Pinaka (Hinduism)
The bow of lord Shiva
The Pinaka (Sanskrit: पिनाक, pināka) is the celestial bow of the Hindu deity, Shiva, which was crafted by Vishwakarma. In popular legend, he is believed to have employed this bow in his avatar as Tripurantaka to annihilate the three cities of Mayasura, known as Tripura. The weapon is the origin of one of Shiva's epithets, Pinākapāṇi, literally meaning, 'The Wielder of The Pināka'. According to Valmiki Ramayana, Lord Shiva gifted the Pinaka bow to Devatas after the destruction of Daksha's Yajna. Later the Devatas passed the Pinaka bow to the King Devarata Janaka of Mithila Kingdom for its safe-keeping. It was kept safe till the regime of the King Shreedhwaja Janaka.
Literature
The first mention of the pinaka is In the Taittirīya and Vājasneyi Samhitas of the Krishna and Shukla Yajurveda respectively. Here, Rudra is called as Pinākahasta (one who has the Pināka bow in his hands) and Pinākavāsa (The one who wears the Pināka bow as an ornament).
In the Shiva Purana, Shiva employed the Pinaka in his duel against Ganesha, who had been appointed to stand guard while his mother Parvati bathed.
In the Harivamsa Purana, when the Prajapati Daksha performed a yajna for the gods, his ceremony was obstructed by Shiva and a human incarnation of Nandi, who wielded the Pinaka.
“Pinaka (Hinduism)” enters the record as the bow of lord Shiva. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Pinaka, Hinduism and lord can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pinaka (Hinduism)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.