Would you mess with this fellow? He is Shiva—Shiva the Destroyer, to you and me. In the Mahabharata (according to Priya Hemenway, author of Hindu Gods), he bears no less than 1,008 names, a different one for each of his many incarnations: the Lord of Sleep, the Lord of Songs, the Lord of Fire, the Lord of Tears, and the lord of much, much else. Along with six arms and hair that represents the flow of India’s sacred rivers, Shiva possesses a third eye from which he can send out flames of wrath to those who do him wrong.

Yet Shiva readily calls upon more earthly powers when the occasion calls for it. From a recent New Yorker piece on the illegal trade in Indian antiquities:

When, in 1986, the Indian government sued for the return of a twelfth-century bronze Shiva that had been looted from a village in Pathur, it did so on behalf of the offended god himself: Shiva was named as a plaintiff in the case. “In the south, people still don’t tell lies in Shiva’s temple,” Ashok Shekhar, a former state arts and culture official in Rajasthan, [said]. “These are very hotheaded deities.”