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

在过去的二十年里，随着原始斯坎达普拉那的“发现”，对Śaiva神话的研究取得了重大进展。这个匿名的6 /7世纪的文本作为早期Śaiva Purana的模型，呈现了宇宙及其事务的综合观点，其中神Śiva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，通过调查第一部Śaiva往世史的最终发展。Śaiva这一时期的神话将在许多不同体裁的梵文文本中进行研究：史诗，Puranic，诗歌（Kavya）和密宗。除了这些文字来源外，铭文、艺术史、考古和钱币材料也将被考虑在内。虽然先前的研究倾向于在结构主义模型的基础上进行，但我们坚信，尽管神话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，而且它的研究需要考虑到这些。我们期望我们的合作方法，主要是语言学（基于文本），但也利用其他种类的证据，将比以前更清楚地揭示从史诗到Puranic Śaivism发展过程中发生的重大变化。因此，我们的项目将为更深入地了解Śaiva神话的发展，以及整个印度神话的扩展提供基础。

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.