Saivism and the Tantric Traditions

Alexis Sanderson is a scholar of Shaiva Tantra, and this survey chapter, published within the edited volume The World's Religions, is his standard scholarly map of the Shaiva traditions, including how the nondual Kashmirian schools relate to the dualist Shaiva Siddhanta tradition. Its strength is Sanderson's own recognized authority in this specialist field, built on close reading of the primary Sanskrit tantric literature, making this chapter a widely cited orientation to a genuinely complex family of traditions. Its limit is that, as a survey chapter within a larger multi-tradition volume, it necessarily summarizes rather than argues any one point in full depth, so a claim needing detailed textual argument about one specific Shaiva school is better served by a focused monograph on that school.