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the grammarians for venturing outside their field of knowledge—grammar—in their attempt to tackle philosophical questions associated with the process of cognition, something that he suggests they have no business addressing (ŚD 2.72–73ab).203

If the dispute is personal, this is very likely the result of the fact that a tantric philosophical school close to Somānanda’s Prtayabhijñā employed the philosophy of the grammarians, or something close to it, to justify its system. The school in question is none other than that of the worshipers of the goddess, the Śāktas, whom Somānanda criticizes in the third chapter of the ŚD. Indeed, both the ŚD and the ŚDVṛ make clear that this school understands the goddess in the form of paśyantī, “seeing,” to be supreme, this over and against the willful form of Śiva whom Somānanda champions as the highest principle:204 “The good Śaivas who imagine that speech itself abides in the sequence beginning with paśyantī prove themselves not to be Śaivas at all.”

That the supremacy of paśyantī is in question is reiterated in a number of places in the third chapter. Not only does Somānanda mockingly refer to his opponents there with the term “good” (sat), this in a manner that echoes his sarcastic references to the grammarians,205 but Utpaladeva also states explicitly that the “good Śaivas” in question conceive of the universe as appearing in the form of paśyantī, madhyamā, and vaikharī, the very triadic structure of speech found in the VP.206 Later in the third chapter, Somānanda himself considers the possibility that his opponents understand paśyantī to be supreme by virtue of the fact that she is the means to enlightenment (ŚD 3.15cd–16ab).207 Somānanda also considers an objection from his Śākta opponents that suggests that Śiva must be identical with paśyantī insofar as he is experienced in/as the everyday universe (ŚD 3.30cd), an objection he subsequently and explicitly answers (ŚD 3.85cd–86ab and 3.86cd–88ab). Somānanda even reiterates in the third chapter that speech (vāc) can be nothing more than an organ of action (karmendriya), a point he made already in his treatment of the VP in the second chapter.208 There can be little doubt, then, that Somānanda’s Śākta opponent conceived of the goddess in terms rather similar to Bhartṛhari’s paśyantī. Somānanda, in turn, clearly had this fact in mind when he criticized the philosophy of the grammarians.

203Ibid.

204See ŚD 3.9: śaivaiḥ sadbhir vāca eva paśyantyādikrame sthitāḥ / kalpitās tair aśaivatvam ātmanaḥ pratipāditam.

205See ŚD 2.8c. This, in turn, echoes Somānanda’s reference to the “honorable grammarians” (vaiyākaraṇasādhu) in ŚD 2.1c. Cf. ŚDVṛ ad ŚD 2.8cd–11; cf. ŚDVṛ ad ŚD 2.1, where Utpaladeva tells

us that Somānanda’s reference to the grammarians as “honorable” (sādhu) is meant to be sarcastic.

206See ŚDVṛ ad ŚD 3.9.

207Note that, although the ŚD makes this reference with a pronoun that, being in compound form, does not show its gender, Utpaladeva clearly states in his commentary that the entity in question is paśyantī.

208Compare ŚD 3.10a with ŚD 2.12cd–13ab and ŚD 2.89–91.

K N O W N A N D H E R E T O F O R E U N I D E N T I F I E D P A S S A G E S

O F T H E TATTVAGARBHASTOTRA

The identity of Somānanda’s Śākta opponent may be stated clearly, even if his identity must be established by inference. He can be none other than one Bhaṭṭa Pradyumna.209 This is known because Utpaladeva quotes a verse from a lost work that may nevertheless be identified as an excerpt of the Tattvagarbhastora (TGSt) of Bhaṭṭa Pradyumna (ŚDVṛ ad ŚD 3.1), because Rājānaka Rāma cites the same passage in his commentary on the SpKā, the Spandavivṛti (SpVi). In doing so, he refers to the name of the work in question, but without naming the author. Elsewhere, however, Utpaladeva tells us (in his commentary on ŚD 1.13cd–17) that a Tattvagarbhastotra was authored by Bhaṭṭa Pradyumna.210

The verse in question (here labeled TGSt passage #1) is the following:211 “We worship you constantly, Ambā, you who are the supreme mother, the form of limitless light, the one whom people call ‘Śiva.’” Notably, the verse suggests that “Śiva” is a name for the goddess, a statement Somānanda will counter (in ŚD 3.4–5ab) by suggesting that her’s must be an alternative name for Śiva if the Śāktas are to avoid the philosophical problem of an infinite regress. Apart from this, namely, that Bhaṭṭa Pradyumna understands the goddess to be supreme, however, the passage reveals little of the author’s philosophical or theological disposition.

Two additional passages of the TGSt have been identified to date, both of which are quoted in the SpVi. The first (TGSt passage #2) is the following:212 “O Śivā, (You are variously called) consciousness expansion and the like when, Mother, the empowered state which is the ‘subtle swelling’ (of consciousness)

209It is of real interest, then, that Somānanda identifies the same Bhaṭṭa Pradyumna as a “great man” who refers in his own writings to something akin to aunmukhya as a “minimal swelling” (kiñciducchūnatā). How could Somānanda refer to the one who is the object of his scorn in the third chapter of the ŚD in such a laudatory manner in the first? The simplest answer to this question is to understand Somānanda to be sarcastic in the first chapter. We know that he mocks the grammarians and his Śākta opponents by hurling compliments at them, as he refers to them as “honorable” (sādhu) ones (ŚD 2.1) and as “good” (sat) people (ŚD 2.8cd, ŚD 3.9) in the second and third chapters. I propose that the present reference should be understood in the same spirit: Bhaṭṭa Pradyumna is “great” (mahat) insofar as he fails properly to account for the power of will, as he, like the grammarians, fails to understand the nature of Śiva’s fundamental power; at the same time, the existence of the first movement of Śiva’s very will, aunmukhya, is signaled by Bhaṭṭa Pradyumna himself in what we label passage #1 of his Tattvagarbhastora (TGSt), about which see below. Also, as Utpaladeva makes clear, Bhaṭṭa Pradyumna understands this “minimal swelling” to be associated with śakti, the goddess as power, meaning that it must arise from Śiva. See ŚDVṛ ad ŚD 3.1.

210Dyczkowski 1992: 53 was the first to associate the third chapter of the ŚD with the writings of Bhaṭṭa Pradyumna, followed by Torella 1994: xiv, and, most recently, Sanderson 20071: 418, n. 629.

211The Sanskrit reads: yasyā nirupadhijyotīrūpāyāḥ śivasaṃjñayā / vyapadeśaḥ parāṃ tāṃ tvām ambāṃ nityam upāsmahe. The translation is based on Dyczkowski’s, for which see Dyczkowski 19921: 123.

212The Sanskrit reads: kiñciducchūnatāpatter unmeṣādipadābhidhāḥ / pravartante tvayi śive śaktitā te yadāmbike. The translation is Dyczkowski’s (19921: 123). It appears that kiñciducchūnatāpatti is a bahuvrīhi compound referring to the goddess as “one possessed of the arising of a subtle swelling, etc.”

prevails within You (and, like a seed, You are about to issue forth as the sprout of creation).” The second (TGSt passage #3) reads as follows:213 “O Śivā, those who know (the one) reality have said that Sadāśiva is Your state and experience when You unfold in the form of knowledge and action. The category Īśvara, full of activity, manifests when You, as the power of knowledge, recede to abeyance and are manifest as action. O Supreme One, when You are propense (to giving rise to) phenomenal existence and the power of knowledge is exalted, You are said to be Vidyā.”

In the effort to adduce what one may of Bhaṭṭa Pradyumna’s philosophical vision from this pair of excerpts, let us examine the second passage (TGSt passage #3), first. This passage of the TGSt clearly invokes the model of the tattvas of the “pure road” (the śuddhādhvan), these being the sadāśiva-, the īśvara-, and the śuddhavidyā-tattvas, which reflects the standard formulation of the thirty-six tattva model. More important, the passage in question conforms with Utpaladeva’s understanding (found both in his commentary on ŚD 2.1 and, as Rājānaka Rāma noted in his SpVi, on ĪPK 3.1.1–4) of the manner in which the powers correlate to the tattvas: the powers of cognition and action (the latter presumably in a seminal form) are found at the level of Sadāśiva, while the power of cognition recedes and the power of action becomes predominant at the level of Īśvara. Finally, at the level of (Śuddha-)Vidyā the power of cognition is again raised to a primary level, this because the level in question is the one at which the universe begins to be manifested and therefore emerges as the object of cognition. This tells us little more than that Bhaṭṭa Pradyumna subscribed to a vision of the tattvas that accords with the conventional formulation thereof.

The first of the two passages (TGSt passage #2), in turn, is the one to which Utpaladeva refers in his commentary on ŚD 1.13cd–17. And it adds little to our understanding of the author’s philosophical vision. The only item of real note in the text is the author’s use of the term unmeṣa, which is common in the Spanda literature but absent in the ŚD and refers to the opening of the eyes and the concomitant expansion of consciousness in the form of the created universe.

In addition to these three passages, a close reading of the ŚDVṛ suggests the presence of other, heretofore unidentified, passages of the TGSt, or some work closely related to it. This is found in Utpaladeva’s commentary on ŚD 3.9, a verse, as noted above, in which we are told of a group of “good” Śaivas who think of speech as existing in a sequence beginning with paśyantī. Utpaladeva explains that the Śāktas in question conceive of speech as a sequence of stages called paśyantī, madhyamā, and vaikharī, and they consider it to be the universe itself

213The Sanskrit reads: jñānakriyāsvarūpeṇa pravṛttāyās tu te śive / sadāśivatvaṃ jagadur bhogāhvaṃ tattvavedinaḥ. guṇībhūtajñaśaktis tvaṃ vyaktībhūtakriyātmikā / yadā tadaiśvaraṃ tattvaṃ vyaktatām eti vṛttimat. pravṛttāv unmukhībhūtā bhaves tvaṃ parame yadā / jñānaśaktis tadodārā vidyā tvaṃ parigīyase.

Again, the translation is Dyczkowski’s, for which see Dyczkowski 19921: 123.

(viśvātmatā). Identifying these “good” Śaivas with the author of the verse we have labeled TGSt passage #1, Utpaladeva goes on to suggest that these same ones who “espouse the doctrine of (the supremacy of) śakti” (śaktivādins), say something else as well, namely, what is contained in two passages said to stand at the beginning and the end of a longer excerpt from a work that was uttered by the same śaktivādin(s) as the one(s) who subscribe(s) to the views expressed in TGSt passage #1. It seems highly likely, then, that the two passages were selected from the same TGSt of Bhaṭṭa Pradyumna, or perhaps from another of that author’s works, and certainly from a closely related work of the same Śākta school. I propose, then, tentatively to label them TGSt passages #4a* and #4b*, respectively.214 They may be translated as follows:

TGSt passage #4a*: “As long as the individual does not partake in the expansion of consciousness [unmeṣa], he does not relate to the object; and we maintain that the expansion of consciousness [unmeṣa] is an action, and an action must have a variegated form.”215

TGSt passage #4b*: “Having abandoned the fixed condition of its own true nature, the level (in question) is (nevertheless) not different from that [nature], O Śivā, in which exists the subtle form of speech the visibility of which is not yet full-grown.”216

Difficult as they are to interpret without any context, these passages offer slight additional information on Bhaṭṭa Pradyumna’s philosophy. What we have labeled TGSt passage #4a* signals both the presence of the notion of the expansion of consciousness associated with the act of opening one’s eyes (unmeṣa) and the notion that action is of a “variegated form” (nānārūpā), this likely being a reference to the grammarians’ famous definition of action, mentioned above. What we have labeled TGSt passage #4b*, in turn, refers to a subtle form of manifested speech that is apparently difficult to recognize. The passage also seems to indicate that a certain continuity exists in the nature of existence, from the “fixed condition” of some apparently transcendental state to the condition of the manifested one. It is not entirely clear what precisely Utpaladeva finds in the present passage that contradicts the position of the Pratyabhijñā, though he might have found unacceptable this suggestion, namely, that any abandonment of “the fixed condition of its nature” is possible. It is also possible, and perhaps rather more likely, that Utpaladeva wished to indicate that Somānanda objected to the notion that the universe is manfiested in the form of speech, which is

214An anonymous reviewer of the present manuscript suggested that the present passages could be quotations of a tantric scriptural source, something that is of course possible. The passages are offered without attribution, but only with the indication that their contents are consonant with the writings of Bhaṭṭa Pradyumna. It therefore bears reiterating that my attribution of these passages to the lost TGSt is provisional, as I have indicated above.

215The Sanskrit reads as follows: ...yāvan nonmeṣabhāg aṇuḥ / na tāvad arthe varteta sa conmeṣaḥ kriyā matā. kriyā ca nānārūpaiva...

216The Sanskrit reads as follows: svasvabhāvasthitiṃ muktvā tasmān nānyāsti sā daśā / śive yasyā na vāgrūpaṃ sūkṣmam aprāptasaṃnidhi.

the core message conveyed by what we have labeled TGSt passage #4b*. After all, the balance of the third chapter of the ŚD, along with the commentary, is devoted to the repudiation of precisely this point of view: that the universe is a manifestation of the goddess, of śakti, in the form of speech.

In sum, the extant passages of the TGSt suggest that their author, Bhaṭṭa Pradyumna, was a worshiper of the goddess who was familiar with the Spanda school, was familiar with the philosophy of the grammarians, and accepted the Trika-based theory of thirty-six tattvas so common in the philosophy of the Pratyabhijñā. Apart from these details, little more can be ascertained from the extant fragments of the TGSt quoted in the ŚDVṛ and Rājānaka Rāma’s SpVi, however. And what is extant of the TGSt suggests that the most substantive difference between this work and those of the Pratyabhijñā involves precisely the concern addressed in the third chapter of the ŚD, namely, the purported supremacy of the goddess, in the form of speech, over and above Śiva.

B H A Ṭ Ṭ A P R A D Y U M N A A S PŪRVAPAKṢIN, A N D S O M Ā N A N D A ’ S

A R G U M E N T S A G A I N S T T H E Ś Ā K TA S

The crux of Somānanda’s disaffection with the philosophy of the Śāktas is straightforward: power and the possessor of power are inextricably linked (ŚD 3.2cd–3, 3.6cd, 3.7ab, 3.7cd–8), and there must be an agent who wields the power or powers in question. If the Śāktas refer to the one who wields this power as a feminine entity called “power” (śakti), they must understand her to be the possessor of the power she wields, and as such she is conceptually identical with Somānanda’s understanding of Śiva (ŚD 3.1, 3.2ab). Otherwise, there would be an infinite regress of śaktis, empowered ones, who must wield a power to accomplish their desired ends (ŚD 3.4–5ab). In a word, if she is supreme, then she, like Śiva, is the possessor of power (śaktimat) (ŚD 3.5cd–6ab). Indeed, the very nature of Śiva (śivarūpatva) consists of being thoroughly imbued with one’s own powers (svaśaktyāveśanātmaka), and this condition, moreover, exists equally in Śiva as it does in any manifested entity (ŚD 3.17, 3.18ab, 3.18cd–20), something that simply cannot be said for speech, as can be proven by a careful examination of what is said in scripture (ŚD 3.10–15ab). This is so, moreover, even if speech is considered the means to enlightenment (ŚD 3.15cd–3.16). The Śāktas therefore show themselves not to be good Śaivas when they conceive of the universe as being comprised of speech, which is merely an organ of action in Śaivism.

Put differently, Somānanda brooks no argument with those who worship the goddess as supreme, so long as they understand the goddess to be identical with Śiva himself, the two, Śiva and his powers, being utterly indistinguishable per Somānanda’s thoroughly explained pantheism. Because the very powers that create the universe are in no way different from Śiva, then, to worship power (śakti), the goddess, as supreme, is a perfectly legitimate form of devotion, according to Somānanda. Those, by contrast, who believe the goddess to be

(ŚD 3.74cd–76ab), for the distinction of erroneousness from truthfulness is conventional, while Śiva’s nature encompasses both (ŚD 3.76cd–78ab).

This view, moreover, cannot be said to contradict the settled opinions of other, authoritative schools of thought, as the gamut of scriptures describe the divine as both empowered and active (ŚD 3.63–68ab). In short, Somānanda argues that Śiva-nature cannot be equated with the nature of the paśyantī of the grammarians, as is suggested in ŚD 3.30cd, because Śiva, unlike paśyantī, sees all the entities in a single mass, devoid of distinctions of time, space, class of entity, and so forth, this in the manner of a perfume vendor, who smells all the various perfumes at once, delighting in them all simultaneously (ŚD 3.85cd–86ab). There is therefore no separation of the agent from the object in the act of cognition, as there necessarily is in any cognition conceived of in terms of a “seeing” one (paśyantī), for all of the various entities one experiences are primarily and always a part of Śiva himself. Even the moment of “rest” following any cognition is imbued with Śiva’s various powers, for there is no separation anywhere of Śiva-nature from the objects of cognition (ŚD 3.86cd–88ab). There simply can be no moment when the will is inactive, because there must always be a desire to experience, even if no external entity, but only one’s sense of self, is experienced (ŚD 3.90cd–91ab).

In a particularly important counterargument, the Śākta opponent asks Somānanda how Śiva can produce an effect that in turn is possessed of the very same power of will as was Śiva: should not this power of will have been “left behind,” as it were, at the level of the cause, rather than being reconstituted in the effect of action, one that is the very object of cognition toward which Śiva directed his will (ŚD 3.31)? Will simply arises, Somānanda replies, as Śiva wishes it to do. The cycle is endless. The powers are eternally existent and function simply as Śiva wishes, because Śiva’s willful consciousness regularly manifests itself in a form that is identical with Śiva’s form. This is to say that the fact that the powers are eternal, the fact that they always function, stems from the fact that it is their nature continually to manifest reality (ŚD 3.92cd–93ab). At the same time, will is entirely free, meaning it can create whatever it likes, without limitation (ŚD 3.94cd–95ab). This is simply the nature of Śiva’s activity, and, unlike the grammarians’ paśyantī, there is no need for any extrinsic cause, nor any need to explain the relationship of Śiva to any apparently or truly external objects of cognition, as this form of dynamic will is simply Śiva himself in all his power.

Śiva’s power of will, then, which initiates all cognition and action, forever renews itself. The powers simply emerge in accordance with their nature. The powers in esse are identical with the powers in posse because there is no distinction between the nature of the entity consciousness creates and the consciousness that created it: both are unlimited, replete with the unlimited form of delight (nirvṛti), and yet both simultaneously direct their delight to the desired objects, according to Śiva’s very will. Thus, the series of causes is endless. Will, conceived in this manner, is clearly central to Somānanda’s pantheism, then,