Utpaladeva

About the Author Raffaele Torella is Professor of Sanskrit at University of Rome “Sapienza”, where he has also taught for long Indian Philosophy and Religion, and Indology. Dr. Bettina Bäumer, Indologist from Austria and Professor of Religious Studies (Visiting Professor at several universities), living and working in Varanasi since 1967, is the author and editor of a number of books and over 50 research articles. Her main fields of research are non-dualistic Kashmir Śaivism, Indian aesthetics, temple architecture and religious traditions of Odisha, and comparative mysticism. She has been Coordinator of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, Varanasi, and Fellow, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. She has translated important Sanskrit texts into German and English. Dr. Bettina Bäumer, Indologist from Austria and Professor of Religious Studies (Visiting Professor at several universities), living and working in Varanasi since 1967, is the author and editor of a number of books and over 50 research articles. Her main fields of research are non-dualistic Kashmir Śaivism, Indian aesthetics, temple architecture and religious traditions of Odisha, and comparative mysticism. She has been Coordinator of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, Varanasi, and Fellow, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. She has translated important Sanskrit texts into German and English. About the Book The book, which partly derives from the papers offered at the first International Seminar on Utpaladeva (IIAS, Shimla 2013), is the first ever attempt at presenting a comprehensive portrait of one of the most important philosophers of premodern India, so far mainly taken into account as a mere predecessor of the great Abhinavagupta. Recent studies by R. Torella and others have shown the central importance of Utpaladeva in the elaboration of the Pratyabhijñā philosophy, and reduced the role of Abhinavagupta to that of his brilliant commentator. The contributors to the present volume have shown the multifarious aspects of Utpaladeva, not only an outstanding metaphysician and epistemologist, engaged in a strenuous critical dialogue above all with the Buddhist logicians, but also one of the most extraordinary mystical poets of India. For the first time his contribution to poetics and aesthetics has been duly highlighted. The book contains two appendices with the critical edition and translation by R. Torella of fragments from Utpaladeva’s long commentary (Vivr̥ti) on his Īśvarapratyabhijñā-kārikā and Vr̥tti, one of the most important works of Indian philosophy as a whole, so far deemed to be totally lost. This book should generate great interest among scholars of Sanskrit and philosophy for its uniqueness and should serve the curiosity of each and every scholarly reader of Kashmir Śaivism.

Utpaladeva (late 9th-early 10th century) was a great philosopher of the School of Recognition of non-dualist Kashmir Saivism, who established its philosophy on a solid basis with his Isvarapratyabhijna Karikas (Verses on the Recognition of the Lord), and with three philosophical works, the Siddhitrayi. He was the predecessor (Paramaguru) of the great Abhinavagupta. But at the same time he was a mystic of bhakti as we find it here expressed in his Hymns Sivastotravalt. For him, bhakti and advaita were not opposed to each other but complementary. The sivastotravali is a collection of verses and hymns which are an expression of intense bhakti, longing for the Lord, and the mystical experience of the author and his non-dual union with Siva. They were arranged in 20chapters or Stotras by his disciples. Of highly poetic quality, these verses belong to the greatest mystical literatures of the world. Swami Lakshman Joo, the last Saivacarya of Kashmir (1907-1991), combined in himself the great scholar of the tradition of Kashmir Saivism, who taught and expounded its texts time and again to his disciples and to scholars from all parts of the world, and the perfect yogi who had an intimate experience of the spirituality contained therein. He had a special love for the Sivastotravali and expounded it many times in different languages (Kashmiri, Hindi and English). His edition of the Sivastotravali with Ksemaraja's commentary and his Hindi translation remains the standard text. In the present volume his exposition in English is brought out for the first time.

The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy tells the story of philosophy in India through a series of exceptional individual acts of philosophical virtuosity. It brings together forty leading international scholars to record the diverse figures, movements, and approaches that constitute philosophy in the geographical region of the Indian subcontinent, a region sometimes nowadays designated South Asia. The volume aims to be ecumenical, drawing from different locales, languages, and literary cultures, inclusive of dissenters, heretics and sceptics, of philosophical ideas in thinkers not themselves primarily philosophers, and reflecting India's north-western borders with the Persianate and Arabic worlds, its north-eastern boundaries with Tibet, Nepal, Ladakh and China, as well as the southern and eastern shores that afford maritime links with the lands of Theravda Buddhism. Indian Philosophy has been written in many languages, including Pali, Prakrit, Sanskrit, Malayalam, Urdu, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Persian, Kannada, Punjabi, Hindi, Tibetan, Arabic and Assamese. From the time of the British colonial occupation, it has also been written in English. It spans philosophy of law, logic, politics, environment and society, but is most strongly associated with wide-ranging discussions in the philosophy of mind and language, epistemology and metaphysics (how we know and what is there to be known), ethics, metaethics and aesthetics, and metaphilosophy. The reach of Indian ideas has been vast, both historically and geographically, and it has been and continues to be a major influence in world philosophy. In the breadth as well as the depth of its philosophical investigation, in the sheer bulk of surviving texts and in the diffusion of its ideas, the philosophical heritage of India easily stands comparison with that of China, Greece, the Latin west, or the Islamic world.

"This book investigates the history of a popular genre of Sanskrit devotional poetry in Kashmir: the stotra, or hymn of praise. Focusing on literary hymns from the eighth century to the twentieth, it studies the close link between literary and religious expression in South Asia--the relationship between poetry and prayer"--

Abhinavagupta is undoubtedly the most famous Kashmirian medieval intellectual: his decisive contributions to Indian aesthetics, Saiva theology, and metaphysics, and to the philosophy of the subtle and original Pratyabhijna system, are well known. Yet so far his works have often been studied without fully taking into account the specific historical, social, artistic, religious, and philosophical context in which they are embedded. The purpose of this book is to show that this intellectual background is no less exceptional than Abhinavagupta himself. (Series: Leipzig Studies on the Culture and History of South and Central Asia / Leipziger Studien zu Kultur und Geschichte Sud- und Zentralasiens, Vol. 6) [Subject: History, Abhinavagupta, India Studies, Religious Studies]

John Nemec examines the beginnings of the non-dual tantric philosophy of the famed Pratyabhijna or "Recognition [of God]" School of tenth-century Kashmir, the tradition most closely associated with Kashmiri Shaivism. In doing so it offers, for the very first time, a critical edition and annotated translation of a large portion of the first Pratyabhijna text ever composed, the Sivadrsti of Somananda. In an extended introduction, Nemec argues that the author presents a unique form of non-dualism, a strict pantheism that declares all beings and entities found in the universe to be fully identical with the active and willful god Siva. This view stands in contrast to the philosophically more flexible panentheism of both his disciple and commentator, Utpaladeva, and the very few other Saiva tantric works that were extant in the author's day. Nemec also argues that the text was written for the author's fellow tantric initiates, not for a wider audience. This can be adduced from the structure of the work, the opponents the author addresses, and various other editorial strategies. Even the author's famous and vociferous arguments against the non-tantric Hindu grammarians may be shown to have been ultimately directed at an opposing Hindu tantric school that subscribed to many of the grammarians' philosophical views. Included in the volume is a critical edition and annotated translation of the first three (of seven) chapters of the text, along with the corresponding chapters of the commentary. These are the chapters in which Somananda formulates his arguments against opposing tantric authors and schools of thought. None of the materials made available in the present volume has ever been translated into English, apart from a brief rendering of the first chapter that was published without the commentary in 1957. None of the commentary has previously been translated into any language at all.

"The current discourse of New Materialism seeks to chart a way of addressing our contemporary predicament around environmental destruction through reassessing our relationship and attitudes to matter. This book argues that the panentheism of the 11th century Indian Hindu thinker Abhinavagupta offers a cogent philosophical model that gives us new ways of thinking about matter, which can help a contemporary New Materialist thought. What makes panentheism an attractive model for Abhinavagupta's philosophy is its Tantric impetus towards both the materiality of the world and the transcendence of divinity, proposing a philosophy that finds consciousness-a subjectivity as, and at the very core of matter. With this, Abhinavagupta's articulation of a foundational and encompassing subjectivity proposes a panentheist solution to a familiar conundrum, one we still grapple with today-that is: how does consciousness, which is so unlike matter, how does it actually connect to the materiality of our world? In familar 21st century terms, how does mind connect to body? This book brings this question to bear in comparative fashion on contemporary issues: our current concerns around what is sentient-animals? viruses? artificial intelligence?-set in relation to Abhinavagupta's articulation of what gives rise to sentience via his use of the term vimarśa; our current conceptions of information as data-articulated in juxtaposition to Abhinavagupta's theology of mantra, mystic sound; examining Abhinavagupta's use of wonder (camatkāra) as as a philosophical concept, and how his cosmological system (tattva) underwrites his understanding of a foundational subjectivity"--

Exploring the relations between the concepts of peace and violence with aesthetics, nature, the body, and environmental issues, The Poesis of Peace applies a multidisciplinary approach to case studies in both Western and non-Western contexts including Islam, Chinese philosophy, Buddhist and Hindu traditions. Established and renowned theologians and philosophers, such as Kevin Hart, Eduardo Mendieta, and Clemens Sedmak, as well as upcoming and talented young academics look at peace and non-violence through the lens of recent scholarly advances on the subject achieved in the fields of theology, philosophy, political theory, and environmentalism.