Shaiva Siddhanta
शैव सिद्धान्त
Meykandar's Sivajnana Bodham: early 13th century. The 1945 edition's preface says the first half of the 13th century; the translator's own 1895 reckoning is about 1200 CE
Shaiva Siddhanta is the school of Shiv worship whose basic text is Meykandar's Tamil Sivajnana Bodham, twelve short sutras with a commentary. Its subject is three entities: Pati (the Lord, Shiv), Pasu (the soul) and Pasa (the bonds that bind it). This page follows the text itself, in J.M. Nallaswami Pillai's English translation.
A genuine scholarly dispute touches this school's history - see below for what is settled and what isn't.
What the name means
The 1945 edition's preface explains that Siddhanta means 'conclusions arrived at' or 'the true end', conclusions reached through spiritual experience that agree with the guru's teaching and with scripture. It is called Shaiva Siddhanta because it is held to be the logical conclusion of the Shiva Agamas, which originated from Shiva. The preface says the Agamas' knowledge section is where the real exposition of the Upanishads is to be sought, and that they relate to the Upanishads as a commentary relates to an aphorism. These are claims made by the school's own publishers, and are reported as such. The preface also names the schools of Shrikantha, Shankara, Ramanuja and Madhva in the school's own terms (Shivadvaita, Kevaladvaita or Mayavada, Vishishtadvaita and Bhedavada).
Meykandar, as the preface tells it
The preface gives the traditional account. Meykandar was born at Pennadam (the preface spells it Pennakadam), about ten miles from Vriddhachalam, to a Shaiva prince named Achyutakalappalar, after a prayer at the Tiruvenkadu temple. Around the age of two, the sage Paranjyoti Munivar of Kailash, travelling through the sky, felt a hindrance above Tiruvennainallur, came down and initiated the child, passing on a teaching said to have come from Shiva through Nandi Deva, Sanatkumara and Satyajnana Darshanigal. The child received the name Meykandar, a Tamil equivalent of Satyajnana Darshanigal. He then set down the truth in twelve sutras in the presence of Ganesha (Polla Pillaiyar) at the Arutturai temple, added a prose commentary, and taught forty-nine disciples. This is tradition as one publisher records it, not history this site has verified.
How the book is built
Sivajnana Bodham has four chapters and twelve sutras. Chapter 1, Proof, has three sutras: the existence of God, the relation of God to the world and the souls, and the existence of the soul. Chapter 2, Definition, has three: the soul and its inner faculties, the relation of God, soul and body, and the nature of God and the world. Chapter 3, the means, has three: the soul, how souls obtain wisdom, and the purification of the soul. Chapter 4, the fruit, has three: how bondage is destroyed, how the soul unites with God, and the manner of worshipping God, who is beyond thought and speech. Each sutra is divided into short arguments with a commentary (the Varthika) and an analogy in verse (the Udarana) used as part of the proof.
The twelve sutras in brief
Sutra 1: the universe, which has a beginning, a growth and a decay, must have a cause, and that cause is Hara. Sutra 2: God is one with the souls, different from them, and both, and acts through his power of knowledge, causing souls to go through births and return. Sutra 3: the soul is not the body; it speaks of 'my body', dreams, and exists in sleep. Sutra 4: the soul acts through the inner faculties, as a king acts through his ministers. Sutra 5: the senses perceive objects but not themselves or the soul, and the soul perceives them but not itself or God. Sutra 6: what the senses perceive changes, and God is neither that nor nothing; he is Siva-Sat or Chit-Sat. Sutra 7: before Sat, everything else is unapparent; the soul, which perceives both, is called Sadasat. Sutra 8: the Lord appears as guru to the mature soul and shows it that it has been living among the five senses. Sutra 9: the soul sees the Lord by the eye of jnana, gives up the world as a mirage, and contemplates Sri Panchakshara according to law. Sutra 10: as the Lord becomes one with the soul in its human state, so the soul should become one with him and see its actions as his, losing mala, maya and karma. Sutra 11: as the soul enables the eye to see and itself sees, so Hara enables the soul to know and himself knows, and non-dual knowledge with unending love unites the soul to his feet. Sutra 12: the soul, having washed off the mala, should contemplate the forms of the devotees and the forms in temples as his form.
The guru and the three classes of souls
The commentary on sutra 8 distinguishes three classes of souls, Vignanakalar, Pralayakalar and Sakalar, according to how many of the three bonds bind them, and says God teaches each differently: directly to the first, in a divine form as guru to the second, and as a guru in human form, concealing himself, to the third. The sutra itself says that the Lord appears as guru to the soul that has matured. Sutra 9 names Sri Panchakshara, the five-syllable mantra, as the object of contemplation. The Vayaviya Samhita of the Shiva Purana on this site teaches the same five syllables.
The line after Meykandar
The preface names Arulnandi Sivacharya as Meykandar's chief disciple, originally the Shaiva priest Sakalagama Pandita, who was humbled when the child answered his question about the form of evil (anava) by pointing at him. Arulnandi wrote Sivajnana Siddhiyar and Irupa Irupahthu. The translator's introduction says Umapati Sivacharya was fourth in succession from Meykandar and dated his Sankalpa-nirakaranam to 1235 of the Shalivahana era. The preface says the founders of the Dharmapuram and Tiruvavaduthurai Adhinams descend from this line, and that the sages' writings are collected as the Pandara Shastras. The school counts fourteen Siddhanta Shastras, of which Sivajnana Bodham is the first.
Dating
No firm date is available. The translator reckons from Umapati's date, 1235 of the Shalivahana era, which is 1313 CE, and from an estimate of twenty-five to thirty years per teacher, and arrives at about 1192 or 1212 for Meykandar, which he rounds to about 1200 CE. The 1945 preface says the first half of the 13th century. He adds that he lacked the time to investigate fully and leaves the question open.
What scholars still dispute
Where the school began is unsettled in modern scholarship: some propose Kashmir, some South India, and some link its initiation-based route to the Pashupata tradition. Whether it grew from Tamil sources alone or from a Tamil-Sanskrit blend is also debated. This paragraph rests on an encyclopedia overview and not on the text read for the rest of this page, and the page does not choose.
Read the source chapters
Source note
Read from the 1945 Dharmapuram Adhinam edition of J.M. Nallaswami Pillai's English translation, Sivagnana Botham of Meykanda Deva (first edition 1895), using a machine-read text of the scan with some OCR errors. The statements about Sanskrit-Agamic Siddhanta and about scholarly disputes come from encyclopedia overviews, not from this book. All wording on this page is a paraphrase, and the sutra summaries are brief. Only the twelve sutra statements and the translator's introduction and preface were read in detail, not the full commentary on each argument.