Similarities Between Dhushera & Shiva | Mufti Abu Layth

Right. You know what I was looking into, though? Check this out, people. I was looking into the uh the similarities and in fact most likely what is presumably I'm just I'm going with the with the kind of uh suggestive research that I've come across that some or a god one of the popular gods or in fact sorry, let me rephrase it.

The most popular god from from Petra and the Nabataean uh kingdom is called Dushara. Now or Dushara some say. Now what I was reading into was some research suggesting that Dushara is actually Shiva from the Hindu uh belief.

It's quite fascinating when you start looking into the parallels of Cuz Dushara was this uh this kind of black stone black block. A bit similar to the Shivlingam kind of thing. I know the the fertility But so what you have from uh from Shi- Shiva a very similar that is the uh Dushara embodied.

And also symbolic around uh around the thing being snakes which also is symbolic of Shiva the the bull and the kind of uh the thing with Shiva as well in the whole but it was quite interesting I was reading into some of these. It's uh it's suggesting that along the trade route because the Nabataean empire were uh I mean they they had like a mercantile empire so they were merchants.

That they survived on being merchants. Because they were at the center of the Silk Road Silk routes, right? So, people bringing silk in from China, from India, coming that way into the Middle East. From here, you could either go on to Africa or you could go up into Europe. So, the interesting thing was that perhaps those people or maybe some of the Nabataeans that went to India to bring back the the spices and and the silk and things

like this were influenced by this particular by this particular god and they kind of reenacted the whole thing. And there is also a festival, you see, uh that is the Dussehra in in Hindu kind of uh practices. And although that is linked with, I believe, Durga and things like this, but it still is ultimately associated with Shiva, as well.

So, what the researcher had said was that maybe some of the most likely some of these Nabataeans that were frequenting India may have uh coincided with the Dussehra festival, which lasts for many days, and then replicated that back home in a similar way and ended up kind of associating the name not just with the place, but then with the god.

So, Dussehra being Shiva. I just found that very fascinating. It's something I'm still reading into. Um