Civa is on all sides opposed to Vishnu.  The Greek account of the third century B.C. says that he taught the Hindus to dance the kordax, but at this time there appears to have been no such phallic worship in his honor as is recorded in the pseudo-epic.  Civa is known in early Brahmanic and in Buddhistic writings, and even as the bearer-of-the-moon, Candracekhara, he contrasts with Vishnu, as his lightning-form and mountain-habitat differ from the sun-form and valley-home of his rival.  This dire god is conceived of as ascetic partly because he is gruesome, partly because he is magical in power.  Hence he is the true type of the awful magical Yogi, and as such appealed to the Brahman.  Originally he is only a fearful magical god, great, and even all-pervading, but, as seen in the Brahmanic Catarudriya hymn, he is at first in no sense a pantheistic deity.  In this hymn there is a significant addition made to the earlier version.  In the first form of the hymn it is said that Rudra, who is here Civa, is the god of bucolic people; but the new version adds ’and of all people.’  Here Civa appears as a wild, diabolical figure, ’the god of incantations,’ whose dart is death; and half of the hymn is taken up with entreaties to the god to spare the speaker.  He is praised, in conjunction with trees, of which he is the lord, as the one ’clad in skins,’ the ‘lord of cattle,’ the ‘lord of paths,’ the ‘cheater,’ the ‘deceiver.’  When he is next clearly seen, in the epic, he is the god to whom are offered human sacrifices, and his special claim to worship is the phallus; while the intermediate literature shows glimpses of him only in his simple Brahmanic form of terror.  It has long been known that Civaite phallic worship was not borrowed from the Southerners, as was once imagined, and we venture with some scholars to believe that it was due rather to late Greek influence than to that of any native wild tribe.[96]

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FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 1:  Parts of the epic are called Pur[=a]nas, as other parts are called Upanishads.  These are the forerunners of the extant Pur[=a]nas.  The name, indeed, is even older than the epic, belonging to the late Vedic period, where are grouped together Pur[=a]nas and Itih[=a]sas, ’Ancient History’ and ‘Stories’; to which are added ‘Eulogies.’  Weber has long since pointed out that even when the ’deeds of kings’ were sung at a ceremony they were wont to be so embroidered as to be dubbed ‘fiction’ by the Hindus themselves.  India has neither literary history (save what can be gleaned from genealogies of doubtful worth), nor very early inscriptions.  The ‘archaeology’ of the Pur[=a]nas was probably always what it is in the extant specimens, legendary material of no direct historical value.]

     [Footnote 2:  Strictly speaking to the present
     Allah[=a]b[=a]d, where is the Pray[=a]ga, or confluence of
     Yamun[=a] and Gang[=a] (Jumna and Ganges).]