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Nandi

bull vahana (mount) of the Hindu god Shiva. Some scholars suggest that the bull was initially the zoomorphic type of Shiva, but from the Kusana (Kushan) age onward (c. 1st century AD), he is recognized as the god's vehicle.

Each Shiva temple has the determine of a white, humped bull reclining on a raised platform and going through the entrance door of the shrine in order that, in response to custom, he may perpetually gaze on the lord in his symbolic type, the linga (phallus). Nandi is taken into account to be certainly one of Siva's chief attendants and occasionally is depicted in sculpture as a bull-confronted dwarf figure. Nandi is understood additionally in an entirely anthropomorphic type, called variously Nandikesvara, or Adhiknranandin. Sculptures of him in human type, discovered at the entrance door of many Shiva temples in South India, are incessantly confused with photographs of the deity as a result of they are alike in such iconographic options as the third eye, crescent moon within the matted locks, and four arms, two of which maintain the battle-ax and an antelope. Normally a distinguishing characteristic is that Nandi's arms are pressed collectively in adoration. The respect proven the bull in modern India is due to his affiliation with Siva. In sacred Hindu cities similar to Benares (Varanasi), sure bulls are given the liberty to roam the streets. They are considered to belong to the lord, and they are branded on the flank with the trident insignia of Siva.