bhadrakAlI priest swap
An Ādiśaiva Brāhmaņa who served at a temple at Simhapuri mentioned to us about a Bhadrakālī temple his patriline is associated with.
On most days, she would receive worship in the Saiddhāntika fashion, being seen as the consort of Vīrabhadra, whose Tattva placement is between Prakrti and Guņa tattvas. Her liturgy is Samskrta and the praxis is Āgamika, an “Ārya” evolute ultimately rooted in Vaidika and Sāńkhya thought.
On some days, the Ādiśaiva priests will leave and another class of priests will temporarily take over the temple and offer her blood sacrifice in the sanctum sanctorum and clean it up before the Ādiśaiva Brāhmaņas take over the service.
She blesses both classes of priests and they both have experiences with her.
jagannAtha
There are examples of how Kairata tribal praxis was adopted as the ultimate religion of Śakti and how Jagannātha’s original Mūrti is expressly acknowledged in the Skāndapurāņa as being the original prerogative of Śābara tribals alone (I mean, anyone who is honest to himself and not dumb will be able to figure this out himself with one look at the Mūrti) before Jagannātha allowed it to become an object of Vaidika-Tāntrika worship for the good of all.
This is why I am comfortable with the idea that completely different ethnolinguistic groups melded their rites and lores into the melting pot of Hindudharma. Today, Jagannātha responds to two different ritual systems which evolved in parallel and both of which WORK before him.
This is an object of wonder. There is little else like this elsewhere in this world.
Hindus should be perceptive enough to appreciate this. Others should be humble enough to acknowledge this.
Skāndapurāņa’s open & positive acknowledgment of the Śābara roots of the image at Puri & the Brāhmaņa’s encounter with the Vișņu therein is an excellent example of how we did not seek to cover up origins or appropriate but genuinely discovered what we know at a completely unexpected place in an entirely unexpected form.
The idea that Vișņu scattered His presence all across the earth and one such unit of his presence made its way into a totemic image among the austroasiatic Śābaras—where it would remain undetected for what it really was, for centuries upon centuries, till a king and Brāhmaņa discovered it through divine will—is a striking tribute to the power of the Devas.
karuppu
Imagine hundreds of pieces of rudras thrown and scattered across the earth by Śiva; each then developing a cocoon/layers of husks around itself in the language and ethnic culture from each place it has been scattered at.
So, several thousand years later, when an Upāsaka says this deity of “non-IA” origin, like Karuppu, is an ectype of this Vedic deity (Rudra, through a series of intermediates); that’s not mundane/profane appropriation; that’s a spiritual discovery.
Theological significance
Connections between one IA deity and another IA or IE deity are important & theologically insightful but not as interesting or theologically meaningful as the example given above.
It is the fact that two pantheons (Ārya & drAviDa/austroasiatic) have distinct origins, that makes their connections/links more theologically meaningful. +++(5)+++
abhivyakti
My so-called novel approach was itself inspired by the last line of the first screenshot here: https://x.com/ghorangirasa/status/1894322481277931965?s=46
“shikhaNDisamAnaguNAbhivyakteH…”
It is a very small usage that made all the difference and rapidly inspired a theology of village/“Non-IA” deities.
From that point on, I began to see the existence of different pantheons positively. The fact that they were historically not of the same origins makes the connections look even more divine for me.
The reason that phrase inspired this much was because till then, I have only seen “abhivyakti” (manifestation of that which is latent/innate) only being applied to every sentient’s innate Śivatvam.
But in the commentary on the Mātaṅgapārameśvara, Bhaṭṭa-Rāmakaṇṭha uses that word to apply to the manifestation of Śikhaṇḍī-vidyeśvaratvam in a Rudra who has reached that level of maturity and becomes the new Śikhaṇḍī, the eighth and most junior of the eight Vidyeśvaras, when Ananta retires and waits for full mukti at Mahāpralaya, and Sūkṣma (No. 2) becomes the new Ananta, and so on till No. 8 (Śikhaṇḍī) becomes the new No. 7 (Śrīkaņțha), and one of innumerable Rudras becomes the new No. 8 (Śikhaṇḍī).
From that point, I began to conceive every village deity as layers of souls, where the rustic village deity is the outermost layer, with a transcendental deity or Paramaśiva Himself as the innermost layer. Different shrines of the same village deity may have different combinations of layers. But this explained why certain deities such as Karuppu and Munīśvara were given transcendental meaning by both Ādiśaiva priests (who conceived pratișțhā-vidhis for these deities) as well as Upāsakas who conceived prayogas for them.