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Shiva Nataraja: The Cosmic Dancer
http://www.indian-heritage.org/articles/sp1.html
Shiva as Nataraja is the cosmic dancer. He is the master and source of all the dance forms. He is also the source of all art forms ' dance, music, drama, etc' Shiva as Nataraja taught all the art forms to Bharata muni, .Most of the Shiva temples in south India have a separate shrine for Nataraja inside their temple premises. The temple of Chidambaram has Lord Nataraja as the main deity instead of the usual Shiva lingam.
Shiva is considered to have started all the one hundred and eight tandavas. These are presented as one hundred and eight Karanas. These are present in some of the temples including the Brihadeeswara temple of Tanjore and the gopurams of the Nataraja temple of Chidambaram. In the temple cars, the most common and most popular presentations are the Ananda Tandava, Rudra Tandava, Urdhava Tandava and Chatura Tandava
Apart from the universal representation of Shiva in the abstract form of the Lingam, there are two more depictions of Shiva in the human form- One - Nataraja, as described above and two as Dakshinamoorthi- the embodiment of Supreme knowledge.
DAkshinamoorthi is depicted as a divine sage sitting under the banyan / peepul tree, facing south (hence his name- dakshina moorthi), his fingers in the chinmudra and imparting knowledge to the four youthful rishis-Sanaka, Sanandana , Sanatkumara Santana.
After Sati had immolated herself and her body cut asunder, Shiva discarded all the feelings, emotions and thoughts and sat down facing south (considered as the direction of Yama) - the direction in which his beloved Sati had gone.
He transformed himself from a grihasta to a Sanyasin - whose only identity was His Advaitic Knowldege.
In the temples in South, it is common to have a shrine for Dakshinamoorthi in all Shiva temples, where he is not accompanied by a consort.
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