Nilakanthaनीलकंठ

Nilakantha (नीलकंठ), the blue-throated one, names Shiva by the mark of his most celebrated act of rescue. When the gods and asuras churned the ocean of milk for the nectar of immortality, the first thing to surface was its opposite: halāhala, a poison potent enough to destroy creation. The desperate gods turned to Shiva, who gathered the poison and drank it. Parvati pressed his throat so that it would descend no further, and it lodged there, staining the god's neck a deep blue that he carries forever.

The meaning of the mark

The tradition reads the blue throat as compassion's signature. Shiva neither swallows the poison — which would destroy the destroyer — nor spits it out to poison the world; he holds it, transformed into an ornament. Devotional literature returns constantly to the image: the god who takes the world's worst into himself and is beautified rather than ruined by it. The epithet appears already among the names of Rudra in the Vedic Shatarudriya, and the churning narrative is told in the Mahabharata and the Puranas.

In worship

Nilakantha is one of the most beloved of Shiva's names, invoked wherever protection from harm is sought. Some traditions associate the drinking of the poison with Maha Shivaratri and with the practice of offering the god cooling substances — water, milk, bael leaves — to soothe the burning throat. The name is carried by temples and by the Himalayan peak Nilkantha above Badrinath, and the blue throat remains, in painting and bronze, the quickest way to know Shiva among the gods.