Nandiनंदी

Nandi is the bull of Shiva: his mount, his chief attendant, the foremost of his gaṇas and the guardian of Kailāsa. His name is commonly connected with joy. No image in Hindu temple culture is more faithfully repeated than the seated Nandi placed before a Shiva shrine, facing the liṅga in unbroken attention; the devotee entering the temple passes between the watcher and the watched. Popular custom holds that a wish whispered into Nandi's ear will be carried to the god.

In the tradition

The bull belongs to Shiva's oldest layer: Rudra of the Vedic hymns is already associated with the bull, an immemorial emblem of virility and strength in the subcontinent. In the Purāṇic literature Nandi becomes a person as well as an animal, sometimes depicted bull-faced and man-bodied as Nandikeśvara, chief of Shiva's attendants and doorkeeper of his mountain household. Some traditions revere him further as a teacher, a transmitter of Shaiva doctrine and of the arts of music and dance. In the Tamil Shaiva lineages, Nandinatha is honoured as the fountainhead of a line of preceptors.

Iconography

Nandi is shown as a humped bull, most often white, recumbent with legs folded, garlanded and belled, his head turned towards the sanctum. Monolithic Nandis of great size are among the celebrated sights of South Indian temple architecture. In the reliefs and bronzes of the Shiva family he stands patiently by, and Shiva leaning on the standing bull, an image called Vṛṣabhavāhana, is one of the gentlest in the Shaiva repertoire.