Śaivism after the Śaiva Age: Continuities in the Scriptural Corpus of the Vīramāheśvaras

Elaine M Fisher

doi:10.3390/rel12030222

Abstract

This article makes the case that Vīraśaivism emerged in direct textual continuity with the tantric traditions of the Śaiva Age. In academic practice up through the present day, the study of Śaivism, through Sanskrit sources, and bhakti Hinduism, through the vernacular, are generally treated as distinct disciplines and objects of study. As a result, Vīraśaivism has yet to be systematically approached through a philological analysis of its precursors from earlier Śaiva traditions. With this aim in mind, I begin by documenting for the first time that a thirteenth-century Sanskrit work of what I have called the Vīramāheśvara textual corpus, the Somanāthabhāṣya or Vīramāheśvarācārasāroddhārabhāṣya, was most likely authored by Pālkurikĕ Somanātha, best known for his vernacular Telugu Vīraśaiva literature. Second, I outline the indebtedness of the early Sanskrit and Telugu Vīramāheśvara corpus to a popular work of early lay Śaivism, the Śivadharmaśāstra, with particular attention to the concepts of the jaṅgama and the iṣṭaliṅga. That the Vīramāheśvaras borrowed many of their formative concepts and practices directly from the Śivadharmaśāstra and other works of the Śaiva Age, I argue, belies the common assumption that Vīraśaivism originated as a social and religious revolution.

Highlights

Vırasaivism, Tantra, and the Saiva Age By the mid-thirteenth century, Saivism in the Deccan had already been irrevocably transformed by the decline of the Saiva Age, as Alexis Sanderson has called it, the golden age of what we colloquially describe as “tantric Saivism” (Sanderson 2009)
Even before Alexis Sanderson and his students had revolutionized our narrative of medieval Saivism over the past two to three decades, the Kalamukhas were already known to have vanished abruptly, as their landholdings were systematically replaced by another Saiva tradition rising to prominence in the region, the Vırasaivas
Inscriptions in the Karnataka region often refer to the tradition with the spelling Kalamukha, because the name is shown in textual citations to be originally synonymous with the Sanskrit asitavaktra (“black face”), I use the spelling Kalamukha here throughout)

Summary

Introduction

The Telugu works of Palkurike Somanatha contain all of these features, incorporating the self-referential term “Vıramahesvara”, extended descriptions of the Saiva institutions of thirteenth-century Srisailam, and, as we will see, lengthy anthologized passages of Sanskrit citations.

Results

Conclusion