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Contents

Illustrations vii Preface ix Acknowledgments xiii Abbreviations xv
INTRODUCTION
Locating the Tradition 3
CHAPTER ONE
Ritual and Human Powers 22
CHAPTER TWO
Oscillation in the Ritual Universe 42
CHAPTER THREE
Becoming a Siva 83
CHAPTER FOUR
Summoning the Lord 112
CHAPTER FIVE
Relations of Worship 137 CONCLUSION 163
Notes 165 Glossary 181 Selected Bibliography 189 Index 195

Illustrations

FIGURES

1. Emission and reabsorption of the tattvas 43 2. Imposition of mantras onto the hand 49 3. Locations of domains 54 4. Subtle anatomy and domains 56 5. Diagrams for establishing pots 65 6. Siva’s entourages 67 7. Transfer of five kalas to the pasasutra 97 8. Siva’s supports 122 9. Divine throne and divine body 127
2. Locations of the twelve kalas 130 11. ThemeetingofworshiperandSiva 135

PLATES

{following page 74)

1. Nataraja (Rajaraja Museum, Thanjavur)
2. Imposition of brahmamantras onto the hands
3. Imposition of brahmamantras onto the worshiper
4. Ejection of the attributes
5. Imposition of brahmamantras onto the linga
6. Ascending pronunciation and invocation

Preface

IN THIS ESSAY, I attempt to take seriously a simple postulate that seems to me fundamental to the study of ritual: that those who compose and perform the ritual are conscious and purposeful agents actively engaged in a world they themselves constitute, in large measure, through their practices of knowing and acting.

The “world” in which Śaiva ritual takes place is not the familiar world of Western science or “common sense” that modern Westerners often believe common to all people. Nor does it occur in some sociologically defined uni verse of a particular community or society, as social anthropology might portray. Rather, Śaiva liturgy is performed in a world that is ontologically organized and constituted by Śaiva siddhanta: a world that oscillates, that is permeated by the presence of Siva, in which humans live in a condition of bondage, and where the highest aim of the human soul is to attain liberation from its fetters. Within that world, the Śaiva worshiper acts with and upon forces, objects, and categories that are defined for him by Śaiva ontology, and his goals in practicing ritual are based on the possibilities and purposes of human attainment depicted in Śaiva soteriology.

My aim in this study is to explicate, insofar as I am able, both the world envisioned in Śaiva siddhanta and the way in which daily worship reflects and acts within that world. This world is assuredly not the one we think we live in, but nevertheless it is a world we can enter, partially and temporarily, through a mental “reenactment,” as R. G. Collingwood put it. The Śaivas themselves would call it bhavana, “imaginative re-creation.” For the Śaivas, as for Collingwood, this reconstructive praxis is primarily intellec tual and rational, rather than simply a matter of empathy. By rethinking ourselves the convictions and intentions a well-versed Śaiva ritualist of the twelfth century would have brought to his daily practice, we can mentally place ourselves in his temple and reenact his worship of Siva.

To enter that world, it will be necessary to attend to two different modes of discourse in Śaiva literature: the propositional discourse of philosophical knowledge (jMna) and the practical discourse of ritual action (kriya). These are, in the Śaiva view, integral and necessary to one another. According to the Śaiva siddhanta tradition, a Śaiva agama should have four sections or “feet” (padas) to be a complete, self-standing treatise. One section, the jhanapada, describes how the world is; it sets forth, in metaphysical and theological terms, the fundamental order of the universe as envisioned by Śaiva siddhanta. A second section, the kriyapada, prescribes how one should conduct oneself in that world, utilizing the most powerful and effica-χ · Preface

cious forms of action. (The other two sections, dealing with yogic discipli nary practices [yogapada] and proper day-to-day conduct [carydpada], are also necessary but clearly subordinate in importance to the first two.) And just as jnanapada and kriyapada are equally necessary to a complete agama, Śaiva authors insist that an aspirant who wishes to advance within the world of Siva must exert himself both to know that world and to act properly and effectively within it.

Unfortunately, the applicability of this principle to my own study was not always so apparent to me. When I first began to study the Śaiva agamas, I was like a commentator whom Ramakantha criticizes. In his own commentary on the Matangaparame&varagama, Ramakantha contrasts himself with this other, unnamed commentator of the same text who ended his explication after the jnanapada.

A certain commentator who knew only philosophy completed an extensive exam ination of the knowledge section (Jnanapada), and altogether disregarded the three practical sections concerning ritual action, yoga, and proper conduct. Whereas I, honoring the Lord Siva, will here compose a lucid exposition of those sections as well, because the types of action prescribed here conform (anuga) completely with the meanings of the philosophical discourse.

He was engaged only by philosophy; I was concerned solely with ritual. As a historian interested in temple ritual and its relation to medieval Indian po litical formations, I wished to read only those practical portions of the agamas dealing with kriya, and not waste time with what I considered spec ulative metaphysics. I believed I would be able to discern the significance of medieval Śaiva ritual texts directly by locating them in the context of the social and political structures of medieval South India. I was certainly mis taken in this presumption.

To be fair to myself, the commentator that Ramakanfha criticized and I are not the only ones ever to have pursued such shaky, one-legged inquiries. In fact, the large majority of scholarly studies dealing with Indian rituals make no recourse to the philosophical foundations on which the rituals are based. They characteristically present Indian rituals as instances of highly elaborate routinized behavior either divorced from any formative consciousness or based on severely flawed apprehensions of the world. On the other side, it is only the rare study of an Indian philosophical school that makes any ex tended reference to such practical corollaries as modes of proper conduct or ritual activity. Scholars most often portray Hindu theology as the exercise of great intellectual ingenuity with little or no concern for practical conse quence. So in focusing my attention on only one limb of the body of thought and action I wished to study, I was simply following the habitude of my scholarly field.

Preface · xi

As I commenced reading the account of daily worship in Kamikagama, however, I soon realized that I was missing something. At first I saw it as a problem of terminology or technical language. What were the five kalas, or the twelve kalas, or the thirty-eight kalas, to which the text kept refer

ring? Who were the VidyeSvaras, the Man<Jale§varas, and numerous other su perhuman characters who periodically showed up in the ritual terrain? What did it mean for the worshiper to “make his hand into Siva” (SivJkarana)? Why should a bubhuksu and a mumuksu do things in reverse order? My Sanskrit dictionaries were of little or no avail in tracking down the significance of these, and many other, mystifying terms. With timely help from more expe

rienced scholars in South India, however, I learned that many of the terms I could not comprehend in the kriydpada were discussed in the jMnapada, and so I began reading philosophical digests and commentaries in addition to my ritual texts. Soon I was able to ferret out the meanings of most of the bothersome terms and to gain a preliminary idea of what was going on in the ritual.

Yet clearing up perplexing terminology was only a first step. It slowly dawned on me that the shared terminology of the two sections was not fortu itous. As the Śaivas would put it, the fetter that was causing my ignorance gradually “ripened,” and its grip upon me loosened, enabling me finally to see the principle of “conformity” (anuga) or connectedness of jfiana and kriya to which Ramakantha so clearly refers. The two sections were meant to be mutually explanatory; with good reason were they called two feet of the same entity. Belatedly I started to follow a more conscious two-footed ap proach in my own reading and research, stepping back and forth between ritual texts and philosophical texts, and found that each helped clarify and explicate the other. The rituals served to illuminate and objectify Śaiva philosophical categories and topics, while philosophy helped me to under stand the purposes and strategies of Śaiva ritual.

More than that, I began to see that the Śaiva texts envision a world—the world, they would say—in which the capacities of humans to know about that world and to act within it are two interrelated modalities of a unitary power of consciousness. According to Śaiva siddhanta, every animate being, beginning with Siva, has a soul, whose principal characteristic is “consciousness” (cit). Consciousness, in turn, manifests itself through two primary powers: the power to know (Jnanasakti) and the power to act (kriyasakti). Yet these two powers are not fundamentally distinct. Siva’s power, AghoraSiva tells us, is in essence a single power. However, because of an “apparent” distinction (upddhi) between the spheres of knowing and practical activity, this power seems to take on forms suitable to its tasks in each domain (TPV 3). Similarly, what we humans experience as two sepa rate capacities, to know and to act, is, in the highest sense, the integral

xii · Preface

power of consciousness as it directs itself toward the seemingly distinct do mains of the knowable and the doable. From the highest point of view, the powers of consciousness are one and the domains in which the powers act are one; from our more limited human perspective, the unitary power ap pears divided and the single field for its exercise seems differentiated. The conformity we observe now between the philosophical and ritual portions of

the Śaiva texts results, in the Śaiva view, from this fundamental integrity. The metaphysical unity of knowledge and action in Śaiva siddhanta pro vides the underlying theme and the end point of this study. I will follow an oscillating course throughout, back and forth between accounts of the philosophically constructed world of Śaiva jfiana and explication of Śaiva kriyd within that world, in an attempt to demonstrate and illustrate the inte gral relationship between these two modes of Śaiva religious consciousness. At the outset I can only point to the complex intertwining of knowing and acting in Śaiva siddhanta; in the course of the discussion to follow, it will take on a more definite shape and texture. In the end I hope to indicate that the “distinction” between philosophical knowledge and ritual action, while useful and necessary as a starting point for the study of Śaiva worship, be comes increasingly indistinct as we delve into it, much as the Śaiva philoso phers themselves speak of the division between knowing and acting as only an “apparent” dichotomy of a fundamentally unified human capacity of consciousness.

Acknowledgments

AT THE COMMENCEMENT of daily worship, a Śaiva ritualist constructs a new “body of mantras” by superimposing onto himself a host of powers greater than his own. He is then able to make use of that augmented body in performing all subsequent acts of devotion. Writing this book has not ex actly been an act of puja, but I too have benefited from and relied on the support and assistance of many powers beyond my own in the course of this study. I would like to invoke each here with the appropriate namaskara.

My initial research in India, the bija of all that follows, was facilitated through the Kuppuswami Sastri Research Institute in Madras, the Sarasvati Mahal Library in Thanjavur, and the Institut Frangais d’Indologie in Pon dicl^ry. I was very fortunate to read Śaiva ritual texts with Dr. S. S. Janaki, Director of the Kuppuswami Sastri Research Institute, and philosophical texts with T. R. Damodaran, formerly with the Sarasvati Mahal Library. Both helped me in myriad ways during my stay in India, and I thank them for their friendship. I wish also to thank Sn K. A. Sabharatna Sivacarya of Madras, whose command of agama-based Śaiva ritual, both practical and textual, is of a kind rarely encountered among Śaiva priests nowadays. His demonstrations and explications helped immensely in making the mil lenium-old agama texts come alive for me. He was also kind enough to let me photograph his enactment of rites of daily worship.

Three scholars associated with the Institut Frangais d’Indologie deserve special mention: N. R. Bhatt, Ηέΐέηε Brunner, and Bruno Dagens. Pandit Bhatt generously went over my early translations of the Kamikagama, pa tiently answering my endless questions, and Dr. Brunner sent me a valuable set of comments and suggestions on a Kriyakranuidyotika translation. Pro fessor Dagens perceptively discussed the project in its early stages and later on made detailed suggestions on a written draft. More than this personal assistance, however, their careful and painstaking work in the field of saivdgama studies over the past twenty-five years, collecting, editing, and translating, provides the foundation on which any future research rests. It would not be possible for me to cite all the places in this study where I have relied on their insights and authority.

At the University of Chicago, where the project germinated as a disserta tion, I benefited greatly from day-to-day contact with a whole community of South Asian scholars. In particular, I would like to thank the members of my committee, A. K. Ramanujan and Bernard Cohn, for their support

throughout. Ronald Inden, my adviser, has been especially important at every stage of this manuscript. He initially pointed me toward the study of

xiv * Acknowledgments

$aiva siddhanta texts, and through numerous conversations he suggested new paths to explore in the material when I saw none. It is his combination of critical rigor and breadth of interest that I have sought, albeit imperfecdy, to emulate in my study.

The Department of Religious Studies at Yale University, where the proj ect made that difficult metamorphosis from dissertation to book, has pro vided a supportive and stimulating environment for research.

Truly the mulamantra at the root of any research project in these times is funding. Support for research in India was provided by the U.S. Department of Education through a Fulbright-Hays fellowship. The USEF-I officers ad ministering the grant in Delhi and Madras were always helpful to me. For writing up the dissertation, I enjoyed the support of the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation and the Committee on Southern Asian Studies, University of Chicago. Final preparations have been assisted through the grace of an A. Whitney Griswold Faculty Research Grant, the Frederick W. Hilles Fund, and the Morse Fellowship in the Humanities at Yale University.

Hank Heifetz transmitted some esoteric WordPerfect mantras to me at a crucial moment. Charles Bryan, a graphics student at the Yale School of Art, transformed several of my initial drawings into finished form. Several other persons read earlier versions of this study and helped remove many of its lingering fetters: Charles Collins, Ginni Ishimatsu, Ralph Strohl, Cyn thia Talbot, and two anonymous readers at Princeton University Press. Finally, I want to thank Rita McCleary, whose careful editing and countless suggestions are responsible for much of whatever clarity exists in this work. Om ham sarvebhyo namah.

Abbreviations

A Ajit gama

Ac Acinty gama

PV Ālayapravesavidhi of Samakantha

BhK Bhogak rik of Sadyojyoti

IP Īi nasivagurudevapaddhati of Īsānasiva JNP J tinirnayap rvakalayapravesavidhi of R makantha K K mik gama, p rvabhaga

K l K lottar gama (S rdhatrisati K l )

K l V vrtti of R makantha on K lottaragama K r K rart gama, purvabhaga

Kir Kiran gama

KKD Kriy kramadyotik of Aghorasiva

KKDP prabh of Nirmalamani on Kriyakramadyotika LPur Lingapur na

ML Mudr laksana

MM Mayamata

MP Matangap ramesvar gama

MP V vrtti of R makantha on Matangaparamesvaragama Mr Mrgendr gama

MrĀV vrtti of N r yanakantha on Mrgendragama Mr VD d pik of Aghorasiva on Mrgendr gamavrtti MV Mahotsavavidhi, a portion of Aghorasiva’s KKD PA Pauskaragama

R Raurav gama

SAC Sivarcan candrik of Appayad ksita

S SS Sakalagamas rasamgraha

SDS Sarvadarsanasamgraha of Madhava

SP Somasambhupaddhati of Somasambhu SPbh Śaivaparibh s of Sivagrayogin

SPM Saiv gamaparibhāsāmanjari of Vedajnana SPur Sivapurana, Vayaviyasamhita

Sataratnasamgraha of Umapati

SS Siddhantasaravali of Trilocanasiva

SSPbh $aivasiddhantaparibha$a of Suryabhatta SSV vyakhya of Anantagambhu on Siddhantasaravali SupA Suprabhedagama

SvaA Svayambhuvagama

SvaT Svacchandatantra

xvi • Abbreviations

TP Tattvaprakāsa of Bhojadeva

TPD dipik of Sr kum ra on Tattvaprakāsa TPV vrtti of Aghorasiva on Tattvaprakāsa TS Tattvasamgraha of Sadyojyoti TST t k of Aghorasiva on Tattvasamgraha TTN Tattvatrayanirnaya of Sadyojyoti TTNV vrtti of Aghorasiva on Tattvatrayanirnaya UKA K mik gama, uttarabh ga

V V r gama

VS V tulasuddh gama

Ritual in an Oscillating Universe

INTRODUCTION

Locating the Tradition

THIS IS a study of the inner world of the Hindu temple: the world, that is, constructed and acted upon by the priests who perform the liturgical rounds that animate and maintain a temple as a living place of worship. To compre hend this world, we will reenact the central ritual of temple Hinduism, seek ing as we do to reconstruct as well the metaphysical setting within which this ritual makes sense and from which it derives its efficacy for those who perform it.

“Daily worship” (p&jd, nityapuja) is the ubiquitous Hindu ritual form by which devotees of a divinity regularly offer tokens of their respect and ado ration to that deity embodied in an image or icon. It is the most common and recurrent ritual action of Hindu temples, and in many respects it is paradig matic for the entire system of temple ritual as it developed in medieval India. As a general ritual pattern, pUja has myriad variations. Each Hindu order articulates its own version of piija, suitable for the particular god or goddess to whom it is directed and adapted to its own particular theological convictions.1

Here I will focus on the complex formulation of daily worship articulated by the Śaiva siddhanta school during the early medieval period, and re corded in a corpus of Śaiva agama and paddhati texts compiled in roughly the eighth through twelfth centuries.2 The Śaiva siddhanta texts offer with out a doubt one of the most complete, detailed, and interesting descriptions of medieval Hindu liturgical practice, and one that is to some extent still authoritative today in South Indian temples.

More specifically, I will draw principally on two fundamental texts of this tradition: the Kamikagama, which provides a full discussion of public tem ple worship, and AghoraSiva’s Knyakramadyotika, a twelfth-century pad dhati that gives the most influential Śaiva siddhanta account of private wor ship.3 Concentrating on the ritual prescriptions (yidhi) for daily worship contained in these two texts will enable us to comprehend much of the met aphysical world of Śaiva siddhanta, for Śaiva puja acts as a virtual precis of Śaiva siddhanta theology, a daily catechism in action for worshipers who undertake it with diligence and mindfulness.

Before we enter the inner world of the medieval Śaiva masters and begin this imaginative reenactment of nityapuja, however, it will be useful to lo cate the Śaiva siddhanta order outwardly, as a historical religious commu nity that defined itself and formulated its theological and ritual system in a

larger cosmopolitical setting. Śaiva siddhanta is nowadays a significant4 • Introduction

school of Hindu philosophy and religious practice prevalent only in the South Indian state of Tamilnad. However, in the early medieval period with which we will be primarily concerned, Śaiva siddhanta was a school of Pan Indian scope enjoying close ties with the political order and often exercising decisive control over the principal religious and social institutions of the time. Let us begin not with the Śaiva priests and adepts themselves, but with one of the great patrons of medieval Saivism, the Cola king Rajaraja I.

RAJARAJA’S GREAT TEMPLE

In 985 C.E., when RajarSja I became king, the Cola kingdom was a modest one. Under Rajaraja’s great-grandfather ParaAtaka I, it had expanded rapidly to include much of South India. But in 953 the Rastrakuta king Krsna ΙΠ marched from the north against the upstart Colas and defeated them deci

sively at the battle of Takkolam. Thirty-two years of retreat, dynastic confu sion, and gradual rebuilding followed for the Cola royalty. By the time of Rajaraja’s consecration, the Colas had reconsolidated their sovereignty in the Kaveri River basin of Tamilnad and had acquired some territories be yond their traditional regional center.4

Once he became king, Rajaraja began a series of military campaigns. As he explained in his inscriptions, he became convinced, “in his life of blos soming strength,” that “the great goddess Earth, as well as the goddess of Fortune, had become his wife.” Because of this conviction, he “graciously” conquered kings in every direction, extending his sovereignty until he was “so resplendent that he was worshiped everywhere.“5 These campaigns went on for nearly twenty years, until almost all of India south of the Tun

gabhadra, as well as parts of Sri Lanka and the Maldive Islands, owed hom age to the Cola king. In his own terms, he accomplished a “conquest of the quarters” (digvijaya) and made all kings into his tributaries; he then returned to dwell in his own city, Thanjavur.

In 1003, the nineteenth year of his reign and near the completion of these military campaigns, Rajaraja began construction of an imperial temple in the capital. By the time of its consecration six or so years later, the RajarajeSvara stood as the most massive temple in India: a granite tower of fourteen stories 190 feet high, with a base 96 feet square, set in a rectangu

lar courtyard 500 feet by 250 feet. The primary icon of the temple was a colossal Siva-linga, probably the largest such linga in existence. The octago nal dome at the top of the tower, directly above the central linga, was com posed of a single huge stone, weighing about eighty tons, that according to tradition was conveyed to the top by means of a ramp four miles long. The temple was sometimes called the “Dak§inameru,” or World-Mountain of the South, and indeed it must have towered above the Cola landscape like a world-mountain.6

The purpose of this monumental structure was to provide a home for the

Locating the Tradition - S

divinity that Rajaraja and his retinue considered the preeminent overlord of the cosmos, so that the god would come to receive the homage and offerings of devotion presented by the king, his family, and his kingdom. The god was Siva, referred to in the inscriptions variously as RajarajeSvara (“Lord of Rajaraja”), AiJavallan (“Master of Dance”), and Dak^inameravitaAkar (“Lord of the Southern World-Mountain”). Siva typically dwells upon Mount Kai lasa, the Uttarameru or Northern World-Mountain. It is a measure of the ambition embodied in this imperial act that Rajaraja could portray himself as having offered Siva a new home in the south, equal to Siva’s Himalayan abode.

To serve Siva and the other divine inhabitants of the temple, Rajaraja and his royal entourage made extensive donations and endowments, many of which are recorded on the stone walls of the temple.7 Rajaraja himself pre sented gold articles weighing almost five hundred pounds troy weight, silver

objects of more than six hundred pounds troy, and myriad jewels. The king’s elder sister Kundavai, the second most generous donor, gave about a hundred pounds of gold and almost two hundred pounds of silver and jew els. Rajaraja also gave land, making over the royal share of produce from numerous villages throughout his dominion and as far afield as Sri Lanka. These endowments yielded an annual income of roughly a quarter million bushels of rice paddy. To supply ghee for cooking and for burning oil lamps, livestock was donated to the temple. One inscription details 2,832 cows, 1,644 ewes, and 30 she-buffalos that were assigned to 366 cowherds, who were in turn required to supply ghee to the temple at the rate of one ulakku (roughly half a pint) per day for every 48 cows or 96 ewes. (An ulakku of ghee per day will keep a “perpetual lamp” burning continuously.) Arrangements were also made for the regular supply of such cooking ingre dients and condiments as fruit, pulse, pepper, tamarind, mustard, cumin, sugar, curds, plantains, salt, greens, areca nut, and betel leaves. All of these were necessary for the regular offerings of worship on a suitably grand scale, and for the even grander special offerings made during the several “great festivals” held annually.8

A religious institution on such a scale of course required personnel as well as endowments. As the temple inscriptions record it, the king arranged for other temples throughout the realm to supply dancers, some four hun dred in all, to entertain Siva. Forty-eight musicians along with two drum mers were assigned to the regular recitation of the Tevaram hymns com posed by the Tamil Śaiva saints. The assemblies of brahman settlements (brahmadeyas) were required to furnish young students to act as temple ser vants and accountants. Other villages were called upon to send people for carrying out such diverse services at the temple as holding the parasol (eleven persons), lighting lamps (eight persons), and sprinkling water on the deities (four persons); also required were potters, washermen, barbers, as trologers, tailors, jewel-stitchers, braziers, carpenters, and goldsmiths.

6 • Introduction

Priests (acaryas) were brought in from all parts of the subcontinent to execute the liturgical program. One inscription details the provisions made for them: each year roughly forty-five hundred bushels of paddy were to be supplied for the head priest Sarvasivapandita, his worthy students, and his stu dents’ students, who were natives of AryadeSa (North India), MadhyadeSa (the Deccan), and GaudadeSa (Bengal).

While Rajaraja’s imperial temple is one of the most impressive and best documented medieval religious structures of South Asia, it is by no means unique. Throughout the subcontinent during the half millennium between 700 and 1200 C.E., and longer in the south, Hindu kings sought to outdo one another in the scale and lavishness of the temples they constructed. Ca lukyas, Pallavas, Rastrakutas, Pratiharas, Colas, Kalacuiis, Candellas—a number of Hindu dynasties centered in various parts of the subcontinent staked claims to imperial status at some point during the early medieval period, and each sought to solidify and display its position through the con struction of appropriately commanding stone monuments.

Even Rajaraja’s son and successor, Rajendra I (1012-1044), performed a second digvijaya, extending still further the domain owing homage to the Cola crown, and then returned to construct thirty-five miles from Thanjavur a wholly new capital city, named Gangaikondacolapuram (“the city of the Cola king who took the Ganges”). In the midst of the new capital Rajendra built yet another imperial-scale Śaiva temple, to rival in its authoritative presence the edifice of his father.

TEMPLE HINDUISM

The ideological setting for Rajaraja’s and Rajendra’s building programs was a particular historical formation I will here simply call “temple Hinduism,” which became the dominant religious and political order of South Asia in the seventh and eighth centuries, and which remained so for five hundred years.9 Temple Hinduism consisted of a number of distinct schools of thought that nevertheless largely shared both a body of ideas about how the cosmos was organized and a set of practices that enabled followers to act most efficaciously in that cosmos. These practices not only sought to bring the agent personally into relation with God and to transform his or her con dition, but they also collectively engendered the relations of community, authority, and hierarchy within human society. Though it drew upon earlier Indian formations such as the Vedic sacrificial system, temple Hinduism clearly distinguished itself from Vedism in several fundamental respects.

Temple Hinduism directs itself primarily toward two gods, Visnu and Siva. Each is viewed by his votaries as the highest overlord of the cosmos, the transcendent and encompassing divinity. The supreme character of the di vinity is repeatedly expressed in appellations such as Purusa (“cosmic Per son”), paramesvara (“the highest Lord”), and visvesvara (“Lord of every-

Locating the Tradition · 7

thing”)· Yet, transcendent as they are believed to be, these gods are also fully immanent, pervasive throughout the cosmos, and capable of manifest ing themselves visibly in the world through incarnation (avatara), emana tion (vyiiha), or embodiment (murti) in order to enter into direct relations with other divinities and lesser beings such as humans. Schools might differ from one another as to which divinity is supreme, but they share the theo logical premise that, to be supreme, God must be both transcendent and immanent.

The other divinities who inhabit the universe recognize the superiority of Vi§nu and Siva. Narratives in the purdnas, cosmogonic texts of temple Hindu ism, often recount the events by which lesser gods such as Indra and Agni, who were paramount in the Vedas, have been brought to this recognition. Likewise, Śaiva purdnas also feature accounts where Siva’s main contem porary competitors for supremacy, Visnu and Brahman, assent to Siva’s pre

eminence. Accordingly, subordinate deities appear most often as acolytes and devotees, and occasionally as aspects, of the highest god. Relations between the high gods and humans are, likewise and even more so, asymmetrical and hierarchical, not reciprocal as in the Vedas. The proper attitude for a person to take toward Vi§nu or Siva is that of bhakti: recognition of the god’s superiority, devoted attentiveness, and desire to participate in his exalted domain. The god is in no way compelled by human devotion, nor by any ritual action humans may undertake (as the Vedic exe getes claimed of sacrificial ritual), but he may freely choose to grant favor (prasada) or grace (anugraha) to those humans who have properly recog nized and served him.

Such acts of divine generosity of course have profound transformative consequences for their recipients. They bring one worldly benefits (bhoga), but much more important within this system of values, they lead one toward liberation (moksa), the highest state to which a human may aspire. (The Vedas, by contrast, may enable one to obtain worldly ends but do not envis

age the superior goal of moksa, charge the advocates of temple Hinduism.) Liberation is conceptualized in various ways by the different schools of Hindu thought. Moksa always involves leaving behind the sufferings and fetters that constitute our normal worldly existence, but it may lead one, according to which school one follows, to a merging with the godhead, to permanent service at the feet of the Lord, to autonomous and parallel divin ity, or to some other final and ultimate state. The character of liberation was one of the major points of contention among the theological schools that developed during this period.

The internal attitude of bhakti is most visibly externalized in temple Hin duism through ritual action, of which pujd is the model. In this sense, piijd replaces the Vedic sacrifice (yajna) as the paradigmatic ritual act of Indian religiosity during this period. In puja, a worshiper invokes or invites the deity into some material form, most often an image or icon visually and

8 • Introduction

symbolically representing the deity, and presents to him both material offer ings such as food and clothing and devoted services such as the recitation of his praises, music, dance, and songs. Texts classify all these material and performatoiy presentations to the deity as “services” (upacara). Vi§nu and Siva, as gods simultaneously transcendent and immanent, enter into a vari ety of both anthropomorphic and aniconic objects so that their devotees may see them and make their offerings of homage.

In many respects, Hindu puja carries on the central ritual concerns of Vedic yajna. Both center on acts whereby humans offer food to the gods. Both require that the human participants attain a personal state of purity or godliness consonant with the solemnity of the ritual action, and both pro vide means through which divinities are summoned to be present at the rit

ual terrain. Once invoked, the divinities are treated with all the respect due them and presented with a repast of the finest order. In most cases the re mainders of the meal are subsequently distributed among the community of human worshipers in a prescribed hierarchical order. Both, accordingly, in volve an enactment of proper relations between humans and deities, as these are understood by each, and may articulate as well status relationships within the human community.

However, several fundamental features clearly distinguish puja from the Vedic form of worship. Vedic deities when invoked remain invisible. In puja deities are summoned to inhabit material embodiments and so make their presence evident even to humans of limited vision. Sacrificial offerings cannot be presented directly to the divinities; another deity, the fire god Agni, is required to act as intermediary, conveying the offerings to the other gods. Offerings of puja, by contrast, may be made directly to the highest god in the central image and to other subsidiary deities also present in their own individual embodiments. And as temple Hinduism seeks to render rela

tions between humans and divinities more visible and direct, it also attempts to instantiate them more permanently. While Vedic public sacrifices are per formed in temporary ritual settings constructed for the occasion, public puja (pararthapuja) takes place in a durable structure, built to last out of stone or brick and elegantly decorated by sculptors and painters. Such a temple serves as an enduring home for the divine image and for the god himself who dwells within it.

During the early medieval period, the temple became the dominant reli gious institution of South Asia. Myriad temples of every scale were con structed and dedicated not only to the two primary divinities but also to the many lesser divinities who (at least in the view of Vaisnavas and Śaivas) occu pied lower rungs in the hierarchy of lordship. As the permanent residence of the deity in a particular community, the temple became much more than simply the site of puja offerings. It acted as host to a wide assortment of both personal and communal activities, ritual and otherwise. It provided the stage upon which performing and literary arts developed. As employer,

Locating the Tradition * 9

landholder, and moneylender, it was often the major economic institution of the community. It occupied the social center of the community, and it was a primary arena in which relationships of authority and rank were consti tuted, contested, and displayed.10

To sponsor a temple was a central act of devotion. Because it made pos sible all subsequent offerings, it was considered a foundational and most efficacious ritual action. As offering public sacrifices had been in an earlier time, so during this period an essential act of rule was to sponsor and endow temples within one’s dominion. This was true not just for independent and imperial kings, but also for subordinate regional chieftains and for local headmen or assemblies who exercised authority within their smaller and en compassed domains. Of course, at different levels of organization the re sources available would also differ. Architectural texts gave directions for the construction of temples ranging from modest single-story shrines to vast towers of twelve or more stories, and liturgical texts like Kamikagama prescribed nine different gradations of puja offerings, ranging from “low est of low” to “highest of high,” that a temple should follow “according to its capacity.” The size and wealth of a temple, accordingly, often served as the visible index not only of the degree of religious aspiration of its build ers, but also of the scale of polity responsible for its construction and maintenance.

Building a temple, then, became a highly visible political act as well as one of devotion. For instance, only a “king of kings” whose kingdom in cluded within it smaller, subordinated kingdoms, such as Rajaraja’s did, was considered qualified to construct a “preeminent temple” (mukhyapra sada), which was said to include within itself the various types of smaller temples.11 Rajaraja’s imperial temple, in this light, was not simply a matter of a warrior turning his attention from military to religious matters in his dotage. He intended it rather as the completion of his “conquest of the quar ters,” a highly visible proclamation and embodiment of his political achievement, which at the same time located this earthly accomplishment in relation to diva’s sovereignty over the entire universe. King over other kings, subject to no other human lord, Rajaraja yet proclaims his fealty to Siva.

THE AGAMAS

A new genre of liturgical texts became prominent during the early medieval period, explicitly non-Vedic in origin and directed primarily toward the temple cults of Visnu and Siva. This genre comprises the Vaispava samhitas, the Śaiva agamas, and somewhat later, the Sakta tantras centered on the Goddess. I will focus here on the Śaiva agamas, but much of what I say applies equally to the samhitas and tantras. Like so many others in the field of Indian studies, this extensive body of literature was largely dismissed and

10 * Introduction

left unexplored by scholars until recently. Yet it is a rich and diverse corpus of texts and offers one of the most important sources we have for under standing the formation and development of temple Hinduism.

A Śaiva agama consists, ideally, of four “feet,” or portions: knowledge (jMna), ritual action (kriya), proper conduct (carya), and discipline (yoga). Together, these four parts constitute everything worth knowing from a spir itual point of view; the section on knowledge reveals how the cosmos is organized, and the other three sections fully instruct one who adheres to that view of the world in how to act in it. As the Vayusamhita, borrowing a trope from the Mahabharata, puts it, “Whatever is said in the other treatises, one finds that in the Śaiva agamas; and that which one does not find in the Śaiva agamas, is not found anywhere else.“12

The primary focus of the texts, however, is clearly on religious practice. The agamas spell out in detail the organization of the temple cult, from the ritual procedures and architectural guidelines needed to construct and ani mate Śaiva temples, through the regular program of daily worship and sub sidiary rites, to the much larger occasional festivals. Many of the texts elab orate a pattern as well for daily household ritual, which parallels the daily temple cult. They set forth a sequence of transformative rituals—initiations and consecrations—that progressively incorporate the subject into the Śaiva community, move him toward liberation, and empower him to act as a tem ple priest or adept. In this respect, the agamas provide liturgical compen diums for Śaiva priests (dcdrya), for renunciatory adepts (sadhaka), and for committed householders worshiping at home shrines. They are the primary ritual texts of medieval Saivism.

According to the lists contained in nearly every text, the canon of Śaiva agamas consists in 28 “root” treatises (mulagama) and some 197 “subsidi ary” treatises (upagama).13 Despite this profusion, the texts repeatedly tell us that the system of knowledge (Sivajnana) they express is unitary. They view themselves as a single textual coipus. As the Kamikagama has it, each agama represents a part of the body that is the whole of the sivajndna: the Kanukagama is its feet, the Yogajagama represents its ankles, and so on up to the Kiranagama as its jewelry and Vatulagama as its garments (KA 1.93- 101).

They are fundamentally united, they claim, because all agamas originate from a single source, namely from the highest god, Siva. Initially, the texts say, the knowledge embodied in the agamas exists not in any verbal formu lation, but as “undifferentiated sound” or “pure thought,” which has not yet assumed any apparent divisions, but which contains immanently all there is to know. During the process of emission (srsti), by which all things become differentiated, Siva divides this unitary and subtle knowledge into a number of versions, and in so doing transforms it into an auditory form (sabdarupa) accessible to lower categories of beings. He emits it, according to some

LocatingtheTradition - 11

texts, in a series of “streams” (srotas) that issue from the five faces of Sadaiiva.14 These differentiated verbal versions of the originally unitary jnana are then passed on to a number of divine auditors, who in turn pass them on to others.

Eventually the dgamas reach the ears of humans, a momentous event. The first human auditors of the dgamas are always rj/s, sages portrayed as the most highly accomplished of all humans. The instruction may take place at diva’s dwelling on Mount Kailasa or in a forest hermitage such as the fa

mous Narayanasrama. The sages approach the god and, desiring to hear the superior knowledge of a Śaivagama^ humbly request the god to teach them. Here, for instance, is the setting in which SrikaQtha, a manifest form of Siva, narrates the Kamikagama to an eminent coterie of pupils.

On the southern peak of marvelous Kailasa, veiled by the shade of full-grown fig trees, on a seat sparkling with jewels, clothed in the skin of a tiger, the great god Siikantha, lord of all, was attended by gods, demons, heavenly musicians, divine magicians, demigods, and still others.

KauSika, KaSyapa, Agastya, Gautama, and Narada, Sanatkumara, Sanaka, Sanatana, and Sanandana, Bhrgu, Atri, Bharadvaj a, Vasi stha, and others—all these great sages desired to know the highest knowledge. They looked up at Siva and Sakti, bowed at his feet, and addressed the Lord, Protector of Uma:

“Blessed One, you are the Lord of the Gods of Gods. You untie the fetters that bind the soul. You are the cause of emission, preservation, veiling, reabsorption, and grace. You instantaneously set in motion the great mSya, made up of Ether and the other elements. You are joined with the highest Sakti, whose very form is complete intelligence. You are free from direc

tion, space, and time. You bring joy to living beings. We have been ordered by you, O Lord of Gods, to perform the worship of Siva. Out of compassion for your devotees, please deign to tell us, O Lord of Gods, the system of knowledge which came from Siva’s mouth, and its meaning in essence.”

Asked in this way by the sages, the Lord whose flag bears the bull and whose crown bears the gleaming half-moon answered in a deep voice. “You have asked well. So listen, you who have fulfilled your vows, to the highest system, which was extracted from the great text called ‘Kamika.’ This system first appeared on Mount Meru, and has been passed on by Pranava and others. It is the most complete system, containing ritual action (kriya) and proper conduct (carya) as well as discipline (yoga) and knowl edge (jMna).”

The sages, addressed thus, fell to the ground and bowed. Having given them a command, Siva now taught this unsurpassed text. (KA 1.1-14)

Siva goes on to set forth his teachings with the serene authority of om niscience.

Siva addresses his instruction to an audience of the converted: those gods,

12 * Introduction

sages, and human followers who already recognize and accept his pre eminence. As these teachings are handed down in distinct agama texts, they remain the exclusive possession of Śaiva priests and initiates; others are, in fact, excluded from hearing them.

If uninitiated members of the three twice-born classes, persons born in the SMra class, persons born of mixed parentage such as the savarna group, architects (ii7- pin), artisans, and the like should study the Śaiva treatises, the king and kingdom will be quickly destroyed on account of that sin. So the king should prevent them. (KA 1.111-12)

For such a select audience there is little need for polemic directed at other religious groups or doctrines. There is, however, great need for practical instruction. Most of the contents of the agamas concern ritual activity. Siva sets forth, most often in the optative mood, those actions best calculated to lead his auditors to the highest states of attainment. Subsequent members of the Śaiva community have carefully guarded and preserved these instruc tions, regularly copying over the manuscripts and passing them on to new priestly generations over many centuries.

Because the agamas consider themselves human recensions of what was originally uttered by Siva, they do not lend themselves to precise dating. As divine revelations of a universal knowledge, the agamas eschew all refer ences that might tie them down to particular times and places. Further, their own theory of origination, involving a gradual emanation and successive transmission, implies an openness to textual emendation and accretion. As the SivajMna, while remaining fundamentally one, has been differentiated and emitted over time, so human redactors of the agamas have on occasion felt it necessary to add new formulations of Śaiva thought and practice inso far as they cohere with the basic unity of the teachings. The result, from a historicist point of view, is a corpus of texts that is maddeningly diverse in compositional chronology.

Undoubtedly many agamas were in existence by 700 C.E. The Pallava king Narasimhavarman Π (695-728) refers to himself as “one who has re moved all his impurity (mala) by following the path of Śaiva siddhanta” in his foundation inscription on the Siva Kailasanatha temple of Kancipuram, the largest imperial edifice built by the Pallavas. Among his royal titles in scribed there, he styles himself a “follower of the agamas” and “one whose means of knowledge is the agamas.“15 The South Indian sage Tlrumular mentions nine agamas by name in his work of perhaps the seventh century, Tirumantiram. But the agamas available to Narasimhavarman and Tiru mular are not necessarily the agamas that have been passed down to us.

One of the texts Iirumular refers to is the Kamikagama, often described as the “first” or “primary” agama. This text is also mentioned by name in the Sutasamhita, which may also date from the seventh century. No doubt

Locating the Tradition · 13

a Kamikagama existed at an early time. Yet most portions of the Kami kagama that we have undoubtedly reflect the much larger scale of temple construction and liturgy that developed in later centuries in South India. Its architectural portions, for instance, follow those of the Mayamata, which correspond to the Cola architecture of the eleventh century.16 Ritual pre

scriptions are, in several cases, parallel to the prescriptions given in the di gests of SomaSambhu (of the late eleventh century) and AghoraSiva (twelfth century). (I speak here primarily of the Purva Kamikagama; the second di vision, the Uttara Kamikagama, is perhaps later still.)17

We must assume that a highly esteemed text like the Kamikagama would be subject to a complex process of revision, both reflecting and guiding developments and changes in the knowledge and practice of the Śaiva com munity. I would propose, as a tentative approximation, that the most signif icant recasting of the Kamikagama took place in Tamilnad during the elev enth century, in light of Cola-period temple culture, and under the strong influence of the Śaiva siddhanta school. Some of its contents are no doubt older than this, and some have been added since, but the weight of the text is grounded, it seems to me, in that period.

With some other agamas we can be on surer chronological ground, at least as to their tennini ad quem. The oldest extant agama manuscript, of the Kiranagama, was transcribed in 924 C.E.18 The Mrgendragama was com mented upon by the Kashmiri Śaiva siddhanta author NarayaQakaQtha in the late tenth or early eleventh century, and his commentary in turn was glossed by AghoraSiva in the mid-twelfth century.19 In cases such as these, we can be certain that the texts we have correspond to versions available in the tenth century, and perhaps earlier. Beyond this, however, scholars of the Śaiva agamas have only begun to develop the means of distinguishing different chronological strata within the texts. Until such an internal archeology is more fully established, efforts to trace the development of pre-tenth-centuiy Saivism within the agamas are premature.

As we have seen, the agamas assert an overall coherence while recogniz ing at the same time the differentiation within the genre. “Like the sparkling gem Cintamani,” says Kamikagama, “the Śaiva teachings appear as both one and many. Although they are unitary because of their speaker [Siva], they are also multiple because they are divided into streams [as the gem, while a single object, glistens with many beams]” (KA 1.103). Indeed, within the agamas is a diversity of teachings. They present neither a single philosophically consistent doctrine, nor a unified liturgical system; rather, they offer us a variegated, multiple body of Śaiva thought. On many basic matters, the agamas appear in complete agreement. Yet within the corpus one finds fundamental points of disagreement as well. Some agamas argue a monist metaphysics, while others are decidedly dualist. Some claim that ritual is the most efficacious means of religious attainment, while others14 - Introduction

assert that knowledge is more important. They advance different lists of the basic constituents of material being, the tattvasP0 Such differences in the texts of course reflect the various “streams” of thought within a large and geographically extensive Śaiva community as it developed in the early medieval period.

If the agama corpus, like CintamaQi, was both one and many, the “schools” of Saivism that formed themselves in the early medieval period took it as their task to formulate from this diverse canon a coherent doctrine, one that could hold up in philosophical debate. Yet, as it turned out, more than one unity subsisted within the agamas. Different Śaiva schools articu

lated quite different philosophical viewpoints, yet each based its doctrines on the authority of the agamas. The dualist Śaiva siddhanta, the strict mo nist Kashmiri schools of Trika and Pratyabhijfia, and the VIraŚaivas of Kar nataka, to name the most noteworthy, all claimed allegiance to the Śaiva

agamas.21 Of these, we are concerned here only with the Śaiva siddhanta.

ŚAIVA SIDDHANTA

The temple of Rajaraja reflects the teachings of one particular agama-based school of Saivism, the Śaiva siddhanta. Indeed, there are many reasons to suppose that this was the most prominent Hindu order in early medieval Tamilnad. Even today, Śaiva siddhanta is an important school of Hindu phi

losophy in Tamilnad, and temples in the region most often claim allegiance to Śaiva siddhanta liturgical texts.

It is difficult to be precise about the origins of Śaiva siddhanta as a dis tinct order. Sometime around the ninth century, it seems, Śaiva siddhanta appeared as part of a division within the larger Śaiva community. The works of the monist theologian Saiikara and his successors provide a useful index for this shift. Writing probably at the very beginning of the ninth century, Sankara speaks in his commentary on BrahmasUtra 2.2.37 of a single order of Śaiva dualists, which he calls “MaheSvaras.” The MaheSvaras are else

where called PaSupatas. The mid-ninth-century commentaries of Vacaspati MiSra and Bhaskaracarya, by contrast, distinguish four categories of Śaivas: the Śaiva, PaSupata, Karunika, and Kapalika orders. For these ninth-century observers, Saivism was changing from a single and undifferentiated reli

gious community to a group composed of several distinct orders or schools of thought. From the ninth century, it became conventional to speak of four Śaiva schools, though the names varied: most commonly they are called Śaiva siddhanta, PaSupata1 Kalamukha, and Kapalika.22

Within this new quaternity of Saivism, Śaiva siddhanta attempted to por tray itself as the “pure” (Juddha) Saivism, the “fully completed” (siddhanta) Saivism, or more simply as Saivism par excellence. If Śaiva siddhanta is “auspicious” (Śaiva), Aey claimed, the other so-called Śaiva orders are “in auspicious” (raudra). Not surprisingly, Śaiva siddhanta claimed to offer a

Locating the Tradition · 15

more compelling and more efficacious formulation of the iivajnana, partic ularly as regards human liberation, than the competing schools of Saiv ism.23 Yet we know very little about the actual doctrinal or practical dis putes that brought about the division in Saivism, nor do we know the

context in which the division initially took place.

While the earliest moment of Śaiva siddhanta self-definition necessarily remains vague, the picture becomes clearer around 900 C.E. From this time on there exist a large number of dated inscriptions referring to Śaiva sid dhanta priests and ascetics, furnishing much fuller information about their affiliations and spiritual lineages. Followers of Śaiva siddhanta turn up in Madhya Pradesh (especially the Dahala region), in Rajasthan, Gujarat, Ma

harashtra, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Tamilnad, and even in Southeast Asia. These epigraphical references coincide with the appearance of Śaiva monas tic institutions (mathas), to which many of these Śaivas were attached, and with a heightened program of Śaiva temple construction throughout the sub continent. The inscriptional and archeological evidence suggests that from the tenth through twelfth centuries a broadly extended network of interre lated Śaiva siddhanta lineages spread itself out over much of India, acting frequently as spiritual preceptors to kings, constructing and presiding over

temples and monasteries, and propagating the teachings of the agamas.74 Aghorasiva, the twelfth-century South Indian author of many Śaiva siddhanta works, serves as an apt exemplar of this “stem with many widely spreading branches.“25 At the conclusion of his Kriyakramadyotika, he specifies his lineage of twelve Śaiva preceptors reaching back to the legen dary sage Durvasas (MV pp. 424-27). Among his predecessors, he lists Uttungasiva, a Gujarati living at Kalyananagari (perhaps the capital of the later Calukyas, in Karnataka), and Brahmasiva, also hailing from Gujarat; PiIrnaSiva and Vidyantaiiva, who served as royal preceptors in Varanasi; Sarvatmasiva, who was “received hospitably” by the ruler of Great Puri, in the Northern Konkan near present-day Bombay; and Snkanthasiva, “a bull among the Bengalis.” AghoraSiva’s own preceptor also came from Bengal, apparently traveling south to Tamilnad. Several others in the succession lived and taught in the Cola dominions of South India.

During this period, the earliest independent Śaiva siddhanta treatises of explicitly human authorship were composed. From the tenth century on, Śaiva authors writing in Sanskrit produced an array of agama commentaries (vrm’s), ritual manuals (paddhatis), and philosophical treatises. Here I will refer to this entire body of texts as the “paddhati literature.” Paddhatis tread in the “footprints” of other texts, and this corpus of Śaiva writings, both ritual and philosophical, follows in the path set forth by the Śaiva agamas. And since these texts, unlike the agamas, do not profess to be the direct words of Siva, the paddhati authors are not reticent about leaving clues that allow us to locate them historically. Thus, Aghorasiva tells us in a colophon to his Kriyakramadyotika that he completed this work in 1157 C.E. (MV

16 * Introduction

p. 433), and in his commentary to the Tattvatraytmirpaya he extols himself as the guru ornamenting the Cola country (77TW 32).

The primary task of the paddhatis, as their authors saw it, was to clarify the views of the Śaiva siddhanta school and to refute the wrong views of others, all in order to enhance the spiritual welfare of their audience. In light of the diverse teachings of the agamas, it was important first of all to make the Śaiva teachings easily comprehensible. One of the earliest paddhati au thors, Sadyojyoti says in the opening verse of Tattvasarpgraha, “I will ex plain the tattvas concisely, so that even those of simple minds may under

stand” (TS 1). The agamas themselves are sometimes too prolix to allow easy comprehension, but the paddhati authors claim to put matters simply, concisely, and clearly by virtue of their own comprehensive study and their lucidity. ISanaSiva tells us that he wrote his paddhati only after extensive examination of the agama texts (IP 1.1), while the eleventh-century Para mara king and author Bhojadeva praises his own clarity of mind: “The king Bhojadeva composed this matchless Tattvaprakaia, containing the meaning of the saivagamas. In that lord’s consciousness, the entire set of tattvas gleam as clearly as myrobalan fruits held in the palm of the hand” (TP 76). This effort at systematization of agama teachings no doubt often had effects on the agamas themselves, as texts like Kamikagama were revised to accord more closely with developing Śaiva siddhanta doctrine and practice.

The paddhati authors were inspired to set forth their system clearly and forcefully by other competing systems of thought. When Vidyakantha in structs his pupil Narayanakantha to compose a commentary on the Mfgetidra gama, he explains the need for such a work: “Treatises are written time and again by adherents of other schools, while up to now the seal on this school has not been broken” (MrAV vidya 1.1). AghoraSiva gives a similar reason for commenting on Bhojadeva’s Tattvaprakaia: “I undertake this commen

tary because the text has elsewhere been commented upon by others who are filled with the tainted ideas of nondualism (advaita) and who lack the true knowledge of siddhanta” (TPV 1). These other systems, they claim, have led people astray. Confused by the welter of competing viewpoints, some people abandon the superior Śaiva view and follow other, inferior ones.

Some have been won over by the Vedas, others by the views of Kaula, and still others by the Nyaya school. The willful elephant (matanga) has abandoned the path set out by Śaiva siddhanta and celebrated by the best gurus, and has been led on a bad route. Therefore, put to the test by these other scholars, we have sought to refute the wrong views by striking them with the goad of this commentary, and to return the elephant onto the correct path. (MPAV vidya 1.1)

Consequently there is a greater polemical dimension to the paddhati liter ature than to the agamas upon which it was based. Sadyojyoti, for instance, directs his NareSvarapariksa chiefly against the Buddhists for their denial of

LocatingtheTradition · 17

the soul and against the MTmamsakas, primary medieval proponents of the Vedic tradition, for their denial of the category of the Lord. Here, as in many paddhati texts, there is also a strong argument against nondualist po sitions such as those held by Kashmiri Śaivas and Advaita Vedantins. A later text, Sivagrayogin’s Satvaparibhafa takes it upon itself to summarize and refute the positions on mok$a held by Carvaka, Madhyamika, Yogacara1 Samkhya, Nyaya, Mlmamsa, Jainas, thepurdnas, and several competing Śaiva schools including the Mahavratins, PaSupatas1 and Kapalikas (SPbh pp. 335-52). Paddhati authors wrote consciously in a world of competing view

points, attempting to distinguish the Śaiva siddhanta route prominently from the many paths prescribed by others.

Their intellectual efforts, then, were directed at reestablishing a lost unity among the dgama texts and at guiding back to the right path a community of Śaivas who had wandered off. Yet through their efforts the paddhati au thors created something as much new as old. They identified a central tradi tion within the more disparate corpus of the dgamas, articulated this tradi tion into a unified system of thought and action, and established it as the basis for a new community of priests, monks, and lay followers. So success ful were the paddhati authors in this endeavor that they ended up nearly eclipsing the dgamas themselves as guides to Śaiva knowledge and prac tice.26 It is to paddhatis such as Aghorasiva’s Kriydkramadyotika, rather than to the dgamas upon which they are based, that later Śaiva practitioners have most often turned for ritual guidance.

AghoraSiva stands at the culmination of this intellectual project, spanning two and a half centuries and encompassing many parts of India, that aimed at formulating from the Śaiva dgamas a coherent and systematic school of thought and practice.27 Writing in South India in the mid-twelfth century, Aghorasiva was one of the most prolific of all Śaiva siddhanta authors, com

posing commentaries on dgamas, an extensive ritual digest, several philo sophical commentaries, and even a few works of belles lettres, unfortu nately no longer available. He relied not only on the dgamas themselves but on the works of many other paddhati authors as well. He cited UttungaSiva, Bhojadeva, and SomaSambhu as among his teachers and influences; he wrote commentaries on the works of Sadyojyoti, Bhojadeva, RamakaQtha, and Narayanakantha; and in his writings he quoted from the works of many other Śaiva authors also. It is no exaggeration to say that his works offer the fullest, most cohesive articulation of the agama-based Śaiva siddhanta sys tem integrating philosophy and ritual.28

Within a century of AghoraSiva’s lifetime, two major events transformed the Śaiva siddhanta order. With the establishment of the Delhi sultanate in 1206 under Qutb al-dTn Aybak, the balance of North Indian military power decisively shifted away from the independent Hindu dynasties that had sup

ported temple Hindu orders like Śaiva siddhanta, and came to rest with

18 • Introduction

iconoclastic Turko-Afghan Muslims. In this altered climate, Śaiva sid dhanta seems to have quickly disappeared as an identifiable school in north ern India. Compared with other, more ascetically oriented Śaiva orders such as the Kapalikas and Kalamukhas, Śaiva siddhanta was primarily an institu tional school centered on temples and monastic networks, and consequently dependent on continuing royal patronage. As a result, it was particularly vulnerable to this transformation of the North Indian political order. When Saivism did resurface as a public religion there several centuries later, re generating itself under more tolerant Tslamic regimes or within renegade Hindu clans, it was quite different in character from the medieval Śaiva siddhanta order. Meanwhile, the more aniconic school of VTrasaivas be came the dominant form of Saivism in the Deccan. So from the thirteenth century on, Śaiva siddhanta has been largely a regional Hindu order of South India, and especially of Tamilnad, where it was largely unaffected by early Islamic attacks.

The second event was literary, not political. Around 1221, MeykaQtar com posed the Civaruinapdtam, the first and most important exposition of Śaiva siddhanta theology in Tamil.29 This was soon followed by the extensive Tamil works of Arulnanti, Manavacakam Katantar, and Umapati, elaborating and extending Meykantar’s core teachings. Even though these authors very largely and explicitly based their writings on the Sanskrit agamas and the paddhatis, and even though Umapati (as well as others) continued to com

pose works in Sanskrit as well as Tamil, the dominant language for Śaiva siddhanta theology (though not for ritual) shifted from Sanskrit to Tamil. With this shift in linguistic preference also some changes in doctrinal em phasis. Most notable among these, from the perspective of this study, Tamil Śaiva siddhanta authors decreased the role of ritual in religious attainment, considering knowledge and devotion as sufficient for liberation.30 At the same time, they sought to relate the teachings of Śaiva siddhanta to the earlier Tamil poetry of the nayanmar poet-saints, a regional tradition of considerable popular bearing.31 In some matters, such as epistemology and refutation of other schools, the Tamil authors clearly surpassed previous exponents of Śaiva siddhanta. However, the shift has also tended to cut off the ritual prescriptions of the agamas and paddhatis (which are still to some extent authoritative in South Indian temples) from the theological moorings that the early medieval authors gave them.32 In spite of this change, though, the Tamil version of Śaiva siddhanta is best seen as a philosophical continu ation and extension of the earlier Sanskrit-based school.

These two events have also had a powerful bearing on the way scholars have characterized Śaiva siddhanta as a school of Hinduism. The impor tance of the Śaiva siddhanta order in Tamilnad and its relative or complete absence from other parts of South Asia have led most Indianists to view Śaiva siddhSnta as solely a Tamil school, based on the Tamil-language texts

Locating the Tradition · 19

of Meykanfar and the other three “lineage founders.” This tendency goes back at least as far as one of the pioneers of Tamil studies, G. U. Pope, who wrote:

The Śaiva siddhanta is the most elaborate, influential and undoubtedly the most valuable of all the religions of India. It is peculiarly the Southern Indian and Tamil religion and must be studied by everyone who hopes to understand and influence the great South Indian peoples.33

Yet considerable inscriptional and textual evidence points to the Pan-Indian character of Śaiva siddhanta from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries, as I have indicated. The task of drawing these materials together into a con nected historical account of Śaiva siddhanta as a coherent, widespread me dieval Hindu order, however, remains to be accomplished.

ŚAIVA SIDDHANTA AS A SYSTEM

In this study, I take the notion of a Śaiva siddhanta “system” seriously. The texts themselves clearly envision the agamas and paddhati literature as comprising a unity of thought and action, and accordingly I have chosen to portray Śaiva siddhanta as a coherent system of knowledge and practice.34

The work of developing and articulating Śaiva siddhanta as a ritual and theological system was, as I have indicated, a collective and historical en deavor, beginning in an early stage that is now largely unrecoverable (and will remain so until it is possible to establish a chronological segmenta tion of the agama texts), evolving within the context of temple Hinduism as it became the dominant South Asian cosmopolitical formation, and re ceiving systematic treatment from Śaiva siddhanta authors who sought to derive from diverse agama sources a coherent Śaiva dualism in knowledge and practice. This system was the special preserve of initiated Saivites, for whom it represented a detailed depiction of the cosmos and a program for action within it. It was expressed more openly in the very public do main of the temple, for the participation of the larger community of Siva worshipers.

In this reenactment of daily worship and explication of the Śaiva theolog ical world, I will present the Śaiva siddhanta order, synchronically, at what appears to be the high point of Śaiva ritualism. The Kamikagama and Kriyakramadyotika depict Śaiva siddhanta ritual as it was formulated (and, we can only presume, practiced by the most conscientious) in Tamilnad dur ing the eleventh and twelfth centuries.35 These two texts draw upon the work of several generations of Śaiva siddhanta paddhati authors as well as the unknown transmitters of the dgamas, and they clearly reflect the large scale Śaiva temple cult of Cola-period Tamilnad.

In addition to these two basic treatises, I have found it necessary to use

20 • Introduction

other Śaiva texts as well to supplement and contextualize the instructions of Kamikagama and Kriydkramadyotika. In doing so I have tried to follow Kamikagama’s own directive concerning the use of primary and secondary texts in constructing a temple and performing worship in it.

One should perform [the ritual construction and consecration of a temple], begin ning with plowing and ending with establishment, according to a root treatise (miildgama) only; if performed according to a subsidiary treatise (upagama), builder and sponsor will both be destroyed And temple rituals from plow ing through worship itself should all be carried out according to the prescriptions of the text with which one began, not according to some other treatise. One may conduct a ritual according to the prescriptions of another treatise, however, if it is not discussed in the primary text. (KA 1.104—7)

The ritual reenactment here too follows the prescriptions of my two “root treatises” insofar as possible. But as predominantly ritual in subject matter, these two leave many matters implicit, particularly the theological back ground of the ritual. Such knowledge would have been tacitly supplied, of course, by the well-trained Śaiva initiate as he enacted the ritual, but we do not share this internalized knowledge.

Throughout this study, I make greatest use of dgamas and paddhatis that are most closely related in outlook to the two primary texts: philosophical treatises that AghoraSiva commented upon, the Mrgendrdgama, Somasam bhupaddhati, commentaries by Kashmiri Śaiva siddhanta authors, Nirma lamani’s commentary on the Kriyakramadyotika, and so on. Certain texts in other genres of Sanskrit literature, such as puratms and iilpasdstras, reflect a Śaiva siddhanta viewpoint, and I use several of these also.36 With few exceptions, I refer only to texts that adhere to an identifiably Śaiva sid dhanta perspective. (The most important exception to this is the monist Ap payadik§ita’s Sivarcanacandrikd, which provides an unusally detailed guide to certain aspects of Śaiva piijd.) Not only does this method enable us to avoid the “destruction” that Kdmikdgama predicts for those too promiscu ous in their use of heterogeneous texts, but it also results in a portrait of early medieval Śaiva ritual and philosophy that is clear and systematic, just as the paddhati authors sought to make it.

There is of course a choice involved here, which should be noted at the outset. As a Śaiva order of priests and ascetics that developed over several centuries and in many regions of the subcontinent, Śaiva siddhanta was not a completely unified phenomenon. There were important doctrinal and pro

cedural differences within the school.37 For clarity of exposition, I choose to present one formulation of Śaiva siddhanta, one “stream” of the differen tiated SivajMna. Based as it is on several of the most esteemed and influen tial texts of the school, this version of Śaiva siddhanta was no doubt an authoritative one, especially in Tamilnad, in early medieval Kashmir, and

Locating the Tradition * 21

probably in other regions as well. But I do not wish to suggest that all dgamas and Śaiva siddhanta texts completely cohere with it. When I speak of what “Śaivas say” or what “the dgamas tell us,” it should be understood in this more particularized sense, as representing the views of an important, even central, group of early medieval Śaiva siddhanta masters who sought to articulate a compelling and coherent Śaiva worldview and to advance it as the highest form of knowledge, the parajMna.