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Literature of Southern Saivism [CH. with rituals, forms of worship, construction of the places of worship and mantras, and the like. These have no philosophical value and could not, therefore, be taken accountof and had simplyto be ignored.
The Agamic Saivism belongs principally to the Tamil country, the Pāśupata to Gujarat and Pratyabhijñā to Kāśmīr and the northern parts of India. The Vira-saiva is found mostly among the Kanarese-speaking countries. Schomerus points out that it is sometimes claimed that the Agamas were written in the Dravidian languages in prehistoric times, and that they owe their origin to revelation by Siva, to Nandiperuman in the form of Śrīkantharudra in the Mahendra Parbata in Tinivelly District. Owing to a great flood much of these twenty-eight Agamas were lost. The rest is now available in the Sanskrit translations and even the Dravidian texts abound with Sanskrit words. But this claim cannot be substantiated in any way. The reference to the Agamas is found in the Vāyavīya-samhitā of the Siva-mahāpurāṇa and the Sūtasamhitāt. The references show that the Kāmika and other Agamas were written in Sanskrit, as they formed a cognate literature with the Vedas. Portions of the Kāmika in Sanskrit quotations have been available to the present writer; similarly Msgendra, which formed a part of the Kāmika, is wholly available in Sanskrit. In the section on the Agamic Saivism the present writer has drawn his materials from these Āgamas. It has already been noted that there is a definite text in the Svāyambhuvāgama that these Sanskrit works were translated into Prākst and other local dialects. We are, therefore, forced to think that the assertion that these Āgamas were originally written in Dravidian and then translated into Sanskrit, seems only to be a mythical patriotic belief of the Tamil people.
Schomerus mentions the names of twenty-eight saivāgamas, though he sometimes spells them wrongly. He further mentions
1 In Sūta-samhitā, part 1, ch. 2, we find that the Vedas, Dharmaśāstras, Purānas, Mahābhārata, Vedāngas, Upavedas, the Āgamas such as Kāmika, etc. the Kāpāla and the Lākula, the Pāśupata, the Soma and the Bhairavāgamas and such other Agamas are mentioned in the same breath as forming a cognate literature. Sūta-samhitā is generally regarded as a work of the sixth century A.D.
? Kāmika, Yogaja, Cintya, Kārana, Ajita, Dipta, Sūkşma, Sāhasraka, Ansumān, Suprabheda, Vijaya, Niḥśvāsa, Svāyambhuva, Anila, Vira, Raurava, Makuta, Vimala, Candrahāsa, Mukha-jug-bimba or Bimba, Udgita or Prodgīta, Lalita, Siddha, Santāna, Nārasimha, Pārameśvara, Kirana and Vätula. Most of these have been already mentioned by the present writer and some of them are in his possession. Schomerus says that these names are found in Srikantha's bhāşva, but the present writer is definite that they are not to be found there.
Lalita a Vimala, Candranova, Ninsvāsa, svartan Dipta, Sükşma, Century A.D.
