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Updated: June 22, 2025
Śâktism also was not evolved from ancient Brahmanism but is different in tone from Vishnuism and Sivaism. Whereas they start from a movement of thought and spiritual feeling, Śâktism has for its basis certain ancient popular worships. With these it has combined much philosophy and has attempted to bring its teaching into conformity with Brahmanism, but yet remains somewhat apart.
Also the forms which Śivaism assumed in these two outlying provinces present differences: in Kashmir it was chiefly philosophic, in the Dravidian countries chiefly religious. In the south it calls on God to help the sinner out of the mire, whereas the school of Kashmir, especially in its later developments, resembles the doctrine of Śankara, though its terminology is its own.
Even at the present day authorities differ as to whether Śiva or Vishṇu commands the allegiance of the majority and naturally it is hard to describe the distribution of sects in earlier times. Bâṇa who lived at his court indicates that Śivaism was the predominant form of worship, but also mentions Buddhists and Bhâgavatas. Hsüan Chuang on the other hand holds him up as a devout Buddhist.
But the prodigious amplification of Hinduism was mainly due to the absorption of beliefs prevalent in Indian districts other than the homes of the ancient Brahmans. Thus south Indian religion is characterized when we first know it by its emotional tone and it resulted in the mediaeval Sivaism of the Tamil country.
The originality of the Śaiva Siddhânta lies less in its dogmas than in its devotional character: in the feeling that the soul is immersed in darkness and struggles upwards by the grace of the Lord, so that the whole process of Karma and Mâyâ is really beneficent. As already mentioned Śivaism has an important though unorthodox offshoot in the Lingâyats or Lingavants.
In both there is a line of poet-saints followed by philosophers and teachers and in both a considerable collection of Tamil hymns esteemed as equivalent to the Veda. Perhaps Śivaism was dominant first and Vishnuism somewhat later but at no epoch did either extinguish the other.
But still the whole system, though heated in the furnace of Dravidian emotion, has not been recast in a new mould. Its dogmas are those common to Śivaism in other parts and it accepts as its ultimate authority the twenty-eight Śaiva Âgamas. This however does not detract from the beauty of the special note and tone which sound in its Tamil hymns and prayers.
This frantic Sivaism is developed from the conception which makes the world the product of blind will, the principle of everything. The acrid blasphemy of the doctrine naturally leads the writer to indulgence in epithets of bad taste which prevent our regarding his work as the mere challenge of a paradoxical theorist.
Lakulin does not play an important part in modern Śivaism but is mentioned in inscriptions from the tenth till the thirteenth centuries. The Sarva-darśana-saṅgraha describes the Nakulîśa-Pâśupata system and quotes Nakulîśa who is clearly the same as Lakulin.
But though the antithesis between the ritualism of the older Brahmanism and the faith or philosophy of Śivaism and Vishnuism may remind us of the differences between the Catholic Church and Protestant reformers, yet historically there is no resemblance in the development of the antithesis.
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