ch1_torella_intro

• portance of Utpaladeva

• Introduction

• ffaele Torella

• e Pratyabhijñā provides non-dual Śaivism of Kashmir with a
• hilosophy”. A presentation of the Pratyabhijñā doctrines involves,
• rst and foremost, giving voice to one of the most original and
• culiar components of India’s philosophical and religious scenario from
• dieval times down to our own: what is known in the West as “Tantrism”.
• will be necessary to stretch a discreet veil over the incautious
• marks of a well-known scholar like Georg Feuerstein:1

• ntrism’s contribution to philosophy is negligible. Its unicity lies
• olly within the practical sphere, the sādhana. From a philosophical
• int of view, there is no hiatus between Tantrism and previous
• aditions. Buddhist Tantrism rests substantially on the foundations of
• e Mādhyamika school of Mahāyāna, and its Hindu counterpart on those of
• e cognate Advaita-Vedānta.

• actual fact, Pratyabhijñā, which provides the theoretical basis for
• l Hindu Tantrism, constitutes one of the highest and most original
• ments of Indian thought (it has, moreover, very little to do with
• dānta). The principal aim of the Pratyabhijñā philosophers was to
• low the Tantric Śaiva sects to emer­ge from the dimen­sion of
• stricted circles, often devoted to transgressive practices, and
• tablish themselves in the stratum of so­cial nor­mality, by
• ternalizing, or in any case cir­cumscrib­ing, their own specific
• f­ferences. Their main addressees were no more the ascetics, but,
• pically, the householders. As a consequence, the Pratyabhijñā engages
• a far-reaching dialogue with Indian philosophy of its time, accepting
• s modalities and rules. The initial nucleus comprises non-dualistic
• ivite scriptures, the Bhairava Tantras — Bhairava being the terrible
• rm of the God Śiva, in whom cruelty and violence are metaphors for
• mpant energy, far distant from the unmoving and bloodless deities of
• dānta. Bhairava coincides with the “I” of every creature. In first
• dressing the notion of “I”, so much disliked by Brāhmanic thought,
• n-dualist Śaivism and in primis Utpaladeva implicitly state the
• ntrality of free movement as against the always lurking reification
• nnected to the notion of ātman, the I as substance. As compared to the
• — the Supreme Consciousness — the flow of the phenomenal world is not
• (bad) dream from which one must awake as soon as possible, but the
• ontaneous manifestation of the Absolute itself. The concept of māyā,
• ntral to Vedānta, is not eliminated: māyā is taken to be the power of
• e Lord, even his highest power, otherwise known as svātantryaśakti
• ower of freedom), and svātantryavāda (doctrine of freedom) becomes one
• the favourite names for this school.

• paladeva inaugu­rates what was to be­come a salient fea­ture of the
• ole Trika in Abhinavagupta’s syn­thesis: name­ly, the ten­den­cy not
• con­stitute a monolithic doctrine and a world of religious
• ­perience to op­pose en bloc everyth­ing that does not coin­cide with
• (as in the ekāntin “absolutistic” trends) but to dis­tin­guish
• anes, which are hierarchi­cal­ly or­dered but in which the “higher”
• es not automati­cal­ly can­cel the “lower” (as Somānanda had al­ready
• id, Śiva is everywhere, even in dif­feren­tia­tion, pain and hell).
• is is the perspec­tive of the Paramādvaita “Supreme Non-Duality”, such
• elevated view­point that it does not fear what is dif­ferent from
• ­self, is not put in a criti­cal posi­tion by it, is not forced to
• ke a choice.

• ile Somānanda is considered the founder of the Pratyabhijñā, its
• ll-fledged elaboration is due to Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta.
• mānanda’s Śivadr̥ṣṭi is to be considered the first philosophical work
• Kashmirian Śaiva Advaita,2 its only predecessor being the
• anda-Kārikā, in which however the experiential and scriptural approach
• rgely prevails over philosophical elaboration. The Śivadr̥ṣṭi is
• animously recognized as the first work of the Pratyabhijñā school,
• spite the fact that the word pratyabhijñā does not even occur in it
• t least in its pregnant meaning). Abhinavagupta at the beginning of
• s Vimarśinī on the Īśvarapratyabhijñā-Kārikā does not hesitate to say
• at Utpaladeva’s masterwork is in fact only a “reflected image” of the
• vadr̥ṣṭi.3 This is, of course, not to be taken literally, for, although
• e Śivadr̥ṣṭi was a powerful source of inspiration for Utpaladeva, it is
• ly with the Īśvarapratyabhijñā-Kārikā that the Pratyabhijñā becomes a
• ry original and elaborate philosophical system. In the
• mānanda–Utpaladeva –(Lakṣmaṇagupta)–Abhinavagupta triad it was the
• tter who largely overshadowed his predecessors. Among the Pratyabhijñā
• xts, Abhinavagupta’s Īśvarapratyabhijñā-Vimarśinī became by far the
• st “popular” — if I may use this adjective for one of the profoundest
• d most sophisticated worldviews that India has ever produced. The main
• ctim of the success of the Vimarśinī was the extraordinarily important
• vr̥ti or Ṭīkā by Utpaladeva, of which only fragments have survived.

• e works of Abhinavagupta are well known, and his
• varapratyabhijñā-Vimarśinī and the Īśvarapratyabhijñā-Vivr̥ti-Vimarśinī
• commentary on Utpaladeva’s Vivr̥ti on his own
• varapratyabhijñā-Kārikā and Vr̥tti) are generally considered the
• andard works of the Pratyabhijñā.4 However, the role of Utpaladeva’s
• vr̥ti as the real centre of gravity of Pratyabhijñā philosophy has
• come more and more evident, since my discovery of a long fragment of
• e Vivr̥ti, which I have edited and translated in a series of articles
• orella 2007a-d, 2012). Now that it is possible to look, however
• rtially, into the Vivr̥ti, we realize that most of Abhinavagupta’s
• eas are just the development of what Utpaladeva had already expounded
• ere. As a consequence, we are no longer allowed to consider Utpaladeva
• mere predecessor of Abhinavagupta, as being the latter the great
• ster of Pratyabhijñā, but we must rather take Utpaladeva, particularly
• th his Īśvarapratyabhijñā-Vivr̥ti, as the real centre of gravity of the
• stem (see Torella 2014a) and Abhinavagupta mainly as his brilliant
• mmentator.

• ghly interesting is Utpaladeva’s philosophical strategy, which the
• ter Pratyabhijñā authors will simply continue. Instead of dispersing
• atyabhijñā’s philosophical energies against an undifferentiated
• ltiplicity of opponents, he very lucidly selects one, the most
• estigious philosophical and religious tradition of the Kashmir of that
• me. For various reasons (the principal one probably being the will to
• esent the new Pratyabhijñā philosophers as the champions of the entire
• iva tradition against the main common antagonist), these privileged
• ponents are the Buddhists, especially those belonging to the so-called
• gical–epistemological school.5 While for Somānanda the Buddhists are
• ponents just like many others, they are given a special status in the
• rk of Utpaladeva, for whom they, admired and attacked in an equally
• rong way, are so to speak the most intimate enemies. The criticism of
• eir positions is to Utpaladeva of a substantial help in building and
• fining the Pratyabhijñā philosophy.

• e Buddhist epistemologists and Pratyabhijnā start from presuppositions
• at appear — and are — absolutely irreconcilable: an impersonal world
• events on the one hand and, on the other, a world permeated and
• vified even in its seemingly most inert crannies by the dynamism of
• e I (Śiva or Consciousness). Despite this, an undoubted fascination is
• erted by the rigour of the Buddhist epistemologists’ argumentation and
• eir dauntless critical capacity that uses its sharp and original
• struments on the doctrines of the most diverse opponents. The very air
• superiority that may sometimes be glimpsed in their opposition to all
• hers, though it does not fail occasionally to provoke a note of
• rcasm in the Śaiva masters, ends up by further enhancing their image.
• is contributes toward causing them to be adopted by the Pratyabhijnā
• thors, partly, so to speak, as a touchstone to test the soundness of
• eir theses, and partly as a whetstone to sharpen their dialectic arms.

• ddhist epistemology, in its struggle against realism (particularly of
• āya, but also of Mīmāṁsā and Sāṁkhya), is constantly concerned with
• owing the fundamental importance of the mind in structuring reality,
• contrast to those who, with the aim of underlining the independent
• ture of the external reality confronted by human experience, move in
• e opposite direction — reducing the creative and formative role of
• owledge as far as possible and making it into a mere mirror that
• cords readymade realities outside itself, resulting in an unending
• tification even of relations, qualities, etc. This reference to the
• ntrality of the mind must have been felt by Utpaladeva to be a strong
• ement of affinity, even though it was destined to have quite divergent
• velopments. After letting the Buddhist philosophers demolish the Nyāya
• tegories, he shows how the Buddhist alternative is in fact equally
• adequate. It does overcome Nyāya, but remains as though suspended in
• d-air, since it is proved — in the Buddhist fragmented and isolated
• iverse — to be incapable of accounting for the network and circularity
• human experience. The only way to save the Buddhist view from its
• eoretical failure is to include it in a different field of reference,
• presented by the omnipervasive dynamism of a free and “personal”
• nsciousness that coincides with the Supreme Lord, Śiva. In this way,
• paladeva achieves the result of both showing the superiority of
• atyabhijñā to Buddhism and warning the Naiyāyikas (among whom the
• iva faith was most prevalent) not to count too much on their forces
• one, detached from those of the new Śaiva philosophers.

• rough this subtle play of a declared basic disagreement with the
• ctrines of Buddhist philosophers, a limited acceptance and purely
• strumental (or thought to be such) use of them, the masters of the
• atyabhijñā end up being somehow drawn into their orbit. The
• chitecture of the Pratyabhijñā feels the effect of this. The very fact
• at many problems are posed, more or less unwittingly, in Buddhist
• rms to a certain extent prefigures their development and reduces
• ssible alternatives as regards solutions.

• so very interesting is Utpaladeva’s choice of the main ally, the
• ammarian-philosopher Bhartr̥hari, though the latter had been fiercely
• tacked precisely by Utpaladeva’s guru Somānanda (cf. Torella 2009).
• ch a change of attitude, which in a broader sense is also a paradigm
• ange proper, does invest the problematic aspects of taking distance
• om one’s own guru, and, at the same time, shows how the choice of the
• ponents and allies may be the outcome of a definite plan rather than a
• ct of mere liking or disliking some worldview.6 In order to undermine
• e discontinuous universe of the Buddhists, Utpaladeva decides to avail
• mself precisely of Bhartr̥hari’s doctrine, the language-imbued nature
• knowledge, which is meant to demolish Buddhism’s main foundation
• one, i.e. the unsurpassable gulf between the moment of sensation and
• at of conceptual elaboration, representing, as it were, the very
• chetype of the Buddhist segmented reality.

• far as the metaphysical background is concerned, there is nothing
• sentially new in this doctrine — the scriptural sarvaśaktivilolatā
• ffervescence of all powers (in any reality)” of the Śivadr̥ṣṭi (I.11b)
• plicitly already contained it. But what Utpaladeva wanted to resort to
• s not scriptural authority but an argument belonging to the shared
• ilosophical debate. Thus, the omnipervasiveness of language is the
• istemological version of the omnipervasiveness of Śiva, and at the
• me time calls for integration into the spiritually dynamic Śaiva
• iverse.

• us, some of the most famous, and crucial, verses of the
• varapratyabhijñā-Kārikā originate.

• e essential nature of light is reflective awareness; otherwise light,
• ough ‘coloured’ by objects, would be similar to an insentient reality,
• ch as the crystal and so on. — I.V.11; cf. Torella 2002: 118

• nsciousness has as its essential nature reflective awareness; it is
• e supreme Word that arises freely. It is freedom in the absolute
• nse, the sovereignty of the supreme Self. — I.V.13; cf. Torella 2002:
• 0

• en at the moment of direct perception there is a reflective awareness.
• w otherwise could one account for such actions as running and so on,
• they were thought of as being devoid of determinate awareness? —
• V.19; cf. Torella 2002: 125

• ­like what oc­curs here and there in Somānanda’s Śivadr̥ṣṭi, in the
• varapratyabhijñā-Kārikā any emo­tion­al colour­ing is banished. This
• es not mean that Utpaladeva was sole­ly a philosopher: the
• ­traordi­nary in­ten­sity of his hymns, which were later to be
• l­lected in the Śiva-Stotrāvalī and are still re­cited daily by the
• ivas of Kash­mir, proves it.

• e Shimla seminar has duly emphasized the universalistic approach of
• e Pratyabhijñā philosophy: the Śaiva Āgama is just the culmination
• ak of the universal Āgama, which, unlike the Veda, is not separated
• om mankind by an unsurpassable gulf, but inhabits in the very heart of
• y creature. The idea of the universality of revelation as the
• terplay of four closely related concepts
• asiddhi–āgama–pratibhā–śabdana is developed by Abhinavagupta in the
• ntrāloka, Tantrasāra and Īśvarapratyabhijñā-Vivr̥ti-Vimarśinī (cf.
• rella 2013a). But once again this may be considered merely the
• velopment of what Utpaladeva says in his Vivr̥ti, while commenting upon
• o ślokas (we might even surmise Utpaladeva’s authorship of them). It
• worthwhile to delve at some length into this important, if
• mparatively less studied, aspect of Utpala’s thought.

• asiddhir āgamo loke yuktimān athavetaraḥ ।

• dyāyām apy avidyāyāṁ pramāṇam avigānataḥ ।।

• asiddhir avigītā hi satyā vāg aiśvarī matā ।

• yā yatra yadā siddhaṁ yat tad grāhyam aśaṅkitaiḥ ।।

• asiddhi is what we commonly call āgama, which may be either congruent
• th reason or not; it is a source of valid knowledge in the domain both
• vidyā and avidyā, provided that it is not contradicted. For the
• n-contradicted prasiddhi is to be considered the true Voice of the
• rd. What is established by virtue of this Voice, within a certain
• atial/temporal condition, is to be accepted by those who are
• ustful.7

• order to express such a concept, Utpaladeva needed a broader term
• an pratibhā and less connoted than pratibhā by typically “mysterious”
• ertones: prasiddhi, perhaps also because it furnished the occasion for
• itically addressing the Mīmāṁsā, was indeed the ideal candidate. A
• ntinuous line runs from the individually oriented prasiddhis which are
• work in the everyday experience of living beings and the
• ogressively higher prasiddhis, which give shape to the various
• rld-views, i.e. the various Āgamas — from the Veda to the Bauddha, the
• ñcarātra, the Śaiva — culminating in the all-encompassing eka āgama
• antrāloka XXXV.24a, 30a, 35a, 37a). Prasiddhi (in Abhinava’s
• aboration, based on the Vivr̥ti) is the paradox of something both
• ming from outside (ā-gama) and abiding in the depths of men’s
• teriority. It is a content of our individuality for which we are not
• sponsible, since it is already present in the new-born creature. It is
• t a fixed content, but a varying one, due to its interaction with the
• her factors of individuality. In a sense, then, prasiddhi is not even
• content, being instead more akin in its essence to a “container”. At
• e same time, rather than belonging to the “cognition” side it belongs
• the “action” side; it is the object of belief and the belief itself.
• ain, it is not bound to remain an inner belief, but enacts specific
• actical behaviours (Tantrāloka XXXV.15cd lokān vyavahārayet). In the
• ckground lies the common Indian awareness that cognition alone is
• sufficient to set humans in motion. Prasiddhi is belief in something,
• hesion to something; its most recurrent qualifications are dr̥ḍha
• irm), nirūḍha (deeply rooted). However, this “firmness” does not
• rive from a conscious effort, but is innate, spontaneous, just as
• ontaneous as the insightful intuition (pratibhā) that plays such a
• eat part in driving most of our actions. However, even this
• ontaneity does not belong to the creature individually, but to its
• ared background. Such a “background” of the creature is its being
• timately rooted in universal consciousness, Śiva. This active divine
• esence is what may also be called āgama, and has the form of the
• nate language principle which imbues all cognitions and actions. It is
• e divine Voice (vāc) of the Lord that speaks in living beings.

• om Utpaladeva–Abhinavagupta’s conception of āgama, any parochial bias
• banned as it comprises all the existing āgamas, from the Vaiṣṇava to
• e Buddhist (the Śaiva included). The immensely distant and
• decipherable āgama of Mīmāṁsā, the Veda, leaves here the place to the
• ternal and variegated āgamas of the Śaivas. Along with advaitācāra
• on-dual behaviour), such a far-reaching universalistic approach to
• velation constitutes the most insidious attack by Śaiva Tantrism to
• āhmanical hegemony.

• e work of Utpaladeva can be viewed as the very icon of the integration
• the rational and emotional sides of man: his extremely sophisticated
• ilosophical arguments are to be viewed side by side with his
• ssionate mystical poetry. His philosophy is characterized by this
• ique blend of epistemology, metaphysics, religious experience,
• nguistic philosophy and aesthetic speculation. Precisely to Utpaladeva
• do owe the entrance of aesthetics into philosophical–religious
• eculation. His concept of camatkāra (wondrous enjoyment) marks a
• gher level of experience, which leaves the reality and beauty of the
• nifested world intact, but at same time projects it into a totality
• ose centre is Supreme Consciousness. This will be later developed by
• hinavagupta into a full-fledged aesthetic system, destined to become
• e main stream of aesthetical speculation of pre-modern India as a
• ole.

• stly, Utpala’s work is a most conspicuous example of an essential
• ature of Indian philosophy as a whole, which, however, has hardly been
• ly highlighted: ceaseless interchange among the different schools,
• vely confrontation with the opposite theories, tireless capacity of
• lf-reshaping accordingly.

• ferences

• xts

• hinavagupta, Īśvarapratyabhijñāvimarśinī, ed. Mukund Ram Sha­stri,
• ls. I-II, KSTS XXII, XXXIII, Bombay, 1918-21.

• hinavagupta, Īśvarapratyabhijñāvivr̥tivimarśinī, ed. Madhusudan Kaul
• a­stri, vols. I-III, KSTS LX, LXII, LXV, Bombay 1938-43.

• hinavagupta, Tantrāloka with Commentary by Rājānaka Jayaratha, edited
• th notes by Madhusudan Kaul Shastri, vols. I-XII, KSTS XXIII, XXVIII,
• X, XXXVI, XXXV, XXIX, XLI, XLVII, LIX, LII, LVII, LVIII,
• lahabad-Srinagar-Bombay 1918-38.

• artṛhari, Vākyapadīya (mūlakārikās), Bhartr̥haris Vākyapadīya, ed. W.
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• gnāga, Pramāṇasamuccaya, see Steinkellner 2005 and Jinendrabuddhi,
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• nendrabuddhi, Viśālāmalavatī Pramāṇasamuccayaṭīkā, Chapter I. Part I:
• itical Edition, by E. Steinkellner, H. Krasser, H. Lasic, China
• betology Research Centre – Austrian Academy of Sciences,
• ijing-Vienna 2005.

• mānanda, Śivadr̥ṣṭi with the vr̥tti by Utpaladeva, ed. Pandit Madhusudan
• ul Shastri, KSTS LIV, Srinagar 1934.

• paladeva, Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā with svavr̥tti (see Torella 2002).

• anslations and Studies

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• tschinger, Vincent, 2006, “Les oeuvres de Śaṅkaranandana: nouvelles
• ssources manuscrites, chronologie relative et identité
• nfessionnelle”, Annali dell’Università degli studi di Napoli
• ’Orientale”. Rivista del Dipartimento di Studi Asiatici e del
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• uerstein, George, 1974, The Essence of Yoga: A Contribution to the
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• asser, Helmut, 2001, “On the Date and Works of Śaṅkaranandana”. In
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• oli nel suo 70° compleanno (Serie Orientale Roma 92), pp. 489-508.

• mec, John, 2011, The Ubiquitous Śiva: Somānanda’s Śivadr̥ṣṭi and his
• ntric Intelocutors, AAR Religion in Translation, New York: Oxford
• iversity Press.

• tié, Isabelle, 2011, Le Soi et l’Autre. Identité, différence et
• térité dans la philosophie de la Pratyabhijñā, Jerusalem Studies in
• ligion and Culture 13, Leiden: Brill.

• rella, Raffaele, 1992, “The Pratyabhijñā and the
• gical-Epistemological School of Buddhism”. In: Teun Goudriaan (ed.)
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• doux, Albany: SUNY Press, pp. 327-45.

• —, 2002, The Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā of Utpaladeva with the Author’s
• ̥tti. Critical Edition and Annotated Translation, Delhi: Motilal
• narsidass (Ist edn. Serie Orientale Roma 71, IsMEO, Roma, 1994), repr.
• 14.

• —, 2004 “How is Verbal Signification Possible: understanding
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• —, 2007a, “Studies in Utpaladeva’s Īśvarapratyabhijñā-vivr̥ti. Part I.
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• —, 2007b, “Studies in Utpaladeva’s Īśvarapratyabhijñā-vivr̥ti. Part II.
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• —, 2007c,“Studies in Utpaladeva’s Īśvarapratyabhijñā-vivr̥ti. Part III.
• n a Cognition become the Object of another Cognition?”. In: Dominic
• odall, André Padoux (eds.) Mélanges tantriques à la mémoire d’Hélène
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• —, 2007d,“Studies in Utpaladeva’s Īśvarapratyabhijñā-vivr̥ti. Part IV.
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• —, 2009, “From an Adversary to the Main Ally: The Place of Bhartr̥hari
• the Kashmirian Śaivādvaita”. In: M. Chaturvedi (ed.) Bhartr̥hari:
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• —, 2013a, Inherited Cognitions: Prasiddhi, Āgama, Pratibhā, Śabdana
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• —, 2013b, “Pratyabhijñā and Philology”, Journal of the American
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• —, 2014a, “Utpaladeva’s Lost Vivr̥ti on the Īśvarapratya-bhijñākārikā”,
• urnal of Indian Philosophy, 42: 115-26.

• —, 2014b, “Notes on the Śivadr̥ṣṭi by Somānanda and its Commentary”,
• urnal of Indian Philosophy, 43: 551-601.

• ----------------------------------------------------------------------

• Feuerstein 1974: 176-77. A very similar position is also maintained by
• rcea Eliade. For a detailed presentation of Pratyabhijñā philosophy,
• . Torella 1992; 2002: ix-xlv; 2009; Ratié 2011.

• A somewhat problematic book has recently been devoted to this
• portant work (Nemec 2011; on it, see a review article in Torella
• 13b). A survey of the textual and translation problems of the
• vadr̥ṣṭi can be found in Torella 2014b.

• Vol. I, p. 2: śrīsomānandanāthasya vijñānapratibimbakam.

• Just to give an example, we can see that when Mādhava describes the
• atyabhijñā-Darśana in the Sarva-Darśana-Saṁgraha he presents passages
• ming only from Abhinava’s Vimarśinī.

• The main reference point for Utpaladeva is Dharmakīrti (then Dignāga
• d Dharmottara). Abhinavagupta gives a prominent place also to
• ṅkaranandana, a very interesting and peculiar post-Utpala thinker (see
• ̈hnemann 1980; Krasser 2001; Eltschinger 2006; Torella 2011: 19 n. 12).

• Interestingly, though showing on all occasions to Bhartr̥hari the
• ghest respect and appreciation, Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta do not
• cept the theory of sphoṭa, indeed one of the cardinal points of his
• ctrine. The reasons for this denial are investigated in Torella 2004.

• For an assessing of the correct text of the two ślokas and elaborate
• planation of their import, see Torella 2013a: 458-62.