Kāpālika
A tradition no longer extant within Śaivism. The disagreements in the sources are shown rather than settled.
Kāpālika is recorded within Śaivism and is no longer extant. Also written Kapalikas, skull-bearers.
Origin
No founding year is given below, because the sources read do not agree on one and a date has not been chosen for them. Britannica: the Kāpālikas and Kālāmukhas were 'two groups of Shaivite ascetics, most prominent in India from the 8th through the 13th century, who were successors of the Pashupatas'. Worldmark (Urban): a deliberately transgressive sect whose ritual used 'wine, meat, and sexual intercourse'. No founder or founding year given.
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Citation
English
The language and the date you read it belong in the citation: this corpus is multilingual and articles are revised after publication.
John Shaqi. “Kāpālika.” English version. 11 August 2026. https://johnshaqi.com/articles/sect-kapalika.
@misc{johnshaqi-sect-kapalika-en,
author = {John Shaqi},
title = {Kāpālika},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {English version},
url = {https://johnshaqi.com/articles/sect-kapalika},
note = {Accessed n.d.}
}The word count is counted from this edition. The minute estimate uses 238 words a minute, the silent reading rate for English non-fiction reported by Brysbaert (2019). The Urdu, Hindi and Roman Urdu editions carry a word count and no estimate, because no comparable rate has been published for those scripts.