AGAMA-KAMIKA-AGAMAM – Part I.GRANTHA SCRIPT

8/13/2019 AGAMA-KAMIKA-AGAMAM Part I.GRANTHA SCRIPT

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Mamandur Sri Rajarathina Sivachariar Education, Research & Charitable Trust, India

Digital Library

Title KAMIKA-AGAMAM Part I

Language SANSKRIT

Script GRANTHA, TAMIL

Courtesy THE HIMALAYAN AC ADEMY

Publication THE SOUTH INDIAN ARCHAKAR ASSOC IATION

Source


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(turning the sod) to p r a t i ~ t a installation) of deities. Theuttarabl~aga deals with diksa festivals etc. So this is acomplete Manual for priests and laymen and for the inquisi

tive scholar who wants to know the details and symbolismof Agamic worship, private and public. Indeed there iscurrently a great interest in the inforn~at ion rom other reli-gionists and Western scholar. This publication would there-for e serve a felt need by the Hindus and non- Hindus andplace the Agamas before a world view.

T h e S o ~ ~ t hndian Archakar Associdtion is to be congrat-tulated on this programine of reprinting the Agamas. I tdeserves State support as well as the support of the professors

of the faith, The Secretary of the Sangam, Sivasri C. Swami-natha Gurukkal deserves the thanks of the public for hislabours even at his old age, particularly when the pres entcost of p roduc tion of books has increased enosmously. Theo111y recompense that the Sangam would most need is the quickp~irchase of this Part so that the remaining Parts co~ild betaken q ~ ~ i c k l y.

I commenced this v o l ~ ~ n ~ eo the attent ion of all who wishto get an insight into the con ter~ts f the Agamas without whichHinduism would not be a living religion and no research onIndian philosophy would be completed.

Arasadi Karpagam, l N . MURUGESA MUDALIAR,Thyagarayak~agar, Retd Secretary to Govt arid

Madras-17. I s p c i a l A d~iser ometime Patrofi Salvo1st Feba 977 Siddhanta Maha Samajum ere

INTRODUCTION

The Saiva Agamas are some of the earliesth o k s in the Sanskrit language on the Saiva religionand philosophy7 written over a period of severalcenturj,es before the Christian era. The Agamasrepresent on independent class of writing by veryearly seers, who had an inward experience andenlightenment from the Supreme Being, and whowere also perhaps influenced by the Vedas in theiroriginal form. They had realised in their lives

and thoughts the general truths taught by the earlyUpanisads. So far as Saivism is concernedp theseseers were not men from the North . They wereessentially representatives of All India and theyreflected in their thoughts modes of meditation andworship, and in their writing, the inherent Theism ofthe South, The Theism of the south or rather, theSaivism of ti e Tamilians, was the growth of an~~nbroken radition probably from the pre-historicpast and this had three elements fused into it. Theseare worship of idols and images, both in the shrinesthroughout the land and in the devoteesy own houses,symb~lism, nd the inward meditation and realisa-tion. These three were not separate compartmentspbut basically one harmonious integrated whole.When the Upanisads were added on to the Vedasin the course of the later centuries, they could notF i t be influenced by the religion and philosophyflourishing around them. These naturally embody aconsiderable volume of the thought of the agmicscholars, bemuse some of the early Agarnas were


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earlier than these later Upanisads in point of timeand the Aga~iias were much more alive and vibratingwith life and activity than the Upanisads, becausethey dealt with definite and concrete objects, while

the others dealt only with abstract concepts. Thevery fact that some later Upanisads came to bewritten shows that the followers of the originalUpanisads had to take note of agamic thoughts and,to bring them also into a single common fold,adopted the device of writing further Upanisads, toembrace fresh thought on the same subject. The

Saiva Upanisads such as Brhudjubulu did certainlycome into existence a long time after the Agamas-

The Agamas claim Vedic authority for theirdoctrines. The agama doctrines are indeed theisticand such theism is not foreign to the Upanisads.The following agamic passages may be seen to affirmthe derivation of the Agamas from the Vedas

The siddhanta consists of the essence of the Veda

(Suprabhedagama) ; his tantra is of the essence ofthe vedas ; This siddhanta knowledge which is thesignificance of Vedanta is supremely good Mulzutu).It has been suggested that the agamic systems weredeveloped out of the Brahmanas in the same way asthe Upanisads, though at a much later stage, and thatsome of the later Upanisads like the Svetasvatarawhich address the Supreme Being by a sectarian titleand not as Param Brahman, as of yore, probably grew

up under the shadow of the Agamas. The agamiccult which w s that of the generality of the people,and the Vedic cult which was that of th priestly

classes, officiating for themselves or for others , wereboth indigenous ; they existed and grew up side by

side from the earliest times without any extraneousinfluence ; the distinction between the two was in nosense racial- The Agamas are deemed to have scrip-tural authority and are often called the Veda and theFifth Veda, As a niatter of fact, although the SanskritNighuntu names the Veda as the Nigumu an d theTantra as the Agama the Veda and the Agama bothseem to have been denoted by the common tern1 srut iup to the X century, afte r whicli period the abovedistinction of Nigama and Agama seems t have beenadopted. The againic (tantric) texts, as we knowthen1 today, had for the most part preceded Bud dl ~i sm ~and only the agam ic cult had been able gradually toswallow up Buddhism on the Indian sub-cont inent,and ultimately to bahish i t idtogether from the Indiansoil ; it was not the Upanisadic philosophy but theagamic cult that was responsible for the supplantingof Buddliism and for the fusion of the salient featuresinto the core of the Hindu religion.

Several explanatioi~s have been offered for theterm aga7nu. One is that because it en~a nat ed romGod, it is called the Agaman hat which came (fromGod). Another is that the three letters a-ga-marespectively denote pati, pusu and pasa (the self9 thesoul and the bonds) and that the agama deals with allthese three entities and their relationship, and liencethis name.

A Sanskrit verse gives an interesting meaningfor the three syllables a, ga and mu


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5166 Uttara-6477 ; verses lost 357. The teim Kamikameans he object desired ; the term Kumikaga~za

is said to signify the Book which grants the desiredobject to the souls 'and helps them to final releasethrough severance of bonds': The Kamika is theagama which is'widely in use today . Sivacharyas saythat its authority derives from the fact that it alwaysprescribes the rules very definitely, saying this andnot that .

The Purva Kam ikai-the first part was published

with a Tamil translation done by Visveswara Sastri ofTiruvottiyur. It h a s four sections dealingwith therevelation of the agamas, rules for daily observanceand worship, rules for the construction of templesand houses and for performance of rituals and rulesfor theinstallation of the deities.

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The Karnilca published by S hanm ugasund araMud aliar had long been out of print and most of the

present generation could never have set its eyes on it.Th e non-availability of this Kriyapada text wasnaturally a great handicaps to the earnestarchulcawho wanted really to study the scripture and followit in the temple's rituals. The South Indian ArchakarAssociation~throughts Secretary ShriC waminathaSivacharya published in February 1976 the Kriyapadatext alone in the nagari script. This no doub tmade the text available to Sanskrit scholars but

the entire bulk of the Sivacharyas could no t useit because they knew only the grantha script.Realising this, the association hasnow brought outa handsome volume of the Kriyapada, past I in the

^rantha script with a complete paraphrase in theTamil language, chapter by chapter, in about 48pages. Th e wealth of the information and guidancecontained in this pa rt cannot be brought ou t inashort introdu ction. Suffice it to say that anarchakawho has no t made every line in this book his owndoes not know his job. Archakas hereafter donot have any execuse to say that they do not knowany ritual connected with Siva worship. Th e volumeis an encyclopaedia which will reward even anySaiva for a careful scrutiny.

In these days of high paper prices a nd highlabour charges Shr i Swaminatha Gurukka l has donea great service to the cult of temple worship, andt h e archaka comm unity by publishing this volum e .I t i s t h e duty of the Hind u Religious EndowmentsBoard to see that some copies are in the libraryof temples and to supply copies also to the~ rc h a k a s ' mmediate distribution of the book willgive the necessary enthusiasm a nd encouragement tothe aged G urukkal to publish further volumes ofagamas.


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AGAMA-KAMIKA-AGAMAM – Part I.GRANTHA SCRIPT