text: The Hindu god Shiva shares several features with Rudra. The theonym Śiva ('kind') originated as a euphemistic epithet for Rudra, who is similarly invoked as Aghora ('not frightful') and Abhayaṅkara ('providing safety').  Although Rudra remains the primary designation of the god, e.g., in the Pāśupata ascetic tradition, lay devotees preferred to address him as Śiva, Maheśvara ('Great Lord'), or Mahādeva ('Great God'), as in the Śivadharma literature, the Sanskrit epics, and the Purāṇas.  Those epithets come to be the primary names of the deity.
  Shri Rudram
  The president of the Ramakrishna Mission, at Chennai, in commentating on the foreword to Swami Amritananda's translation of Sri Rudram and Purushasuktam, states, 'Rudra to whom these prayers are addressed is not a sectarian deity, but the Supreme Being who is omnipresent and manifests Himself in myriad forms for the sake of the diverse spiritual aspirants'. Shri Rudram occurs in the fourth Kanda of the Taittiriya Samhita in the Yajurveda.
  It is a preeminent Vedic hymn to Shiva as the God of dissolution and it is chanted daily in Shiva temples throughout India.
  The prayer depicts the diverse aspects of the Almighty. The Shri Rudram hymn is unique in that it shows the presence of divinity throughout the entire universe. We cannot confine the qualities of the divine to those that are favourable to us. The Lord is both garden and graveyard, the slayer and the most benevolent one. The Almighty is impartial and ubiquitous.