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The doctrines of Mâyâ and the distinction between higher and lower truth, which are of cardinal importance in his philosophy, receive only dubious support from the Upanishads and from Bâdarâyaṇa, but are practically identical with the teachings of the Mâdhyamika School of Buddhism and it was towards this line of thought rather than towards the theism of the Pâśupatas or Bhâgavatas that he was drawn.
But until a later period the types of divinity known as Vishṇu and Śiva resisted combination. The worshippers of Śiva have in all periods shown less inclination than the Vishnuites to form distinct and separate bodies and the earliest Śivaite sect of which we know anything, the Pâśupatas, arose slightly later than the Bhâgavatas.
At the close of the hymn Śiva says that he has introduced the Pâśupata religion which partly contradicts and partly agrees with the institutions of caste and the Âśramas, but is blamed by fools. These last words hint that the Pâśupatas laid themselves open to criticism by their extravagant practices, such as strange sounds and gestures.
The biographers of Śankara represent him as contending with these demoniac fanatics not merely with the weapons of controversy but as urging the princes who favoured him to exterminate them. Hindu authorities treat the Pâśupatas as distinct from the Śaivas, or Śivaites, and the distinction was kept up in Camboja in the fourteenth century.
The adherents of this view belong to four different classes Kapalas, Kalamukhas, Pasupatas, and Saivas. All of them hold fanciful theories of Reality which are in conflict with the Veda, and invent various means for attaining happiness in this life and the next. They maintain the general material cause and the operative cause to be distinct, and the latter cause to be constituted by Pasupati.
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