Saura-purana (analytical study)
by Priyanku Chakraborty | 2019 | 92,293 words
This page relates ‘Various religious cults and sects in ancient India’ of the study on the Saura-Purana—an important Upapurana associated with the Puranic Pashupata sect of Shaivism—and offers crucial insights into the socio-religious, philosophical, and cultural history of India. The study further delves into the oral, literary, and archaeological context of Purana literature (such as the Saurapurana), highlighting its intricate connections with Vedic and Tantric traditions.
Go directly to: Footnotes.
Part 1 - Various religious cults and sects in ancient India
India had discovered the existence of oneness or unity in the midst of diverse entities since the beginning of civilization, and proclaimed it for the first time in the verses of the Ṛgveda-saṃhita.[1]
Thus, the Nirukta of Yāska mentions:
“mahābhāgyād-devatāyā eka ātmā bahudhā stūyate|
ekasyātmano’nye devāḥ pratyaṅgāni bhavanti”.[2]
Simultaneously, different manifestations of the one supreme, is also the reality of Indian religious culture. Since ancient times the very mention of different gods or deities, demigods etc. and their respective cults as well as sects too, had been made in ancient literature. Here we should mention the texts Aṣṭādhyāyī[3] of Pāṇini (c. fifth century BCE), the Buddhist Pali text Niddesa[4] (c. fourth-second century BCE) etc., where mention of such religious sects and cults occur. The Vaiyāsika Mahābhārata has been familiar with different religious sects and their worshippers. However, in the Purāṇa literature, Vṛhatsaṃhitā of Varāhamihira (c. sixth century CE) mention of various religious sects can be found.
Apart from these literary evidences a huge number of archaeological antiquities, which have been reported from the Indian subcontinent, attest the existence of different cults at least since c. third-second centuries BCE.
Footnotes and references:
[1]:
[2]:
Nirukta, Daivatakaṇḍa, 7. 1. 5 c-d.
[3]:
Aṣṭādhyāyī, 4. 3. 98.
[4]:
“The deity of the lay followers of the Ājīvakas is the Ājīvakas, of those of the Nighaṇṭ̣has is the Nighaṇṭ̣has, of those of the Jaṭilas (ascetics wearing long matted hair) is the Jaṭilas, of those of the Paribbājakas is the Paribbājakas, of those of the Avaruddhakas is the Avaruddhakas, and the deity of those who are devoted to an elephant, a horse, a cow, a dog, a crow, Vāsudeva, Baladeva, Puṇṇabhadda, Maṇibhadda, Aggi, Nāgas, Supaṇṇas, Yakkhas, Asuras, Gandhabbas, Mahārajās, Canda, Suriya, Inda, Brahmā, Deva, Disā is the elephant, the horse, the cow, the dog, the crow, Vāsudeva, Baladeva, Puṇṇabhadda, Maṇibhadda etc. respectively.” R.G. Bhandarkar: Vaiṣṇavisam, Śaivism and Minor Religious Systems, p.3.