Atimarga
atimārgaThe Outer Path: the older, ascetic-only, pre-tantric Shaivism of the Pancharthika Pashupatas, the Lakulas and the Kapalikas. The word is a Mantramargic coinage. Peter Bisschop has shown that no Pashupata, Lakula or Kalamukha scripture uses it of itself, and that it was built on atyashrama, the state beyond the four life-stages, which is what those ascetics did call their path.
Where this term appears
- The 28 Śaiva Āgamas Lineages
Sanderson calls the tantric Śaiva path the Mantramārga , the Way of Mantras, distinguishing it from an older, pre-tantric ascetic path, the Pāśupata Atimārga .
- The Aghorīs Lineages
…them within the architecture of Śaivism: the Kāpālika belonged to the Atimārga , the "Outer" or "Higher Path," the older, austere, ascetic-only wing of the Śaiva tradition, out of which the tantric Mantramārga …
- The Types of Tantra Lineages
…r of the constituents of reality, the Śaivas absorbed wholesale. Then atimārga , the outer path.
- Who is Shiva? Deities
…road division, an older path of ascetics seeking only liberation, the Atimārga , and a later Tantric stream seeking both liberation and power, the Mantramārga .
- The Nisvasa: the oldest tantra, and what it does not yet know Lineages
It divides religious literature into five kinds: the worldly, the Vedic, the philosophical, the atimarga and the mantramarga .