natural bases are the five elements—earth, water, fire, air and ether. The apprehension of God in the last of these five as ether is, according to the Saiva school of philosophy, the highest form of worship, for it is not the worship of God in a tangible form, but the worship of what, to ordinary minds, is vacuum, which nevertheless leads to the attainment of a knowledge of the all-pervading without physical accessories in the shape of any linga, which is, after all, an emblem. That this is the case at Chidambaram is known to every Hindu, for if he ever asks the priests to show him the God in the temple he is pointed to an empty space in the holy of holies, which has been termed the Akasa, or ether-linga.” But, however congenial this refined symbolism may be to the worshipper of a speculative turn of mind, it is difficult to see how it could ever satisfy the religious wants of the common man little given to abstract conceptions of this kind.
From early times, detachment from the world and the practice of austerities have been regarded in India as peculiarly conducive to a spirit of godliness, and ultimately to a state of ecstatic communion with the deity. On these Mendicant orders. grounds it was actually laid down as a rule for a man solicitous for his spiritual welfare to pass the last two of the four stages (āśrama) of his life in such conditions of renunciation and self-restraint. Though there is hardly a sect which has not contributed its share to the element of religious mendicancy and asceticism so prevalent in India, it is in connexion with the Siva-cult that these tendencies have been most extensively cultivated. Indeed, the personality of the stern God himself exhibits this feature in a very marked degree, whence the term mahāyogī or “great ascetic” is often applied to him.
Of Saiva mendicant and ascetic orders, the members of which are considered more or less followers of Sankara Acharya, the following may be mentioned: (1) Daṇḍīs, or staff-bearers, who carry a wand with a piece of red cloth, containing the sacred cord, attached to it, and also wear one or more pieces of cloth of the same colour. They worship Siva in his form of Bhairava, the “terrible.” A sub-section of this order are the Dandi Dasnamis, or Dandi of ten names, so called from their assuming one of the names of Sankara’s four disciples, and six of their pupils. (2) Yogis (or popularly, Jogis), i.e. adherents of the Yoga philosophy and the system of ascetic practices enjoined by it with the view of mental abstraction and the supposed attainment of superhuman powers—practices which, when not merely pretended, but rigidly carried out, are only too apt to produce vacuity of mind and wild fits of frenzy. In these degenerate days their supernatural powers consist chiefly in conjuring, sooth-saying, and feats of jugglery, by which they seldom fail in imposing upon a credulous public. (3) Sannyasis, devotees who “renounce” earthly concerns, an order not confined either to the Brahmanical caste or to the Saiva persuasion. Those of the latter are in the habit of smearing their bodies with ashes, and wearing a tiger-skin and a necklace or rosary of rudraksha berries (Elaeocarpus Ganitrus, lit. “Rudra’s eye”), sacred to Siva, and allowing their hair to grow till it becomes matted and filthy. (4) Parama-hamsas, i.e. “supreme geese (or swans),” a term applied to the world-soul with which they claim to be identical. This is the highest order of asceticism, members of which are supposed to be solely engaged in meditating on the Brahma, and to be “equally indifferent to pleasure or pain, insensible of heat or cold, and incapable of satiety or want.” Some of them go about naked, but the majority are clad like the Dandis. (5) Aghora Panthis, a vile and disreputable class of mendicants, now rarely met with. Their filthy habits and disgusting practices of gross promiscuous feeding, even to the extent of eating offal and dead men’s flesh, look almost like a direct repudiation of the strict Brahmanical code of ceremonial purity and cleanliness, and of the rules regulating the matter and manner of eating and drinking; and they certainly make them objects of loathing and terror wherever they are seen.
On the general effect of the manner of life led by Sadhus or “holy men,” a recent observer (J. C. Oman, Mystics, Ascetics and Saints of India, p. 273) remarks: “Sadhuism, whether perpetuating the peculiar idea of the efficiency of austerities for the acquisition of far-reaching powers over natural phenomena, or bearing its testimony to the belief in the indispensableness of detachment from the world as a preparation for the ineffable joy of ecstatic communion with the Divine Being, has undoubtedly tended to keep before men’s eyes, as the highest ideal, a life of purity, self-restraint, and contempt of the world and human affairs. It has also necessarily maintained amongst the laity a sense of the righteous claims of the poor upon the charity of the more affluent members of the community. Moreover, sadhuism, by the multiplicity of the independent sects which have arisen in India, has engendered and favoured a spirit of tolerance which cannot escape the notice of the most superficial observer.”
An independent Saiva sect, or, indeed, the only strictly
Saiva sect, are the Vīra Śaivas, more commonly called Lingayats
(popularly Lingaits) or Lingavats, from their
practice of wearing on their person a phallic emblem
Lingayats.
of Siva, made of copper or silver, and usually enclosed
in a case suspended from the neck by a string. Apparently from
the movable nature of their badge, their Gurus are called Jangamas
(“movable”). This sect counts numerous adherents in
southern India; the Census Report of 1901 recording nearly
a million and a half, including some 70 or 80 different, mostly
endogamous, castes. The reputed founder, or rather reformer,
of the sect was Basava (or Basaba), a Brahman of the Belgaum
district who seems to have lived in the 11th or 12th century.
According to the Basava-purana he early in life renounced his
caste and went to reside at Kalyana, then the capital of the
Chalukya kingdom, and later on at Sangamesvara near Ratnagiri,
where he was initiated into the Vīra Śaiva faith which he
subsequently made it his life’s work to propagate. His doctrine,
which may be said to constitute a kind of reaction against the
severe sacerdotalism of Sankara, has spread over all classes of
the southern community, most of the priests of Saiva temples
there being adherents of it; whilst in northern India its votaries
are only occasionally met with, and then mostly as mendicants,
leading about a neatly caparisoned bull as representing Siva’s
sacred bull Nandi. Though the Lingayats still show a certain
animosity towards the Brahmans, and in the Census lists are
accordingly classesd as an independent group beside the Hindus,
still they can hardly be excluded from the Hindu community,
and are sure sooner or later to find their way back to the
Brahmanical fold.
Vishnu, whilst less popular with Brahmans than his rival, has from early times proved to the lay mind a more attractive object of adoration on account of the genial and, so to speak, romantic character of his mythical personality. Avatars. It is not, however, so much the original figure of the god himself that enlists the sympathies of his adherents as the additional elements it has received through the theory of periodical “descents” (avatāra) or incarnations applied to this deity. Whilst the Saiva philosophers do not approve of the notion of incarnations, as being derogatory to the dignity of the deity, the Brahmans have nevertheless thought fit to adopt it as apparently a convenient expedient for bringing certain tendencies of popular worship within the pale of their system, and probably also for counteracting the Buddhist doctrines; and for this purpose Vishnu would obviously offer himself as the most attractive figure in the Brahmanical trinity. Whether the incarnation theory started from the original solar nature of the god suggestive of regular visits to the world of men, or in what other way it may have originated, must remain doubtful. Certain, however, it is that at least one of his Avatars is clearly based on the Vedic conception of the sun-god, viz. that of the dwarf who claims as much ground as he can cover by three steps, and then gains the whole universe by his three mighty strides. Of the ten or more Avatars, assumed by different authorities, only two have entered to any considerable extent into the religious worship of the people, viz. those of Rama (or Ramachandra) and Krishna, the favourite heroes of epic romance. That these two figures would appeal far more strongly to the hearts and feelings of the people, especially the warlike Kshatriyas,[1] than the austere Siva is only what might have been expected; and, indeed, since the time of the epics their cult seems never to have lacked numerous adherents. But, on the other hand, the essentially human nature of these two gods
- ↑ As in the case of Siva’s traditional white complexion, it may not be without significance, from a racial point of view, that Vishnu, Rama and Krishna have various darker shades of colour attributed to them, viz. blue, hyacinthine, and dark azure or dark brown respectively. The names of the two heroes meaning simply “black” or “dark,” the blue tint may originally have belonged to Vishnu, who is also called pītavasas, dressed in yellow garment, i.e. the colours of sky and sun combined.
