Śaiva, Śākta and Vaiṣṇava transformations

transformations Chapter argument. Between the late ancient and early medieval centuries, Śaiva, Śākta and Vaiṣṇava traditions became increasingly visible in Mithila, Vajji and Aṅga through image installation, temples, ritual specialists, patronage, sacred water and pilgrimage. The transformation was cumulative rather than a single conversion: Buddhist, Jain, Vedic, household and local practices continued within a poly-religious landscape. Regional claims are therefore tied to inscriptions, sculptures, architecture and securely controlled textual comparison rather than inferred from later sectarian prestige. 22.1 Transformation is a historical process, not a switch from one religion to another Śaiva, Śākta and Vaiṣṇava traditions became increasingly visible in the religious landscape of eastern India between the late ancient and early medieval centuries, but the process cannot be described as a single conversion from “Vedic religion” to “Hinduism.” Sacrifice, household ritual, local cults, Buddhist and Jain institutions, image worship, temple patronage and ascetic traditions overlapped. New forms acquired monuments, specialists, texts and donors at different speeds. The historian must therefore ask when a deity, ritual or institution becomes visible in a particular evidence stream, who supported it, and whether the surviving material represents a local community, a travelling object, an elite foundation or a later reuse. The central argument of this chapter is that regional religious change occurred through institutional thickening: images, shrines, endowments, ritual experts and sacred places accumulated around older social landscapes rather than replacing them in a single chronological break. 22.2 Four evidence streams must be kept separate before they are combined The first evidence stream is epigraphy: inscriptions can identify donors, rulers, deities, installations, tanks, temples and occasionally ritual specialists, but survive unevenly. The second is archaeology and art history: sculptures, architectural members, temple foundations and reused images can demonstrate material cult, yet often lack secure excavation context. The third is textual: Purāṇic, Āgamic, Tantric and sectarian literature records sophisticated ritual and theological systems, but the date and place of a manuscript or recension need not equal the date and place of the practices it describes. The fourth is later sacred memory, including living temples, pilgrimage claims and relocated images. Such continuity is historically important but cannot automatically date the beginning of a cult. Only after controlling these streams separately is it legitimate to reconstruct a regional transformation. 237237 GAJENDRA THAKUR Figure 84 — Evidence for Śaiva, Śākta and Vaiṣṇava transformation must be separated into inscriptional, material, textual and archaeological streams before regional synthesis. 22.3 The Gupta and post-Gupta centuries intensified iconic and temple-centred worship Across north India, the Gupta and post-Gupta centuries saw increasingly durable forms of deity installation, image patronage and temple building. Viṣṇu, Śiva, Devī and other deities had much earlier textual histories, but their material presence became more archaeologically visible through icons, shrines and inscriptions. This visibility should not be mistaken for the birth of the gods themselves. It marks a change in institutional form: divinity could be made present in consecrated images and fixed sacred buildings that required maintenance, ritual service and social investment. In eastern India the process unfolded unevenly and interacted with powerful Buddhist and Jain establishments. The result was not a uniform Brahmanical landscape but a denser field of religious institutions in which donors could support more than one tradition and sites could accumulate multiple layers of sacred use. 22.4 Śaivism was not one organisation but a family of ritual and theological formations The label Śaiva covers practices ranging from worship of the liṅga and anthropomorphic forms of Śiva to ascetic, initiatory and Tantric systems. Early medieval inscriptions and textual research show the growing importance of Śaiva teachers, lineages and temple institutions across much of South Asia. Alexis Sanderson’s influential formulation of a “Śaiva Age” draws attention to the exceptional reach of Śaiva ritual specialists and scriptures between roughly the fifth and thirteenth centuries. For Mithila, Vajji and Aṅga this macrohistorical model is useful only when tested against local evidence. A regional Śiva image or shrine supports Śaiva presence; it does not prove that a particular initiatory school operated there. The chapter therefore distinguishes broad Śiva worship from specific sectarian systems unless inscriptions or texts provide firmer identification. HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II 22.5 Śaiva institutions connected renunciation, temple ritual and political patronage Śaiva traditions could speak simultaneously to ascetics, householders and rulers. Renunciant prestige gave some Śaiva specialists an authority distinct from ordinary temple priesthood, while temple cult created regular ritual obligations, public festivals and durable sacred property. Royal and elite patrons could sponsor liṅgas, temples, tanks or teachers as acts of piety and political representation. These relationships were not merely ideological. A shrine required stone or brick, artisans, ritual materials, water, access routes and people responsible for daily service. Patronage could therefore bind religious institutions to agrarian and urban economies. Early medieval Bihar’s documented Śaiva topography shows that Śiva worship was distributed across multiple localities rather than confined to one court. For this volume, the important social fact is the multiplication of supported nodes, not a claim that every village or ruler became exclusively Śaiva. 22.6 The liṅga is a ritual object whose history cannot be reduced to a modern symbol The liṅga became one of the most recognisable material forms of Śiva worship. Historically, however, it should be analysed through installation, ritual use and site context rather than through a single universal explanation. A consecrated liṅga establishes a focus for offerings, bathing, circumambulation and priestly service; a portable or displaced liṅga has a different archaeological history. Multi-faced liṅgas and anthropomorphic Śiva images further show that aniconic and iconic modes were not opposites. When early medieval remains in Bihar or Mithila include liṅgas, they indicate ritual investment in Śiva, but dating must depend on associated architecture, inscription, style or excavation. Living worship around old stones may preserve continuity, may represent revival, or may combine both. The historian must leave these possibilities open where context is weak. 22.7 Śākta history requires distinguishing goddess worship from later formal Śākta systems Female divinities appear in Vedic, epic, local and pan-Indian traditions long before the consolidation of formal Śākta theology. The early medieval centuries nevertheless transformed the scale and organisation of goddess worship. Durgā as Mahiṣāsuramardinī, Pārvatī/Umā, Cāmuṇḍā, the Mothers and other forms became prominent in sculpture and sectarian texts, while Tantric traditions developed increasingly elaborate understandings of divine power, mantra and ritual. It would be methodologically unsafe to call every ancient female figurine “Śākta” or to infer a mature Tantric system from a single goddess image. The stronger inference is that goddess-centred cults became materially and theologically more visible and interacted with Śaiva, Buddhist and local traditions. Eastern India later became especially important for such interactions, making careful chronology essential. 22.8 The Devīmāhātmya helped articulate a goddess who could absorb multiple divine powers The Devīmāhātmya, embedded in the Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa and generally assigned to the early centuries of the first millennium’s latter half, presents Devī as a supreme power whose manifestations defeat cosmic threats. Its theological importance lies partly in synthesis: diverse goddess forms are related within a larger conception of one sovereign female divinity. The text does not document worship at a named Mithila or Aṅga site, so it cannot be used as a local gazetteer. It does, however, illuminate the conceptual environment in which images of Durgā, Cāmuṇḍā and allied forms could be understood within expanding goddess 239239 GAJENDRA THAKUR traditions. As sculptures appear across eastern India, textual and material histories can be compared without assuming that one directly caused the other. Figure 85 — Early-medieval religious transformation is modelled as institutional thickening and overlap, not a single conversion line from earlier ritual to three mutually exclusive sects. 22.9 Goddess images reveal public materialisation, not simply private belief A stone Mahiṣāsuramardinī or Cāmuṇḍā image required an artisan, a patron, a chosen iconographic programme and some intended setting. Even when that setting is lost, the object is evidence of organised material production. Pāla-period Bihar is particularly rich in images of both Buddhist and Brahmanical deities, including fierce and benign goddess forms. Such plurality cautions against assigning entire dynasties or regions a single religious identity. Sculptures also circulated after their original installations collapsed: they were reused in later temples, placed under trees, recovered from ponds or transferred to museums. Their present location therefore cannot be equated automatically with their original cult centre. Provenance, style, inscription and local archaeological context must be considered together. 22.10 Śākta and Śaiva traditions often intersected rather than occupying separate worlds Many goddess traditions developed in close relation to Śiva. Pārvatī and Umā appear as consort figures; Durgā and Cāmuṇḍā can be integrated into Śaiva mythic and ritual systems; later Tantric corpora create even more complex relations between Śiva and Śakti. This interweaving makes modern denominational boxes misleading when applied too rigidly to early medieval evidence. A temple complex might contain Śiva, goddess, Gaṇeśa and other images; a patron could honour several forms; a ritual specialist might participate in a system that modern catalogues divide between “Śaiva” and “Śākta.” The correct historical question is therefore not which label exclusively owned a site, but how particular divine forms, ritual practices and institutions were assembled at that site over time. HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II 22.11 Vaiṣṇava transformation joined older Viṣṇu traditions to image, temple and avatāra devotion Viṣṇu’s Vedic presence and the growth of Nārāyaṇa, Vāsudeva-Kṛṣṇa and avatāra traditions long predate the early medieval period. What changes visibly in archaeology is the density and institutional setting of Vaiṣṇava images and temples. Four-armed Viṣṇu figures with conch, discus, mace and lotus, images of Varāha or Narasiṃha, and complex stelae with attendants and personified attributes materialise a theological world in durable form. The temple creates recurring service and a public point of access, while royal or elite inscription can attach patronage to a named deity. This does not mean devotion was previously absent; it means the evidence for organised cult becomes more concrete. Eastern Indian sculpture demonstrates that Vaiṣṇava imagery belonged fully to the Pāla-period artistic world alongside Buddhist and Śaiva-Śākta production. 22.12 Aṅga’s Mandar Hill provides a rare inscriptional anchor for regional Vaiṣṇava patronage Mandar Hill in the wider Aṅga-Bhagalpur zone is especially valuable because a seventh-century Later Gupta inscription associated with Ādityasena links royal piety to a Viṣṇu/Narahari installation and to sacred water infrastructure created by the queen. Unlike a free-floating sculpture, an inscriptional record can connect deity, patron and place. The evidence demonstrates a Vaiṣṇava foundation in the Mandar landscape and shows how image installation, kingship and a tank could form part of one sacred project. It does not prove that Mandar was exclusively Vaiṣṇava: the hill accumulated Jain and other Hindu associations as well. Precisely this layered character makes it a strong case study for regional transformation through addition rather than replacement. 22.13 Sacred water, temple patronage and kingship formed a linked social technology The Mandar evidence also reminds us that religious patronage extended beyond the sanctum. Tanks, wells, approach routes and settlement resources shaped access to sacred sites. A ruler or royal woman who sponsored water infrastructure participated in both piety and public utility, although the balance between these motives cannot be measured from inscriptional praise alone. In a monsoon environment, a tank could support ritual bathing, visitors and local water needs. Temples likewise generated movement of artisans, priests, donors and pilgrims. Religious institutions should therefore be placed inside material landscapes. The social history of Vaiṣṇavism, Śaivism or Śāktism cannot be written only from theology; it must include the built environment that made repeated worship possible. 22.14 Pāla political history does not equal a Buddhist monopoly on religious life The Pāla rulers are famous for major Buddhist institutions, but the religious landscape of Bihar and Bengal under and around Pāla power was markedly plural. Brahmanical images, temples and grants coexisted with Buddhist monasteries, and regional rulers and elites could support different traditions. Birendra Nath Prasad’s archaeological synthesis emphasises poly-religiosity rather than a sequence in which one religion simply replaces another. This matters for Mithila and Aṅga because Pāla-period artistic style is often encountered through both Buddhist and Hindu sculpture. A “Pāla image” is an art-historical and chronological description, not a statement that its deity is Buddhist. The same workshops or artistic conventions could serve patrons with different religious commitments. 241241 GAJENDRA THAKUR 22.15 Art-historical style can connect a sculpture to a region and period, but not reconstruct its whole institution Susan Huntington’s study of the Pāla-Sena schools remains fundamental for understanding eastern Indian stone and metal sculpture. Stylistic analysis can identify regional conventions, chronological development and relationships among images, especially when compared with dated works. Yet style alone cannot tell us who worshipped an image, how often, under what economic arrangements or whether the image stood in a large temple, a smaller shrine or another setting. This limitation is particularly important for sculptures reported from villages without controlled excavation. They are real evidence for artistic and cultic production, but their institutional biography may be partly lost. A socio-cultural history must therefore combine art history with settlement archaeology, inscriptions and later documentation without allowing one evidence type to carry conclusions it cannot support. 22.16 Mithila’s surviving medieval sculptures show plurality rather than a single sectarian landscape Published surveys of Mithila’s art and archaeological discoveries record images of Viṣṇu, Śiva-Pārvatī, Gaṇeśa, Durgā/Cāmuṇḍā, Sūrya, Buddhist deities and other forms at sites across the region. Many are assigned broadly to Pāla-Sena or later medieval centuries, although individual datings require specialist review. The strongest regional conclusion is not that one cult “won,” but that multiple iconographic traditions were materially established. A cluster of images at a site may indicate a temple complex, successive shrines, reuse or collection from the surrounding area; without excavation these alternatives remain open. This plural material record also warns against reading later literary or sectarian prestige backward as exclusive religious dominance. 22.17 Recent recoveries from ponds and fields demonstrate both archaeological richness and loss of context In north Bihar, old stone images continue to be recovered accidentally during pond cleaning, cultivation and construction. Such finds can greatly expand the known corpus, but accidental discovery usually destroys stratigraphic context. A sculpture identified as Pāla or Karnata-period may still be datable stylistically, yet its original building and associated deposits may be unknown. Modern villagers may begin worship immediately, while museums and archaeologists seek conservation. This contemporary process is itself historically revealing: ancient objects can acquire new sacred biographies. For the present chapter, however, accidental finds are used cautiously—as evidence that early-medieval religious material survives widely, not as proof that the exact recovery spot was an original temple. 22.18 Vaiṣṇava images in Bihar demonstrate sophisticated iconographic production and patronage Museum collections preserve substantial Pāla-period Vaiṣṇava sculpture from Bihar, including large bronzes and black-stone stelae. The Metropolitan Museum’s early ninth-century bronze of Viṣṇu flanked by personified attributes and its later Pāla stone images illustrate the technical and theological sophistication of this production. Such objects imply patrons able to commission costly work and artisans trained in precise iconographic conventions. Their significance is broader than aesthetics: an image structured ritual attention, identified a divine form and helped make sectarian affiliation publicly legible. Yet museum provenance is sometimes only “Bihar,” so these objects cannot be assigned specifically to Mithila, Vaiśālī or Aṅga unless HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II find history permits. They establish a regional artistic environment against which securely local finds can be compared. Figure 86 — Selected regional anchors show different evidentiary strengths: Mithila’s sculptural plurality, Vaiśālī’s layered sacred landscape, Aṅga–Mandar’s inscriptional Vaiṣṇava anchor, and the wider eastern Bihar corridor. 22.19 Image installation created durable obligations of care A consecrated image is not merely a representation. In temple-centred traditions it is bathed, dressed, fed, adorned, awakened, put to rest, carried in procession or approached through vows and offerings according to local and textual prescriptions. This ritual life creates recurring needs for water, flowers, food, lamps, textiles, metal vessels and human labour. Consequently, the spread of image worship also has an economic history. Priests, gardeners, potters, oil suppliers, musicians and donors may become connected to a shrine even when inscriptions preserve only the elite patron. The institution converts episodic gift into repetitive service. This is one reason temple cult could become socially durable: it embedded theology in routines of material provisioning. 22.20 Temple growth changed the spatial organisation of religious life A monastery, sacrificial ground, household shrine and temple organise space differently. The temple establishes a fixed divine centre with thresholds, circumambulation, restricted and public zones, and often an associated settlement environment. In early medieval eastern India, temple remains are much less uniformly preserved than sculpture, partly because brick structures deteriorate and later rebuilding obscures earlier phases. Where architectural fragments survive, they can reveal the scale and aesthetic programme of patronage. Where only images survive, the original building must not be imagined beyond the evidence. Even so, the wider transformation toward fixed cult places encouraged more regular pilgrimage, seasonal gathering and local identification with a deity or sacred site. 22.21 Sectarian texts and actual village practice operated at different levels Āgamas, Tantras and Purāṇas can specify complex initiation, mantra, diagram, temple and worship systems. Their sophistication is indispensable for intellectual history, but local practice need not reproduce a text completely. Ritual specialists select, adapt and transmit procedures; householders participate at different 243243 GAJENDRA THAKUR levels; local deities can be identified with wider divine forms without losing distinctive traditions. Conversely, practices poorly represented in surviving texts may have been socially important. The historian should therefore resist two opposite errors: treating normative texts as exact ethnography, or dismissing texts because practice was diverse. The relationship is better understood as a repertoire from which institutions drew authority and technique. 22.22 Tantric transformations linked body, mantra, deity and power in new ritual configurations Early medieval Tantric traditions, especially Śaiva and Śākta systems, developed powerful ritual technologies centred on initiation, mantra, visualisation, maṇḍala, the ritual body and forms of divine power. Their influence extended well beyond small esoteric groups because ritual specialists could serve rulers and temples, and because Tantric elements entered broader worship. Eastern India later became a major field of interaction among Śaiva, Śākta and Buddhist Tantric traditions. Yet the regional evidence for any specific school in Mithila, Vaiśālī or Aṅga must be demonstrated rather than assumed from eastern India as a whole. The safe conclusion is that these areas participated in a wider cultural zone in which Tantric forms became increasingly influential, while local institutional histories remain unevenly documented. 22.23 Śākta power should not be reduced to a story of “tribal absorption” Older scholarship often explained goddess traditions through a simple model in which Brahmanical religion absorbed supposedly primitive or tribal mother goddesses. Such models can obscure agency, chronology and the complexity of religious exchange. Local goddesses, village protectors, elite temple goddesses and textual Devī forms may interact without fitting a one-way ladder from “folk” to “high” religion. In Mithila and Aṅga, later goddess centres can preserve local names and ritual features while also participating in Sanskritic myth and Tantric theology. The historical task is to trace specific connections where evidence permits. A regional goddess image with identifiable iconography is one datum; a later pilgrimage tradition is another. Neither should be forced into an evolutionary scheme unsupported by evidence. 22.24 Vaiṣṇava avatāra theology allowed regional landscapes to connect with pan-Indian narratives The avatāra concept gave Vaiṣṇava traditions a powerful way to locate cosmic narratives in particular places. Narasiṃha, Varāha, Rāma and Kṛṣṇa could be represented in sculpture and associated with local sacred geography. Mandar’s Narahari association is an especially important regional example because inscriptional evidence links the deity with a royal foundation. Other local claims, especially those first documented much later, require separate dating. Pan-Indian narrative does not erase locality; rather, locality can gain wider prestige by being incorporated into a shared mythic world. This process helps explain how pilgrimage networks grow: a hill, tank or temple becomes simultaneously local infrastructure and a point within a larger sacred map. 22.25 Religious patronage was not mechanically determined by dynastic identity Historians often label rulers “Buddhist,” “Śaiva” or “Vaiṣṇava,” but royal patronage could be broader than personal initiation or devotional preference. A ruler might support Brahmins, monasteries, temples, teachers and public works for different political and religious reasons. Queens, ministers, feudatories, merchants and local elites also acted independently. The Mandar record itself gives a royal woman a visible HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II role in sacred water patronage. In Pāla-period eastern India, the coexistence of Buddhist and Brahmanical institutions makes dynastic labels especially inadequate as descriptions of society. Religious transformation should therefore be mapped through actual grants, objects and sites rather than inferred automatically from the ruler’s conventional identity. 22.26 Gender appears in patronage, goddess theology and ritual participation in different ways The rise of goddess traditions does not by itself demonstrate increased social power for women. Divine femininity and women’s legal or economic position are separate historical questions. Nevertheless, women appear in religious history as patrons, household ritual participants, ascetics and members of pilgrimage communities. Royal women could fund tanks or temples; household women could sustain vows and domestic worship; goddess theology could articulate female divinity in extraordinarily powerful terms. These dimensions intersect but should not be collapsed. A strong Devī cult may coexist with patriarchal social institutions. Conversely, an inscription naming a female donor provides concrete evidence of agency even when theological texts say little about ordinary women. 22.27 Religious specialists became mediators between textual systems and local society Priests, ascetics, teachers, temple managers and ritual experts translated broad traditions into local institutions. Their work included consecration, daily worship, calendrical rites, teaching, dispute, healing rites, pilgrimage guidance and maintenance of sacred property. Some specialists belonged to hereditary communities; others to initiatory or monastic lineages. Surviving evidence rarely lets us reconstruct the full occupational structure of a single Mithila or Aṅga temple in this period. Nevertheless, the growth of specialised ritual systems implies social roles that could persist beyond individual patrons. Religious transformation therefore involved professional and institutional continuity as much as theological innovation. 22.28 Poly-religiosity is a better model for early medieval Bihar than a zero-sum contest Archaeological study of Bihar and Bengal between roughly 600 and 1200 CE shows Buddhist, Brahmanical and Jain sites existing in overlapping landscapes. Competition for patronage was real, and some institutions declined while others expanded, but coexistence was common. Images and architectural remains indicate that Śaiva, Śākta and Vaiṣṇava cults did not require the immediate disappearance of Buddhist or Jain practice. Nor were the Brahmanical traditions themselves a single bloc. This model is particularly appropriate to a region already shaped by the earlier Buddhist and Jain histories of Vaiśālī and Aṅga. The early medieval transformation added new densities of temple and image-centred worship to an already plural religious environment. 245245 GAJENDRA THAKUR Figure 87 — Sectarian traditions became socially durable through linked processes of patronage, materialisation, ritual specialists, public practice, and the continued repair or reuse of sacred objects and places. 22.29 The evidence is strongest for material and institutional visibility, weaker for population percentages By combining inscriptions, sculpture, architectural remains and comparative texts, several conclusions are robust. Śiva, Viṣṇu and goddess cults were materially established in early medieval Bihar; Mithila preserves a diverse corpus of Brahmanical imagery; Mandar offers a specific seventh-century Vaiṣṇava patronage anchor; and wider eastern Indian religious life was poly-religious. Much weaker are claims about what percentage of the population followed each sect, whether particular villages were exclusively Śaiva or Vaiṣṇava, or how quickly household belief changed. Archaeology preserves durable objects better than private devotion. The chapter therefore speaks of expanding visibility and institutionalisation rather than demographic conversion. 22.30 Conclusion: Śaiva, Śākta and Vaiṣṇava traditions transformed the region by building durable institutions into an already plural landscape The major transformation was not the sudden arrival of three fully formed religions. It was the progressive materialisation and institutionalisation of related but distinct traditions through images, temples, sacred water, ritual specialists, texts, patronage and pilgrimage. Śaiva networks linked ascetic authority and temple service; goddess traditions expanded through powerful iconographies and Tantric-theological synthesis; Vaiṣṇava cults connected established Viṣṇu-Nārāyaṇa traditions with temples, avatāra images and regional sacred places such as Mandar. Mithila’s sculpture record and the broader archaeology of Bihar show plurality rather than monopoly. The social history that follows from this evidence is therefore one of layered sacred landscapes: older rites, Buddhist and Jain institutions, local cults and new Brahmanical temple formations interacted, competed, borrowed and endured. Chapter 23 can now examine how these accumulated traditions turned rivers, hills, ponds, routes and settlements into a more densely articulated sacred geography. HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II Table 22.1 — Evidence for Śaiva, Śākta and Vaiṣṇava transformations, and limits of inference Evidence What it supports What it does not Source control prove alone Ādityasena/Mandar Named royal Exclusive Vaiṣṇava Epigraphic anchor; Hill inscription, 7th Vaiṣṇava/Narahari control of Mandar or later sacred layers c. patronage and the beliefs of the whole must be separated sacred-water works population in the Aṅga- Bhagalpur zone Pāla-period Viṣṇu Sophisticated A specific Use sculpture from Vaiṣṇava Mithila/Vaiśālī/Aṅga dated/provenanced Bihar iconographic provenance when objects where production, costly museum findspot is available commissions and only “Bihar” wider regional cult Śaiva inscriptions Widespread Śiva- Presence of one Macro-regional and shrine oriented patronage uniform Śaiva sect or topography distribution in early and institutional identical ritual at every requires local medieval Bihar nodes site checking Mithila sculptures: Material plurality of That every recovery Many finds lack Viṣṇu, Śiva-Pārvatī, Brahmanical cults in point is an original controlled goddess forms and the medieval temple or that one cult excavation context others landscape dominated the region Devīmāhātmya and Theological Direct proof of Textual history later goddess consolidation of worship at a named and local cult literature Devī and a Mithila or Aṅga site history must be framework for correlated, not powerful goddess equated forms Śaiva/Śākta Tantric Initiatory, mantra Automatic presence of Specific lineages corpora and ritual systems a named Tantric require textual, influential in early school wherever Śiva inscriptional or medieval religious or Devī images occur other local culture evidence Archaeology of Poly-religiosity, A simple replacement Site-by-site Bihar–Bengal, c. coexistence and sequence or chronology 600–1200 competition among demographic remains essential Buddhist, Jain and percentages Brahmanical institutions Later living Continuing sacred The foundation date Continuity, revival temples, pilgrimage memory and new of a cult without and reuse must claims and reused biographies of old earlier evidence remain separate ancient images objects possibilities 247247