Kapalika
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The Kāpālika tradition was a
History
The Kāpālikas were an extinct sect of Shaivite ascetics devoted to the
According to David Lorenzen, there is a paucity of primary sources on the Kāpālikas, and historical information about them is available from fictional works and other traditions who disparage them.[1][2] Various Indian texts claim that the Kāpālikas drank liquor freely, both for ritual and as a matter of habit.[1] The Chinese pilgrim to India in the 7th century CE, Hsuan Tsang, in his memoir on what is now Northwestern Pakistan, wrote about Buddhists living with naked ascetics who covered themselves with ashes and wore bone wreathes on their heads, but Hsuan Tsang does not call them Kāpālikas or any particular name. Historians of Indian religions and scholars of Hindu studies have interpreted these ascetics variously as Kāpālikas, Digambara Jains, and Pashupatas.[1]
The Kāpālikas were more of a monastic order, states Lorenzen, and not a sect with a textual doctrine.
Literature
One of the earliest references to a Kāpālika is found in Hāla's Prakrit poem, the
funeral pyre of her lover. Varāhamihira (c. 500-575) refers more than once to the Kāpālikas thus clearly establishing their existence in the sixth century. Indeed, from this time onwards references to Kāpālika ascetics become fairly commonplace in Sanskrit ...[9]
See also
References
- ^ OCLC 1224279234.
- ^ LCCN 2007007627.
- ^ JSTOR 10.1525/j.ctt1pp4mm.9.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-8239-3179-8.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-470-99868-7.
- ISBN 1-932476-03-2. Retrieved 3 February 2010.
- ^ Sanderson, Alexis. "The Śaiva Literature." Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine Journal of Indological Studies (Kyoto), Nos. 24 & 25 (2012–2013), 2014, pp.4-5, 11, 57.
- ^ Ronald Davidson (2002), Indian Esoteric Buddhism, Columbia University Press. pages 202-218
- ISBN 978-0-88706-494-4.
Further reading
- ISBN 0-500-51088-1) by Anna L. Dallapiccola (London : Thames & Hudson, 2002).
- Kapalikas and Kalamukhas: Two Lost Saivite Sects (ISBN 0-520-01842-7) by David N. Lorenzen (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1972).
- Mattavilasaprahasana by Māni Mādhava Chākyār
- ISBN 3-515-04702-6) by Eveline Meyer (Stuttgart : Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GMBH, 1986)
- The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism. by Gavin Flood. 2003. Malden: Blackwell.
- Indian Esoteric Buddhism. by Ronald Davidson. 2002. Columbia University Press.
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