Library Update 44

mega.nz/#F!AE5yjIqB!y7Vdxdb5pbNsi2O3zyq9KQ
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TANTRALOKA

Abhinavagupta's magnum opus, a commentary on Malinivijayottara Tantra, and an expansion of its precepts, appears here for the FIRST TIME in English online. Authored by a noted Tantrik mystic and aesthetic philosopher, for centuries this volume was only available in its native script. In the early 2000s a translation began to get published that was cut short. Mark D's working on another that's in limbo. After I started tripfagging, it came out in English in full translation, but was prohibitively expensive for most.

This is the first time, ever, that a complete English edition is appearing online.

The two extant translations leave...something to be desired. The earlier, abandoned, translation is more precise and technical. It cuts twilight language better. The other later one (chapters 5-37), is rather weaker. Some readings are questionable and some twilight language goes unparsed. If all else fails, it's interlinear, so get to work on learning that Middle-Late Classical Kashmiri Sanskrit dialect.

But we have help. Chapter 29, “The Kula Ritual”, was published by Dupuche. It's a massive, detailed, and complex rendering of the central rite of the Uttara Kaula Trika. Sanderson's “Mandala and Identity in Agamic Identity in Trika of Kashmir” is shorter, but clearer.

But these do not impart all mantras. For help I recommend:
Manblunder.
Kamakotimandali.
Manasataramgini.

Included in this update are:
>Tantraraja Tantra
>Malinivijayottara Tantra (shitty 1956 edition. I can have a copy and may scan it, but...why do we need MVJT when we have TL?)

All new material appears in:
>Eastern>Saivism>Abhinavagupta (Uttara Kaula Trika)

I am now working to obtain and scan Svaccharanda Tantra, another that has recently been published in English but appears nowhere online.

Other urls found in this thread:

sacred-texts.com/hin/hyp/index.htm
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/4/4f/Adhan_in_Shalqar_mosque.webm/Adhan_in_Shalqar_mosque.webm.480p.webm
twitter.com/AnonBabble

The inspiration and the basis for this historical inquiry are the actual works of Kashmiri Shaivites, the most extensive of which are by Abhinavagupta, who wrote the Tantraloka. He was the one who built up what he called “Anuttara Trika,” and he did that by referring to and integrating many Tantras and other works, drawn from varied Shaiva Tantric traditions. The main manual—you might say the Bible of Anuttara Trika—is the Tantraloka, and secondary to that is the Paratrishikavivarana. The Tantraloka is one of the last great classics in Sanskrit that had not been fully and authoritatively translated into English before now.

To fully understand the importance of the Tantraloka, I need to say more about the history of Shaivism. Basically what happened is that sometime around the sixth century AD, relatively suddenly, a huge number of revealed texts began to come to the earth, as it were. There were two streams of thought. The first is Siddhanta Shaivism, which is now very popular in South India. It centers on the worship of lingas and the form of Shiva called Sada Shiva, which means “always Shiva, always auspicious.” Nowadays this tradition is found in the large Shiva temples of South India.

The logic of calling Anuttara Trika the “highest” is that according to the revelation itself, Trika comes at the end of a series. One is initiated into Trika Shaivism after having taken a series of initiations into what are considered from the Trika perspective to be lower forms of Shaivism—and even below that Vaishnava Tantra, and finally Vedanta. So there is an ascending gradation of initiation, and Trika contains and encompasses all of them as their ultimate teaching. Everything culminates in Anuttara Trika.

Abhinavagupta presents his Tantraloka as an explanation of the teachings of the Malinivijayottara, the Trika Tantra he considers to be the most authoritative. He holds this authority in such reverence that he declares at the beginning of his Tantraloka that there is nothing in it which is not in some form present or suggested in the Malinivijay. Abhinava thus intends his Anuttara Trika to be understood not as something new, but as the final development of the Trika school of Shaivism— which is one of the oldest of the Bhairava current of Shaivite scriptural traditions— and the most explicit and detailed presentation of its essential teachings.

Abhinavagupta (c. 950 – 1016 AD) was a philosopher, mystic and aesthetician from Kashmir. He was also considered an influential musician, poet, dramatist, exegete, theologian, and logician – a polymathic personality who exercised strong influences on Indian culture.

He was born in Kashmir in a family of scholars and mystics and studied all the schools of philosophy and art of his time under the guidance of as many as fifteen (or more) teachers and gurus. In his long life he completed over 35 works, the largest and most famous of which is Tantrāloka, an encyclopaedic treatise on all the philosophical and practical aspects of Trika and Kaula (known today as Kashmir Shaivism). Another one of his very important contributions was in the field of philosophy of aesthetics with his famous Abhinavabhāratī commentary of Nāṭyaśāstra of Bharata Muni.

Abhinavagupta's thought was strongly influenced by Buddhist logic.

To study he took many teachers (as many as 15) both mystical philosophers and scholars. He approached Vaiṣṇavas, Buddhists, Śiddhānta Śaivists and the Trika scholars.

Among the most prominent of his teachers he enumerates four. Vāmanātha who instructed him in dualistic Śaivism and Bhūtirāja in the dualist/nondualist school. Besides being the teacher of the famous Abhinavagupta, Bhūtirāja was also the father of two eminent scholars.

Lakṣmasṇagupta, a direct disciple of Somānanda, in the lineage of Trayambaka, was highly respected by Abhinavagupta and taught him all the schools of monistic thought : Krama, Trika and Pratyabhijña (except Kula).

Śambhunātha taught him the fourth school (Ardha-trayambaka). This school is in fact Kaula, and it was emanated from Trayambaka's daughter.

For Abhinavagupta, Śambhunātha was the most admired guru. Describing the greatness of his master, he compared Śambhunātha with the Sun, in his power to dispel ignorance from the heart, and, in another place, with "the Moon shining over the ocean of Trika knowledge".

Abhinavagupta received Kaula initiation through Śambhunātha's wife (acting as a dūtī or conduit). The energy of this initiation is transmitted and sublimated into the heart and finally into consciousness. Such a method is difficult but very rapid and is reserved for those who shed their mental limitations and are pure.

It was Śambhunātha who requested of him to write Tantrāloka. As guru, he had a profound influence in the structure of Tantrāloka and in the life of its creator, Abhinavagupta.

It is believed that Abhinavagupta had more secondary teachers. Moreover, during his life he had accumulated a large number of texts from which he quoted in his magnum opus, in his desire to create a synthetic, all inclusive system, where the contrasts of different scriptures could be resolved by integration into a superior perspective.

Bump for preservation of Tantra.

>tfw I like Indian history and religious stories but think all this spiritual shit is bollocks

>books

Shit nigga ain't no-one got time for that, you feel me? Hit me up wit' some recommendations for edutaining videos so I can harmonize my chakras n'shit with my eyes closed, you dig?

K.

That's a pretty common opinion desu senpai