How did Śaivism spread across South Asia?
SHIVADHARMA The Śivadharma and the Making of Regional Religious Traditions in Premodern South Asia
Hinduism is a very broad religion containing several different devotional movements, including Śaivism, and evidence dating from the last centuries BCE shows it spread rapidly across South Asia from the 6th century onwards. The Śivadharma project aims to examine how Śaivism spread and to investigate its influence on religious identities in different regions, through studying the composition and spread of the ‘Śivadharma texts’, as Dr Florinda De Simini explains. The Śaiva religion developed around the cult of the God Śiva, and is one of the main branches of modern Hinduism. This devotion to Śiva distinguishes the Śaiva religion – or Śaivism – from other branches of Hinduism, such as Viṣṇuism, which are devoted to other Gods. “Hinduism is very broad, and contains several different devotional movements,” says Dr Florinda De Simini, Associate Professor in the Ancient and Medieval History of India at the University of Naples. While Śaivism is primarily a movement devoted to the God Śiva, this does not tell the whole story, and Dr De Simini says there are also other dimensions to the religion. “A whole philosophical system developed around it. This is about theology, but it’s also about culture and art,” she explains. “This religion has a huge level of cultural and political influence.”
Śivadharma project As the Principal Investigator of the Śivadharma project, Dr De Simini is now exploring this very complex cultural phenomenon and how it spread across parts of South Asia to areas with different linguistic traditions, covering a period from the early Middle Ages right up to the 18th century. Together with her colleagues, Dr De Simini is studying the Śivadharma texts, which were written in Sanskrit around the 6th/7th centuries, a period when Śaivism started to become a public religion. “Scholars have seen that Śaivism becomes more prominent at this time – meaning that it is increasingly
associated with political power. So it attracts more patronage at a certain point – and these texts really give an overview exactly of that period in which Śaivism started to become very prominent,” she says. “The main part of our research is about investigating how it spread very quickly throughout South Asia.” Researchers are investigating this phenomenon through the lens of the regions to which it spread, including Nepal, NorthEast India, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. The Śivadharma texts became popular and influential in these regions, while they are also the very important regions in the history of Śaivism, two factors which Dr De Simini believes are connected. “These texts were popular in places where Śaivism was strong. We are trying to understand how these texts influenced the growth of Śaivism in those places,” she outlines. Researchers are also investigating the people and communities responsible for the spread of these texts, as well as how Śaivism was adapted to the specific local context. “For example, the Śivadharma texts were brought to Nepal before the 9th century, and a whole collection of texts was then built around them,” continues Dr De Simini. This collection reflects the local community, which included adherents of several different religions. These texts were integrated within a collection that also incorporated elements of Vaiṣṇava and Buddhist culture for example. “There was a process of hybridisation in Nepal,” explains Dr De Simini. This also occurred elsewhere
in India, as in some areas certain practices and rituals were adopted that had previously been associated with other traditions. “When we look at medieval texts, we see that there is a common syntax in the rituals for the followers of different Gods,” continues Dr De Simini. “This common syntax meant that it was relatively easy to adapt the teachings of a successful school to another that was maybe still growing. Rituals and practice could be translated into new environments.” The picture was however different in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where the Śivadharma texts were not hybridised with other religions. Instead, they were used to create a ‘stronger’ form of Śaivism, in the sense of providing strong scriptural support. “This stronger form of Śaivism came to be identified by some adherents with the nature of Tamil culture in a way,” explains Dr De Simini. The Śivadharma texts and a number of other Sanskrit scriptures were translated by local intellectuals, which Dr De Simini says was a way of grounding the community. “Along with Śaiva scriptures written in the Tamil language, they were using these texts to provide roots, and to provide them with the additional authority of Sanskrit scripture,” she says. “These were public texts promoting public rituals. So when they translated the texts they also translated the rituals.” There is no single text in the Indian religious tradition, but rather a continuous production of scriptures that claim to be authoritative and to come directly from a certain God. This made it difficult to identify authoritative
Researchers of the Śivadharma Project examine the manuscripts of the Tamil Civatarumōttaram in the library of the Thiruvavaduthurai Adheenam (February 2020).
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EU Research
Project Objectives
Śivadharma Project Kickoff Workshop at the University of Naples “L’Orientale” (October 2019).
In the framework of the Śivadharma Project, Dr de Simini will work on the Sanskrit text of the Śivadharmottara and investigate its spread and impact on various forms of Śaivism throughout South Asia, as well as focus on Śaiva inscriptions from the Deccan. Other members of the team are investigating the impact of the Śivadharma texts in Nepal, East India and Tamil Nadu through texts, inscriptions, and iconography. She is also scientific coordinator for the University “L’Orientale” within the ERC Synergy Project DHARMA, “The Domestication of Hindu Asceticism and the Religious Making of South and South-East Asia.”
Project Funding Śivadharma reading workshop at the EFEO, Pondycherry (January 2020)
scriptures, both for scholars and the wider population. “One of the main criteria was whether scripture was orthodox – meaning whether it was coherent and consistent with the Vedas, a set of primary Hindu scriptures,” outlines Dr De Simini. The Śivadharma texts were seen as orthodox, meaning they were consistent with the Vedas, while they were also aimed at the wider population rather than a specific caste, both factors which Dr De Simini believes contributed to their success. “These texts were quite general and adaptable as well as open, to both common people and powerful people,” she says.
While the initial plan was to focus on the period between roughly the 6th and 14th centuries, further materials have since been discovered from more recent times, especially from Tamil Nadu. “We have actually extended our work now to the 18th century,” says Dr De Simini. Researchers are working to publish these texts and make them available in Sanskrit and English, with accompanying notes. “We are also studying them of course in Tamil, in Bengali, as well as in Kannada, which is the language of Karnataka. There is a lot of work still to do,” acknowledges Dr De Simini. “Besides studying the main sources,
The Śivadharma texts were popular in places where Śaivism was strong. We are trying to understand how these texts influenced the growth of Śaivism in those places. Converting the King The texts also show that there was a clear strategy to try and convert the King to Śaivism, on the basis that the wider population would then follow, and it might be argued that this strategy proved successful. Many Kings professed their allegiance to Śaivism in their inscriptions, a topic of great interest to Dr De Simini and her colleagues in the project. “We are studying inscriptions and epigraphical materials, to document this phenomenon,” she explains. Some of these inscriptions relate to public readings of the Śivadharma texts. “We are looking at situations where these texts were recited by public command, for instance in monasteries and public areas, or in which they are quoted and expressly referred to,” says Dr De Simini. There are a huge number of further texts to consider in terms of the project’s overall agenda, and many have not yet been studied.
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we are also trying to better understand these local languages.” This work has been disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, yet Dr De Simini hopes to travel to India in the next year or so. For the moment, the focus is on the textual sources, with the goal of publishing these texts and bringing them to wider attention. “One of our main aims is to make this tradition known to other historians,” says Dr De Simini. One part of the project involves developing a database in which the texts and translations will be presented, which Dr De Simini believes will prove valuable to other researchers. “We would like historians from other traditions to have the opportunity to learn about the history of Śaivism, we think that there is room for comparisons and learning,” she says. “We also see very strong possibilities in research on the Dravidian languages, which are spoken in South India.”
This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement n° 803624)
Project Partners
• Università di Napoli “L’Orientale” (Host Institution) • École Française d’Extrême-Orient. Pondycherry (Partner Institution) • Università di Bologna (Partner Institution)
Contact Details
Florinda De Simini, Associate Professor History of Ancient and Medieval India Principal Investigator of the ERC-2018Starting Grant Project “Śivadharma” Università degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale Dipartimento Asia, Africa e Mediterraneo Largo San Giovanni Maggiore 30 - 80134, Napoli secondo piano T: +39 373 712 8883 E: fdesimini@unior.it W: https://shivadharmaproject.com/
Florinda De Simini
Florinda De Simini is associate professor in Ancient and Medieval History of India at the Dipartimento Asia, Africa Mediterraneo of the University of Naples “L’Orientale”. Her scholarly interests encompass the history of Śaivism through written sources, South Asian epigraphy in Sanskrit and Kannada, as well as the cultural aspects of the production and transmission of handwritten documents in South Asia.
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