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WorkAbhinavagupta

Parātrīśikā-vivaraṇa

A long commentary on a short Tantra, reading a goddess's question to Shiva as consciousness asking itself.

by Abhinavagupta223 passages held

  • Sanskrit, the original language
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Original title
Parātriṃśikāvivaraṇa
Original language
Sanskrit

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Overview

The root text was known as the Parātriṃśikā, "thirty verses on the Supreme", and Abhinavagupta set that reading aside in his opening pages. Its title, he argued, is Parātrīśikā, and it names no count of verses but the goddess Parā as mistress of three powers: will, knowledge and action. His commentary (vivaraṇa) explains a short Tantra, a Śaiva scripture held to be revealed. In it the Goddess asks Bhairava, a fierce form of Shiva, how the unsurpassable, anuttara, can bring an initiate of the Kaula lineage, with its secret rites, to the goal at once. The scripture names itself the Rudrayāmala, a title meaning Rudra's union with his consort, and its verses stand in this text, each before the commentary on it. Abhinavagupta reads the dialogue as one consciousness questioning and answering itself. When the text says that the Goddess spoke, he takes it to mean that the single knower reflects on itself as "I", so that question and answer are one act. From there the book becomes a theory of language. Speech descends through four levels, from a supreme level where word and thing are not yet apart, down to the spoken word; the letters of the Sanskrit alphabet, in two orders called Mātṛkā and Mālinī, map the levels of reality; and a riddle in the root verses, which the commentary decodes as the syllable sauḥ, holds the whole in one sound, the "heart" of Bhairava. He says he writes to cut the knots left in the text, and that he composed the work after reflecting on the teaching of Somānanda, Utpaladeva's teacher, and he quotes Somānanda's own commentary on the same verses. Alexis Sanderson, the Oxford Indologist, places it between the Mālinīślokavārttika and the Tantrāloka, as the work in which Abhinavagupta turned to the elite Kaula practices of the Trika, his own school. It was printed at Srinagar in 1918. Raniero Gnoli translated it into Italian, and Jaideva Singh's English translation, with the Sanskrit corrected by Swami Lakshman Joo, a Kashmiri teacher of the tradition, appeared at Delhi in 1988.

Key concepts

What does anuttara, 'the unsurpassable', mean?

Anuttara is the highest reality, that beyond which nothing stands, and it is the Goddess's subject when she asks Bhairava how it brings the goal at once. Abhinavagupta identifies it with Bhairava as pure consciousness, and also with the first letter of the alphabet, a, from which every other sound unfolds, as everything unfolds from consciousness.

Who is Parā, the goddess of the title?

Parā, 'the supreme', is the Goddess understood as Shiva's own power, consciousness in its fullness. Abhinavagupta reads the title as naming her as mistress of three powers, will, knowledge and action, rather than as a count of thirty verses. Every act of a living being, from wanting something to knowing it to doing it, is for him a share of her three powers.

What is parā vāk, 'supreme speech'?

It is speech at its source, before any sound, where a word and what it means are still one. In this tradition speech descends from there through a seeing, in which a meaning is grasped whole, and an inner word, ordered in thought, to the spoken word. For Abhinavagupta supreme speech is the knower's own awareness of itself as 'I'.

What are Mātṛkā and Mālinī?

They are two arrangements of the letters of the Sanskrit alphabet, each read as a map of reality. Mātṛkā is the familiar order, vowels first, then consonants. Mālinī mixes vowels and consonants in a different sequence. The commentary matches each letter to a level of reality and treats both orders as ways in which consciousness unfolds the world and takes it back.

What is the 'heart' in this commentary?

The heart is consciousness at its centre, the point where everything is held together before it unfolds. Abhinavagupta also gives the name to a single seed-syllable, the heart of Bhairava, which gathers the whole of reality into one sound. Ordinary moments open onto it: the expansion a person feels at a sweet song is a stirring of that heart.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

A Question Asked Within

Who is asking when a goddess questions a god, and who answers? Abhinavagupta turns a scripture's dialogue into an account of how awareness comes to know itself.

In the Tantra the Goddess asks and Bhairava, a fierce form of Shiva, replies, and the commentary reads both parts as one consciousness questioning and answering itself. 'The Goddess spoke' means that the single knower turns back on itself as 'I', so asking and answering are one act. Even the title is drawn in: not 'thirty verses', as others read it, but Parā, the supreme goddess, as mistress of three powers, will, knowledge and action. The dialogue form, on this reading, is no literary device but the shape of awareness itself.

  • consciousness
  • nonduality
  • nondualism
  • self-awareness
  • selfhood
  • divine power
  • will
  • freedom
  • knowledge
  • omniscience
  • ultimate reality
  • interpretation
  • memory
  • perception

Enter a dialogue

Speech Before Sound

Where does a word come from before anyone says it? The commentary follows speech down from its source and finds the whole of reality ordered along the way.

Speech descends through four levels, from a supreme level where word and thing are not yet apart, through a seeing and an inner word, to the spoken word. The letters of the Sanskrit alphabet trace the same descent, each standing for a level of reality from Shiva down to earth, and they are laid out in two orders, the familiar Mātṛkā and the Mālinī, which mixes vowels and consonants. The first letter, a, stands for the unsurpassable itself, and the breath that closes a syllable becomes the power by which consciousness pours out a world.

  • language
  • speech
  • sound
  • sound and language
  • phonetics
  • grammar
  • mantra theory
  • cosmology
  • manifestation
  • tattvas
  • śakti
  • māyā
  • time
  • metaphysics

Enter a dialogue

The Heart of Bhairava

The Goddess asks how the unsurpassable can bring an initiate to the goal at once. The answer is sought in a single seed-syllable, and in the wonder that stirs the heart.

The root text belongs to the Kaula lineage, with its secret rites, and its promise is speed: freedom given at once, not at the end of a long path. Abhinavagupta locates that speed in the heart, a seed-syllable he calls the heart of Bhairava, which holds the whole of reality in one sound. A mantra's power comes from that heart, not from its letters. Ordinary delight shows the way, since a sweet song or a lovely sight makes the heart expand, and the highest state is not calm but a self-delighting wonder.

  • mantra
  • ritual
  • tantra
  • initiation
  • liberation
  • bliss
  • embodiment
  • meditation
  • spiritual practice
  • spiritual attainment
  • worship
  • purification
  • bondage
  • ignorance
  • divine grace

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held
223
distinct concepts
203
by passages held, corpus-wide
#323

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “consciousness” and “nonduality”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 26 pairings. 78 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
consciousnessnonduality35
consciousnesscosmology23
consciousnessnondualism23
consciousnesslanguage22
consciousnessliberation17
consciousnessmantra15
cosmologynonduality9
languagemantra9
liberationritual9
liberationnondualism8
languagenonduality7
mantranonduality7
mantraritual7
consciousnessritual6
cosmologymantra5
cosmologynondualism5
liberationmantra5
cosmologylanguage4
cosmologyritual4
languageliberation4
languageritual4
nondualityritual4
languagenondualism3
cosmologyliberation1
liberationnonduality1
nondualismritual1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. Īśvarapratyabhijñā-vimarśinī

    Commentary on a book by his teacher's teacher, Utpaladeva, whose verses it carries; the shorter of his two works on that treatise, and the one later scholars in Kashmir and Tamil Nadu chose to explain.

     SA
  2. Mālinīślokavārttika

    The earlier of his two great Trika works, written at Pravarapura before the Tantrāloka, and a verse commentary that stays with the opening of its scripture, the Mālinīvijayottara, for its whole length.

     SA
  3. Paramārthasāra

    His teaching in its most compact form: a poem of about a hundred verses, with an eleventh-century commentary by Yogarāja.

     SA
  4. Parātrīśikā-vivaraṇa (Parātriṃśikāvivaraṇa) you are here SA
  5. Paryantapañcāśikā

    Among the minor works ascribed to him: a verse primer of the whole system, unprinted until 1951 and still known from a single manuscript.

     SA
  6. Tantrāloka

    Abhinavagupta's largest work and the fullest statement of the Trika, composed after the Mālinīślokavārttika; he later condensed it into the Tantrasāra, and Jayaratha's twelfth-century commentary became the way it was read.

     SA
  7. Tantrasāra

    Abhinavagupta's middle-length statement of the Trika: the Tantrāloka set out again by its author in plain prose, and digested further in two still shorter works.

     SA
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