Saiva Rites of Expiation: A First Edition and Translation of Trilocanasiva's Twelfth-Century Prayascittasamuccaya

Rites of expiation and reparation (prayascitta) may not seem central to the history of the Mantramarga, but they provide a fascinating angle from which to view the evolution of this broad religious tradition. Instead of focussing on the evolution and philosophical defence of Saiva doctrines, or on the examination of ritual practices and of theories developed to justify and shore up such practices, this study puts the spotlight instead on social dimensions of the religion. This book contains a first edition and translation of a South Indian compendium of Saiva expiation rituals compiled by Trilocanasiva, a twelfth-century theologian celebrated for his Siddhantasaravali, a metrical treatise on the Saivasiddhanta that is still traditionally studied in the Tamil-speaking South today. Trilocana does not reveal the sources from which he quotes, many of which are lost to us, but an earlier Northern treatise on the same theme from Malwa by a certain Hrdayasiva consists only in large labeled quotations, typically whole chapters, from those sources. A Nepalese palm-leaf manuscript kept in Cambridge that is dated to 1157 ad may be the earliest surviving codex to transmit Hrdayasiva’s text and we have included a complete transcription of that manuscript as an appendix. A combined quarter-verse-index helps readers to navigate both Trilocana’s and Hrdayasiva’s works. Our introduction attempts to trace the social developments within the Saivasiddhanta that give context to the evolution of Saiva reparatory rites.…