The White Yajur Veda[341] contains a celebrated prayer known as the Satarudriya addressed to Rudra or the Rudras, for the power invoked seems to be now many and now one.  This deity, who is described by a long string of epithets, receives the name of Sankara (afterwards a well-known epithet of Siva) and is blue-necked.  He is begged to be Siva or propitious, but the word is an epithet, not a proper name.  He haunts mountains and deserted, uncanny places:  he is the patron of violent and lawless men, of soldiers and robbers (the two are evidently considered much the same), of thieves, cheats and pilferers,[342] but also of craftsmen and huntsmen and is himself “an observant merchant”:  he is the lord of hosts of spirits, “ill-formed and of all forms.”  But he is also a great cosmic force who “dwells in flowing streams and in billows and in tranquil waters and in rivers and on islands ... and at the roots of trees ...”:  who “exists in incantations, in punishments, in prosperity, in the soil, in the threshing-floor ... in the woods and in the bushes, in sound and in echo ... in young grass and in foam ... in gravel and in streams ... in green things and in dry things....  Reverence to the leaf and to him who is in the fall of the leaf, the threatener, the slayer, the vexer and the afflicter.”  Here we see how an evil and disreputable god, the patron of low castes and violent occupations, becomes associated with the uncanny forces of nature and is on the way to become an All-God.[343]

Rudra is frequently mentioned in the Atharva Veda.  He is conceived much as in the Satarudriya, and is the lord of spirits and of animals.  “For thee the beasts of the wood, the deer, swans and various winged birds are placed in the forest:  thy living creatures exist in the waters:  for thee the celestial waters flow.  Thou shootest at the monsters of the ocean, and there is to thee nothing far or near."[344]

These passages show that the main conceptions out of which the character of the later Siva is built existed in Vedic times.  The Rudra of the Yajur and Atharva Vedas is not Brahmanic:  he is not the god of priests and orderly ritual, but of wild people and places.  But he is not a petty provincial demon who afflicts rustics and their cattle.  Though there is some hesitation between one Rudra and many Rudras, the destructive forces are unified in thought and the destroyer is not opposed to creation as a devil or as the principle of evil, but with profounder insight is recognized as the Lord and Law of all living things.

But though the outline of Siva is found in Vedic writings, later centuries added new features to his cult.  Chief among these is the worship of a column known as the Linga, the emblem under which he is now most commonly adored.  It is a phallic symbol though usually decent in appearance.  The Vedas do not countenance this worship and it is not clear that it was even known to them.[345] It is first enjoined