[Review] The Parākhyatantra, a Scripture of the Śaiva Siddhānta: A Critical Edition and Annotated Translation. By Dominic Goodall. Pondicherry: Institut français de Pondichéry. more

Reviews of Books The Parakhyatantra, A Scripture of the Saiva Siddhanta: A Critical Edition and Annotated Translation. By DOMINIC GOODALL. Collection Indologie, vol. 98. Pondicherry: INSTITUT FRANÇAIS DE PoNDiCHÉRY / ÉCOLE FRANÇAISE D'EXTRÊME-ORIENT, 2004. Pp. cxxv + 669. This first editioti and translation of the Parakhyatantra constitutes a significant contribution to understanding of the early (pre-tenth c.) áaiva Siddhanta literature. The text posed particular challenges, being available only in an incomplete and poorly transmitted form in a codex unicus held in Mysore (and an apograph in two codices), plus a number of testimonia, especially from Ksemaraja's Svacchandatantroddyota. The result, representing several years' work, became Goodall's Habilitationsschrift, and now appears in revised form from Pondicherry, where he directs the center of the École française d'Extrême-Orient. Both there and in the Institut français de Pondichéry, the study of áaiva Siddhanta has been a specialty since the early 1960s when French scholars collaborating with Pandit N. R. Bhatt began to bring out editions and translations of áaiva works. Goodall's tenure has seen a revival of áaiva studies there, and the almost-daily group reading sessions at the EFEO, in which European and American scholars and traditionally trained Indian pandits discuss and debate together over the fine points of Sanskrit (and Tamil) texts, have become an institution rarely to be found elsewhere. Such is the environment in which this book was prepared. For the non-specialist, Goodall's labors yield three important benefits: a meticulously clear and idiomatic translation attentive to the text-critical problems presented by the original, an authoritative assessment of the existing literature in the field, and a concise statement of the "state of the art" of áaiva studies. In the preface Goodall reviews earlier scholarship, noting its insufficiencies in light of recent advances in the recovery of data on the early tradition. This review leads into a summary of what has been established in the last couple of decades about the pre-twelfth-century áaiva Siddhanta. He states the "three firm proofs that a given Siddhantatantra is early": the existence of (1) early Nepalese manuscripts, (2) early commentaries, and (3) "substantial attributed quotations" in early commentaries that can be traced to a surviving tantra of the same name. By these criteria, only the Paramesvara, Nisväsa, Sväyambhuva, Raurava, Kirana, and Parâkhya/Saurabheya tantras from the traditional list of twenty-eight principal Saiddhantika scriptures are attested in a definitely early form. To these he adds a list of pre-twelfth-century Upabhedas (works not included in the lists of the twenty-eight "original" tantras but claiming to be derived from one of them, viz. the Jnänapancäsika, Mrgendra, Matahga, Sarvajñanottara, Mohacüdottara, Mayasangraha, and various Kälottaras) (pp. xxii-xxiv). Early commentaries include those of Sadyojyotih (probably seventh c ) , áríkantha, Näräyanakantha, and Rämakantha (tenth c. Kashmir), and Aghorasiva and his immediate disciples Vaktrasambhu and Trilocanasiva (twelfth c. south India). Based on close study of these sources, it appears that all but one (the Sarvajñanottara) teach a consistently dualist theology. Moreover, "the Siddhantatantras that are demonstrably early are not concerned with the performance of public worship in temples [but rather] are primarily concerned with teaching a system of worship for private individuals who have taken liberating initiation . . ." (p. xxvii). So (he asks): "Why do publications of today present the school as Tamil, philosophically non-dualist (or at any rate not strictly dualist) and vedanticizing, largely or entirely post-12th-century, and partly based on a group of liturgical Sanskrit tantras teaching the mode of public worship in temples?" In answer he lists five factors: (1) relative neglect by Tamil Siddhantin scholars of Sanskrit sources in favor of Tamil ones, none of which has been critically edited, and one of which—the Tirumantiram of TirumOlar—has traditionally been dated, "on slender evidence," "six or seven centuries too early" (p. xxix); (2) the disappearance of the system in all parts of India except the Tamil country after the twelfth century; (3) the existence of Sanskrit texts composed thereafter in the Tamil south that Journal of the American Oriental Society 128.2 (2008) 333 334 Journal of the American Oriental Society 128.2 (2008) continued to present themselves as Saiva Siddhânta while propounding rules for temple worship and introducing Vedanta-influenced thought; (4) the practical impediment that many of the earliest texts remain unpublished or poorly edited, and that "much of the worthwhile secondary literature is in French"; and (5) a lack of interest in reconstructing the historical development of the tradition, whether for reasons of piety or a preference for synchronie description of "coherent systems of ideas." To this last factor Goodall responds: "Only when we see the chronological relationships between the works of the Saiva Siddhanta can we then trace the intellectual history of the school and see its relationship to other philosophies" (pp. xxx-xxxii). The introduction guides the reader through the labyrinth of problems posed by this text: its place in the canon (and the possibility of two works by the same name); its sources and date ("probably the latest or one of the latest of the surviving listed pre-tenth-century tantras" [p. xliv]; it "may have been composed in the eighth or ninth century A.D." [p. lviii]); quotations by Aghoras'iva and his disciples from a lost commentary; a résumé of the surviving chapters; and some discussion of the language and meter of the text, alluding to Ksemendra's characterization (in his commentary on the Svacchandatantra) of aisa language—the Lord's divine style of expression—as a way of accounting for departures from the classical standards of "good" Sanskrit. The introduction concludes with an answer to the question, "Does the Parâkhya tell us anything new?" and some remarks on "the nature of this edition." Goodall acknowledges that this text is neither particularly elegant nor clearer than its peers, nor does it propound "a lot of new or surprising doctrines." However this edition is valuable as an addition to the small corpus of critically edited early tantras—welcome for its special elaboration of language, mantra, diksa, and yoga—and it is accompanied by "the first translation of an early Siddhäntatantra into English" (p. lxxxviii). The balance of the book contains the edition itself, with the chapters assigned the following headings: 1, The soul; 2, The Lord; 3, Scripture and the pure universe; 4, The evolutes of primal matter; 5, The cosmos; 6, Mantras; 14, Yoga; 15, Liberation and the means to its attainment. The edition is followed by a densely annotated translation, four appendices, a bibliography of works consulted, a padaindex, a general index, and a résumé français. The appendices consist of (I) a compilation of quotations attributed to the Parâkhya in other works but not found in the manuscript; (II) a diplomatic transcription; (III) the edited text of a commentary on sütra 18 of the Sataratnasangraha (= Parâkhya 1.15); and (IV) a comparison of units of measurement of length used in several tantric sources. One of the greatest values of Goodall's works is his thoughtful reflection on philological method. Like his mentors and collaborators Alexis Sanderson and Harunaga Isaacson, he is a principled proponent of conjectural emendation. He is well aware of its dangers (and he cites Housman's acerbic caveats thereon). Conjectural emendation is best practiced by editors thoroughly imbued with the tenor and characteristic modes of expression of the literature, only to be had through long and deep acquaintance with a wide range of authors in the tradition. Goodall and his circle fulfill this criterion admirably. Accordingly, he accepts many conjectures by Isaacson and Sanderson (and others), and makes many more of his own, as he did in his edition of Bhatta Ramakantha's Kiranavrtti 1-6 (Pondicherry, 1998; see his defense of the practice there, p. cxiv, where he cites George Kane, "Conjectural Emendation," in Medieval Literature and Civilization, ed. D. A. Pearsall and R. A. Waldron [London: Athlone, 1969], 155-69). The present text may arguably call for more emendation on the grounds that, confronted with a severely corrupt original, it is better to print sense than nonsense, and that the brute form of the text is preserved anyway in the apparatus—-as well as in the appended diplomatic transcription. But this "belt and suspenders" approach to safeguarding the sometimes unintelligible voice of the sole witness still allows for perhaps too free a hand in the attempt to "repair" the poorly transmitted text. The edition is full of conjectures, at least some of which—insofar as I am qualified to judge (which in the Saiva realm is not very far)—seem capable of being understood as transmitted, or with less invasive surgery. To take just one example, the manuscript at 1.6 reads: yatra sä bhogani.^pattis tat tu karma nibandhanam [or: karmanibandhanam] I pasutvadosanirdagdhah sa padärthah paÊur matah II Goodall (140) accepts Isaacson's conjecture for pâda b, tattatkarmanibandhanâ, and translates: "Where there is [discussion of] the accomplishment of experience caused by various past actions {tattatkarmanibandhanâ), that is held to be the topic 'bound soul', afflicted by the faults of impurity Reviews of Books 335 (pasutvadosanirdagdhah)." In a footnote, however, he concedes: "One could keep more of M^'s reading and emend instead to tatra karma nibandhanam, 'for that the cause is karman,' but this would be syntactically disturbing, since yatra in the first päda correlates with the sa in the fourth. But päda b could be treated as a parenthetical aside." To my eye, the manuscript's reading, however clunky, can indeed be accepted as an independent parenthetical phrase ("—and karman is the basis [thereof]—"). Indeed, worse habits such as disjunct syntax (shifts of subject, disagreement of gender) are common enough in tantric verse. There are arguably more than a few similar cases. Granted, Goodall has given us the integral original so that we can judge for ourselves; granted, he has signaled alternative interpretations; and granted, he has a keen sense of the peculiar idiom of this literature and the idiosyncrasies of this very manuscript (which he toiled over in editing the Kiranavrtti, which is also contained in it). But it is easy to over-homogenize a text by correcting it when it appears to be clumsy, unidiomatic, or doctrinally deviant; sometimes authors are clumsy or inconsistent. Goodall himself concedes the unreliability of even the most natural-looking conjecture. His discovery near the end of the editing of a part of the apograph gave him a unique opportunity to check his restored readings of a portion of M"' that had been damaged: "not one of the restitutions proposed by myself or by friends—stylistically plausible as the restitutions seemed—was confirmed by the discovery of the apograph" (p. cxxv). In any case, 1 am inclined to favor a more conservative use of conjectural emendation, reserving it for more desperately opaque passages. This reservation aside, Goodall's volume is a model of textual analysis. For those outside the circle of cognoscenti, the footnotes to the introduction and translation are of particular interest, providing elaborate background discussions rising sometimes to the level of a short excursus, and not infrequently citing unpublished manuscripts, complete with a critical apparatus. This sort of edition-within-anedition is an apt metaphor for the depth of erudition that underlies the book in hand, and offers a glimpse of further treasures to be disclosed in the future. In sum, for anyone interested in understanding the early pan-Indian Saiva Siddhànta in its own right, and in discerning its distinctive contribution to the post-Meykantar south Indian Saiva Siddhànta, this volume is indispensable. It should also be read for its thoughts on philological method and intellectual historiography, especially as applied to medieval Sanskrit theological literature. Goodall's critical judgment is not infallible—as he emphatically admits—but his contributions to this field are astonishingly thorough and meticulous, and will help redefine the state of the art for decades to come. TIMOTHY LUBIN WASHINGTON AND LEE UNIVERSITY Temple to Love: Architecture and Devotion in Seventeenth-Century Bengal. By PIKA GHOSH. Bloomington: INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2005. Pp. xv + 255. In the seventeenth century, a religious movement centered on the worship of the divine couple Krisna and Râdhâ, and named Gaudiya Vaishnavism, becairie a cultural force for transforming the countryside of southwestern Bengal into a cosmopolitan urban environment. Folklore has it that more than three hundred temples were built in the newly established capital of the local Malla dynasty, which then became Vishnupur, the city of the Hindu god Vistiu, of whom Krisna is the blue-bodied, erotic incarnation. A handful of exuberant temples that still remain in the vicinity of Vishnupur is the subject of this tirelessly researched, elaborately conceptualized, lucid, and accessible study worthy of the Edward Cameron Dimock, Jr. Prize in the Indian Humanities it has received. Religious architecture has both a past and a present, a visual presence in which a historian attempts to re-imagine an earlier time as well as a sacred presence that rejuvenates a living community of devotees and pilgrims. Ghosh stages an interplay of these two seemingly contradictory aspects of her analysis through a fine calibration of her own documentation and visual analysis of monuments with