FOOTNOTES:
[511] In various allusions to be found in the Kâdambarî and Harshacarita.
[512] The best known of these is the Tantravârttika, a commentary on the Pûrva-mîmâmsâ.
[513] This is the generally accepted date and does not appear to conflict with anything else that is at present known of Śankara. An alternative suggestion is some date between 590 and 650 (see Telang, I.A. XIII. 1884, p. 95 and Fleet, I.A. XVI. 1887, p. 41). But in this case, it is very strange that I-Ching does not mention so conspicuous an enemy of the Buddhists. It does not seem to me that the use of Pûṛnavarman's name by Śankara in an illustration (Comm. on Vedanta Sut. II. i. 17) necessarily implies they were contemporaries, but it does prove that he cannot have lived before Pûṛnavarman.
[514] Another tradition says he was born at Chidambaram, but the temple at Badrinath in the Himalayas said to have been founded by him has always been served by Nambuthiri Brahmans from Malabar. In 1910 a great temple erected in his honour was consecrated at Kaladi.
[515] His conflicts with them are described in works called Śankara-vijaya of which at least four are extant.
[516] They are called Daśanâmis which merely means that each ascetic bears one or other of ten surnames (Sarswati, Bharati, Tirtha, etc.). See for a further account of them Jogendra Nath Bhattacharya, Hindu Castes and Sects, pp. 374-379.
The order in all its branches seems to have strong pantheistic inclinations. They mutter the formula Sivo'ham, I am Śiva.
[517] I have been told by south Indian Pandits that they think Śaṅkara was bom in a Bhâgavata family and that there is some evidence his kinsmen were trustees of a temple of Kṛishṇa. The Śâktas also claim him, but the tradition that he opposed the Śâktas is strong and probable. Many hymns addressed to Vishṇu, Śiva and various forms of Durgâ are attributed to him. I have not been able to discover what is the external evidence for their authenticity but hymns must have been popular in south India before the time of Śaṅkara and it is eminently probable that he did not neglect this important branch of composition.
[518] See Bhattacharya, Hindu Castes and Sects, p. 16.
[519] This maṭh has an endowment of about £5000 a year, instituted by the kings of Vijayanagar. The Guru is treated with great respect. His palankin is carried crossways to prevent anyone from passing him and he wears a jewelled head-dress, not unlike a papal tiara, and wooden shoes covered with silver. See an interesting account of Śringeri in J. Mythic Society (Bangalore), vol. VIII. pp. 18-33.
Schrader in his catalogue of the Sanskrit MSS. in the Adyar Library, 1908, notices an Upanishad called Mahâmâyopanishad, ascribed to Śaṅkara himself, which deals with the special qualities of the four maṭhs. Each is described as possessing one Veda, one Mahâvâkyam, etc. The second part deals with the three ideal maṭhs, Sumeru, Paramâtman and Śâstrâthajnâna.
[520] There is some reason to suppose that the Maṭh of Sringeri was founded on the site of a Buddhist monastery. See Journal of Mythic Society, Bangalore, 1916, p. 151.
[521] Pracchanna-bauddha. See for further details Book IV. chap. XXI. ad fin.
[522] The old folk-lore of Bengal gives a picture of Śiva, the peasant's god, which is neither Vedic nor Dravidian. See Dinesh Chandra Sen, Bengali Lang. and Lit. pp. 68 ff. and 239 ff.
[523] J.R.A.S. 1899, p. 242.
[524] See some curious examples in Whitehead's Village Gods of South India.
[525] Rice, Mysore and Coorg from the Inscriptions, pp. 27 and 204.
[526] The early Brahmi inscriptions of southern India are said to be written in a Dravidian language with an admixture not of Sanskrit but of Pali words. See Arch. Survey India, 1911-12, Part I. p. 23.
[527] See Rice, Mysore and Coorg, pp. 3-5 and Fleet's criticisms, I.A.. XXI. 1892, p. 287.
[528] The various notices in European classical authors as well as in the Sinhalese chronicles prove this.
[529] Except in the first chapter.
[530] A complete list of them is given in Foulkes, Catechism of the Shaiva religion, 1863, p. 21.
[531] Tamilian Antiquary, 3, 1909, pp. 1-65.
[532] Edited and translated by Pope, 1900.
[533] Established opinion or doctrine. Used by the Jains as a name for their canon.
[534] Thus the catechism of the Śaiva religion by Sabhapati Mudaliyar (transl. Foulkes, 1863) after stating emphatically that the world is created also says that the soul and the world are both eternal. Also just as in the Bhagavad-gîtâ the ideas of the Vedanta and Sâṅkhya are incongruously combined, so in the Tiruvaçagam (e.g. Pope's edition, pp. 49 and 138) Śiva is occasionally pantheized. He is the body and the soul, existence and non-existence, the false and the true, the bond and the release.
[535] E.g. Hymn vi.
[536] Pope's Tiruvaçagam, p. 257.
[537] Yet I have read that American revivalists describe how you play base ball (an American game) with Jesus.
[538] Pope's Tiruvaçagam, p. 101.
[539] It does not seem to me that the legend of Śiva's drinking the hala-hala poison is really parallel to the sufferings of the Christian redeemer. At the most it is a benevolent exploit like many performed by Vishṇu.
[540] Although Śiva is said to have been many times incarnate (see for instance Catechism of the Shaiva religion, p. 20) he seems to have merely appeared in human form on special occasions and not to have been like Christ or Kṛishṇa a god living as a man from birth to death.
[541] The lines which seem most clearly to reflect Christian influence are those quoted by Caldwell from the Nana nuru in the introduction to his Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian languages, p. 127, but neither the date of the work nor the original of the quotation is given. This part of the introduction is omitted in the third edition.
[542] Tamilian Antiquary, 4, 1909, pp. 57-82.
[543] Ib. pp. 1-57; Sesha Aiyer gives 275 A.D. as the probable date, and 375 as the latest date.
[544] The Śaiva catechism translated by Foulkes says (p. 27) that Śiva revealed the Tiruvaçagam twice, first to Manikka-Vaçagar and later to Tiru-Kovaiyar.
[545] Sanskrit, Siddha.
[546] Space forbids me to quote the Śiva-vâkyam and Paṭṭaṇaṭṭu Piḷḷai, interesting as they are. The reader is referred to Gover, Folk-Songs of southern India, 1871, a work which is well worth reading.
[547] The date of the Skanda Purâṇa creates no difficulty for Bendall considered a MS. of it found in Nepal to be anterior to 659 A.D.
[548] One of his maxims was adu, adu âdal, that is the mind becomes that (spiritual or material) with which it identifies itself most completely.
[549] It is contained in fourteen śâstras, most of which are attributed to the four teachers mentioned above.
[550] For the Kashmir school see Barnett in Muséon, 1909, pp. 271-277. J.R.A.S. 1910, pp. 707-747. Kashmir Sanskrit series, particularly vol. II. entitled Kashmir Śaivism. The Śiva sûtras and the commentary Vimar'sinî translated in Indian Thought, 1911-12. Also Srinivasa Iyengar, Outlines of Indian Philosophy, pp. 168-175 and Sarva-darśana-saṅgraha, chap. VIII.
[551] Among them may be mentioned Kallata, author of the Spanda Kârikâs and Somânanda of the Śivadṛishti, who both flourished about 850-900. Utpala, who composed the Pratyabhijñâ-kârikâs, lived some fifty years later, and in the eleventh century Abhinava Gupta and Kshemarâja composed numerous commentaries.
[552] Kashmirian Śaivism is often called Trika, that is tripartite, because, like other varieties, it treats of three ultimates Śiva, Śakti, Anu or Pati, Paśu, Pâśa. But it has a decided tendency towards monism.
[553] Also called the Śakti or Mâtrikâ.
[554] See Epig. Carn. VII. Sk. 114. 19, 20 and Jour. Mythic Society, 1917, pp. 176, 180.
[555] To say nothing of Śivaite temples like the Kailas at Ellora, the chief doctrines and even the terminology of Śivaite philosophy are mentioned by Śankara on Ved. Sutras, II. 2. 37.
[556] In the Samyuktavastu, chap. XL. (transl. in J.A. 1914, II. pp. 534, etc.) the Buddha is represented as saying that Kashmir is the best land for meditation and leading a religious life.
[557] Chatterji, Kashmir Śaivism, p. 11, thinks that Abhinava Gupta's Paramârthasâra, published by Barnett, was an adaptation of older verses current in India and called the Âdhâra Kârikâs.
[558] See Thurston, Castes and Tribes of southern India, s.v. vol. IV. pp. 236-291 and Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, vol. XXIII. article Bijapur, pp. 219-1884.
[559] An inscription found at Ablur in Dharwar also mentions Ramayya as a champion of Śivaite monotheism. He is perhaps the same as Channabasava. The Lingâyats maintain that Basava merely revived the old true religion of Śiva and founded nothing new.
[560] They have also a book called Prabhuling-lila, which is said to teach that the deity ought to live in the believer's soul as he lives in the lingam, and collections of early Kanarese sermons which are said to date from the thirteenth century.
[561] The use of the Linga by this sect supports the view that even in its origin the symbol is not exclusively phallic.
[562] Their creed is said to have been the state religion of the Wodeyars of Mysore (1399-1600) and of the Nayaks of Keladi, Ikken or Bednur (1550-1763).
[563] At Kadur, Ujjeni, Benares, Śrîsailam and Kedarnâth in the Himalayas. In every Lingâyat village there is a monastery affiliated to one of these five establishments. The great importance attached to monastic institutions is perhaps due to Jain influence.
CHAPTER XXIX
VISHNUISM IN SOUTH INDIA
1
Though Śivaism can boast of an imposing array of temples, teachers and scriptures in the north as well as in the south, yet Vishnuism was equally strong and after 1000 A.D. perhaps stronger. Thus Alberuni writing about north-western India in 1030 A.D. mentions Śiva and Durgâ several times incidentally but devotes separate chapters to Nârâyana and Vâsudeva; he quotes copiously from Vishnuite works[564] but not from sectarian Śivaite books. He mentions that the worshippers of Vishṇu are called Bhâgavatas and he frequently refers to Râma. It is clear that in giving an account of Vishnuism he considered that he had for all practical purposes described the religion of the parts of India which he knew.
In their main outlines the histories of Vishnuism and Śivaism are the same. Both faiths first assumed a definite form in northern India, but both flourished exceedingly when transplanted to the south and produced first a school of emotional hymn writers and then in a maturer stage a goodly array of theologians and philosophers as well as offshoots in the form of eccentric sects which broke loose from Brahmanism altogether. But Vishnuism having first spread from the north to the south returned from the south to the north in great force, whereas the history of Śivaism shows no such reflux.[565] Śivaism remained comparatively homogeneous, but Vishnuism gave birth from the eleventh century onwards to a series of sects or Churches still extant and forming exclusive though not mutually hostile associations. The chief Churches or Sampradâyas bear the names of Sanakâdi, Śrî, Brahmâ and Rudra. The first three were founded by Nimbâditya, Râmânuja and Madhva respectively. The Rudra-sampradâya was rendered celebrated by Vallabha, though he was not its founder.
The belief and practice of all Vishnuite sects alike is a modified monotheism, the worship of the Supreme Being under some such name as Râma or Vâsudeva. But the monotheism is not perfect. On the one hand it passes into pantheism: on the other it is not completely disengaged from mythology and in all sects the consort and attendants of the deity receive great respect, even if this respect is theoretically distinguished from adoration. Nearly all sects reject sacrifice in toto and make the basis of salvation emotional—namely devotion to the deity, and as a counterpart to this the chief characteristic of the deity is loving condescension or grace. The theological philosophy of each sect is nearly always, whatever name it may bear, a variety of the system known as Viśishṭâdvaita, or qualified monism, which is not unlike the Sâṅkhya-Yoga.[566] For Vishnuites as for Śivaites there exist God, the soul and matter, but most sects shrink from regarding them as entirely separate and bridge over the differences with various theories of emanations and successive manifestations of the deity. But for practical religion the soul is entangled in matter and, with the help of God, struggles towards union with him. The precise nature and intimacy of this union has given rise to as many subtle theories and phrases as the sacraments in Europe. Vishnuite sects in all parts of India show a tendency to recognize vernacular works as their scriptures, but they also attach great importance to the Upanishads, the Bhagavad-gîtâ, the Nârâyaṇîya and the Vedânta Sûtras. Each has a special interpretation of these last which becomes to some extent its motto.
But these books belong to the relatively older literature. Many Vishnuite, or rather Krishnaite, works composed from the eighth century onwards differ from them in tone and give prominence to the god's amorous adventures with the Gopis and (still later) to the personality of Râdhâ. This ecstatic and sentimental theology, though found in all parts of India, is more prevalent in the north than in the south. Its great text-book is the Bhâgavata Purâṇa. The same spirit is found in Jayadeva's Gîtâ-govinda, apparently composed in Bengal about 1170 A.D. and reproducing in a polished form the religious dramas or Yâtras in which the life of Kṛishṇa is still represented.