Tolerance Exclusivity Inclusivity and Pe PDF

Tolerance, Exclusivity, Inclusivity,
and Persecution in Indian Religion

During the Early Mediaeval Period
ALEXIS SANDERSON
INTRODUCTION
I
t is generally believed that already in the early mediaeval
period from the fifth century of the Christian era onwards, if not earlier,
there existed a single Hindu religion, embracing Vaidika orthopraxy in ac-
cordance with primary and secondary Vedic revelation (Śruti and Smrti) together
˙
with the sectarian traditions of the worship of Visnu, Śiva, Devī, and the Sun God
˙˙
(Sūrya), to mention only the foremost among the deities that attracted personal
devotion, that is to say, those whose worship is attested not only in countless tem-
ples surviving from that period in the Indian subcontinent and much of South
East Asia but also in numerous donative inscriptions and extensive bodies of pre-
scriptive literature. It is also widely believed that this complex unity displays an
exemplary degree of religious tolerance, not only between Vaidikas, Vaisnavas,
˙˙
Śaivas, Śāktas, and Sauras, but also between these and the followers of the other
two major Indian faiths of the age, namely Buddhism and Jainism.1
1. For a survey of the major proponents of this doctrine of the essentially eirenic and tolerant nature
of Hinduism see VERARDI 2011, pp. 41–58. (For full bibliographic details see References at the end of this
essay).
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One who wishes to challenge the first of these beliefs might begin by pointing
out that before the advent of Islam India lacked any term even loosely correspond-
ing in its semantic range to that of the modern term Hinduism. Sanskrit sources
differentiated Vaidika, Vaisnava, Śaiva, Śākta, Saura, Buddhist, and Jaina tradi-
˙˙
tions, but they had no name that denotes the first five of these as a collective entity
over and against Buddhism and Jainism.2
2. The term Hindu (Arabic and Persian hindū), first used by Muslims to refer to the inhabitants of
Hind, that is to say, the lands east of the Indus river, who had not embraced Islam, does not appear in
any non-Muslim Indian source known to me before the work of the Kashmirian brahmin court historian
Śrīvara, learned in both Sanskrit and Persian, who uses it in the late fifteenth century in the Sanskri-
tized form hindukah to refer in the Indo-Islamic manner to those in the population of Kashmir who
˙
were not Muslims (variously called yavanāh, mlecchāh, turuskāh, and mausulāh in Kashmirian Sanskrit
˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
sources). He does so in his Zaynataraṅginī (Jainataraṅginī), covering the last years of the reign of Sultān
˙ ˙ ˙
Zayn al-‘Ābidīn (1459–1470), and, in the second chapter, the short reign (1470–1472) of his son and
successor Haydar Šāh, and his Rājataraṅginī, covering the reign of Hasan Šāh (1472–1484) and the first
˙ ˙ ˙
two years of the reign of Muhammad Šāh (1484–1486). The passages in these works in which the term
˙
hindukah is found are Zaynataraṅginī 2.122–123: oppression of certain Muslims (yavanāh) by Hindus
˙ ˙ ˙
(hindukāh) leading on the Sultān’s orders to retaliatory oppression of the brahmins (dvijapīdanam);
˙ ˙ ˙
Rājataraṅginī 1.213ab: Sultān Hasan Šāh’s mother Gul Khātūn is lamented after her death as one who
˙ ˙ ˙
had been to the observances of the Hindus like the sun that causes the lotus to open its petals (hindu
kasamācāraśatapatraraviprabhām); 1.270: some pro-Muslim (mausulavallabhāh) merchants who had
˙
observed Hindu customs from birth (ājanmahindukācārāh) slaughter a cow; 2.503–507: after the death
˙
of the tolerant Sultān Zayn al-‘Ābidīn the kingdom became bereft of proper Hindu observance; every
˙
year more of the calendrical rites prescribed in the [Nīlamata]purāna lapsed; and some merchants,
˙
favouring the Muslims (mausulapriyāh), gave up the observances proper for them as Hindus (svoci
˙
tam · hindukācāram· tyaktvā), slaughtering cows and eating their flesh, ashamed of the ways of their
ancestors. For the distinction between Śrīvara’s two works, hitherto concealed by their publication
as successive parts of a single Rājataraṅginī (Kaul 1966), I follow Slaje 2005. The second work begins
˙
with the third chapter of the consolidated edition (Rājataraṅginī 1.213 as cited here = 3.213 of Kaul’s
˙
edition). The evidence of Śrīvara’s learning in Persian, which after the advent of Muslim rule in Kashmir
in 1339 had replaced Sanskrit as the language of court culture, is his Kāvya Kathākautuka, a rendering in
Sanskrit of ‘Abd al-Rahmān Jāmi’s celebrated Persian narrative poem Yusof o Zoleykā of 1483.
˙
There may be an earlier use of the word by a non-Muslim Indian author. I merely report the earliest
uses that I have encountered, these being a century earlier than the earliest occurrences previously
noted, namely those in texts of the Gaud· īya Vais· n· ava tradition, beginning with the Caitanyabhāgavata
of Vr·rndāvanadāsa, c. 1545, cited by Halbfass (1988, p. 192) following O’Connell (1973). There, as in the
usage of Śrīvara, the term always appears in contexts of conflict with, or in opposition to, Islam. I note
also that the term does not occur in the Rājataraṅginī of Śrīvara’s teacher Jonarāja, which covers the
˙
history of Kashmir from 1149 to 1459 (the year of his death). When Jonarāja refers to the ancestral
religion of his community he uses the language of the insider, terming it sadācārah ‘orthopraxy’ (773)
˙
and brāhmakriyā (596) ‘rites prescribed by the Veda’, opposing it to the ‘sinful observances of the Mus-
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toler a nce, exclusivit y, inclusivit y, a nd persecution . . .
However, the absence of a name does not entail the absence of a corresponding
concept. There is evidence, as we shall see, that by the end of the first millennium
of the Christian era the consensus had indeed come to conceptualize a complex
entity corresponding to Hinduism as opposed to Buddhism and Jainism, exclud-
ing only certain forms of antinomian Śākta-Śaiva observance that could not be
reconciled with basic Vaidika values of ritual purity and the separation of castes.
Conservative authorities continued to rail against this soft-focus ‘Hinduism’,
with its blurring of the boundaries between the Vaidika and the non-Vaidika,
well into the second millennium of the Christian era, the Vaidikas insisting that
the prescriptions of the Vaisnava (Pāñcarātrika) and Śaiva scriptures are in-
˙˙
valid in their entirety, being based on scriptures that are not part of the Veda
or rooted therein (vedamūla-),3 the Śaivas insisting on the absolute superiority of
their own revelations and the ultimate inefficacity of those of the Vaidikas and
the Vaisnavas, and the Vaisnavas insisting that they too were Vaidikas in spite of
˙˙ ˙˙
Vaidika rejection and in keeping with this insistence fervently condemning the
Śaivas,4 in spite of the fact that the Śaiva and Vaisnava systems of observance
˙˙
lims’, by which, he says, the kingdom of Kashmir had been defiled (kaśmīramandale mlecchadurācārena
˙˙ ˙
dūsite [591ab]).
˙
One may ask whether when the term Hindu was introduced following Islamic usage it was used
to refer to Hindus in the modern sense, that is to say, to Hindus as opposed to Buddhists and Jainas, or
was used to cover the followers of all three non-Islamic religions. It is probable that it was used in the
narrower sense, since several centuries earlier the great Khwarezmian scholar Abū Rayhān Moham-
˙ ˙
mad b. Ahmad Bīrūnī (Al-bīrūnī, Alberuni) (973–1050) clearly distinguishes Hindus and Buddhists in his
Indological magnum opus Ketāb tahqīq mā le’l-Hend men maqūla maqbūla fi’l-‘aql aw mardūla (entitled
˙
India in Sachau ’s two-volume English translation [1910]); see, e.g., vol. 1 of that translation, p. 7.
3. An outstanding case of this conservative stance is that of Aparāditya, a twelfth-century ruler of

North Konkan, who devoted much learned effort to resisting the drift into acceptance of the initiated
Śaivas in his long comment on Yājñavalkyasmrti 1.7, the verse that lists all the valid means of knowing
˙
one’s religious duties (dharmapramānāni) (vol. 1, pp. 9–20).
˙
4. The Vaisnava stance has been expounded with great clarity by Yāmuna in his Āgamaprāmānya.
˙˙ ˙
According to Śrīvaisnava tradition, his life span was ad 916/17–1038, a barely credible 121 or 122 years.
˙˙
Mesquita (1973) has proposed that he lived from 966/7 to 1038. The attempt of Yāmuna in South India
to persuade the deeply sceptical Vaidikas that the Bhāgavatas are real brahmins reflects a wider strug-
gle. For the objections raised by the Vaidikas against the Bhāgavatas’ claim as presented by Yāmuna
are found in much the same form about a century earlier in Kashmir in Jayanta’s topical play Āgama
dambara, where they appear on the lips of a disgruntled Vaidika officiant (rtvik), who complains bitterly
˙ ˙
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have much more in common with each than either has with the Vaidika.5 But the
middle ground saw in Śaivas and Pāñcarātrika Vaisnavas proper, that is to say,
˙˙
in those who had taken initiation (dīksā) into these soteriologies and practised
˙
their special rites, only variants of observance applicable to specific communities
added to the ancient bedrock of Vaidika religion without detriment to the latter;
and this view came, as we shall also see, to be accepted not only by the orthoprax
but also by many, perhaps even most, of the initiated themselves. As for the un-
initiated, whose only rite of religious empowerment had been the upanayanam
that qualified a man for Vaidika observance and the recitation of the Veda, they
had themselves long since developed their own modes of Vaidika worship of the
deities of the initiated and integrated them into their daily rites, privileging one
deity as an expression of personal devotion but generally including the others in
a syncretistic approach that, through its daily repetition in countless households,
must have done much to express and nourish this sense of the greater unity that
came to be called Hinduism.
The thinking behind the concept of this as yet unnamed Hinduism is by its
nature more tolerant than the views that we shall see below of the strict adherents
of its competing components. But it is strictly brahmanical: Buddhism and Jain-
ism remain invalid in this thinking.
However, while certain states did at times adopt a hostile attitude towards
these two non-Vaidika faiths, we may surmise that in general it was not politic for
Indian and Southeast Asian governments during the early mediaeval period to
adopt a policy that strongly disadvantaged their Buddhist and, in the case of the
subcontinent, Jaina subjects. As we shall see, this supra-brahmanical perspective,
which I see as an answer to the socio-legal question of what forms of religion the
state should tolerate or support and which are truly beyond the pale of the per-
missible, also finds its voice in the learned literature of our period. Stopping short
about the attempts of the Bhāgavatas to intrude themselves into the brahmin community by pretend-
ing to be brahmins themselves (4.3, prose, 4.4, prose).
5. On the intimate connection between the Pañcarātra and the Śaiva tradition of the Mantramārga
see Sanderson 2009a, pp. 61–70.
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of accepting that all forms of religion are within the law or, rather, that any form
of religion is above the law, since it excludes the most blatant forms of antinomian
observance, it nonetheless requires tolerance of these long-established traditions.
In this perspective it may be said that Indian and Southeast Asian states gen-
erally propagated tolerance in matters of religion. But it is not the case that any
of the individual religions that came within the purview of this tolerance were
tolerant by nature. The long-entrenched contrary view, that the Indian religions
were essentially tolerant, cannot reasonably be maintained in the face of the care-
fully formulated views of the adherents of these Indian traditions and evidence of
sporadic outbreaks of intolerance and persecution. If the religions that flourished
during the early mediaeval period in the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia
enjoyed in many regions and periods an enviable degree of peaceful co-existence,
this must be explained not through an argument from essence, which leads in-
evitably to the overlooking or dismissing of contrary evidence, but in terms of a
balance of influence in which no one religious tradition was in a position of such
strength that it could rid society of its rivals, a balance of power sustained by the
policy of governments.
Vaidika Exclusivity
Let us now begin by looking at the extremes that reject or contradict this unity.
Any claim that tolerance of religious diversity is at the heart of Hinduism must
overlook the view of the Vaidikas, whose theoreticians flatly denied the validity
of any religious practice that was undertaken on the authority of texts lying out-
side the Veda (vedabāhyāni), that is to say, outside the Vaidika scriptural corpus
of Śruti and such secondary literature (Smrti) as was accepted to derive from it.
˙
Thus in the ninth or tenth century Medhātithi 6 states in his erudite commentary
on the Manusmrti: 7
˙
6. On the probable date of Medhātithi see Kane 1930, p. 275.
7. Manubhāsya, vol. 1, p. 57, ll. 5–6.
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So all those outside [the Veda], namely the worshippers of the Sun (bhojaka-),8
the followers of the [Vaisnava] Pañcarātra, the Jainas, the [Buddhist] deniers
˙˙
of the self (anātmavādi-),9 the Pāśupatas, and the rest, hold that their doctrines
have been authored by exceptional persons or deities who have had direct ex-
perience of the truth they teach. They do not claim that their religious prac-
tices derive [like ours] from the [eternal and unauthored (apauruseya-)] Veda;
˙
and indeed their teachings contain doctrines that directly contradict it.
Similarly, the seventh-century Mīmāmsaka Kumārila declares: 10

˙
The texts that may not be drawn on, because they contradict the Veda and
because we can detect their [base] motives, are, we are taught, [the following.
Firstly they are] these well-known works of religion-cum-irreligion rejected by
Vaidikas and accepted [as scriptures] by the Sām khyas, the followers of the
˙
Yoga school, the Pāñcarātrika Vaisnavas, the Pāśupatas,11 the Buddhists, and
˙˙
the Jainas. These hide in the shadow cast by a screen of pious observance con-
8. The term bhojakah denotes the Maga or Magabrāhmana officiants of the Sūrya cult (Old Persian
˙ ˙
magu-), descendants of Pahlavas who established kingdoms in Northwest India in the first century bc .
It renders Middle Iranian *bōžak, ‘one who saves’ (Scheftelowitz 1933, pp. 305–306).
9. I have emended the edition’s nirgranthānārthavāda- to nirgranthānātmavādi-, since anārthavāda

yields no meaning, while anātmavādi- ‘denier of the self’ yields a meaning fully apposite to the context,
defining Buddhists as it does in terms of the doctrine that most starkly differentiates from them all
other Indian religious traditions.
10. Tantravārttika, vol. 1, pp. 114, ll. 20–115, l. 6, on 1.3.3–4.
11. By the time of Kumārila, an approximate contemporary of the Buddhist Dharmakīrti, who was ac-
tive sometime between c. 550 and 650, the Śaiva Mantramārga was well enough established to attract
trenchant criticism from the latter. Its earliest scriptural texts go back to the fifth to sixth centuries,
inscriptions recording the initiation of kings following its procedures are attested from the seventh
onwards, and epigraphical evidence of its monastic institutions goes back to the late sixth (Sander-
son 2013b, pp. 235–236). It is extremely improbable, therefore, that Kumārila was familiar only with
the Atimārga and not also with the Mantramārga. I am therefore inclined to think that he is using the
term Pāśupata here to cover the Pāśupatas and all subsequent Śaiva developments up to his time,
understanding it as meaning ‘one who follows what has been taught by Paśupati’, where Paśupati is
to be understood simply as a synonym of Śiva (see, e.g., Nāmaliṅgānuśāsana 1.1.130–134). The same
will apply to Medhātithi’s use of the term Pāśupata in my preceding citation. Both authors are perhaps
160

taining some elements of the Veda’s teaching; but their real purpose is to win
social approval, wealth, veneration, and fame. They are contrary to the Veda
and incoherent. The greed and other [vices of their authors] are manifest.
They have been composed on the basis of arguments framed within the limits
of [the means of non-transcendental knowledge, namely] sense-perception,
inference, analogy, and presumption. They are perfumed with the fragrance of
a handful of teachings congruent with Śruti and Smr ti, [advocating such vir-
˙
tues as] non-violence, truthfulness, self-control, generosity, and compassion;
but [at the same time] they propagate teachings of a quite different nature,
teachings that are little more than means of making a living, by demonstrat-
ing the occasional successes of a handful of spells and herbs able to counteract
the effects of poison, to subject people, to drive them out, to drive them mad,
and so forth. And [secondly they are] the works even more remote [from the
Veda] (bāhyatarāni) that prescribe [observances] that are contaminated by
˙
[culturally alien] practices proper to barbarians (mlecchācāramiśra-), such as
eating from a skull-bowl (kabhojana-) and wandering naked (nagnacarana-).12
˙
using what they considered to be the properly Vaidika expression for the teachings of Śiva, following
Mahābhārata 12.337.59ab: sāmkhyam yogam pañcarātram vedāh pāśupatam tathā.
˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
12. Here I propose that Kumārila wrote mlecchācāramiśrakabhojananagnacaranādi rather the edi-
˙
tion’s reading mlecchācāramiśrakabhojananagnācarana, and, as my translation shows, I analyse this
˙
compound as mlecchācāramiśra-kabhojananagnacaranādi, taking ka- in the meaning ‘human head’,
˙
‘skull’ (syn. kapālam) (see, e.g., Abhidhānaratnamālā 5.61). In this I am swayed by the testimony of a
parallel discussion in Medhātithi, Manubhāsya on 2.6: syāt tādrśī vedaśākhā yasyām ayam narāsthip
˙ ˙
ātrabhojananagnacaryādir upadisto bhavet, ‘There might well be a branch of the Veda [now defunct]
˙˙
which is such that in it such [practices] as eating from a vessel made from a human skull and wandering
naked might have been prescribed’. Jhā (1924) did not see the reference to the skull-bowl users here,
dividing the compound as mlecchācāramiśraka-bhojana-ācarana and translating it as follows: ‘abso-
˙
lutely repugnant practices fit for Mlecchas, such as the eating together of many persons, and the like’.
Similarly Kataoka 2011, pt 2, p. 351: ‘barbarian customs, i.e. the practice of eating together’. Evidently
this ‘eating together’ renders Kumārila’s miśrakabhojana-. I argue against this interpretation in detail
in my forthcoming Śaivism and Brahmanism. Those who ate from a bowl fashioned from a human skull
were the ascetics of the Lākula and Kāpālika traditions of the Atimārga and, in the Mantramārga and
Kulamārga, persons engaged in the propitiation of Bhairava and/or Cāmundā/Kālī through the prac-
˙˙
tice of the Kāpālika observance. On the three Mārgas (Ati-, Mantra, and Kula-) see Sanderson 2014.
Kumārila’s and Medhātithi’s ‘wandering naked’ (nagnacaranam, nagnacaryā) probably refers to the
˙
practice of wandering Jaina mendicant ascetics. See also Medhātithi on 4.30: ‘The pāsandinah are the
˙ ˙˙ ˙
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Concluding his argument he points out that greed and other such base urges
(lobhādi) are a sufficient explanation of the source of all these traditions, and that
they themselves make no claim to be Veda-based (vedamūlatvam). So, he says, it is
these that are referred to by Manu when he speaks of followers of forbidden religious
practices (pāsandinah) and rules that they should not be honoured even with speech: 13
˙ ˙˙ ˙
[The householder] should not honour even with speech those who follow
forbidden religious practices,14 those who practice professions forbidden to
their caste, those who practice religion for profit, deceivers, those who reason
[against the teachings of the Vedas], and pious hypocrites.
The context of this prohibition is the behaviour of householders towards unin-

vited guests (atithih), the respectful feeding of whom is one of their cardinal du-
˙
ties. Commenting on this verse Medhātithi says that if a would-be recipient of
food belonging to these prohibited categories arrives at the home, which in our
present context means any follower of the Pañcarātra or of any one of the Śaiva
systems, a Buddhist, or a Jaina,15 he is not to be greeted respectfully, nor to receive
red-robed, the naked wanderers, and others, who adopt the insignia [of religious observances] that are
outside [the Veda]’ (pāsandino bāhyaliṅgino raktapatanagnacarakādayah). The expression ‘red-robed’
˙ ˙˙ ˙ ˙
(raktapatah) is commonly used as a somewhat undignified term for Buddhists in non-Buddhist sources,
˙ ˙
as in Āgamadambara, prose before 1.17 (bho raktapata) and 3.26 (raktapatocchistam), and Śaṅkara,
˙ ˙ ˙ ˙˙ ˙
Brahmasūtrabhāsya on 2.2.35, and the pairing of Buddhists and Jainas is standard.
13. Manusmrti 4.30.

˙
14. The term pāsandin-, often misleadingly translated ‘heretic’, is defined as I have translated it here by
˙ ˙˙
Medhātithi’s gloss on pāsandam, from which pāsandin- is formed by the addition of the possessive suffix,
˙ ˙˙ ˙ ˙˙
in his commentary on Manusmrti 1.118: pāsandam pratisiddhavratacaryā ‘pāsandam is to practice a for-
˙ ˙ ˙˙ ˙ ˙ ˙˙
bidden religious observance’ and on 5.89: śāstraparityāgena bāhyadarśanāśrayam naraśirahkapālarak
˙ ˙
tāmbarādidhāranam pāsandam ‘pāsandam is to turn one’s back on the teachings [of the Veda] and
˙ ˙ ˙ ˙˙ ˙ ˙˙
thereby to carry the skull of a human head, to wear red robes and the like, [practices] that are proper
to religions outside [the Veda]’. The term ‘heretic’ is better reserved to denote professed followers of
a religion whose views or practices reject or are seen as rejecting the established norms of that same
religion. From the Vaidika point of view those it terms pāsandin- are apostates rather than heretics,
˙ ˙˙
Vaidika observance being seen as the default and all other faiths as arising through its rejection.
15. The South Indian Vaisnava Yāmuna cites a text without attribution in his Āgamaprāmānya (p. 26,
˙˙ ˙
ll. 9–7) that rules on the authority of Smrti that the term pāsandam covers the whole range of non-
˙ ˙ ˙˙
162

the customary enquiries concerning his birth and learning, nor to be offered a
seat and the rest. He may be fed, but only as one feeds untouchables and the like.16
This equation with untouchables is more than rhetorical. For other Smrti
˙
passages tell us that even the sight of such persons is pollutant for the orthoprax,
let alone physical contact: 17
If he comes into physical contact with Buddhists, Pāśupatas, materialists, de-

niers [of life after death, the validity of the Veda, and the like], or brahmins
engaged in improper employment, he should bathe fully clothed.
and: 18
If he sees Jainas, Pāśupatas, Buddhists, Kāla[mukha]s, [Śākta] Kaulas, or

peripatetic [mendicants] he should glance at the sun. If he has come into con-
tact with any of them he should bathe fully clothed.
Likewise a verse from an unidentified Smrti text cited with approval in the
˙
digest-like commentary on the Yājñavalkyasmrti attributed to Aparāditya, the
˙
twelfth-century Śilāhāra ruler of North Konkan: 19
Vaidika systems: the Vaisnava Pañcarātra, the Śaiva [Mantramārga], the Pāśupata, the Kāpālika, Bud-
˙˙
dhism, and Jainism.
16. Manubhāsya on 4.30: ‘There is certainly no question of respectfully giving them a seat and so
forth. Nor may one even speak to them, saying, for example, “Welcome. Please be seated here”. One
is allowed to give them food [but only] as one would to untouchables and the like (śvapacādivat). Con-
cerning this giving of food the venerable Krsnadvaipāyana has taught the following Smrti: “One should
˙˙˙ ˙
not enquire concerning his birth or learning”.’
17. The Sattrimśanmata quoted by Aparāditya, Yājñavalkyasmrtitīkā, p. 923.

˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
18. An unnamed Smrti text (smrtyantaram) quoted by Aparāditya, Yājñavalkyasmrtitīkā, p. 923.
˙ ˙
19. There were two Aparādityas among the Śilāhāra kings of North Konkan. The earliest known in-
scription of Aparāditya I is dated in ad 1127 (cii 6:20), and his reign ended in 1148 (cii 6:62). Aparāditya II
has dated inscriptions from 1184 to 1197 (cii 6:30–32, 63). The last known inscription of his predecessor
Mallikārjuna is dated in 1162 (cii 6:29) and the first known inscription of his successor Anantadeva II is
dated in 1198 (cii 6:33). Kane has argued (1930, p. 334) that the great commentary on the Yājñavalk
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If he sees Kāpālikas, Pāśupatas, Śaivas [of the Mantramārga], or Kārukas,20

he should gaze at the sun [in order to purify himself]. If he has come into
physical contact with them he should bathe.21
yasmrti is more probably to be assigned to the first of these two Aparādityas on the grounds that the
˙
work is quoted in the Smrticandrikā of Devannabhatta. This is because he dates that work c. 1200
˙ ˙˙ ˙˙
(1930, p. 346) on the evidence that it cites Vijñāneśvara and is cited by Hemādri. This would not pre-
clude Devannabhatta’s having known a work by Aparāditya II, but it would, he argues, leave uncomfort-
˙˙ ˙˙
ably little time for the work to have become well enough known to have been cited as an authority.
This is less compelling than it seems, since Hemādri tells us that he wrote while he was a minister of
Mahādeva, the Seüna king of Devagiri, who ruled from 1260 to 1271, as Kane himself agrees (1930,
p. 357). There is therefore no good reason to date Devannabhatta as early as 1200 on the grounds that
˙˙ ˙˙
he is cited by Hemādri, and there is therefore no good reason to doubt that the Yājñavalkyasmrtitīkā
˙ ˙
was by Aparāditya II solely because it was cited by Devannabhatta. However, that the author of that
˙˙ ˙˙
work was indeed Aparāditya I does find some support in a fact not noted by Kane , namely that the
colophons of that work describe the author simply as the Śilāhāra king Śrīmad-Aparādityadeva, which
is as we find Aparāditya I modestly identified in his inscriptions (cii 6:20–22 [śrīmadaparādityadeva- or
śrī-aparādityadeva-]). Aparāditya II assumed the much grander title of Mahārājādhirāja (cii 6:32). A
further point in favour of Aparāditya I is that the author of the commentary on the Yājñavalkyasmrti is
˙
uncompromising in his rejection of the non-Vaidika religion of the Pāñcarātrikas and Śaivas, whereas
Aparāditya II, as we can see from inscriptions, had one Vyomaśiva/Vyomaśambhu, an initiated Said-
dhāntika Śaiva officiant, as his chief minister (Mahāpradhāna/Mahāmātya), as did his immediate prede-
cessor on the throne, Mallikārjuna (r. c. ad 1155–1170). See cii 6:29, 30, and 32.
20. The Kārukas of this passage are a group closely related to the Lākulas and sometimes take their
place when the totality of Śaivas is intended, as here, through the listing of their four major types:
Pāñcārthika Pāśupatas, Lākulas/Kālamukhas, Kāpālikas, and [Mantramārgic] Śaivas. Cf. Bhāskara on
Brahmasūtra 2.3.37: tatra māheśvarāś catvārah pāśupatāh śaivāh kāpālikāh kāthakasiddhāntinaś ceti;
˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
Vācaspatimiśra, Bhāmatī on Śaṅkara, Brahmasūtrabhāsya on 2.3.37: śaivāh pāśupatāh kārunikasiddhān
˙ ˙ ˙
tinah kāpālikāś ceti. In these two passages the readings kāthakasiddhāntinaś and kārunikasiddhāntinaś
˙ ˙ ˙
yield no apposite sense and are both, I propose, corruptions of kārukasiddhāntinaś ‘followers of the
Kāruka doctrine’ introduced by later Vaidika scholars unfamiliar with this somewhat obscure Śaiva
tradition.
21. Yājñavalkyasmrtitīkā, p. 18. According to Visnudharma 25.7, 25.11cd, and 25.29cd (quoted by
˙ ˙ ˙˙
Aparāditya, Yājñavalkyasmrtitīkā, p. 171, ll. 18 and 29), purification in these cases requires the power
˙ ˙
of the Śucisad Mantra: ‘If the learned has spoken with [any of] these persons [following a forbidden
˙
religious practice] he should meditate on Visnu Śucisad . . . If he has seen one he should utter [the Man-
˙˙ ˙
tra] om namah Śucisad and then glance at the sun . . . If he has come into physical contact with one the
˙ ˙ ˙
learned will be purified if he bathes while mentally reciting the Śucisad.’
˙
164

He comments: 22
On the evidence of this further Smr ti [it is established that] the Śaivas and
˙
other [sectarians mentioned in it, that is to say] those who adhere to bodies
of [non-Vaidika] scripture such as those proclaimed by Śiva (śaivādi), are con-
sidered by those fully versed in the injunctions of the three Vedas to be as
pollutant as the basest of untouchables (antyāvasāyivat) 23 if seen or touched.
It is clear from the discussion in which Aparāditya makes this point that for
him, and no doubt for the Smrti in question, the term Śaiva here refers to all
˙
branches of the Mantramārga, including the Siddhānta, in spite of the latter’s
relatively innocuous, Veda-congruent observances.
Nor was this vituperative rejection of all religious traditions other than the
Vaidika confined to theory. For Manu goes so far as to exhort kings to put it into
practice by expelling all followers of such religious systems from his kingdom:
[The ruler] should expel from his capital without delay any gamblers, news-
mongers, men of violence, men adhering to non-Vaidika religious obser-
vances (pāsand asthān), men engaged in occupations not in keeping with their
˙ ˙˙
caste, and publicans. For if these are present in the kingdom they are like
thieves in disguise for the king. They constantly oppress his virtuous subjects
with their deviant activities.24
22. Yājñavalkyasmrtitīkā, p. 18.

˙ ˙
23. The term antyavasāyī, here rendered ‘the basest of untouchables’ but literally ‘one who makes his
abode in the lowest [of places]’, is defined in the Manusmrti as the cremation-ground-dwelling son of a
˙
Candāla man born to a Nisāda woman, despised even by the other divisions of the excluded (bāhyānām
˙˙ ˙
api garhitam) (10.39). Bhāruci comments in his Manuśāstravivarana: ‘Cremation-ground-dwelling
˙
means working and living therein. This being the case he should be recognized as even more sinful
(pāpatarah) than the Candāla.’
˙
24. Manusmrti 9.225–6. In his commentary on this passage Bhāruci makes it clear that although Manu
˙
states only that they should be expelled from the capital (purāt), the implication is that they should be
exiled from the whole kingdom: ‘He should expel them from the capital. It is implied that these should
165

Honoris Causa
For the Vaidikas, then, there certainly was no Hinduism as defined in our
opening paragraph, since they looked with abhorrence on all systems, including
the Vaisnava Pañcarātra and the varieties of Śaivism, that deviated from their
˙˙
definition of orthopraxy; and, as we have seen, the Manusmrti, far from tolerating
˙
these with indifference, urged the state to banish their adherents. Moreover, it en-
joined the orthoprax to avoid dwelling in any place where they were numerous.25
It may be doubted that the Manusmrti’s rule of exile was often if ever imple-
˙
mented; but the idea that it should be put into effect survived centuries during
which the non-Vaidika systems flourished and Śaivism among them rose to
become the dominant religion of the era.26 For this survival is gently satirized
in Kashmir around the turn of the ninth and tenth centuries in Jayanta’s play
Āgamadambara (‘Much Ado About Religion’). There two Vaidikas – an officiant
˙
(rtvik) and an instructor (upādhyāyah) – face the failure of the ultra-orthoprax
˙ ˙
camp to persuade the state to revert to a purely Vaidika utopia free of Śaivas, Pāñ-
carātrikas, Buddhists, and Jainas. The official protest of its champion, the Snā-
taka Samkarsana, fresh from his long training in the Veda, had met with initial
˙ ˙ ˙
success. The government of Kashmir had agreed to ban a particularly antinomian
and subversive cult of the Kaula type known as the Black-Shawl Observance
(nīlāmbaravratam), a measure whose historicity is confirmed by another source.27
be expelled from the whole kingdom too (rāstrād apy ete ’rthato nirvāsyāh), since the effect of their
˙˙ ˙
banishment from the kingdom [and the capital] is the same.’
25. Manusmrti 4.61: ‘He should not live in any kingdom governed by Śūdras, in one full of people who
˙
neglect their religion, in one occupied by communities adhering to non-Vaidika religious observances
(pāsandiganākrānte), or in one beset by the lowest born.’ Medhātithi gives in clarification of the last the
˙ ˙˙ ˙
case of Balkh (bāhlīkāh) in ancient Bactria between the Hindu Kush and the Amu Darya (Oxus), which,
˙
he accurately reports, was beset by people of alien culture(s) (yathā bāhlīkā mlecchaih).
˙
26. On the rise of Śaivism to dominance in early mediaeval India see Sanderson 2009a.
27. That the suppression of the followers of the Black-Shawl Observance was not the theatrical in-
vention of Jayanta but a historical fact is attested by Jayanta himself in his philosophical masterpiece
Nyāyamañjarī. For he writes there (vol. 1, p. 649, l. 4): ‘King Śaṅkaravarman, knowing the nature of [true]
religion (dharmatattvajñah), banned (nivārayām āsa) the Black-Shawl Observance, in which uninhibited
˙
couples would indulge in many [indecent] activities (-aniyatastripumsavihitabahucestam) wrapped in
˙ ˙˙
a single black shawl (asitaikapatanivīta- em : amitaikapatanivīta- Ed.), because he realized that it was
˙ ˙
without precedent (apūrvam), having been invented (kalpitam) by some libertines.’ That this was a
166

But this led to panic among the Śaivas in general, who felt that they too might
be driven out. The status quo is restored by the king by summoning Samkarsana,
˙ ˙ ˙
finding him a wife, favouring him with the (white parasol and other) insignia
of distinction (mānaih),28 a golden fillet for his head (pattabandhena),29 and the
˙ ˙˙
honorific Śrī- (śrīśabdena),30 and putting him in charge of the Department for the
variety of Kaula Śākta-Śaivism is apparent from the account of it in the Āgamadambara, where it is
˙
clearly a cult involving unrestrained sexual indulgence and the drinking of intoxicating liquor, only meat
among the Kaulas’ three M’s (madyam, māmsah, and maithunam; see Tantrāloka 29.97–100b, quoting
˙ ˙
the Yogasamcāra) failing to be mentioned here. It is confirmed by the account of the Śaiva scriptural
˙
canon quoted from the otherwise lost Śrīkanthīyasamhitā by Taksakavarta in his Nityādisamgraha
˙˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
paddhati, an account that was the locus classicus for the Kashmirians. For this includes a Nīlāmbara
in its list of ‘eight Kaula[tantra]s’: nīlāmbaram sutāram ca sandhyā yoginidāmaram | svāyambhuvam
˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
siddhamatam ganākhyam khecarīmatam | astau kaulās tv amī khyātāh sadyahpratyayakārakāh (Ni
˙ ˙ ˙ ˙˙ ˙ ˙
tyādisamgrahapaddhati f. 10r13–14). Some of these, including Nīlāmbara, also appear in a list of Śaiva
˙
scriptures in the Kaula Kularatnoddyota f. 2r2: nīlāmbaram ca tārākhyam ganākhyam khecarīmatam.
˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
This is not the only report of action against this cult. According to a story about its followers,
the Nīlapataprabandha, contained in the Puratānaprabandhasamgraha (p. 19) compiled by the Jaina
˙ ˙
scholar Jinavijaya Muni, King Bhoja, the famous Paramāra emperor who ruled from Dhārā in Mālava
for most of the first half of the eleventh century (on his date see Sanderson 2014, p. 16, fn. 61), heard
about this cult from his daughter, who told him that she was going to join it. He then invited all of its
adherents, forty-nine couples in all, to assemble in his presence on the pretext that he wished to be-
come their devotee, executed all the men, and sent the women into exile. That they were Kaulas is
evident from a verse that they recite in answer to Bhoja’s asking them whether they are happy: ‘There
aren’t rivers flowing with wine; there aren’t mountains made of meat; and the whole world doesn’t
consist of women. How [then] can a Nīlapata [“one of the Black Shawl (cult)”] be satisfied?’ (na nadyo
˙
madyavāhinyo na ca māmsamayā nagāh | na ca nārīmayam viśvam katham nīlapatah sukhī). For this is
˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
a variant of a verse about Kaulism cited by Rājānaka Jayaratha on Tantrāloka 15.169c–170b: na nadyo
madhuvāhinyo na palam parvatopamam | strīmayam na jagat sarvam kutah siddhih kulāgame.
˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
28. Cf. the Cambodian Sanskrit inscription K. 762 of ad 673, v. 6: sitātapatrādisanmānah (Cœdès 1937–
˙
1966, vol. 1, pp. 12–15).
29. On the designs of the various fillets, also called mukutah, to be worn by the king, the chief queen,
˙ ˙
the crown prince, and the general, and as an honour bestowed by the king (prasādapattah), see
˙˙ ˙
Brhatsamhitā 48.1–5. According to that source all are to be made of pure gold (48.4cd).
˙ ˙
30. This transforms him from plain Bhatta-Samkarsana into Bhattaśrī-Samkarsana; see Āgamadam
˙˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
bara, prose imediately before 3.1: ‘Inhabitants of the capital and country, Bhattaśrī-Samkarsana, at the
˙˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
command of His Majesty Mahārāja Śaṅkaravarman, hereby informs you . . .’ Other Kashmirians named
with this title are Kallata (author of the Spandakārikā), Jayanta (author of the Nyāyamañjarī), Nārāyana
˙ ˙
(author of the Stavacintāmani), Nārāyanakantha (author of the commentary on the Mrgendra), Bilhana
˙ ˙ ˙˙ ˙ ˙
(author of the Vikramāṅkadevacarita), Bhāskara (author of the Śivasūtravārtika), Bhūtirāja (Guru of
167

Honoris Causa
Protection of Religion (dharmaraksādhikāre niyuktah) with authority through-

˙ ˙
out the kingdom. In this office he goes forthwith to the hermitage of the ascetic
Bhattāraka Dharmaśiva, apparently the official representative of all the Śaiva
˙˙
groups in Kashmir, to reassure him that the Śaivas will not be further targetted.
The officiant laments:
What a disaster! The way things have turned out is not at all what we en-
visaged. We imagined that all the religions outside the Veda would be
suppressed and that in this state of affairs the result would be (vedabāhya-
sakalāgamatiraskārena) that the whole kingdom would become our fiefdom
˙
(sarvam asmadbhogyam eva bhuvanam bhavisyatīti cintitam). But the outcome
˙ ˙
is that the alien religions (bāhyāgamāh) are in precisely the same position as
˙
before (yathānyāsam eva). For [v. 4.1]:
These Śaivas, Pāśupatas, Pāñcarātrikas, Sām khyas, Buddhists, Jainas,
˙
and the rest, are all enjoying exactly the same status as before. Damn
the Snātaka [Sam karsana]’s useless erudition!
˙ ˙ ˙
The Upādhyāya responds:
My friend, [the Snātaka] has now become the servant of the king, has he not?
And the king is entirely devoted to Śiva (paramamāheśvarah). So it is inevi-
˙
table that [Sam karsana] should be directing all his thoughts to winning his
˙ ˙ ˙
favour. For [v. 4.2]:
In the presence of kings their servants habitually do nothing but par-
rot their commands and being greedy to enhance their positions they
no more distinguish between what is good or bad than echoes.
Abhinavagupta’s father), Mukula (teacher of Pratihārendurāja), Rāmakantha (son of Nārāyanakantha),

˙˙ ˙ ˙˙
Vāmana (=Hrasvanātha), Śaṅkara (the father of Cakradhara), Śaśāṅkadhara (the Guru of Cakradhara),
Śitikantha (author of the Kaulasūtra), Śivasvāmin (author of the Mahākāvya Kapphinābhyudaya), and
˙˙ ˙
Somānanda (author of the Śivadrsti).
˙ ˙˙
168

The officiant agrees but asks how they can survive as Vaidikas in a society that
under-values them:
It is indeed as you hold, my friend: it is a rare man that in disregard of his

own interests will impartially restrict his thoughts to what is ordained by the
Veda. But how are we to survive [here] when we can support ourselves only by
purely Vaidika services such as performing sacrifices for others [in my case]
and teaching the Veda [in yours]?
The Upādhyāya says:
My friend, we shall live out our future as we have our past, satisfied with noth-
ing more than a mouthful of food and cloth to cover us.
The real world, it seems, no longer pays more than lip-service to the ortho-
prax Vaidika position. The non-Vaidika elements have become too strong to be
suppressed, and the Vaidika camp is too weak, and impoverished, to lobby suc-
cessfully to diminish their power. The king, Śankaravarman, is after all a devotee
˙
of Śiva inclined to be indulgent towards all forms of established religion,31 and his
queen, Sugandhā, we are told, favours the Pāñcarātrikas, as does, according to
report, one of the king’s functionaries.32
The Śaivas’ Inclusivist View of Their

Own and the Vaidikas’ Religion
As for the Śaivas, they likewise seem to undermine the unity of Hinduism by
insisting not merely on the validity of their own scriptures but also on their supe-
riority to the Vaidika scriptures and indeed to the scriptures of all non-Śaiva sys-
31. Āgamadambara, Act 3, prose between 3.3 and 3.4: ‘For the king, his Majesty Śaṅkaravarman
˙
is entirely devoted to Śiva (paramamāheśvarah) and shows compassion to all religious disciplines
˙
(sarvāśramesu ca dayāluh).’
˙ ˙
32. Āgamadambara, Act 4, prose after 4.4.
˙
169

Honoris Causa
tems. This was already so in the earliest known Śaiva initiatory system, that of the
Pāñcārthika Pāśupatas of the Atimārga, whose ascetic initiates were to see them-
selves as having severed all ties with the Vaidika religion, leaving behind their
former obligations to the gods and ancestors to focus their devotion on Śiva/
Rudra alone; 33 and it continued to be so in the Mantramārga, even though this
later form of the religion, in evidence from about 450–550 onwards, expanded
the community of the initiated beyond that of ascetics, important though they
continued to be, by opening up initiation to householders, allowing them, indeed
requiring them, to remain in this status after they had received initiation.
It might appear, therefore, that Śaivism was as much distinct from, and
opposed to, the religion of the Vaidikas as the latter was to the former and as
both were to Buddhism and Jainism. However, while the Śaivas thought their
scriptures superior to the Vaidikas’ and the Vaidikas thought their own supe-
rior, the two traditions’ views of each other were not symmetrical, not at least
where the Śaivas of the Mantramārga were concerned, these alone having left
us adequate evidence of their views on this issue. For while most Vaidika theo-
reticians during this period condemned the Śaiva scriptures as false, the Śaivas
of the Mantramārga held unanimously that the Śruti and Smrti of Brahmanism
˙
are universally and uniquely valid in their own sphere, that of prescribing the
conduct and religious observance obligatory for persons in their identity as mar-
ried and unmarried members of the caste-classes (varnāśramadharmah), and that
˙ ˙
as such they are man’s sole means of valid knowledge both of all actions (karma)
that benefit and harm the soul’s destiny in the domain of recurrent incarnation
(samsārah) and of the nature of the consequences of these actions, from the re-
˙ ˙
wards of the heavens to the tortures of the hells.
Nor did they deny the reality of Brahmanism’s goal, that of liberation
33. See, e.g., Kaundinya, Pañcārthabhāsya on 2.9: ‘This brahmin’s qualification and obligation to make
˙˙ ˙
offerings to the gods and his ancestors applied [only] before [his initiation]. Therefore he should [now]
withdraw devotion from these gods and ancestors and in place of both fix his heart on Maheśvara and
worship him and no other. The word ca here [in pitrvac ca] expresses prohibition. It implies that the
˙
reason why he should no longer make offerings to the [other] gods and his ancestors is that they lack
the agency that he used to attribute to them.’
170

(moksah), offered to those who aspired to escape recurrent incarnation through

˙˙
knowledge, unmotivated obedience to ritual injunctions, or both. They denied
only that it was ultimate, holding that true, definitive liberation lay beyond it and
could be reached through Śaivism alone, by undergoing initiation in the pres-
ence of the Mandala of Śiva (śivamandaladīksā) and then following the Śaiva ritual
˙˙ ˙˙ ˙
and meditative disciplines, or, in the case of those prevented by incapacity or so-
cial responsibilites from taking up those disciplines, notably their royal patrons,
through initiation followed by fervent devotion manifest in support of the Śaiva
religion and its institutions.
Nor was the validity of the Vaidika scriptures irrelevant to the Śaivas within
their own world of Śaiva rites and belief. Indeed Sadyojyotis, who is much the
earliest of the commentators on the Śaiva scriptures whose works have reached
us – he flourished sometime between the second half of the seventh century and
the beginning of the ninth, probably no later than the first half of the eighth 34 –
insisted that the defence of the validity of the Vaidika scriptures (Śruti and S mrti)
˙
is essential to a belief in the validity of the scriptures of the Śaivas themselves.
He offered two cogent reasons. The first is that if the Vaidika scriptures were
not the source of valid knowledge in their domain, as the Buddhists and Jains insist,
then Śaivism’s central claim that it frees the initiate from the cosmic hierarchy of the
levels of incarnation would be empty. Śaivas must believe that the Vaidika scripural
corpus is valid because the initiation rituals prescribed in their scriptures and per-
formed by Śiva himself through their officiants bring about the progressive freeing
of the soul from a cosmos created and maintained for and by the enactment and con-
sequences of meritorious and demeritorious actions, and these actions, as we have
seen, are held by the Śaivas to be good and bad on the authority of the Veda alone.
The second reason – and it is this that is more weighty in an assessment of
the lived relations between Śaivism and Vaisika orthopraxy – is that the Mantra
mārga’s scriptures themselves insist that the rules of the Vaidika socio-religious
order are binding on Śaiva initiates. Śaivas were subject to that order at the time
34. See Sanderson 2007a.
171

Honoris Causa
of their initiation, and to the extent that they chose to continue to live within it
after their initiation they were enjoined to continue to adhere to its rules.35
That the Śaiva scriptures do indeed require this conformity is well illustrated
in the following passage, much cited by the commentators:
So he should not transgress (na laṅghayet) the practices of his caste-class and
[Vaidika] discipline (varnāśramācārān) even in thought (manasāpi). He should
˙
remain (tist het) in the discipline (āśrame) in which he was when he was initi-
˙˙
ated into the Śaiva religion (dīksitah śivaśāsane) and [at the same time] main-
˙ ˙
tain the ordinances of Śiva (śivadharmam ca pālayet).36
˙
There is another respect in which the Vaidikas’ view of Śaivism and the Śai-
vas’ view of Vaidika religion were asymmetrical. For while the Vaidika tradition
made no attempt to justify its validity in Śaiva terms, the Śaivas, in their eager-
ness to establish themselves in what was by that time a fundamentally brahman-
ical society, attempted to persuade the orthoprax that the Śaiva corpus was valid
not only because it recognized the Vaidika ordinances as binding on all including
the Śaivas themselves but also by attempting to undermine the Vaidikas’ attacks
on the legitimacy of their religious practices by pointing to the abundant evidence
of the promotion of the worship of Rudra or Śiva, by then considered one and the
same, that is found both in Śruti texts and in the secondary Vaidika scriptures.
Thus in his commentary on the Mrgendratantra the tenth-century Kash-
˙
mirian Saiddhāntika Bhatta Nārāyanakant ha cites the presence of such practices
˙˙ ˙ ˙˙
in the traditions of all four Vedas. The passage on which he is commenting is the
narrative introduction to the Tantra.37 In the hermitage of Badarī, Bharadvāja
35. For this argument see Sadyojyotis, Nareśvaraparīksā, 3.74–76. I have emended yatnam sarvam
˙ ˙ ˙
karoti in 74b to yatnam sarvah karoti following Bhatta Rāmakantha’s paraphrase in his commentary:
˙ ˙ ˙˙ ˙˙
sarvena . . . yatno vidheyah.
˙ ˙
36. This passage is cited, for example, by Bhatta Rāmakantha, in his commentary on Nareśvaraparīksā
˙˙ ˙˙ ˙
3.76. His father, Bhatta Nārāyanakantha, cites it in his commentary on Mrgendratantra, Vidyāpada p. 63,
˙˙ ˙ ˙˙ ˙
ll. 13–15, attributing to the Bhārgavottara, which has not, to my knowledge, survived.
37. Vidyāpāda 1.2–6.
172

and other sages install an image of Śiva and undertake asceticism before it. The
god Indra comes to the hermitage and asks them why they are not following the
religion of the Veda (codanādharmah). They reply that the method of propiti-
˙
ating Śiva with asceticism that they are following is indeed Vaidika and point
out (v. 6) that the Veda contains Mantras whose deity is Rudra and procedures
for causing him to come into one’s presence. In his commentary on this verse
Bhatta Nārāyanakant ha elaborates, citing a six-month-long ascetic procedure for
˙˙ ˙ ˙˙
the summoning of Rudra into the propitiator’s presence taught in the now lost
Rudrakalpa that was a supplement (Pariśista) of the Śrautasūtra of the Kāt haka
˙˙ ˙
Yajurvedins, the use of the long Yajurvedic litany known as the Eleven Rudras
(rudraikādaśinī samhitā), probably its recitation while one inundates the Liṅga
˙
(rudrābhisekah), a practice still current among the Taittirīya Yajurvedins in the
˙ ˙
Śiva temples of South India, sacrificial procedures using Mantras and chants of
the Rgveda and Sāmaveda found in the Rgvidhāna and Sāmavidhāna, and proce-
˙ ˙
dures for the propitiation of Rudra found in the Atharvavedic corpus.
Similarly, in his commentary on Sadyojyotis’s Moksakārikā Bhatta
˙ ˙˙
Nārāyanakant ha’s son Bhatta Rāmakant ha turns to the corpus of secondary
˙ ˙˙ ˙˙ ˙˙
Vaidika scriptures, arguing that these contain abundant historical evidence that
Śaivism was accepted by venerable figures of remote antiquity whose standing as
men learned in the Veda is beyond question. He cites the rule that Śaivas must
remain in their castes and life-disciplines, not transgressing the ordinances of
those institutions even in thought, and then addresses the Vaidikas as follows: 38
So this [teaching of Śiva] is not a forbidden form of religion (na pāsand atvam)
˙ ˙˙
even from your point of view [as Vaidikas]. This is because it does not conflict
with the Vedas, and because there is [Vaidika] scriptural evidence that it was
accepted by men learned in the Vedas. In the Purānas, the Mahābhārata,
˙
and the like we learn that Śveta, Upamanyu, and other great sages under-
took religious practice within this [teaching of Śiva]. In the [Mahā]bhārata
we learn that Nara, Nārāyana [=Arjuna and Vāsudeva], and Aśvatthāman
˙
38. Moksakārikāvrtti on v. 146ab.

˙ ˙
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did the same, in the words ‘The god that you [Aśvatthāman] have worshipped
in an anthropomorphic image in every age those two have worshipped in the
Liṅga,’ 39 and also that it was by propitiating Śiva that the Lord Vāsudeva
achieved his goal in Suvarnāksa, as is related in the verse ‘O Kr sna, you will
˙ ˙ ˙ ˙˙
be the man most dear to me in the world; and the whole world will turn to
face you [in adoration]. Of this there is no doubt,’ [and Paraśurāma received
the axe with which he slew Kārtavīrya.] 40 Moreover in the Smr tis we have
˙
references to such pious acts for the benefit of the public (pūrto dharmah)
˙
as that of establishing a temple [of Śiva, as in] ‘He who makes a temple of
Śiva, built with baked bricks’ 41 and ‘in pious acts for the benefit of the public
one should know [that the reward is] liberation.’ 42 Then there is the evidence
of our own eyes in the form of the Pr thukeśvara [of Pr thu], the Rāmeśvara
˙ ˙
[of Rāma], and [many] other [Śivas that have been installed in temples by
exemplary Vaidikas in ancient times]. Furthermore, the Veda confirms the
validity of the teaching of Śiva in such Upanisads as the Śvetāśvatara and in
˙
Mantra-texts such as the Atharvaśiras. So none of the [three] faults that would
entail the invalidity [of the Śaiva scripture] from your point of view applies:
there is no disagreement [concerning the omniscience of Śiva, the creator of
our scriptures], there is no lack of proof [of their validity], and they have not
been adopted by a small minority.43
39. Mahābhārata 7.172.86cd.
40. Mahābhārata 3.82.18; text and translation in brackets suspect at this point.
41. Source not located.
42. Varāhapurāna 170.33[c]d. The category of pious action termed pūrtam or pūrto dharmah com-
˙ ˙
prises such actions as establishing fountains, wells, step-wells, reservoirs, dams, and gardens, and
planting fruit trees and the like; the installing of deities; and the building and renovation of temples and
monasteries. See, e.g., Varāhapurāna 168.21; 170.33–58.
˙
43. These three faults are specified by Kumārila in Ślokavārttika-Codanāsūtra 133 as reasons for re-
jecting the Buddhists’ argument that their claim that the Buddha, the author of their scriptures, was
omniscient is proved by the existence of an unbroken tradition to that effect from his time to the
present. For a detailed discussion of this verse and the three that follow and their interpretation by
Kumārila’s commentators see Kataoka 2011, pt. 2, pp. 358–366.
174

So Mantramārgic Śaivism, while claiming to transcend Brahmanism by offer-

ing true liberation, was nonetheless closely tied to it. It was the Vaidika world
rather than the Buddhist or the Jaina through which Śaivas rose to salvation; and
on their path thereto they continued to be bound by its rules, adding their Śaiva
obligations rather than substituting them for the Vaidika. They looked, more-
over, to the Vaidika scriptural corpus to provide proof of the validity of their own
scriptures. The evidence adduced as proof is not cogent, since none of it refers to
the specific practices of initiatory Śaivism; it refers only to forms of propitiation
that had long been part of Vaidika observance. Nonetheless, the attempt reveals
the concern of the Saiddhāntikas to be considered valid by the adherents of the
Vaidika tradition that they claimed to rise above.
The Properly Śaiva Attitude of Śaivas

Towards Their Vaidika Rites
Now this extension from the purely Śaiva domain of the ascetic in the Atimārga
into the Vaidika domain of the Śaiva householder added in the Mantramārga
opened the door to a process of Śaiva-Vaidika hybridization, in which rites of
both kinds were maintained and co-ordinated without a proper sense of their
distinctness. The Śaivas’ theoreticians, aware that this development had the
potential to produce a blurring of the boundary between the two domains
that would undermine the faith of Śaivas in the independence and supremacy
of Śaivism, ruled that while initiated Śaiva householders were thus subject to
two bodies of injunction – both the Śaiva and the Vaidika – their attitude
towards adherence to the latter was to differ fundamentally from that of the
Vaidikas.
Two passages of early Saiddhāntika Śaiva scripture much cited by the com-
mentators clarify this attitude. The first of these is in the Sarvajñānottara. In the
context of its prescription that only persons in two of the four Vaidika disciplines,
those of the unmarried scholar and the married householder, may be consecrated
as Śaiva officiants, it tells us that the Śaiva should maintain his Vaidika obser-
vances after initiation but without believing that they are fully real. He is to do
them but without subjective commitment. He should not think that by accom-
modating Vaidika rites beside the Śaiva he brings about a doubling of the benefit
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that he will derive or that if he were to omit them he would damage that benefit.
He is to see himself as acting in this regard not for his own advantage but so as
not to undermine through a pointless non-conformity the Vaidika order within
which Śaivism is embedded.44
The second passage is in the Mataṅgapārameśvara. This clarifies the matter
in the language of the Mīmāmsā by saying that though the initiate should main-
˙
tain his Vaidika duties, here called ‘the mundane observance’ (laukikācārah), he
˙
must not conceive of them as ancillary elements (aṅgam) of his Śaiva observances,
which is to say, as elements without which those observances would be incom-
plete and therefore inefficacious.45
The Śākta-Śaiva Attitude Towards Vaidika

Observance Among Initiates
The view seen in the Sarvajñānottara that the Śaiva should conform to Vaid-
ika injunction only for the sake of others tended not to be emphasised in the
later Saiddhāntika exegetical literature, which seems to be more eager to stress
conformity with Vaidika injunctions than to justify this from a properly Śaiva
standpoint. But the Śākta-Śaiva scholars of such traditions as the Krama and
Trika, whose ritual practice was further distanced from Vaidika norms than
the Saiddhāntikas’, preserved a strong emphasis on Śaivism’s transcendence,46
even arguing that the true reason for conformity with Vaidika observance was
spiritual immaturity. Thus Abhinavagupta’s pupil Ksemarāja (fl. c. 1000–1050)
˙
asserts that one should continue to perform the Vaidika ritual of venerating the
Juncture of the day (brāhmī samdhyā) before one venerates it in the Śaiva manner
˙
(śaivī samdhyā) only so long as one’s mind is in thrall to one’s constructed social
˙
identity as a member of a caste. In support of this position he cites a passage
from the Saiddhāntika Svāyambhuvasūtrasamgraha to the effect that the Vaidika
˙
44. Sarvajñānottara, Liṅgoddhārādiprakarana N f. [34]r5–v5; P pp. 97–98.

˙
45. Mataṅgapārameśvara, Caryāpāda 2.2–7b.
46. See, for example, Abhinavagupta, Tantrāloka 4.221c–253; 15.162c–179b; Parātrimśikāvivarana

˙ ˙
p. 266, l. 4–p. 267, l. 7, edited and translated in Sanderson 2005, pp. 111–112.
176

ritual of the Juncture is optional but the Śaiva compulsory. But he leaves out that
part of the passage in which we learn that the option applies only in the case of
ascetics. His reason for doing so is evidently that he wishes the text to support
the view that one should aspire to drop the Vaidika elements of one’s ritual pro-
gramme even if one is not an ascetic, seeing persistence in these as symptoms of
a contracted state of mind that all Śaivas, householders included, should strive
to transcend.47
Nonetheless, it is unlikely that this Śākta-Śaiva view of the accommodation
of Vaidika ritual had a negative impact on the integration of such Śaivas within
Vaidika society. Ksemarāja speaks here of an ideal adjustment within the largely
˙
private domain of the Śaiva householder’s daily ritual rather than a wholesale re-
jection of conformity in the socio-religious domain. And this is in line with other
elements of transcendence that set the Śaivas engaged in Bhairava and goddess
worship apart from the Saiddhāntikas. Thus, for example, when a Saiddhāntika
participated in a collective meal with other initiates he was not to sit in a line that
contained persons of a caste other than his own. If he did so he was to do penance,
its severity determined by the degree of the caste difference, being doubled if the
contaminator was a Vaiśya and trebled if he was a Śūdra.48 But according to the
Svacchanda, the principal scripture of the non-Saiddhāntika Daksina system of
˙˙
47. Ksemarāja on Svacchanda 2.14c: ‘This veneration of the Juncture (sandhyāvandanam) is done with
˙
the Mantras of Śiva, but first it is done with the Mantras of [one’s] Veda. That is the duty of those in
whom there lingers the deep-seated mentality of identification with the caste that was theirs [before
they entered the casteless “caste” of Bhairava (bhairavajātih) through initiation] (anivrttaprāgjātivāsa
˙ ˙
naih kāryam). The rest should do it with the Śaiva Mantras [alone], immediately after they have com-
˙
pleted the ritual bath. As has been taught [by Śiva in Svāyambhuvasūtrasamgraha 7.9cd]: “He may or
˙
may not do the Vaidika [Sandhyā ritual]; but it is compulsory that he should do the Śaiva”.’ On the early
Śākta-Śaiva attitude to caste, and other Vaidika dualities, such as that of the pure and the impure, see
Sanderson 1985, pp. 198–205 and endnote 69; Sanderson 2009a, pp. 292–297; and Sanderson 2009b.
48. Trilocanaśiva, Prāyaścittasamuccaya p. 25: ‘He should always avoid when eating sitting in the same
line (ekapanktih) as persons of a different caste (bhinnajātibhih). A brahmin who eats unknowingly with
˙ ˙
persons of a Ksatriya, Vaiśya, or Śūdra caste and abandons his meal in the middle as soon as he realizes
˙
this, should declare this, and then [as his penance] repeat the Aghoramantra ten, twenty, or thirty times
respectively. If he realizes [what he has done only] after the meal has been finished [he should repeat
it] one, two, or three hundred times respectively.’
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Bhairava worship, initiates may be arranged in separate rows on such occasions

only according to their rank as initiates. They must never separate themselves in
accordance with the distinctions between the castes in which they were at the time
of their initiation (prāgjātih). They must see themselves as having become equal
˙
members of a single ‘caste’ of Bhairava (bhairavīyā jātih), and they must know that
˙
if they make any reference to the former caste of an initiate they will be guilty
of a sin that will lead them to hell. In short, says the text, if one wishes to attain
one’s goal, be it salvation or Siddhi, one must be free of all caste discrimination
(avivekī).49 But there is no suggestion that this transcendence of caste distinctions
should be applied on the socio-religious level in such matters as marriage. The
fact that Abhinavagupta cites the Sarvajñānottara with approval for its view of the
necessity of general conformity, and does so even in the context of an argument
that the considerations of relative purity and impurity that dominate Vaidika
behaviour are subjective (pramātrdharmah), makes clear that no such subversive
˙ ˙
transcendence was envisaged.50
The same is the point of a Kaula verse cited by the Śākta-Śaiva Jayaratha in
this context and also by the Smārta Aparāditya, though in that case with the con-
trary purpose of demonstrating the insincerity of the Śaivas’ conformity:
He should be a Kaula in private (antah kaulo), a Śaiva in outward appearance

˙
(bahih śaivo), but a Vaidika in his mundane observances (lokācāre tu vaidikah),
˙ ˙
keeping the essence [of his religion hidden behind these two outer layers], just
as the coconut fruit [keeps its milk within its flesh, which in turn is enclosed
by its hard outer shell].51
49. Svacchanda 4.540–546.
50. Tantrāloka 4.248–251. On Abhinavagupta’s doctrine that purity and therefore impurity are subjec-
tive and not real properties of things see Sanderson 2013a.
51. Rājānaka Jayaratha, Tantrālokaviveka on 4.251ab. For Aparāditya’s version see Yājñavalkya
smrtitīkā, p. 10, ll. 12–13.
˙ ˙
178

In the same spirit the Tārātantra, a text from the later East Indian Śākta tra-
dition, tells us concerning the orgiastic gathering of Śākta initiates known as a
‘circle of Bhairavī’:
Once the circle of Bhairavī has commenced (ārabdhe bhairavīcakre) all [the
participants, whatever their] caste-classes are the best of brahmins (sarve var-
nā dvijottamāh). But as soon as it has ended each returns to his or her separate
˙ ˙
station. If a person, being deluded, makes distinctions of caste (jātibhedam . . .
˙
karoti) within the sacred circle, then without doubt he will fall into a terrible
hell from which it will be hard to escape.52
A Śaiva-Vaidika Socio-Religious Hierachy

under Royal Authority
The Śaivas, then, advocated a two-tiered Śaiva-Vaidika socio-religious system,
with the Vaidika subordinate to the Śaiva. To achieve this new order they ex-
erted themselves to secure the support of royal patrons, without which no such
aspiration could be realised, and though the details of how they proceeded to this
end in particular cases are mostly inaccessible to us now, epigraphical and other
evidence reveals that they were successful in their endeavour in many parts of the
subcontinent and Southeast Asia.
It is at least clear from their prescriptive literature that they expanded their
ritual repertoire to support this endeavour, by introducing a form of initiation
for rulers that not only promised the benefit of liberation at death and, in this
life, the heightening of the initiand’s temporal power, but also departed radically
from tradition by exonerating the beneficiary from all the time-consuming and
arduous ritual duties that were the usual consequence of initiation. A king who
was devoted to Śiva (paramamāheśvarah) could receive the prestige of initiation
˙
52. Tārātantra quoted in the Sarvollāsatantra, p. 80. I conjecture ārabdhe for ārambhe in the first
verse.
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Honoris Causa
without any of its inconveniences, being required thereafter only to maintain the
support of the faith that is the duty of any lay (uninitiated) devotee (śivabhaktah,
˙
upāsakah).
˙
The Saiddhāntikas also developed a Śaiva version of the royal consecration rit-
ual (rājyābhisekah) to be given to a king after he had received this Śaiva initiation.
˙ ˙
The Naimittikakriyānusamdhāna of Brahmaśambhu, completed in ad 938/9,53 the
˙
earliest surviving guide to the Saiddhāntika Śaiva rituals, states that the purpose
of this ceremony is to qualify the king for his office as the guide and guardian
of the system of the castes and disciplines.54 This is none other than the role as-
signed to him by purely Vaidika authorities; 55 and accordingly the Mantra recited
at the climax of this empowerment, as the water of consecration is poured, is not
Mantramārgic but rather the long-established verse text of the (royal) consecra-
tion Mantra prescribed for this purpose by Varāhamihira in the first half of the
sixth century on the authority of the Older Garga.56 But since it is as an initiated
Śaiva that the king is to assume this role, it is evident that the socio-religious or-
der entrusted to his care is not just that envisaged by the Vaidika authorities but
rather the expanded religion that comprised both the Vaidika and the Śaiva tra-
ditions. For the Śaiva literature elsewhere requires him to ensure that the strata
of this complex of injunction are maintained in the proper order of relative au-
thority, with the Vaidika subordinate to the Śaiva, promising him that to do so
53. Naimittikakriyānusamdhāna f. 103r–v2: ‘On the tenth day of the bright fortnight of the first month
˙
of autumn in the 860th year of the king of the Śakas I, disciple of the abbot of Mattamayūra, have de-
clared this procedure for initiation that adheres to the teaching of the Dviśata[kālottara] and should be
given by a Guru to Gurus initiated in his own lineage to terminate his holding of his tenure of office.’
54. Naimittikakriyānusamdhāna f. 74v1 [4.118]: ‘I shall now teach in addition the consecration cere-
˙
mony to empower an initiated king as the guide and guardian of the castes and disciplines (varnānām
˙
āśramānām ca gurubhāvāya bhūpateh | yo ’bhisekavidhih so ’pi procyate dīksitātmanah).’ See Sander-
˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
son 2009a, p. 255, fn. 593.
55. See Sanderson 2009a, p. 255, fn. 594.
56. See Brhatsamhitā 47, especially 47.55c–70 Varāhamihira himself says only that the Mantra was
˙ ˙
‘taught by the Muni’ (47.51d: mantro ’tra munigītah). It is his commentator Bhatta Utpala who in a com-
˙ ˙˙
ment on this statement identifies the Muni as the Older Garga: munigīto muninā vrddhagargenoktah.
˙ ˙ ˙
180

will guarantee him a long reign and the prosperity of his kingdom, and implying
thereby that failing to do so will have the opposite consequences.
We see all this clearly enunciated in a passage of the Mohacūrottara, one of
a number of as yet unpublished scriptures of the Śaiva Mantramārga known as
Pratist hātantras.57
˙˙
These texts, as their name indicates, are concerned to regulate the practice
specific to the class of Mantramārgic Śaiva officiants known as Sthāpakas, who
specialized in the installation (pratist hā) of temples, their images, and monaster-
˙˙
ies, and in the planning of settlements and royal palaces, and the layout of the
towns around them. After prescribing the proper disposition of the habitations
of the various castes around the palace of an emperor (mahārājādhirājah) it says:
˙
Tradition declares that the king is the protector of his subjects. Therefore it
is right that he should protect the caste communities and ensure that they are
instructed in their duties, each according to its station. The sources that con-
vey these duties are Śruti, Smr ti, Purāna, and the [Śaiva] scriptures (āgamāh).
˙ ˙ ˙
If the king abides by these he enjoys a long reign. [The correct order of author-
ity in which they should be applied is as follows.] The Vedas [comprising both
Śruti and Smr ti] take precedence over the Purānas, and the [Śaiva] scrip-
˙ ˙
tures take precedence over the teachings of the Vedas.58 There is the common
[Vaidika authority of Śruti, Smr ti, and Purāna] (sāmānyam), and then there
˙ ˙
is the special (viśesam). The Śaiva [scriptures] (śaivam) are the latter. [So] the
˙
learned should not doubt their authority when they find that they conflict
with [a Vaidika injunction]. The all-knowing [master] should adjudicate each
case objectively [by this criterion]. Given the plurality of scriptural authori-
ties, whenever there is a question as to which of two [conflicting] statements
takes precedence, he should adopt that which has been taught by Śiva. He
57. On the canon of these texts see Sanderson 2014, pp. 26–27 and fn. 100.
58. The Vedas here must be understood to include Smrti, that is to say, the Dharmaśāstras, if this
˙
statement is not to contradict the preceding assertion that the (non-Śaiva) sources of the knowledge
of duty are not only Śruti (the Vedas in the narrow sense) and Purāna but also Smrti.
˙ ˙
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should reconcile the two, whether self-sufficient or depending for the under-
standing of their meaning on [examination in the light of] other sources of the
same kind, related sources, and [, where they fail,] learned exegesis, by apply-
ing such modes of reasoning as presumption (arthāpattih). Understand this, O
˙
Indra, and thereby attain the ultimate bliss. When the king understands the
duties of religion in this way his realm will always prosper.59
This model, in which the Vaidika ordinances are maintained under the aegis
of Śaivism, might be suspected to have been more ideal than real were it to rest on
this prescriptive evidence alone. However, it is in harmony with what is conveyed
by the historical records of the period. They certainly do not support a position
that the rise of Śaivism during these centuries led to a corresponding decline in
the hold of the Vaidika order. On the contrary, they point to a renaissance in that
sphere; and they show that Śaiva kings were active in promoting it.
A good part of the inscriptions that have come to light from this time con-
sists of thousands of copperplate charters in which kings, including those who
were Śaiva, have recorded their establishing Vaidika brahmins in their territories
through grants of tax-exempt land, thus fulfilling one of the principal duties im-
posed on them by Vaidika scripture, extending the penetration of Vaidika ober-
vance, while facilitating the administration of their territories and promoting
agricultural development.
Further, numerous kings, Śaivas prominent among them, have been com-
mended during this period, particularly at its beginning, for having imposed the
system of castes and disciplines (varnāśramadharmah) in their newly established
˙ ˙
kingdoms, this frequently being presented as a restoration after a period of de-
cline.
Nor was this promotion of Brahmanism by Śaiva kings restricted to the socio-
religious level. It extended on occasion to the commissioning of the horse sacrifice
(Aśvamedha) and other solemn (Śrauta) Vaidika rituals. These were associated
with the acquisition and celebration of sovereignty; but their performance was
59. Mohacūrottara ff. 21v6–22r2 (4.275–281).
182

also a signal of a king’s desire to be seen as an exemplary supporter of the Veda,

dedicated to the revival of Vaidika religion in its entirety.
So the epigraphic record indicates that there were numerous Śaiva kings
throughout our period who fully accepted their role as the guardians of the
Vaidika social order and thus conducted themselves in matters of religion in the
manner envisaged by Brahmaśambhu and the Mohacūdottara. Indeed, in many
˙
cases their panegyrists have portrayed them as zealous propagators of that order,
praising them for their efforts to reverse the decline in the hold of the Vaidika
order on society.60
The Loss of Transcendence

This double religion, combining the Vaidika religion and Śaivism under royal
authority, was from the point of view of all Śaiva theoreticians a two-tiered hi-
erarchy with Śaivism on top and the Vaidika religion below. The theoreticians’
ahistorical and fundamentalist presentation depicts no overlap between the two
levels, no encroachment of one upon the other, or rather it uses theory to outlaw
any such encroachment.
Nonetheless, when we see that the Vaidika domain has been so comprehen-
sively accommodated we are bound to look for evidence of a weakening of the
orthoprax Vaidikas’ rejection of Śaivism and also of a commensurate adoption
by Śaivas themselves of a view of their religion that surrendered the doctrine of
its transcendence. We may well imagine Śaivas who had abandoned all sense of
their religion as a path above the Vaidika, who saw themselves simply as Śaivas
by birth, who claimed for their scriptures no more than that they apply to them
as Śaivas, that there is nothing special about initiation, that it is merely a rite
of passage into ritual activities peculiar to their group, and that these activities
are much like the practices of other groups, Vaisnava and orthoprax Vaidika, of
˙˙
similar social standing.
60. Space prevents me from setting forth here the epigraphical evidence of the engagement of Śaiva
kings in these efforts to promote Brahmanism in their kingdoms. It has been presented in detail in my
forthcoming Śaivism and Brahmanism.
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Jayanta
We do indeed find evidence of both these developments. The earliest appears on the
Vaidika side near the end of the ninth century in the Nyāyamañjarī of the Kashmirian
philosopher Bhatta Jayanta, minister of king Śaṅkaravarman (r. c. ad 883–902) and
˙˙
author of the Āgamadambara, the humorous play about the religious tensions of the
˙
day that I have cited above. He states that he undertook the monumental Nyāya-
mañjarī in order to protect the authority of the Vedas; and this commitment is ap-
parent throughout.61 Yet he argues for the validity of the Śaiva scriptures: 62
But as for the scriptures that we see which are other than [those of the Vedic
corpus], they too are of two kinds. Some, such as those taught by the Buddha,
are completely at odds with the Veda. But others, such as those taught by Śiva,
are certainly not, merely teaching optional modes of religious observance that
differ [from those of that corpus]. I declare that of these the scriptures [of
the latter kind, those] taught by Śiva and [Visnu,] are undoubtedly (tāvat)
˙˙
valid. This is (1) because we find in the cognitions that they produce none of
the numerous defects that give rise [in other cases] to doubt or refutation,
[and] (2) because we are unable to impute any of the motives such as greed and
delusion that might otherwise explain their creation, since both Smr ti texts
˙
and inference establish that these too were authored by God (Īśvara). For we
find in them no record of their having come into existence at a specific time
[after the creation]; and we find in them, as in the Veda, numerous instances
of ekadeśasamvādah [, that is to say, of] ‘the verification of claims made in
˙ ˙
part [of the corpus’, claims which when they have been put to the test and
61. Nyāyamañjarī, vol. 1, p. 7, ll. 6–9: ‘As for the system of the Nyāya taught by Aksapāda, it is the cen-
˙
tral pillar [that holds up the edifice] of all the other branches of learning. This because it is the means of
safeguarding the authority of the Vedas. For if the Vedas have their authority overturned by the false
reasonings authored by false philosophers, the commitment of the pious would slacken. Why then
would they devote themselves to the task of putting its injunctions into practice, a task that among
other things requires great expense and exertion if it is to be accomplished successfully?’
62. Nyāyamañjarī-Āgamaprāmānya, ed. Kataoka , p. 152, l. 3 to p. 154, l. 8, corresponding to Nyāyamañ

˙
jarī, vol. 1, p. 635, l. 6 to p. 637, l. 2.
184

found effective evince confidence in the truth of its statements on matters that
must be taken on trust]. So what scope remains for the postulation that they
have some other source [such as human greed or ignorance]? Nor [, unlike the
scriptures of the Buddhists and others,] do they stand in opposition to the
Veda. For they do not abandon participation in the system of the four caste-
classes and [four life-disciplines] established by [the ordinances of] the Veda.
The manner [in which we establish the validity] of the injunctions of
Manu and the other [promulgators of secondary scripture] cannot
apply to the Śaiva scriptural corpus. But that does not entail its in-
validity. [For] throughout its texts we find clear understanding of the
well-known teachings of all the Upanisads pertaining to the ultimate
˙
goal. Moreover, even the foremost of those who have mastered the
Veda, such as Kr snadvaipāyana, support the view that the teachings
˙ ˙˙
of the Śaiva scriptures and [the like] are valid. And he has taught that
this validity also applies to [the corpus of Vaisnava texts called] the
˙˙
Pañcarātra. For they too contain nothing that requires us to dismiss
them as devoid of authority.63
Moreover, they contain the declaration that Lord Visnu is their author; and
˙˙
he is just God himself (Īśvara) [under another name].
Because one beginningless soul with infinite power, the wondrous
(kasyacit) cause of the creation of the entire universe, undertakes the
[three] distinct tasks of creating the world, holding it in existence, and
withdrawing it [again at the end of each cycle], it has come to be per-
ceived as [three distinct deities:] Brahmā, Visnu, and Rudra.
˙˙
Furthermore, at various places within the Veda we have the texts ‘Rudra
alone remained. There was no second’ (eka eva rudro ’va tasthe na dvitīyah)
˙
63. He refers to Krsnadvaipāyana, alias Vyāsa, as the author of the Mahābhārata, which does indeed
˙˙˙
assert this validity in the Moksadharma provided that one understands the term pāśupatam to refer in
˙
the meaning ‘that taught by Paśupati’ (following Astādhyāyī 4.3.101: tena proktam) to Śaivism in general
˙˙
rather than specifically to the Pāśupata system. He anachronistically includes under that heading the
Saiddhāntika Śaiva scriptures, and accepts, as some did not, that the passage authorizes not just the
study of these texts but also the enacting of their injunctions.
185

Honoris Causa
and ‘Visnu strode out over [all] this’ (idam visnur vi cakrame); and means of
˙˙ ˙ ˙˙
union with these [deities], [that is to say] methods for their propitiation, are
certainly enjoined in the Veda too. As for the methods taught in the Śaiva
scriptures and the Pañcarātra, they are certainly different; but this does not
amount to an [invalidating] contradiction of the Veda, because these [various]
methods [Vaidika, Śaiva, and Pāñcarātrika] are alternatives from which one
is free to choose. So these two [bodies of scripture, the Śaiva and the Pañ-
carātra,] are not invalid, because they have been composed by a competent
authority [namely God himself] and because they do not contradict the Veda.
Here, then, is a view that has accepted much of the Saiddhāntikas’ own ar-
gument for the validity of their scriptures, namely (1) the evidence of compliance
with Vaidika ordinances, a feature that Jayanta takes to differentiate them mark-
edly from such teachings as those of the ‘Veda-rivalling’ Buddhists, which, as he
claims shortly after the passage quoted here, actually forbid adherence to to these
ordinances; 64 and (2) that of validation by the Vaidika scriptures themselves. In-
deed it appears, if Cakradhara’s commentary on the Nyāyamañjarī expresses a
widely held view, that in this aspect the Naiyāyika defense of the Śaiva scriptures
had actually attempted to strengthen the case made by the Śaivas themselves
by claiming that even the ceremony of Śaiva initiation (dīksā), the centrepiece of
˙
the Mantramārga’s bid to be considered superior to the religion of the Veda and
for this very reason one of the principal grounds for its rejection by the theoreti-
cians of Vaidika orthopraxy, has been validated by the unquestionable evidence
of Vaidika scripture.65
64. Nyāyamañjarī-Āgamaprāmānya, p. 154, l. 31 to p. 155, l. 1: ‘For in the case of the teachings of the
˙
Buddha their being outside the Veda is fully manifest, since they stress that one should avoid behaving
in keeping with the duties imposed by the caste in which one was born.’ Jayanta refers to the Buddhists
and others as ‘Veda-rivalling’, p. 197 [156], l. 6: vedaspardhino bauddhādayo niseddhavyāh.
˙ ˙
65. Cakradhara, Nyāyamañjarīgranthibhaṅga, p. 379, ll. 21–23: ‘Showing in the Dānadharma [of the
Śāntiparvan of the Mahābhārata] that Upamanyu taught Krsna the dīksā taught in those teachings he
˙˙˙ ˙
has made this validity of the Śaiva scriptures clear.’ He has in mind here Mahābhārata 13.15.4ab: ‘And
on the eighth day I was duly initiated (dīksito ’ham yathāvidhi) by that learned brahmin.’ This is in fact a
˙ ˙
spurious argument, since Dīksā here is not Śaiva initiation but ‘[a period of] ascetic restraint’ (syn. vra
˙
186

A significant part of the Saiddhāntika defense of their system is lacking here,

namely Sadyojyotis’s argument that the Śaiva scriptures presuppose the validity
of the Veda to the extent that Śaivism collapses if that presupposition is not de-
fended, which is to say that for the Śaivas the proof of the validity of scripture
(āgamaprāmānyam) must of necessity encompass both the Śaiva and the Vaidika
˙
corpora. Evidently that is because the acceptance of this argument is incompat-
ible with even the most tolerant Vaidika view, since it is inseparably connected
with the doctrine that Śaivism is superior to the faith of the Veda, accepting the
validity of the Veda in its sphere only because it needs to believe that its initiation
is liberating the soul from real bonds.
It is in the same spirit, I propose, that Jayanta puts forward here the vague
and inaccurate claim that the teachings of the Śaiva scriptures are consistent with
those of the Vaidika Upanisads.
˙
This in short is a view that accommodates the religion of the Śaivas but over-
looks what makes that religion unique in their own estimation, choosing not to see
the respects in which the teachings of the Śaivas differ from those of the Vaisnava
˙˙
and Vaidika traditions in matters of metaphysics and soteriology, even though
some of these positions bear strongly on their sense of identity and purpose. The
price of recognition, then, is that the Śaivas must accept a watered-down version
of themselves, one in which they are no longer the inheritors of a uniquely effica-
cious vehicle of salvation, but subscribers to an ecumenism that argues that there
is but one god with many forms and names teaching various paths that lead to
the same goal. They are invited in other words to see themselves as just another
equipolent component of the complex that would come to be called Hinduism.
We might be tempted to see this view of Śaivism as idiosyncratic. It certainly
does not seem to to be found in the work of any other Vaidika authority of this
tam), a common usage in that text; see, e.g., 2.16.13c: ‘emaciated because of his Dīksā’ (dīksākrśatanuh);
˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
5.118.7abc: ‘having reduced her body with various kinds of fasting, with Dīksās, and restraints’ (upavā
˙
saiś ca vividhair dīksābhir niyamais tathā | ātmano laghutām krtvā); and 13.130.50ab: ‘having observed
˙ ˙ ˙
the Dīksā for twelve years’ (cīrtvā dvādaśa varsāni dīksām).
˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
187

Honoris Causa
period.66 However, Jayanta himself blocks this line of thought by stating categor-
ically that his position is that of the greater society (mahājanah), which he defines
˙
as all who live in Āryadeśa within the boundaries of the system of the four caste-
classes and four life-disciplines in accordance with the ordinances of the Veda; 67
it is the consensus of this community which for him constitutes the true arbiter
of orthopraxy and therefore of scriptural validity; and this community, he says,
currently accepts as valid not only the Vedas and the secondary Vaidika scrip-
tures that follow in their wake, but also such other scriptural corpora as are not
in opposition to the Vedas, namely the Śaiva and the Pañcarātra.68
66. It has been claimed by Svāmī Yogīndrānanda, the editor of the Nyāyabhūsana, that the validity of the
˙ ˙
Śaiva scriptures was also defended by its author Bhāsarvajña (fl. c. 900), Jayanta’s near-contemporary
and fellow-Naiyāyika (Introduction, p. 19: śaivagranthānām prāmānyam pratanoti). But this is based on
˙ ˙ ˙
a misunderstanding of Nyāyabhūsana, p. 402, ll. 6–10. The form and terms of Bhāsarvajña’s argument
˙ ˙
in this passage are in fact largely lifted from the Buddhist Dharmakīrti’s auto-commentary on 1.246 of
his Pramānavārttika. Bhāsarvajña, like Dharmakīrti admits that Śaiva Mantras, like any other Mantras,
˙
produce supernatural effects (siddhih). But he neither states nor implies that the scriptures that teach
˙
them are valid.
67. The term Āryadeśa ‘the territory of the Āryas’ in this context does not denote a particular region
of India. Rather it refers to all regions within which the system of the four caste-classes and disciplines
has been established, as opposed to mlecchadeśah, ‘the territory of the barbarians’, where it has not.
˙
Consider, for example, Abhinavagupta, Tantrasāra, p. 133: ‘as the regions of the Āryas are for the ad-
herents of the religion and the regions of the barbarians are for those outside it’ (āryadeśā iva dhār
mikānām mlecchadeśā iva adhārmikānām); and Nyāyamañjarī vol. 1, p. 595, ll. 11–12: ‘Or rather the [true]
˙ ˙ ˙
meaning of words is that established in Āryadeśa. Any other meaning, accepted by the barbarians, is
certainly to be disregarded’ (athavā āryadeśaprasiddha eva śabdānām arthah. itaras tu mlecchajana
˙
sammato ’nādaranīya eva). This distinction between Ārya and Mleccha is cultural rather than racial.
˙
The term mlecchabhāsāh ‘languages of the barbarians’ refers not only to foreign languages, such as
˙ ˙
those of India’s Śaka and Hūna invaders, but also to the Dravidian and other non-Indo-Aryan languages
˙
of the subcontinent. But the regions in which these languages were spoken were not mlecchadeśāh
˙
where the system of the four caste-classes and disciplines had been established, as was the case in the
Dravidian-language regions during our period, at least in the nuclear regions of the various states that
flourished there. Abhinavagupta, we may presume, did not consider the brahmins of the Tamil region
who were his contemporaries to be Mlecchas bereft of religion.
68. Nyāyamañjarī-Āgamaprāmānya, p. 156, ll. 14–15: ‘By the greater society (mahājanah) I mean this
˙ ˙
population established in Āryadeśa comprising all those within the four caste-classes and the four
life-disciplines’; p. 197 (156), ll. 1–4: ‘Only when [a body of scripture] has the support of general ac-
ceptance by the orthoprax consensus can one say without difficulty that it is the teaching of a trust-
worthy source; and the orthoprax consensus recognizes as valid (1) the Vedas, (2) the Purānas and
˙
188

I see no reason to doubt the accuracy of this report of the current state of belief
in the Vaidika community. Jayanta offers no statistics, as he himself admits; 69 but
this would have been a very weak argument indeed if the evidence adduced were
manifestly contrary to what his audience could see for themselves. It is more reason-
able to think that Jayanta is simply attempting to move Vaidika doctrine forward
from its long-established theoretical position on the subject of the non-Vaidika
traditions to take account of a change that had occurred in the lived relationship
between the orthoprax and both Śaivism and Pāñcarātrika Vaisnavism in the cen-
˙˙
turies since the emergence and development of the Mantramārga.
As for what he means to include under the rubric of the valid Śaiva scriptures,
it is clear, though not explicit, that he has in mind only the Saiddhāntika form of
the Mantramārga. For elsewhere he strongly condemns those forms of religion
whose practices violate Vaidika norms of purity and permitted conduct. Thus,
after arguing for the validity of the Śaiva scriptures, to which he refers without
differentiation simply as Śaiva,70 he turns to those forms of religion that he judges
to be invalid. After dismissing Buddhism, he attacks the obscure Samsāramo-
˙
Dharmaśāstras that follow their lead, and (3) some scriptures [namely those of the Śaiva canon and
the Pañcarātra] that are not in contradiction with the Vedas, but not those, such as that taught by the
Buddha, which do contradict them.’
69. Debating the matter with an imaginary Buddhist, Jayanta has told him that Buddhism is invalid be-
cause it is not accepted by the greater society (mahājanah). The Buddhist then asks rhetorically, ‘What
˙
is this “greater society”; what is its form; where is it located; how big is its population; and what are
its customs?’ and adds that in any case the Buddhists have their own “greater society” consisting of
their own co-religionists. Jayanta then admits that he has no physical or quantitative data concerning
this greater society. He cannot describe the physical appearance of its members or their total num-
ber (ākāras tu tasya kīdrśah pānipādam kīdrśam śirogrīvam vā kīyatī tasya samkhyeti purusalaksanāni
˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
ganayitum na jānīmah). But he does know that its values are pervasive, to the extent that the Buddhists
˙ ˙ ˙
themselves are unable to escape them, since they too avoid untouchables, and those (the Śākta Śaivas)
who indulge in orgiastic rites do so covertly, not fully believing in the rightness of their transgressive
actions; see Nyāyamañjarī-Āgamaprāmānya, p. 156, l. 8 to p. 157, l. 10. For the Buddhist prohibition
˙
against the ordination of untouchables see Gunaprabha’s commentary on Vinayasūtra-Pravrajyāvastu,
˙
p. 151: ‘One should not ordain as monks chariot-makers, tanners, Candālas, Pukkaśas, and the like’ (na
˙˙
rathakāra[carmakāra]candālapukkaśatadvidhān pravrājayet).
˙˙
70. Nyāyamañjarī-Āgamaprāmānya, p. 139, ll. 9–10: purānetihāsadharmāśāstrāni vā śaivapāśupatapañ
˙ ˙ ˙
carātrabauddhārhatādīni vā. tatra śaivādīni nirūpayisyāmah; p. 152, l. 5: śaivādivat; l. 8: śaivādyāgamā
˙
nām prāmānyam; p. 153, l. 6: śaivapañcarātrayoh.
˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
189

Honoris Causa
cakas (‘Those who Free Souls from Samsāra [by killing them in order to end their
˙
suffering]’),71 and then goes on to say: 72
How can anyone bring himself even to mention the question of the validity
of those systems whose rites are dominated by engagement in the forbidden?
which his commentator Cakradhara takes, no doubt correctly, to be an allusion

to the Bhairava Śaivism of the Right Stream (daksinasrotah), since to illustrate
˙˙ ˙
Jayanta’s point he quotes a verse that declares that the impurities of the body are
considered pure in that system.73 Then, condemning the relativistic argument that
no system should be judged by any standards other than its own, Jayanta states: 74
As for those others, who practice various impermissible forms of post-

initiatory observance (dīksā) that [claim to] transcend inhibiting duality
˙
(nirvikalpa-) through such means as eating the impure and having sexual in-
tercourse with forbidden partners, [they evidently lack the strength of their
professed conviction, because] they do not do these things openly but act in
secret, shying away from the majority that abides by the rules that govern
the four caste-classes and life-disciplines. For if their faith in their scriptures
is so free of doubt why do they put their teachings into practice like thieves
[avoiding detection].
Here he attacks what can only be Śākta-Śaiva traditions of the Kaula type.
For the use of the term nirvikalpa- in the special sense that we see here, namely
free of doubt, free of inhibition, or free of duality, in the sense of being free of dis-
71. On the Samsāramocakas and the Thags see Halbfass 1983, pp. 10–15.
˙ ˙
72. Nyāyamañjarī-Āgamaprāmānya, p. 155, ll. 5–6.
˙
73. Nyāyamañjarīgranthibhaṅga, vol. 1, p. 380, ll. 22–26): ‘Without a doubt, for Sādhakas in the Bhairava
system faeces, urine, fat, and blood are pure.’ Cf. Sanderson 2005, pp. 110–114, fn. 63 on the ‘five nec-
tars’ (pañcāmrtam).
˙
74. Nyāyamañjarī-Āgamaprāmānya, p. 157, ll. 7–10.
˙
190

crimination between the permitted and the forbidden, is a hallmark of the Śākta-
leaning non-Saiddhāntika and Kaula literature.75 Moreover, the passage brings
to mind others in the Kashmirian literature of this period which use the same
idiom in describing the activities of the Kaulas, such as the satirist Ksemendra’s
˙
description of women in the initiatory circle of a fictional Kaula Guru: 76
Once initiated by that libertine Guru [and Guru of libertines] (jāragurunā)

˙
those beauties would make love with all and sundry, faithfully adhering to the
non-dualistic observance (nirvikalpavrate sthitāh).
˙
and of a caste-promiscuous Kaula orgy as a symptom of the degeneration of soci-

ety that will herald the descent of Kalkin, Visnu’s tenth Avatāra: 77
˙˙
[At that time] the Gurus teach that liberation is attained in a circle gathering
with dyers of cloth, weavers, tanners, cremation-ground attendants (kāpā-
lika-), and other such persons of the service-castes (-śilpibhih), by drinking
˙
[wine] from a single vessel with them and holding an ecstatic orgy of non-
dualistic/indiscriminate (nirvikalpa-) love-making.78
and the historian Kalhana’s comments on Pramadakant ha, the Guru of the
˙ ˙˙
Kashmirian king Kalaśa (r. ad 1063–1089): 79
75. See, e.g., Bhairavamangalā f. 15r6–7: nirvikalpo ’viśaṅkī ca *pañcāmrtam (corr.: pañcāmrtas
˙ ˙
Cod.) upāharet; and Matasāra f. 62v1–3: bhaginībhrātaraih sārdham śisyaih pūrveva dīksitaih || tataś
˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
cakropacārena bhaksayeta śanaih śanaih | mukhān mukhena samprāśya nirvikalpena cetasā || tatah
˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
praksālya hastau ca alinā siddhim icchatā | bhaktyā viśuddhayā yukto pūjayet parameśvaram.
˙
76. Narmamālā 2.54.
77. Daśāvatāracarita 10.26.
78. For the use of the term kāpālikah in the meaning ‘cremation-ground attendant’ (→ Kashmiri kāwuj)
˙
see Sanderson 2009a, p. 294, fn. 699.
79. Rājataraṅginī 7.277–278.

˙
191

Honoris Causa
The Guru, by teaching forbidden [religious] practices to that [king], who was
already wicked by nature, abolished in him all consciousness of the distinction
between permitted and forbidden sexual partners, and he himself engaged
in sexual intercourse without inhibition even with his own daughter. What
greater evidence of the freedom from duality (gatavikalpatvam) 80 achieved by
this Guru could I provide?
Bhat t a Rāmakant ha II’s Śaivas without Pride of Transcendence

˙˙ ˙˙
Having established that Jayanta’s view of Saiddhāntika Śaivism as a valid from of
religion is unlikely to have been a minority view in the general Vaidika population
outside Śaiva circles, we must wonder whether it is likely that this view could
have been as general as he says it was in the absence of Śaivas who subscribed to
it themselves.
There are indeed indications that an ideologically emasculated Śaivism of the
kind outlined by Jayanta did exist and therefore that the great Kashmirian Naiyā-
yika was indeed expressing the view of an already established segment of the Śai-
vas themselves. Furthermore, we may suspect that this had become the majority
view among them, and that the learned theories of the Śaiva theologians, which
demonstrate how Śaivism is superior to the Vaidika religion, how its rituals and
meditations work on an altogether higher level and its doctrines penetrate far be-
yond the reach of its rival, were not so much articulations of established, common
belief as fundamentalist attempts to revitalize and recover a tradition that was fast
losing a sense of its original calling. Thus Bhatta Rāmakant ha, writing in the tenth
˙˙ ˙˙
century, when Saiddhāntika learning in Kashmir was at its height, tells us that one
of his reasons for writing his commentary on the Saiddhāntika scripture Mataṅga
pārameśvara was to counteract attempts to draw the understanding of the text
into the Vaidika domain, by going back to the foundational doctrines of Sadyo-
jyotis and Brhaspati and sweeping away what he saw as the inauthentic interpre-
˙
tations of the Siddhānta that had developed since the time of these two founding
80. This expression gatavikalpatvam equals nirvikalpatvam, i.e., ‘being nirvikalpah.’

˙
192

fathers of Saiddhāntika exegesis.81 And he confirms that this loss of identity was
well advanced when he targets for criticism the view of some at least of his Śaiva
co-religionists that the execution of their regular rituals of worship was merely
the fulfilment of a duty, with no higher purpose than conformity to scriptural
injunction, which is to say, the view of Śaivas who had abandoned a properly Śaiva
perspective and substituted that of the Mīmāmsaka theorists of Vaidika ritual: 82
˙
Now, for what purpose do we do [our obligatory Śaiva] rituals, time-fixed and
[incidental]? Some say that our engagement in these is entirely without pur-
pose, [that we do them simply] because they are enjoined [by our scriptures],
just as the Mīmām sakas [hold with regard to their own obligatory rituals].
˙
That is not correct; because [the two cases, the Vaidika and Śaiva,] are differ-
ent. For the [Mīmām sakas] hold that [their] scriptures are valid because they
˙
are not the product of any conscious being [but are an eternal self-existent
body of injunctions that minds can perceive but have not created]. So they
may well formulate such a view. But in our system [our scriptures are held
to be valid] as the work of all-knowing [God]. So how can [we believe that]
he could teach something that has no purpose? Or rather, if he does so then
he must be comparable to an imbecile or madman and therefore, being non-
omniscient, not worthy of our regard, with the undesired consequence that
our scriptures would be invalid.83
81. See Mataṅgapārameśvaravrtti, Vidyāpāda, Maṅgala vv. 2 and 4 (2 = Moksakārikāvrtti, Maṅgala v. 1).
˙ ˙ ˙
For the theses, supported by these verses, (1) that Bhatta Rāmakantha saw his mission as that of re-
˙˙ ˙˙
turning the Siddhānta to its original purity, freeing it from orthoprax Vaidika and Śākta influences, and
(2) that the success of his mission explains the long period of time between the works of Sadyojyotis
and Brhaspati, c. ad 650–750, and the next surviving works, from tenth-century Kashmir, see Sander-
son 2007a. Instead of the edition’s gurūnām api tau vandyau in 2c the Kashmirian manuscript of the
˙
Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (P) reads gurūnām agrato vandyau (not reported in Sanderson
˙
2007a), which I judge to be preferable, both in sense and as the lectio difficilior, that is to say, the reading
less readily explained as a corruption of the other.
82. Mataṅgapārameśvaravrtti, introduction to Kriyāpāda 3.100c–101 (p. 66, ll. 3–6).

˙
83. For what the Kashmirian Saiddhāntika scholars advocated as the correct view of the superior
purpose of the daily, periodic, and incidental rituals of worship required of Saiddhāntika initiates see
Sanderson 1995, pp. 38–43.
193

Honoris Causa
Aparāditya’s Śaivas by Birth

A comparable situation is revealed by Aparāditya, the Śilāhāra king of North
Konkan, writing in the early twelfth century, through one of the Śaiva arguments
for acceptability that he puts up to refute in in his commentary on Yājñavalkya
smrti. The Śaiva is made to argue that since the adherents of the Vaidika religion
˙
hold that the injunctive force of the Veda is directed only to specific, restricted
classes of persons, they can have no reason to deny that the Śaiva scriptures are
valid for Śaivas as members of a similar community of birth, which suggests that
its members, when asked why they engage in their special Śaiva rituals, would
have responded like Georg Bühler’s Śaiva brahmin informants in Kashmir in 1875
that they attached no special importance to them but did them because this was
the long-established custom of their community.84 Aparāditya responds by at-
tacking the very notion that it is possible to be a Śaiva by birth (jātyā), to be, as it
were, a member of a caste of Śaivas.
He does so in the course of his commentary on 1.7, which details the means
that enable men to know their religious duty (dharmamūlam) – namely Śruti,
Smrti, observable orthopraxy (sadācārah), and, within the limits set by these,
˙ ˙
mental satisfaction, enabling one, for example, to decide that one is now ready
to end a course of ascetic observance, and personal preference, in such matters
as choosing the time at which to perform some pious action – taking this oppor-
tunity to examine the objection that this list wrongly omits the Śaiva, Pāśupata,
Pāñcarātrika, and other (unspecified) scriptural corpora.
The initial proposition is that these corpora have as good a claim as the Vaid-
ika to be accepted, because they too are eternal revelation, and that therefore
the highest good will be attained by enacting their injunctions. Aparāditya then
counters by insisting that this cannot apply to orthoprax Vaidikas, because the
Śaiva scriptures teach that the Vaidika rites are inefficacious when they say, as we
have seen, that these rituals are enjoined on Śaivas not because of their efficacity
but because by doing them in addition to their Śaiva rites Śaivas will ingratiate
84. See Bühler 1877, p. 24, and the discussion of the view that he reports in Sanderson 1995, pp. 37–38,
and 2007b, pp. 110–112.
194

themselves with those who, in the Śaiva perspective, are not yet ready for the
higher system.85
He next addresses a passage from the Devīpurāna that condemns to torture
˙
in hell those who despise either the teaching of Śiva or the Vedas, and a passage
from the Yogayājñavalkya 86 which includes ‘the teachings of Paśupati’ (pāśupa-
tam) in a list of those that one is forbidden to challenge with logical argument.
He argues that these passages merely prohibit condemnation and permit study
and do not allow the inference that one is also permitted to put their injunctions
into practice; 87 and he provides several reasons that block that inference, the most
significant of which is perhaps that if a person were to take Śaiva initiation, as
he would have to do if he intended to enact the Śaiva injunctions, he would be
punished with hell, according to the Śaiva scriptures, if he had a Vaidika Śrāddha
ceremony performed for him.88 The unstated point of this, I propose, is that he
thereby provides a refutation of the Śaivas’ claim that their scriptures are accept-
able because they require their initiates to adhere rigidly to Vaidika regulations
and so are not contrary to the Veda (vedaviruddha-). For while it is true that they
were enjoined to undergo all the Vaidika rites of qualification (samskārāh) prior to
˙ ˙
their initiation, namely up to upanayanam or marriage, following the procedures
laid down in the Grhyasūtra of their branch of the Veda, one major rite of passage
˙
remained, namely cremation (antyestih), and the various rites of offerings to the
˙˙
deceased thereafter. For these the Śaivas developed their own rituals and it was
these that had to be followed in the case of the initiated.89
85. Yājñavalkyasmrtitīkā, vol. 1, p. 10, ll. 14–16.

˙ ˙
86. A variant of Mahābhārata 12.337.59.
87. Yājñavalkyasmrtitīkā, vol. 1, p. 10, l. 23 to p. 11, l. 5.

˙ ˙
88. Yājñavalkyasmrtitīkā, vol. 1, p. 11, ll. 7–9.
˙ ˙
89. See Sanderson 1995, pp. 31–32; and Mirnig 2009. The anonymous ritual manuals used by Śaiva
officiants in Kashmir for cremation and the post-mortuary Śrāddha ceremonies are of two kinds. In
one the Śaiva procedures alone are given. In the other we find both the Vaidika and the Śaiva, the
two proceeding in tandem from phase to phase with the Vaidika element always preceding the Śaiva.
This hybrid, which is not envisaged in the Śaiva Paddhatis of pan-Indian authority, is likely to have
been introduced precisely out of anxiety that omitting the Vaidika procedures might have a negative
195

Honoris Causa
It is at this point that he moves on to address the proposition that the Śaiva
scriptures are valid as ordinances for the Śaivas as members of a distinct commu-
nity entered at birth: 90
Can it not be conceded that just as the Vedas and [Smr tis] apply to only
˙
certain specific persons [defined by their birth] so the Śaiva and other [non-
Vaidika] scriptures [are valid because they] are for Śaivas and others as per-
sons who are members of specific communities[, Śaiva or other,] that they
have entered through birth? No, it cannot. This is because in passages such
as ‘No persons other than those for whom all the rites from conception to
cremation with [the Veda’s] Mantras have been prescribed are qualified for
this teaching’ Manu and other [promulgators of Smr ti texts] have given us
˙
evidence only of the qualification of brahmins[, Ksatriyas,] and [Vaiśyas] for
˙
their teachings but not of the qualification of ‘Śaiva brahmins’ and the like for
corpora of scriptures taught by Śiva and others. Then let it be conceded that
Śūdras [at least] are qualified to enact the teachings of Śiva[, since they have
no access to the Veda and its Mantras and so fall outside Manu’s definition
of those who are qualified and obliged to enact his teachings]. But that too we
will not concede, because no Smr ti or any other [Vaidika scriptural source]
˙
accepts this. Furthermore, there is in fact no such person as a Śaiva by birth
(jātyā) to whom the Śaiva scriptures could apply. For the word śaivah ‘Śaiva’
˙
[means simply] ‘one who studies or understands the scriptures taught by Śiva’.
[This is established by the semantic conditions governing the formation of the
word śaivah from śivah through śaivam according to the grammatical rules of
˙ ˙
consequence. See for an example of the hybrid form the Kashmirian manuscript Vaidikatāntrikasa
mastividhinā (samasti em. : samisti Cod.) ekoddistaśrāddhavidhih (ekoddista em. : ekoddiste Cod.), ‘The
˙˙ ˙˙ ˙˙ ˙˙ ˙ ˙˙ ˙˙
ritual of the Ekoddista Śrāddha following the procedure in which Vaidika and Tāntrika [Paddhatis] are
˙˙
combined.’ This is how the work is identified in its final colophon. At its beginning we read atha vaid
ikatāntrika ekoddistakaranavidhih (ekoddista em : ekoddiste Cod.), ‘Next the ritual for performing the
˙˙ ˙ ˙˙ ˙˙
Ekoddista [Śrāddha] that is [both] Vaidika and Tāntrika.’
˙˙
90. Yājñavalkyasmrtitīkā on 1.7, p. 13, l. 23 to p. 14, l. 11.
˙ ˙
196

derivation. Thus] by applying the suffix -a to [the name] śivah ‘Śiva’ we form
˙
[the derivative noun] śaivam in the meaning ‘that which has been taught by
Śiva’, that is to say, the corpus of Śaiva scriptures; and we then form the word
śaivah (‘a Śaiva’) from this in the meaning ‘one who understands or studies
˙
those scriptures’, the same suffix -a being added after the word śaivam in ac-
cordance with the rule ‘[-a after N in the sense] “one who studies N, one who
understands N” and then elided by the rule “substitution of zero [for -a in
the meaning “one who studies N, one who understands N” when that suffix
comes] after [a word that has already been formed by the addition of the affix
-a in the meaning] “taught [by N].” Pāśupata and other [words of this kind,
such as Bauddha, Kāpila, Kānāda, Vaisnava, Jaina, etc.] are formed in the
˙ ˙˙
same way [to mean “one who studies or understands what has been taught by
Paśupati,” and so on].” 91 So the Śaiva and analogous bodies of scripture func-
tion without having naturally fixed social groups to ground them; and from
this it follows that they are analogous to pictures [drawn] in the air. This being
the case, they must certainly be rejected [as sources of valid knowledge] in [the
domain of] religious practice.
The view whose prevalence is attested by this attack would have been equally
unacceptable to the likes of Bhatta Rāmakant ha II and Abhinavagupta, though
˙˙ ˙˙
for the very different reason that it reveals a complete surrender of the properly
Śaiva view that Śaivism is a universal revelation, reaching anyone whom Śiva
deems ready to be liberated, regardless of such incidentals as region, caste, or
lineage.92
91. The grammmatical rules that Aparāditya applies here are Pānini, Astādhyāyī 4.3.101, 4.2.59, and
˙ ˙˙
4.2.64.
92. Note in this context the commonly expressed Śaiva doctrine that division by birth into castes is
an artificial construct that overlays and obscures the unity of humanity. For text and translation of text
passages, both Saiddhāntika and non-Saiddhāntika, that express this conviction see Sanderson 2009a,
pp. 289–290, fns. 689–692, and pp. 292–294; and Sanderson 2009b.
197

Honoris Causa
Hinduism
It is entirely reasonable to claim in the light of this evidence that a complex corre-
sponding roughly to what would come to be called Hinduism was already recog-
nized, though not yet named, around the turn of the ninth and tenth centuries.
At this juncture Jayanta assures us that the orthoprax majority had conceded
that the Vaisnavism of the Pañcarātra and the non-transgressive forms of Śaivism
˙˙
(therefore excluding those of the Bhairavatantras and Kulamārga) were valid and
that communities that followed them were acceptable co-religionists; and we have
seen evidence that Jayanta’s portrayal of these systems was not merely an out-
sider’s projection: it corresponded to the way in which what was probably the
great majority of Vaisnava and Śaiva adherents had come to see themselves, by
˙˙
surrendering the doctrines that were intended to keep alive their sense of tran-
scendence. This change of perspective, moreover, is one that is certainly more
tolerant of diversity than the strictly Śaiva, which admitted only a hierarchy in
which other vehicles of salvation, Vaidika and Vaisnava, are subordinate to it.
˙˙
Here we have rather the view that the Vaidika, Vaisnava, and Śaiva paths are
˙˙
options determined by inherited practice leading to a single Vaidika goal. It must
be kept in mind, however, that this congeries of equipolent options was never the
whole of Indian religious awareness in this period. Learned scholars among the
Śaivas and Śākta-Śaivas strove by various strategies to keep alive in initiates the
scripturally sanctioned belief that their Śaiva practices were not just a variant of a
single accommodating religion but something which had the power to lead them
to an ultimate goal that far transcended what either the Vaidika or the Vaisnava
˙˙
system could reach, and Vaidika ideologues such as Aparāditya held out to the
bitter end against this trend to accept what from their point of view was forbid-
den religious practice following false scriptures.
Religion and the State: A Maximally Tolerant View

of What Is Acceptable in Matters of Religion
In Jayanta’s play Āgamadambara we have seen the uncompromising Vaidika camp
˙
attempt and fail to impose its Manu-inspired vision of a society free of all but
properly Vaidika religion. When the suppression of an extreme fringe cult leads
to panic among the Śaivas, the king, a Śaiva himself, not necessarily an initiate
198

but a publicly declared loyal devotee of Śiva (paramamāheśvarah),93 who had at

˙
the beginning of his reign founded temples for the installation of Śivas whose
names incorporated those of himself (Śaṅkaragaurīśvara) 94 and his chief queen
(Sugandheśvara), intervenes and ensures that the status quo is maintained. The
play ends with an orchestrated debate between the Vaidikas and the preceptors
of the other faiths held in the Vaisnava Ranasvāmin temple in Srinagar on the
˙˙ ˙
subject of whether the Pañcarātra and the scriptures of the other non-Vaidika
systems are or are not valid. In front of an audience of thousands, including the
former Snātaka Samkarsana, now turned ultra-tolerant minister of religious
˙ ˙ ˙
affairs,95 the Naiyāyika Sāhata, also called Dhairyarāśi, appointed as adjudictor
˙
by the order of the king himself (nrpādeśāt), hears the various disputants put their
˙
cases and then delivers his judgement. In this he rejects the narrow Vaidika view
of validity and advocates one with the greatest latitude, stopping short only of ap-
proving transgressive, licentious, and violent cults such as were certainly present
in Kashmir and elsewhere at this time. This view goes even beyond that enun-
ciated above to recognize that not only Vaisnavism and Śaivism but also Bud-
˙˙
dhism and Jainism are valid and must therefore be tolerated, holding that there
is a single omniscient and nameless deity who in consideration of the differing
intellectual dispositions of human beings has manifested himself variously as the
propagators of all faiths: as Śiva, Paśupati, Kapila, Visnu, Samkarsana, the Jina,
˙˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
93. Āgamadambara, prose between 3.3 and 3.4; prose before 4.2. He is also described there to the
˙
same effect as puraharahrdayasya ‘one whose heart is given to the destoyer of the [three] celestial
˙
palaces’ (prose after 4.6).
94. Kalhana, Rājataraṅginī 5.156–158. The two Śivas were installed in his new capital Śaṅkarapura or
˙ ˙
Śaṅkarapattana (now Pattan/Patan in the Baramulla district of Kashmir), which he founded with his
˙
own name after coming to the throne. The two temples survive in ruins beside the road that runs from
Srinagar to Baramulla, approximately equidistant from both.
95. Samkarsana, who in the first part of the play was the champion of the view that all non-Vaidika
˙ ˙ ˙
views are invalid, is described by the Vaidika officiant who earlier lamented Samkarsana’s failure to
˙ ˙ ˙
push this view through, when he catches sight of him in this gathering of the learned, as a champion of
the view that all (established) religions are valid; see the prose after 4.4: ‘We have direct experience
of the power of Samkarsana [in this matter]. For he [has become] an adherent of the doctrine of the
˙ ˙ ˙
authoritativeness of all the religions’ (drstah samkarsanapratāpah. sa hi sarvāgamaprāmānyavādī).
˙ ˙˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
199

Honoris Causa
the Buddha, and Manu.96 The only criteria of validity from this point of view are
expressed as follows: 97
This path of validation cannot be applied to any [tradition regardless of its

character], but only to religious systems that meet the following criteria:
(1) they must have an unbroken tradition known to all; (2) the community
of the orthoprax (āryalokah) must not be loth to be acquainted with them or
˙
speak about them; (3) the practices that they advocate must not be beyond
the pale of [what is acceptable to] society (janabāhyam); and (4) must not en-
danger [its members] (sabhayam); (5) their character must not be manifestly
new-fangled (na rūpam yesām sphurati navam abhyutthitam iva); (6) they must
˙ ˙ ˙
not have the appearance of the teachings of madmen (pramattagītatvam);
(7) they must not be teachings of Kaulas (akaulikatvam); 98 and (8) their source
must not be greed or any other [base motive] (lobhādi).
This position that all religious traditions (sarvāgama-) are entitled to be con-
sidered valid, if they meet the above criteria, is presented in theistic terms. A
nameless supreme being is declared to have taught these various religions by as-
suming the form of their promulgators. However, it is clear that this dresses up in
religious language what is in effect a juridical and political view of what the state
should tolerate. The issue on this level is not truth or falsity but legality and the
policy to be followed by the state in its role as guardian of the boundaries of the
permissible, or rather, to use the monarchical language used by our authors, by
the king in his role as the guardian and guide of the entire socio-religious order
(sarvavarnāśramaguruh) or, to use a phrase favoured by Jayanta, the king as the
˙ ˙
96. Āgamadambara 4.57. These are in order the propagators of the Śaiva, Pāśupata, Sāmkhya,
˙ ˙
Vaisnava, Pāñcarātrika, Jaina, and Buddhist systems, and the core Smrti of the Vaidika tradition.
˙˙ ˙
97. Āgamadambara 4.100–101.
˙
98. I have tentatively conjectured the reading akaulikatvam here in place of the manuscripts’ alauki
katvam because the latter nonsensically excludes from acceptance any tradition that is not mundane
(laukika-). As we have seen, Śaṅkaravarman’s minister Jayanta was uncompromising in his condemna-
tion of Kaula practice, but it is nonetheless surprising that this list should make so specific an exclusion.
200

authoritative judge (-acāryah) of the boundaries (maryādā) of religious conduct

˙
(dharmah) within that order.99
˙
However, the king’s role was not merely to police these boundaries. It was also
to promote the peaceful co-existence of the faiths through even-handed patron-
age. During our period the publicly declared personal religious commitment of
kings, in addition to their commitment to preserve the Vaidika socio-religious
order, generally took the form of devotion to Śiva, Visnu, the Sun-God (Sūrya,
˙˙
Āditya), or the Goddess (Bhagavatī), the deities of the new initiatory religions, or
to the Buddha (Sugata, Tathāgata) of Buddhism or the Arhats of Jainism, these
allegiances being commonly announced in their inscriptions by the inclusion
amid their royal titles of epithets that mean ‘entirely (parama-, atyanta-, param)
devoted’ to whichever of these deities or religious founders they favoured. Thus
devout worshippers of Śiva/Maheśvara are identified as paramamāheśvarah,
˙
atyantamāheśvarah, or paramaśaivah; of Visnu as paramabhāgavatah, parama-
˙ ˙ ˙˙ ˙
vaisnavah, or atyantabhagavadbhaktah; of the Sun as paramādityabhaktah or para-
˙˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
masaurah; of the Goddess (Bhagavatī) as param bhagavatībhaktah; of the Buddha
˙ ˙ ˙
as paramasaugatah or paramatāthāgatah; and of the Jaina Arhats as paramārhatah
˙ ˙ ˙
or paramajainah.100
˙
However, it was rarely the case that a king’s publicly declared allegiance to
one or another of these traditions was accompanied by strict exclusivity of pa-
tronage. For while a king might favour one religion over another, say Vaisnavism
˙˙
over Śaivism, it was common, and no doubt politic, for him to extend support
to religious traditions other than his own. Thus, the Kārkotakas of Kashmir,
˙
who following the Śaiva kings of the Hephthalite Hun dynasty that had ruled
the country from early in the sixth century 101 held power from the seventh to the
99. Āgamadambara, prose after 2.20: varnāśramadharmamaryādācāryah; prose after 4.104: varnāś
˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
ramamaryādācāryah.
˙
100. See Sircar 1966, s.v. for all except paramārhatah and paramajainah, for the first of which see, e.g.,
˙ ˙
Kumārapālacaritrasamgraha pp. 28, 45, 108, and for the other, e.g., Vividhatīrthakalpa, p. 98. Also found
˙
are epithets of the same kind expressing devotion to Bhairava (atyantasvāmimahābhairavabhaktah)
˙
or Narasimha (paramanārasimhah); see Sircar 1966, s.v.
˙ ˙ ˙
101. Dani 1996, pp. 173–174.
201

Honoris Causa
ninth centuries, were consistently devotees of Visnu, offering no support to the

˙˙
cult of Śiva, yet they also supported Buddhism and the cult of the Sun.102
Similarly, the Maitrakas of Valabhī were consistently Śaiva from the sixth to
the eighth centuries, yet, as we know from their copper-plate grants, Xuanzang,
and the Mañjuśriyamūlakalpa, they were also generous patrons of Buddhism; 103
and the Pālas of Bihar and Bengal, though Buddhists, continued to support
Śaivism and Vaisnavism,104 as did the Candras of Arakan; 105 the predominantly
˙˙
Śaiva Licchavi and Thākurī kings of Nepal were generous patrons of Bud-
˙
dhism; 106 and simultaneous royal patronage of Śaivism and Buddhism was also a
conspicuous feature of religion in mainland Southeast Asia, in the kingdoms of
the Khmers, Chams, Sumatrans, Sundanese, and Javanese.107
In the south of India too we find examples of royal patronage of more than
one religious tradition. The Pallava Mahendravarman I Gunabhara was a Śaiva
˙
convert from Jainism if we may believe the Tamil Śaiva hagiography. As a Śaiva
he established rock-cut cave temples of Śivas with his biruda names: Śatrum-
alleśvara at Dalavānūr,108 Avanibhājanapallaveśvara at Śīyamaṅgalam,109 and Lal-
˙
102. See Sanderson 2009a, p. 73.
103. In the Alīnā copper-plate inscription of Śīlāditya VI Dhrūbhata of ad 766 (cii 3:39) the account of
˙
the Maitraka lineage jumps from the Śaiva founder, Bhatārka, over the next four generations, which we
˙
know from other inscriptions to have included a Vaisnava and a Saura, to Guhasena. He and his thirteen
˙˙
descendants down to Śīlāditya VI are identified as paramamāheśvarah, with the exception of Śīlāditya
˙
IV and Śīlāditya VI, who are given no sectarian epithet. For the Maitrakas patronage of Buddhism (in
its pre-Tantric forms) see Mañjuśriyamūlakalpa 53.538–549; and Xuanzang on the recent conversion of
the king of Valabhī to Buddhism (Beal 1884, vol. 2. p. 267). Of the land-grant documents of the Maitrakas
of Valabhī three quarters are records of grants to brahmins, but the remaining quarter report grants
made by these kings to Buddhist institutions (Schmiedchen 2007, p. 360). On the Maitrakas support of
Buddhism see Sanderson 2009a, pp. 72–73.
104. See Sanderson 2009a, pp. 87–117.
105. Sanderson 2009a, pp. 84–86.
106. Sanderson 2009a, pp. 74–80.
107. Sanderson 2009a, pp. 171–173.
108. Mahalingam 1988, no. 19 and no. 20.
109. Mahalingam 1988, no. 29.
202

itāṅkurapallaveśvara Tiruchirāpal l i.110 Yet he also excavated a rock-cut temple of

˙˙
Visnu with his name (Mahendravisnu) in his town of Mahendrapura.111 We find
˙˙ ˙˙
the same phenomenon in the dynasty of the Eastern Gaṅgas of Kaliṅganagara in
northern Andhra Pradesh, a line all of whose known rulers, from the first half of
the sixth century through to the end of our period, were declared devout worship-
pers of Śiva (paramamāheśvarah). An inscription issued in year 79 of the Gaṅga
˙
era, which is to say, c. ad 578, records that Mahārāja Hastivarman Ranabhīta of
˙
this line made a land-grant for the support of a temple of a Visnu incorporating
˙˙
his name (Ranabhītodaya) in spite of the declaration that the donor is a para-
˙
mamāheśvarah.112 The Hoysala king Visnuvardhana (r. 1110–1141) likewise, though
˙ ˙ ˙˙
strongly influenced by the Śrīvaisnava movement, was also a generous patron of
˙˙
both Jainism and Śaivism.113
There were even kings whose inscriptions depart from the convention of de-
claring allegiance to a single tradition by declaring them ‘entirely devoted’ to both
Śiva and Visnu. This is true of the Pallava Narasimhavarman II (r. c. 700–728),114
˙˙ ˙
the Gaṅga Anantavarman Codagaṅga in his Korni plates of 1081/2,115 Vaidyadeva
˙
of Prāgjyotisa in his copper-plate grant probably of 1142,116 and Jayabhañja of the
˙
Bhañjas of Kolāda in the eleventh or twelfth century.117
˙
We also have evidence from the Khmer realm that there were Vaisnava dig-
˙˙
nitaries within the predominantly Śaiva royal staff, that members of the same
family could be of different religious allegiances, and that the state limited the
freedom of individuals to change their religion only in the special case of persons
112. Rajaguru 1960, no. 4.
113. Settar 1992, pp. 46–48 (Jainism under Visnuvardhana), pp. 50–51 (Vaisnavism under the same),
˙˙ ˙˙
pp. 60–61 (Śaivism under the same).
114. Mahalingam 1988, no. 53, ll. 10–11.
115. Singh 1994, p. 113.
116. Epigraphia Indica 2:28, l. 47.
117. Singh 1994, p. 105 (śrīśaṅkarabhaktimān, śrīvaisnavah).

˙˙ ˙
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Honoris Causa
from certain title-groups (varna) who had been selected for training as Śaiva offi-
˙
ciants in the service of the king and were forbidden by a decree of Jayavarman V
(r. c. 970–1000) to become Vaisnavas.118
˙˙
There are also numerous instances of royal marriages across religious bound-
aries in the subcontinent. In the fourth century the Vākātakas Rudrasena I
˙
(r. c. 335–360) and Prthivīsena I (r. c. 360–395) were Śaivas.119 But c. 388 their suc-
˙
cessor Rudrasena II (r. c. 395–405) married Prabhāvatīguptā, the daughter of the
Gupta emperor Candragupta II (r. 376–415), a princess who in accordance with
the religious preference of her paternal family was a devotee of Visnu (atyant-
˙˙
abhagavadbhaktā). Though Rudrasena continued to support the faith of his pre-
decessors, he declared himself a Vaisnava, no doubt under her influence,120 and
˙˙
developed Rāmagiri (Ramtek) as a Vaisnava state temple-complex.
˙˙
We have other examples in Kalhana’s Rājataraṅginī. As we have seen above,
˙ ˙
at the end of the ninth century, after the demise of the Vaisnava Kārkotaka dy-
˙˙ ˙
nasty, Śaṅkaravarman (883–902) was a devout worshipper of Śiva and accordingly
founded Śiva temples with his and his queen’s names. But his queen Sugandhā, a
foreigner from the north, probably a Dard (5.157), was a supporter of the Vaisnava
˙˙
Pāñcarātrikas,121 and while she occupied the throne from 904 to 906 after the
death of her husband and the short reigns of her sons, the boy king Gopālavar-
man (902–904) and his younger brother Samkata (904), she established a Visnu
˙ ˙ ˙˙
Gopālakeśava and a Gopālamat ha with the former’s name (5.244). Moreover,
˙
Nandā, Gopālavarman’s child bride, no doubt chosen for him by his Vaisnava
˙˙
mother, founded a Visnu (Nandā)keśava and a Nandāmat ha with hers (5.245).
˙˙ ˙
After the end of the rule of this dynasty in 939 the brahmins bestowed the
crown on Yaśaskaravarman (939–948), the son of Prabhākaradeva, the trea-
surer of Gopālavarman, and the the secret lover of his Vaisnava queen Sugandhā
˙˙
118. Sanderson 2003, pp. 434–435.
119. The Vākātaka inscriptions identify them as atyantasvāmimahābhairavabhaktah and atyantam

˙ ˙
āheśvarah respectively.
˙
120. Bakker 1997, pp. 17–22.
121. Āgamadambara, p. 196, ll. 18–19.

˙
204

(5.469–477). This paramour may well have been the unnamed royal functionary
rumoured 122 to have been a supporter, like the queen, of the Vaisnava Pāñcarātri-
˙˙
kas. In any case his son Yaśaskaravarman was a Vaisnava and one who exerted
˙˙
himself to encourage orthopraxy and suppress the Śākta-leaning Śaivism then
strong in Kashmir (6.6–12, 108–112). He began the construction of a temple for
a Visnu Yaśaskarasvāmin, incorporating his own name, but died before it was
˙˙
finished (6.140).
His successor Parvagupta (949–950) was a Śaiva, as we may infer from the
fact that he established a Śiva Parvagupteśvara (6.137) and at the end of his life
chose to die in the precincts of the Śaiva temple of the Sureśvarīksetra (6.147). His
˙
religious conviction would not then have predisposed him to complete the Visnu
˙˙
temple of his anti-Śaiva Vaisnava predecessor, but he was tricked into doing so
˙˙
by one of Yaśaskaravarman’s widows, no doubt another Vaisnava, who promised
˙˙
him her favours if he did so and then when he had completed the work, commit-
ted pious suicide by offering herself into a sacrificial fire (6.140–144).
Parvagupta was succeeded by Ksemagupta (950–958), whose Śaiva persuasion
˙
can be seen from the report that he founded a temple for a Śiva Ardhanārīśvara
under the name Ksemagaurīśvara (6.172–173). But he married Diddā, the ruthless
˙
and dissolute daughter of Simharāja, the Śāhi chief of Lohara, a mountainous dis-
˙
trict adjoining Kashmir on the south-west (6.176). Again a matrimonial alliance
favoured Visnu. It was probably through her influence – the king was so besotted
˙˙
with her that he was mockingly known as Diddāksema (6.177) – that when he
˙
fell fatally ill he chose to go to die in the Vaisnava holy site Varāhaksetra (6.186).
˙˙ ˙
During her long dominance of nearly fifty years until 1008 she enshrined a Visnu
˙˙
Abhimanyusvāmin with the name of her deceased son Abhimanyu (6.299), two
Visnus Diddāsvāmin with her own name (6.300, 302), and a Visnu Simhasvāmin
˙˙ ˙˙ ˙
in Lohara (8.1822) with the name of her father (6.304); and her illustrious ma-
ternal grandfather Bhīma, the Śāhi king of Udabhānda (Hund) on the Indus,
˙˙
enshrined and richly endowed a Visnu Bhīmasvāmin with his name in Kashmir
˙˙
proper, at Bumzu near Bavan (6.178).
122. Āgamadambara, p. 196, ll. 19–20.

˙
205

Honoris Causa
Nor does it seem that Indian courts were less tolerant than the Khmer when
it came to the religion of their members. It seems not to have been the case, for
example, that a Śaiva could not aspire to ministerial office under a Vaisnava king.
˙˙
We have a striking example of this at the beginning of our period at Udayagiri
near the ancient city of Vidiśā in central India, where an inscription records that
Vīrasena, a minister of the Vaisnava (paramabhāgavatah) Gupta emperor Can-
˙˙ ˙
dragupta II (r. c. 375–415), had a cave excavated for Śiva when he had come there
with that monarch while the latter was engaged in a military campaign.123
The state’s support for religions other than that professed by the monarch in
the inscriptions issued by his chancellery is also clear from evidence of his par-
ticipation in their major festivals. Xuanzang’s Da Tang Xiyuji, the account of his
journey to and sojourn in India from 629 (var. 627) to 645 (var. 644), completed in
646 on his return to China, tells us that in the vicinity of the city of Kanyakubja
(Kanauj) were a Buddhist monastery, a temple of the Sun-God, and a temple of
Śiva, all three of similar scale and grandeur; 124 and Huili and Yanzong’s biogra-
phy of this learned Chinese pilgrim (Da ci en si san cang fa shi zhuan), completed
in 688, reports that in Kanyakubja during the Buddhist quinquennial festival
of the general distribution of alms (pañcavarsaparisat), the Pusyabhūti emperor
˙ ˙ ˙
Harsa, whose Śaiva allegiance is reported by his biographer Bāna,125 offered wor-
˙ ˙
ship to the Buddha on the first day, to the Sun-God on the second, and to Ma-
heśvara (Śiva) on the third.126 This multi-faith environment, with several equally
balanced religious traditions flourishing side by side, is, I propose, the probable
cause of the great inconstancy of the declared religious allegiance of the kings
of this once great city, seen first among the Pusyabhūtis and then among the
˙
Gurjara-Pratīhāras. Among the Pusyabhūtis the emperor Harsa, as we have seen,
˙ ˙
123. cii 3:6, l. 5: ‘[Vīrasena, Minister of Peace and War of Candragupta] had this cave constructed out of
devotion for the god Śambhu when he had come to this place together with the king himself, who was
seeking to conquer the entire world (krtsnaprthvījayārtthena rājñaiveha sahāgatah).’
˙ ˙ ˙
124. Beal 1884, vol. 1, pp. 222–223.
125. Bāna, Harsacarita, p. 45, l. 18: paramamāheśvarah sa bhūpālo . . .

˙ ˙ ˙
126. Iyanaga 1983, p. 731a.
206

was a Śaiva (paramamāheśvarah); but his father was a Buddhist (paramasaugatah),

˙ ˙
and three preceding ascendants were Sauras (paramādityabhaktah); 127 and among
˙
the Gurjara-Pratīhāras we have successively the Vaisnava Devaśakti, the Śaiva
˙˙
Vatsarāja, the Śākta Nāgabhata (r. c. 816–834), the Saura Rāmabhadra, the Śākta
˙
Bhoja (r. c. 840–890), the Saura Vināyakapāla, and the Śaiva Mahendrapāla.128
We may also point to socio-legal provisions at the eastern edge of the Indic
world, in East Java during the Majapahit period (1293–c. 1500). We know that
the state appointed clerical administrators of religion (dharmādhyaksa) for both
˙
the Śaiva (dharmādhyaksa rin kaśaiwan) and Buddhist faiths (dharmādhyaksa rin
˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
kasogatan), providing official residences for them close to the royal compound,
and that there was a board of subordinate religious officials known as the Asses-
sors of Religion (dharmopapatti, dharmādhikarana), who included persons adher-
˙
ing to the non-Saiddhāntika Bhairava cult (bhairawapaksa) and the Saura cult of
˙
the Sun (sorapaksa).129
˙
Persecution
The emergence of the orthoprax consensus reported by Jayanta and confirmed
by other evidence, in which Vaidikas, Vaisnavas, and Śaivas were seen by oth-
˙˙
ers and themselves as equipolent aspects of a single loosely defined faith, the ju-
ridical view that all religions other than those considered criminal or subversive
should be accepted by the state, and the evidence of royal patronage extended
to religious traditions other than those to which monarchs claimed to be espe-
cially devoted suggest that there was indeed a high degree of official tolerance of
religious diversity to be found in the various states of early mediaeval India. But
the evidence presented above also shows that this tolerance was not innate to
the individual traditions that had been absorbed, however incompletely, into this
consensus. The Vaidikas, as we have seen, had a strictly exclusivist view that, if it
could have found the support of willing monarchs, would have driven all compet-
127. Bānskherā plate of Harsa, ad 628: Epigraphia Indica 4:29.

˙
128. Epigraphia Indica 14:13.
129. Sanderson 2009a, pp. 105, 118–120.
207

Honoris Causa
itors for royal patronage from the field; and we have seen that Śaiva ideologues
for their part, while claiming to support the Vaidika tradition within an inclu-
sive Śaiva-Vaidika socio-religious order, nonetheless show in their scriptures and
learned commentaries an uncompromising faith in the otherness and superiority
of Śaivism and the marked inferiority of the Vaidika system, which they saw as
merely ‘mundane religion’ (laukiko dharmah).130 The Buddhists and Jainas likewise
˙
stood in clear opposition to the ‘Hindu’ traditions, even though Buddhist kings at
least have professed in their inscriptions their commitment to the preservation of
the Vaidika socio-religious order; 131 and the Śaivas, Vaisnavas, and Vaidikas have
˙˙
been unanimous in their condemnation of these two heterodox faiths. In this at
least they could agree.
Consequently, it was always a possibility that the peaceful co-existence of
these competing traditions might be upset, if a royal patron or charismatic re-
ligious figure found himself eager and able, for whatever reason – political, eco-
nomic, or perhaps even simple religious conviction – not merely to favour one
tradition at the expense of others, but even to persecute whatever tradition he was
inclined to suppress, or at least punish anyone who dared to raise a voice against
the dominant religious consensus of the region and period. Consider the strident
tone of the following declaration in an inscription of ad 1036 recording a grant of
land made by Jayasimha II, the Cālukya ruler of Kalyāna, for the support of the
˙ ˙
temple of Śiva Pañcaliṅgeśvara, to Lakulīśvara, evidently in his capacity as the
Lākula incumbent of this sacred site: 132
I, a fire of destruction to disputants [of other faiths], shall place my foot in

the presence of the king’s council on the head of any who claims that either
of these is false: the God Śiva, whose feet merit the worship of all men, and
130. See, e.g., describing the ideal Śaiva Sthāpaka, Devyāmata f. 1v3 [2.20ab]: ‘With no attachment to
the mundane religion, devoted [only] to the religion of Śiva’ (virakto laukike dharme śivadharmānurañ
jitah).
˙
131. See Sanderson 2009a, pp. 115–117, for the epigraphical evidence of this commitment.
132. Epigraphia Carnatica 7 Sh 126, p. 175.
208

the religion proclaimed in the three [Vedas], in which the system of the caste-
classes and disciplines has been established in its proper hierarchy.
Consider also the following passage from an authoritative South Indian Said-
dhāntika Śaiva treatise of the twelfth century, which tells the Śaivas that they
may kill without sin anyone who attacks their faith: 133
Even if he kills those who revile Śiva, the Mantras of Śiva, and his Gurus, he
does not thereby infringe the rules of his post-initiatory discipline. There is no
fault in killing those who attack [our] deities, sacred fire, and teachers.
Nor do our historical sources lack accounts of persecutions, pogroms, or sim-

ple vandalism directed against the religious other. Some may be fictions or at least
exaggerated. But some are well attested and by their mere existence they proclaim
that the Indians of our period were not adherents of the view that the religions
around them were eirenic by nature.
Buddhist sources, from the Kashmirian Vibhāsā of the second century to the
˙
East Indian Mañjuśriyamūlakalpa of the eighth, identify as the first major perse-
cutor of their religion Pusyamitra Śuṅga of the second century bc, the brahmin
˙
general who was believed to have re-established the pre-eminence of Brahmanism
after bringing the pro-Buddhist Maurya dynasty to an end. According to these
works he burned the Buddhist Sūtras, demolished Stūpas and monasteries, and
killed many Buddhist monks, from Magadha to Jālandhara.134
Xuanzang, the seventh-century Chinese Buddhist scholar monk, who spent
about fifteen years in Central Asia and India, reports that the Hephthalite Hun
Mihirakula, who ruled in Kashmir early in the sixth century, destroyed many
Buddhist foundations in Gandhāra, having resolved to extinguish Buddhism.135
He was evidently Śaiva in allegiance, since on his coins he had the bull and tri-
133. Trilocanaśiva, Prāyaścittasamuccaya, p. 16.
134. For a review of these accounts see Lamotte 1958, pp. 424–431.
135. Beal 1884, vol. 1, pp. 167–172.
209

Honoris Causa
dent and the legend jayatu vrsa jayatu vrsadhvaja ‘Victory to the Bull! Victory to
˙˙ ˙˙
[Śiva,] who has the Bull as his emblem!’,136 and, according to Kalhana, established
˙
a Liṅga of Śiva incorporating his name (Mihireśvara) in the capital.137 It should
be noted, however, that Kalhana says nothing of persecution of the Buddhists
˙
in particular but notes only that before the close of his life he had been a pitiless
monster responsible for countless deaths.138
Xuanzang also reports the persecution of the Buddhists by the East Indian
ruler Śaśāṅka (c. 603–619/20). He tells us that this king attacked the religion
of Buddha, dispersed the Saṅgha, cut down the Bodhi tree, damaged the rock
nearby that bore the Buddha’s footprints, and ordered that a Buddha image
there should be replaced by an image of Śiva.139 He too was a devout worshipper
of this deity (paramamāheśvarah),140 and his gold coins show Śiva reclining on
˙
his bull.141
The religious history of the kings of India up to the reign of Gopāla (r. c. 750–
775), the first king of the Pāla dynasty, given in the guise of a prophecy and added
to the Buddhist Tantric Mañjuśriyamūlakalpa, probably not long after Gopāla’s
136. Stein 1979 on 1.289. To laud the bull (vrsah) would be surprising if the intended meaning were the
˙˙ ˙
bull that is Śiva’s mount, but not if the word is intended in its figurative meaning, namely dharmah or
˙
sukrtam ‘the virtuous actions [prescribed by the Veda].’ For this meaning of vrsah see, for example,
˙ ˙˙ ˙
Amarasimha, Nāmaliṅgānuśāsana 1.4.25b (sukrtam vrsah), 3.3.220 (sukrte vrsabhe vrsah); Halāyudha,
˙ ˙ ˙ ˙˙ ˙ ˙ ˙˙ ˙˙ ˙
Abhidhānaratnamālā 1.125cd (dharmah punyam vrsah śreyah sukrtam ca samam smrtam); Manusmrti
˙ ˙ ˙ ˙˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
816a (vrso hi bhagavān dharmas . . .); and the Gwalior Museum Stone Inscription of Pataṅgaśambhu
˙˙
(Mirashi 1962), l. 15, vrsaikanistho ’pi jitasmaro ’pi yah śaṅkaro ’bhūd bhuvi ko ’py apūrvvah, concerning
˙˙ ˙˙ ˙ ˙
the Śaiva ascetic Vyomaśambhu: ‘He was in the world an extraordinary new Śiva, since he too was
vrsaikanisthah (‘devoted solely to pious observance’; in Śiva’s case ‘riding only on the Bull’) and he
˙˙ ˙˙ ˙
too was jitasmarah (‘one who had defeated sensual urges’; in Śiva’s case ‘the defeater of the Love god
˙
Kāmadeva’). This is also the meaning of vrsah in the title Vrsasārasamgraha, one of the works of the
˙˙ ˙ ˙˙ ˙
Śivadharma corpus (see, e.g., Sanderson 2014, p. 2), i.e., ‘Summary of the Essentials of the [Śiva]dharma’.
137. Rājataraṅginī 1.306.

˙
138. Rājataraṅginī 1.291–293, 361.
˙
139. Beal 1884, vol. 2, pp. 91, 118, and 121.
140. Sircar 1983, Supplement, no. 1, ll. 4–5.
141. Sircar 1983, no. 5.
210

reign,142 reports that in Vārānasī a king of Gauda called Soma, perhaps the
˙ ˙
Sāmanta-Mahārāja Soma/Somadatta, the feudatory of Śaśāṅka recorded in an
inscription of c. 620,143 destroyed Buddha images; had the Buddhist scriptures
burned; obliterated Buddhist monasteries, assembly grounds, and Stūpas; and
blocked their endowments.144
In the twelfth or thirteenth century an inscription from the royal town of
Vodāmayūtā in Haryana praises a Saiddhāntika Śaiva ascetic from Anahi-
˙
lapātaka called Varmaśiva who had been appointed head of the Śaiva Mat ha in
˙ ˙
Vodāmayūtā by the minister of the great-grandfather of the present ruler, relat-
ing that when he had gone to the Deccan as a boy he had seen an image installed
by the Buddhists and in his fury had by some mysterious means succeeded in
carrying it off to a great distance.145
The Pallava Mahendravarman I (c. 610–630), originally a Jaina, is thought
to have persecuted the Śaivas until he was converted to Śaivism by the Tamil
poet-saint Appar.146 Appar declares himself a convert from Jainism and his po-
etry, like that of his near contemporary Campantar, is full of vituperation both
against his former co-religionists and the Buddhists.147 After his conversion from
Jainism to Śaivism the Pāndya king of Madurai is said to have had 8,000 Jainas
˙˙
impaled in revenge for an attempt to kill his Śaiva Guru Campantar.148 Whatever
the degree of accuracy of this grotesque claim it is significant that this massacre is
depicted in relief around the enclosure of the tank of the temple of Mīnāksisund-
˙
areśvara in Madurai and celebrated to this day in its festivals.149
142. Matsunaga 1985, p. 893.
143. Sircar 1983, no. 4.
144. Mañjuśriyamūlakalpa 53.657–687, especially 657–660.
145. Epigraphia Indica 3, no. 1, l. 8.
146. Stein 1994, p. 78.
147. Viswanathan Peterson 1991, passim.
148. Cf. vanmikanathan 1985, pp. 239–262, stating in all seriousness that in fact the Jainas impaled them-
selves.
149. Sastri 1964, p. 110.
211

Honoris Causa
An inscription of c. 1200 at Ablūr, a Jaina stronghold in the Dharwar district

of Karnataka,150 reports a conflict between Jainas and Śaivas towards the end of
the twelfth century that culminated in the destruction of a Jaina temple and its
image of the Jina and the construction in its place of the temple of Śiva Vīraso-
manātha (/Someśvara) by the Śaiva zealot Ekāntada-Rāmayya; and inscriptions
at Shravana Belgola and other places in Karnātaka record that in 1368 the Jainas
˙˙
appealed successfully to the king of Vijayanagar for protection from persecution
at the hands of Vaisnavas.151
˙˙
There is also an inscription of ad 1184 from Talikoti in the Mudehihal Taluk
of Bijapur District on a pillar near the gateway of the fort, which records that the
Ganas of the temple of Vīra-Bayseśvara established the glory of the god Śiva with
˙
supreme valour by destroying the Buddhist and Jaina religions, vanquishing the
adherents of the rival faiths at many places near and far, demolishing Jaina tem-
ples, and installing Liṅgas of Śiva.152 Nor was this kind of sectarian hatred limited
to the south. In 1174, Ajayadeva, the Śaiva king of Gujarat who founded Ajmer, is
said to have begun his reign with a severe persecution of the Jainas.153
There is also evidence of hostility between Śaivas and Vaisnavas. An inscrip-
˙˙
tion of 1160 at Tirukkadaiyūr rules that devotees of Śiva (Māheśvaras) associated
˙
with the temple there would forfeit their property to the temple if they mixed
freely with Vaisnavas.154 The South Indian Vaisnava Yāmuna (c. 966/7 to 1038)
˙˙ ˙˙
is uncompromising in his view that the Śaiva faith is outside the pale of valid
religion 155 and that, against appearances, orthoprax Vaidika criticism of inner
non-Vaidika practice applies only to Śaivism and not also to the Vaisnava Pañ-
˙˙
150. Epigraphia Indica 5, no. 25, E.
151. Rice 1909, pp. 113–114 and 207–208.
152. South Indian Inscriptions 15:56.
153. Guérinot 1908, no. 11.
154. Sastri 1984, p. 645.
155. Āgamaprāmānya, pp. 91–101.

˙
212

carātra; 156 and this view was not moderated by the later Vaisnavas of southern
˙˙
India, who held firmly to the position that the Mantramārgic Śaivas and the
Pāśupatas were infidels (avaidikāh, pāsandinah) the very sight of whom pol-
˙ ˙ ˙˙ ˙
lutes.157 Then there is the Śrīvaisnava hagiographical tradition of works such as
˙˙
the Divyasūricarita of Garudavāhana and the Yatirājavaibhava of Vatuka Nampi,
˙ ˙
according to which their teacher Rāmānuja had to flee because of persecution by
the fanatically Śaiva Cola emperor, finding refuge in Karnātaka, where he con-
˙ ˙˙
verted the Jaina Hoysala king Bitt ideva to Vaisnavism,158 and the tradition of the
˙ ˙˙ ˙˙
Divyasūricarita that the same king, or Kulottuṅga II (r. 1133–1150), according to
his court poet Ottakūttan, had an image of Visnu removed from the front of the
˙˙ ˙˙
shrine of Śiva Natarāja in Cidambaram and thrown into the sea.159 Whatever the
˙
truth of this claim, it was strongly believed.160
Only accounts of religious persecution or killing of non-Buddhists by Bud-
dhists are lacking in the Indian sources known to me.161 Their aggression, as far as
I can tell at present, was limited in India to the provision of Mantras to be used
to kill the enemies of Buddhism; 162 to narratives of the forcible humiliation of
156. Āgamaprāmānya, pp. 156–158.

˙
157. See, e.g., the Pañcarātraraksā of Vedāntadeśika (1268/9–1369/70), p. 27.
˙
158 Sastri 1984, pp. 295–296 and 308.
159. Sastri 1984: pp. 300 and 644–645.
160. Finally, in 1539 Acyutarāya of Vijayanagara, a Vaisnava like all the post-Saṅgama kings of this dy-
˙˙
nasty, responded to this belief by founding the present shrine of Visnu Govindarāja within the precincts
˙˙
of the temple, right beside the Citsabhā, the Śaivas’ holy of holies, ordaining that it should be wor-
shipped according to the ritual of the Vaikhānasas (Younger 1995, pp. 111–112).
161. This is not the case in Tibet. In his Blue Annals (tr. Roerich 1995, p. 53) Gzhon nu dpal relates that
the Buddhist monk Lha lung dpal gyi rdo rje assassinated Glang dar ma, the last king of the Yarlung
dynasty, c. ad 842, to put an end to his persecution of Buddhism. For a colourful and no doubt fictional-
ized account of the assassination, see Bsod nams rgyal tshan’s Rgyal rabs gsal ba’i me long (fourteenth
century), tr. by Sørensen (1994), pp. 431–435. I merely cite the tradition. For there are grounds for
doubting both Glang dar ma’s hostility to Buddhism and his assassination; see Yamaguchi 1996.
162. See, e.g., Mañjuśriyamūlakalpa 50, prose before v. 1: ‘This [Mantra of the] Wrathful King [Yamān-
taka] should certainly be employed (prayoktavyah) against evil rulers and any persons that do harm to
˙
the teaching (dustarājñām śāsanāpakārinām ca sattvānām) . . .’; ‘to protect the teaching of the Buddhas,
˙˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
to secure the longevity of the sacred texts (dharmadhātucirasthityartham), to block all wicked rulers,
213

Honoris Causa
the non-Buddhist deities, particularly Śiva or Bhairava and his consort; and to
the canonization of these narratives in the iconography of their Tantric deities,
who tread triumphant on the prostrate bodies of their Śaiva rivals, and wear their
flayed skin as garments and their bones as Kāpālika ornaments.163
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˙ ˙
to punish those who harm any one of the three Jewels (ratnatrayāpakārinām)[, namely images of the
˙ ˙
Buddha, the sacred texts of Buddhism, and the community of monks] . . .’ The use of the Mantra of the
Buddhist deity Black Yamāri to bring about the death of the target is taught at the end of the 4th Patala
˙
of the Krsnayamāritantra. See also Vajrabhairavatantra, at the end of its 2nd Kalpa, f. 5r–v: ‘He should
˙ ˙˙
make efforts to kill (māranīyāh prayatnena) or remove (athavā sthānacālanam) those who are intent
˙ ˙
on reviling [our] Ācāryas (ācāryanindanaparāh), who attack the Mahāyāna (mahāyānapradūsakāh), and
˙ ˙ ˙
who mock those who are versed in the Mantras, rituals, and their applications (mantratantraprayoga
jñān hāsyam kurvanti).’
˙
163. See, e.g., Iyanaga 1985; Sanderson 2009a, pp. 155–156, 172–174.
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˙ ˙
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Tolerance, Exclusivity, Inclusivity,

and Persecution in Indian Religion

33211 Honoris Causa 3P_SS.indd 155 11/18/15 9:14 PM

33211 Honoris Causa 3P.indd 156 11/18/15 5:22 PM

3. An outstanding case of this conservative stance is that of Aparāditya, a twelfth-century ruler of

33211 Honoris Causa 3P.indd 157 11/18/15 5:22 PM

33211 Honoris Causa 3P.indd 158 11/18/15 5:22 PM

6. On the probable date of Medhātithi see Kane 1930, p. 275.

7. Manubhāsya, vol. 1, p. 57, ll. 5–6.

33211 Honoris Causa 3P.indd 159 11/18/15 5:22 PM

Similarly, the seventh-century Mīmāmsaka Kumārila declares: 10

9. I have emended the edition’s nirgranthānārthavāda- to nirgranthānātmavādi-, since anārthavāda

10. Tantravārttika, vol. 1, pp. 114, ll. 20–115, l. 6, on 1.3.3–4.

33211 Honoris Causa 3P.indd 160 11/18/15 5:22 PM

33211 Honoris Causa 3P.indd 161 11/18/15 5:22 PM

The context of this prohibition is the behaviour of householders towards unin-

13. Manusmrti 4.30.

33211 Honoris Causa 3P.indd 162 11/18/15 5:22 PM

If he comes into physical contact with Buddhists, Pāśupatas, materialists, de-

If he sees Jainas, Pāśupatas, Buddhists, Kāla[mukha]s, [Śākta] Kaulas, or

17. The Sattrimśanmata quoted by Aparāditya, Yājñavalkyasmrtitīkā, p. 923.

33211 Honoris Causa 3P.indd 163 11/18/15 5:22 PM

If he sees Kāpālikas, Pāśupatas, Śaivas [of the Mantramārga], or Kārukas,20

33211 Honoris Causa 3P.indd 164 11/18/15 5:22 PM

22. Yājñavalkyasmrtitīkā, p. 18.

33211 Honoris Causa 3P.indd 165 11/18/15 5:22 PM

33211 Honoris Causa 3P.indd 166 11/18/15 5:22 PM

33211 Honoris Causa 3P.indd 167 11/18/15 5:22 PM

Protection of Religion (dharmaraksādhikāre niyuktah) with authority through-

The Upādhyāya responds:

Abhinavagupta’s father), Mukula (teacher of Pratihārendurāja), Rāmakantha (son of Nārāyanakantha),

33211 Honoris Causa 3P.indd 168 11/18/15 5:22 PM

It is indeed as you hold, my friend: it is a rare man that in disregard of his

The Upādhyāya says:

The Śaivas’ Inclusivist View of Their

33211 Honoris Causa 3P.indd 169 11/18/15 5:22 PM

33211 Honoris Causa 3P.indd 170 11/18/15 5:22 PM

(moksah), oﬀered to those who aspired to escape recurrent incarnation through

34. See Sanderson 2007a.

33211 Honoris Causa 3P.indd 171 11/18/15 5:22 PM

37. Vidyāpāda 1.2–6.

33211 Honoris Causa 3P.indd 172 11/18/15 5:22 PM

38. Moksakārikāvrtti on v. 146ab.

33211 Honoris Causa 3P.indd 173 11/18/15 5:22 PM

39. Mahābhārata 7.172.86cd.

41. Source not located.

33211 Honoris Causa 3P.indd 174 11/18/15 5:22 PM

So Mantramārgic Śaivism, while claiming to transcend Brahmanism by oﬀer-

The Properly Śaiva Attitude of Śaivas

33211 Honoris Causa 3P.indd 175 11/18/15 5:22 PM

The Śākta-Śaiva Attitude Towards Vaidika

44. Sarvajñānottara, Liṅgoddhārādiprakarana N f. [34]r5–v5; P pp. 97–98.

46. See, for example, Abhinavagupta, Tantrāloka 4.221c–253; 15.162c–179b; Parātrimśikāvivarana

33211 Honoris Causa 3P.indd 176 11/18/15 5:22 PM

33211 Honoris Causa 3P.indd 177 11/18/15 5:22 PM

Bhairava worship, initiates may be arranged in separate rows on such occasions

He should be a Kaula in private (antah kaulo), a Śaiva in outward appearance

49. Svacchanda 4.540–546.

33211 Honoris Causa 3P.indd 178 11/18/15 5:22 PM

A Śaiva-Vaidika Socio-Religious Hierachy

33211 Honoris Causa 3P.indd 179 11/18/15 5:22 PM

55. See Sanderson 2009a, p. 255, fn. 594.

33211 Honoris Causa 3P.indd 180 11/18/15 5:22 PM

62. Nyāyamañjarī-Āgamaprāmānya, ed. Kataoka , p. 152, l. 3 to p. 154, l. 8, corresponding to Nyāyamañ

As for those others, who practice various impermissible forms of post-

119. The Vākātaka inscriptions identify them as atyantasvāmimahābhairavabhaktah and atyantam