Early Saiva Mythology: a study of the formative period of an integrated religious vision

在过去的二十年里，随着原始Skandapurana的“发现”，对古埃及神话的研究取得了重大进展。这部匿名的6/7世纪的文本是早期《湿婆往世书》的典范，它对宇宙及其事务提出了一种综合的观点，其中湿婆神被认为是至高无上的。我们的项目旨在揭示这个神话的形成时期，通过调查在第一部《普什图往世书》的制作中达到高潮的发展。这一时期的古湿婆神话将在一些不同类型的梵语文本中进行研究：史诗，古兰，诗歌（Kavya）和密宗。除了这些文本来源，金石，艺术史，考古和钱币材料也将被考虑在内。虽然以前的研究往往是在结构主义模型的基础上进行的，但我们坚信，神话尽管可能被认为具有普遍和永恒的特征，但它植根于社会历史背景，它的研究需要考虑这些因素。预计我们的合作方法，主要是语言学（基于文本），但利用其他种类的证据，以及，将揭示，比以前更清楚，发生在发展中的重大变化，从史诗到Puranic古埃及主义。我们的项目将因此提供了一个基础，更历史的了解古埃及神话的发展，以及整个印度神话的延伸。

The study of Śaiva mythology has made significant progress during the last two decades with the ‘discovery’ of the original Skandapurana. This anonymous 6th/7th-century text stands as a model of an early Śaiva Purana, presenting an integrated view of the cosmos and its affairs in which the god Śiva is regarded as supreme. Our project aims at bringing to light the formative period of this mythology, by investigating developments culminating in the production of the first Śaiva Puranas. Śaiva mythology of this period will be studied in Sanskrit texts of a number of different genres: epic, Puranic, poetic (Kavya), and Tantric. Apart from these textual sources, epigraphic, art-historical, archaeological and numismatic materials will also be taken into account. While previous research has tended to proceed on the basis of structuralistic models, it is our strong conviction that mythology, for all that it may be argued to have universal and timeless characteristics, is rooted in sociohistorical contexts, and that its research needs to take account of these. It is expected that our collaborative approach, predominantly philological (text-based) but making use of evidence of other kinds as well, will reveal, much more clearly than before, the significant changes that took place in the development from epic towards Puranic Śaivism.Our project will thus provide the basis for a more historically informed understanding of the development of Śaiva mythology, and by extension of Hindu mythology as a whole.