Who is the father of Shiva?

Within the vast and diverse tapestry of Hindu cosmology, the question of Lord Shiva's parentage is a profound one that leads to the very core of Shaivite philosophy. For the vast majority of devotees and according to the most prominent scriptures, Lord Shiva has no father. He is considered Swayambhu, meaning self-created, unborn, and eternal.

He is the supreme being who exists beyond the cycles of birth, life, and death that govern all other entities in the cosmos. Shiva is often referred to as Aadidev (the first god) or Mahadev (the great god), signifying his position as the primordial consciousness from which everything emanates and into which everything eventually dissolves. He is the destroyer and the transformer, but he is also the source of creation, the ultimate reality who is without beginning and without end.

This concept of Shiva as the ultimate, uncaused cause is central to the Shaivism tradition, one of the major sects of Hinduism. In this view, Shiva is the Supreme Lord himself, who manifests the entire universe. The holy trinity, or Trimurti, consisting of Brahma (the creator), Vishnu (the preserver), and Shiva (the destroyer), are often understood not as three separate and competing deities, but as different aspects or manifestations of this one supreme reality. From this perspective, asking who fathered Shiva is a logical fallacy, akin to asking what existed before time or what is beyond space. Shiva represents the absolute, the timeless, and the formless reality (Nirguna Brahman) that precedes and transcends all creation.

However, some Puranic texts, which are narrative scriptures that often present complex philosophical ideas through stories, offer different allegorical accounts of the gods' origins to explain their roles. For instance, some narratives in the Puranas describe a scene where Brahma and Vishnu are debating their supremacy. A great, infinite pillar of fire, a Jyotirlinga, appears before them. They agree that whoever can find its end will be considered superior. Brahma travels upwards and Vishnu travels downwards for eons but can find no end to the pillar, as it is infinite.

It is from this pillar of light that Shiva emerges, revealing himself as the ultimate source of both of them. In other, less common and more symbolic stories, Brahma is sometimes said to have been born from a lotus that emerged from Vishnu's navel. In one such narrative, a furious Brahma, frustrated by his austerities, creates a crying child from his brow, named Rudra (a form of Shiva). But these stories are largely seen as allegorical. The dominant and philosophically consistent answer remains that Lord Shiva is the eternal, unborn Lord, the father of the entire universe, who himself has no father.