SAIVA-SIDDHANTA

INTRODUCTION
V
in a new perspective, that is to say, in a setting that will be differ
ent to what has till now been considered, by
the orthodox school
of European orientalists, as the purely Vedantic view of the
entire arcanum or scheme of Indian metaphysics.
Consequently, an
independent study of the Agamas, untrammelled by any prior
predilections, will prove of inestimable value to those orientalists
who would be glad to investigate de novo whether the Aupanishadic
teachings will not bear any other philosophic interpretation than
the one accorded to it heretofore by the so-called accepted
schools of Hindu philosophy. Again, in the last important
work that Max Muller published previous to his death, The
Six Systems of Indian Philosophy, though there are indications
that he knew of the existence of the Agamanta
in both Sanskrit
and Tamil, there is nothing to show that he went into, or
was conversant with, the details of the Saiva-darsana as
developed in the Divyagamas. Dr. Georg Buhler had, it is said,
an idea of making quite a study of the treatises in Sanskrit
that were based on the Agamas, as far as they concerned the
Spanda and the Pratyabhijna phases of the Saiva-darsana, but
his loss came off all too soon in 1898. And so, Dr. L. D. Barnett
is perhaps the only extant European orientalist that has for some
years past been taking an abiding interest in the study of the
literature relative to the Saiva-darsana in Sanskrit, and it must
be said to his lasting credit that he is not only a thorough
going Sanskrit scholar, but is also an accomplished student of
the Dravidian vernaculars, and his writings bear an unmistakable
stamp of very good acquaintance with the works bearing on
most of the phases of the Agamanta, to wit, the Pratyabhijna,
the Vira- Saiva and the Suddha Saiva (the parent of the system
developed by Meykandan in Tamil). He has translated into
English the Parana arthasara of Abhinavagupta (a Pratyabhijna