118 CHAPTER SIXMadhyamika school, which refused to defend any position, maintained that
the practical expression of the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness lay in a debat-
ing stance: the use oflogic to demolish the theories of others without propos-
ing a positive theory of one's own. We might wonder how successful the
debaters were in maintaining the essential features of Buddhist doctrine, but
the debaters themselves were always conscious of their identity as Buddhists,
and of the need to protect what they viewed as Buddhism from outside
encroachments.
However, the view of Buddhism the debaters were defending became less
and less related to the area of practice, its depiction of the goal more and more
remote from the realm of human possibility. Thus it was of little help in de-
fending the religion on the popular level. At the same time, because the basic
concepts of the doctrine had become divorced from their original practical
matrix, they could be freely reinterpreted in light of other practices, some of
which might be quite alien to the original teachings. This is precisely what
happened as Buddhism encountered what was perhaps the major event in the
history oflndian popular religion during the first millennium c.E.: the rise of
Saivism, the traditions surrounding the god Siva. (All dates from this point
onward are common era unless otherwise noted.) Saivism had an almost inex-
haustible capacity to absorb elements in its cultural environment and convert
them to its own purposes. Because it had such a strong influence on Bud-
dhism during this period, it is worth going into some detail on the Saivite
practices that proved most influential.
Saivism seems to have originated as a pre-Aryan, Indus Valley fertility reli-
gion (see Section 1.1), centered on a yogin god, which for a while was driven
underground by the Aryahinvasions but which then witnessed a resurgence
after Brahmanism had been weakened by Buddhism and other sraman~ move-
ments. As Saivism came to the fore, it absorbed Vedic ritual patterns, Sa~ya
philosophy, and the cults of many local gods and goddesses. The gods became
different expressions of Siva's personality, whereas the goddesses became his
consorts, although-in keeping with the Indian view that the female principle
is active and the male passive-they maintained their role as sources of spiri-
tual power. Saivism also absorbed and developed various types of yoga (medi-
tative practice), including hatha yoga, which involved elaborate physical
postures and breath control, and kul}qalinl yoga, which involved the manipula-
tion of the subtle flow of energy through channels in the body. As the religion
grew, Siva took on the form of the Lord of the Dance, a god from whom em-
anated all the beings in the great dance of the cosmos, simply for the purpose
of his own entertainment, and into whom all beings would eventually return.
Because the cosmos was an expression of the power of Siva's dance, whatever
pleasure a person found in the cosmos was part of the pleasure experienced by
Siva himself in union with his power (which in Sanskrit is a female form).
From this perspective, sensual pleasure and spiritual bliss were directly related
in the vibratory hum of a blissful heart. The way to reunion with Siva thus lay
through the deliberate cultivation of heightened sensual bliss through the arts.
Saivite temples were designed in line with the latest advances in painting,
sculpture, and architecture. In them, stories from the Saivite mythical cycle