Kapalika
कापालिक kāpālikaThe “skull-bearer”: a medieval Śaiva ascetic of the Mahāvrata, carrying a skull-bowl in imitation of Shiva’s penance; the documented antecedent of the modern Aghorīs.
Where this term appears
- The Aghorīs Lineages
…hind him stands a documented medieval history, and it begins with the Kāpālikas , the "skull-bearers." The Kāpālikas and their parallel order, the Kālāmukhas , the "black-faced," were Śaiva ascetic groups most …
- The Pāñcarātra Saṃhitās Lineages
The Kūrma Purāṇa lumps the Pāñcarātra with the Kāpālika and Bhairava cults as scriptures made "for the delusion of mankind," and calls its followers non-Vedic.
- What is Tantra? Lineages
Its exemplary figures are the Kapalikas , the "skull-bearers," Shaiva ascetics who imitated the terrible god Bhairava: they haunted the shmashana , the cremation ground, carried a skull as a begging bowl, and u…
- The Four Streams of Hinduism Essentials
And there are the older ascetic orders behind them all, the Pashupatas , the Kapalikas , and the Nath yogis of Gorakhnath who shaped hatha yoga.
- Who is Bhairava? Deities
The scholar David Lorenzen, in his 1972 study The Kapalikas and Kalamukhas , traced the Kāpālikas , the "skull-men," a Shaiva order who took Bhairava's penance as their model, carrying a skull-bowl and a skull-…
- The two seats: how the tantric canon was actually organised Lineages
The Bhairava Tantras carry a Kāpālika background, and Sanderson describes their basic ascetic form as "that of the skull (kapālavrata/mahāvrata)" (1988, p.
- 779 CE, and the Śabaras are already a costume Treatise
Bagchi , editing Matsyendranātha's Kaulajñānanirṇaya in 1934, refers to the same twenty-four-Kāpālika passage under the title Sāvara Tantra .
- A genre that was always bilingual Treatise
Dasgupta printed the Śābaratantra's twelve-and-twelve Kāpālika list in English, from the Gorakṣasiddhāntasaṃgraha , in Obscure Religious Cults of 1946.