History of Shaivism - Puranic Shaivism

Puranic Shaivism

It is with the Puranas that Shaivism spread rapidly, eventually throughout the subcontinent, through the singers and composers of the Puranic narratives. The Puranic literature has its origins in the later Gupta period (6th century) and develops during c. the 8th to 11th centuries. along with Smarta Brahmin forms of worship. The convergence of various Shaiva and Vaishnava trends, as well as their growing popularity, may have been partly the outcome of dominant dynasties like the Guptas assimilating the resources and cultural elements of their conquered territories.

The bulk of the material contained in the Puranas was established during the reign of the Guptas, with incremental additions taking place to the texts up to later medieval times. There are eighteen major Puranas, and these are traditionally classified into three groups of six each, with Shiva considered to be the central deity in the Shiva Purana, Linga Purana, Matsya Purana, Kurma purana, Skanda Purana, and Agni Purana. However this traditional grouping is inexact, for while the Shiva Purana is strongly sectarian in its focus on Shiva, others are not so clearly sectarian and include material about other deities as well, particularly Vishnu.

The Puranic corpus is a complex body of materials that advance the views of various competing cults, as Gavin Flood explains:

Although these texts are related to each other, and material in one is found in another, they nevertheless each present a view of ordering of the world from a particular perspective. They must not be seen as random collections of old tales, but as highly selective and crafted expositions and presentations of worldviews and soteriologies, compiled by particular groups of Brahmins to propagate a particular vision, whether it be focused on Viṣṇu, Śiva, or Devī, or, indeed, any number of deities.

For example, the Vishnu Purana (4th century) presents a Vaisnava viewpoint in which Vishnu awakens, becomes the creator god Brahma to create the universe, sustains it, and then destroys it as Rudra (Shiva).

Shaiva theism was expounded in the Agamas, which number two hundred including the Upagamas (the "Lesser" Agamas), which were composed before the 7th century. In the 7th century, Banabhatta included the worship of Shiva in his account of the prominent religious sects of that time.

In the 7th century the great Chinese traveller Xuanzang (Huen Tsang) toured India and wrote in Chinese about the prevalence of Shiva worship at that time, describing Shiva temples at Kanoj, Karachi, Malwa, Gandhar (Kandahar), and especially at Varanasi (Benares) where he saw twenty large temples dedicated to Shiva.