Lord Shiva Bust with Cobra Indian Brass Statue 16 Inch.
This carving is of Shiva's head only.He has a crescent moon on the Left side of his head.Shiva has a cobra perched on what would be his right shoulder.There is also a cobra coming out of the skull in his hair.He wears two large hoop earrings.
The cobras symbolizes the power He has over the most deadly of creatures.Snakes are also used to symbolize the Hindu dogma of reincarnation. Their natural process of molting or shedding their skin is symbolic of the human souls transmigration of bodies from one life to another.The Hindu Goddess Ganga, the goddess of the Ganges is shown nesting in Shiva's dreadlocks.The river Ganges that flows in Shiva's hair originally flowed in heaven. When the heavenly Ganges was needed on earth, she was unwilling to fall to earth because she realized that her fall from heaven would be too much for the earth to withstand. Shiva agreed to break the violent power of the sacred Ganga's fall by catching her in his tangled hair, breaking the fall with his hair on its way to the Himalayas and Northern India.
