Śaivism in the Gupta-Vākāṭaka Age

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great …, 2008

This book deals with the early development of Śaivism in ancient Dakṣiṇa Kosala, the region that roughly corresponds to the modern state of Chhattisgarh, plus the districts of Sambalpur, Balangir and Kalahandi of Odhisha (formerly Orissa). At the end of the sixth and the beginning of the seventh century, this region was under the control of the Pāṇḍava king Śivagupta alias ‘Bālārjuna' hailing from Śrīpura (the modern village of Sirpur), who was a great patron of religion. Epigraphical evidence, supported by archaeological remains, has shown that by the time of Śivagupta's reign, which lasted for at least fifty-seven years, Dakṣiṇa Kosala was already a rich centre of early Śaivism. In the context of this setting the following research questions were formulated: what circumstances fostered the rise and development of Śaivism in this area, and did the Skandapurāṇa, an important and contemporaneous religious scripture, play any role in that development? An answer to these questions would not only shed light on the religious processes at work in Dakṣiṇa Kosala, but would also touch upon the interplay of political, social, economic and geographical factors.

Groningen Oriental Studies 21, Forsten, 2006

Skandapurāṇa 167 is concerned with a description of Śaiva sacred sites and may be dated to the latter half of the 6th or first half of the 7th century. As such it is a very valuable source for the history and topography of early Saivism. In addition it contains an account of the origins of the Pasupata movement in its descriptions of Karohana, the site of Siva's descent as Lakulisa. The present volume contains a critical edition of two different versions of Skandapurāṇa 167, one transmitted in early Nepalese palm-leaf manuscripts, another transmitted in two later recensions styled Ambikakhanda and Revakhanda. The latter version has never been published before and opens up new perspectives for the study of the transmission of Puranic literature and the historical development of Śaivism. The introduction deals with the sacred topography of Śaivism, the early Pasupata movement and editorial principles. The editions are preceded by an English synopsis and are accompanied by an extensive philological and historical commentary.

Indo-Iranian Journal, 2013

This paper considers the limitations of the Śaivas’ prescriptive literature as evidence of the reality of their religion and stresses the benefits of reading it in the light of inscriptions and other forms of non-prescriptive evidence. It utilizes these other sources to address a number of questions that the prescriptive texts do not or cannot address. The first is that of the early history of Śaivism between the Mauryas and the Guptas. It concludes that when initiatory Śaivism achieved its dominance, as it did after the Gupta period, it did so on the basis of a widespread tradition of popular devotion that goes back at least to the second century bc, and that while the ingenuity and adaptability of the emerging Śaiva traditions were instrumental in this rise, a more fundamental cause may have been that in investing in these traditions their patrons were adopting an idiom of self-promotion that would be efficacious in the eyes of an already predominantly Śaiva population. It then pr...

2014

This panel focuses on topics that contribute towards a more differentiated understanding of the various Vaiṣṇava and Śaiva devotional communities and their interface in early medieval South-Asia (ca. 5th-12th centuries CE). One of the main objectives of these papers is to understand the emergence and process of the literary production of the Vaiṣṇavas and Śaivas and to identify religious groups and their motivations behind these texts. In particular, our focus is on relevant sections of the Mahābhārata, the collection of texts designed to provide social norms and systems of practices for their respective communities of devotees, such as the Viṣṇudharma or Śivadharmaśāstra, as well as texts of contemporaneous initiatory traditions, such as those of the early Pañcarātras. This panel thus hosts two kinds of papers: firstly, those on specific topics within each system, which can be used as a basis for comparison; secondly, papers that directly address the comparative aspects, including those dealing with textual relations, cases of reuse, and direct textual influence. By identifying points of convergence and divergence between these religious groups, the papers aim to bring into focus the boundaries and interface, or even levels of syncretism, regarding Vaiṣṇava and Śaiva communities in this dynamic period which saw the rise of devotional movements.

Journal of the American Oriental Society, 2014

Religions, 2021

This article makes the case that Vīraśaivism emerged in direct textual continuity with the tantric traditions of the Śaiva Age. In academic practice up through the present day, the study of Śaivism, through Sanskrit sources, and bhakti Hinduism, through the vernacular, are generally treated as distinct disciplines and objects of study. As a result, Vīraśaivism has yet to be systematically ap-proached through a philological analysis of its precursors from earlier Śaiva traditions. With this aim in mind, I begin by documenting for the first time that a thirteenth-century Sanskrit work of what I have called the Vīramāheśvara textual corpus, the Somanāthabhāṣya or Vīramāheśvarācārasāroddhārabhāṣya, was most likely authored by Pālkurikĕ Somanātha, best known for his vernacular Telugu Vīraśaiva literature. Second, I outline the indebtedness of the early Sanskrit and Telugu Vīramāheśvara corpus to a popular work of early lay Śaivism, the Śivadharmaśāstra, with particular attention to the concepts of the jaṅgama and the iṣṭaliṅga. That the Vīramāheśvaras borrowed many of their formative concepts and practices directly from the Śivadharmaśāstra and other works of the Śaiva Age, I argue, belies the common assumption that Vīraśaivism originated as a social and religious revolution.

Wattelier-Bricout, 2023

This paper proposes to analyse myths as narratives conveying doctrinal values and seeks to show that the conclusions drawn from this approach can complement the results of philological work. Focusing on the Sukeśa myth told in the original Skandapurāṇa (SP), this study aims to reassess Kropman’s hypothesis according to which the whole Naraka cycle could be a later addition, probably issued from a Smārta author- ship. To this end, all her arguments are reviewed and a new approach to myths, which is based on their comparison with doctrinal texts, is applied in order to identify doctrinal values conveyed within their stories and to determine the religious affiliation of their authors. As the two authorships suggested belong to the Brahmanical orthodoxy and to the Pāśupata re- ligion, I first define their main disagreements, i.e., their respective paths to salvation. Then I investigate the two versions of the Sukeśa myth told in the SP by highlighting the promoted paths to salvation. This analysis shows that both versions endorse a soteriology close to Pāśupata values and offer a Śaiva solution to Brahmanic imperatives such as the obliga- tion to have a son to save the lineage of the ancestors. Finally, I demonstrate that the path to salvation can be a key for the identification of the religious affiliation and the authorship and conclude that, even if it is not possible to affirm that the Naraka cycle is a later addition, it is very unlikely that the author of the second version of the Sukeśa myth was an orthodox Smārta Brahmin.

Religions of Early India: A Cultural History, 2024

This narrative history of the myriad religious cultures of early India covers a broad span of two thousand years, from 1300 BCE to 700 CE. From its earliest recorded history, India was a place of remarkable religious activity: elaborate sacrificial rituals, rigorous regimes of personal austerity, psycho-spiritual experimentation, vigorous theological debate, sophisticated poetic composition, ideals of righteous kingship, flourishing arts of sculpture and architecture, fervent devotional practices, utopian visions, and energetic missionizing. It was the birthplace of the three world religions we now know as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. It was also the home of other, often unnamed religions, usually classified as “folk” or “popular” religions. To examine the historical origins of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, this narrative history considers them as interacting communities within a shared, changing social and political reality, in which they may compete with one another for resources and influence. In the perspective adopted here, religious cultures define and redefine themselves in relation to one another. This historical study speaks, as much as is feasible, through voices from early India. The voices are recorded in verbal works: hymns, poems, songs, didactic stories, epic narratives, scientific treatises, ritual guidebooks, theological discourses. The narrative also attends to voices that speak from ancient material remains, including coins, sculptures, inscribed rocks and pillars, built structures, cityscapes. All these represent intentional works of human labor, articulating distinctive voices or visions, realized at certain moments in the human past.