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siddhas and the religious landscape ⁄ 173
level—especially their involvement with Brahmans or %aiva/%akta ascetics. It
has frequently been an object of scholarly consternation, for example, that
Hsüan-tsang did not utter a word about the rise of the devotional (bhakti)
movements, despite his travel around 642 c.e. through South India, where they
clearly were the most vital force. 8 The probable answer to this anomaly is that
Buddhist monks have seldom considered non-Buddhist popular religion a matter
of concern: its doctrinal content is limited; it is noncontemplative; and it has
no specific behavioral agenda, but predominantly relies on affective states, generally
combined with song and dance. Devotees (bhakta) who fit into established
patterns, viz. %aiva bhaktas, the Buddhists tended simply to see as representing
an older tradition. Hsüan-tsang and others were probably unaware that
they were dealing with a new phenomenon developing in South India.
In distinction to popular devotional movements, the available evidence
suggests that a contribution to siddha ideology derived from local, tribal, and
outcaste groups existing in a fluid state outside the formal institutions of religious
authority. At the beginning of the medieval period, India was only starting
to encounter the full range of tribal cultures, local groups, autochthonous
cults, site-specific divinities, and other phenomena. Indeed, the data available
suggest that much of the prehistory of noninstitutional yogins dedicated to
full-time praxis is messy, is not easily classified, and probably includes a
plethora of lost systems, either group-based or totally personal (svatantra). In
the case of the designation “siddha,” the title seems to progress through India
by two primary means. First, the designation is appropriated by one group
from another unrelated group, although their discontinuity is by no means certain.
Second, related behaviors and identities develop between two or more
closely patterned groups.
first moments in siddha identity
Apparently the earliest Indian use of the term “siddha” to specify a successful
group of saints is found in Jaina quarters and evinces only partial continuity
with the Buddhist or %aiva application. In terms of firm chronology, this is
perhaps the easiest to specify, for the term is used in the homage at the beginning
of the Hathigumpha cave inscription of Kharavela, who is post-Mauryan
and generally assigned to the second or first century b.c.e. 9 Inscribed in a
cave on the Udayagiri hill north of Bhubaneswar in Orissa, the inscription
simply begins with the homage to the arahants and the siddhas (namo arahantanam
namo savasidhanam). The nature of these siddhas is not specified, yet