The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Hindusim vol 2

Sharada Math
considered both a musical instrument
and an instrument of war, since through
its powerful sound he is said to have
struck terror in the hearts of his enemies.
The conch is also commonly
carried by certain powerful forms of the
Goddess. The reason for this can be
found in her charter myth, in which she
is formed from the collected radiance of
all the gods and receives duplicates of all
their weapons.
Shanta (“peaceful”) Bhava
The first of the five modes of devotion to
God that were most prominently articulated
by Rupa Goswami, a devotee
(bhakta) of the god Krishna and a follower
of the Bengali saint Chaitanya.
Rupa used five different models of
human relationships to explain the variety
of links followers might have with
the deities. These five models showed
growing emotional intensity, from the
peaceful (shanta) sense that comes from
realizing one’s complete identity with
Brahman, or Supreme Reality, to conceiving
of god as one’s master, friend,
child, or lover. The shanta bhava, in
which one finds mental peace through
the realization of complete identity with
Brahman, is the only one of these modes
in which the devotee does not have a
personalized relationship with God.
Given Rupa’s assumption that Krishna
was the highest manifestation of godhead,
and that true religious life
involved having a relationship with him,
the shanta bhava was thus judged inferior
to the other four modes.
Shantanu
In the Mahabharata, the later of the two
great Sanskrit epics, Shantanu is the
father of Bhishma by his first wife, and
the husband of Satyavati in his second
marriage. Satyavati has agreed to marry
Shantanu on the condition that her sons
reign, despite the fact that Bhishma is
the eldest and thus is rightly entitled to
the throne. Shantanu agrees to this condition,
and to please his father Bhishma
vows never to marry, so that he will have
no heirs to compete with Satyavati’s.
Bhishma upholds his promise until his
death, but Shantanu’s willingness to put
aside the rightful heir has terrible consequences.
When Satyavati’s son Vichitravirya
dies childless, she calls on her
elder son Vyasa to sire children by his
wives. From this union comes Pandu
and Dhrtarashtra. The struggle for royal
power by their respective sons culminates
in the Mahabharata war, in which
the family is destroyed.
Shantiniketan
(“abode of peace”) Town in the Birbhum
district of West Bengal, about ninety
miles northeast of Calcutta. It is most
famous for Vishva-Bharati University,
founded in 1921 by the Indian poet and
Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore
(1861–1941). As an educational institution,
the university was dedicated to
providing an education that would satisfy
people’s material and spiritual needs
and thus develop an integrated human
being. It did this in part by promoting
the arts and by stressing the interconnection
between nature and human
beings, both themes that were close to
Tagore’s heart.
Sharada Math
One of the four maths or sacred centers
for Hindu ascetics (often translated as
“monasteries”) traditionally believed to
have been established by the great
philosopher Shankaracharya; the others
are the Jyotir Math, Shringeri Math,
and Govardhan Math. These four sacred
centers are each associated with one of
the four geographical corners of the
Indian subcontinent; the Sharada
Math is in the western quarter, in the
city of Dwaraka in the state of Gujarat,
on the shore of the Arabian Sea.
Shankaracharya is traditionally cited as
the founder of the Dashanami Sanyasis,
the most prestigious Hindu ascetic
order. The Dashanami (“ten names”)
ascetics are devotees (bhakta) of the god
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