SIDDHANTHAM AND ITS INFLUENCE OVER OTHER PHILOSOPHIES: GANGETIC PLAINS: The agamas along with the Vedas in the indo-gangetic planes achieved a major growth in the 1st century AD. The mandukya Upanishad and Saiva doctrines often come very closer in this context. The next phase of six brahmanical schools like Sankhya,nyaya, vaisoshika, yoga, mimamsa and Vedanta saw the mutually opposing tendencies among the various Hindu philosophy systems. There was a period of puranas and Saiva schools also have that phase in their system. The Siva puranam, skandha puranam are notable amongst them. The pre Veda, Veda, purana and agama phases of Saiva siddhantham are by and large very less found in Tamil texts. Either they were destroyed or lost (there were strong jain-buddhist influences in Tamil the country up to 6th century AD). EAST ASIA: Needless to say the Far East Asia has taken up Buddhist ideas significantly even than the Indian subcontinent. The existential aspects of Buddhism is well acknowledged now in the west. The meditating Buddha is in fact a symbol of the Far East Asia. The meditating posture and self contemplation of Buddha is an Indian concept. The man in yogic posture seals in the Indus valley seals are the early existential attempts in the history of Hindu philosophy. The word "dhyan" in Sanskrit was corrupted to "xhan" in Chinese and still further as "zen" in Japanese. The Indus yogi of 2nd millennium BC and the meditation practices in the shaolin temples of china and the monasteries of Japan are connected in one certain way. WEST ASIA: Saiva tenets were one of the few Hindu schools which has survived the catastrophe that took place in Northern India from 10-17th centuries. Many of the important philosophical schools were threatened by the influence of west Asian and European influences in northern India. However the southern schools survived and in fact flourished to grow further well into 18th century. The west Asian influence was detrimental to Hinduism in general. However during this interaction some west Asian scholars ( also known as Sufi) did a great service to world philosophy by translating Hindu thoughts into Arabic and introducing them to Europe. SOUTH EAST ASIA: Siddhantham was taken to southest-asia during the CHOLAN conquests, in the KADARAM(Kedah province of Malaysia)expeditions of 11th century CE. Since then Saiva siddhantham has spread to the South-East Asia. Monasteries were teaching siddhantham in Thailand, Cambodia, Malaya, Java and Bali. THEVARAM hymns were used in the rituals of the royal houses -even 100years ago- in Thailand. They are evident in the temples of Angkor-vat in Cambodia and the Parambanan temple complexes in Indonesia. Recent excavations in "keda province -bujong vallaey" has confirmed the hindu tamil contacts with south east asia from the 4-5 centuriesAD. EUROPE: It grew with leaps and bounds up to 18TH century till the European arrival. The Royal Asiatic society was established by the Europeans at Calcutta in 1750s. This forum aimed at understanding Indian arts, science and philosophy. Many of the works were translated and sent to Europe. Earliest works were translated to German language and made significant impact to the German idealism. In fact Immanuel Kant's transcendental idealism was not unknown to eastern schools. Hegel made significant observations about Hinduism and noted the deeper connotations in Hindu symbols, images and arts. He felt the gods in Hinduism are representations of unconscious processes. Schopennehauer was an important philosopher who had admired Upanishads and Vedas. The subsequent raise of phenomenology and existentialism with Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche and Karl Jasper etc followed this thread. Freud and his psycho-analysis were substantially influenced by this thread from Kant. While phenomenology aimed at describing the mental contents the psycho-analysis strived to find explanations to the mental functions.
The presence of existentialism, phenomenology and psycho-analysis in Hindu thoughts are well known and they were here for 3000 years in Buddhist, Jain and Hindu works. The psycho-analytic contents are so much pronounced in siddhantham. The similarities with Freudian terminologies are so striking and sometimes the symbolisms are almost same in both schools. Even though many Europeans studied agama works there are no convincing proof so far to say siddhantham was directly translated to European languages before18th century.