IN THE FINAL SECTION of the Sivapurana, after the wind-god Vayu has given the eager sages of the Naimisa forest preliminary instruction in the siva jnana, he concludes his discourse with a statement about the character of knowledge.
Knowledge is said to be of two types, indirect (paroksa, literally “beyond one’s own sight”) and direct. Indirect knowledge is unstable, they say, while direct knowledge is very firm. Knowledge acquired through reasoning and instruction is considered indirect knowledge; direct knowledge will arise through the most excellent practice of ritual. Deciding that you cannot obtain moksa without direct knowledge, you should exert yourselves assiduously to master this excellent practice. ($Pur Vdyaviya 1.31.98-100)
Vayu might seem here to undermine the authority of his own teachings. After all, according to this dichotomy the mediated verbal instruction he has just given the sages would be classified as indirect, unstable, and not lead ing to final liberation. But the sages are well-disposed to accept Vayu’s statement, since they have already been engaged in a sacrificial rite for a thousand divine years in order to gain Vayu’s presence in the first place. Immediately understanding its implication, they ask to be tutored in the su
perior ritual procedures so they can put them into practice themselves. By now, we too should be able to assent to Vayu’s claim, even if we do not intend to follow his practical counsel. Śaiva daily worship, one of those most excellent ritual practices Vayu speaks of, has provided us with a privi leged entry point into the world as it was envisioned and acted upon by medieval Śaiva adepts and priests. By discursively reenacting Śaiva piija ourselves, we have seen how SivajMna is embedded in every detail of its action and how this ritual engenders the direct, unmediated knowledge Vayu declares is requisite to attaining liberation.
Śaiva nityapuja employs a series of synecdochic representations to offer its practitioner a comprehensive vision of the Śaiva world within a delimited ritual terrain. Though by definition still fettered and limited in knowledge and action, the worshiper can temporarily free himself from these limita
tions within the sphere of puja. As he places mantras on his hands, removes impurities from his body, or mentally constructs Siva’s divine court, the worshiper regularly employs the ordering principles of cosmic dynamism, emission and reabsorption. As he reconstructs his body in self-purification, he recapitulates the central passage of the soul from its condition of bondage to liberation. When he imposes a variegated divine body onto the material164 * Conclusion
linga and invokes Siva into it, he enacts a condensed theophany of the Lord £iva, a ritual metonym of diva’s variegated being. And when he offers sub stantive services, he brings the three ontological categories—Siva, bound souls, and inanimate substance—into their proper and fundamental relation ship with one another.
Through regular effort, as Vayu directs the sages, the worshiper could “exert himself assiduously to master” this ritual, to complete in himself the knowledge-in-action that would produce the highest fruits. For puja was not just a vision of an imagined world, nor even of a reconstructed historical world such as we have sought to enter, for the medieval Śaiva siddhantins. It was rather a way of seeing into the fundamental order of things, beyond the human fetters that determine our partial viewpoint and our ignorance, and of acting thereby with greater efficacy to higher ends, beyond the bonds that normally suppress our active powers of consciousness.