Another school of Sivaite philosophy flourished in Kashmir[550] from the ninth century onwards and is not yet extinct among Pandits. It bases itself on the Âgamas and includes among them the still extant Siva-sûtras said to have been discovered as revelation by Vasugupta. He lived about 800 A.D. and abandoned Buddhism for Sivaism. The school produced a distinguished line of literary men who flourished from the ninth to the eleventh centuries.[551]
The most recent authorities state that the Kashmir school is one and that there is no real opposition between the Spanda and Pratyabhijñâ sections.[552] The word Spanda, equivalent to the godhead and ultimate reality, is interesting for it means vibration accompanied by consciousness or, so to speak, self-conscious ether. The term Pratyabhijñâ or recognition is more frequent in the later writings. Its meaning is as follows. Siva is the only reality and the soul is Siva, but Mâyâ[553] forces on the soul a continuous stream of sensations. By the practice of meditation it is possible to interrupt the stream and in those moments light illuminates the darkness of the soul and it recognizes that it is Siva, which it had forgotten. Also the world is wholly unreal apart from Siva. It exists by his will and in his mind. What seems to the soul to be cognition is really recognition, for the soul (which is identical with the divine mind but blinded and obstructed) recognizes that which exists only in the divine mind.
It has been held that Kashmirian Sivaism is the parent of the Dravidian Saiva Siddhânta and spread from Kashmir southwards by way of Kalyan in the eleventh century, and this hypothesis certainly receives support from the mention of Kashmiri Brahmans in south Indian inscriptions of the fourteenth century.[554] Yet I doubt if it is necessary to assume that south Indian Sivaism was _derived_ from Kashmir, for the worship of Siva must have been general long before the eleventh century[555] and Kashmiri Brahmans, far from introducing Sivaism to the south, are more likely to have gone thither because they were sure of a good reception, whereas they were exposed to Moslim persecution in their own country. Also the forms which Sivaism assumed in these two outlying provinces present differences: in Kashmir it was chiefly philosophic, in the Dravidian countries chiefly religious. In the south it calls on God to help the sinner out of the mire, whereas the school of Kashmir, especially in its later developments, resembles the doctrine of Sankara, though its terminology is its own.