Shiva as the supreme deity

Shaivas affirm Shiva as the supreme deity, at once the great ascetic and the cosmic dancer whose rhythm creates, sustains, and dissolves the universe. In Shaiva theology Shiva is the ground of all being, both the transcendent absolute and the intimate Lord who bestows grace and liberation; he is worshipped in image and, characteristically, in the aniconic linga. The tradition ranges from the intense devotion of the Tamil saints to the sophisticated non-dualism of Kashmir Shaivism, which sees all reality as the self-expression of Shiva-consciousness.

Shaivism itself spans sharply different philosophies. Shaiva Siddhanta, the classical South Indian school, holds a realist, broadly dualist metaphysics in which the individual soul, though ultimately dependent on Shiva, remains distinct from him even in liberation, and its temple worship and ritual grammar shaped Tamil Shaivism for over a millennium. Kashmir Shaivism, by contrast, developed a rigorous non-dualist philosophy, elaborated by thinkers such as Abhinavagupta around the turn of the eleventh century, holding that the entire universe is nothing but Shiva's own self-expressive consciousness. The devotional wellspring for much of Tamil Shaivism is the Tevaram, hymns of the Nayanar saints, sixty-three canonised devotees active from roughly the seventh to ninth centuries.

Shaivism is among the largest and oldest Hindu traditions, with roots reaching into the earliest Indian religion and a rich philosophical and devotional development. Its affirmation of Shiva's supremacy parallels and contrasts with the Vaishnava exaltation of Vishnu and the Shakta exaltation of the Goddess, the three forming the principal theistic streams of Hinduism.

Within the common Hindu cosmology of rebirth and release, Shaivism presents the path to moksha as devotion to, and ultimately identity or union with, Shiva as the absolute. A further, distinct current is Lingayatism (Virashaivism), founded or substantially reformed in twelfth-century Karnataka by the poet-saint Basava, which rejects caste hierarchy, Vedic ritual, and temple worship of images in favour of personal devotion focused on a small linga worn on the body, and produced its own vernacular scripture, the Vachanas.

Whether Lingayatism is a reform movement within Shaivite Hinduism or an independent religion remains politically live: in March 2018 the Karnataka state government, on the recommendation of an expert committee, approved separate religious minority status for Lingayats, and India's central government rejected the request in November 2018, citing the community's classification as a Hindu sect since the 1871 census; the underlying disagreement remains unresolved among Lingayats themselves.