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CH. XXXVII] Saiva Philosophy in the Siva-mahāpurāņa 97 schools referred to in the seventh or eighth centuries with the existing records of Saiva thought. There was a great upheaval of Saiva thought from the twelfth century, contemporaneously with the revival of Vaişnava thought in Rāmānuja, but Rāmānuja himself does not refer to all the schools of Saivism referred to by Sankara and Vācaspati Miśra in his Bhāmatī commentary. Rāmānuja only mentions the Kālamukhas and the Kāpālikas, and no literature about their philosophical views is now available. The Kāpālika sect probably still exists here and there, and one may note some of their practices, but so far we have not been able to discover any literature on the practices of the Kālamukhas. But we shall revert again to the problem when we discuss the antiquity of Saiva thought and its various schools. The three schools of Southern Saivism that are now generally known are the Vīraśaivas, the Sivajñāna-siddhi school and the school of Saivism as represented by Srīkantha. We have dealt with the Saivism of Srikantha in two sections. The school of Pāśupata-Saivism is mentioned in the fourteenth century in Mādhava's Sarva-darśanasamgraha and the Pāśupata school is referred to in the Mahābhārata and many other Purāņas. In the Siva-mahāpurāņa, particularly in the last section called the Vāyavīya-samhitā, we have a description of the Pāśupata philosophy. I shall, therefore, now try to collect the description of the Pāśupata system of thought as found in the Vāyavīya-samhitā of the Siva-mahāpurāņa.
The Siva-mahāpurāņa, according to the testimony of the Purāņa itself, is supposed to have been a massive work of one hundred thousand verses divided into seven sections, written by Siva Himself. This big work has been condensed into twenty-four thousand verses by Vyāsa in the Kaliyuga. We know nothing about the historicity of this Vyāsa. He is supposed to have written most of the Purāņas. The present Siva-mahāpurāņa, however, contains seven sections, of which the last section called the Vāyavīyasamhitā is divided into two parts and is supposed to elucidate the view of the different schools of Saivism. According to our interpretation it shows only one school of Saivism, namely.the PāśupataSaivism in two variant forms. None of the works that we have been able to discover so far have been attributed to Siva or Maheśvara, though Sankara in his bhāsya on the Brahma-sūtra II. 2, 37 refers to Siddhānta works written by Maheśvara. We have traced some of
