismissing the Puranas that carry them as tamasic and therefore not binding. The Narasimha Purana answers in kind, with Vishnu taking the form of Gandabherunda, the two-headed bird, who destroys Sharabha. And the word itself is claimed from the other side: sharabha is the 356th name in the Vishnu Sahasranama, where Adi Shankara declines to read any lion-killing animal into it and glosses it instead as the Lord shining within the perishable body.

The iconographic manuals are precise where the myths argue. The Kamikagama prescribes a golden bird-bodied figure with two lifted wings and two red eyes, four lion legs on the ground and four clawed legs turned up, an animal tail, and a human upper body under a crowned lion face with side tusks, Narasimha beneath with his palms pressed together. The Sritattvanidhi goes further and gives thirty arms holding thunderbolt, discus, sword, axe, skull-cup, plough, noose, bow and fire among the rest, with one arm around Durga, and promises that this form brings luck, cures disease and destroys enemies. The Cholas, who favoured the Shaiva side, put him in stone: the earliest image at Vikramasolishvaram near Kumbakonam under Vikrama Chola, then Darasuram, then Thirubuvanam under Kulottunga Chola III, where he was given a shrine to himself.

Buddhism kept the animal and dropped the fight. In the Sarabha-miga Jataka the Bodhisattva is born as a sharabha deer in the forest; a king hunting him misses, and horse and rider go over a precipice. The deer climbs down and hauls the king out, and the king, undone by it, forbids hunting in his kingdom. Tibetan art gives the sharabha a goat’s head and horns, a lion’s mane and a horse’s body and legs, sometimes eagle claws, and sets it under the thrones of buddhas and bodhisattvas as one of the six torana beasts, where it stands for the perfection of effort.

What he can do follows from what he is. Nothing in the sources outruns him, out-jumps him or breaks him: he is stronger than lion or elephant, clears a valley in one leap, and his body is hard enough that an avatar’s blow rebounds on the god who struck it. What he cannot do is stop. One version ends with the gods realising that Sharabha’s fury is no more governable than the fury he was made to put down, and asking Shiva to give the form up. Shiva dismembers it, distributes the limbs, and what is left of the torso becomes a Kapalika, a skull-carrying ascetic. Half of Hinduism says he flayed a god. The other half says the word was never an animal at all.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Sharabha in Hindu mythology?

Sharabha is an eight-legged, part-lion and part-bird being described in Sanskrit literature as stronger than a lion or an elephant and able to clear a valley in a single jump. In Shaiva scripture it is the form Shiva takes to subdue Narasimha, and in that role he is called Sharabheshvara. Earlier texts, including the Mahabharata, treat the sharabha simply as a dangerous wild animal rather than a god.

Why did Shiva become Sharabha?

According to the Shiva Purana, Narasimha could not calm down after killing the demon king Hiranyakashipu, and his rage began to shake the three worlds. Shiva first sent Virabhadra, who failed, and then took the Sharabha form himself. Accounts differ on what happened next, from pinning and quieting Narasimha to beheading and flaying him.

Did Sharabha kill Narasimha?

It depends on which text is asked. The Shiva Purana, Linga Purana and Sharabha Upanishad describe Sharabha mutilating Narasimha, while the Skanda Purana has Vishnu simply recognise Shiva and praise him, and the Vamana Purana gives neither side the advantage. Vaishnava tradition rejects the whole episode and holds that Vishnu, as the two-headed bird Gandabherunda, defeated Sharabha instead.

What does Sharabha look like?

The Shiva Purana describes him as lion-faced with matted hair, wings, eight feet and a thousand arms, while the Sharabha Upanishad gives him two heads, two wings, eight clawed lion legs and a long tail. The Kalika Purana adds eight tusks, a mane and a black body with four feet planted and four raised. Temple images follow the manuals, often showing a crowned lion face, lifted wings, upturned claws and Narasimha pinned underneath.

Where can images of Sharabha be seen?

The Chola kings of Tamil Nadu, who favoured the Shaiva tradition, commissioned several: the earliest at Vikramasolishvaram near Kumbakonam, then Darasuram, then the Kampahareshvarar temple at Thirubuvanam, where Sharabha has a shrine of his own. The Thirubuvanam image shows a lion-bodied figure with four human arms holding an axe, a noose, a deer and fire, standing over an eight-armed Narasimha.

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Narasimha, Vishnu, Shiva, Rudra, Varaha, Gandabherunda, Kalki, Durga, Kali, Kaal Bhairav, Garuda, Yali, Airavata, Griffin (or Gryphon)