In Hindu culture, Kapalika means bearer of the skull-bowl, and refers to Lord Bhairava taking the kapala vow. As penance for cutting off one of the heads of Brahma, Lord Bhairava became Bhikshatana, an outcast and a beggar. In this guise Bhairava frequents waste places and cremation grounds wearing nothing but a garland of skulls and ash from the pyre, unable to remove the skull of Brahma fastened to his hand. The skull hence becomes his begging-bowl, and the kapalikas (as well as the Aghoris of Varanasi) supposedly use skulls as begging bowls and as drinking and eating vessels in imitation of Bhairava. Although information on the kapalikas is primarily to be gleaned from classical Sanskrit sources, where kapalika ascetics are often depicted as depraved villains in drama, it appears that this group worshiped Shiva in his extreme form, Bhairava the ferocious. They are also often accused of having practiced ritual human sacrifices. Ujjain is alleged to have been a prominent center of this sect.
The kapalikas may also have been related to the Kalamukhas ("black faces") of medieval South India (Lorenzen 1972). Moreover, in modern Tamilnadu, certain Shaivite cults associated with the Goddess Angaalaparameshwari, Irulappasami, and Sudalai Madan, are known to practice or have practiced ritual cannibalism, and to center their secretive rituals around an object known as a kapparai (Tamil "skull-bowl," derived from the Sanskrit kapala), a votive device garlanded with flowers and sometimes adorned with faces, which is understood to represent the begging-bowl of Shiva (Meyer 1986).
Beer (2003: p. 102) relates how the symbolism of the khatvanga that entered esoteric Buddhism (particularly from Padmasambhava) was a direct borrowing from the Shaivite kapalikas who frequented places of austerity such as charnel grounds and cross roads (see Crossroads (mythology)) as a form of left-hand path (Sanskrit: vamamarga) spiritual practice (Sanskrit: sadhana):
"The form of the Buddhist khatvanga derived from the emblematic staff of the early Indian Shaivite yogins, known as kapalikas or 'skull-bearers'. The kapalikas were originally miscreants who had been sentenced to a twelve-year term of penance for the crime of inadvertently killing a Brahmin. The penitent was prescribed to dwell in a forest hut, at a desolate crossroads, in a charnel ground, or under a tree; to live by begging; to practice austerities; and to wear a loin-cloth of hemp, dog, or donkey-skin. They also had to carry the emblems of a human skull as an alms-bowl, and the skull of the Brahmin they had slain mounted upon a wooden staff as a banner. These Hindu kapalika ascetics soon evolved into an extreme outcast sect of the 'left-hand' tantric path (Skt. vamamarg) of shakti or goddess worship. The early Buddhist tantric yogins and yoginis adopted the same goddess or dakini attributes of the kapalikas. These attributes consisted of; bone ornaments, an animal skin loincloth, marks of human ash, a skull-cup, damaru, flaying knife, thighbone trumpet, and the skull-topped tantric staff or khatvanga."[1]
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Dyczkowski (1988: p. 26) holds that Hāla's Prakrit literature poem, the Gaha Sattasai, is one of the first extant literary references to a kapalika:
One of the earliest references to a Kāpālika is found in Hāla's Prakrit poem, the Gāthāsaptaśati (third to fifth century A.D.) in a verse in which the poet describes a young female Kāpālikā who besmears herself with ashes from the funeral pyre of her lover. Varāhamihira (c500-575) refer more than once to the Kāpālikas thus clearly establishing their existence in the sixth century. Indeed, from this time onwards references to Kāpālika ascetics become fairly commonplace in Sanskrit...".[2]
Dyczkowski (1988: p. 26) relates how Kṛṣṇa Miśra casts the character of a kapalika in his play, the Prabodhacandrodaya and quotes verbatim a source that renders the creed of this character into English thus:
"My charming ornaments are made from garlands of human skulls." says the Kāpālika, "I dwell in the cremation ground and eat my food from a human skull. I view the world alternately as separate from God (Īśvara) and one with Him, through the eyes that are made clear with the ointment of yoga... We (Kāpālikas) offer oblations of human flesh mixed with brains, entrails and marrow. We break our fast by drinking liquor (surā) from the skull of a Brahmin. At that time the god Mahābhairava should be worshipped with offerings of awe-inspiring human sacrifices from whose severed throats blood flows in currents.[3]
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