Handbook of Virasaivism

“This book is a ‘handbook’ for students of Indian religions and culture history, but it will also interest readers who are looking for an objective and reliable inside view of the religious system of a peasant society. The Virasaiva sect constitutes the majority of the Kannada-speaking class of peasants and traders, Virasaivas forming something more than 20 percent of the approximately nineteen million speakers of this Dravidian language. They are thus one of the largest of the groups in India which has a distinctive “bhakti” religion, Their philosophy of devotion to a single God, Siva, whom the Virasaivas link with the driving force of the universe, and the significance of Virasaiva life cycle rites for the symbolic expression of this religious conception, have been unusually difficult for non-Virasaivas to grasp. One reason for the failure of outsiders to understand this religion may be that the important literature of the sect was written in the Kannada language rather than in Sanskrit, the traditional medium for religious thought in India.

As a Virasaiva, Nandimath leads his readers to the Kannada sources of the religion and interprets then genuinely, so that his opinions in this book have been accepted as authoritative by the Virasaivas. However, Nandimath’s viewpoint is not due either to unfamiliarity with the Sanskrit language or to hostility toward it, for he is Professor of Sanskrit and Sanskrit literature.

Nandimath comes closest to sociological interpretation in his description of the function of popular Virasaiva literature”.

Excerpts from the Review by WILLIAM MaCormack, Deccan College, Poona, India; published in the American Anthropologist.