Sivagnana Bodham

Sivagnana Bodham, "instruction in the knowledge of Siva", is the root text of the fourteen Meykanda Sastras: the whole philosophy in twelve sutras.

Sivagnana Bodham is short enough to learn by heart in an afternoon and deep enough to study for a lifetime. Each sutra packs an argument into three or four lines of Tamil. Meykandar then unfolds each sutra himself in a prose gloss, the Vartikam. The gloss divides it into arguments (adhikaranams) and illustrates them in short verses (udaharana venbas).

✦Its place in the canon

Among the fourteen Sastras it is the first text (mudal nul): the others explain it, expand it or defend it. Arulnandi's Sivagnana Siddhiar is its great expansion, and Umapathi's Sivaprakasam reorders the same teaching for students. The two older Sastras, Tiruvundiyar and Tirukkalirruppadiyar, come before it in the traditional list but are devotional rather than systematic.

A traditional saying puts it in a line of descent. The Vedas are the cow, the Agamas its milk, and the Tevaram hymns the ghee drawn from it; Sivagnana Bodham is the taste of that ghee.

✦Where it comes from

The sirappu payiram, the preface verse attached to the text, says the teaching came down from Nandi to the sages, and that the one who spoke it in Tamil was Swetavanan of Vennai, on the Pennai river, "who saw the truth and left the false": Meykandar.

Where the Raurava stands among the twenty-eight, and what the Agamas are: The Agamas.

Tradition remembers Meykandar as a child of grace who was taught by a sage in his infancy, and who then taught his own family's guru.

✦The traditional story

Tradition speaks of forty-nine disciples, with Arulnandi first among them. Some accounts say Meykandar was born at Tiruppennakadam, his mother's home, and raised at Tiruvennainallur. All agree that he lived and taught at Tiruvennainallur, where his shrine stands today.

✦Dating

Meykandar is placed in the early 13th century. The basis is the chain of teachers after him: his disciple Arulnandi, Arulnandi's disciple Maraignana Sambandar, and then Umapathi Sivachariyar, whose Sankarpa Nirakaranam carries a date early in the 14th century. A date close to 1221 CE is often given for Sivagnana Bodham.

✦The lineage he began

Meykandar is the first of the four Santana Kuravars, the lineage teachers of Siddhanta. The Saiva monasteries that trace their teaching back through this line still call it the Tirukkailaya lineage.

1. 1

   Meykandar

   Sivagnana Bodham

2. 2

   Arulnandi Sivachariyar

   Sivagnana Siddhiar, Irupa Irupathu

3. 3

   Maraignana Sambandar

   teacher of Umapathi

4. 4

   Umapathi Sivachariyar

   Sivaprakasam and seven more Sastras

Meykandar · All the poets and teachers ›

Twelve sutras in two parts and four chapters: first what is real, then how the soul is freed.

The first six sutras are the general part (podhu athikaram). They prove that God, the soul and the bond exist, and define each one. The last six are the particular part (unmai athikaram): how the soul comes to know the truth, and what freedom is like. Each part has two chapters (iyals) of three sutras.

✦Three layers in every sutra

1. 1

   Sutra

   three or four lines of Tamil verse: the claim itself

2. 2

   Vartikam

   Meykandar's prose: the sutra split into arguments (39 adhikaranams in all), each with its reason

3. 3

   Udaharanam

   short venba verses that illustrate each argument (81 in all)

Before the sutras come an invocation to Ganesa as Pollap Pillaiyar, a verse of humility before the learned, and the preface verse naming the author.

Meykandar does not begin with faith. He begins with an inference from the world we see.

✦Sutra 1: the world needs a Maker

Everything we see is "he", "she" or "it", and everything we see is born, stays and passes. Whatever is produced implies a producer, as a pot implies a potter. The world is withdrawn into the one who ends it, Aran, and must come forth from Him again, because souls still bound by impurity need a world in which to work it out. So the one who ends the world is also its first cause.

✦Sutra 2: one with souls, yet distinct

This is the Siddhanta meaning of Advaitam. Siva is not the soul, and the soul is not Siva; but He is never apart from it. He acts through His Anai, His Sakti, and through it souls take birth and die ("go and come") according to their good and bad deeds.

How the Advaita reading of a great saying differs from the relation this sutra states: How the great sayings are read.

✦Sutra 3: the soul exists

The third sutra gives seven arguments that there is a soul, distinct from body, senses and mind. Meykandar's vartikam takes them one at a time:

1. 1

   It says "not this"

   We say of the body, of the senses, of the mind: "this is not I". Something must be doing the denying.

2. 2

   It says "my body"

   We say "my body" as we say "my house". The owner is not the thing owned.

3. 3

   It knows through all five senses

   Each sense knows only its own object. Something knows all five together.

4. 4

   It knows sleep

   We know that we slept. Something was present that knew the senses had withdrawn.

5. 5

   In deep sleep, nothing is eaten or done

   The body lies whole, yet nothing is enjoyed or done. What is missing is the soul's attention.

6. 6

   It knows when it is taught

   The mind learns only when someone knows through it.

7. 7

   It lives in a body-machine made of maya

   The body is an instrument, and an instrument implies a user: the soul.

The soul knows, but never by itself: it knows through instruments below it, and only because Siva is present above it.

✦Sutra 4: the soul and its inner instruments

The soul is not the mind. Mind, intellect, ego and chittam, the inner instruments, are tools made of maya. The soul works through them as a king works through ministers. Because Anavam clings to it from beginningless time, the soul cannot know by itself. It passes through five states: waking, dream, deep sleep, a fourth state and one beyond it.

✦Sutra 5: iron before a magnet

The senses know nothing without the soul, and the soul knows nothing without Siva. Yet Siva does not change, labour or become involved, any more than the magnet does when the iron moves.

✦Sutra 6: neither object nor nothing

Whatever can be known by the senses and the mind is changing and made: asat, the unreal. Whatever cannot be known at all does not exist. Siva is neither. He cannot be grasped by the senses, yet He is known by grace. The sutra calls Him Siva-Sat, the Real that is known in a different way.

The body, senses and inner instruments that the sutras distinguish from the soul are listed in The 36 Tattvas.

Pasupati, the Lord of souls, as the name is worshipped at Kathmandu: The Jyotirlingas and the Himalayan shrines.

The soul cannot free itself. When it is ripe, the Lord Himself comes as its guru.

✦Sutra 7: the soul is in between

Only the soul knows both the Real (Siva) and the unreal (the world). The Real has no need to know the unreal; the unreal knows nothing at all. So the soul is distinct from both, and takes on the colour of whichever it clings to. This is its Sadasat nature.

✦Sutra 8: the prince among the hunters

The guru comes only when the soul is ripe: when its impurities have ripened (Malaparipakam) and it has come to regard good and bad deeds alike (Iruvinaiyoppu). Then grace descends (Sattinipatam).

✦Sutra 9: the eye of wisdom

The soul cannot see Siva with the "eye of flesh", knowledge that comes through the senses. It seeks Him with the eye of wisdom that the guru opens. The bond then fades, as a mirage vanishes when you come close. Siva is found as cool shade. To keep this vision steady, the soul meditates on the five syllables, the Panchaksharam, in the prescribed way.

Freedom is not dissolving into Siva. It is living wholly in His service, in love, among His devotees.

✦Sutra 10: one with Him in service

The freed soul becomes one with Him, as the second sutra said He is one with souls. It does nothing on its own account and stands in Iraipani, the Lord's service. Impurity, maya and strong karma cannot touch it. This is Jivanmukti: freedom while still in the body.

✦Sutra 11: as the soul helps the eye

The eye sees only because the soul sees through it and shows it what it sees. In the same way the soul knows only because Siva knows through it and shows it what it knows. Seeing this, the soul goes to Hara's feet with love that never tires.

✦Sutra 12: the devotees and the temple

The last sutra brings the highest philosophy back to the temple. The freed soul does not rise above worship; it worships with its whole being. It honours the Adiyar and the temple because Siva is present in both.

The temple this sutra asks us to honour, its plan and the walk round it: The temple and its plan.

Sivagnana Bodham is still learned by heart, taught in the Adheenams and honoured at Meykandar's shrine.

• In the Adheenams. The Saiva monasteries of Tamil Nadu, such as Dharmapuram, Tiruvavaduthurai and Tiruppanandal, teach the Sastras with Sivagnana Bodham at the centre. They also publish the text with its commentaries.
• Learning by heart. Students in Siddhanta classes commit the twelve sutras to memory and then study them one argument at a time, with the vartikam and a commentary.
• At Tiruvennainallur. Meykandar's shrine stands in the town where he taught. His guru puja, his annual remembrance, falls on the day of the Swati star in the month of Aippasi.
• Before other study. Students often begin with Tiruvarutpayan or Unmai Vilakkam as introductions, then turn to Sivagnana Bodham and its expansion, the Sivagnana Siddhiar.

✦Commentaries (by name)

• Meykandar's own vartikam, the first commentary, part of the text itself.
• Pandipperumal's commentary (vritti).
• Sivagnana Swamigal (18th century): the long Dravida Mapadiyam, also called Sivagnana Mapadiyam, and the shorter Sirrurai.
• English translations by J. M. Nallaswami Pillai (1895) and Gordon Matthews (1948).

Sivagnana Swamigal the poet and monk, beside the later saints who carried the tradition on: Later Tamil saints and Siddhanta.

What each kind of commentary does, from word-by-word gloss to the Mapadiyam, and the manuals used in teaching: Later works and commentaries.

Meykandar's Guru Puja, and those of the other teachers and the sixty-three, month by month: Festivals and Guru Pujas.

Read the text in Tamil with a traditional commentary; use this page as a map.

The twelve sutras are short, but each line carries a whole argument. The best way in is a printed edition from one of the Adheenams, with the vartikam and a commentary, read slowly with a teacher.