Shaivism

Shaivism (; Sanskrit: शैवसंप्रदायः, romanised: Śaivasampradāyaḥ) is an umbrella-term for a number of Hindu religious traditions, which worship Shiva as the supreme being. The followers of Shaivism are called Shaivas or Shaivites, numbering about 385 million people, across South Asia predominantly in India, Sri Lanka, and Nepal.

Shaivism developed as an amalgam of pre-Aryan religions and traditions, Vedic Rudra, and post-Vedic traditions, accommodating local traditions and Yoga, puja and bhakti. Worship of the Vedic deity Rudra forms its earliest traceable root, but the earliest evidence for sectarian Rudra-Shiva worship appears with the Pasupata (early CE), which emerged with the Hindu synthesis, when many local traditions were aligned with the Vedic-Brahmanical fold. The Pāśupata movement rapidly expanded throughout North India, giving rise to different forms of Shaivism and followed by the emergence of various tantric traditions. Both devotional and monistic Shaivism became popular in the 1st millennium CE, and it became the dominant religious tradition of several Hindu kingdoms. It arrived in Southeast Asia shortly thereafter, leading to the construction of thousands of Shaiva temples on the islands of Indonesia as well as Cambodia and Vietnam, co-evolving with Buddhism in these regions.

Shaivism encompasses a wide range of sub-traditions. Historically, a basic distinction can be made between Puranic Shaivism, such as the Shiva-worship in the Smarta tradition, and non-Puranic (Agamic/Tantric) Shaivism. The latter is further divided in the atimarga, solely for sanyassins (ascetic renunciates), and the mantramarga, open to both sanyassons and householders.