Saiva Siddhanta is a south Indian saiva philosophical doctrine. The Saiva Siddhanta agamas are the fundamental sectarian scriptures of Saiva Siddhanta. There are two classifications of the Saiva Siddhanta Agamas. They are Shiva Agamas and Rudra Agamas. There are 10 Shiva Agamas and 18 Rudra Agamas. The Saiva Agamas led to the Saiva Siddhanta philosophy in Tamil-speaking regions. Many of them are in Tamil. The majority of the Sanskrit Agamas are in grantha script and not in devanagari script. One interesting feature of Saiva Siddhantha Agamas is that they do not discriminate caste or gender. Saiva Siddhantha became such a great movement in Chola period that the biggest temples of the Hindu History were built by their believers.

Saivism prescribe certain practices to grow spiritually. These practices are called Sariya, Kiriya, Yoga and Jnana. Sariya is doing service to devotees and in temples. Worshipping lord Siva with body and mind is Kiriya. Meditating on Siva without allowing the mind to stray outwards and getting united mentally with Him is Yoga. Understanding the books of wisdom and staying in the Grace of Siva is Jnanam. The Saiva siddhantha further says, God Siva in His inherent form is formless. To bestow grace to the souls He manifests in various forms. His manifested forms are grouped into three categories. They are arupa(aruvam) form (without a body), rupa(uruvam)form (with body) and rupa-arupa (aruvuruvam) form (with and without body). The image of Siva Linga (Sivalingam) is symbolic of the last category, which is the intermediate stage between the other two. Other manifested images of Siva are symbolic of the second category. The images of Ambikai, Nadarajah, Dakshnmoorthy, Ganapathy, Murugan etc., belong to this category.