ir[550] from
the ninth century onwards and is not yet extinct among Pandits. It
bases itself on the Agamas and includes among them the still extant
Siva-sutras 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 Pratyabhijna
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
Pratyabhijna 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 Maya[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 Siddhanta 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 o