Five ways the Shaivas see him

Ask five Shaivas who Shiva is and you get five answers that do not reduce to one. The oldest, the Pashupatas, are known from the early centuries CE and from the ash-smeared yogi carved at Elephanta. In the Tamil south, Shaiva Siddhanta teaches that Lord, souls and the bonds that hold them are all real and beginningless; Meykandar's twelve verses set the school on its feet in the thirteenth century, and its scripture is the twelve books of the Tirumurai. In Kashmir the Trika of Somananda, Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta says the opposite: there is only one consciousness, Shiva, and the world is its real shining, to be recognised rather than escaped. In Karnataka, Basava's Lingayats took the linga off the altar and hung it on the body, threw out caste, Vedic sacrifice and the priest, and bury their dead seated with the linga in hand. The Naths of the north follow Matsyendra and Gorakh toward a body made immortal by yoga, under Shiva as the first of all teachers. Devalok describes each in its own terms.