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50 Vira-saivism
[CH. and the nature of our experiences, are determined by our karma, and that the law of the distribution of the fruits of karma is mysterious. But the effects of karma take place automatically. This view is only modified by the Pāśupatas and the Naiyāyikas who belong to their fold. It is interesting to notice that the Siddhāntaśikhāmaņi borrows this idea of karma from the Pāśupatas, who hold that the distribution of karma is managed and controlled by God. Siddhānta-śikhāmaņi thus seems to present before us an eclectic type of thought which is unstable and still in the state of formation. This explains the author's ill-digested assimilation of elements of thought on Pāśupata doctrine, the varying Agama doctrines, the influence of Sāmkhya, and ultimately the Vedānta of the Sankarites. This being so, in the thirteenth century we cannot expect a systematic Vira-śaiva philosophy in its own individual character as a philosophical system in the time of Basava. It will be easy for us to show that Allama-prabhu, the teacher of Basava, was thoroughly surcharged with the Vedāntism of the Sankara school.
In the Sankara-vijaya Anandagiri, a junior contemporary and a pupil of Sankara gives a long description of the various types of the devotees of Siva who could be distinguished from one another by their outward marks. Sankara himself only speaks of the Pāśupatas and the Saivas who followed the Siddhāntas or the Āgamas, in which God Siva has been described as being the instrumental cause, different from the material cause out of which the world has been made. Vācaspati in his Bhāmatī, a commentary on the bhāsya of Sankara on the Brahma-sūtra II. 2. 37, speaks of four types of the followers of Siva. Of these we have found ample literature of the Saivas and the Pāśupatas, and had ventured to suggest that the Kāruņika-siddhāntins were also the followers of the Agamic Saiva thought. But we could find no literature of the Kāpālikas or of the Kālamukhas referred to in the bhāsya of the same sūtra by Rāmānuja. In the Sūta-samhitā we find the names of the Kāmika and other Agamas, the Kāpālikas, the Lākulas, the Pāśupatas, the Somas, and the Bhairavas, who had also their Āgamas. These Agamas branched off into a number of sections or schools!. In our investigation we have found that the Lākulas and the Pāśupatas were one and the same, and we have the testimony of Mādhava, the author of the Sarva-darśana-samgraha, to the same effect.
1 Sūta-samhitā iv, Vajña-vaibhava-khanda, ch. XXII, verses 2-4.
