All Agama Scriptures

Agama scriptures are the Hindu canon division of Tantric ritual and doctrinal literature, composed in Sanskrit and Tamil and organized into three principal branches devoted respectively to Shiva, Vishnu and the Goddess. The Agama corpus sets out cosmology, temple architecture and construction, image worship, meditation practice, mantra and the stages of yoga, and its Vaishnava branch alone traditionally comprises 108 texts also known as the Pancharatra Samhitas, alongside 28 principal Shaiva Agamas and 64 Shakta Agamas or Tantras. Scholars date the surviving Agama texts to roughly the middle of the first millennium CE on epigraphic and archaeological evidence, though some material may be considerably older, and the genre stands institutionally apart from both the shruti and smriti divisions even where individual Agama passages claim to restate the true spirit of the Vedas.