History of Dance Lord

History:-

A statue of Shiva Nataraja gifted by India at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland

One of the earliest known Nataraja artworks has been found

 in the archaeological site at Asanapat village in Odisha, 

which includes an inscription, and is dated to about the 6th 

century CE. The Asanapat inscription also mentions a Shiva 

temple in the Saivacaryas kingdom. Literary evidences 

shows that the bronze representation of Shiva's ananda-

tandava appeared first in the Pallava period between 7th 

century and mid-9th centuries CE.

Stone reliefs depicting the classical form of Nataraja are found in numerous cave temples of India, such as the Ellora Caves (Maharashtra), the Elephanta Caves, and the Badami Caves (Karnataka), by around the 6th-century. Archaeological discoveries have yielded a red Nataraja sandstone statue, from 9th to 10th century from Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, now held at the Gwalior Archaeological Museum. Similarly, Nataraja artwork has been found in archaeological sites in the Himalayan region such as Kashmir, albeit in with somewhat different dance pose and iconography, such as just two arms or with eight arms. In medieval era artworks and texts on dancing Shiva found in Nepal, Assam and Bengal, he is sometimes shown as dancing on his vahana (animal vehicle) Nandi, the bull; further, he is regionally known as Narteshvara. Nataraja artwork have also been discovered in Gujrat, Kerela and Andhra Pradesh.

The oldest three-dimensional stone sculptures of Nataraja were built by Chola queen Sembiyan Mahadevi. Nataraja gained special significance and became a symbol of royalty in Tamil Nadu. The dancing Shiva became a part of Chola era processions and religious festivals, a practice that continued thereafter.

The depiction was informed of cosmic or metaphysical connotations is also argued on the basis of the testimony of the hymns of Tamil saints.

The largest Nataraja statue is in Neyveli, in Tamil Nadu

In the contemporary Hindu culture of Bali in Indonesia, Siwa (Shiva) Nataraja is the god who created dance. Siwa and his dance as Nataraja was also celebrated in the art of Java Indonesia when Hinduism thrived there, while in Cambodia he was referred to as Nrittesvara.

In 2004, a 2m statue of the dancing Shiva was unveiled at CERN, the European Center for Research in Particle Physics in Geneva. The statue, symbolizing Shiva's cosmic dance of creation and destruction, was given to CERN by the Indian government to celebrate the research center's long association with India. A special plaque next to the Shiva statue explains the significance of the metaphor of Shiva's cosmic dance with quotations from Fritj of Capra:

Hundreds of years ago, Indian artists created visual images of dancing Shivas in a beautiful series of bronzes. In our time, physicists have used the most advanced technology to portray the patterns of the cosmic dance. The metaphor of the cosmic dance thus unifies ancient mythology, religious art and modern physics.

Though named "Nataraja bronzes" in Western literature, the Chola Nataraja artworks are mostly in copper, and a few are in brass, typically cast by the cire-perdue (lost wax casting) process.

Nataraja is celebrated in 108 poses of Bharatnatyam, with Sanskrit inscriptions from Natya Shastra, at the Nataraja Temple in Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu, India.