Kapalika

[9] The Kāpālikas were an extinct sect of Shaivite ascetics devoted to the Hindu god Shiva dating back to the 4th century CE, which traditionally carried a skull-topped trident (khaṭvāṅga) and an empty human skull as a begging bowl.

Historians of Indian religions and scholars of Hindu studies have interpreted these ascetics variously as Kāpālikas, Jain Digambara monks, and Pashupatas.

[2] In his masterpiece Yoga: Immortality and Freedom (1958), the Romanian historian of religion and University of Chicago professor Mircea Eliade remarks that the "Aghorīs are only the successors to a much older and widespread ascetic order, the Kāpālikas, or "wearers of skulls".

[3][5] Mark S. G. Dyczkowski holds the Gaha Sattasai, a Prakrit poem written by Hāla (3rd to 4th century CE), to be one of the first extant literary references to an early Indian Kāpālika ascetic: 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.

Indeed, from this time onwards references to Kāpālika ascetics become fairly commonplace in Sanskrit ...[18]The Act III of Prabodha Chandrodaya, a Sanskrit and Maharashtri Prakrit play written by Kirttivarman's contemporary Shri Krishna Mishra (11th to 12th century), introduces a male Kāpālika ascetic and his consort,[5] a female Kāpālini,[5] disrupting a dispute on the "true religion" between a mendicant Buddhist wanderer and a Jain Digambara monk.

The Kāpālika tradition and its offshoots in Shaivism
In Vajrayana Buddhism , the symbol of the skull-topped trident ( khaṭvāṅga ) is said to be inspired by its association with the Kāpālikas. [ 10 ] Pictured here is an ivory khaṭvāṅga , 15th-century Chinese art, Metropolitan Museum of Art , New York City .
Tantric goddess Bhairavi and her consort Shiva depicted as Kāpālika ascetics, sitting in a charnel ground . Painting by Payāg from a 17th-century manuscript ( c. 1630–1635 ), Metropolitan Museum of Art , New York City.