Pratyabhijna Philosophy

Ce livre est une introduction à l'enseignement du plus célèbre maître du śivaïsme du Cachemire, Abhinavagupta, en mettant l'accent sur son message essentiel : la conscience est liberté absolue. La  quatrième de couverture :
Durant l'Âge d'or de l'Inde, le Cachemire fut le coeur vivant
du Tantra, ce vaste mouvement qui cherche à réconcilier
spiritualité et sensualité.
Ce livre est une introduction à l'enseignement du génie
le plus fulgurant du Tantra, Abhinavagupta (Xe siècle).
Il nous fait voir dans l’existence humaine le jeu de l’absolu
jouant à s’oublier dans les choses de ce monde pour ensuite
mieux s’y reconnaître. Abhinavagupta se donne corps et âme
à cette reconnaissance du Soi divin à travers les joies et les
misères de la vie quotidienne, partageant son expérience
paradoxale avec rigueur et vigueur, en mélangeant des registres
que l’Occident oppose. Chez lui, l’expérience et la théorie,
l’intellect et la vie, l’art et l’ascèse, la philosophie et la religion
se conjuguent pour réveiller la conscience libre depuis toujours,
mais assoupie dans ses habitudes mécaniques. Sa métaphysique
s’enracine toujours dans l’expérience. Maître de la parole,
Abhinavagupta n’oublie jamais de s’abreuver à la Source.
Sans moralisme, Abhinavagupta esquisse, au fil des extraits
présentés dans ce livre, une véritable voie d’exploration et de
célébration de la liberté. Loin de tout formalisme religieux ou
conceptuel, il joue de tous les registres du savoir disponible
en son temps pour s’émerveiller et entraîner son lecteur.
Cette oeuvre intéressera le chercheur d’aujourd’hui par sa
dimension universelle et pratique. Sans exotisme, sans
dogmatisme, elle va droit à l’essentiel. Chaque extrait proposé
veut être une ouverture possible vers l’essence de notre être.

Il s'agit de la première traduction en français de l’œuvre fondatrice de la philosophie de la Reconnaissance (pratyabhijñā).
Au Xème siècle de notre ère, au Cachemire, des philosophes ont défendu la thèse ­– inouïe – selon laquelle la conscience est Dieu au motif qu’elle est, comme lui, omnisciente et toute-puissante. S’ignorant elle-même, la conscience s’est aliénée dans le monde et dans les textes religieux dont elle est pourtant la source. En redécouvrant la conscience comme étant Dieu lui-même, l’homme peut se délivrer de toutes ses fausses identités et recouvrer sa toute-puissance native.

Pratyabhijñā is a school of thought within the nondual Śaiva tantra tradition. Along with the Kula, Krama, and Spanda systems, it is also one of the four subsystems that make up the Kashmiri Śaiva tradition. Together, these four influenced the Trika system, taught by Abhinavagupta. The Pratyabhijñā school teaches the spontaneous recognition of the self as identical with the divine.

The present paper offers the first Polish annotated translation and edition of the Tantrasāra, an important text of Kashmiri Shaivism written at the turn of the first and second millennium by Abhinavagupta. The translation og Abhinavagupta’s work covers the chapters 1-5, 21, and the beginning of the chapters 6 and 8. It includes also the translation of the very helpful marginal glosses of the oldest available manuscript of the Tantrasāra from 1527 A.D. In the introductory part of the paper are given a brief description as well as a summary of the whole treatise.

ISSN 1232-4663 STUDIA INDOLOGICZNE 21 (2014),
Wydział Orientalistyczny,  Uniwersytet Warszawski
Warszawa 2014

Forthcoming Volume: THINKING WITH THE YOGA-SŪTRA OF PATAÑJALI (Lexington Books)

In their paper “Realism and Omniscience in the Yogasūtras,” Kevin Perry Maroufkhani and Arindam Chakrabarti defend, based on passages that are traditionally taken as arguing against idealism,  a strong Sāṃkhyan-Yoga realist reading of the YS against the absolute idealism usually attributed to the Yogācārins.  Theirs is an original and comparative argument that arises from the need to reconcile two seemingly contradictory positions in the Yogasūtra: the idea that there is something independent from consciousness, i.e. the material principle, and the idea that omniscience is possible. There is nothing beyond the consciousness of an omniscient being, yet realism about the external world is, according to these authors, best in accord with Yoga’s metaphysical dualism. To solve this puzzle, Maroufkhani and Chakrabarti gloss the alleged anti-idealist passages in the Yogasūtra with Davidsonian lenses, strengthen the realist arguments found in Vyāsa and Vacāspati Miśra, and propose a modal understanding of omniscience within the Yogasūtra.

A somewhat problematic book has recently been devoted to one of the most fascinating (and neglected) works of Kashmirian Śaiva Advaita: the Śivadṛṣṭi by Somānanda. This furnishes the occasion for broader reflection on the role of philology in dealing with the complex texts of the Pratyabhijñā tradition (or perhaps in dealing with any philosophical-religious Sanskrit text).

The author of this paper questioned the linear chronological overdetermined history of Indic language and its subsequent genealogical classification by deploying following methods :(a) David Hume’s Regulatory Theory; (b) pratyavijna (roughly ‘retrospection’) darsana ;(c) Althusser’s concept of historicism; (d) the Buddhist concept of jataka ( Buddha himself did not believe in rebirth. Proofs are cited in the paper), the semantics of which was like this: non-reified existence of human being (jataka) with continuous flux. (d) primary repression caused by the other-mirrors (language-police/-judge/-managers) in semiotic order (Julia Kristeva). The author compared, with the help of the concept of Foucauldian genealogy, this linear history with ‘fast forward-rewind’ phenomenon in magnetic tapes.
There were four case studies offered by the author to nullify institutionalized linear chronological history of Indic languages as proposed by Suniti Kumar Chatterji and Sukumar Sen: (a) the dating of the Rgveda: it is not the oldest Veda, but constructed in the 6th C. B.C. by marginalizing Samasongs by means of grammaticalization/codification of Rg-recitations (cf.: http://www.academia.edu/409175/VEDIC_SONGS_TECHNOLOGY_WITHOUT_MACHINE ) ; (b) the Jataka- narratives were composed almost 500 to 600 years after the death of Buddha, though scholars had put it within the lifetime of Buddha; (c) In case of constructing the linguistic history of imagined Bangla, the author put a simple question: if anyone ask Luipada (one of the Carya- poets) or Candidasa (composer of Srikrsnakirtana) or the king Laksmanasena: are you a Bengali? Obviously they did not understand the connotation of Bangla/Bengali that was a 19th C. product/construct or historical apriori; (d) looking at the ontogeny of language acquisition, when a child is forming ”go-goed “ (Bangla examples are cited) type analogical formation, other-mirrors started to “rectify” it. The problematic question is: which one is earlier and which one is after?
According to author this institutionalized linear history of language, that, peculiarly enough, overlaps with history of literature, subscribes the nation statist genealogical fantasy and deals only with substantive arbitrary epi-phenomenal E-linguistic features—a leisure class’s conspicuous consumption. The problem of Comparative Philology or Historical linguistics is that this enterprise largely depends on the entailment theory of causality and frequent (?)One-after-another occurrences of arbitrary signifiers lead them to a dogmatic bad faith! If Chomskian UG is to be believed, how do we classify languages genealogically? And that is an inner contradiction of the linguistics. (cf. SSRN Paper ID:  http://www.academia.edu/411313/_Why_Do_I_Forsake_Historical_Linguistics_  ). This type of History is not only ahistorical, but anti-historical non-epistemology.

While in the past I took almost for granted that the grounds of Abhinavagupta’s aesthetic thought were to be found in his philosophical-religious speculation, in the course of time my feeling has been gradually changing and now I am more and more inclined to give prominence to a basic aesthetic flavour as the more or less hidden background of his activity as a whole. This aesthetic flavour goes hand by hand with an aristocratic attitude, the latter being allegedly the very source where the former stems from.

In the celebrated tantric manual, the Tantrāloka, Abhinavagupta (fl.c. 975-1025 CE) and his commentator Jayaratha (fl.c. 1225-1275 CE) establish a non-dual S ´ aiva theory of reflection (pratibimbavāda) (3.1-65) using the key metaphors of light (prakāśa) and reflective awareness (vimarśa). This paper attempts to explain the philosophical problem of reflection from the standpoint of these non-dual S ´ aivas. It also evaluates the problem in its hermeneutical context, analysing multiple layers of meaning and interpretation. Is the metaphor of reflection only a way of explaining the particular currents of the S ´ aiva phenomenology represented by the concepts of prakāśa and vimarśa? What philosophical problem does Abhi-navagupta seek to solve by complicating the category of reflection and giving it a quasi-paradoxical status? Why does he use the model of the subtle elements (tanmātras) to explain the theory of reflection? What does the 'untaintedness (nairmalya) of the mirror of consciousness' mean for his system? These questions form the focus of this paper.

This dissertation engages two medieval Indian philosophical traditions on the question of how humans construct and experience their worlds. Both Dharmakīrtian Buddhism (7th century onward) and Pratyabhijñā Śaivism (10th century onward) define themselves through dialogical encounters. The problematics of the earlier Buddhist views that Dharmakīrti inherits fundamentally shape his famous theory that concepts refer merely to the exclusion of what is other, and that these concepts guide successful activity in the everyday world despite not being ultimately real. While his thought generally proceeds as if the Abhidharma ontology of ultimately real particulars were correct, at key moments he rejects the idea that any kind of diversity—from spatial extension to the mere differentiation of a moment of awareness into subject and object—could be ultimately real. Following Vasubandhu (4th century), Dharmakīrti finally affirms that, ultimately, the appearance of a dualistically structured world is nothing but a cognitive error created by beginningless karmic imprints. The question of whether or not Dharmakīrti’s final ontology supports his account of ordinary experience inspires the Pratyabhijñā Śaiva critique of his ideas. Although Utpaladeva (10th century) and Abhinavagupta (10th-11th century) avail themselves of Dharmakīrti’s account of concept formation, they claim that Dharmakīrti’s reliance on beginningless karmic imprints cannot bridge the gap between nondual ultimate consciousness and the everyday world of mutually opposed subjects and objects. Moreover, in contrast to Dharmakīrti’s general refusal to provide an ultimate grounding for the conventional world, these Śaivas claim that a successful ontology can and must address this question. Their sophisticated adaptation of Dharmakīrti’s theories allows them to account for the transition from their own articulation of ultimate reality as Śiva’s nonconceptual self-realization to the conventional worlds that we ordinarily experience. For these Śaivas, the diversity we experience within the conventional world cannot be purely the result of an error. Rather, it is an expression of the nondual differentiation inherent to ultimate consciousness itself. While this consciousness always exceeds the limited realities of various types of sentient beings, these realities themselves are nothing but Śiva’s play of manifesting himself in diverse forms for the sheer joy of partaking in different experiences.

If we look at full-fledgedŚaiva nondualism of Kashmir (in contrast to Saiddhāntiká Saiva dualism of which it appears to be a later development) as expressed in the works of the four great masters somānanda (c. 900-950), Utpaladeva (c. 925-975), Abhinavagupta (c. 975-1025), and Ks. emarāja (c. 1000-1050), we find that the individual soul fully coincides withŚiva; the material world is the free manifestation ofŚiva himself; māyā is not an autonomous reality, but a power ofŚiva; the stains (mala), which are responsible for the arising of the limited subject, are by no means substantial realities, but erroneous attitudes of the subject themself based on their lack of knowledge (see below); the opposition knower-knowable is only provisional; and finally everything shines as dynamic I-ness. Somānanda laid the foundation for the philosophy of nondualŚaivism (later called Pratyabhijñā "Recognition") with hisŚivadr. s. t. i (ŚD), an unflinching criticism of opposing doctrines with an emotionally aggressive overtone, deeply rooted in theŚaiva scriptures. Although theŚD was a powerful source of inspiration for Utpaladeva (Torella and Bäumer 2016), it is only with hisĪśvarapratyabhijñā-kārikā (ĪPK) that the Pratyabhijñā becomes a very original and elaborate philosophical system. TheĪPK and the author's Vr. tti ("short commentary"), composed at the same time, were commented upon in a long and complex Vivr. ti ("elaborate commentary"), which has come down to us only in fragments: the Siddhitrayī, three terse treatises on specific subjects and a Vr. tti on theŚivadr. s. t. i. Besides authoring philosophical works, Utpaladeva was also a mystical poet, as expressed in his splendid hymn collection,Śivastotrāvalī. The Pratyabhijñā philosophy was continued by Utpaladeva's disciple Laks. man. agupta (of whom nothing has come down to us) and by the latter's disciple, the great Abhinavagupta, who composed two extensive commentaries on the Pratyabhijñā, and took it as the theoretical frame for his Trika system in the Tantrāloka (TĀ), meant as a synthesis of the entire tantricŚaiva tradition; this synthesis was built around a single text, the Mālinīvijayottara-tantra (MVU), but at the same time included the teachings of many lineages ofŚaiva tantras, organized according to a Trika-Krama model (Sanderson 2009). Abhinava's work covers an astonishingly vast array of subjects, ranging from the exegesis of tantric scriptures to epistemology, to aesthetic speculation, this latter probably forming the very basis on which the whole edifice of his worldview rests. His most illustrious disciple, Ks. emarāja, was essentially the author of commentaries-a literary genre that in India was the actual seat of knowledge, much more than the few "original" sutra and kārikā texts-among which theŚivasūtra-vimarśinī, Spanda-nirn. aya, Netra-uddyota, and Svacchanda-uddyota stand out. While the

Indian civilisation has been strongly characterised by the work of containment erected by the Brahmanical elite over the almost two thousand years of its grandiose attempt at culturally and socially dominating the Indian world as a whole. Lacking any direct power, the Brahmans have replaced it by successfully imposing, as an alternative, an opposition between purity and impurity that has marked every aspect of Indian culture: purity of spirit, purity of philosophy, purity of rites, purity of language, purity of social and religious conduct, etc. Nondualistic Śaiva Tantrism’s response starts by questioning the legitimacy and very basis of the division between pure and impure, destined to crumble progressively beneath the thrust of deliberate “non-dual” behaviour (advaitācāra). Purity or impurity are not properties of things. They are qualifications pertaining to the knower depending on whether he perceives the object as united with consciousness or not. “Impure is what has fallen away from consciousness: therefore everything is pure if it has achieved identity with consciousness.” Moreover, if Śiva “is” the universe, there may be no impurity. In the Tantric texts special emphasis is laid on the necessity to overcome śaṅkā (“hesitation, inhibition”), viewed as the ultimate purpose of the Brahmanical rules concerning purity/impurity, acting as a subtle and effective instrumentum regni.

There has long been a debate on the possible similarity between some forms of Indian and Greek idealistic monism (Advaita and Neoplatonism). After a basic historical introduction to the debate, the text proposes that Paramādvaita, also known as Kashmiri Shaivism, is a more suitable comparandum for Neoplatonism than any other form of Advaita, suggested in the debate. Paramādvaita's dynamic view of reality summarized in the terms prakāśa-vimarśa or unmeṣa-nimeṣa, corresponds quite precisely to the viewpoint of Neoplatonism, summarized in the similar bipolar terms such as prohodos-epistrophe. The context of the dynamic nature of reality doctrine is also quite similar (svataḥsiddhatva, authypostasis). My arguments are based on the texts of Plotinus and Proclus (Neoplatonism) and the texts of Abhinavagupta, Utpaladeva and Kṣemarāja (Paramādvaita). Several parallel doctrines of both systems are further discussed: the doctrine of creative multilevel subjectivity, the doctrine of mutual omnipresence of all in all, the doctrine of creative multilevel speech, and some corresponding doctrines on aesthetic beauty and its important role in the Soul's return towards its ultimate source. Some implications of the high degree of correspondence between both systems are considered at the end of the paper, for instance whether some similarities of compared systems might be explained on a structural basis, since both schools ware facing similar sceptical critique (Mādhyamika, Hellenistic scepticism).

This article of several years ago inaugurated the quest for fragments of Utpaladeva's Īśvarapratyabhijñā-vivṛti, one of the most significant works of Indian philosophy, which unfortunately has not come down to us. More fragments have been discovered and edited after 2007 by Yohei Kawajiri, Isabelle Ratié and Raffaele Torella.

A somewhat problematic book has recently been devoted to one of the most fascinating (and neglected) works of Kashmirian Śaiva Advaita: the Śivadṛṣṭi by Somānanda. This furnishes the occasion for further reflection on the textual transmission and interpretation of several passages of the Śivadṛṣṭi and the only extant commentary upon it, the insightful Padasaṃgati by Utpaladeva, unfortunately covering only the first three āhnikas and a part of the fourth. This important text (along with its commentary), the first philosophical presentation of non-dual Śaivism and foundation stone of the Pratyabhijñā school, still awaits a fully reliable edition and translation.

With Vāmanadatta we are in tenth century Kashmir, where an extraordinary work of doctrinal systematization has just started within the diverse streams of tantric Śaivism, and also, at least in part, within tantric Viṣṇuism. For some complex reasons these schools choose to bring the tantra teachings into the open, by accepting to confront themselves with the leading social and philosophical-religious establishment. In this framework, we can insert the problematic figure of Vāmanadatta, the only case of a follower of the tantric Vaiṣṇava school of Pañcarātra to be regarded as a master also by the later non-dual Śaiva tradition, including the great Abhinavagupta. The paper is based on my forthcoming edition and English translation of Vāmanadatta's main works: Saṃvitprakāśa and Ātmasaptati, clearly influenced by the contemporary teachings of non-dualistic Śaivism.

Contemporary scholars have begun to document the extensive influence of the sixth to seventh century Buddhist philosopher Dharmakīrti on Pratyabhijñā Śaiva thought. Utpaladeva (925–975) and Abhinavagupta's (975–1025) adaptation of Dharmakīrti's apoha (exclusion) theory provides a striking instance of the creative ways in which these Śaivas use Dharmakīrti's ideas to argue for positions that Dharmakīrti would emphatically reject. Both Dharmakīrti and these Śaivas emphasize that the formation of a concept involves both objective and subjective factors. Working within a certain perceptual environment, factors such as a subject's desires, habits, and conditioning lead him or her to form a concept (vikalpa) based on excluding what is not relevant to the accomplishment of his or her goal. However, the two differ in their account of the relationship between concepts and subject/object duality itself. While Dharmakīrti claims that the division of a cognition into subject, object, and awareness is nonconceptual, the subtly shifted definition of a concept that these Ś aivas employ allows them to claim that the error of subject/object duality is actually conceptual. This seemingly small difference in their respective evaluations of the nature of subject/object error has surprisingly large consequences. If, as these Śaivas claim, any awareness involving a duality is conceptual, then subject and object are concepts. Moreover, if the formation of a concept requires desire, then some kind of desire must be inherent to consciousness itself before the formation of a limited subject/object pair. In short, ultimate consciousness must be Śiva, who possesses the freedom to will any and all possible realities.

This book examines the theory of consciousness developed by the school of Recognition, an Indian philosophical tradition that thrived around the tenth c. CE in Kashmir, and argues that consciousness has a linguistic nature. It situates the doctrines of the tradition within the broader Indian philosophical context and establishes connections with the contemporary analytic debate.

The book focuses on Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta (tenth c. CE), two Hindu intellectuals belonging to the school of Recognition, Pratyabhijñā in Sanskrit. It argues that these authors promoted ideas that bear a strong resemblance with contemporary ‘higher–order theories’ of consciousness. In addition, the book explores the relationship between the thinkers of the school of Recognition and the thought of the grammarian/philosopher Bhartṛhari (fifth c. CE). The book bridges a gap that still exists between scholars engaged with Western traditions and Sanskrit specialists focused on textual materials. In doing so, the author uses concepts from contemporary philosophy of mind to illustrate the Indian arguments and an interdisciplinary approach with abundant reference to the original sources.

Offering fresh information to historians of Indian thought, the book will also be of interest to academics working on Non-Western Philosophy, Comparative Philosophy, Indian Philosophy, Religion, Hinduism, Tantric Studies and South Asian Studies.

This paper explores the interface between the media ecological theories of Marshall McLuhan and the Indian philosophical system known as Pratyabhijñā (recognition). It is argued that our contemporary media environment composed of digital networked electronic media forms reorients human perception, expanding our normal awareness to spatial and temporal ranges of extension that are, metaphorically and in some senses actually, universal in scope. This massive extensivity is further compressed into a single, resonating sphere of electronic interpenetration, rendering all individuals simultaneously present. In this "discarnate condition" our metaphysical state approximates the condition of divinity itself as conceptualized in the pratyabhijñā. This is further indicative of more general transformations effected by the mediated environment in the sphere of religion, in which subjectivity itself becomes the locus of religious recognition and the site for the irruption of the sacred, due to its having become electronically externalized in the pervasive forms of media use.

This article is a reflection on a conception of death, that of karma and rebirth, and its value in interpreting one's life. I have thought about this conception in two ways. The first is that I can see the circumstances of my life as the result of causes of which I was the agent, and the second is that I can see my life and the relationships in my life as part of a much larger narrative that began before this life. Through an examination of Vaishnava and Advaita theology, Ny¯ aya philosophy, and some Puranic and Epic texts, I argue for an interpretation of karma and rebirth as a rational system that allows one to see relationships as involving many layers of complexity.

The article addresses a critical problem in the history of South Asian philosophy, namely the nature of the 'knowledge of knowledge' (svasaṃvedana). In particular, it investigates how thé Saiva tantric school of the Pratyabhijñā (10th–11th c. CE) used the notion as an argument against the Buddhists' ideas on the nature of the self. The paper then considers the possibility that the source of thé Saivas' discussion was the work of the philosopher/grammarian Bhartṛhari (5th c. CE).

The paper is part of the proceedings of the Conference of the Society for Tantric Studies, edited by Glen A. Hayes and S. Timalsina.

The article examines the impact the grammarian/philosopher Bhartṛhari (460–510) had on the way the ‘School of Recognition’ (Pratyabhijñā, tenth/eleventh c. CE) elaborated the notion that knowledge and consciousness have a close relationship with language. The paper first lays out Bhartṛhari’s ideas, showing that his theses are rationally defensible and philosophically refined. More specifically, it claims that the grammarian is defending a view which is in many respects similar to ‘higher-order theories’ of consciousness advanced by some contemporary philosophers of mind. In the second part, the paper shows how Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta adopted Bhartṛhari’s scheme without significant alteration.

All-being as well as all-knowing, unitary awareness is in the integral monism of Kashmir Śaivism (KŚ) the bountiful and dynamic wellspring of the objective world. Ours is the last stop on a continuum of creative descent of and by consciousness, ever more contracted and fragmented in its unfoldment. Thus, consciousness as degraded in everyday experience operates in the form of determinate cognitions by individual subjects of differentiated objects. The delimiting of such cognitions with regard to agency, space, time, form, and cause effectively cuts them off from one another, so they express discretely. This profoundly transactional world can function only by means of elaborate connections among them. That is the crux of the argument for the necessity of unitary awareness as the substratum of objective reality put forward by Utpaladeva in the Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā (ĪPK) and Abhinavagupta in the Īśvarapratyabhijñāvimarśinī (ĪPV). How can this collective actuality, delusory as it may be, even appear to coalesce and operate absent some medium for integrating circumscribed manifestations? No sooner do these momentary cognitions arise, after all, than they perish. What keeps them from passing forever into oblivion and ceding to entirely novel arrangements in the next moment? How do they cohere and sustain as they do in temporal experience? This exercise lifts from the polemical context and examines pertinent metaphysical tenets in an effort to gain insight into this controversial point of contention among Indic schools. Self-Aware Cognition The notion of self-apperception held by many Buddhist schools and accepted by KŚ takes cognition to be a circumscribed reflective relation in which its object refers back to its subject. Regardless of the content of the cognition, no object is perceived without the accompanying awareness that it is being perceived. The cognition is thus self-aware. KŚ departs notably, however, by holding that this awareness is no momentary byproduct of or contingent reaction to direct experience, but rather the abiding underlying driver integral to all experience. Consider the correlation between awareness and presence. Your awareness that I am here now validates your presence as such. (Recall the Cartesian cogito.) Yet the awareness of

The poetry of Lal Ded (c. 1300–1370), who was known as Lalleshvari or Lalla Arifa, has not yet received much attention outside Kashmir. This is in spite of the fact that Lal Ded played a crucial role in the emergence of the modern Kashmiri language. As the first poet of Kashmiri literature, she created a style called vakh which until today is one of the classical forms of poetical expression of the Kashmiris. This article is intended as a survey of the published and unpublished written sources and the living oral transmission of Lal Ded's vakhs. It also presents the characteristic features of her teachings with the intention to examine to which mystical traditions of India she is related. Finally, her proximity to siddhas and nathas, who played an important role in the emergence of vernacular languages of Northern India, is indicated.

The expression Pratyabhijñā ('Recognition') refers to the doctrines of a number of scholars and spiritual teachers who lived and taught in Kashmir between the tenth and eleventh century CE. This philosophical tradition prospered in the religious framework of tantric Śaivism, and its primary purpose, already evident in its name, was to recognize the presence of Śiva at all levels of reality. 1 The three main theoreticians of the school -Somānanda (900-950), Utpaladeva (925-975) and Abhinavagupta (975-1025) -established and refined the main tenets of the tradition in approximately one hundred years' time. 2 Somānanda, the founder of the school, emerged as a leading thinker and guru in the heterogeneous setting of tenth century Kashmir, and his main work, the Śivadṛṣṭi, was probably addressed to an audience of tantric initiates. 3 His pupil Utpaladeva broadened the perspective of the tradition and was responsible for much if not all its theoretical and argumentative elaboration. His major work, the Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā (ĪPK), 4 put the Pratyabhijñā in the wider arena of Indian philosophical debate, in active engagement with beliefs and arguments of other traditions. Finally, Abhinavagupta closed the most creative phase of the school by commenting Utpaladeva's work twice. 5 He possibly was the most eclectic of the three 1. The school is perhaps the most sophisticated outcome of that composite movement of systematization and elaboration of tantric material that emerged at the end of the first millennium CE and which is sometimes labelled 'post-scriptural exegesis'. Pratyabhijñā's staunch non-dualism is rooted in scriptural sources that were held as authoritative in contemporary Kashmir and which foregrounded the dynamic and unifying role of the feminine power of the god, the śakti, like the Siddhayogeśvarīmatatantra, the Mālinīvijayottaratantra and the Vijñānabhairava.

The worship of Śiva as a deity was the dominant form of theistic and religious devotion which flowed through Kashmir to other parts of India from the first century BC. The Trika school is an idealistic, monistic, and theistic school of philosophy in Śaivism, that originated in the ninth century C.E. in Kashmir. The study attempts to elucidate the historical development of Trika school along with the idiosyncratic and unique philosophy of the school. The paper further endeavours to explain the enthralling development of this particular school which can best be understood from a religio-philosophical context. The study employs textual analysis and conceptual enquiry as the research method to analyse and present the development and distinct nature of the Trika school.

As a world view based on reason and revelation, Śaiva nondualism is expected to have its roots in Śaiva scriptures. Indeed, one of the most popular divisions of the Śaiva scriptures  presents three sets of texts, characterised by dualism, dualism-cum-nondualism and nondualism, promulgated by Śiva, Rudra and Bhairava, respectively, in the number of ten, eighteen and sixty-four. The scrutiny of what is extant from the sixty-four Bhairavatantras risk disappointing the seeker for unequivocal nondualist lines, various forms of dualism being no doubt the common ground of the earliest Śaiva tantras. The very occurrence there of terms like advaita, advaya, etc., essentially concerns ritual practice. Apart from isolated instances, straightforward affirmation of ontological and epistemological nondualism can be found only in post-scriptural tradition centred on the seminal work of Somānanda and Utpaladeva, then merely followed (and only partly developed) by Abhinavagupta. Such exegetical tradition is discernible in later markedly nondual scriptures, such as the Kālikākrama.

A recent article by Johannes Bronkhorst treats a delicate issue: in the case of Indian doxographies, such as the Sarvadarśanasaṃgraha, whose body is mainly constituted by an impressive number of quotations - either explicit or not - from several texts, is it allowed, or advisable, to correct the text of the doxography on the basis of its sources? JB says: “A closer investigation shows that this procedure is not without risks, and may occasionally give rise to unjustified “corrections”. The article  shows  that  quotations  in  the Sarvadarśanasaṃgraha deviate  from  their source-texts in numerous cases.”
The present article goes through these observations and furthers them following partly different lines.

The Śaiva philosophical school known as Pratyabhijñā (10th-11th c. CE) put forth a strong form of ontological non-dualism in which, at the highest level of awareness, all reality is identified with the self, more precisely with a universal consciousness that corresponds to the supreme manifestation of Śiva himself. This non-dualistic attitude is also at work on the epistemological level, since these Śaiva philosophers believed that there is no actual difference between a cognitive event, its subject and its content, all being manifestations of a unitary and all-embracing consciousness. In addition to that, they also claimed that all knowledge is conceptual and therefore language informed. These considerations point to two inevitable and rather bold conclusions: i) cognitions are more or less pronounced forms of self-cognition and ii) self-cognition is a language-related phenomenon. In other words, in cognizing something one is always necessarily cognizing oneself, and this self-cognition always implies a linguistic factor. Therefore, in order to be (or, at least, in order to be conscious of one's own existence) one must be able to speak. The paper examines the implications of these two statements, it evaluates their plausibility and analyzes how the Pratyabhijñā's philosophers defended their validity. Furthermore, it will also consider the influence earlier thinkers might have had on the development of the arguments of the Pratyabhijñā, by discussing in particular the case of the 5th c. grammarian Bhartṛhari.

The function of music in relation to autobiographical memory is explored in terms of the Śaiva philosophy of Pratyabhijñā (self-recognition), and the aesthetic theory of one of its leading figures, Abhinavagupta. This philosophical system pictures memory as playing a crucial synthetic role in effecting the recognitive realization of one's identity, revealed here to include and perfect individual egoity through its unification with its transcendent and cosmic dimensions (Śiva, Śakti). Music, in its popular forms and in the ways it is engaged with by the contemporary populace, acts as a both collective cultural arena which provides publicly recognized and repayable sites for personal affective investment and also as an idiosyncratic lifetime soundtrack correlating with one's memory, giving shape and coherence to an underlying divine identity. Recognition, like profound aesthetic experience, involves the awareness and manifestation of a kind of transcendental memory in relation to direct perception. I propose this memory is correlated with affective investment in personal sites of significance such as music, and that musical autobiographical memory illustrates and participates in these dynamics of recognition.

ABSTRACT: There has long been a debate on the possible similarity between some forms of Indian and Greek idealistic monism (Advaita and Neoplatonism). After a basic historical introduction to the debate, the text proposes that Paramādvaita, also known as Kashmiri Shaivism, is a more suitable comparandum for Neoplatonism than any other form of Advaita, suggested in the debate. Paramādvaita’s dynamic view of reality summarized in the terms prakāśa-vimarśa or unmeṣa-nimeṣa, corresponds quite precisely to the viewpoint of Neoplatonism, summarized in the similar bipolar terms such as prohodos-epistrophe. The context of the dynamic nature of reality doctrine is also quite similar (svataḥsiddhatva, authypostasis). My arguments are based on the texts of Plotinus and Proclus (Neoplatonism) and the texts of Abhinavagupta, Utpaladeva and Kṣemarāja (Paramādvaita). Several parallel doctrines of both systems are further discussed: the doctrine of creative multilevel subjectivity, the doctrine of ...

The poetry of Lal Ded (c. 1300–1370), who was known as Lalleshvari or Lalla Arifa, has not yet received much attention outside Kashmir. This is in spite of the fact that Lal Ded played a crucial role in the emergence of the modern Kashmiri language. As the first poet of Kashmiri literature, she created a style called vakh which until today is one of the classical forms of poetical expression of the Kashmiris. This article is intended as a survey of the published and unpublished written sources and the living oral transmission of Lal Ded's vakhs. It also presents the characteristic features of her teachings with the intention to examine to which mystical traditions of India she is related. Finally, her proximity to siddhas and nathas, who played an important role in the emergence of vernacular languages of Northern India, is indicated.

Une introduction simple et concrète au tantrisme shivaïte non-duel du Cachemire. Comment aller de la dualité vers la non-dualité ? Faut-il pour cela supprimer toute dualité, fuir le monde, faire le vide, renoncer à ses désirs ? C'est la voie de l'advaita vedânta qui sacrifie la dualité pour atteindre la non-dualité. Mais David Dubois nous montre que le non-dualisme du Cachemire embrasse la dualité dans la non-dualité et ne sacrifie jamais le multiple au nom de l'Un. Scrutateurs des détails du quotidien avec ses petits miracles et ses grandes misères, les maîtres du shivaïsme ont suggéré que la liberté se logeait au coeur même de l'émotion, dans la terreur, dans le choc de l'effroi, mais aussi dans le désir, la jalousie et même l'égoïsme. Ils développent une alchimie concrète qui plonge dans la tourmente pour la dépasser. L'auteur présente l'essentiel des conseils pratiques et des expériences des grands maîtres indiens. Ni réincarnation, ni karma, ni lendemains qui chantent - juste un regard lucide sur ce qui arrive pour le meilleur et pour le pire. Yoga de l'instant, de la surprise, du désarroi, du contre-pied et de l'excès aussi bien que de la sieste, ce témoignage forme comme un écho étonnant à nos interrogations.

Voici la traduction d'un enseignement intemporel sur la connaissance de soi. Simple et clair, accessible à tous.
Qui suis-je ? Telle est la question cruciale. La plupart des gens s'identifie à leur corps ou à une âme, à leurs pensées ou leurs émotions. Comme ces choses sont limitées et soumises à des conditions, nous éprouvons alors un mal être difficile à surmonter. Mais l'enseignement non-dualiste de l'Inde nous apprend une bonne nouvelle : nous ne sommes ni le corps ni l'esprit, mais la conscience pure et simple, identique à la Source de tout et de tous. Il suffit de le reconnaître dans l'expérience ici et maintenant.
Tel est le message radical de ce texte sanskrit ancien est ici traduit pour la première fois en français. Deux version de la traduction sont proposées : la première s'adresse à tous les lecteurs et est accompagnée d'un commentaire simple et bref qui cherche à aller droit à l'essentiel. La seconde version, plus littérale, s'accompagne de notes plus précises.