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The manner in which the two texts reinterpret these practices, however, shows a certain divergence in strategies of interpretation; for while the VBh regularly emphasizes entrance into a state free of distinction and conceptualization, the ŚD emphasizes the agent’s action as Śiva. Thus, the visualization (dhyāna) involves concentration on no image in the VBh, but recognition of all entities as Śiva in the ŚD. Worship (pūjā) involves absorption in a nonconceptual “ether” in the VBh, but the identification of all the elements of the action with Śiva in the ŚD; and so on. Somānanda does not guide the practitioner toward the cessation of all conceptualization (vikalpas) or to any resorption into the divine plenum that is encouraged in the VBh, but rather calls the practitioner to recognize his identity with Śiva in all that he or she sees and does.

This is not to say that Somānanda wished merely to contradict the VBh, though. Indeed, he may well have found in the VBh inspiration for, or at least validation of, the most striking element of his entire system, what Torella termed an “extreme formulation,” namely, the notion that volition and therefore agency exists equally in all entities, down to the mundane pot. For something similar to this idea is expressed on VBh 105: “‘Knowledge, desire, and so forth, do not appear only within me, they appear everywhere in jars and other objects.’ Contemplating thus, one becomes all pervasive.”133 Similarly, the VBh suggests that Śiva-nature is all-pervasive, and that the mind cannot but experience Śiva, regardless of the identity of the objects with which the senses make contact.134 It also suggests that the senses may bring one to Śiva-consciousness,135 an idea clearly echoed in Somānanda’s reformulation of the process of visualizing the deity (dhyāna), surveyed above.136

It may be said, rather, that one can identify two streams of thought in the VBh. One (which is emphasized, as we shall see, by the SpKā and the ŚSū) suggests that the path to knowing the divine involves the cessation of desire. This

133See VBh 105: ghaṭādau yac ca vijñānam icchādyaṃ vā mamāntare / naiva sarvagataṃ jātaṃ bhāvayann iti sarvagaḥ. The translation is Singh’s. Cf. ŚD 5.16: jānan kartāram ātmānaṃ ghaṭaḥ kuryāt svakāṃ kriyām / ajñāte svātmakartṛtve na ghaṭaḥ sampravartate. “Cognizing itself as the agent, the pot performs its own action. If it were not aware of its own agency, the pot would not be present.”

134See, e.g., VBh 116: yatra yatra mano yāti bāhye vābhyantare ’pi vā / tatra tatra śivāvasthā vyāpakatvāt kva yāsyati. “Wherever the mind goes, be it internal or external, the Śiva-condition exists there; where (else) can [the mind] go, given his omnipresence?”

135See, e.g., VBh 117: yatra yatrākṣamārgeṇa caitanyaṃ vyajyate vibhoḥ / tasya tanmātradharmitvāc cillayād bharitātmatā. “On every occasion that the consciousness of the Omnipresent reality is revealed through the sensory organs, since it is the characteristic only of the Universal Consciousness, one should contemplate over the consciousness appearing through the sensory organs as the pure Universal Consciousness. He will then attain the essence of plenitude (which is the characteristic of Bhairava).” (Translation Singh’s.)

136That the verse in question immediately precedes the primary verse that is echoed in ŚD 1.9–11ab is further suggestive of the connection articulated in the VBh between quotidian engagement with the world and an active awareness of the divine, something Dyczkowski (1992: 52) noted, and identified as a peculiarly Kaula inclination, some time ago.

is expressed in VBh 96–97, for example:137 “Seeing a desire arise, he should quickly quiet it. It will be reabsorbed in the very place from which it arose. When I am one without desire or cognition, who, verily, am I? Being thus, I am in reality absorbed in that [condition] and become mentally absorbed in the same.” The other, taken up in the ŚD, suggests that one may contact the divine by attentively and actively engaging the world in all its apparent diversity. This latter stream of thought is encapsulated in the dhāraṇā found in the very next verse (VBh 98), one that intimates that the practitioner should embrace his desires:138 “Alternatively, when a cognition of a desire occurs one should fix one’s consciousness on it; being one whose mind is fused with awareness of the self he will then see the nature of reality.” In other words, Somānanda emphasizes this stream of thought over and above the one that articulates the need for the practitioner to withdraw from the world in order to know the divine.

It is intriguing, then, that Somānanda explicitly suggests in the third chapter of the ŚD that any mention in Śaiva scripture of the universe as being somehow illusory exists only for the purpose of cultivating dispassion in the individual practitioner. For in doing so he suggests that these passages should therefore be taken in no way to contradict the arguments he has put forward regarding the active and engaged form of Śiva-as-consciousness.139 This statement is intriguing because the VBh occasionally makes just this sort of suggestion, intimating that one should imagine that the universe is an illusion so that one may transcend it.140 “By contemplating the universe as being Indra’s web of illusion, or as configured like the work of a painting, or as moving to and fro unsteadily, and by seeing everything (thusly), one becomes delighted.” One cannot help but wonder whether Somānanda had in mind just such passages from the VBh as the one here quoted when he explained away such references to the universe as illusion. After all, the tantra is filled with exercises in concentration (dhāraṇās), and it explicitly recommends the very sorts of methods for yogic contemplation that are here in question.141

There can, in sum, be little doubt that the VBh is a primary—perhaps the premier—work in Somānanda’s mind when he composed the ŚD. And Somānanda emphasizes the practices therein that are associated with understanding the divine to be present in all activity and all appearances. In light of the existence of a significant influence of the VBh on subsequent Pratyabhijñā authors,

137See VBh 96–97: jhagitīcchāṃ samutpannām avalokya śamaṃ nayet / yata eva samudbhūtā tatas tatraiva līyate. yadā mamecchā notpannā jñānaṃ vā kas tadāsmi vai / tattvato ’haṃ tathā bhūtas tallīnas tanmanā bhavet.

138See VBh 98: icchāyām athavā jñāne jāte cittaṃ niveśayet / ātmabuddhyānanyacetās tatas

tattvārthadarśanam. Note that I understand tattvārtha to refer to paramārtha, the nature of reality.

139See ŚD 3.95cd–96ab.

140See VBh 102: indrajālamayaṃ viśvaṃ vyastaṃ vā citrakarmavat / bhramad vā dhyāyataḥ sarvaṃ paśyataś ca sukhodgamaḥ.

141Cf. note 81 of the second chapter of the translation.

Somānanda’s Tantric Interlocutors, and

the Philosophy of the Grammarians

We have already mapped Somānanda’s interaction with the Trika scriptures in our review of Somānanda’s philosophical theology, as we have examined the differences between the ŚD and the writings of Somānanda’s disciple, Utpaladeva, followed by a consideration of the ways in which the ŚD invokes Trika terminology.143 In doing so, we have shown that Somānanda’s ŚD should be considered to be a Trika-influenced post-scriptural work that is closely linked to the VBh, even if Utpaladeva’s ĪPK and ĪPVṛ exorcize the scriptural flavor of the ŚD in favor of speaking in a more purely philosophical register. We turn now to the task of mapping Somānanda’s interaction with his tantric interlocutors, as well as the Hindu grammarians who informed some among them.

9. The Tantric Post-Scriptural Schools and Authors

Known to Somānanda

By the time of the golden age of tantric Śaiva exegesis, around the middle of the tenth century and certainly by the beginning of the eleventh, six distinguishable streams of post-scriptural learning flourished in the Kashmir Valley. These include: the Śaiva Siddhānta, with its ritual and liturgy that closely mirrored orthodox Brahminical mores, even as its adherents considered theirs to be a revelation superior to that of the Veda; the traditions of exegesis based in the Kālīkula, or the “Family of Kālī,” which elevated the divine feminine, usually in the form of Kālasaṃkarṣiṇī, the goddess Kālī as the “Destroyer of Time,” to the highest level of reality and located her at the pinnacle of ritual worship; the Krama subgroup of the Kālīkula, which understood the universe to exist as the flow of divine powers or śaktis;144 the tradition of exegesis based in the

143See, supra, sections 5, 6, and 7.

144On the structure of Krama worship, see, e.g., Dyczkowski 1987: 117–138.

Trika, which developed a ritual and philosophy associated with, as its name suggests and as already mentioned above, a triad of female deities, Parā, Parāparā, and Aparā; the writings associated with the “Doctrine of Vibration” or the Spanda School, which articulated a vision of the universe in the form of Śiva the yogin, whose consciousness was said to form and move the universe and all who occupy it; and, finally, the Pratyabhijñā or “Recognition” School, whose explanation of the universe as the form of Śiva’s consciousness adhered to a strict non-dualism that drew on both Buddhist idealist philosophy and a number of the aforementioned tantric post-scriptural traditions.

Now, if the Śaiva post-scriptural traditions of Kashmir reach their apogee before the turn of the eleventh century, the situation was rather more fluid and ill-defined when Somānanda composed the ŚD, at the beginning of the tenth century. At that time, three of the six traditions just mentioned—the post-scriptural writings of the Trika, the Kālīkula, and the Pratyabhijñā—were not yet extant,145 and a fourth—the post-scriptural Śaiva Siddhānta—had not yet reached maturity.146 The Spanda School, too, existed only in an incipient form at the turn of the tenth century, for while the root texts of the tradition, the SpKā and the ŚSū that informed them, were in circulation by the end of the ninth century, virtually none of the extensive commentatorial tradition on the two works was extant in Somānanda’s day. If it is true, then, as the RT states, that the ninth century was particularly notable for the descent of enlightened Siddhas or “Accomplished Ones” to earth for the benefit of humankind during the reign of the Kashmiri king Avantivarman (r. 855/6–883), then it is also true that the genre of literature associated with them—the post-scriptural works said to be authored by these enlightened Siddhas—took some one hundred years to develop fully and in all the forms known to scholars and aficionados of tantric learning and practice today.147

145Although the exegesis of the Kālīkula, be it based in the massive compendium of apotropaic and other forms of learning, the Jayadrathayāmala, or otherwise, is datable only to the middle of the tenth century—it can be shown to have followed the writings of Utpaladeva (fl. c. 925–975), for which see Sanderson 20071: 252–259, esp. 255—the activities of the authors of the Krama subdivision of the Kālīkula may be traced in Kashmir to Jñānanetranātha (c. 850–900), to whom all Krama lineages are traced (ibid.: 263 and 411). The Spanda stream, in the form of the “Aphorisms of Śiva” or Śivasūtras (ŚSū) and the “Stanzas on Vibration” or Spandakārikās (SpKā), being the first post-scriptural works of a Śākta Śaiva nature that sought to contrast themselves from the Śaiva Siddhānta (ibid.: 426), emerges in Kashmir around the middle of the ninth century. The second stream of Śākta Śaiva exegesis, other than those myriad traditions of the Kālīkula, i.e., the Trika—on this division, see Sanderson 20071: 250—, is in fact not represented in Kashmir in the early tenth century, other than in the writings of Somānanda himself, and it knows its full development only with the writings of Abhinavagupta around the turn of the eleventh (ibid.: 371).

146Indeed, the precise contours of that tradition are in many ways unclear prior to the writings of Bhaṭṭa Rāmakaṇṭha II (fl. c. 950–1000). See Goodall 1998: ix–xviii; cf. Sanderson 20062: 45. Earlier Saiddhāntika exegetes were likely to have been active in the Valley around the turn of the tenth century, as is evidenced in Somānanda’s reference to one Vyākhyāniguru, about which see Goodall 1998: cvi-cvii, and Sanderson 20062: 80.

147See RT 5.66: anugrahāya lokānāṃ bhaṭṭaśrīkallaṭādayaḥ / avantivarmaṇaḥ kāle siddhā bhuvam avātaran.

10. The S´ivadr.s.t.i and the Spanda School

The philosophical theology of the ŚD shows itself to be in many ways rather compatible with the Spanda School of Somānanda’s time. Indeed, in examining the SpKā, Bhaṭṭa Kallaṭa’s commentary thereon, the Spandakārikāvṛtti (SpKāVṛ), and the ŚSū—these texts being the only three works associated with the Spanda School that were extant in Somānanda’s time—it becomes evident that a great deal of continuity exists between Somānanda’s thought and these works.148 Both Somānanda and these Spanda works maintain that Śiva exists as the source (SpKā 1) and substance (SpKā 2) of the universe, one that remains unchanged even when the world appears to be both multiple and changing (SpKā 3–5, esp. 3), and like the ŚD the Spanda School recognizes Śiva as the sole agent who both creates and acts within the universe (SpKā 3 and 10; cf. SpKā 8). Similarly, all experience is ultimately rooted in the experience of Śiva himself (SpKā 4–5), who exists as the individual agent (jīva) who experiences the world (SpKā 28; cf. SpKā 36–39, ŚSū 1.11), just as he realizes this exalted state at will (SpKā 31).

All experiences, moreover, are ultimately identical with Śiva, including even conceptual experience or, in other words, thought and language (SpKā 29). Both Somānanda and his Spanda counterparts further understand only consciousness to exist, this being, as already noted, a doctrine of the Buddhist Vijñānavādins, for the absence of consciousness could never be experienced (SpKā 12–13); and this consciousness belongs to the inner being, who is ultimately Śiva himself (SpKā 16). (The ŚSū declare, somewhat cryptically, that “it is the same there as it is elsewhere” [ŚSū 3.14].) The universe, then, appears in both systems only as a result of Śiva’s desire to play (SpKā 30), as he creates the universe at will (SpKā 33). In the ŚSū this is described by way of analogy with the theatre, where the self (ātman) is the actor (ŚSū 3.9), the stage is the inner self (antarātman) (ŚSū 3.10), and the senses are the audience (ŚSū 3.11).

What is more, though the śaktitraya, the triadic schema of the three Trika powers of will (icchā), cognition (jñāna), and action (kriyā) that is so central to Somānanda’s ŚD, does not appear in either the ŚSū or the SpKā, both works make mention of the power of will (icchā) in some context. The ŚSū, for one, refers to the power of will and identifies it as the greatest power,149 as it states simply that the universe is the aggregate of the powers of the divine (ŚSū 3.31). One aphorism even suggests that creation is the product of the divine agent’s desire (ŚSū 3.41). The SpKā, for its part, approaches the idea of the existence of an individual agent whose knowledge and action are preceded by the agent’s

148For the sake of convenience, I will here refer to the three texts here listed as works of the “Spanda School,” though the relationship between the ŚSū and the SpKā is more complex than my nomenclature can suggest. On the somewhat ambiguous relationship of the SpKā to the ŚSū, see Dyczkowski 19921: 11–17.

149See ŚSū 1.13: icchāśaktitamā kumārī.

will. This is found in SpKā 10, where it is said that one may know or do whatever one wishes once one has freed oneself to experience one’s own innate nature. The verse, then, might be considered a precursor of sorts to ŚD 1.19ab, where Somānanda suggested that cognition and action constitute “activity by means of will,” as mentioned already.150

There are therefore intriguing points of contact between the Spanda School of Somānanda’s day and the contents of the ŚD, with the latter certainly owing the former something in the way of inspiration for the idea that the universe is the product of a creator god in the form of consciousness. Indeed, both the Spanda School and the ŚD suggest that Śiva is the agent who is all agents, the universe being a part of his very experience. Also held in common is the notion that one may witness the functioning of the universal power in heightened moments of experience, though in the SpKā it is spanda and not aunmukhya that one may experience in, for example, moments of anger, when intensely excited, when wondering what to do, or when running. And this feature, common to the ŚD and the SpKā, may be traced to the influence of a shared scriptural source, the VBh, as we have already discussed above.151

As close as the two schools appear to be, however, they do not present identical formulations of the nature of reality, of Śiva, or of the individual agent who resides within the manifested universe. To begin with, the SpKā and ŚSū are texts that essentially speak the language of yoga rather than philosophy.152 This pair of Spanda works regularly refers to the states of awareness, to yogic concentration, to the three phases of existence, often spoken of in terms of states of wakefulness, along with a fourth that transcends them (see, e.g., ŚSū 3.21), and the like. And they do so to a degree not even a fraction of which is found in the ŚD, even if Somānanda’s notion of Śiva as a yogin is strongly reminiscent of the depiction of Śiva in the SpKā.

More substantively, the SpKā and the ŚSū show themselves rather willing to recognize the existence of some real differences between the manifested universe and the agent who manifests it, a distinction Somānanda fully rejects, as we have seen. For the fourteenth verse of the SpKā suggests that two states (avasthā) exist, that of the agent and another of the product of his action. The

150Compare SpKā 10 (tadāsyākṛtrimo dharmo jñatvakartṛtvalakṣaṇaḥ / yatas tadīpsitaṃ sarvaṃ jānāti ca karoti ca) with ŚD 1.19ab (quoted in note 55). Compare the same with NP 1.2, etc. (quoted in note 102), this to see the degree to which the SpKā continues to emphasize the pair of activities over a formulation that reflects the presence of the śaktitraya in the text.

151See section 8, above. See also SpKā 21–22: ataḥ satatam udyuktaḥ spandatattvaviviktaye / jāgrad eva nijaṃ bhāvam acireṇādhigacchati. atikruddhaḥ prahṛṣṭo vā kiṃ karomīti vāmṛśan / dhāvan vā yat padaṃ gacchet tatra spandaḥ pratiṣṭhitaḥ. Dyczkowski (19921: xvi) translates: “Therefore he who strives constantly to discern the spanda principle rapidly attains his own (true) state of being even while in the waking state itself. Spanda is stable in the state one enters when extremely angry, intensely excited, running, or wondering what to do.”

152See Torella 1994: xiii.

two, moreover, are of differing natures and are therefore distinct, because the state of being an agent is said to be permanent, while the state of being a product of action is perishable. Bhaṭṭa Kallaṭa’s commentary on this stanza even goes so far as to indicate that agency, associated with the one who enjoys (the bhoktṛ), has consciousness as its form (cidrūpa), while the other state, apparently, does not.153

Both the ŚSū and the SpKā also identify two forms of knowledge, one binding (ŚSū 1.2, 3.2) and the other liberating (ŚSū 1.16, 1.18, 1.22, 3.7), as the former suggests that the realm of pleasure and pain is “external” (bahis) to the one who experiences them (ŚSū 3.34), this while simultaneously indicating that the one freed of pleasure and pain is liberated (ŚSū 3.35).154 This formulation of course stands in direct contrast to the ŚD, where, as we have seen, it is no one but Śiva himself who suffers and enjoys the world, or even hell below. Bondage and liberation are not linked to states of pleasant and unpleasant experience in the ŚD as they apparently are in the ŚSū. Concomitant with this difference is a certain willingness in the SpKā to differentiate the pure agent, who knows his enlightened and elevated state (SpKā 43–44, 48, and 51), from the agent afflicted by the impurities that defile him and distort his awareness of reality (SpKā 45, 46, 47, 48, and 49–50). Indeed, the yogin is said to avoid the bodily afflictions of old age (SpKā 39), while the ignorant do not (SpKā 40 and Bhaṭṭa Kallaṭa’s Vṛtti on the same). And the ninth stanza of the SpKā, along with Bhaṭṭa Kallaṭa’s Vṛtti thereon, suggests that there exists an “innate impurity” (nijāśuddhi) that one must eliminate prior to experiencing the supreme state (parama pada). When one does so, one may know or do what one likes (SpKā 10). On the other hand, the SpKā, along with Bhaṭṭa Kallaṭa’s Vṛtti, also suggests that the fetters that bind the individual are of a kind with the vibration of consciousness that creates all reality, it being only a matter of perspective that binds the individual practitioner to the limiting qualities (guṇas) that are found manifested in the universe (see SpKā 19–21 and the Vṛtti thereon).

In sum, both the Spanda works in question and the ŚD present clearly nondualistic expressions of the unity of Śiva as the agent who creates the universe; and the differences between the ŚD, on the one hand, and the Spanda School, on the other, may be said rather to lie in their respective, specific formulations of a shared non-dualistic philosophy. As with the divergences between the philosophical writings of Utpaladeva and Somānanda, the differences between the writings of the Spanda School and the ŚD may again be characterized as being similar to the difference between pantheism and panentheism, Somānanda’s view of course being the former. The Spanda School, moreover, may be said to

153See SpKā 14: avasthāyugalaṃ cātra kāryakartṛtvaśabditam / kāryatā kṣayiṇī tatra kartṛtvaṃ punar akṣayam. Cf. Bhaṭṭa Kallaṭa’s commentary on the same: avasthāyugalam avasthādvayam eva kāryakartṛtvasaṃjñaṃ bhogyaboktṛbhedabhinnam. tatra yo bhogyarūpo bhedaḥ sa utpadyate naśyati ca. bhoktṛbhedas tu cidrūpaḥ punar na jāyate na kadācid vinaśyati. tena nityaḥ.

154See Dyczkoski 19921: 16 and fn. 52 for a similar observation.

It is nevertheless worth pondering whether and how Somānanda’s understanding of Śiva’s activity owes something to the spirit of the Krama scriptures, or the exegetes of the Krama,159 because Somānanda’s philosophical theology mirrors two key features of the Krama system. First, Somānanda’s sequence of powers, nirvṛti, aunmukhya, icchā, jñāna, and kriyā, which proceeds in a manner that creates all phenomenal existence within consciousness and occurs in both the act of cosmic creation and in any and every mundane act, echoes the Krama formulation of a sequence of phases that are associated with both the powers that create the universe and one’s experience of it. Second, Somānanda further claims that the powers exist concurrently, as they are always present regardless of whether they are active or at rest, and this formulation closely parallels the model of the Krama, which suggests that the sequence of powers unfolds both sequentially and instantaneously.160 These features, then, strongly suggest the presence of a Krama influence in the ŚD, even if Somānanda formulates a novel sequence of powers that clearly reflects his affinity for the Trika.

Beyond these affinities, one can only guess, for now, the extent to which the Krama influenced Somānanda.161 Two items, in particular, are worthy of speculation. First, it is intriguing that Utpaladeva, following Somānanda, identifies a moment of “rest” (viśrānti) prior to and following every cognition, one in which Śiva appears in his unmanifested potential form.162 If one adds this state of “rest” to the sequence of powers found in the triad of powers (śaktitraya), will (icchā), cognition (jñāna), and action (kriyā), one may identify a tetradic scheme that echos that of the four phases of existence of the Krama, the one in which the unmanifested is reached in the fourth, “nameless” state. Of course, the ŚD also identifies a power preceding the śaktitraya, namely nirvṛti, as we have seen, just as it accounts for a subtle moment of will, aunmukhya, prior to the will (icchā) of the Trika triad of powers, both items that are not attested in the Krama literature. Yet, the post-scriptural Krama is marked by a penchant for innovation, and the Krama post-scriptural works elaborate on the four phases of existence in various ways.163 Could this formulation, of the śaktitraya followed by a moment of “rest,” be a Pratyabhijñā innovation on the Krama, one based in the Trika? Second, it may be stated briefly that it is worth questioning whether the thirteen knowledges outlined in the ŚāVi and summarized, above,164 but found nowhere else, to my knowledge, in the extant primary literature were

159On the various configurations of the phases of existence, the cycles of the Kālīs in the “nameless” phase, etc., in Krama post-scriptural sources, see Sanderson 20071: 260ff.

160See Dyczkowski 1987: 125.

161I say “for now,” because little of the Krama materials has thus far come to light, and much scholarly work remains to be done on the school. I thank an anonymous reviewer of this volume for suggesting

as much.

162See ŚD 1.5–6ab and the Vṛtti on the same.

163Jñānanetra’s Kālikāstotra, for example, identifies six phases of worship that precede the four

phases in question. See Sanderson 20071: 270–272 and 307. 164See notes 23 and 24, above.