Prof. Alexis Sanderson - Śāktism among the Śaivas (part 2)

Welcome to the second part of Professor Alexis Anderson's lecture for the Shaivism Traditions online lecture series. Last time, Professor Sanderson announced that he would provide us all with a handout, and I have attached a link to it down in the description of this video. I can also tell you all that this will not be the final lecture by Professor Sanderson for this series. So next week, we will have a lecture by Professor Kevin Flott, and the Wednesday after that, we will have a third lecture by Professor Sanderson. But without further ado, I will pass on the word to you, Professor Sanderson.

the description of this video i can also tell you all that this will not be the final lecture by professor sanderson for this series so next week we will have a lecture by professor kevin flott and the wednesday

So we come now to my second Ochs lecture on the structurism of the shivers of Kashmir. My last lecture was devoted to outlining the broad context of the historical development of Shaivism, within which I locate the special Shiva developments in Kashmir, the special Shakta Shiva developments in Kashmir. One of the great advantages of having a recording is that I could listen to it and see, to my embarrassment, the various places in which I tripped over my tongue and said the opposite of what I wanted to say. So I have to begin with one or two corrections from the audio of the lecture last week.

kashmir my last lecture was devoted to outlining the broad context of the historical development of shaibism within which i locate the special shiva developments in in kashmir the special shakta shiva developments in kashmir uh and one of the great advantages of having a

The first of these was when I was talking about the Shaktism of the Shakta traditions, pointing out that in some traditions, particularly in the tradition known as the Kramara, the goddess under the name Khalasan Karshli or Vyama Varmeshwari is identified as the ground of the ground of Shiva's consciousness, that point within his consciousness, that point within Shiva's nature which he cannot objectivate, which he cannot get behind in order to perceive. But I pointed out that even in that perspective, in which the goddess becomes the ground of the ground, as it were, she remains theoretically Shiva Shakti. I said that lost the term Shiva Shakti as the power of the goddess, which of course is a slip of the tongue. I meant to say the power of Shiva. So in spite of the orientation on the goddess as the fundamental reality, nonetheless the theoretical idea is maintained that Shakti by definition implies that which has that Shakti power, implies a power holder, and that power is always Shiva, even though that power comes from a point within his nature which even he cannot objectivate. That was the first correction I wanted to make.

corrections from the audio of the lecture last week um the first of these was when i was talking about the sharktism of the shakta traditions pointing out that in some traditions particularly in the tradition known as the kramer the goddess under

The second is rather more consequential. I was talking about the silence of the Pali tradition on the subject of Shiva under any of his names, including Maheshwara and Mahadeva, and I pointed out that although absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, the silence of a particular text, the Nedesao, was particularly telling because it contains a list of persons who seek to purify themselves by adopting the vrata or ascetic observance of a particular deity. Various deities are listed; it's a typically archaic list of non-Buddhist objects of devotion. It begins with Vasudeva and Baladeva, the two Bhagavats of the early Vaishnava tradition. I said that this text is perhaps as early as AD 300. What I meant to say is as early as 300 BC. It was a slip of the tongue.

but i pointed out that even in that perspective in which the goddess becomes the ground of the ground as it were she remains theoretically shiva shakti and i said that lost the term shiva shakti as the power of the goddess which of course

Later, I was speaking of the Lalita Vistra in the context of early references to Shiva in Buddhist literature, where he appears as an interlocutor in Mahayana sutra dialogues, and I referred to one of these texts, the Lalita Vistra, as if I heard myself correctly, the early Vaishnava Lalita Vistra. I'm sure many of you will have realized that what I meant was the early version of the Vistra because there is a later version. There are two main versions translated into Chinese. I was referring to the earlier of the two.

implies a power holder and that power is always shiva even though that power comes from a point within his nature which even he cannot objectivate that was the first correction i wanted to make the second is rather more consequential

One other point I'd like to bring to your attention is this: when talking about the existence of a corpus of Siddhantika scriptures, Siddhantaka Shiva scriptures from South India, I might have created the impression that I'm talking of two non-overlapping bodies of text, that there's a North Indian corpus of texts seen in Kashmir and certain other places, and then there's a South Indian corpus of texts which has no overlap between the two other than perhaps in titles. What I meant to say, what I meant to convey, is that there is a large body of South Indian Siddhantika material which is not found anywhere in northern India, either in citation or in manuscripts preserved in the north of India. But the South Indian manuscript tradition also includes works from this northern tradition. So we have an early literature which is found throughout the subcontinent, although it happens to be preserved most substantially in Nepal, and then we have a substantial body of texts which are only circulating in South Indian manuscripts. These seem to me to be genuine South Indian products which were added by the South Indian tradition as the great tradition of Chola temple building got underway, and the Siddhantikas moved into the control of these elaborate institutions and needed to produce scriptural support for their temple rituals. That really is the point of these later Siddhantika Shiva works to which I'm referring. They are concerned with providing scriptural backing for the efflorescence of the Shiva temple cult of South India. If you needed proof of that, one could simply point to the fact that most of these texts glorify the Adi Shiva subcaste. The Adi Shivas are a group of Brahmins in South India who enjoy the exclusive right to officiate in the temple Shaiva temples of Tamil Nadu. They're not found outside that region, and the presence of passages scattered throughout that South Indian corpus is a fairly clear indication that these texts come from their milieu and not from the early North Indian Shaiva tradition.

nedesao it was particularly telling because it contains a list of persons who seek to purify themselves by adopting the vrata or ascetic observance of a particular deity various deities are listed it's a typically archaic list of non-buddhist objects of devotion um and

One more point: I referred carelessly to the alphabet goddesses Matrika and Malini. Now, Matrika is in certain contexts considered to be a goddess, but it's somewhat misleading to define Matrika only as that because commonly when the two are worshiped together, Matrika and Malini, these two orders of the alphabet, the first Matrika is referred to as Shabdarashi Bhairava, so that Bhairava is the alphabet, as opposed to Malini, who's always a goddess. So that was the last correction I wanted to make.

later i was speaking of the lalita vistra in the context of early references to shiva in buddhist literature where he appears as an interlocutor in mahayana sutra dialogues and i referred to one of these texts the lalita vistra as if i heard myself

Now we come finally to the topic of Shaivism in Kashmir, and of course, we'll be focusing particularly on the Shakta Shiva element. But first, I want to address the issue of the term Kashmir Shaivism, which still is on its feet in secondary literature about Indian religion. It's not a term I use myself, and I think for good reason. I find it misleading, and I want briefly to tell you why. There are reasons not to use this term.

was referring to the earlier of the two um one uh other point i'd like to bring to your attention is this when talking about the existence of a corpus of sidantica scriptures siddhantaka shiva scriptures from south india i might have created the impression that

The first is that the term Kashmir Shaivism is a product of the contraction of the Shiva traditions during recent centuries that created the appearance of two disconnected islands at different ends, opposite ends of the Indian subcontinent: Kashmir Shaivism, as it was called, and South Indian Shaivism. The first defined by its intuitionist mystical approach, non-dualistic metaphysics, and Shakta orientation, and the second, so-called South Indian Shaivism, characterized by its ritualism, its dualistic metaphysics, and its absence of Shakta orientation. But in fact, in earlier centuries, Shaivism in Kashmir and the far south was a complex of traditions that comprise both of these poles, both as Shakta-paul and this ritualistic Siddhantika-paul, and several other traditions in between.

perhaps in titles what i meant to say what i meant to convey is that there is a large body of south indian scidantica material which is not found anywhere in northern intestinally in citation or in manuscripts preserved in the north of

To use the term Kashmir Shaivism to refer to the traditions embraced by the non-dualistic literature of Somananda, Utpaladeva, Abhinavagupta, and other authors of their tradition is to overlook the fact that these predominantly Shakta traditions co-existed in Kashmir with the dualistic Siddhantika tradition, that this Kashmiri and Siddhantika tradition, far from being a fringe phenomenon in Kashmir, was actually the dominant Shiva tradition there in the time of our non-Siddhantika authors, and that the non-Siddhantika traditions draw much of their force from their...

have a substantial body of texts which are only circulating in south indian manuscripts and these seem to me to be genuine south indian products which were added by the south indian tradition uh as the great tradition of chola

temple building got underway and the siddhantikas moved into the control of these elaborate institutions and needed to produce scriptural uh support for their temple rituals and that really is the point of these later uh said anti-gashiva works to which i'm referring they are

concerned with the providing scriptural backing for the efflorescence of the shiva temple cult of south india and if you needed proof of that one could simply point to the fact that most of these texts glorify the adi shiva subcast

the aadi shivas are a group of brahmins in south india who enjoy the exclusive right to officiate in the temple shaiba temples of tamil nadu they're not found outside that region and the presence of passages scattered throughout that

south indian corpus is a fairly clear indication that these these texts come from their milieu and not from the early north indian cyber tradition one more point i referred carelessly to the alphabet goddesses matrika and malini now marchika is

in certain contexts considered to be a goddess but it's somewhat misleading to define her only to define it matrika only as that because commonly when the two are worshiped together matrika and malini these two orders of the alphabet the first

matrika is referred to as shabdarashi bhairava so that bhairava which is the alphabet as opposed to malini who's always a goddess so that was the last correction i wanted to make now we come finally to the topic of

shaivism in kashmir and of course we'll be focusing particularly on the shakta shiva element but first i want to address the uh issue of the term kashmir shaivism which still is on its feet in secondary literature about indian religion it's not a term i

use myself and i think for good reason i find it misleading and i want briefly to tell you why there are reasons not to use this term the first is that is this the the term kashmir shaivism is a product of the contraction of the

shiva traditions during recent centuries that created the appearance of two disconnected islands at different ends opposite ends of the indian subcontinent kashmir shaivism as it was called and south indian shaivism the first defined by its intuitionist mystical approach non-dualistic

metaphysics and shark to orientation and the second so-called south indian shaivism are characterized by its ritualism and its dualistic metaphysics and its absence of shatter orientation but in fact in earlier centuries shaivism in kashmir and the far south

was a complex of traditions that comprise both of these poles both as shark depaul and this ritualistic sidontic of paul and several other traditions in between to use the term kashmir shaivism to refer to the traditions embraced by the non-dualistic literature

of somananda utpaladeva abhinav texas and other authors of their tradition is to overlook the fact that these predominantly shakti traditions co-existed in kashmir with the dualistic saidantica tradition that this kashmiri and saidantika tradition far from being a fringe

phenomenon in kashmir was actually the dominant shiva tradition there in the time of our non-said article authors and that the non-signed traditions draw much of their force from their coexistence with the said antico tradition and we'll see that in the sequel

furthermore the traditions embraced by these kashmiri and exegetes whether said or non-scientical were by no means limited to these two regions in earlier times my exploration during recent decades of uh epigraphical evidence art historical evidence and of shiver

and shock to shiver manuscripts preserved in libraries around the world especially in the extensive collections of early nepalese and east indian shiva and shakta shiva manuscripts that are preserved in the kathmandu valley have shown that the infrastructure of

all these traditions by that i mean everything except the theoretical metaphysical superstructure imposed on them is in fact much more widely distributed throughout the subcontinent and in the case of the saidantica shaivism extending also into southeast asia so for these reasons i avoid the term

kashmir shaivism no doubt there have been many polish and distinguished polish theologians of catholicism but wouldn't refer to catholicism as polish christianity uh there's still of course a a scope for that term as there is uh a scope for the term kashmiri and shaivism

but then we mean various forms of shaivism which happen to have flourished at a particular time in kashmir we don't wish to def to to divide the whole evidence of the religion into these two entities southern and northern

and to refer to the first as kashmir shiverson because they are drawing on traditions which precede kashmir the kashmir phase and they also coexist with other forms of shaivism and to refer to the non-dualistic alone as kashmir shaivism

is to forget about the mainstream of the tradition at the time which was in fact sadantika now let me turn to uh first this broad base of kashmiri and saidantika which i think we must keep in mind when

we think about the shakta traditions now the surviving kashmiri literature from this tradition belongs to the 10th and 11th centuries just as does the influential core of the shaktishaver literature and it comprises i won't attempt to give a complete list but you

have a number of these on the handout which either has been distributed or will be distributed shortly have important commentaries on fundamental said antica scripture we have the commentary of bhatta narayanakantha on the regendra we have the commentaries of bhatta

ramakanta perhaps the most influential of these authors on the matanga the vidya or gnostic chapters of the kiruna that the chapter is dealing with doctrine and the commentary on the 350 verse reduction of the carlotra we also have his philosophical

commentary is nareshwara pariksha prakasha on the seminal theological treatise of sadhyo jyotis the nareshwara pariksha and we also have a work by a relative of that family bhattavidya kantha and this is a particularly interesting find we have only one manuscript

only one manuscript seems to have survived of this text and it's particularly interesting because it's a commentary on a pratishta tantra that is to say a tantra concerned with the installation of images and the consecration of temples and other

substrates of worship we also have among said saidantica scriptures at least one the eclectic ultra a large work uh often referred to as the sahasrara that which contains six thousand uh stanzas and among those among these identical scriptures

the brahad khalotra or large is probably a product of kashmir i can't go into the reasons for that some of them have been set out in my study of the netra tantra and i should point out here that no

kashmiri and sidantica works are known from the period after the 11th century this doesn't mean however the tradition died out completely but we do not have preserved any works of a later date as for its character as it appears

uh mediated by these kashmiri and commentators it is strictly ritualistic that is to say um it holds to the view that liberation cannot be obtained by any means other than shiver initiation the ritual of shiva initiation which consists essentially if i may

abbreviate in the elimination of the bonds of the soul as the as the result of ritual manipulations performed by a competent archery a qualified officiant um rituals for the most part performed through offerings into fire but also through visualization

breath control and certain other practices so it's strictly ritualistic in that sense uh the the understanding of the doctrines of the tradition the observance of its yogic practices the observance of its discipline uh or as it were ancillary to this

fundamental cause of liberation which is diksha and when i say that it's ritualistic i also imply that it's highly professionalized because what these authorities are saying is that you cannot obtain liberation except by receiving initiation and you cannot receive

initiation except by being given initiation by a qualified scientist official so in other words the gift of liberation is entirely in the hands of a professional body of qualified archarias so in that sense it's not really ritualistic but also professionalized and um

other forms of shaivism which are more open to the idea of mystical enlightenment without passing through as it were these through the door manned by these doorkeepers were clearly considered highly threatening by the said articles and they're not sure

they're not slow to attack them um so it's strictly ritualistic and it's also we may say veda congruent that is to say on the whole it avoids those elements of antinomian behavior or ritual practice which are not in keeping

with mainstream brahmanical notions of what is pure and what is impure in the domain of food drink and conduct and for this for this reason it's vader congruence it was vulnerable to assimilation by the brahmanical mainstream as one of the forms of religion

considered valid now the most orthodox the most orthodox uh the most orthodox brahmanical authorities as i said last week um deny the authority of any shiver texts requiring initiation uh any any shiva texts of a tradition that requires initiation

as resting upon practices which are not authorized by the vaders but because the mainstream psychological tradition was essentially non-challenging in that it didn't infringe any of the brahmanical criteria of purity it came in due course to be accepted as

part of valid religion and this view is clearly attested already in the early 9th century by the the great kashmiri and nayaka philosopher jayanta bhatta who tells us clearly that this tradition is a is accepted by the generality of orthodox brahmins

throughout aryadesha throughout the world of of india where brahmanical observance is maintained and he said he he states that as an empirical observation um so it seems and there's other evidence to indicate that in general this identical tradition was considered

unthreatening enough to be considered valid another way of doing things uh to to to uh promote that view one had to sub surrender uh a faith in the peculiar doctrines the specific doctrines of siddhartha shiva which are of of said shaivism which are

predicated on the idea that the brahmanical tradition cannot take you all the way to liberation those specific notions are played down and shiver notions of the deity just seen as variants of upanishadic doctrine so in order to be

accepted they have to surrender the sense of their specialness and separateness and we may say that these saidantika shiva authors of the 10th and 11th centuries are resisting that trend to assimilation and analyzation by insisting on the distinctness of the shiva tradition

pointing out that the shive religion is doing for one what the brahmanic religion cannot do so in a sense the whole theoretical exercise the whole philosophical enterprise is designed to show um those born into brahma into shiva brahmin families

why the brahmanical tradition is not sufficient why shaivism is not simply a voluntary extra an ornament as it were a family tradition but something that you need to have in order to obtain final liberation the traditions um are motivated by the same

desire to put a break on this assimilation of the tradition into yet another various states of yet another variant of brahmanism but they adopt one of the more radical methods in the form of non-dual observance observances which do openly contradict

the brahmanical principles of purity and impurity assuming therefore claiming therefore that those dualities between pure and impure only apply on a level of mundane socio-religious practice and not on the domain of practice for liberation yeah um the survival of this commentary uh of by

vijaya kantha on the maya sangra by the way shows that the kashmiri and siddhantakas shared the general sidantica range of engagement from initiation and private worship uh to the public institutions of the temple and the monastery the other uh area we need to consider

here is the extent to which this tradition is that of householders are also of ascetics at first sight one has the impression that the kashmir inside on literature is only concerned uh with the world of household initiates the ascetics are not prominent

in this perspective and it seems that neither bhatta ramakanta nor na rayana come to ascetics that is to say lifelong celibates rather than renounces um so there's very little evidence of an ascetic tradition among the cydanticas of kashmir

but this may be because the institutional basis of shiva asceticism namely the temple and the monastery was largely eliminated during the centuries of islamic rule in kashmir which extended from 13 39 through to 1819 and the shah miri kings the mughal

governors and then subsequently the pattan governors giant butters agar madamera much ado about scripture attest the existence of saidantic asceticism in kashmir around the turn of the 9th and 10th centuries as does the 11th century kashmiri and poet and satirist

shemendra who mocks the licentiousness of three fictional ascetics of this tradition in his advice to the nation his deshaw padesha where he speaks of three shriver ascetics bald nayana shiva bucktooth rupa shiva and dhyana shiva devoid of knowledge of

both rituals and their mantras who now enter before the mandala the mass tresses of shiver ascetics cleansed by washing with nutmeg are nut and cloves richly fumigated with incense their lies killed with fistfuls of ash are fortunate indeed

for they are prostitutes pillows this you see is not a very sympathetic portrayal of shiver ascetics and the three names naina shiva rupa shiva and yanasheva are cleverly chosen they are perfectly normal shiver initiation names in the said

tradition but he clearly wishes us to understand them as meaning something like uh eye full shiver ogle shiver and unable to take his eyes off shiva something along those lines implying that improper interest in members of the other sex

right so there's some indirect evidence of the ascetic tradition in kashmir and i'm suggesting that the absence of literature which uh attest to that strand in tradition so well attested elsewhere in india may be to do with the collapse

of the supporting institutions of the temple and the mata because of muslim rule over centuries in that part of india as for the uh data of these traditions you may we may ask now how far back in time do we know that the

said anti-shaivi tradition was active in kashmir well the earliest evidence is probably the fact that the nitro tantra is aware of the siddhanta the tradition of the saidanticus and i date this text somewhere between 700 and 850 a.d

and i think it's almost certain that this text was indeed composed in kashmir the only really firmly dateable evidence either i have found in the work of the kashmiri and poet rajanica ratnakara it appears from his mahakavya hara vijaya that he and his

audience were conversant with the scriptures of the siddhanta and with the exegesis on that corpus of texts produced in the period 675 to 750 by sadio jyotis and brahaspati the two founders of the ritualistic take on the sidontica corpus

so we know this from a hymn that is part of this massive poetic composition anavidya um occupying about 160 or 70 verses which was composed during the reign of chipotle king of kashmir around 830 a.d so we know that

almost two centuries before our kashmiri and exegetes the tradition was well established in kashmir of course the i take it that the the fact that a poet can work in actually rather complex allusions to his doctrines and subtle

paraphrases of of of its texts indicates that the intended audience no doubt a courtly audience was able to get these references to pick them up and understand them and appreciate the subtlety of the the poet's effort so i take this as

evidence not merely that rajanakara nakara was familiar with the siddhanta at this period but that the learned audience of the mahakavia also familiar with these since there's nothing more likely to cause poetry to fall flat on its face

than its subject matter being entirely alien to the audience to whom it's addressed there's also evidence of of its acceptance i've already mentioned this by mainstream brahmanical tradition in nanyaya manjuri of the kashmiri nayaka philosopher jayanta bhatta who was a contemporary of king

shankaravarman who ruled kashmir from 883 to 902. finally i want to mention the fact that shema raja pupil of abhinava gupta approximately dated to a thousand to 1050 a.d reports that the said tradition was the most influential shiva tradition in his

time so it's still very active at that time and that he wrote his commentaries on the non-swachanda tantra and near tantra precisely in order to free them from the scidantica readings to which they were being subjected by his

contemporaries now we come to non-scientific shaivism you're waiting patiently for me to get to sharp to shy visibility we will get there in in due course but before we reach it we have to go through as it were a mesoteric domain between the

exoteric uh uh shakti ah exoteric scidante literature and the esoteric shark to shiver literature and in between those two domains we have um two forms of worship that of swachanda bhairava and amriteshwara byrov are and um the the cult of these two deities

taught in the two tantrums for chandra tantra and natra tundra forms the bedrock of the surviving mass of liturgical manuals uh which tell us about shiva worship and liturgical procedures in kashmir down to modern times when i say modern

times i don't mean down to the present because i think the last 75 years or so has seen the more or less complete extinction of these uh tantric uh traditions in kashmir um so you have on your handout or you

will have on your handout a list of the the relevant texts beginning with the commentaries of shima raja on the swachanda and the natra but after that i've listed a number of texts which have not been published but

which are the basis of my understanding of the centrality of these two cults the kala diksha padditi of manoda which was written in the 14th century and expanded in the 16th and here we see a ritual system based

primarily on the swagenda for initiation but also secondarily on the natura and also incorporating ancillary material from a wide range of sources within the shiva corpus basically the siddhantas also the brahmayamala the jayadratiyamala tradition and very marginally the

tricker there are other works i've listed here the guru pus which teaches a ritual system based entirely on the naitra tantra then we have the ninjyadi sangrahapadati of rajanika takshikawata compiled at some time after 11th century i can't be

more precise at this stage the interest of this work is that it conserves it preserves large extracts from a number of works which are otherwise lost and we can see from this work that the compiler is aware of

three main ritual traditions um in so where mainstream shivers them in the valley those following the siddhanta those following the swajunder and those following the nature now that's interesting i think it's early testimony of three distinct as it were traditions

among the kashmiri and brahmins depending upon which text they're following and it's also interesting to note that the anonymous mass of ritual manuals that we have tends to contain all these elements worked in together but with swachanda on top and nature a

close second so we see that mixture in the anonymous ritual manuals used by the tantric shiva family priests of the kashmiri and brahmins for cremation and shraddha and other posthumous rituals you will see the titles uh in your

handout so it's the eclectic nature of these texts which i think is particularly striking if you try to understand shaivism um without as well getting your hands dusty by looking in these rather looking at these rather humble manuscripts often anonymous

but concentrate entirely upon the works of the learned you would get the impression that these various traditions may these various traditions are completely hermetically sealed from each other you're in one or the other and they must never as it were be

combined or mixed the ritual manual shows a very different reality we see a complete admixture of such under and netra tantra to the extent that the central deity is often switched under plus nature for which there's no parallel in

the learning manuals the learned works of prescription concerning ritual um now uh the date of this in intermediate tranche of traditions so chanda and nature is hard to establish um but i'm rather struck by the absence of any reference to switch under my river

in the uh the work i've already mentioned the uh the hara vijaya this kavya this epic poem which contains not only a hymn to the goddess but also a hint of shiva a very long hymn to shiver which

essentially um draws upon the all the theological systems uh active in kashmir and known uh to the author um so if such underbarrier were up and uh running at that early period that's to say in the early 9th century we would expect some

reference to him uh but none appears i find that silence rather telling on the other hand i've already told you that the nitro tantra was composed in kashmir in the period 700 to 850 and now this scripture presupposes the

switch under tantra there are certain connections between the two texts and it seems likely that the nature chandra presupposes the knowledge of the switch under that in some sense it's a text ancillary to the swajunder it doesn't merely

supplement it it introduces a new cult to be practiced by a special kind of shiva efficient who is acting like a royal roger like a royal parish a royal chaplain but somehow there are textual connections between it in the

switch under so possibly the such underbar if it was present in kashmir this earlier period but the evidence is not very strong now finally after having dealt with those intermediate traditions which i in a sense truly the shaivism of kashmir that

counts for a great deal of what's actually done in in practice until recent times and i should point out that although the cidanta is not in that central area uh nonetheless the ritual manuals that survive do incorporate substantial elements of

saidantic ritual practice which they bring into the mix as just as they do in the other direction bring in elements from uh esoteric shakhtar tradition so we have in the ritual manuals of the kashmiri efficients the whole of the kashmiri and

chiva traditions as they were brought together and mingled in one complex whole which is i think a reminder of the the likelihood of the truth of the proposition that the learner present these systems schematically without reference to their

actual coexistence in the real world that shaivism is not either or it's all these things interacting in complex ways there's a kind of synergy in the coexistence of these traditions i think i mentioned in my last lecture that

the cydantica shiva tradition from the point of view of its royal patrons was largely valuable as the means of giving dechard to kings initiation to kings and also consecrating royal temples whereas the shark to shiver tradition was valuable to them

as a kind of resource in times of emergency performance of special tantric rights to protect the kingdom in times of invasion flood plague and so forth so that too points to the um the synergy of these traditions the learned present them as each in its

own separate world with its distinctive doctrines and so forth but in the lived world of religious practice from the point of view of its patrons all these elements are relevant so now we come to the properly shakhtar shiva traditions and we begin with the

most chakra of all and that is the tradition that may roughly be called the kali kula this is a form of kaula practice and i distinguish here between two uh main bodies of textual material the first is this very large work i've

mentioned to you already the jayadrata yamala supposedly in 24 000 verses in fact slightly less in in length this work was also referred to by the kashmiri and scholars notably and jayarata simply as the tantra raja or tantra rajapatharika the term

bataraka appended there being an honorific the venerable king of tantras tantra rajapatarika so on the one hand there's that work which can be described briefly as an encyclopedic collection of liturgical procedures for the propitiation of a wide range

of variants of the ferocious goddess kali generally known under the name karshini in this tradition she who destroys resorbs removes time karla some partially and the basic character of this text is called palika it has strong connections with ati

margaret iii ascetics propitiating these vidyas these uh these mantra deities uh generally adopt the karpalika observance living in cremation grounds worshiping wild adorned with ornaments of human bone begging with the hum with the human skull as a skull bowl

and sporting a staff in the human skull attached to it their offerings are highly transgressive they are offering meat and wine they're intoxicated at the time of worship they have female companions with whom sexual intercourse is required for the production of of power

substances from the body thought to attract the deities in question the forms of practice adopted involve the induction of possession by as it were bringing the goddess into yourself involving often wild behavior leaping dancing and so forth in order to induce

a state of possession or aveisha i have pointed out last week that these in spite of this very extreme carpallic in nature the iconography of many of the deities uh in this huge pantheon of variants of khalasankarshi have a distinctly a distinctly

uh vaishnava tone to them that is to say we see garuda in there and narasimha appearing and need vishnu himself for example in the in the fourth section of this text there's a text called the mud of a color which

probably had a separate existence before it was incorporated here um and this uh text the mod of akula is summarized by by abner gupta in the 29th book of tantras teaching one of two forms of the kulla that he advocates reading

abner gupta's synopsis you would have no inkling of this but in fact if you read the original in the jayadrathiyamala you see that the goddess here is being worshipped as the consort of vishnu of madhava so there are

interesting vaishnav elements in the background and recent research i've been doing has been exploring this and showing that the elements of the cult of carla sanchez go back into the harivangsa in fact and related vaishnava mythological traditions now as for i i mentioned already that

has a karpalaki tradition and therefore i'm um invoking atimaraga3 here and pointing out claiming that there's a strong continuity between anti-murga iii and this kind of kali-based worship and i want to draw your attention there to a particular part of this rata yamula a

rather substantial text originally independent i think before its inclusion in this encyclopedic reduction the yogini sanchada which has been redacted in the third shatka the third set of approximately six thousand verses that makes up this text then we

find a rather fascinating passage where i found as it were the the the earth slipping from beneath my feet suddenly you seem to be in a much more archaic environment it teaches a form of initiation which lacks any of the distinctive

features of mantramarga initiation uh by that i mean the process of the systematic elimination of the bonds of the soul through offerings into fire simply a kind of ecstatic transmission from the guru to the to the the candidate has been touched with

skull bowl and katwanga that is to say that staff with the the human skull attached to it being given a t car of human blood etc etc um very radical uh forms of observance and i should point out that um the kind

the the the text which sets out initiation in this text the organi sanchala prakarna um surfaces in the buddhist yoga nitantra lagushampara a highly aberrant buddhist work which consists largely of passages which we find redacted in chivas sources

and it's fairly clear that the origin is shy for rather than buddhist so there is um within the extensive surviving literature of the kali kula and indeed other texts within the vidyar peter division of the bireva canon the non-scientifical cannon there

is substantial material which looks to me as though it may go back to uh atimaga 3 materials as i pointed out we don't have any surviving atimah three texts that are that confess themselves to be that but i think um that material from mati

margaret three has found its way into these later uh works and the yogi sanchada seems to need to be an outstanding example of this as for the date of this compendium no doubt it you know contains material that is older

but i think that the text as we now have it in its four divisions it's four shuttles could not have been completed before 850 a.d approximately and that i come to i come to that conclusion on art historical

grounds because it utilizes various iconographic details which do not appear in the art historical record in kashmir before that date innovations as for the provenance of the text this is very difficult to establish of course because scriptural texts do their best

to conceal such mundane details because after all they wish to present themselves as timeless divine revelation not as the product of a particular era and place but um nonetheless there is a fair amount of information in the in the text apart from its first

shotgun which was originally an independent work i believe but there's a fair amount of information in shuttle's two to four that the text was redacted in kashmir by a kashmiri and i've set out some of that evidence in my study of the nitra tantra

um as for its impact on the ritual practice of the kashmiris this middle ground that i've been talking about where is dominated by the cult of swachanda and the cult of amriteshwar we do find its influence in the section of the

fire ritual uh the the agnikaria parity the homopanity of the kashmiri and shiva officials where there's a section devoted to the gratification and fire of goddesses and in that section we find a large number of uh deities taken from the jaidrayamal

tradition um part of the material for their visualization lifted straight out of the jaidratyamla in some cases not supplementing the information of the jayadratyamla so this is evidence that the text was indeed studied in kashmir even though no

manuscripts of it survive from from kashmir and then there are particular culprits or ritual procedures within the jaidrati amla which have a as well their own life within this middle ground of shaivism there's a um a chapter in the jidrata yamala

devoted to the cult of bhuvan malini a particular kali form and that has been adopted by the kashmiri and middle ground to provide a form of abbreviated initiation to be adopted in times of poverty or distress a highly compressed and

simplified initiation uh remember that dichar and shy ritual in general is ritual for the rich it's very expensive mature and it's on the whole as my view of this is that the tantric shiva option among the brahmins tended to be restricted to land owning

brahmins of considerable wealth and that is borne out by what we can find out from recent centuries and the main protagonists in this tradition in recent centuries seem to have been wealthy landowners learning brahmin families who had received grants of land from the king at

various points and had managed to hold on to this down to recent times so the first division of this kali kula is represented by the giant ratiamla with its strongly kappalika emphasis on ferocious forms of the goddess kali to be propitiated

in the temple by highly antinomian challenging practices and the induction of possession consumption of wine and meat promiscuous sexual intercourse with untouchables and so forth the other division is closely related to that and can be gathered under the title

chroma the crammer system this particular system is also known by other names notably maharta the great truth or mahanaya the great system now it's produced a large number of works um and i really can't go through them all now but

the they are not uh they're not homogeneous it's important to note that there's a great deal of innovation going on in this tradition we have several variants of the ritual system followed by these authors indicating that this is a very

live and vigorous tradition which is innovating in the time of the production of these texts we have for example three works called mahanaya prakasha the illumination of the great system and they don't agree with each other in in my new details certainly and often

not in in metaphysical background and it's worth pointing out here that this is one of the major errors in using the term kashmir shaivism because when people use the term kashmir shaivism they have in mind a set of doctrines elaborated in

philosophical works known as the prachabigyan and that non-dualistic philosophical perspective is seen as somehow pervading the whole kashmiri tradition except perhaps the said tradition which those who use the term conveniently forget about i want to point out here that even in the

non-dualistic tradition the shakta shiva tradition there is not uniformity the of those three works called mahanay and prakasha two the old kashmiri mahanaya prakasha and his sanskrit commentary on the one hand and a work called the mahanai prakasha

composed by a certain uranus shiva who flourished in the second half of the 11th century are quite distinct from the third which has been published in the trivandrum sanskrit series with from a single manuscript which lacked its final folio at least

in which we would have discovered the author this work is certainly kashmiri in in in my view but unlike the other two it alone shows that it has absorbed the doctrines of the prachavigya and is written in accordance with them the

other two seem strikingly independent they teach a form of non-dualism but not in the terms of the practicum so this uh old kali-based tradition of the kramer had its own separate life and it also has its own separate sociological profile

because unlike the other system which we'll be looking at the trigger this one is um heavily engaged in karpalika practice the number of the gurus of this tradition were karpalaki ascetics and some of them were not men some of them were women

also and this is rather unique in the shiva tradition so i just want to point that out briefly the doctrinal base of this tradition is really rather extraordinary um the idea is that um deep inside by river's consciousness

is a reality which he cannot penetrate and the teaching of the crammer is the unfolding of that dynamic structure which he cannot access himself and is taught as a means of self-realization through the great the gradual successive uh worship of each of the phases of this

dynamic structure that is said to lie at the very heart of consciousness and can be perceived microcosmically in the flow of individual individual perceptions from the projection of the object to the resolution of the object back into its

non-dual consciousness underlying state of non-dual consciousness uh the date of this tradition seems to be that it emerged in kashmir at least around the middle of the ninth century um and i'll i will i will leave it there

for the time being um from the point of view of our uh learned authors in this uh kashmiri and non-dualistic tradition uh i should uh tell you that it's my view that abhinav gupta began his career in this domain as an english

as an initiate of the kramer not in the trigger so this uh is apparent from his work summarizing the teachings of the bhagavad-gita the bhagavad-gita prakasha and also from his kramer clearly a lost commentary on the kramas torture

which is the central text of this kashmiri and kramer tradition it doesn't survive that we have substantial evidence about his contents from a south indian author who did have access to it this is to say um who speaks about this

in his maharata manjari parimala so in my view abner began in his early years as a shiva as a initiate into this tradition of the kramer and later moved on to the tricker bringing the crammer with him as it were

in the background of his thinking and applying it to his understanding of the trigger so we come now with time running out again to the trigger and this tradition is generally seen as at the very center of our imaginary entity kashmir shaivism

but it should be pointed out that the literature uh dramatically great though it is particularly the tantra loker of abner gupta is not clear evidence that this tradition was very widespread in the kashmiri community we have in fact very few texts but they

are very distinguished texts but we can't infer from their distinction that they represent the broad uh a broad base of practice in the community the kramer has a better claim to that on the basis of the diversity of its own

of its literature so basically we have a last commentary on the trishika one of the texts of the tricker composed by somananda at the beginning on the in the first half of the um i've seen i i see my

see i've made a mistake here in my hand out i'm saying that he follow it so he flourished he flourished circa 1000 to 1050.

that's incorrect those are the dates of chimeraja we should take him back to um the middle of the 10th century um and we have a commentary which does survive never go on the same text the very elaborate commentary

and then we have three works of exegesis on the maldives the most important of which by far is the tantra loka and the the trigger before uh the guru is from samantha abner gupta um is uh uh something i've looked into

um is there any evidence of it before samantha apparently there are no texts surviving in kashmir which can be taken back before some monitor for this trigger system but in fact again we can turn to the hadavidya this great mahakavya by

raknakara composed circa 8 30 because there in the hymn to the goddess chandi which occupies 150 verses 152 verses in the 47th chapter of that vast work we find intimate technical knowledge of the trigger and we may reasonably assume that this

uh intimate knowledge presupposes the same in his target audience so in fact we have evidence of a quite detailed understanding of the special doctrines of the tricker already in the early 9th century so the trigger is present in kashmir from that early date but

did it originate there i think there's no evidence that it did and some evidence that it didn't or at least evidence which alerts us to the naivety of assuming that because our early evidence of it is kashmiri it

originated there what is this other evidence well the first is that the comes from the tradition of the kaalas known as the paschimam naya this is essentially the literature concerned with the propitiation of the kaula goddess kojika the scriptures of this tradition

beginning with the kubji kamata are heavily dependent upon the scriptural corpus of the of the um of the trigger and we can see from various indications that the uh provenance of this kubjica cult at least the early text of the

country car cult is the deccan plateau so it's clear that the redactors of the kubrick armata and related materials had access to the scriptures of the tricker in the deccan so that immediately alerts us to the possibility that we're looking

at a much older tradition um whose original place of origin is whose place of origin is still unclear but certainly doesn't cannot be assumed to have been kashmir um there are also references to the tricker in south indian literature

in 959 a.d considerably before evidence of kashmir influence on the shock to shaivism of this region and these references are found in the yashas tilika the monumental poetic work of the champu jean completed in that year by the china

scholar and poet somadeva suri in telangana in what is now in south india in telangana the form of the tricker known to him corresponds with that of the tantra baba a worked much of which was incorporated in the

kubjicamata so it looks to me very likely that the early um tricker tradition developed on the deccan plateau and subsequently found its way to kashmir and other places including nepal now apart from these two uh uh great tricky

traditions we have a large body of works that underpan underpin the theory that sustains the exegesis of these traditions and that is reasonably well known we have the shiva sutra and spantakarika we have the dhrishi of samanda and we

have that wonderful corpus of philosophical texts uh produced by utmaladeva first to his commentary on the shivadashi and then his uh ishwara practical and his two commentaries on that text the vritti and the vivreti and then we have

abhinava gupta's commentaries on those commentaries for the practice and the ishwara practice and there's no time for me to elaborate that i think the doctrines are perhaps reasonably accessible from secondary sources now what was i never gupta's project in

his exegesis of the trigger where we will end of this we'll end with this uh it is very different it creates a very different shark to shiver world from that that we see in the kali kula first of all he is attempting a tricker

crammer synthesis he's trying to re-read the uh the the deities of the tricker in terms of the crammer he's giving a crammer reading to the tricker pantheon and this relates to his early education in that kramer tradition with his early guru known as bhutiraja

the next feature i want to mention is that his stance is highly gnostic and anti-ritualistic he does not deny ritual indeed he spends a lot of his work the tantra loka setting out the rituals of the trigger but he insists right from the very

beginning of the tantra loka that it's knowledge that liberates the soul enlightenment is the is the key not ritual and if ritual action works that is because it's a kind of inculcating of liberating knowledge so gnosis of yemen comes to the fore

there and this also radically undermines the professionalism of the saidantic approach to shaivism since it envisages the possibility of sudden enlightenment that individuals may come forth who are simply enlightened and by that very fact qualified even though they haven't passed through

the entry into shaivism patrolled by the saidantika acharya gatekeepers then i should point out that while the kali kula still has aesthetics at the center of the picture carpalic aesthetics the trick of abnormal gupta has largely overlooked or marginalized this

figure the figure of the ascetic and his concerns are largely absent from from abnormal gupta's trigger he is elaborating um if you like domesticating a system originally called parker in orientation for consumption by highly educated learned householder shivers in his community

and in this um shift away from the ascetic we also see a shift away from visionary yoga the malni vigil which is the text that the tantra loker is based upon the video tantra is primarily concerned with long long term yogic practice

involving visualization a kind of visionary yoga which leads to the gradual revelation in the meditator's mind of higher states of consciousness accessed through visions that which occupies a substantial part of the text is completely pushed out of the picture by abner gupta who is

concerned with insight and insight driven ritual and aestheticized ritual and it's this element of aestheticization that needs to be stressed as well the kali kula tradition is not concerned with the beautiful indeed it's in a way fascinated with the ugly um

the hideous the unconventional even down to the level of the choice of sexual partners you may be surprised to know that in the in the grammar uh when discussing ideal partners for the uh the carla ritual we are told that

women of great ugliness should be selected by ascetics in certain uh context in other words the point is not sexual it's not pleasure it's um all part of a transgressive world in which people separate themselves from mundane values

um so there's this process of aestheticization going on which is a kind of rationalization of non-dualistic practice so the point of wine becomes not transgressing the brahmanical prohibition against consuming alcoholic liquor is to do with the evoking of a state of

inner joy um and the offerings which in the karpalaki world emphasize uh foul products of the body meat and such which are objectionable to me to many members of mainstream brahmanical society all this is replaced by an emphasis

upon fine sense odors sensations touch fabrics beautiful flowers and the rest the idea being that this aestheticization leads to a kind of greater resting in consciousness which can be as it were a springboard into a higher awareness so i would mention also estheticization

as a crucial feature the next feature perhaps the most radical of all is rationalization after composing the tantra loka he moved on to write his commentaries on the prachabigya texts and i see this as a kind of attempt

to move beyond the world of ritual into a domain a kramer inspired world of direct insight into the nature of reality through the observance of consciousness the observance rather of cognition of the fact that one is a consciousness

uh conscious agent so i see the practica not as a system of philosophical uh ideas outside the shaktishave tradition but an attempt to extract a rational core that enables the advanced practitioner to transcend the world of mantra mudra mandala and the rest of the

tantric apparatus and go for a direct recognition of his nature through an intensification of a rational perception of ultimate reality as guided by these texts the next feature is its inclusivism the system of the kali kula is highly

exclusive it emphasizes the that we must never reveal its secrets to followers of the said tradition and so forth it's a highly uh antinomian outsiders tradition if you like whereas the tricker seeks to elaborate a volume to elaborate a model of what it calls a

higher non-dualism a paramard via vada in which it subsumes and validates all forms of shaivism under its aegis the idea being that it's the inside that's important not the liturgical externals so whereas the color for example forbids the worship of the linga which is

fundamental to the saidantika tradition the malni vijaya malani vidyotra or more specifically its 18th chapter as interpreted by abner gupta says it doesn't matter which you do just adopt any practice that will lead to this insight so long as you're making

your awareness firm in its focus on reality the externals do not matter so this is a move to establish a kind of universal platform for the incorporation of all chiva practice and in this em in this uh ambition

um there is also elaborated on the base of scriptural prototypes the idea of successive initiations in which one climbs up this ladder from the sedan at the bottom to the highest level of the trigger at the top i want to end now with what i'm calling

structure outreach that is to say after the elaboration of this new perspective that we see in the works of abhinav gupta we have the works of shema raja i've already mentioned his commentaries on the swachanda and the nature and it seems to me that these are

a concerted attempt to systematically introduce the new shakhtar non-dualistic perspective into the practice of those tantras to move to free those tantras of incursions from the saturn from the saidantica domain he also wrote commentaries to achieve the same effect

on the shiva sutra and the spandakarika and these are two works which in a sense render accessible to shiva devotees core doctrines of the shakta shiva tradition without necessarily requiring initiation so this too may be seen as an attempt

to establish in the minds of kashmiri and brahmins at the time a sense of ultimate reality independent from engagement in elaborate ritual a lifelong engagement with shaiba ritual and in the same spirit i would place his commentaries on popular hymn collections since he

wrote commentaries on the stovach in tamilnadu of bhattanarayana and also on the shiva store traveling whose popularity i referred to in my last lecture at least i was referring to evidence of the popularity of the stovach in harmony

now if this if i had a little bit more time now i would like to go on to point out uh to evidence of the influence of this shocked outreach uh into other shiver communities elsewhere in india but i'll have to come

i will have to restrain myself or restrict myself to pointing out that the subsequent cult of tripara sundari which flourished greatly in south india was in its early manifestations at least grounded in and the appropriation of the doctrines of the prachibia system

elaborated by tricker teachers in kashmir in the 10th century but it's not restricted there we also find to that area we also find it among certain virus virus works for example we find it also incorporated largely on the strength of

raja's convenient summaries in work such as the ishwara practice such as the practitioner idiom rather in the pancharatra work lakshmi tantra and in the pancharacha work ahead of the near so even southern invasionism are strongly influenced by this tradition

well i have to stop there and i'm sorry if i had a whole series of lectures i could put more flesh on this but i hope that to some extent um you see the general picture and perhaps i should end with the statement

that the crucial doctrines the central doctrines of the shaktis tradition of of kashmir make no sense except in relation to the sadantik tradition which they're opposing which they see themselves as transcending rather than opposing they wish to incorporate that broad base

of the religion but they wish also to point out that there is this higher method of preserving the sense of a separate shiva identity through engagement in shakhtar practice so this chakra practice is designed to maintain an intense awareness of the transcend

transcendent nature of one's shaiva identity there is a verse which is quoted both by jayarata and by opponents of the shiva tradition which says internally akaula externally a shaiva and in one's worldly identity a conform a conformer to brahmanical

injunction so inwardly kaula that's to say shakhtar outwardly shiva in one social identity and yet in one society religious activities such as arranging marriage alliances and so forth vedic in accordance with the vedic or brahmanical tradition yes the this i think sums up rather

precisely the um the self-perception being advocated by the shark to shivers of kashmir thank you very much