Shaiva Siddhānta

If you are a Tamil Shaiva — in Tamil Nadu, Jaffna, Kuala Lumpur or Durban — your religion very likely has a philosophy you have never been formally taught, yet already know in your bones. When the priest performs the Āgamic pūjā, when the ōtuvār sings Appar’s hymns, when an elder says “everything happens by His grace” — எல்லாம் அவன் அருள் — that is Shaiva Siddhānta சைவ சித்தாந்தம், “the settled conclusion of the Shaivas.” This page sets out its teaching in its own terms. Shaiva Siddhānta view Rival schools’ objections are gathered near the end.

Three eternal realities

Siddhānta begins with a bold claim: there are three realities, and all three are without beginning.

• Pati पति பதி — the Lord: Shiva, all-knowing, all-powerful, pure, full of grace.
• Paśu पशु பசு — the soul, literally the “tethered animal”: countless individual souls, conscious, but bound.
• Pāśa पाश பாசம் — the bonds, the rope that ties the animal.

The image is from the cattle-pen: a beast tied by a rope, and its master. The names are old — Shiva as Paśupati, “Lord of the creatures,” goes back to the Veda — and the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad, beloved of Shaivas, already promises release from the “bonds”:

Tirumūlar’s Tirumantiram puts the doctrine in a famous verse: of the three, paśu and pāśa are as beginningless as Pati himself — yet they cannot reach Pati of their own accord, and when Pati draws near, the bonds cannot remain. Notice what this rules out. The soul was never created by God, and the bonds are not God’s fault: they are as old as the soul. God’s work is not to make souls but to free them. Tap the tiles:

• 1பதிPati · the LordShiva: pure consciousness, untouched by any bond, who acts out of grace alone. He is the efficient cause of the world, not its material.
• 2பசுPaśu · the soulInfinite in number, conscious by nature, but its knowledge and power are covered from beginningless time. It takes on the character of whatever it is joined to.
• 3பாசம்Pāśa · the bondsNon-conscious, beginningless fetters — counted as three (or five) malas.
• 4ஆணவம்ĀṇavaThe root impurity: a darkness that shrinks the soul to the sense of being small, ignorant and powerless. Like verdigris on copper, it was always there.
• 5கன்மம்KarmaThe deeds, good and bad, whose fruits the soul must experience. Not punishment, but the medicine that ripens it.
• 6மாயைMāyāA real, eternal, unconscious substance from which Shiva fashions bodies, senses and worlds — a bond, but also a lamp in the dark.

The three bonds

The bonds are called malas, “impurities.” The deepest is āṇava ஆணவம் — an innate impurity that limits the soul’s knowledge and power. It is not something the soul did; it is a darkness the soul has always had, as copper has always had its tarnish. Left alone in āṇava, the soul is like someone in pitch darkness: not wicked, simply unable to see, or even to know that it cannot see. (In everyday Tamil, āṇavam means arrogance — and the philosophers would say that is exactly how the darkness shows itself: as the small self puffing itself up.)

Here is the surprise. Māyā and karma, the other two bonds, are also Shiva’s gifts. To a soul lost in total darkness, Shiva gives a body, a mind and a world made from māyā — like lighting a small lamp in a dark room. The lamp is limited; it casts shadows; but by it the soul can begin to know and act. Then karma — the fruit of its actions — teaches it, life after life, until it is ready. This is why Siddhānta has no room for calling the world an illusion: mithyā is not its word. The world is real, made of a real stuff, and it exists for the soul’s education.

Siddhānta describes the soul as sat-asat, “real-unreal” — not because it half-exists, but because it is always shaped by its company. Like a crystal that turns red beside a red flower and clear in the sunlight, it becomes like the bonds while bound, and like Shiva when it turns to Shiva.

The five acts and grace

Siddhānta’s God is above all a God who acts. Shiva performs five acts, the pañcakṛtya, and every one of them, even the hard ones, is done for the souls’ sake. Naṭarāja dancing at Chidambaram is their picture: the drum in one hand sounds creation; the hand raised in blessing protects; the flame dissolves; the foot planted on the dwarf of forgetfulness conceals; and the raised foot offers release (see Time & Cosmology). Step through them:

When is a soul “ripe”? The teachers name two signs. One is malaparipākam, the ripening of the impurity, as a boil must come to a head. The other is iruviṉaiyoppu, the “balancing of the two deeds”: the moment the soul is no longer moved more by good fortune than by bad, and stops clinging to either. Then aruḷ, grace, descends — the śaktipāta or “fall of power” — and with it the guru and initiation. Even the soul’s devotion is grace. Māṇikkavācakar says it in a line every Tamil Shaiva knows:

The thirty-six tattvas

How does one stuff become a whole universe? Like the Sāṃkhya school (see Samkhya), Siddhānta answers with a ladder of tattvas, “principles” — but extends Sāṃkhya’s twenty-five to thirty-six, adding the subtle levels above matter. Very briefly, from the top:

1. 5 pure tattvas शुद्धŚiva, Śakti, Sadāśiva, Īśvara, Śuddhavidyā — the levels of pure māyā, through which Shiva acts. No bound soul lives here.
2. 7 “knowledge” tattvas विद्याMāyā itself and its limiting sheaths — time, fate, partial power, partial knowledge, desire — which turn the soul into a limited experiencer (puruṣa).
3. 24 soul tattvas आत्मSāṃkhya’s familiar list: nature (prakṛti), intellect, ego, mind, ten senses, five subtle and five gross elements.

The same thirty-six appear, with a very different meaning, in Kashmir Shaivism. And the four-stage path that climbs this ladder — caryā, kriyā, yoga and jñāna, the servant’s, son’s, friend’s and true way — is set out on Agamas & Tantras.

The fourteen Meykaṇṭa Śāstras

Siddhānta has two scriptures. Its revelation is the twenty-eight Āgamas, in Sanskrit. Its heart is the Tamil Tirumurai — the hymns of the Nāyaṉmārs, Tirumūlar and Sekkiḻār (see Tamil Sacred Literature). Between them stands a third body of texts: the Meykaṇṭa Śāstras, fourteen Tamil treatises that turn devotion into exact philosophy.

The keystone is the Civañāṉapōtam சிவஞானபோதம், “instruction in the knowledge of Shiva,” by Meykaṇṭār (13th century) of Tiruveṇṇainallūr — just twelve sūtras, with brief arguments and examples. Popular tradition Meykaṇṭār is remembered as a child-sage who taught while still a boy; his name means “he who saw the truth.” Its twelve sūtras correspond closely to twelve Sanskrit verses transmitted as part of the Raurava Āgama; which came first is debated. Its second sūtra states the relation of God and souls:

The fourteen are: two Uyyavanta Tēvar works (the Tiruvuntiyār and Tirukkaḷiṟṟuppaṭiyār); Meykaṇṭār’s Civañāṉapōtam; two by his disciple Aruḷnanti, the Irupā Irupahtu and the great Civañāṉa Cittiyār, which expands the Pōtam at length and debates rival schools; Maṉavācakam Kaṭantār’s Uṇmai Viḷakkam; and eight by Umāpati Civācāriyar of Chidambaram (14th century), including the Civappirakācam and the Tiruvaruṭpayaṉ, “the fruit of divine grace,” a hundred couplets in the metre of the Kuṟaḷ.

“Not two”: what advaita means here

It may surprise you that Siddhānta calls itself advaita. But it means something quite different from Shankara. For Shankara, “not two” means identity: the self is Brahman. For Siddhānta, “not two” means inseparability: God and soul are never apart, like body and life, yet never one thing. Umāpati opens the Tiruvaruṭpayaṉ with an image that deliberately echoes the first couplet of the Tirukkuṟaḷ:

That is the shape of liberation too. When the bonds are gone, the soul attains śivatva, “Shiva-ness”: it shares Shiva’s knowledge, freedom and bliss, so completely united with him that it no longer experiences itself apart. But it does not cease to exist, and it does not become the Lord who creates and frees others. It is union, not merger: the many liberated souls remain many, each wholly filled with Shiva. See Samsara & Moksha for how this compares with other schools.

Two Siddhāntas: Sanskrit and Tamil

The Tamil Siddhānta of Meykaṇṭār has a long Sanskrit prehistory. Scholarly view Historians, above all Alexis Sanderson, have shown that Śaiva Siddhānta was once the main Shaiva ritual tradition across India, including Kashmir. Its early theologians wrote in Sanskrit: Sadyojyoti (perhaps around 700), Rāmakaṇṭha in 10th-century Kashmir, and Aghoraśiva, whose ritual manual, written at Chidambaram in the 12th century, is still used in Tamil temples.

The early Sanskrit teachers were strict dualists: the liberated soul becomes equal to Shiva — omniscient and omnipotent like him — but remains wholly separate, one of many “Shivas.” Liberation came through initiation (dīkṣā) as a ritual act more than through devotion. The Tamil Siddhānta from the 13th century kept the Āgamas and the three realities but moved them towards the warmth of the Tēvāram: union instead of mere equality, grace and love at the centre, and God inseparable from the soul. As the Sanskrit traditions faded in the north, the Tamil south became Siddhānta’s home. Many traditional Siddhāntins see these as one continuous teaching, unfolding rather than changing; both views deserve a hearing.

A living tradition

Siddhānta was never only a philosophy for scholars. Its great monasteries, the Ādhīnams ஆதீனம் — among them Dharmapuram, Thiruvavaduthurai and Thiruppanandal, in the Kaveri delta — have for centuries maintained temples, published the Tirumurai and the Śāstras, and trained the ōtuvārs who sing them. Their heads are celibate teachers, revered as the living guru.

Its history includes caste, and it should be named plainly. Temple priesthood belongs to the hereditary Ādiśaiva Śivācāryas; the Ādhīnams have long been led by members of the Vellāḷa community; and classical Siddhānta graded initiation by caste, even while the Tirumurai sang of devotees from every background. In the late 19th and 20th centuries, Siddhānta was revived as “the Tamils’ own religion” by writers such as J. M. Nallaswami Pillai and Maraimalai Adigal, and in Jaffna by Ārumuka Nāvalar, who printed the texts and founded Shaiva schools. Modern revival

Community practice In Malaysia, many Tamil and Sri Lankan Tamil families learned their Shaivism through this revival: Tēvāram and Tiruvācakam classes in temples, Siddhānta study circles and talks by visiting Ādhīnam heads, and the sense — strong at Thaipusam and Mahāśivarātri — that grace is not an abstract doctrine but a daily experience. Practice varies from temple to temple and family to family.

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Sources & further reading

• K. Sivaraman, Śaivism in Philosophical Perspective: A Study of the Formative Concepts, Problems and Methods of Śaiva Siddhānta (Motilal Banarsidass, 1973).
• Mariasusai Dhavamony, Love of God according to Śaiva Siddhānta: A Study in the Mysticism and Theology of Śaivism (Clarendon Press, 1971).
• Gordon Matthews (trans.), Śiva-ñāna-bōdham: A Manual of Śaiva Religious Doctrine (Oxford University Press, 1948).
• J. M. Nallaswami Pillai (trans.), Sivagnana Botham of Meikanda Deva (Madras, 1895).
• H. W. Schomerus, Śaiva Siddhānta: An Indian School of Mystical Thought, trans. Mary Law (Motilal Banarsidass, 2000; German original 1912).
• Alexis Sanderson, “Śaivism and the Tantric Traditions,” in Stewart Sutherland et al. (eds.), The World’s Religions (Routledge, 1988); and “The Śaiva Age,” in Shingo Einoo (ed.), Genesis and Development of Tantrism (University of Tokyo, 2009).
• Indira Viswanathan Peterson, Poems to Śiva: The Hymns of the Tamil Saints (Princeton University Press, 1989).
• Tamil texts: Project Madurai and Tamil Wikisource editions of the Civañāṉapōtam, Tiruvaruṭpayaṉ and Tiruvācakam.