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156 Saiva Philosophy in some Important Texts (ch. of India exerted its influence on the dominant Saiva and Vaisnava faith in the country lacks evidence. We have found that as a rule those who held the Sanskritic culture hardly ever read even Pali texts of Buddhism, though Pāli is so much akin to Sanskrit. On this account we find that the reputed disputation of Māņikkavāchakar with the Buddhists is uninteresting, as it does not seem that Māņikka-vāchakar or the Ceylonese knew much of each other's faith. Pope's statement, that Kumārila Bhatta preached the doctrine of a personal deity in the South, is absolutely wrong, because the Mīmāņsā view as expounded by Kumārila did not admit any God or creator.
Māņikka-vāchakar, probably of the ninth century, was one of the earliest saints of the school of thought that goes by the name of Saiva Siddhānta. Probably about a century later there arose Nāṇasambandhar and other devotees who developed the doctrine further. Their legendary tales are contained in the Periya-purāņa. But it is peculiar that King Bhoja of Dhāra, who wrote a Saiva work of great distinction called Tattva-prakāša, does not take any notice of these Tamil writers. Similarly Madhava, also in the fourteenth century, does not mention any of these Tamil writers. We are told that thereafter came fourteen sages, called Santānagurus (succession of teachers), who properly elaborated the system of philosophy known as the Saiva Siddhānta. One of these was Umāpati, who lived in A.D. 1313. He was thus a contemporary of Mādhava, though Mādhava makes no reference to him.
The thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries were periods of great theistic enterprises in the hands of the Saivas and the Srīvaisnavas. In interpreting Tiru-vachakam, Umāpati says that the real intention of all the Vedas is summed up in three mystic words: pati, pašu, and pāśa, the Lord, the flock, and the bond. These are the three categories of the Saiva Siddhānta system. But we have already pointed out that there were no special peculiarities of the Saiva Siddhānta; it was referred to by Sankara in the eighth century and it formed the cardinal doctrine of the Pāśupata school of Saivism, and also to the schools of Saivism as we find them in the Vāyavīya section of the Siva-mahāpurāņa. The pati, pašu and pāśa are equally eternal, existing unchanged and undiminished through the ages. This pati is none else but Siva, who is called by various names, such as Rudra, pašūnām-pati, Siva, etc. Umāpati
