Tantrikasidhi Prakaranam by Sri Aurobindo

2012

Through his ‘Tantrik Texts Series’ (1913-1940) Sir John Woodroffe initiated modern Western studies of the tantra. However, his 1922 translation of the Karpūrādi-stotra reveals how much he and his collaborators felt constrained to purge the scandalous aspects from the text. It is seriously flawed, and yet still commonly used. A new unexpurgated translation is needed. This article describes the rather complex story of the editions and commentaries on the stotra, together with some suggestions on date and authorship: in short, its context. It then provides an unexpurgated translation of the Karpūrādi-stotra along with the Sanskrit text. Lastly, it provides a short commentary on the structure of the text and its purpose. If Woodroffe had to conceal essential elements of the Karpūrādi-stotra, how reliable are the other translations and commentaries in his ‘Tantrik Texts Series’?

Journal of Indian and Buddhist Studies 69/3, 2021

It is perhaps the best example of spiritual verse-poetry as dhyana mantra. This Indian epic is Sri Aurobindo's magnum opus.

2023

The Sāramañjarī by Samantabhadra (ca. mid-9th c. CE) is a commentary on Jñānapāda's Samantabhadrasādhana (ca. late 8th c. CE), a practical meditation manual of the Guhyasamājatantra. This book provides the first critical edition of the Sanskrit text as well as the first English translation of a long portion devoted to the logical justification of the practice of the binduyoga. The book also presents a general introduction to the work and a philosophical introduction to its contents.

vi Contents chapter Swami Vivekananda and the Mainstreaming of the Yoga Sutra 116 chapter The Yoga Sutra in the Muslim World 143 chapter The Yoga Sutra Becomes a Classic 159 chapter Ishvara 172 chapter Journeys East, Journeys West: The Yoga Sutra in the Early Twentieth Century 182 chapter The Strange Case of T. M. Krishnamacharya 197 chapter Yoga Sutra 2.0 225 notes 237 suggestions for Further reading 249 index 261 vii Dr a mat is Per sonae Alberuni, also known as Abu al Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al Biruni (973-1048). A renowned Mus lim scientist and court scholar, in 1017 Alberuni was taken by force to India where he authored a learned account of Indian science, culture, and religion titled the Tahqiq-i-Hind ("India"), as well as an Arabic trans lation of a now lost commentary on the Yoga Sutra, known today as the Kitab Patanjal ("Patanjali's Book"). Aranya, Hariharananda (1869-1947). The author of the most highly regarded twentieth century commen tary on the Yoga Sutra, the 1911 Bengali language Bhasvati ("Dawning Sun"), Aranya was also the founder of the Kapil Math monastery in modern day Jharkand state, where at his request he was sealed into a cave in 1926. He remained there until his death in 1947.

Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens, 1992

A study focusing on eight verses summarizing the four Buddhist siddhāntas that appear in Kalkin Puṇḍarīka's Vimalaprabhā. These verses are drawn from the Jñānasārasamuccaya of Āryadeva, and they also appear in the Svadarśanamatoddeśa of Kalkin Yaśas and at the core of Jitāri's Sugatamatavibhaṅgakārikā. N.b.: In this study replace "Pradarśanānumatoddeśaparīkṣānāma"—a Tibetan construction of the title—with Svadarśanamatoddeśa, the title as it is cited in Nāropāda's Sekoddeśaṭīkā [Sferra ed. p. 176.21.] This text is wrongly ascribed to "Narendrakīrti" based on the erroneous back-translation of the Tibetan mi'i dbang po grags pa to narendrakīrti. In this case, mi'i dbang po is an epithet, and grags pa translates yaśas, the proper name of the first Kalkin of Sambhala. As far as I can tell, it is mere coincidence that 1) mi'i dbang po grags pa is given as the title and name of the author of this text, and 2) Narendrayaśas (517–589 CE) was a translator who translated a recension of the Samādhirāja-sūtra into Chinese (T 639) in 557 CE. Nevertheless, this is indeed odd!

Self-Publishing, 2022

The Kālacakra Tantra was the last major Buddhist Tantric text written in India during the early 11 th century. This book has left an enduring impact on different regions of Asia in the last thousand years of its journey. This text is a repository of different fields of knowledge extant during its time. The text delves into linguistics, aesthetics, dramaturgy, erotics, mathematics, astronomy, Eurasian geography, alchemy, armament technology, contemplative subtle neuroscience, science of respiration, and thanatology among other disciplines. This Tantra attempts to construct a universal algorithm running through the three realms of physical, biotic and symbolic universe. The algorithm has philosophical underpinning in the Buddhist concept of pratītyasamutpāda. Evaṃ (एवं), the principle of similarity, defies such causality and

This paper discusses a series of sūtras of Patañjali’s Yogasūtra, namely 1.10, 1.21–23, and 2.9, in the light of their paraphrase and/or interpretation found in the Dharma Pātañjala (‘Book/System of Patañjali’), an Old Javanese-Sanskrit Śaiva scripture retrieved from a rare West Javanese codex unicus dated ca. 1450 AD. Besides a philosophical exposition of the tenets of a form of Śaiva Siddhānta, the Dharma Pātañjala contains a long presentation of the yoga system that apparently follows the first three chapters of Patañjal’s Yogasūtra, either interweaving Sanskrit excerpts from an untraced versified version of the latter text with an Old Javanese commentary, or directly rendering into Old Javanese what appears to be an original Sanskrit commentary. Although the Old Javanese prose often bears a strong resemblance with the arrangement and formulation of the topics treated in the Yogasūtrabhāṣya, it diverges from that commentary in several respects. The Dharma Pātañjala often presents specific doctrinal details that are found in other (sub)commentaries or in the Arabic rendering of the sūtras-cum-commentary composed by al-Bīrūnī before 1030 AD, or adds original elements that are unattested elsewhere. The testimony of the Dharma Pātañjala turns out to be useful in order to solve some of the dilemmas posed by the selected sūtras. It may also help us to better understand the textual cultural transmission and cultural reception of Patañjali’s work in both South and Southeast Asia, for its author, rather than freely borrowing from different Sanskrit commentaries, appear to have drawn upon an as yet unidentified, and possibly lost, ‘common source’.