Remaking South Indian Śaivism: Greater Śaiva Advaita and the Legacy of the Śaktiviśiṣṭādvaita Vīraśaiva Tradition

Abstract

Śaiva Advaita, or Śivādvaita, is typically regarded as an invention of the late sixteenth-century polymath Appayya Dīkṣita, who is said to have single-handedly revived Śrīkaṇṭha’s commentary on the Brahmasūtras from obscurity. And yet, the theological rapprochement between South Indian Śaivism and Advaita Vedānta philosophy has a much richer history, and one that left few South Indian Śaiva communities untouched by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This article is an attempt to trace the outlines of what we can call a “Greater Śaiva Advaita,” defined as the interpenetration of nondualist Vedānta and a number of discrete South Indian Śaiva lineages, including the Śaiva Siddhānta in present-day Tamil Nadu (both Sanskritic and Tamil), the Sanskritic Vīraśaivas (writing in both Sanskrit and Kannada) based in heartlands of Vijayanagar, and the Brāhmaṇical Smārta Śaivas. The article demonstrates, specifically, that Appayya Dīkṣita did not coin the term “Śivādvaita,” but drew on an entire discursive sphere known variously as Śivādvaita or Śaktiviśiṣṭādvaita, a school of Vīraśaiva theology that provides a crucial missing link in the transmission of Śrīkaṇṭha’s Śaiva Vedānta across regions and language communities in early modern South India.