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CHAPTER XXXIV
LITERATURE OF SOUTHERN SAIVISM
The Literature and History of Southern Saivism. The earliest Sanskrit philosophical literature in which we find a reference to Saivism is a bhāsya of Sankara (eighth century) on Brahma-sūtra II. 2. 37. In the commentary on this sūtra, Sankara refers to the doctrines of the Siddhāntas as having been written by Lord Maheśvara. The peculiarity of the teachings of the Siddhāntas was that they regarded God as being only the instrumental cause of the world. Here and elsewhere Sankara has called the upholders of this view Iśvara-kāraņins. If Siva or God was regarded as both the instrumental and the material cause of the world, according to the different Siddhānta schools of thought, then there would be no point in introducing the sūtra under reference, for according to Sankara also, God is both the instrumental and the material cause of the world. Sankara seems to refer here to the Pāśupata system which deals with the five categories, such as the cause (kārana), effect (kārya), communion (yoga), rules of conduct (vidhi) and dissolution of sorrow (duḥkhānta)'. According to him it also holds that Pāśupati (God) is the instrumental cause of the world. In this view the Naiyāyikas and the Vaiseșikas also attribute the same kind of causality to God, and offer the same kind of arguments, i.e. the inference of the cause from the effect.
Vācaspati Miśra (A.D. 840), in commenting on the bhāsya of Sankara, says that the Maheśvaras consist of the Saivas, Pāśupatas, the Kāruņika-siddhāntins and the Kāpālikas. Mādhava of the fourteenth century mentions the Saivas as being Nakulīsapāśupatas who have been elsewhere mentioned as Lākulīšapāśupatas or Lakulīša-pāśupatas, and they have been discussed in another section of the present work. Mādhava also mentions the Saiva-darśana in which he formulates the philosophical doctrines found in the Saivāgamas and their cognate literature. In addition to this he devotes a section to pratyabhijñā-darśana, commonly
1 The skeleton of this system has already been dealt with in another section as Pāśupata-śāstras.
