Pāśupata
A tradition no longer extant within Śaivism. The disagreements in the sources are shown rather than settled.
Pāśupata is recorded within Śaivism and is no longer extant. Also written Pashupata.
Origin
Founder named in the sources: Lakulīśa. No founding year is given below, because the sources read do not agree on one and a date has not been chosen for them. Worldmark (Hugh B. Urban): founder Lakulīśa, 2nd century CE; strict renunciants who 'maintained celibacy' and followed an elaborate three-stage practice. Britannica: 'the earliest recorded Shaiva worshippers were the Pashupatas, who likely emerged about the 2nd century CE', Brahmin celibate ascetics who acted in deliberately antisocial ways, including living in cremation grounds. Neither gives a precise founding year.
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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. “Pāśupata.” English version. 11 August 2026. https://johnshaqi.com/articles/sect-pasupata.
@misc{johnshaqi-sect-pasupata-en,
author = {John Shaqi},
title = {Pāśupata},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {English version},
url = {https://johnshaqi.com/articles/sect-pasupata},
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.