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Literature of Southern Saivism [CH. regards their emphasis on this or that subject. They also sometimes vary as regards their style and mode of approach. Thus the Agama called Siva-jñāna-siddhi deals with the various subjects by quotations from a large number of Agamas. This shows that there was an internal unity among the various Agamas. From these collective works we can know much of the contents of the different Āgamas. This is important as some of these Āgamas are scarcely available even as a single manuscript.
The date of these Agamas cannot be definitely fixed. It may be suggested that the earliest of them were written sometime in the second or third century A.D., and these must have been continued till the thirteenth or fourteenth century. In addition to the theological or religious dogmatics, they contain discussions on the nature of the various ducts or nādis in connection with the directions regarding the performance of yoga or mental concentration. There are some slight disputations with rival systems of thought as those of the Buddhists, Jains and the Sāmkhya. But all this is very slight and may be practically ignored. There is no real contribution to any epistemological thought. We have only the same kind of stereotyped metaphysical dogma and the same kind of argument that leads to the admission of a creator from the creation as of the agent from the effects. Thus apparently the material cause, the upādāna kāraṇa, described as praksti and sometimes atoms, is different from the instrumental cause, God. But in order to maintain the absolute monistic view that Siva alone is the ultimate reality, this material cause is often regarded as the sakti or energy which is identical with God. Sometimes the entire creation is described as having an appearance before the individuals according to their karma through God's power of bondage. The individual souls are all infected by various impurities derived from māyā or karma. These impurities are ultimately destroyed by the grace of God, when the Saiva initiation is taken.
These Agamas are also full of directions as regards various religious practices and disciplines, and also of various kinds of rituals, mantras, directions for the building of temples or of setting up of various kinds of phallic symbols, which, however, have to be entirely omitted from the present treatment of Saivism. But it is easy to see that the so-called Saiva philosophy of the Āgamas is just a metaphysical kernel for upholding the Saiva religious life and
