Rudram, anuvāka 5 — the eight names, and the pairs begin
The popular claimBhava and Rudra, Śarva and Paśupati, the blue-throated and the white-throated. Two names a clause, fifteen clauses.
From the fifth anuvāka to the ninth the Namakam runs on one form: namo …āya ca …āya ca — obeisance to this one and to that one. Two epithets per clause. The fifth has fifteen, and it opens with the names every Śaiva knows.
The names
Namo bhavāya ca rudrāya ca. — To Bhava and to Rudra. Bhava — existence, the one who is; the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa lists it among Rudra's eight names, given by Prajāpati to the newborn god who cried for a name.
Namaḥ śarvāya ca paśupataye ca. — To Śarva and to Paśupati. Śarva — the archer, from śaru, arrow; Paśupati — lord of animals, the name the oldest Śaiva sect took.
Namo nīlagrīvāya ca śitikaṇṭhāya ca. — To the blue-necked and the white-throated. Śitikaṇṭha — Sāyaṇa: white-throated, or, by another derivation, dark-throated; the pair is read as the two aspects of the same throat.
Namaḥ kapardine ca vyuptakeśāya ca. — To the one with braided hair and the one with shaven head. Kaparda — the matted coil; vyuptakeśa — hair shorn. The ascetic with jaṭā and the ascetic with none: both.
Namaḥ sahasrākṣāya ca śatadhanvane ca. — To the thousand-eyed and the hundred-bowed.
Namo giriśāya ca śipiviṣṭāya ca. — To the mountain-dweller and to Śipiviṣṭa. Śipiviṣṭa is an old and obscure epithet — in the Ṛgveda it belongs to Viṣṇu; Sāyaṇa offers "pervaded by rays", others "bald" or "of hidden form". The commentators disagree and say so.
Namo mīḍhuṣṭamāya ceṣumate ca. — To the most bountiful and the arrow-bearer.
The opposites
Namo hrasvāya ca vāmanāya ca. — To the short and the dwarf.
Namo bṛhate ca varṣīyase ca. — To the great and the greater.
Namo vṛddhāya ca saṁvṛdhvane ca. — To the old and the ever-growing.
Namo agriyāya ca prathamāya ca. — To the foremost and the first.
Nama āśave cājirāya ca. — To the swift and the quick.
Namaḥ śīghriyāya ca śībhyāya ca. — To the one in fast water and the one in rapids. Śīghriya — of swift current; śībhya — Sāyaṇa: of the rushing stream.
Nama ūrmyāya cāvasvanyāya ca. — To the one in the waves and the one in the still water.
Namaḥ srotasyāya ca dvīpyāya ca. — To the one in the current and the one on the island.
Why pairs
The pairs are the Śatarudriya's grammar of totality. To say Rudra is short and dwarf, great and greater, old and growing, first and foremost, is to say he is the whole scale between. The water pairs — fast and rapid, wave and still, current and island — place him in every state of the river. The sixth and seventh anuvākas will do the same for rank, for terrain, for weather. A listener hearing ca … ca over and over is hearing the text refuse to leave anything out.
The eight names
The Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa's story is worth having beside this section: the newborn Rudra cried, and Prajāpati gave him eight names — Rudra, Śarva, Paśupati, Ugra, Aśani, Bhava, Mahādeva, Īśāna — one at a time, each with a domain. Four of the eight — Bhava, Rudra, Śarva, Paśupati — open this anuvāka; Ugra appears in the eighth. The eight-name scheme is the Brāhmaṇa's; the Rudram is older and does not know it as a scheme, but the names are here.
What this page does not say
It does not settle śipiviṣṭa, which no one has, and it does not read the pairs as a philosophy the text did not state. It gives the fifteen clauses with both names opened, and the Brāhmaṇa's story for the four that everyone knows, so that the ca … ca a listener hears becomes thirty names they can read.
Source — Taittiriya Samhita 4.5.5 (Namakam, fifth anuvaka), Krishna Yajurveda; Sayana's bhashya on the Taittiriya; Shatapatha Brahmana 6.1.3 on the eight names of Rudra; Bhattabhaskara's commentary on the Rudram
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