The Agamas

Siddhanta receives the Vedas as general revelation and the Agamas as the special teaching of Siva's worship and liberating knowledge.

✦A teaching received and handed on

An Agama is a received sacred teaching, passed through a succession of teachers. In Saiva Siddhanta the name especially denotes the twenty-eight principal Sanskrit scriptures and their subsidiary works. Agama and tantra can both name these scriptures. The term is also used by other religious communities; the twenty-eight discussed below belong to Siddhanta's Saiva canon.

These books speak of Pati, the Lord; Pasu, the souls; and Pasam, the bonds. They also teach the means by which the bound soul approaches release: initiation, observance, worship, meditation and knowledge. Doctrine explains the aim of practice; practice addresses the soul that has yet to realise that aim.

✦General and special revelation

In Siddhanta's own account, the Vedas are potu (பொது), general revelation, and the Saiva Agamas are cirappu (சிறப்பு), special revelation. Arulnandi states this in Sivagnana Siddhiar, Supakkam 267: both are given by Siva, and the Agamas unfold the particular teaching received by souls touched by His grace. General and special describe their reach and purpose. The Vedas remain sacred testimony within Siddhanta.

✦Revelation through five faces

Tradition tells of Siva revealing the Agamas through His five faces: Sadyojata, Vamadeva, Aghora, Tatpurusha and Isana. Divine recipients and sages receive the teaching and carry it onward. The faces express forms of His revelation; they are not five independent gods.

Five sets contain the twenty-eight principal Agamas: ten Sivabheda and eighteen Rudrabheda.

The principal scriptures are called mulagamas (மூலாகமங்கள்). The ten from Kamika through Suprabheda form Sivabheda (சிவபேதம்); the eighteen from Vijaya through Vatula form Rudrabheda (ருத்ரபேதம்). These names distinguish streams of transmission through Siva and Rudra recipients within one Siddhanta canon, as Kamika, Purva 1.22–23 and 1.49–53, explains.

The following face-order is recorded in Gayathri Balasubramanian's study of Agamic temple ritual; Kamika, Uttara 25.62–64, preserves another assignment of the same sets to the faces.

The subsidiary scriptures, upagamas (உபாகமங்கள்), are counted as 207 by the Saiva Sastra Prachara Sabha. That is a received enumeration, rather than a statement that every work survives complete.

Chariyai, kiriyai, yogam and jnanam name both areas of Agamic teaching and ways in which the seeker approaches Siva.

A pada (பாதம்) is a division of teaching. The fourfold frame is carya, kriya, yoga and jnana, commonly spoken of in Tamil as chariyai, kiriyai, yogam and jnanam. Jnanapada is also called vidyapada, the division of knowledge. The frame describes the range of Agamic teaching; surviving scriptures do not all preserve four separate, complete divisions.

The textual divisions organise subjects. The paths describe the soul's approach. Their relationship is close, but a ritual chapter is not simply a description of one person's spiritual maturity. A kriyapada may set out the making and consecration of a temple for an entire community.

In Tirumantiram, Tantra 5, verse 1449, Tirumular names the four beginning with chariyai. Sivagnana Siddhiar, Supakkam 270, names the four paths and their fruits; Sivaprakasam, Pothu 49, connects them with the descent of grace and the appearance of the guru. Read Tirumantiram, Sivagnana Siddhiar and Sivaprakasam beside one another for these teachings.

Tirumantiram speaks explicitly of Agamic revelation, while the Meykanda Sastras unfold its questions about bondage and release in Tamil.

✦Tirumular asks for understanding

Tirumantiram gives Payiram 57–66 to the Agamas. Verse 57 names the twenty-eight and their reception through five faces. Verse 63 names nine Agamic works, including Karana, Kamika, Vira, Cintya, Vatula and Makuta. Verse 64 then asks what collecting sacred teaching achieves without understanding it.

“Northern speech” denotes Sanskrit. Tirumular places both languages in the work of making bondage, release and the Lord understood. His Tamil teaching draws ritual, yoga and knowledge into the same concern for the soul.

✦Meykandar and the Raurava

Tradition holds that Meykandar's twelve sutras of Sivagnana Bodham render twelve Sanskrit verses from the Pasavimochana, the freeing from bonds, associated with the Raurava Agama. N. R. Bhatt argued for Tamil priority because those Sanskrit verses were absent from the Raurava manuscripts known to him, while R. Nagaswamy argued for Sanskrit priority from citations he regarded as earlier.

The Tamil work itself gives reasons, illustrations and sustained teaching around its twelve sutras. Its account of Lord, soul, bond and release can be studied alongside the Agamas without reducing that teaching to a bare list of translated sentences.

✦The temple takes form

The Kamika gives directions for temple sites, lingas, image installation and daily worship. The Ajita and Raurava also contain architectural teaching, studied together by Bruno Dagens. The Agamic treatment brings the place of worship, its sacred forms and its rites into a connected order.

Sanskrit commentators explained the Agamas through argument and ritual instruction, in a history connected with Tamil Siddhanta.

The Sanskrit Siddhanta literature includes scriptures, commentaries, independent doctrinal treatises and ritual manuals. Its teachers worked in different parts of India. Their writings explain difficult passages, defend accounts of the soul and liberation, and arrange procedures that a priest can carry into worship.

Ramakantha worked in Kashmir in the tenth century; Aghorasiva taught in southern India in the twelfth. Geography alone does not identify a doctrinal school: these are Siddhanta teachers. Their explanations attend to real souls, the bonds that constrain them and the Lord who releases them.

Tamil Siddhanta received this Agamic inheritance through teaching, worship and commentary. Arulnandi's name Sakalagama Pandithar recalls his learning in the Agamas. Umapathi, in Sivaprakasam, prefatory verse 11, joins the teaching of Meykandar and Arulnandi with the Sivagamas and inwardly known grace. Later teachers also wrote in both Sanskrit and Tamil.

The shared Agamic inheritance is well established; scholars differ over particular textual dependencies, including the direction of translation between the Tamil and Sanskrit Sivagnanabodha.

For the reader, the connection opens two complementary kinds of study. The Tamil Sastras make the soul's questions speak in compact, memorable language. Sanskrit commentaries let us follow how particular scriptural statements were explained and defended. The ritual manuals show how a body of teaching became an ordered act of worship.

Trained Sivacharyas carry Agamic teaching into temple consecration, daily worship and festivals.

✦The people who carry the rites

Sivacharyas (சிவாச்சாரியர்கள்), also known as Adi Saivas (ஆதிசைவர்கள்), are the priestly community associated with the transmission and performance of Agamic worship in Tamil Saiva temples. Their preparation involves Sanskrit texts and mantras, ritual training under teachers, and the initiations required for their work. Learning includes actions, pronunciation and the sequence of the rite.

The teaching is also carried through manuscript work. Sambandha Sivacharya, trained in temple rites by his father, assisted the editing of Agamas at Pondicherry for decades. Such work connects the books that readers can now open with the knowledge of people trained to perform their rites.

✦Consecration and continuing worship

Pratishtha (பிரதிஷ்டை) is the installation and consecration of a sacred image or linga. The temple's kumbhabhishekam (கும்பாபிஷேகம்) includes the pouring of consecrated water from ritual vessels upon its sacred forms and structures. Mantra, ritual preparation and offerings belong to the larger ceremony. Renewal after renovation also brings this work into the life of an established temple.

Daily puja continues that life through bathing, adornment, offerings and the presentation of light, according to the temple's Agamic observance. A temple's recurring worship is called nitya puja (நித்திய பூசை). Festivals extend the worship through further rites and, where prescribed, processions. The number of daily services and the details of the ceremonies vary with the temple.

Agamic temple worship also travels with Tamil communities. Sivacharyas interviewed at London temples describe worship governed by the Saiva Agamas, alongside Vedas and Tamil sacred texts. The building may stand far from the Tamil country, while its rites remain connected to the teaching carried by its priests.

Read a scripture with its commentary, a study of its rites, and the Tamil works that unfold its teaching.

✦Scriptures, commentaries and studies

• Kamika, Purva portion and Uttara portion, translated by S. Sabharatanam: selected chapters on revelation, daily worship, sacred forms and installation; Purva 1 and Uttara 25 are relevant to the canon and transmission.
• Rauravāgama, edited by N. R. Bhatt: the Institut Français de Pondichéry's three-volume publication of doctrinal and ritual material.
• The Parākhyatantra, edited and translated by Dominic Goodall: an early Siddhanta scripture's surviving doctrine and yoga chapters, with historical introduction and annotations.
• IFP publications catalogue: includes the Svayambhuva with Sadyojyotis's commentary, the Kirana with Ramakantha's commentary, and An Enquiry into the Nature of Liberation, by Alex Watson, Dominic Goodall and S. L. P. Anjaneya Sarma.
• Bruno Dagens, Les enseignements architecturaux de l'Ajitāgama et du Rauravāgama: a study of temple architecture in these two Agamas.
• Richard H. Davis, A Priest's Guide for the Great Festival: Aghorasiva's Mahotsavavidhi: translation and study of a Sanskrit Siddhanta festival manual.
• R. Nagaswamy, discussion of Sivagnanabodha: his argument for Sanskrit priority, including his account of Bhatt's opposing position.
• Gayathri Balasubramanian, Temple Worship and Rituals as per Shaiva Agamas: the five-face grouping in the introductory discussion, pp. 31–32.
• Saiva Sastra Prachara Sabha: its account of twenty-eight principal Agamas and 207 subsidiary Agamas, together with its work in teaching and preservation.

✦Tamil teaching beside the Agamas

• Tirumantiram: Payiram 57–66 on the Agamas; Tantra 5 on the four paths, including verse 1449.
• Sivagnana Bodham: twelve sutras on Lord, soul, bond and release, with the Raurava connection discussed alongside them.
• Sivagnana Siddhiar: Supakkam 267 on general and special revelation, and 270 on the four paths.
• Sivaprakasam: prefatory verse 11 on its Agamic inheritance and Pothu 49 on grace, the paths and the guru.
• Unmai Vilakkam and The 36 Tattvas: the instruments of embodied experience and the soul that uses them.