Tradition

Shaivism

Overview

Shaivism (; Sanskrit: शैवसंप्रदायः, romanised: Śaivasampradāyaḥ) is an umbrella-term for a number of Hindu religious traditions, which worship Shiva as the supreme being. The followers of Shaivism are called Shaivas or Shaivites, numbering about 385 million people, across South Asia predominantly in India, Sri Lanka, and Nepal.

Shaivism developed as an amalgam of pre-Aryan religions and traditions, Vedic Rudra, and post-Vedic traditions, accommodating local traditions and Yoga, puja and bhakti. Worship of the Vedic deity Rudra forms its earliest traceable root, but the earliest evidence for sectarian Rudra-Shiva worship appears with the Pasupata (early CE), which emerged with the Hindu synthesis, when many local traditions were aligned with the Vedic-Brahmanical fold. The Pāśupata movement rapidly expanded throughout North India, giving rise to different forms of Shaivism and followed by the emergence of various tantric traditions. Both devotional and monistic Shaivism became popular in the 1st millennium CE, and it became the dominant religious tradition of several Hindu kingdoms. It arrived in Southeast Asia shortly thereafter, leading to the construction of thousands of Shaiva temples on the islands of Indonesia as well as Cambodia and Vietnam, co-evolving with Buddhism in these regions.

Shaivism encompasses a wide range of sub-traditions. Historically, a basic distinction can be made between Puranic Shaivism, such as the Shiva-worship in the Smarta tradition, and non-Puranic (Agamic/Tantric) Shaivism. The latter is further divided in the atimarga, solely for sanyassins (ascetic renunciates), and the mantramarga, open to both sanyassons and householders. Within the mantramarga, the Shaiva Siddhanta is devotional dualistic theism, while the Tantric Kapalika gave rise to a number of yoga-oriented monistic systems, such as the Trika and Kashmiri Shaivism. Tantric Shaivism is closely related to Shaktism, and some Shaivas worship in both Shiva and Shakti temples. It is the Hindu tradition that most accepts ascetic life and emphasises yoga, and encourages one to discover and be one with Shiva within.

It has a vast literature, making appeals to Vedic orthodoxy but viewing the Agama texts as superior revelations.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

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But by sacred things one must not understand simply those personal beings which are called gods or spirits; a rock, a tree, a spring, a pebble, a piece of wood, a house, in a word, anything can be sacred. A rite can have this character; in fact, the rite does not exist which does not have it to a certain degree.
Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
States what Shaivism is.
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Our interpretation of vegetation cults is supported particularly by the conditions prevailing in the original home of totemism, Australia. These cults here occur chiefly in the northern districts, into which there were early Melanesian immigrations; towards the south, they have gained but a relatively small foothold. The more northerly regions, as we have seen, are the very ones in which plant totems also are…
Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
States what Shaivism is.
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Other methods of deliverance from evil are in the excessive acts of penance performed by the Indians, to which a retreat within themselves is added. Now when the Indian thus internally collects himself, and retreats within his own thoughts, the moment of such pure concentration is called Brahma, the one and the clearly supersensuous state, which the understanding calls the highest possible existence. When this is so…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy
States what Shaivism is.
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Shaivism

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