The Spread and Transition of Lakulisa-Pasupata Order

Pasupatas as we saw in the last section come across as one of the most important and archaic class of Saivas. Interestingly Ramanujacharya, a great critic of Saivism considered Kalamukha, Kapalikas and all Agamanta Saivas as Pasupata, on the basis that all of them use the terms Pasu, Pati, Parmatman and Jivatman in their discourses. The contention by itself hardly holds any weight but it does throw light on the importance and threat of Pasupata system in medieval times. Yamunacarya too openly considers them a menace to his system of thought. The fact that Pasupata thought existed and seems to have been flourishing well by this time points at well developed schools which propagated the ancient thought ofcourse not without some external changes.

Going back to Lakulisa, we are informed by various Puranic and Inscriptional sources that he had four disciples and each of these propagated a branch of learning according to their interpretation of the teacher’s words. Thus four “gotras” or four different lineages came into being from four main disciples of Lakulisa viz: Kusika, Garga, Kaurusa and Mitra. The fifth one Ananta li neage is also of equal importance though he is not mentioned along with the other four in the above mentioned sources and is generally discussed with respect to Siddhayogesvari mata.

Various lineages to which this order belonged or which derived out of this order have been shown in the chart below and will be referred to as and when necessary.