SAIVA-SIDDHANTA

INTRODUCTION 1*X
a heart within him. 1 hgsL.liturgic rites were enshrined in the
remaining padas of the Agamas, and the places for the perform
ance of such rites, became the temples. There are, for instance,
Agamas in which the order of arrangement of the padas, follows
exactly the chronology herein explained while there are also
;
others in which the arrangement is reversed, due possibly to a
J
later deliberate desire to follow logic of theoretic sequence in
preference to the order of natural evolution. Temples are very
ancient institutions, though only less ancient than the Upanishats
of undoubted antiquity. And there is no doubt that,
though the first impulse to temple-worship had come from the
Kashmirian Region, the institution flourished in South India with
considerable pomp and circumstance. The construction of the sacri
ficial pavilion for the performance of the brauta rites, is, as made out
from the Sulba-Satras, chiefly astronomical in design and import.
And not less so is that of the temple, every part of which has an
analogue with either an astronomical phenomenon or a zodiacal
convention. And this astronomical significance of the templesymbolism,
runs, in some of the Agamas, side by side with the
spiritual import
that we have learnt to associate with the same
symbolism. There are also phases of the aiva-darana in which
the temple-worship is not regarded with favour, either because
it is not considered directly contributory to one s spiritual upliftment
and eventual Emanciption,
or because it proves, at a specific
stage, an out-worn and jejune observance unsuited to the spiri
tual wants of the votary.
The Agamas
have branched out from the same stem of the
Vedic tree that produced the earlier Upanishats, and were at one
time as wide-spread in India as the Upanishats themselves. Like
th^ Upanishats, the ^ajmas_also became, in course of centuries, the
basis of a number of creeds which, though unanimous in accepting