Lesser-known Saiva Siddhanta text
R. Gopalakrishnan
The first complete translation in English of all that survives of any Saiva Siddhanta Agama
THE PARAKHYATANTRA - A Scripture of the Saiva Siddhanta: A Critical Edition and Annotated Translation by Dominic Goodall, pub. by Ecole francaise d'Extreme-Orient and the French Institute of Pondicherry, Pondicherry-605001.
Rs. 1000.
The critical edition of the Parakhyatantra, a very significant but lesser-known text is a welcome addition to the existing Saiva Siddhanta literature so meticulously worked on by Dominic Goodall. Continuing in their half-century-long tradition, the French research institutions of Pondicherry, well known as the Ecole Française d'Extrême-Orient and the French Institute of Pondicherry have recently brought out this text furthering their research work in South Indian Saivism.
Accompanying the Sanskrit text is a complete translation, but a translation into English rather than French, which means that the editor's views on the text are accessible to a wider audience than are some of the other major pieces of scholarship published such as those of the recently deceased Hélène Brunner-Lachaux.
Critical edition
That is not to say that the translation is an easy read, for the edition is based on a single source preserved in the Oriental Research Institute in Mysore — a beautiful palm-leaf manuscript in tiny Nandinagari script — and the constitution and interpretation of the text are therefore, often uncertain and have called for rather heavy annotation that draws on a very wide range of parallels and quotations.
The edition itself is a model of the painstaking scholarship Goodall espouses, and the dense apparatus might frighten some readers away. But it does have the merit that it presents all the evidence for the reconstruction of the text in an unambiguous and relatively concise manner; and its density will be no surprise to those who are familiar with Goodall's other edited works namely, volume one of the Kiranagama and commentary, and volume one of the earliest surviving commentary on the Raghuvamsa, a joint effort with Harunaga Isaacson of Pennsylvania published last year from Groningen in the Netherlands.
This textual tradition of critically editing the texts with enormous apparatus has been in vogue for sometime now in Western scholarship and among the notable scholars who have contributed for perfecting this trend, Alexis Sanderson's name is worth mentioning.
Organisation of text
The sole manuscript of the Parakhyatantra transmits only eight of the 15 chapters of the work, and the others are lost. The surviving eight chapters are primarily philosophical, for the scribe evidently chose not to copy the parts devoted to rituals. Drawing attention to substantial attributed quotations, Goodall shows that the Parakhyatantra dates from the period before the appearance of what he considers to be the most significant body of theological writing in the history of Saiva Siddhanta, namely the writings of the 10th Century Kashmiri lineage of Bhatta Ramakantha II.
The book comprises the first critical edition and an annotated translation of the Parakhyatantra, preceded by a lengthy introduction and followed by four appendices, a bibliography and two indices. The introduction aims to present the text in the context of the canon of the Tantras of Saiva Siddhanta, and proposes that the text may have been composed in the 8th or 9th Century A.D.
The introduction also briefly discusses the lost commentary on the work, gives a resume of the surviving chapters (1- 6 and 14-15), examines the language of the text and that of some other Tantras, and concludes with a detailed exposition of the sources and methodology followed in constituting the text of the edition. Copious notes accompany the translation of the text, explaining the choice of readings that has been made, the conjectures and a discussion of the problems of interpretation.
Contents
As for the contents of the Parakhyatantra itself, its first chapter discusses the soul, refuting the conceptions of other schools, notably that of Buddhists and, exceptionally among early Tantras, of Advaita. Chapters two and three deal with the Lord and with the upper reaches of the universe.
The next two chapters present the evolution of Maya and the cosmos within it. Chapter six discusses sound (nada) at some length. The next seven chapters have not been transmitted, and it is clear that these, at least in part, relate to ritual prescriptions.
Chapter 14 discusses Yoga, and finally chapter 15 investigates the roles of initiation and the four Sadhanas — Jnana, Kriya, Charya and Yoga.
In short, this substantial publication is something of a landmark, for it furnishes both the first complete translation in English of all that survives of any Agama of Saiva Siddhanta and at the same time a careful edition of a previously unpublished early scripture.
I have little hesitation in recommending this book to serious students of Saiva Siddhanta in particular and Indian philosophy and religions in general.
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