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Literature of Southern Saivism [CH. school sprang forth as a school of Saivism in the thirteenth century with Meykaņdadeva and his pupils Aru!nanti and Umāpati.
The account of Saivism, as can be gathered from the Tamil sources, may be found in Pope's translation of Tiru-vāchaka, Der Saiva-siddhānta by Schomerus, and in the writings of N. Pillai. The present writer is unfamiliar with the Tamil language and he has collected his account from original Sanskrit manuscripts of the Āgamas of which the Tamil treatment is only a replica.
The Agama Literature and its Philosophical Perspective.
The philosophical views that are found in the Agama literature had been briefly summarised in the Sarva-darśana-samgraha under Saivism and have also been treated fairly elaborately in some of the sections of the present work. The Agama literature is pretty extensive, but its philosophical achievement is rather poor. The Āgamas contain some elements of philosophical thought, but their interest is more on religious details of the cult of Saivism. We find therefore a good deal of ritualism, discussion of the architectural techniques for the foundation of temples, and mantras and details of worship connected with the setting up of the phallic symbol of Siva. Yet in most of the Agamas there is a separate section called the Vidyā-pāda in which the general philosophical view underlying the cult is enunciated. There are slight differences in the enunciation of these views as we pass on from one Agama to another. Most of these Āgamas still lie unpublished, and yet they form the religious kernel of Saivism as practised by millions of people in different parts of India. There may thus be a natural inquiry as to what may be the essential tenets of these Agamas. This, however, cannot be given without continual repetitions of the same kind of dogmatic thought. The present work is, of course, mainly concerned with the study of philosophy, but as the study of Saiva or Sākta thought cannot be separated from the religious dogmas with which they are inseparably connected, we can only take a few specimens of the Āgamas and discuss the nature of thought that may be discovered there. In doing this we may be charged with indulging in repetitions, but we have to risk it in order to be able to give at least a rapid survey of the contents of
