Damaru
The hand drum of Shiva as Nataraja, lord of the dance. Its beat is the first sound of creation and the rhythm of time.
Meaning
It is a small drum, shaped like an hourglass, with a skin stretched over each open end. Rao describes the bead tied to a string at its waist: when the drum is held in the middle and shaken, the bead strikes each skin in turn. He finds it in the hands of Shiva and of his forms such as Bhairava. In the Nataraja image Shiva dances inside a ring of flames, holding the drum in a raised right hand and fire in a left hand. The Cleveland Museum of Art reads the drum as the relentless beat of time moving forward, in a cycle in which the world is created, maintained and destroyed, then created again.
Origin and history
The drum’s place in the dance is explained in Tamil texts. In The Dance of Siva (1918), Ananda Coomaraswamy quotes the Unmai Vilakkam, verse 36: “Creation arises from the drum: protection proceeds from the hand of hope: from fire proceeds destruction”.
Where you’ll see it
Above all in bronzes of Shiva Nataraja from Tamil Nadu, such as the Cleveland Museum of Art’s, made in the Chola period in the 11th century. For the Himalayan Academy, Nataraja’s dance, carved in stone or cast in bronze, is the ananda tandava, which “dances the cosmos into and out of existence”.
In other traditions
The Monier-Williams dictionary records the damaru as a drum used by Buddhist mendicant monks, as well as by Shiva, to accompany chanting.
See also
Sri Yantra, Trishula, Shankha, Sudarshana Chakra, Padma, Kalasha.
Sources
- Nataraja, Shiva as the Lord of Dance (1930.331), Cleveland Museum of Art, Description
- Sacred Symbols, Himalayan Academy
- Elements of Hindu Iconography, Vol. I, Part I, T. A. Gopinatha Rao, 1914, Law Printing House, Madras (Internet Archive, Cornell University Library copy), Introduction: definition and description of terms
- The Dance of Siva: Fourteen Indian Essays, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, 1918, Sunwise Turn, New York (Internet Archive), “The Dance of Siva”
- Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary (1899): ḍamaru, Monier Monier-Williams, p. 430, Cologne Digital Sanskrit Dictionaries, University of Cologne
Last reviewed September 24, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research