The question is why people in Kampuchea or Indonesia or Madurai would worship a tradition based on mountainous snow and ice. Both Shiva and most certainly Parvati are mountain traditions - particularly snow-capped mountain peaks.Pulikeshi wrote:There is nothing to indicate Shiva/Parvati tradition as either North or South - in fact it is all over greater India...UlanBatori wrote: Question about how Shiva/Parvati tradition came to be so strong in the south ..
To quote Kalidasa (the only line I remember) from KumArasambhava, SSLC textbook:
TushAra sanghAta shilAtaleshvapi
I can understand if ppl in Kenya/tanzania such as Ms. Lucy Tanzaniwali were to cite that, having strolled past Mr. Kilimanjaro on the way to the Khyber Pass, or Mr. Takahashi Fujimori having seen Mt. Fuji, but I know of no other place in the equatorial zone where there are snow-capped peaks. Maybe Mt. Krakatoa had snow b4 it disappeared in a colossal "Krak!"? Or, maybe the memory is from Mt. Toba, considered a gazillion times bigger explosion (and hence maybe a much taller mountain?)
It has to be an imported/migrated tradition. In Malloostan (TCR) there is actually a tall representation of Shiva (Master of The North, too) built up of successively smaller crescent moons, disappearing into the darkness above. Using ghee, the entire background is a huge peak that is white/beige. Danger of Ghee-Slides is ever-present for the pujaris. Shri Parvati is directly behind the shrine to Shiva, facing the other way: the classic Advaita representation of "Ardha Nareeshvara". (Not the present north-Indian representation of side-by-side!)
Then again, the temple is supposed to be where Adi Sankara spent considerable time doing some of his most extensive writing, so the representation of the Himalaya is not surprising. A low-walled rectangular plot, homage to Sankara represents a simple Shankh and Chakra, side by side. Legend is that this was his Samadhi and it makes sense because that is not a shrine, just these two stone sculptures rising from the ground. (Now they have a more formal shrine with roof and color storyboard etc next to it).