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PREFACE
"The Caiva Siddhantha system is the most elaborate, influential, and undoubtedly the most instrinsically valuable of all the religions of India. It is áeculiarly the South Indian, and Tamil religion. *** Caivism is the old prehistoric religion of South India, essentially existing from Pre - Aryan times, and holds sway over the hearts of the Tamil People".
Dr. G.U. Pope in his English translation of the sacred Tamil lyrics, the Thiruvachakam of the great Saiva Saint Manicakavachakar, p. xxiv.
The above extract expresses the just estimate arrived at by that great Christian missionary and profound Tamil scholar Dr. G.U. Pope as regards the instrinsic merit and high antiquity of the Saiva Siddhanta the religion and philosophy of the Tamil people. Most of his active period of life Dr. Pope spent in the heart of the Tamil country moving intimately with all classes of the Tamil people and learning at first-hand not only their beliefs, customs and manners but also their ancient classics such as Thirukkural, Purananooru, Silappathikaram, Manimekalai, Palamoli, Naladiyar, Periapuranam, Sivajnanabodham and others. His erudition in Tamil was equal to, and in some respects even exceeded, the erudition of great native scholars. So his impartial estimate of the Saiva Siddhanta, coming as it does from a great western scholar who combined in himself the culture of both west and east, might, by being prefixed to this English Preface of the following work of mine on Saivism, serve well to impress its value and importance on the minds of those learned Indians and Europeans to whom it is a sealed book. For the modern philosophic and religious thought in the east and the west is so
