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XXXVII] Māņikka-vāchakar and Saiva Siddhānta 155 the way of commentaries, is written in Tamil: some of it is available in Sanskrit. A sort of Saivism very similar to this is found in the Vāyavīya section of the Siva-mahāpurāņa. It is said in those sections that the original doctrine of that philosophy was written in the Agama works as composed by the successive incarnations of Siva. The same teachings are to be found also in Tamil Agamas, which have the same authority and content. Pope says that the Saiva Siddhānta system is the most elaborate, influential, and undoubtedly the most intrinsically valuable of all the religions of India. This seems to me to be a wild exaggeration. The fundamental facts of Saivism are composed of Vedāntic monism and Sāmkhya, and sometimes the Nyāya doctrines have also been utilised. This latter refers to the Pāśupata school of Saivism, as has been noted elsewhere. It is also doubtful if it is peculiarly South Indian and Tamil, for we have similar doctrines in the Vāyavīya-samhitā and also in a somewhat variant form in the Northern Saivism. There are many statements by Pope which seem to have no factual value, and if the present work had any polemical intention, it would be necessary to criticise him more definitely.
Some people say that the oldest form of Saivism is the old prehistoric religion of South India, but I have not found any evidence to show the exact nature of an existent pre-Aryan, Dravidian religion which could be identified with what we now know as Saivism. It is as yet very doubtful whether the pre-Aryan Dravidians had any systematic form of philosophy or religion differing from that of the kindred classes of other aborigines.
In our view the Pāśupata-sūtra and bhāsya were referred to by Sankara and were probably the earliest basis of Saivism, as can be gathered by literary evidences untrammelled by flying fancies. We are ready to believe that there were ecstatic religious dances, rites of demon-worship, and other loathsome ceremonials, and that these, though originally practised for ancestor-worship and the like, were gradually accepted by the earliest Pāśupatas, whose behaviour and conduct do not seem to affiliate them with the Brahmanic social sphere, though holders of such Saiva doctrines had to be Brahmins. Castelessness was not a part of the earlier Pāśupata Saivism. In a separate section we shall try to give an estimate of the evolution of the concept of Siva from Vedic times. The affirmation that one little Christian Church on the east coast
