Dr. Torella a renowned Indologist and an exponent of Kashmir
Saiva tradition delivered a lecture on Utpaladeva’s work on Pratyabhijna.
Before embarking on the main topic he delved on the various currents of philosophical thoughts
prevalent during Utpala’s time especially focusing on Buddhist Mahayana
Tantricism. Dr. Torella suggested that Tantricism provided a break from the
Absolutist Buddhist philosophy and that is why Buddhists incorporated it in a
big way in their belief system and soon came up with a complex system of
Tantrik iconography. Also interestingly Dr. Torella sees this change as
Tantricism coming out of the shackles of Asceticism and entering a world of a
householder and altering it for ever. One of the examples is the inclusion of
mysterious Non dual Bhairava Tantras reserved earlier for ascetics, in the
religious and ritualistic life of a common man.
Somananda’s ‘Siva Drsti’ was the first philosophical text of
Pratyabhijna school which has sown the seeds for later philosophical and
metaphysical treatises to come. According to Abhinavagupta Utpala’s works are reflections
on Siva Drsti. Hence we can see Abhinavagupta, Utpala and Somananda as
Pratyabhijna triad out of which Abhinavagupta became most popular for his elaborate
commentaries , compilations and brilliant works like Tantraloka.
The dry logic of the Epistemological schools of Buddhist
philosophy was soon countered by this very dynamic and vibrant system of
thought which focused on the Svatantriya
sakti of Lord Siva.Utpaladeva took some linguistic ideas from Bhartrhari whom
Torella calls as his ‘grammarian ally’.
The thought that the language has the potential to reveal the nature of
universe opened vistas for symbolic significance of language, including
omnipresence of Siva.
He further went on to focus on universal appeal of Pratyabhijna philosophy saying that
Utpaladeva’s work is a blend of both rational and emotional side of man and
hence deals with an array of subjects comprising metaphysics , epistemology ,
aesthetics and philosophy. He also suggested that the concept of Chamatkara
which later was developed as an elaborate theory by Abhinavagupta was initially
introduced by Utpala. Talking about the interdependence of scholars Dr. Torella
said, “ Without Utpaladeva no Abhinavagupta would have been possible and
to understand Utpaladeva completely one
needs to know about Dharmakirti” hence
suggesting that to understand various ideas and concepts of so called
Kashmir Saivism it is necessary to understand the Buddhist thought at that
time. He was even of the opinion that we can consider Sankarananda, oten quoted
by Abhinavagupta as an authority as a Buddhist which I am not quite sure about
but reserve my comments as I don’t know much about the scholar.
In the end he stressed on the fact that texts should be
understood philologically and not in isolation but in context of other texts
written around the same time. This lucid and basic lecture was followed by a
question answer session where the queries were more about his interaction with
Swami Laxmanjoo than what he spoke.
