Florinda De Simini

Of Gods and Books

Studies in Manuscript Cultures

Edited by

Michael Friedrich

Harunaga Isaacson

Jörg B. Quenzer

Volume 8

ISBN 978-3-11-047772-6

e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-047881-5

e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-047776-4

ISSN 2365-9696

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The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.

© 2016 Florinda De Simini, published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston.

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Contents

1Manuscripts, Ritual, and the State in Indian Sources

1.1Indian Manuscripts in Art and Ritual: The Case of Buddhism

1.2Rituals of Power and Knowledge in Brahmanism

1.3The ‘Books of Śiva’

2The Task of Writing and the Art of Giving

2.1The Gift of Knowledge

2.1.1The Introductory Procedures

2.1.2The Manuscripts

2.1.3The Thrones of Worship

2.1.4The Scribes

2.1.5The Copying

2.1.6The Donation

2.2The Corrections

2.3The Abode of Knowledge

2.4On Ritual Readings and Teachers’ Salaries: The Gift of Knowledge and its Social Roots

2.5The Books of Knowledge

3Manuscripts, Ritual and the Medieval Literature on Dharma

3.1Something New, Something Old, Something Borrowed: Law-Digests on the Gift of Manuscripts

3.2‘Vedam non sunt libri’, or: How to Give What You Cannot Have

4The Throne of Knowledge: Aspects of the Cult of the Book in Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava Tantric Traditions

4.1The Cult of the Book in the Context of Obligatory and Occasional Rites

4.2The Installation of the Throne of Knowledge

4.3On the Threshold of Modernity: Ritual and Manuscripts in the Sixteenth-Century South India

5Appendix 1: The ‘Chapter on the Gift of Knowledge’ (Vidyādānādhyāya), being the second chapter of the Śivadharmottara

5.1English Translation

5.2Sanskrit Text

6Appendix 2: Tables of Textual Parallels with Chapters 1, 2 and 12 of the Śivadharmottara

7Table A: Structure of the Chapters on the Gift of Knowledge in the Sanskrit Law-Digests

References

Indices

Endnotes

Preface

In the following pages, I shall present the results of research projects undertaken partly during my doctoral studies, and partly in the two and half years between my doctoral defence at the University of Turin in May 2013 and the final writing-up of this book in winter 2015. The leitmotiv of the four chapters comprising the volume that I now present to a broader readership – scholars of Indology, manuscript studies, and ritual studies – is the investigation of ritual practices involving, and in most cases primarily centred on, the use of manuscripts. Manuscripts and rituals, and thus manuscript and ritual cultures, are two areas in which Indic cultural regions have traditionally been very prolific, offering abundant material for different types of analysis. The perspective offered in this book focuses on the intersection and interplay of these two complex entities, for which I have adopted a textual and philological approach. The topics under discussion are thus examined through the prescriptions and descriptions found in the Sanskrit textual sources, with sparse references to epigraphical evidence both in Sanskrit and in other classical Indian languages. My main sources are normative texts addressed to an audience of lay practitioners which were composed in a time span of about ten centuries, ranging approximately from the sixth and seventh century to the seventeenth. They reflect the views of various communities contributing to the religious landscape of premodern India, though the most specific focus is on the literature of the Śaivas and the Dharmaśāstra. Buddhist texts are taken into consideration only as a point of comparison in the analysis of analogous phenomena in Śaiva contexts, while Jaina literature does not make an appearance within the sizeable body of sources on which this study is based.[1]

This book therefore aims to offer some insight into how the textual and religious traditions of India have treated manuscripts, regarded simultaneously as a means of transmitting knowledge and as objects of worship; moreover, it strives to deepen our understanding of the practices connected to the production and use of manuscripts amid the world view and material culture of the people who in fact first conceived and handled those manuscripts through which knowledge has been transmitted and preserved through the centuries. It is perhaps relevant to point out to the reader that this study on manuscripts and rituals had started out as one on textual criticism and traditional hermeneutics. Then, when I first started perusing the Dharmaśāstra literature in search of an ‘orthodox’ viewpoint on scriptures and authoritative texts, and the ways one should materially deal with their transmission, I stumbled upon the descriptions of the donative rituals and worship ceremonies that are examined in detail in the chapters of this volume. These texts in part provided an answer to some of the questions I had in mind — for example, what is the role of the manuscript in the transmission of a text, and how does its material form interact with its scriptural status. On the other hand, this set of sources also inspired new topics, such as the use of manuscripts in the same manner as icons, with the corollary identification of the manuscripts with the gods they are believed to embody; the equivalence between the purity of the manuscript-icon and the correctness of the text it transmits, whose pristine conditions the devotees are exhorted to preserve; and the magical agency of the manuscripts, which overlaps with that of the text when they are used in performative contexts.[2] These are just a few of the points that are touched upon in the textual sources used for this book. For the authors of these texts, it was especially relevant to establish a connection between the various ritual uses of manuscripts and religious institutions. On the one hand, monasteries are evoked not only as the repositories of manuscripts, but also as the primary location in which they were used — both in rituals and as teaching and learning tools; on the other hand, the selection of the texts whose manuscripts should be used in ritual is meant to set a boundary between orthodox and heterodox, authoritative and non-authoritative texts. In this case, the ritual practice overlaps with a hermeneutic stance, and the uses of a manuscript contribute to enhancing the status not only of the physical manuscript, but also of the text it contains. In the eyes of the lay devotees who sponsored these practices for their own spiritual and material benefit, the cultic contexts in which a manuscript was used was sufficient evidence for it being the receptacle of incontrovertible authority.

As I shall point out in the chapters of this book, several of the manuscripts that have been handed down to us and that are now used for textual studies and critical editions have been produced, copied, and preserved for reasons that go beyond the transmission of the text, and are rather concerned with the expectation of material and immaterial benefits. However, the study of the manuscripts alone is not sufficient to fully understand the ideology surrounding these practices, their genesis and development. Integrating the study of the manuscripts as objects with that of the manuscripts as carriers of texts, and thus turning to the information that the latter can provide, has proved to be the sole method conducive to having a more comprehensive idea of the culture in which these peculiar artefacts emerged and with which they actively interacted.

This book is the result of several long years of research and writing in three different European towns, namely Naples, Hamburg, and Leiden, where I could work under the guidance of the extremely knowledgeable and generous scholars whom I now have the privilege of calling my teachers. To them I want to express my most sincere gratitude. I especially want to thank Francesco Sferra (University of Naples), a teacher and a friend, who has been on my side since the very beginning of my Sanskrit studies, and has supported, challenged, and instructed me throughout the years leading up to the completion of this book. This research was prompted and nurtured by our countless conversations and reading sessions which have greatly enriched the past ten years of my life. Harunaga Isaacson (University of Hamburg) and Peter Bisschop (University of Leiden) have always been very generous with their time and knowledge, reading with me, perusing my work and sharing their opinions and suggestions. I will always be grateful for all the help they offered me, both while working on my doctoral thesis and in finalizing this book.

I would also like to thank Alexis Sanderson (University of Oxford) and Raffaele Torella (University of Rome) for their constant support, which has found expression in the many exchanges of ideas and research materials that have deeply enriched my understanding of the topics that I try to investigate in the following pages.

This book would have never existed in this shape, and would probably never have been published at this date, without the tireless efforts and constant exhortations of Michael Friedrich (University of Hamburg), whose support and insights have been very valuable to me in these last years. My deepest gratitude goes to him and to the other editors of the series Studies in Manuscript Cultures, Harunaga Isaacson and Jörg B. Quenzer (University of Hamburg), for having made it possible for me to conceive and publish this book as a volume in their monograph series.

I also feel deeply indebted to the people who have assisted me by doing meticulous editorial work on this volume, trying very hard to get rid of all the contradictions and inconsistencies that affected my writing. Kristen de Joseph and Peter Pritchard are responsible for the revision of the English; Kristen de Joseph has moreover significantly helped me with the editing of the whole volume, and has personally compiled the indexes. Cosima Schwarke has been a very precious ally throughout the whole editorial process, mediating with the publisher and helping (saving) me during the final revisions of the proofs.

I would like to use this opportunity to thank all the institutions that have offered financial support with my work on this book. These are the University of Turin, which granted me a three-year full doctoral scholarship; the University of Naples L’Orientale, my current home institution, which has funded me with a two-year postdoctoral grant, recently extended; the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures of the University of Hamburg (SFB 950), which offered me two short research scholarships during my doctorate, and has recently awarded me a six-month Petra-Kappert-Fellowship to allow me to do research at their institution; the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, which funded a six-month research period in Hamburg; and the Jan Gonda Fund Foundation, thanks to which I could work in Leiden in the months preceding and following my doctoral defense. The most conspicuous source of these grants which have allowed me to move forward in my education and academic career are therefore the Ministero Italiano dell’Università e della Ricerca and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, to which I feel enormously indebted.

My thanks also go to all the libraries that have granted me access to their manuscript collections, in particular the University Library of Cambridge and the team of the project ‘The intellectual and religious traditions of South Asia as seen through the Sanskrit manuscript collections of the University Library, Cambridge’ headed by Vincenzo Vergiani (University of Cambridge); the ‘Nepalese-German Manuscript Cataloguing Project’ and the Nepal Research Centre which, especially with the precious assistance of Namraj Gurung, helped me access the invaluable manuscript materials of the National Archives and the Kesar Library of Kathmandu; the Bodleian Library (Oxford); the Library of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine (London); the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (London); the Adyar Library and Research Centre (Chennai); the Saraswathi Mahal Library (Thanjavur); the Institut Français de Pondichéry (Pondicherry); the Asiatic Society (Calcutta); and the manuscript library of the Banaras Hindu University (Varanasi).

I furthermore want to express my gratitude to all the scholars who have offered me help with single issues connected to the research in this book, and who have been ready to share their knowledge and materials with me, above all Diwakar Acharya, Gérard Colas, Martin Delhey, Jonathan Duquette, Vincent Eltschinger, Camillo Formigatti, Marco Franceschini, Dominic Goodall, Kengo Harimoto, Nirajan Kafle Borayin Larios, Tim Lubin, Carmela Mastrangelo, Nina Mirnig, Elena Mucciarelli, Patrick Olivelle, Sarah Pierce-Taylor, Judit Törzsök, and Eva Wilden.

Thanks to my students at the University of Naples, whose reasonable and unreasonable doubts, and dispassionate interest for India’s past and present history, have taught me how to look at things from a perspective that I would have never considered until a few years ago.

On a more personal note, I would like to thank my parents, Alba and Domenico, for all the love, encouragement, and understanding with which they have supported me throughout the completion of this task. Finally, I want to express my deepest gratitude to all the friends and loved ones who during these years have sustained me in various ways, by sharing bits of their knowledge with me and/or by making my life one that is worth living, thanks to their love and invaluable friendship. Vos estis sal terrae. Their names are, in a dry alphabetical sequence: Maria Arpaia, Jung Lan Bang, Antonella Brita, Stefania Cavaliere, Giovanni Ciotti, Vincenzo Cozzolino, Daniele Cuneo, Victor D’Avella, Kristen de Joseph, Jonathan Duquette, Raffaele Esposito, Nicoletta Fossa, Kengo Harimoto, Nirajan Kafle, Mrinal Kaul, Andrey Klebanov, Werner Knobl, Vito Lorusso, Fabio Managò, Stefano Managò, Valentino Mandrich, Antonio Manieri, Nina Mirnig, Paolo Nicodemo, Marianne Oort, Tania Quero, Serena Saccone, and Luisa Villani.

Special thanks go to the late Helmut Krasser.

Napoli, 15 ottobre 2016

1Manuscripts, Ritual, and the State in Indian Sources

Existing scholarship on the topic of manuscripts as objects of worship and ritual focus in precolonial India has tended to concentrate on Buddhism, and to present the phenomenon, if not exclusively, then at least as primarily Buddhistic.[3] This approach seems to have particular merit when we consider what comprises the earliest literary and archaeological attestations of this practice, which are limited almost exclusively to the vast range of the early Mahāyāna. It is indubitable that the ‘cult of the book’, meaning the devotion paid to the manuscripts of textual scriptures, was a hot topic in early Mahāyāna worship. Both the relevance of this practice and its connection with the still much debated historical and religious phenomenon that is Mahāyāna has been acknowledged by scholars since the dawn of Buddhist studies.[4] At the same time, it is largely accepted that the devotion towards manuscripts prescribed by texts of the early Mahāyāna, and the sacralizing power attributed to these manuscripts, has had a profound influence on the manuscript cultures of India. This is due to the fact that it fuelled the production of manuscripts for reasons other than the transmission of texts—reasons such as the quest for divine protection, the accretion of spiritual merit, or the making of pious offerings. The current state of the evidence, which will be briefly surveyed in the following pages, allows us to safely maintain that early Mahāyāna sources account for the emergence of the cult of the book as a key element in lay devotional practice and popular belief, which would come to have a bearing on visual culture in several artistic fields. However, in the early Middle Ages—if we adopt the Gupta period (fourth to fifth century CE) as the watershed fictitiously dividing the ancient from the medieval—the discourse is enriched by devotional scriptures of Brahmanical authorship, which claim to divulge teachings that were originally taught by the gods themselves. By firmly integrating it into Brahmanical institutions, these works appropriate the cult of the book and develop it in such a particular way that the further popularity and development of these ritual practices can hardly be assessed without considering the contribution of this hugely diversified body of literature, namely the medieval Purāṇas. Śaiva sources played a key role in this development, both by strengthening and promoting a specific ideology that backed the religious and ritual aspects of medieval Indian manuscript culture, as well as by preserving information on the writing culture of India for the time to come.

1.1Indian Manuscripts in Art and Ritual: The Case of Buddhism

Scholars of Buddhist studies have often stressed the emphasis that the Prajñāpāramitā (‘Perfection of Wisdom’) literature places on the worship of scriptures in their written form; self-referential passages in these works encourage the copying of their text in new manuscripts and venerating it with flowers, incense, umbrellas, banners, and other ritual tools.[5] It is difficult to evaluate whether such passages are as old as the Prajñāpāramitā itself, especially because our knowledge of it is often based on manuscripts that are from a much later date than the emergence of the Prajñāpāramitā literature, possibly in the last century BCE.[6] However, references to the copying of the text and the donation of its manuscripts are already contained in the second-century fragmentary version of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā in Gāndhārī;[7] sections listing the transcribing of the text at the head of a series of other activities are found in a sixth- or seventh-century manuscript of the Vajracchedikā, and in the Gilgit manuscript (again from the sixth or seventh century) of the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā.[8] As observed by Schopen, the notion of the manuscript as a sacred object became so relevant for the Mahāyāna communities that some Sūtras, like the Aparimitāyuḥsūtra and the Amoghapāśahṛdayasūtra, were almost entirely devoted to describing the merits deriving from the acts of copying and worshipping their texts. Major Mahāyāna Sūtras also adopted such a ‘self-promoting strategy’ by inserting sections in which they listed the merits gained through the transcription, recitation, veneration, and circulation of their own texts, as attested, for example, by several passages of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka. In one of these, the Buddha predicts the achievement of a ‘perfect awakening’ for anyone who, besides memorising or reciting a religious text,[9] ‘will write it, or will call it to mind when written, will continually gaze at it, will manifest in regard to that manuscript the reverence due to the Tathāgata […] and will worship that manuscript with flowers, incense, perfumes, garlands, unguents, aromatic powders, cloths, umbrellas, flags, banners, music, and exclamations of ‘adoration to you’ and cupped hands’. By becoming objects of veneration, texts and manuscripts of Buddhist Sūtras were attributed powers that could also extend to the protection of the state, starting a pattern that would remain relevant with the transmission of these texts in Central and East Asia. This is particularly evident in the case of the Suvarṇabhāsottamasūtra, whose chapter 4 gives a prophecy concerning the four great kings who will safeguard the country where the Sūtra is upheld, a passage that was already available in Dharmakṣema’s Chinese translation of 417 CE.[10]

Early Buddhist literature also features references to the donation of manuscripts and writing implements as a meritorious act. Examples collected by Skilling (2014) range from the non-Mahāyāna Karmavibhaṅga to long Mahāyāna Sūtras such as the Akṣayamatinirdeśa and other scriptures of Mahāyana literature. In the sources that Skilling takes into consideration, the giving of manuscripts is always regarded as one of the hallmarks of wisdom. The Karmavibhaṅga, for instance, lists the behaviours that are conducive to ‘great wisdom’ (mahāprajñā) as follows:[11]

Here a certain person is by nature inquisitive. He resorts to wise ascetics and Brahmans, and avoids ignorant ones. He explains the True Dharma, and criticizes false dharmas. He promotes the security and confidence of the Dharma-preachers, and applauds those who say what is beneficial. He avoids those who say what is unbeneficial. He praises right view, and he blames wrong view. He donates ink, manuscripts, and pens. He does not drink alcohol […].

Analogously, the opposite activities are said to lead to false knowledge (duṣprajñā). Skilling notes the association between the gift of writing materials and the figure of the dharmabhāṇakas, literally ‘preachers of the Dharma’, who are in fact designated as the recipients of these gifts in the further sources that he considers. The Akṣayamatinirdeśa and the related Bodhisattvapiṭaka, for instance, regard these Dharma-preachers as the donees of four gifts that are said to contribute to the accumulation of knowledge (*jñānasambhāra).[12] These are the gifts of birchbark, ink, and manuscripts; the gift of ‘thrones of Dharma’ (*dharmāsana); the gifts of wealth, honour, and praise; and the gift of directing praise toward the Dharma-preachers[13] —each of which is given ‘in order to make a comprehensive collection of the Dharma’. In brief, one of the options foresees that a lay devotee should donate to the dharmabhāṇakas all that is necessary for writing down the scriptures and for maintenance of the preachers themselves. These considerations run parallel to the passages in the Śaiva texts exhorting the donation of manuscripts and writing tools to the Śaiva teachers and yogins (see § 2.1). The fact that these Buddhist sources differentiate between birchbark—used as writing surface[14] —and manuscripts might suggest that one should donate both a completed manuscript as well as the material for producing a new copy in order to enable the dharmabhāṇakas to accomplish a ‘collection of Dharma’ (*dharmasaṃgraha in the reconstructed Sanskrit). Such instructions are mentioned, with only a few variations, in several other Mahāyāna scriptures,[15] as well as in the Ratnāvalī (v. 3.38), attributed to Nāgārjuna (second or third century). Some scholars however believe that this may be a work of uncertain authorship, but in any case written before the sixth century.[16] It therefore still reflects a relatively early stage of the tradition. Colophons of Buddhist manuscripts, moreover, confirm from an early date that those manuscripts had actually been produced as objects of meritorious donations, namely donations meant to garner religious merit for the donors, who at times were associated with other people who could benefit from this donation. While more examples of this will be adduced further on in this study, it is worth mentioning here two early manuscripts of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka, a Mahāyāna Sūtra that, as observed above, makes several remarks on the importance of its own written transmission and veneration. One is the colophon of ‘manuscript C’ from the Gilgit collection, which reports the text of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka, (the same manuscript from which we have cited the text in fn. 7). The so-called ‘Gilgit collection’, which was actually found at Naupur (Pakistan), close to Gilgit, is the only extant collection of Indian manuscripts from early times.[17] The surviving colophons show that this manuscript collection, on which more will be said in § 2.3, was formed mainly between the sixth and seventh century CE, and that some of its manuscripts were understood as Dharmic gifts (dharmadeya), pious donations made in exchange for religious merits; in certain instances, the patronage of the local dynasty, the Patola-Śāhis, is evident.[18] The colophon of manuscript C of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka, which follows the end of the text, mentions at least 44 people as the donors of this manuscript, most of whom are laypeople, but also a few monks and senior monks, the latter designated as mahādharmabhāṇakas.[19] As observed by von Hinüber,[20] ‘this, then, is the first time in the history of Indian Buddhism that a group of lay people venerating the Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra speaks to us directly’. Another colophon, probably attached to ‘manuscript A’ of the Gilgit Saddharmapuṇḍarīka, confirms the same use for this manuscript.[21] As attested by the proper names, in both cases some of the lay donors had an Iranian background; scholars figured that a few of the Buddhist texts popular in Gilgit, like the same Saddharmapuṇḍarīka or the Saṃghātasūtra, were also popular in Central Asia, specifically in the area of Khotan. Paratexts from a Khotanese manuscript of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka in fact attest that, also in this area, manuscripts of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka were objects of lay worship and pious donation from a relatively early date, which in this case can be traced back to the eighth to ninth century.[22]

Buddhist texts thus attest the practice of donating manuscripts and writing materials from early times on, directly associating these acts with the circulation of the Dharma and, in the case of some Mahāyāna texts, with the conduct of a Bodhisattva. However, the instructions provided in this regard are very scanty. Moreover, these sources do not seem to provide exhaustive descriptions as to how the ritual donations should be performed. What emerges clearly from the above-cited passages, and is confirmed by some of the main Mahāyāna Sūtras such as the Aṣṭasāhasrikā and the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka, is the importance of the figure of the dharmabhāṇaka, whose role in the production and dissemination of Mahāyāna literature has been stressed by several scholars.[23] The word bhāṇaka, literally ‘speaker’, is used in early Buddhist literature to denote those professionals who were charged with the recitation and oral transmission of the canon.[24] In the context of Mahāyāna, according to Drewes, who shares here Shizutami’s view, dharmabhāṇakas might have been the actual composers of the early Mahāyāna literature, and this central role would explain the high reverence that the texts pay to these figures.[25] Buddhist sources often depict dharmabhāṇakas as teachers but, although primarily identified with the activity of teaching orally, textual sources also connect them with the writing down of texts, which is presented as an equal alternative.[26] Dharmabhāṇakas are indeed mentioned in the colophons of Buddhist manuscripts, sometimes even in the function of copyists.[27] Drewes sees the emergence of the Mahāyāna as a ‘textual movement’ promoted by circles of preaching authors and teachers, whose peripatetic lifestyle helped disseminate the texts; according to this interpretation, the centrality of the text in the emergence of the Mahāyāna, as testified by the self-awareness of being part of a ‘new textual revelation’, is the main drive behind the renewed focus that Mahāyāna literature puts on textual practice, including the cultic use of manuscripts.[28]

The thorny question of the emergence and nature of Mahāyāna Buddhism does not fall within the scope of this work, or its author’s specialization. It is however important to bear in mind, as a premise to the topics that constitute the backbone of this work, that the cult of the manuscript promoted in early Mahāyāna scriptures is attributed a formative function in the development of the Mahāyāna. More specifically, an often cited article written by Schopen (1975) argues that those passages in early Mahāyāna literature that encourage the cult of the book indeed reflect a competition between two cults—that of the bodily relics of the Buddha deposited in stūpas, and that of the Buddha’s Dharmic body, i.e. the Mahāyāna texts. Schopen’s interpretation is based on a few passages from Mahāyāna texts (such as the already mentioned Vajracchedikā, Aṣṭasāhasrikā, and Saddharmapuṇḍarīka) in which the place where the scripture is located, transcribed, venerated, etc. is said, according to his translation, to ‘become a shrine’ (caityabhūta); in other passages he adduces, the two cults—that of the stūpa and of the manuscript—are compared to the advantage of the cult of the manuscript.[29] According to this interpretation, the cult of manuscripts may therefore have been patterned on the cult of the stūpas containing the earthly relics of the Buddha, though developing as a rejection of that cult, whose centrality had been maintained by Hirakawa (1974). The difference is that the cult of the book offered the possibility of ‘making a shrine’ out of any place on earth where worship takes place, in contrast with the strong geographical localization of stūpas and their cult. Regardless of one’s interpretation of these data (see also Vetter 1994), the cult of the manuscript played an important role in the propagation of the Prajñāpāramitā and early Mahāyānic literature and practices.

Schopen’s view was recently opposed by Drewes, who maintains that the expression caityabhūta is far more likely to be interpreted—as most of the scholarly tradition before Schopen had done—as a metaphor (‘like a shrine’); it is thus meant to underscore the greatness of the practice of manuscript worship by comparing it to the stūpa.[30] As Drewes remarks, there are several passages in South Asian Buddhist texts in which prominent people are compared to a shrine in order to emphasize their importance (without diminishing the importance of the shrine).[31] In Drewes’s view, the main objective of the caityabhūta expressions, when referring to the copying and veneration of the manuscripts, is to promote the use of the latter as a protective measure for private houses and other places, as the mere presence of the manuscript in its written form and the veneration paid to it would have turned these places into sacred locations. He thus argues that the other, similar expressions on which Schopen had based his deductions also needed to be understood as hyperbolic statements;[32] considering that the cult of the stūpa is in no way belittled by Mahāyāna texts, and how scarce the archaeological evidence for the practice of enshrining entire manuscripts of Mahāyāna Sūtras, Drewes concludes that the veneration of texts, while important, was neither an innovation of the Mahāyāna[33] nor the foundation of a new cultic practice to the detriment of the stūpa cult.[34]

Turning to the archaeological evidence, Drewes specifically remarks on the scarcity of evidence for whole manuscripts[35] or portions of manuscripts of Mahāyāna Sūtras enshrined in the stūpas, with the exception of the Dhāraṇīsūtras. On the contrary, the practice of depositing fragments of texts or formulas in stūpas as votive offerings is well attested. Based on the belief that the teachings of the Buddha are one of his ‘body’ (dharmakāya), fragments of Buddhist scriptures or objects inscribed with protective formulas have in fact been deposited as relics into stūpas and images in areas of Buddhist influence, not only in India but also in Tibet and East Asia.[36] Bentor has showed that such a practice, very popular in Tibetan Buddhism, originated in India and is attested in early Buddhist Sūtras such as the *Pratyutpannabuddhasaṃmukhāvasthitasamādhi (13.8–9), in a passage that is also found in early Chinese translations of the text from the third century.[37] In many cases, however, it is not manuscripts containing entire texts that are deposited into stūpas and images, but small pieces of scriptures, the most common being the Dhāraṇīsūtras, Buddhist texts made of protective formulas (dhāraṇī), which were already being produced in the first half of the first millennium; the Dhāraṇīsūtras themselves offer the possibility of placing either the entire text or just the mantras contained in them inside stūpas and images of the Buddha.[38] The power of some texts is believed to be transmitted to the supports on which they are inscribed, which do not necessarily correspond to manuscripts. For instance, a very popular text all across Asia that is found inscribed on artifacts and deposited in many Buddhist sites is a single verse that has now become famous as the epitome of the Buddha’s teachings on the dependent origination or on the four truths of the nobles:[39] since at least the second century, this verse has been recorded in reliquary inscriptions or incised on clay seals as an alternative to depositing bodily relics of the Buddha.[40] Moreover, there are countless occurrences of this verse in the colophons of Buddhist manuscripts in various languages. An exceptional case of an entire manuscript found enshrined in a stūpa is the so-called Bower manuscript, at least according to the information provided by Hamilton Bower, who bought the manuscript in 1890.[41] Written on birchbark, probably in the first half of the sixth century, the manuscript contains the Mahāmāyūrī, one of the texts of the Pañcarakṣā (see below), along with several other protective dhāraṇīs.

Thus, the pan-Buddhist emergence of an early literature of ‘protective texts’ (rakṣā)—characterized by a certain phraseology (including frequent invocations to protective beings, fixed clauses, protective mantras, and so on) and intended to be recited for apotropaic reasons—is connected to these archaeological findings.[42] However, the protective powers held by these texts were quickly transferred to the manuscripts (or any other support) onto which the texts were copied, as testified by one of the most popular collections of protective Buddhist works, the ‘Five Protections’ (Pañcarakṣā). This collection of five early Sanskrit works[43] is well known in India, Nepal, and Tibet, and it consists of purely protective texts, uniquely devoted to explicating their own apotropaic functions, thus providing the user with various protective formulas. Each of these texts eventually become associated over time with a female deity who is believed to protect the devotees against specific diseases and personal misfortunes.[44] These texts, while praising their own powers, explicitly require assembling amulets with the mantras they teach: the Mahāpratisarā, for instance, instructs the devotees to paint an amulet with its dhāraṇīs and to wear it on the neck or on the arm, or to put it in a flagstaff over a caitya. Amulets bearing the protective formulas given by the Pañcarakṣā have been attested in archaeological findings.[45] After all, the word pratisara itself has meant ‘amulet’ since its earliest attestations in the Atharvaveda, where it is used to denote either a ‘protective thread’ or a ‘magical formula’.[46]

As pointed out in the Introduction, manuscripts of the Pañcarakṣā are still used for worship and public readings among the Newar Buddhists of Nepal, just like the manuscripts of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā. The Pañcarakṣā must have entered the ritual practice rather early, aided by the apotropaic functions and talismanic uses of its manuscripts and by the progressive association of the works with specific deities. Their use for ritual donations is attested by the Gilgit manuscripts, whose colophons report the names of the donors who sought protection through the transcription and offering of these manuscripts;[47] further evidence for the practice is the increased production of illustrated multiple-text manuscripts in eastern India and Nepal, where the Pañcarakṣā had become one of the most popular texts for illustration from the eleventh century onward (see below). The establishment of a precise iconography of the five deities, which were portrayed in the manuscripts, testifies that the process of the text’s deification had favoured its cultic use, as also in the case of the Prajñāpāramitā.[48]

The field of visual art has made an enormous contribution to the study of the presence and relevance of manuscripts in the Buddhist cult, both by enabling us to confirm (or disprove) some of the allegations made in the written sources, and by providing a general historical background for these practices. This study has taken two main directions: on the one hand, the critical analysis of the decorative programs of the manuscripts and their wooden covers, when available; on the other, identifying the representations of manuscripts and understanding them in the context of iconographic art. As regards the first line of study, scholars have assumed a direct connection between the emergence of the practice of decorating manuscripts and manuscript covers and the use of the same as objects of ritualized devotion,[49] also due to the link between figuration and worship in Indian art. Such observation have already been made by Pal (1978), who noticed the absence of a direct relationship between texts and images in illuminated manuscripts from Nepal—a trend that is only attested from the eleventh century—and surmised that this happened because manuscripts (and, as a consequence, the images they hosted) were used as cultic objects and pious gifts, just like icons of the gods.[50] According to this view, the aim of the images depicted on manuscripts or on their covers is not to illustrate the text, but rather to function as a support to worship. Moreover, Pal emphasizes the protective function that images might have played towards the hosting manuscripts, and the role that their donation to Buddhist and Hindu monasteries might have had in boosting the production of such illuminated manuscripts.

The Gilgit manuscripts offer another case study in which the colophon information can also be assessed in the global context of the manuscripts and the iconographic program of their covers. Klimburg-Salter studied the paintings on two of the extant wooden covers of the manuscripts from Gilgit, the earliest surviving covers associated with Indian manuscripts; she concluded that with the production of these items, ‘a change took place in the concept of the book so that books were not seen merely as a media for the conveyance of information but, for some reason or reasons yet unclear, began to be conceived of as objects worthy of beautification’[51] Given how little manuscript evidence from Indian cultural areas dates from a time prior or contemporary to the formation of the Gilgit collection, we should temper Klimburg-Salter’s statements about the innovation that these particular manuscripts represented in the history of Indian manuscripts. However, it is undeniable that they may represent one of the earliest incontrovertible pieces of material evidence for the ritual use of manuscripts in areas of Indian culture. As for the iconographic program of the covers, Klimburg-Salter observes that those from Gilgit, representing Buddhas and Bodhisattvas with kneeling figures at their feet, are different from the ones produced later on during the Pāla period with regard to composition, subject matter, and style.[52] The main difference lies in the orientation of the paintings, which in Gilgit are vertical rather than horizontal, parallel to the orientation of the script, the space sometimes divided into panels, which was to be the most prolific decorative style in India and Nepal. These and other features of the subjects portrayed on the covers allowed to assimilate them into the art of Central Asia, where vertical panels (both on cloth and wood) representing the Buddha or the Bodhisattvas, in some cases with donors kneeling at their feet, are popular items, sometimes even used as manuscript covers or votive offerings themselves.[53] This could explain the origin of the manuscript covers of the Gilgit manuscripts, whose production was most likely not contemporary with the manuscripts themselves, but in any case occurred no later than the eighth century.

Further textual and archaeological clues that seem to suggest a ritual use for the manuscripts of the Gilgit collection—or, more precisely, that the collection might have emerged due to the religious function attributed to its samples—are analyzed below, where the evidence will be compared with the instructions given in this regard by the almost contemporary Śaiva work Śivadharmottara (see § 2.3). It is now worth observing, however, that the hypothesis of attributing a ritual function to manuscripts has been brought forth in order to explain the formation of some of the main collections of early Indian manuscripts, even though the idea is ultimately not considered tenable for all of them. That manuscripts had been used for the performance of a ritual is what Salomon had proposed in his study of the British Library birchbark fragmentary scrolls of Gāndhārī Buddhist texts in Kharoṣṭhī script (1999), which notably have been found in the original pots in which they had been buried a long time before, presumably in stūpa sites. According to Salomon’s first interpretation, the British Library scrolls represented a ritual burial for old, ‘dead’ manuscripts, which would have formed a sort of ‘Buddhist genizah’.[54] The main arguments for this explanation were the donative inscriptions found on some of the pots, resembling those recording the ritual dedication of relics and stūpas; and the study of the scribal notations found on the manuscripts, which Salomon had initially interpreted as indications that a new copy of those manuscripts had been produced, and the old ones were set to be discarded. This theory has recently been revised by the same scholar (2009) on the basis of alternative interpretations of the scribal notations on the manuscripts, and on account of new findings, especially those concerning the Senior collection.[55] This is another collection of early Buddhist birchbark scrolls and scroll fragments from Gandhāra that was interred inside inscribed water jars, but has the unique feature that its manuscripts, unlike those of the British Library collection and of the other big groups of Gāndhāran manuscripts—the Bajaur collection and the Schøyen Buddhist collection[56] —are a uniform set of Buddhist Sūtras, all written by the same scribe. The Senior collection has thus been interpreted as a ‘commissioned collection’,[57] with some of the manuscripts being brand-new at the time of their interment: on account of these findings, the hypothesis now formulated by Salomon for interpreting the four major collections of Gāndhāran manuscripts is that they were all ritually interred or ‘buried’ in funerary monuments as Dharmic relics, rather than as a form of ritual disposal or genizah.[58]

Another early collection of Gāndhāran manuscripts for which similar hypotheses have been considered is the recently discovered Bajaur collection, named after the Bajaur Agency of Pakistan, near the Afghan border.[59] This collection of birchbark fragments of Buddhist works written in Kharoṣṭhī script was reportedly not found in pots, but in a stone chamber of a Buddhist monastery measuring about a half-meter in diameter. According to Strauch,[60] the Bajaur manuscripts were not ritually interred as proposed by Salomon, but rather stored in a room within the precinct of a Buddhist monastery, in a part of the library functioning as a genizah—thus in compliance with the first interpretation given in Salomon 1999—where the worn-out texts, stored in stone caskets, would still remain within the reach of the monks. Moreover, upon reviewing the archaeological evidence for the instances of water pots deposited in stūpas as manuscript-bearing reliquaries, Strauch finds that none of it can be considered definitive; the only data borne out by the sparse archaeological reports were that manuscripts were indeed contained in reliquaries, but only in the shape of tiny fragments used with apotropaic functions. These fragments were inserted not only in reliquaries but also in the hands of the Buddha statues, in the walls, pressed into or inscribed in clay or metal and in various other contexts, not as whole texts preserved in jars.[61] Therefore, this makes him doubt that the British Library collection could indeed also be interpreted as a ritual deposit of manuscripts in a stūpa, as Salomon suggests. According to this view, the only collection that could rightly be regarded as such is the Senior collection, due to the peculiar features that distinguish it from the other three collections of Gāndhāran materials.

A focus on the iconography of illustrated Buddhist manuscripts has characterized the recent studies of Kim (2013). The bulk of her study consists of the analysis of a selection of illustrated Buddhist manuscripts from northeastern India, on the basis of which she attempts to extrapolate data concerning the social history of the cult of the manuscript within the ritual practice of medieval Buddhism. Kim identifies the earliest iconographic attestations of the cultic use of manuscripts in the sixth- to seventh-century Ellora caves 6 and 10, in panels representing the goddess Mahāmāyūrī, one of the ‘Five Protections’:[62] in a corner, at the feet of the goddess, these panels depict a monk in front of a manuscript lying on a book stand; the monk is apparently intent on reciting or (in the case of cave 6) possibly worshipping the manuscript. According to one theory on the panel, the goddess seems to generate from a corner of the manuscript. Although the possibility of reading these images as representations of the cultic use of manuscripts is subject to interpretation, the connection established between Mahāmāyūrī and a manuscript that is being worshipped or recited recalls the apotropaic agency attributed to the texts of the Pañcarakṣā, and reconnects their power to the materiality of the manuscript. Kim also draws attention to a representation that can certainly be identified with a scene of manuscript cult on the base of a statue of the goddess Prajñāpāramitā from Mangalpur (Orissa), dated to the eleventh century:[63] this relief represents a manuscript lying on a stand together with flowers and flanked by a group of worshippers with their hands folded. Kim observes that the man in the first row seems to be endowed with the same iconographic features that are typical of kings, while the women behind him might be members of his family. Other elements of this panel are the officiating monk and the food offerings for the manuscript. The context of this panel is that of the cult of the Buddhist goddess Prajñāpāramitā, her position corresponding exactly to that of the manuscript depicted on the base of her statue. Orissa is homeland to several other depictions of scenes of manuscript worship, always found on the bases of statues representing a Buddhist subject. Kinnard (1999) mentions three such representations, ranging from the ninth to the eleventh century, found on panels at the bottom of Buddha statues in the ‘gesture of touching the ground’ (bhūmisparśamudrā): here the manuscript is constantly depicted on an altar pedestal, flanked by kneeling devotees making offerings or folding their hands in the añjali gesture.[64] More samples of this iconographic motif are identified by Kinnard in areas belonging to the cultural milieu of the Pāla kingdom of northeastern India: several of them come from Bodhgayā, traditionally identified as the place where the Buddha achieved his awakening, like an image of Tārā and one of Śākyamuni now preserved in the Bangladesh National Museum, each of whose bases depict manuscripts set on pedestals and being venerated.[65] Kinnard hypothesizes that the function of these depictions may be to represent wisdom (prajñā) as supporting and ensouling the Dharma of the Buddha; alternatively, these panels may have had a ‘mimetic’ function, exhorting and teaching veneration towards Buddhist scriptures. Kinnard reads these depictions of manuscript worship within the broader context of the sponsorship of the Pālas, under which we observe a re-emergence of interest in the Prajñāpāramitā from the eighth century, with the composition of Haribhadra’s commentary on the Aṣṭasāhasrikā, the Abhisamayālaṃkārāloka Prajñāpāramitāvyākhyā.[66] This would also have allowed a growth in the popularity of the ‘self-referential’ cult of the manuscripts that was implicit in these texts and, Kinnard observes, the creation of a new ‘field’ of devotion that elevates Prajñāpāramitā to the rank of a deity and worships her like the Buddha, while manuscripts are at the same time introduced into the field of visual culture by being represented in sculptures.[67] This is also evidenced by the emergence of the iconography of the goddess Prajñāpāramitā, attested from the ninth century, which embodies the notion of wisdom by means of iconographic features such as the ‘gesture of the setting in motion of the Dharma wheel’ (dharmacakrapravartanamudrā), recalling the Buddha’s first sermon at Sarnath, and the manuscript, often represented atop lotus flowers.[68] The manuscript, as observed by Kinnard, is part of the iconography of several other contemporary representations of Buddhist deities and Bodhisattvas,[69] which leads him to stress that a new cultic focus is placed on the notion of wisdom, which enters the visual culture through all these iconographic means that allow the devotee to partake of the salvific wisdom of the Buddha.[70]

Kim bases such findings on the interpretation given by Kinnard, and stresses the role played by this renewed interest in the Prajñāpāramitā literature recorded from the eighth and ninth century under the sponsorship of the Pālas as a boost for the cult of the manuscript. In Kim’s analysis, crucial evidence is represented by the growth in the production of illustrated Buddhist manuscripts in northeastern India and Nepal in the eleventh and thirteenth century, respectively.[71] The most popular texts for illustration in this area were the Prajñāpāramitā, the Pañcarakṣā, and the Kāraṇḍavyūha. This phenomenon would have been variously motivated by the meritoriousness associated with the production of preciously illustrated manuscripts, and by the iconic status of the latter, causing the cult of the manuscript to become a significant topic in the eastern regions of Magadha, Gauda, and Varendra, connected to Nepal and thus to Central Asia through a network of commercial ties.[72] These deductions are supported by a study of the iconographic program of a few manuscripts produced in said areas and the interplay between iconography, text, and object,[73] along with the readings of the colophons. What emerges from the selected samples that Kim examines is that these illustrated manuscripts were indeed objects of donations that were supposed to confer spiritual benefits on the donors; among the latter, a few were monks, while the lion’s share was represented by laypeople, both women of higher rank, amounting to some 50% of the donors in the eleventh century, and laymen identifying themselves as Mahāyānist lay practitioners (upāsaka), who emerged as a dominant group among donors from the twelfth century onward.[74]

On account of the evidence we are provided with, it can thus be considered very likely that the cultic use of manuscripts may have been popularized in the first place by early Buddhist texts and scriptures, and then became relevant under the Pālas and the contemporary ruling elites of Nepal, thus triggering the production of some of the most precious manuscripts that have survived from that cultural area until present day. Still, and also in consideration of the fact that the availability of manuscript evidence for certain periods of history rather than others is often due to reasons of preservation and climate, it would be highly misleading to try to explain the phenomenon of the use of manuscripts as cultic objects as a purely Buddhist thing. The Pālas have certainly been defined as ‘the most robustly Buddhist of all the dynasties’ in the sixth to the twelfth century,[75] and ‘the most liberal patrons of Buddhist institutions in early Medieval India’;[76] Mahāyāna Buddhism, especially its tantric branches, had grown tremendously under the Pāla emperors who, as is well-known, had also undertaken the endeavour of promoting the construction of what would become the celebrated Buddhist monasteries and centres of Buddhist learning of eastern India.[77] At the same time, it has been shown that this did not prevent a parallel growth of Śaivism, nor ousted its presence in the same areas, which were also heavily influenced by Śāktism. The interplay with Śaivism and more generally with the devotional currents that found their expression in the Purāṇas cannot be overlooked if we want to account for this phenomenon beyond the context of manuscript production under the Pālas. Before wealthy sponsors of the eleventh and twelfth century, under the reign of the Pāla emperors, expressed their religious devotion and social rank by ordering and purchasing expensive manuscripts of Buddhist scriptures—some of which have reached us—the bond between lay devotion and the sponsorship of the production, worship, and donation of manuscripts had taken on enormous importance also for Brahmanical scriptures for the laity, which circulated side by side with Buddhist literature. Above all, this topic had gained centrality in a lay Śaiva scripture called Śivadharmottara, whose composition can possibly be placed in northern India in the seventh century, and which enjoyed great popularity in some cases until modern times, as shown by the numerous parallels and borrowings from this text found in Sanskrit literature throughout India (see § 1.3). At the same time, this text, and the collection to which it ended up belonging, is amply attested in Nepal starting possibly from the ninth century, and with more regularity from the eleventh. Further manuscript evidence is attested in different parts of India later on (see § 1.3). Even if we want to hypothesize that the cultic focus that Brahmanical texts placed on the materiality of the scriptures may initially have derived from a rival interplay with its Buddhist counterpart, the topics concerning the use of manuscripts in religious contexts cannot just be reduced to the Prajñāpāramitā literature and its dissemination, but must also be assessed on account of the popularity that rituals of manuscripts had gained in the scriptures and religious practice of the Brahmins, to which it is now time to shift our attention.

1.2Rituals of Power and Knowledge in Brahmanism

Just like the Mahāyāna Sūtras, the medieval Purāṇas, religious literature for uninitiated devotees of the Hindu gods, contain several references to the worship and donation of the manuscripts of scriptures, as well as to the apotropaic and magical powers attributed to them. On the one hand, these texts connect the rites of donation and public reading from a manuscript to the strategy of self-promotion of the texts and the system of beliefs expressed in them. The method adopted by the Purāṇas chiefly consists of extolling the wondrous powers of their texts in order to encourage their circulation, analogous to what happens in Buddhist scriptural literature. This gave rise to the composition of eulogistic sections called śrutiphala, dealing with the ‘fruits of hearing’ the recitation of the Purāṇas: these are paragraphs, usually placed at the beginning or end of a work or section of a work, which list the grand fruits bestowed on the devotees by merely listening to that specific text, or by meditating upon it. The Śivapurāṇa, for instance, devotes all of its first seven chapters to praising its own qualities and urging the listening of its teachings, namely by singling out a huge number of the text’s properties and the various mundane and ultramundane rewards promised to devotees, and by illustrating all this with exemplary stories.[78] The text concisely explains where these powers come from, as it states,[79] ‘For this supreme Śivapurāṇa, the foremost treatise, has to be known as the form (rūpa) of Śiva on earth, and therefore has to be revered in all possible ways’. The idea that the text shares the same nature of the deity to which it is dedicated (and by which it was originally taught)[80] underlies the textual and material attestations of the practice of the cult of manuscripts in Brahmanical sources, and is eventually what is believed to confer the protective and magical powers attributed to these texts and their manuscripts. Moreover, despite the fact that there are cases in which the text is praised over its material embodiment—like that of the Śivapurāṇa, for instance, where the stress is rather on the hearing of the text—the śrutiphala sections also contain frequent references to the manuscripts of the texts as holding the same apotropaic powers: they must therefore be written down, worshipped, donated, and used for recitation. A further example is that of the Devībhāgavatapurāṇa, a Bengali Mahāpurāṇa that in one of its last chapters (12.14) endorses the circulation of the Devībhāgavatapurāṇa itself both by exhorting worshippers to read it and listen to it, and by giving instructions for writing down the text and donating its manuscripts.[81] The idea that the texts and their manuscripts could protect those who showed devotion towards them gave rise to the practice of using these as amulets. It is attested both by the production of small manuscripts of ‘auspicious’ Purāṇic excerpts that could easily be carried around as shields against misfortune and bad signs,[82] and by a special category of religious compositions specifically called ‘armour’ (kavaca or varman).[83]

One could argue that, on this point, both Buddhist and Brahmanical texts do replicate the same refrains, as has been duly observed by Schopen (2010). He remarks that, in Buddhist as in Purāṇic sources (for the latter he mostly relies on Brown 1986), the manuscript ‘is not just a sacred object, but also a sacralizing presence’, transforming the space around itself into a sacred spot.[84] Insisting on the parallels with Buddhist attestations in the Mahāyāna Sūtras, Schopen further argues that the implication of this notion is that there is no need to invoke a religious officiant in handling the manuscript, as it suffices to place it somewhere—private houses are also mentioned in the sources—in order to turn that place into a shrine.[85] This would largely be true if we were to restrict our attention to those scattered references to the religious obligation of worshipping the manuscripts of scriptures that can be found in the śrutiphala or in the glorification (māhātmya) of some Purāṇas (see the case of the Agnipurāṇa examined in chapter 2 and 3, or the Bhaviṣyapurāṇa referred to in the Introduction). There is, however, a crucial difference that emerges in the Purāṇas, namely that these sources, besides generically referring to manuscripts as foci of worship and donation, also testify to the existence of a specific ritual category that is entirely centred on the use of manuscripts. Literary and inscriptional sources call it the ‘gift of knowledge’ (vidyādāna) and, as the name itself suggests, its core ritual activity consists of the donation of knowledge, which in the case of the accounts of the Purāṇas or Purāṇic-like works can be embodied in a manuscript. The donation of the manuscript is, however, only the peak in a series of structured ritual activities where many of the common uses and functions of the manuscript are ritualized, and as such do require the presence of priestly intermediaries. In the works that contain the most complete accounts of the gift of knowledge—above all the Śivadharmottara, the Nandipurāṇa, and the Devīpurāṇa, along with the shorter passages from the Bhaviṣyottarapurāṇa and the Agnipurāṇa— its main steps are as follows: the production and copying of the manuscript from a previously existing exemplar; the correction of the newly produced copy; a public procession that carries the new manuscript to a temple or a space that is sacred in any other form; the donation of the manuscript to the temple; the performance of appeasement rites; the performance of public readings; and instructions on the daily worship and preservation of the manuscript. Even the initial activities, connected with the assembly of the manuscript and its transcription, are conceived in a highly ritualized environment in which the manuscript is the object of great devotion, on the model of the cult of divine icons that is one of the distinctive traits of medieval Hinduism. The information provided by the literary sources thus allows the reconstruction of the more general ideological and religious context within which we must understand practices such as the donation of manuscripts or their production in the service of acquiring religious merit, practices which are attested in the colophons of a significant number of Indian manuscripts. Moreover, moving from the literal meaning of ‘donation of manuscripts’, the gift of knowledge as described in textual sources could also include activities that were only indirectly linked to the act of giving away manuscripts: it is clear, for instance, that the public readings of the manuscripts, besides being connected to their donation to the temple, could also be considered a gift of knowledge on their own (see §§ 2.1 and 2.4); furthermore, especially in the Śivadharmottara, which gives the most important account on the topic, the gift of knowledge is not exclusively a gift of knowledge but also a gift to knowledgeable people, whether it was connected to the manuscripts themselves (for instance, the donation of writing tools and materials), or it consisted of money or food or any other form of material support that would enable these people to further their study or teaching activities.

The gift of knowledge described in the Purāṇas, which would inspire the formation of analogous rituals attested in tantric sources up to modern times (see chapter 4), is thus a paradigm that, on the one hand, is linked with the developments that led to the emergence of devotional currents within Brahmanism; on the other hand, it also hints at the formation of Śaiva monastic and educational institutions (maṭha and āśrama), the endowment of which is envisaged—in this case only by the Śivadharmottara—in the form of a gift of knowledge, for this is the ultimate support that a very wealthy donor (read: a king) can grant to religious institutions. All the activities arranged under the category of a gift of knowledge, however, primarily centre on manuscripts, even though the focus might seem to be lost in certain points. Far from simply urging their worship and donation, the gift of knowledge in the Purāṇic sources connects manuscripts and the ritualization of their functions with some of the main Brahmanic institutions, thus turning the manuscripts of scriptures into one of the crucial factors that characterize the interplay between religious life and political leaders. The development of a structured ritual linked to existing institutions represents an important shift, a change that is worth examining in order to understand the bigger picture of the ritual, soteriological, and iconic functions traditionally attributed to manuscripts in premodern India.

Through the gift of knowledge, the cult of the book was tied to Brahmanic institutions, the first and most obvious of which being that of the ‘gift’, dāna. That the gift of knowledge must primarily be understood in light of the ‘Brahmanic theory of the gift’[86] is demanded not only by its name, but also by the fact that it is one of the dāna categories which the specialized medieval digests from the twelfth century onward (see chapter 3) afford the utmost relevance, although they do not include the gift of knowledge in any of the known taxonomies (there is one exception that will be dealt with below). The tradition of the Dharmaśāstra, which is also reflected in the Purāṇas, only deals with one of the six typologies of gifts, that is with the dharmadāna, the ‘Dharma gift’, which the Devalasmṛti—a late work[87] whose definitions of dāna and its various components are frequently quoted in medieval digests on gifting—defines as,[88] ‘What [one] constantly gives to recipients independently of [any] purpose, [but] with the sole intention of giving’. According to this definition, therefore, the dharmadāna is a ‘constant’ (nitya) ritual, a wording that refers to a tripartite classification of Indian rites, divided into those that must be performed throughout a whole lifetime; those that are optional (kāmya), solely performed in order to achieve specific results; and those rituals that are carried out only under certain circumstances (and are thus called ‘occasional’, naimittika). The rituals classified as nitya, namely ‘eternal’, ‘constant’, such as the Vedic tradition of the oblation with fire (agnihotra), are therefore regarded as something non-fungible, to be performed, as the text says, ‘independently of [any] purpose’, an expression that in the case of the gifting rituals has been interpreted as a reference to the non-reciprocity of the gift, which is one of the main characteristics of ritual donations according to the Dharmaśāstra tradition.[89] The principle of non-reciprocity however is only to be understood on the mundane level, in the sense that recipients are not supposed to give anything in exchange for the gifts, but the donors are nonetheless rewarded with merits (puṇya) that allow them to receive both mundane and ultramundane benefits.[90] The practice of the ‘Dharma gift’ is therefore intended not only as a way to transfer property in an economy that saw a decreasing reliance on money,[91] but also as a soteriological strategy,[92] and it is in this context that the ceremony of the gift of knowledge must be placed. The correct performance of gifting was believed to increase merit, destroy the donor’s sins,[93] and bestow mundane and ultramundane rewards on him. More basic features of the theory of the ritual gift according to Brahminical sources can be inferred from the simple definition that again the Devalasmṛti gives for ritual gifting in general, and that, in this case, is also often quoted in the beginning of the digests on dāna. Here the word gift is said to be ‘authoritatively defined’ (abhinirdiṣṭaṃ) as[94] ‘the granting of goods, trustfully, to a proper recipient’. This plain definition contains all the chief elements of the ritual gift according to the Dharmaśāstra. In the first place, this line mentions the donee but not the donor. In this literature, the donee is the topic of paragraphs devoted to the identification of the proper recipient, the figure on which the descriptions of ritual dharmadānas place all emphasis. For Dharmaśāstra and Purāṇas, when dealing with gifts, primarily reflect the needs and perspectives of the recipients—identified with virtuous Brahmin men learned in the Veda[95] — while making only general statements on the identification of the donors. The latter are solely qualified via general attributes, chiefly concerning their financial means and attitude towards the gift: the texts underscore that donors have to be able to make gifts in accordance with their material possessions (yathāśākti), that their moral conduct must comply with Dharma and that they must be endowed with trustworthiness (śraddhā), a notion also evoked in the definition of the Devalasmṛti, and which is a crucial component in the performance of a proper dharmadāna.[96]

Donor, donee and trustworthiness are three of the so-called ‘six components of the gift’ singled out by the Devalasmṛti, the remaining ones being the appropriate object to donate (deya), as well as the suitable time and place for the donation:[97]

Donor and recipient, trustworthiness and the object to be donated according to Dharma, as well as the [proper] place and time: people consider these to be the six components of gifts. (11) / One who is not afflicted by sins, who is devout to the Dharma, willing to donate, free from vices, pure, who earns his living through blameless actions: for [these] six [features] the donor is praised. (12) / A very pure Brahmin, who has little livelihood, is warmly compassionate, whose [five] organs of perception are intact, freed from sexual contaminations, [this] is taught [to be] the recipient. (13) / The joy [expressed] through a bright face and so on every time one sees supplicants, virtue and freedom from envy: in that case trustworthyness is celebrated. (14)

A proper Dharma gift thus consists of an unreciprocated donation of goods made by a trustful donor in favour of a virtuous Brahmin: Smṛti texts exhort the laity to piously donate to Brahmins throughout the length of their lives, offering not only material support but also devout veneration to the recipients of their gifts. In this way the Dharmaśāstra and the Purāṇas, along with the medieval digests collecting quotations from these texts (see chapter 3 for more details), participate in the competitive environment that characterized the religious scene of early and late medieval times. Different gifts, requiring different ritual routines, are classified on the basis of the different objects to be donated (deya). Here the Devalasmṛti proposes a classification based on the importance of said objects: food, milk, land, cows, and other precious items are classified as uttama, ‘excellent’ gifts; clothes and medicines are considered ‘middle-range’ (madhya); while all the rest are ‘unessential’ (adhama) gifts.[98]

It is exactly with regard to the object to donate and the way to donate it, on which the theory of the gift in the Dharmaśāstra tradition is based, that the gift of knowledge had partly been considered an exception. This opinion is voiced by Vijñāneśvara, the twelfth-century author of the famous commentary Mitākṣarā on the Yājñavalkyasmṛti. As the text he comments on does not mention the gift of knowledge, but only the ‘gift of the brahman’—which consists in the oral recitation of the Vedic texts and is actually presented as one of the foundations of the gift of knowledge intended as a gift of manuscripts (see § 3.2)—Vijñāneśvara remarks that such a gift only creates another property, without alienating one’s own.[99] For when knowledge is only transmitted orally, the ownership of the donor does not cease. Even though this is true in cases where the gift of knowledge is only intended as an oral transmission of teachings, we will nonetheless show that the material element is indeed restored by medieval Purāṇas also in the case of the so-called ‘gift of the Veda’ (see §3.2). The gifts that do not envisage the cessation of the donor’s property fall into a specific category called utsarga, ‘relinquishment’, which also includes, for instance, works of public utility.[100]

Ritualized gifts cannot exclusively be regarded as means to secure royal patronage, nor as measures of economic welfare, although they undoubtedly fulfilled both functions. Nevertheless, they imply an ultramundane, salvific perspective, while at the same time having become one of the main fields of expression for medieval kingship. This is especially true in the case of those donations in which the donors can patently only be identified with monarchs, due to the sumptuosity and high cost of the ceremonies required for the performance, as well as their public nature. Examples of these public royal donations are the so-called ‘great gifts’ (mahādāna), which are the first category of ritual donations to be examined in the medieval treatises on dāna.[101] The practice of the ‘great gifts’, which count sixteen ectypes according to a frequently quoted section of the Matsyapurāṇa,[102] has been interpreted as one of the chief rituals of power legitimation for medieval Indian kingdoms: mentioned in epigraphs since the eighth century[103] but described in earlier literature, these ritual donations sponsored by kings might have fulfilled, as has been argued, the same legitimizing function that Vedic literature attributed to bloodier rituals like the horse sacrifice.[104]

The gift of knowledge is explicitly called a mahādāna in the very beginning of the second chapter of the Śivadharmottara, the most important literary source on the topic of manuscript rituals in medieval India, which proclaims,[105] ‘The gift of this [knowledge] is a great gift (mahādāna), the most excellent among all gifts’. In no place, however, does the text show awareness of the classification of the 16 great gifts of the Purāṇic tradition, and this definition of the Śivadharmottara remains an isolated case, since medieval digest-authors from the twelfth century onward (see chapter 3), all relying on the testimony of the Matsyapurāṇa for the treatment of the great gifts, not only do not consider the gift of knowledge a mahādāna, but also do not insert the gift of knowledge within a specific gift category. One exception is Hemādri, digest-writer of the thirteenth century, who inserts the gift of knowledge into a heterogeneous class called the ‘excellent gifts’ (atidāna), a choice that is replicated in the fifteenth century by Madanasiṃhadeva. These are said to correspond, according to a verse attributed to the Bhaviṣyapurāṇa,[106] to (the gift of) ‘cows, earth, and knowledge’. Chapter 7 of the Dānakhaṇḍa of Hemādri is thus entirely devoted to detailing the gift of several kinds of cows and bulls, followed by the gift of land (bhūmidāna), while the final part of the chapter, starting at p. 511, is focused on the ‘excellent gift that is called the gift of knowledge’ (vidyādānākhyam atidānam). His predecessors had dealt with all these donations, but without considering them as part of a distinct category, whose ritual patterns seem to share no particular feature.

Although the mention of the great gift made by the Śivadharmottara with reference to the gift of knowledge might simply fulfill a eulogistic purpose, one must observe that the performance of a gift of knowledge in general, and the one described by the Śivadharmottara in particular, shares at least two of the key features of the definition of ‘great gifts’. The first and most obvious is the identity of the donor who, in the Śivadharmottara—and, as regards the literary sources on the gift of knowledge, only in the Śivadharmottara (see § 1.3 and chapter 2 for more details)—is unmistakably recognized as a king. The ceremony described in this text includes a series of public rituals that require the involvement of the inhabitants of the town and the kingdom, and some of these are to be performed by the king in person, or are said to be sponsored by him (see § 2.1). He is eventually the one who leads a procession carrying the manuscript to the Śaiva hermitage for it to be donated. The connection between the ritual use of the manuscripts and monarchical figures, already established in some of the Mahāyāna Sūtras, is thus noted as an essential element of the gift of knowledge by the Śivadharmottara.[107] The second crucial element that qualifies the gift of knowledge as a great gift in the Purāṇic sense is probably less patent, but is still directly connected with the figure of the monarch. This aspect corresponds to the performance of the ‘great appeasement’ rite (mahāśānti) for the king and his kingdom immediately following the donation of the manuscript, almost in order to seal the series of ritual activities that had formed the structure of the gift of knowledge. This is an aspect that features not only in the version of the ritual described by the Śivadharmottara, but it is shared by all the major literary sources on the gift of knowledge. ‘Appeasement’ (śānti), when intended as a ritual category, is an umbrella term that includes different kinds of apotropaic rites whose function was that of reversing omens and personal misfortunes (adbhuta or nimitta). As shown by Geslani, among others, in his studies on the topic,[108] the development of specific ritualistic patterns labelled as śānti and focused on the appeasement of omens are especially connected with the literature of the school of the Atharvaveda from the first millennium BCE to the Middle Ages.[109] These rituals kept evolving and were consistently attested in medieval literature that was no longer connected to the Atharvaveda school, such as the Purāṇas or the Bṛhatsaṃhitā; in these works, Geslani observes that the patterns of śānti rituals also tend to be subsumed under two important categories of kingship rituals, namely the royal consecrations (rājyābhiṣeka) and the great gifts.[110]

Reconstructing the century-long history of the appeasement rites, Geslani identifies specific hallmarks that, emerging with the Śāntikalpa, tend to remain constant throughout later attestations, and whose presence is actually required for some procedures to qualify as a mahāśānti; some of these traits can also be recognized in the Śivadharmottara’s terse description of the appeasement rite celebrated when the gift of knowledge reaches its climax. In the general paradigm of śānti rites, a central role is attributed both to the act of sprinkling the sponsor, or the object to be appeased, with specially empowered waters called ‘waters of appeasement’ (śāntyudaka), as well as to the recitation of Vedic mantras—which can be replaced by non-Vedic ones in Purāṇic literature—collectively called śāntigaṇas.[111] The Śivadharmottara prescribes sprinkling the ‘water of appeasement’ (śāntitoya, 2.63) on the king’s forehead, and then on the people attending the ceremony. As for the chanting of Vedic mantras, the text makes no mention of this, but it proclaims instead that ‘for the sake of appeasement’ (śāntyarthaṃ, Śivadharmottara 2.61) a reciter has to read one chapter, which most likely corresponds to the sixth chapter of the Śivadharmaśāstra, the work to which the Śivadharmottara was connected (see § 1.3) and whose central chapter contains a long appeasement mantra (see §§ 2.1 and 2.5). That this chapter had actually been used in a liturgical function is confirmed both by its manuscript transmission and by historical records (see §§ 2.1 and 2.4). The practice of omen-reversal for the protection of the state, which in medieval religion had become one of the crucial elements of kingship—and, again, had also entered the realm of the main rituals of royalty—is thus also strictly connected with the rituals of manuscripts.

A key role in promoting the practice of appeasement rituals as one of the main services offered to the king was played by the ‘Appendices to the Atharvaveda’ (Atharvavedapariśiṣṭas), early medieval texts that also intimate knowledge of some of the Purāṇic great gifts, though not presenting a complete taxonomy.[112] As is well known, these late Atharvanic works claim that the full monopoly over appeasement rites, seen as a key factor for the successful administration of the state, was held solely by the Atharvan priests, for whom promotion to the rank of royal chaplain (rājapurohita) was exclusively reserved.[113] The relationship between the monarch and the religious officiants envisaged here is thus one of mutual exchange: the priests, who claimed for themselves the magic power to ward off all dangers to the kingdom by means of specific rituals, were necessary for the king just like the latter in his turn was necessary to them, due to his military and political power, as their sponsor and protector. Given the harsh rivalry for royal patronage that characterized medieval India, and the solid connection that the literature of the Atharvaveda had established between the practice of certain rites and the function of the royal chaplains, it is precisely in this arena that the Atharvans’ main competitors, the Śaivas, fought their battle by claiming the practice of those rituals of state protection for their officiants.[114] Moreover, the incorporation of aspects of pre-tantric Śaivism[115] into the Atharvavedapariśiṣṭas has been interpreted as a hint that the authors of these texts reacted by trying to adapt their practice to that of their rivals in order to make it more appealing for prospective sponsors.[116] Based on the Atharvavedapariśiṣṭas, the Bṛhatsaṃhitā of Varāhamihira (early sixth century), and Purāṇic sources (mainly the Matsyapurāṇa and the Viṣṇudharmottara), Geslani deduces that the aggressive campaigning by the authors of the Atharvavedapariśiṣṭas (which he considers to be earlier than the Purāṇas under examination)[117] to promote the category of śānti as the ‘paramount ritual of kingship’ resulted in the paradigm of the appeasement rites being subsumed under the non-Vedic rituals of kingship of the Purāṇas.[118] With reference to the great gifts, he observes that, both in the Atharvavedapariśiṣṭas and in the Matsyapurāṇa, the rituals categorized as great gifts either had to include procedures derived from the ritual paradigm of the śānti, like the ritual bathing of the sponsor; or the preliminary ritual sequence called adhivāsana had to include the recitation of an ‘appeasing reading’ (śāntikādhyāya), which might have corresponded to Ṛgveda 7.35 or Atharvaveda 19.10–11.[119] The Purāṇic mahādānas, according to this interpretation, show both the logic of expiation and that of appeasement at play.

While there is no clear indication of this expiatory function in the gift of knowledge of the Śivadharmottara, its prescription of a royal donation culminating in an appeasement rite performed by a Śaiva master—after the latter had received the manuscript of a Śaiva text directly from the king, and the reciter had chanted a śāntyadhyāya taken not from a Vedic text but from a Śaiva scripture—illustrates how the medieval growth of Śaivism undermined the Vedic liturgy (among others), thanks to the tight connection Śaivism had established with the institution of the monarchy.[120] The rise to powerful patronage called for the necessity of adapting ritual practices and overcoming the might of other traditions’ mantras. In the case of the gift of knowledge, not only were the Vedic mantras replaced by Śaiva ones; we also see a new focus on the materiality of the word, on the protective function that the manuscripts of the scriptures would serve for the king and the whole kingdom. The textual parallels between chapter 2 of the Śivadharmottara, on the gift of knowledge, and Atharvavedapariśiṣṭa 19B, on the ‘sacrifice of the brahman’ (brahmayāga), add one more element to the interrelationship between the two traditions (see Appendix 2).

Another area in which medieval non-Vedic sources show contamination by the appeasement rites of the late Vedic tradition is that of the royal consecrations, like the rājyābhiṣeka described in the Viṣṇudharmottara, or the ‘bath of prosperity’ (puṣyasnāna) of the Bṛhatsaṃhitā.[121] The connection with Vedic apotropaic rituals is detectable in the first part of the royal consecration of the Viṣṇudharmottara, based on the main ectype of the great appeasement presented in the Atharvavedic Śāntikalpa, and prescribing the same mantras as the Vedic rājasūya.[122] However, even the second part of this procedure, the one considered more ‘Purāṇic’, in fact reveals connections with the Atharvan materials, as it is based on the ‘bath of prosperity’ of the Bṛhatsaṃhitā, which in turn is connected to the ‘consecration of prosperity’ (puṣyābhiṣeka) of the Atharvavedapariśiṣṭas, a simpler form of the royal consecration.[123] Chapter 2.22 of the Viṣṇudharmottara contains a famous consecratory mantra, the use of which must refer to the main phase of the royal consecration described in the previous chapters. There it replaced the use of the Vedic mantras attested for the earlier Vedic royal consecration. Whether and how all this is connected with the rituals of manuscript donation and manuscript worship is a question that can only be answered by diverting our attention from the texts to the manuscripts. The manuscripts can help determine whether the association between rituals on the gifting and worship of manuscripts and rituals of kingship extend even further than what the Śivadharmottara suggests when it frames the gift of knowledge as a royal mahādāna, and thus provides it with the main features that rituals of this class were expected to be endowed with. There might be proof—although the evidence so far remains scanty—that a relationship between manuscript worship and the royal consecration (such as the one described by the Viṣṇudharmottara) also existed. Again, the sources also seem to point to the appeasing and protective functions, rooted in the Atharvanic rituals, that have formed the basis for these Purāṇic rites.

The manuscripts I refer to belong to a small, heterogeneous group preserved at the National Archives of Kathmandu, all of which bear the title ‘gift of manuscripts’ (pustakadāna) or ‘procedures for the gift of manuscripts’ (pustakadānavidhi); this is sometimes just one of the multiple titles available.[124] The information that these late manuscripts give about the procedures for the gift of manuscripts rely in most cases on quotations from Purāṇas; in one case (NGMCP E 78/1), the manuscript reproduces one of the prose sections on the gift of manuscripts available in the Dānakriyākaumudī of Govindānanda (sixteenth century; see § 3.1), while another (NGMCP E 132–37) reproduces the whole chapter on the gift of manuscripts by the same author. The small dimensions of these manuscripts (with only one exception),[125] both as regards the dimensions of the page and the total number of folios, their technical contents, and their format—they come in the rather handy shape of a concertina or a booklet—make it feasible that they were conceived as objects for personal use, maybe even to be used for rituals. One of these manuscripts, the already mentioned NGMCPE 132–37, stands out from the group in the peculiarities connected to the texts it transmits and their layout. The manuscript is a paper concertina, and contains the same quotations on the gift of manuscripts given by Govindānanda, namely from the Nandipurāṇa, the Harivaṃśa, and the Kāśikhaṇḍa of the Skandapurāṇa (see § 3.1), accompanied by the short prose commentary of the author. Furthermore, it is relevant that the first two pages, corresponding to fols. 1v and 2r, contain the beginning of the famous consecration mantra of Viṣṇudharmottara 2.22, used during the consecration of the king and introduced here by the caption ‘Then, the consecration’ (tato ’bhiṣekaḥ). That this text is not to be conceived separately from the following ones on the gift of manuscripts is highlighted by their special layout: starting from fol. 2r, the text of the Viṣṇudharmottara’s consecration mantra runs on the margins of the folios, while from fol. 2v the centre of the page is occupied by Purāṇic excerpts in praise of the gift of manuscripts.

Not enough evidence is available to draw any firm conclusion from this; nevertheless, by taking the testimony of the literary sources together with this material evidence, one may at least propose some working hypotheses to help better assess the phenomenon of the use of manuscripts as a ritual focus in the Hindu traditions. First, the Śivadharmottara sees the gift of knowledge as a royal ritual, and we have already examined the connections between the Purāṇic great gifts and the Atharvanic apotropaic rituals intended for the benefit of the kings. While the other Purāṇas describing the gift of knowledge do not envisage any functions for monarchs, the presence of appeasement procedures is a constant feature in all sources. The small, recent manuscripts on the pustakadāna from Nepal, a place where the Śivadharmottara and the corpus it belongs to had thrived,[126] seem to point not only at the popularity of the practice, but also at a possible ritual use of the Purāṇic texts, among which however the Śivadharmottara itself is never quoted —probably due to the stronger Śaiva sectarianism of the ritual described by this text in comparison to the versions proposed by other Purāṇas. Moreover, the association with the consecratory mantra of the Viṣṇudharmottara, a Purāṇa whose ties to royal power have repeatedly been stressed,[127] brings us back to the connection with royal rituals and apotropaic consecrations that the Śivadha-rmottara had already suggested. Besides this, the function of the Viṣṇudharmottara’s consecratory mantra, running on the margins of the pages, is unclear: whether the layout suggests that this mantra had to be chanted during the pustakadāna, or vice versa—that a ritual manuscript donation and worship had to take place on the occasions when this mantra was used—the only possible conclusion is that those who produced and used this manuscript also understood a link between both performances.

At this point, it will be clear to the reader that among the extensive array of Sanskrit literature written for the laity, the single most important source for the topics under investigation is the Śivadharmottara. There are several factors that justify the importance attributed to the account of the Śivadharmottara in a study on the non-Buddhist ‘cult of the book’. First of all, this work seems to attribute a high relevance to the gift of knowledge and, in general, to instructions on how to correctly deal with the manuscripts of scriptures: the entire second chapter of the Śivadharmottara, consisting of 193 anuṣṭubh verses to which the abundant manuscript tradition appended the title ‘Chapter on the Gift of Knowledge’ (Vidyādānādhyāya), is entirely devoted to the description of the various possible understandings of this practice. Moreover, chapter 6 gives prescriptions encouraging respectful behaviour towards manuscripts along with the necessity of worshipping the manuscripts whenever they are used, accompanied by a list of punishments for those who do not follow these principles; chapter 12, which is the last chapter of the work, dedicates forty of its final stanzas to the public performance of ritual manuscript readings, again mentioning the gift of knowledge. Manuscripts of the Śivadharmottara moreover seem to confirm that the rituals described in this text were in fact put into practice for the manuscripts of the text themselves (see § 2.5).

The internal relevance that the Śivadharmottara assigns to the gift of knowledge is related, on the one hand, to the clear political sense in which this ceremony is conceived, on which we have already commented; and, on the other hand, to the salvific function attributed to knowledge, in this case intended as gnosis. The political dimension of this ritual is not only highlighted by the direct request for the involvement of the monarch in the worship and donation of the manuscripts, but also by the other activities that the text includes under the label of ‘gift of knowledge’, namely the patronage offered to the monastic community, the public recitation of texts, and the sponsoring of teaching activities in general. In anticipation of the great rewards awaiting the donors in their next lives, the royal sponsorship is somehow reciprocated by the Śaiva masters with the performance of a ritual of great appeasement (mahāśānti) for the king and his kingdom. In the intentions of the Śivadharmottara authors, the ritualization of the use of manuscripts was far from being just a legitimizing strategy to extoll the status of scriptures through worship, as the cult and donation of knowledge were deeply embedded in the dynamics of the Śaiva community, namely between initiated and lay followers, amid a historical background that could be that of the seventh century,[128] a formative period for Śaiva literature and the threshold of the Śaiva Age.[129] On the other hand, the ‘fivefold sacrifice of knowledge’ (pañcaprakāraṃ jñānayajñaṃ), a notion that overlaps with that of the ‘yoga of knowledge’ (jñānayoga), treated in chapters 3 and 10, is strongly connected to the topic of the donation of knowledge. The Śivadharmottara univocally attributes to this yoga of knowledge the power of emancipation from the endless transmigration of saṃsāra. The connection between these three notions—the gift of knowledge, the sacrifice of knowledge, and the yoga of knowledge—is all but straightforward, especially as far as the link between the former and the last two is concerned; at the same time, it is undeniable that there is ultimately a connection, which explains the salvific power at times ascribed to the practice of the gift of knowledge by the Vidyādānādhyāya (see § 1.3). This also inevitably calls to mind the early Vedic notion of the ‘five great sacrifices’ (pañcamahāyajña), of which the Śivadharmottara’s ‘fivefold sacrifice of knowledge’ seems to be a re-adaptation owing in part to the developments that this notion had undergone in the Dharmaśāstra and the epics. In this respect, the Śivadharmottara is in agreement with the medieval digest-writers, who more explicitly link the gift of knowledge to the Vedic ‘sacrifice of the brahman’ (brahmayajña), one of the five great sacrifices (see § 3.2).

Besides the exhaustiveness and internal relevance the Śivadharmottara affords to the topic of the gift of knowledge, and overall to the ritualization of practices involving the handling of manuscripts, a further factor accounting for the centrality of this work in a study of the medieval cult of the manuscript is the popularity enjoyed by this text, testified by the wide dissemination and abundance of its manuscript tradition, spreading from Nepal to Tamil Nadu and counting, according to a rough estimate, about 85 specimens.[130] This popularity is moreover confirmed by indirect tradition, given that the Śivadharmottara has been silently reused and expressly quoted by a variety of works across India, ranging from medieval Purāṇas to early modern ritual manuals. The Vidyādānādhyāya of the Śivadharmottara had a significant influence, for instance, on chapter 91 of the Devīpurāṇa, containing a description of the gift of knowledge that shows patent textual reuse of the Śivadharmottara, which is also the source for the Devīpurāṇa’s chapters 127 and 128 (see Appendix 2 and §§ 1.3, 2.1 and 2.5). The borrowings traceable in chapter 91 are remarkable in the history of the gift of knowledge since, while the Śivadharmottara was rarely quoted by medieval digest-writers (nibandhakāras) on Dharma, and not at all concerning the gift of knowledge,[131] the Devīpurāṇa has on the contrary been quoted more extensively on a variety of subjects, including that of the gift of knowledge.[132] The most important medieval digest-writers, Lakṣmīdhara, who wrote the Kṛtyakalpataru in twelfth-century Uttar Pradesh, and Hemādri (thirteenth century), author of the Caturvargacintāmaṇi and active in Maharashtra (amply discussed below; see chapter 3), are examples. In the chapters on the gift of knowledge that they insert in the respective sections on gifting in their works, they each quote about 50 stanzas from Devīpurāṇa 91, and many of the quoted stanzas can ultimately be traced back to Śivadharmottara’s Vidyādānādhyāya.

The exposition of the gift of knowledge in Śivadharmottara’s chapter 2, reflected almost literally (though partially) in the Devīpurāṇa, follows a pattern that is also attested in those Purāṇas that do not show any direct textual borrowings from the Śivadharmottara. However, their descriptions can be associated with the Vidyādānādhyāya due to a shared terminology and a common structure and sequence for ritual activities. This applies, for instance, to the now lost Nandipurāṇa, which is by far the single most quoted source among the medieval digestwriters; the more than 120 stanzas that this Purāṇa dedicates to the gift of knowledge also makes for the longest extant full passage from this text, whose position in the religious history of early medieval India is difficult to assess because of the paucity of its attestations. Furthemore, there are shorter and less influential Purāṇic accounts of ceremonies that are either called the ‘gift of knowledge’ or that in some form resemble the gift of knowledge described in the major sources, such as that of Agnipurāṇa 1.63—which actually belongs to a set of chapters likely borrowed from the Hayaśīrṣapāñcarātra (see § 4.2)—or the Bhaviṣyottarapurāṇa, which is quoted in the twelfth century by Aparārka in his commentary on the Yājñavalkyasmṛti. The similarity of these minor testimonies to the Śivadharmottara in terms of lexical choices and ritual performance is also striking, as it points to a shared background of ritual practice and complex textual interplay.

‘Manuscript of Śiva’ (śivapustaka) or ‘manuscript of Śaiva knowledge’ (śivajñānapustaka) are some of the expressions with which the Śivadharmottara denotes the manuscript that is the focus of the ritual activities described in detail in chapter 2; these titles denote Śiva not only as the author of the teachings contained in the texts (see § 2.5), but also as the final recipient of the manuscript. Such a phrase includes the Śivadharmottara and Śaiva scriptures in general; it is also attested in the Devīpurāṇa, another major source on the topic, which uses the same expression in 91.53 to refer to the manuscript during the gift of knowledge, and in fact attributes the knowledge revealed in its own text to Śiva, who is also the main deity whose cult is recommended in the few surviving fragments of the Nandipurāṇa. The textual sources for the study of the gift of knowledge and the use of manuscripts as ritual foci in the Hindu tradition are therefore primarily ‘books of Śiva’, as it is in the Śaiva cultural world that these practices gain importance in the context of the definition of scriptural authority.

Significant portions from Śivadharmottara’s chapter 2, as well as from the rest of the work, are reused in later tantric works, like the Haracaritacintāmaṇi (‘Thought-Gem of the Destroyer’s Adventures’), by thirteenth-century Kashmiri author Jayadratha (see § 1.3 and Appendix 2); at the same time, the many literal borrowings from the Śivadharmottara’s Vidyādānādhyāya traceable in the Śaiva Siddhānta scripture Uttarakāmika contributed to the construction of what we can consider the tantric version of the Purāṇic gift of knowledge, namely the ritual of the ‘installation of the throne of knowledge’ (vidyāpīṭhapratiṣṭhā; see chapter 4). Śaiva ritual manuals and compendia from the sixteenth century, like the Kriyāsāra by Nīlakaṇṭhaśivācārya—many parallels of which are traceable in the Śivārcanācandrikā by Appayya Dīkṣita—or the Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati by Vedajñānaguru II also base their prescriptions concerning the worship and installation of the throne of knowledge on the testimony of the Uttarakāmika and the Śivadharmottara, which Vedajñāna quotes alongside tantric scriptures (§ 4.3).

The Śivadharmottara, moreover, reflecting the views of lay Śaiva worshippers of Lakulīśvara (see § 1.3), must have been influential among the Kālamukhas, a Śaiva sect associated with the cult of Lakulīśvara and mainly attested in epigraphs from the Deccan and modern-day Karnataka. Among these documents, inscriptional evidence from the area attests the practice of vidyādāna and, in one case, confirms that the Śivadharmottara was known and was the source for their prescriptions on the gift of knowledge (see § 2.4). The influence that the Śivadharmottara had in the textual construction and dissemination of the knowledge of rituals that focused to varying degrees on the worship of manuscripts is therefore wide-ranging in terms of the geographical, chronological, and typological distribution of the texts involved. This qualifies the early Śaiva work as a key source of information on the growth and diversification of the cult of the manuscript in Hindu medieval traditions, offering an appropriate perspective to observe the common patterns of this cult along with the peculiarities that emerged in various contexts.

1.3The ‘Books of Śiva’

The title Śivadharmottara suggests that this text was ideally conceived as a ‘continuation’ (uttara), an ‘expansion’ or ‘further development’ of a work on ‘Śaiva Religious Rules’ (śivadharma). This deduction is borne out by fact, as a work called Śivadharmaśāstra (‘Treatise of Śaiva Religious Norms’) is widely attested in the manuscript tradition, which in most cases associates it with the Śivadharmottara. These two works, which remain critically unpublished, are each divided into 12 chapters; they address an audience of non-initiated Śaivas, whose main religious duties are regarded to be the performance of worship rituals and the offering of material support—in the form of dāna—to the community of initiated teachers and yogins. When transmitted together in the same manuscript, the Śivadharmaśāstra always precedes the Śivadharmottara, which is a sign that, according to tradition, they form an established sequence. Their titles recall cases such as those of the Viṣṇudharma and the Viṣṇudharmottara, or the Sauradharma and the Sauradharmottara, conceived for the lay Vaiṣṇava and Saura followers, respectively. However, the Śivadharmottara does not openly portray itself as connected to the Śivadharmaśāstra, nor does it make any explicit reference to the work that is supposed to precede it. The text uses the word śivadharma, mostly in the plural, to refer more generically to teachings on Śaiva religion (like those contained in the two texts), not necessarily to refer to a specific work bearing that title.[133] An example of this occurs immediately in the introductory stanzas of the Śivadharmottara, in which the contents of the text are summarized in the form of questions that the sage Agasti asks Skanda; the response to these requests provides occasion for the exposition of the Śivadharmottara:[134]

O Bhagavān, [just] by seeing you a good rebirth [comes to pass] even for a man of the lowest caste. Once he then falls from Heaven, he is reborn as a Brahmin for seven lives. (3) / Since, o Lord, you have compassion towards all beings, therefore tell me concisely the Dharma that is beneficial to all. (4) / People say that many kinds of religious norms (dharmas) have been taught by the god to the goddess, and they have all been heard by you. For this reason, I ask you: (5) / What are the main religious rules of the Śaivas (śivadharmas), and which are the features of Śiva’s speech? By which procedure is Śiva satisfied when he is worshipped in the liṅga? (6) / Moreover, it is said that the gift of knowledge is the supreme among all gifts; and it has been described in the Revelation (śruti) for no others than the best among the twice-borns: (7) / By means of what ritual procedure is this meritorious act brought about for all castes? And [divided into] how many [different] kinds has this unsurpassable gift of knowledge to be known?[135] (8) / By means of what meritorious actions done in this world do the householders, [who have] afterwards [become] inhabitants of Heaven, once they are born in the people’s world, perform the yoga of Śaṅkara? (9) / The sacrifice of action, the sacrifice of askesis, the self-study of the Vedas, meditation, and the sacrifice of knowledge: these are known as the five great sacrifices. (10) / And among these five great sacrifices, which one is remembered as the best?[136] And which are the features of the fruit [obtained] by gifting to those who rejoice in these five practices?[137] (11) / And how many distinctions between Dharma and Adharma are known? Of how many kinds are the paths for their realization, and which ones are characterized by them (scil. Dharma and Adharma)?[138] (12) / What are the marks of the people who inhabit heaven and hell [and] who have come again to earth, arising from the remnants of the sacrifice?[139] (13) / How do the body-owners free themselves from the terrible ocean of saṃsāra, mixed with the waves of Dharma and Adharma, abundant with the foam which is the anguish [experienced] by the embryos and so on?[140] (14) / Thus impelled, Skanda, illustrator of all questions, [leader of] the great [Gaṇa’s] army, after having revered the Great Lord, expounded (15) / The Śivadharmottara, which bestows the fruit of Heaven and liberation, which saves from the flow of hells, which is the treatise taught by Īśvara. (16)

The title Śivadharmottara is thus directly traceable in the text; its teachings claim to descend straight from Śiva, by whom Skanda and Nandikeśvara, the expounders of the Śivadharmottara and the Śivadharmaśāstra respectively, had been instructed.[141] This shallow frame narrative is parallel to that of the Śivadharmaśāstra, where we find Nandikeśvara disclosing the teachings of Śiva in response to the requests of the sage Sanatkumāra; the latter had asked Nandikeśvara for an easy, affordable set of teachings and rites that would allow common people to fulfill all their wishes. This corresponds to the ‘eternal Śivadharma’, which is contrasted with Vedic ritual. The latter is blamed for being expensive and ultimately unprofitable:[142]

O Bhagavān, knower of all doctrines, entirely devoted to the Śivadharma: all these [people] who gathered [here] desire to listen to the supreme doctrine. (6) / [Vedic] rituals, like the Agniṣṭoma, which need very expensive practices, [do] not abundantly [bestow] endless fruits, [though] requiring great labour and efforts. (7) / Since [these rituals] cannot be performed by twice-borns who are not wealthy, therefore do expound an easy means that is effective to realize all desires and obtain [all] goods, for the sake of all mortals: [this means is] the eternal Śivadharma. (8)

Similar notions are recalled in some verses from chapter 5 of the Śivadharmottara, in which the work is again mentioned by its title—yet this time in the slightly different variant of Śivadharmāgamottara—and the śivadharmas are once again said to be ‘manifold’ and classified into ‘endless branches’. These statements reveal a context in which the composition of similar texts for the laity, claiming direct descendance from the teaching of Śiva, was burgeoning, and stimulated reciprocal competition. Chapter 5’s description of the multiform śivadharmas that are all taught in the Śivadharmottara emphasises the importance of ritual (the karmayoga) as the core of the salvific path proposed by the text:[143]

Now, the teachings taught by Śiva in the further scripture on the Śaiva religious norms have to be known as manifold, and these are [classified] on the basis of the subdivision of the karmayoga. (1) / Devoid of the faults of violence, deprived of defilements and exertions, aimed at the welfare of all living beings, pure, very subtle, bestowing great fruits (2) / Divided into endless branches, solely grounded on the root that is Śiva, all [these], endowed with all the good qualities, are the eternal teachings of Śiva. (3) / Since they save from the harmful (aśiva) [and] are practiced by those who have cultivated [devotion to] Śiva (=the propitious), therefore [these] are remembered as the teachings of Śiva, which save from the ocean of transmigration. (4) / The avoidance of violence, patience, truthfulness, modesty, trustworthyness, control over the senses, munificence, ritual offerings, recitation of mantras, meditation: [this is] the tool to realize Dharma, divided into 10 parts (5).

The religion promoted by the Śivadharmaśāstra and the Śivadharmottara is thus mainly a religion of bhukti (‘enjoyment’), in which devotees strive to secure a very long afterlife in one of the celestial worlds, after which those who have generated the utmost merits can be reborn on Earth as powerful kings or wise Brahmins.[144] Only in a future rebirth will they have the opportunity to become initiated, and will thus attain final emancipation (mukti) from the cycle of existence (saṃsāra). The main pillar of this worldly religion is the worship of Śiva in his aniconic representation of the liṅga—although the use of iconic forms is also well attested[145] —and in the performance of gifts (dāna), either to support the community of initiated Śaiva yogins and teachers (ācārya), or in favour of other lay followers. The cult of the liṅga receives particular emphasis in the Śivadharmaśāstra, which dedicates chapters 3 to 5 and 7 to 9 to this topic.[146] As we have observed in the preceding paragraph, the sixth chapter of the text is notably dedicated to a long mantra for the performance of appeasement rites.[147] The śivayogins, practicing a form of sixfold yoga (ṣaḍaṅgayoga),[148] are regarded as the utmost religious figures. Both the Śivadharmaśāstra and the Śivadharmottara prove their connection with the Śaivism of the Atimārga in more than one respect,[149] by referring to practices connected with Pāśupata Śaivism—see for instance the activities and features of the yogin described in chapter 12 of the Śivadharmaśāstra,[150] or the list of 40 holy places given in the same chapter[151] —and to the cult of Lakulīśvara. Devotion towards the latter is especially relevant in the Śivadharmottara, which gives prescriptions for the installation of the icon of the god precisely in the context of the gift of knowledge.[152] Chapter 12 of the Śivadharmottara gives a brief depiction of the social order envisaged by the text by listing different categories of proper donees and connecting them with the extraordinary rewards reserved for their beneficiaries in the afterlife. Here the text establishes a hierarchy of recipients that starts with the arthin (a ‘supplicant’) and culminates in two figures: the Pāśupata, ‘follower of Pāśupati’, and the Mahāvratadhara, ‘holder of the greater observance’. These two are at the top of the classical Brahmanical taxonomy of the four estates (āśrama), here revisited through the use of Śaiva terminology:[153]

The one who would feed with faith the unmarried Śaiva student (śivabrahmacārin), once established in the town of Śiva he will have fun with divine enjoyments. (203) / The wise man who would feed one who is established as householder according to the Śaiva [doctrine on] the estates, he will reside in the town of Śiva, having fun with abundant enjoyments. (204) / The one who should worship the forest-dweller of the Śaiva [doctrine on] the estates, by means of tubers, roots, and so on, once established in the town of the Lord he will attain divine enjoyments. (205) / Having fed and worshipped with devotion [even just] one Pāśupata, he will rejoice in the world of Śiva with various great enjoyments. (206) / One who would give alms [even just] once to a Mahāvratadhara, he will be extolled in the world of Śiva among great, beautiful enjoyments. (207)

The nouns denoting the first three estates of the orthodox Brahmanical society as they are portrayed in post-Vedic Smṛti literature—the unmarried student (brahmacārin), the householder (gṛhastha), and the forest-dweller (vanaprastha)—are modified here by adding the adjective ‘Śaiva’ to their usual names. The fourth stage of life, which in traditional Brahmanical sources corresponds to the renunciant (samnyāsin), seems to bifurcate into two categories, the Pāśupata and the Mahāvratadhara. The text appears to suggest that both are the recipients of alms, but does not give any clues as to whether they are intended as two separate figures, or the ‘holder of the greater observance’ is understood here as a synonym for the Pāśupata. The Mahāvratadhara is the last among the categories of recipients mentioned in this paragraph, and therefore concludes the whole section. This reference conveys an important piece of information regarding the religious background against which the text was produced, thus providing a key for understanding the historical context of its practices.

Later non-Śaiva—though sometimes also Śaiva—sources resorted to the dichotomy between Pāśupatas and Mahāvratas (a synonym of Mahāvratadhara) to denote two distinct categories of non-tantric Śaiva observants:[154] the Pāśupatas, which usually denotes what scholars have also called the ‘Pāñcārthika system’,[155] and the Lākulas, whose observance is also referred to as the mahāvrata (the ‘greater observance’) in ancient sources; their scriptures, called pramāṇas, are now entirely lost.[156] These two groups are also accounted for in the depiction of Atimārga Śaivism available in the Niśvāsamukha, the introductory section of the Niśvāsa: Sanderson points out that the Niśvāsamukha knows Atimārga Śaivism as divided into two kinds (dviprakāraḥ, 4.130),[157] which are again the Pāñcarthika Pāśupata (whose tradition is called the atyāśramavrata, the ‘observance beyond the estates’, by the Niśvāsa) and the Lākulas, to whose observance the text refers by using the terms kapālavrata (‘vow of the skull’), lokātītavrāta (‘vow of those who have transcended the world’), mahāpāśupatavrata (‘great Pāśupata vow’), and mahāvrata. According to this view the Mahāvratas, identified with the Lākulas, are Pāśupata followers of Lakulīśa, just like the Pāñcārthikas.[158] The characterization of the observance of Pāśupata initiates as ‘beyond the estates’ complies with the depiction given by the Śivadharmottara, in which the Pāśupatas occupy the position that traditional accounts in the Dharmaśāstra reserved for the renunciants, who were conceived as already having transcended the āśrama system. As for the ‘greater observance’ of the Lākulas, in tantric and Purāṇic sources this likely corresponded to the ‘vow of the skull’ (kapālavrata),[159] whose main distinguishing attributes were the use of a human skull as an alms vessel, of a staff called khaṭvāṅga, as well as the association with impure substances and cremation grounds.[160] Lākulas/Mahāvratas can also be identified with the Kālamukhas, || a denomination attested both in northern and southern sources; the name is used in reference to another Śaiva sect that was associated with the ‘greater observance’, which can arguably correspond to the Lākulas.[161] This connection with the Kālamukhas is significant, as it is in Kālamukha environments that inscriptions from Karnataka exhibit their knowledge of the Śivadharmaśāstra and the Śivadharmottara, as well as the practice of the gift of knowledge (see § 2.4).

The concept of the ‘greater observance’ was thus known to the authors of our texts, who themselves were worshippers of Lakulīśvara. On the other hand, from the information provided by the Śivadharmaśāstra, we know that the mahāvrata they intended was not the ‘vow of the skull’ of the initiated Lākulas, nor did it share anything with the homonymous observance adopted by the Somasiddhāntin, another less-known current of Atimārga Śaivism.[162] Rather than being identified with the observance of the initiated Śaiva renunciant, the ‘greater observance’ of the Śivadharma has a secular, non-initiatic nature. For instance, the short chapter 9 of the Śivadharmaśāstra ends by declaring to have revealed[163] ‘This best among religious observances, the secret greater observance (mahāvrata) consisting of [the worship of the] śivaliṅga. This has been told by me to you, who are a devotee, [but] may not be transmitted to anybody’. These teachings had already been depicted as ‘secret’ and ‘esoteric’ (guhya) at the beginning of the chapter,[164] although the practice detailed here consists simply in the veneration of the liṅga. Moreover, this chapter does not seem to teach anything more esoteric than the rest of the text.[165] By means of this ‘greater observance’ all the main categories of living beings are said to have reached their aim in life: the devotee can directly reach Śiva, the deities have obtained their divine nature, and ascetics have reached emancipation from saṃsāra.[166] A proper definition of mahāvrata is given in chapter 11 of the Śivadharmaśāstra, which recalls the notion of the four life-stages of the Śaiva devotee (śivāśrama) that the Śivadharmottara sketches in stanzas 12.203–207. However, the classification known to the Śivadharmaśāstra is exposed less systematically than the one found in the Śivadharmottara. While the latter lists all the four stages together, and does so in accordance with a hierarchy corresponding to that of the Brahmanical tradition, the account of the Śivadharmaśāstra is less coherent, leaving a level of uncertainty as regards the correct distinction among the three figures—the chaste student, the forest-dweller, and the ascetic—who seem to mutually overlap in some respects. The main focus here is rather on the difference between the householder (gṛhastha) and the renunciant, identified with the chaste yogin who survives solely on forest products and alms, and is entirely devoted to the cult of Rudra (see above, fn. 150). Chapter 11 of the Śivadharmaśāstra defines the ‘greater observance’ in these terms:[167]

All those belonging to the stages of life have to be known as devoted to the meditation on Śiva, pacified, totally intent on the religious teachings of Śiva, devoted to Śiva, belonging to the Śaiva stages of life (46) / There are eight characteristics of the greater observance that have been taught by the Lord [and] have to be respected by the Śaiva devotees: this is the best among all observances, [since] here Dharma is accomplished. (47) / Devotion towards Śiva, constant patience, refrain from violence, equanimity towards everybody, contentedness, truthfulness, not stealing, chastity: this is the group of eight characteristics. (48)

The characteristics attributed to the mahāvrata by Śivadharmaśāstra 11 apply to the different stages in the life of a Śaiva devotee, and simply correspond to the adoption of good, respectful behaviour, henceforth not implying renuciation or the embracing of an ascetic life. In fact, the list seems to be written from the perspective of the lay householders who represent the target audience of the Śivadharmaśāstra and the Śivadharmottara, which therefore propose a lay-oriented interpretation of a term that had been repeatedly associated with the hardship of a renunciant’s life both in non-Śaiva as well as Śaiva sources. Going back to the text of Śivadharmottara 12.203–207, we can therefore conclude that only the Pāśupata was mentioned as the proper renunciant in the outline of the four life-stages, while the figure of the ‘holder of the greater observance’, with which the whole list of recipients (starting at 12.184) culminates, epitomizes all the Śaiva devotees—those who follow the norms of the Śivadharma, regardless of their status and condition. The mention of the mahāvrata may betray the intention of aligning the users of these texts with the highest figure of religious observant in certain traditions, although the explanation of the term points to a more prosaic meaning.

As shown by the stanzas that Śivadharmottara 12 dedicates to the identification of the different recipients, that of dāna is a central topic in this literature. This is confirmed by the quantity of text that both the Śivadharmaśāstra and the Śivadharmottara use to dictate the rules of gifting: the chapters containing instructions for this practice—and which in some cases are entirely devoted to it—are, in the Śivadharmaśāstra, chapters 5 (‘On the material substances of the worship of Śiva’, śivārcanadravyavidhi), 7 (‘On the rules for gifting’, dānadharma), 8 (‘On the fruits of the gift [addressed] to Śiva’, śivapradānaphala), and 12 (‘On the primary and secondary branches of the devotion towards Śiva’, śivabhaktyādyaśākhopaśākha); in the Śivadharmottara, chapters 2 (‘On the gift of knowledge’, vidyādāna), 4 (‘On the gift to the proper recipients’, satpātrapradāna), and 12 (‘On the procedures for the worship of Śiva’, śivārcanavidhi), although the topic is mentioned and instructions given in other parts of both texts. The gift of knowledge is thus once again conceived within the broader perspective of a practice that is on one hand the prime institution that regulates the financial relationships between lay sponsors and the community of initiates, while on the other hand being one of the means for accomplishing the worship of a deity, in this case Śiva. Both dimensions, the economic and the cultic one, are especially relevant for the gift of knowledge of the Śivadharmottara, because its construction hinges exactly on these two main presuppositions: devotion, as the manuscript and its recipients are worshipped ‘like Śiva’, earthly embodiments of the sovereign god (§ 2.1); and economic support as a consequence of that devotion, since the same people to whom the manuscript is donated become recipients of all the material objects whose donation is also regarded as a gift of knowledge (§2.4). The Śivadharmaśāstra and the Śivadharmottara build a theory of gifting that is overall identical to that of other Brahmanical sources,[168] with the exception that they put a stronger emphasis on devotion to Śiva in the definition of a gift. Just as the case of the four life-estates (āśrama), which become the ‘Śaiva life estates’ (śivāśrama) in the Śivadharmaśāstra, so does the dāna become primarily a śivadāna. As the Śivadharmaśāstra puts it in its fourth chapter, this is śive dattam, namely a gift addressed to Śiva and conceived as an aspect of his worship:[169]

Among all recipients, the supreme one is Maheśvara, since [he] saves [devotees] from decay in the very deep ocean of Hell. (12) / And due to the greatness of this recipient, the gift becomes undecaying. Therefore, those who desire unmeasurable fruits always have to give to him. (13) / The gift to Śiva, the oblation, the prayer, the worship ceremonies, bali oblations and offerings: this will really bestow huge fruits, no doubt about it! (14)

As a consequence, the best human recipients are those who are identified with Śiva and whose cult is thus equivalent to his own, that is the Śaiva yogins (śivayogin); this is noted several times in the Śivadharmaśāstra and becomes a central issue in the Śivadharmottara. In order to express this, the Śivadharmottara refers to the best recipients of a gift either by simply designating them as śivayogins (see Śivadharmottara 4.2), or by identifying them with ‘those who take delight in the Śaiva knowledge’ (śivajñānābhiyukta; see Śivadharmottara 2.83), the ‘knowers of the meaning of the Śaiva knowledge’ (śivajñānārthavedin; see Śivadharmottara 4.3), and the like. Further, in the chapter on the gift of knowledge, these seemingly distinct categories of recipients—the yogins and the masters of Śaiva knowledge—are the only ones to whom this donation is addressed in all of its forms (see §§ 2.1 and 2.5). The reference to the mastery over knowledge may recall the figure of the teacher (guru), who is worshipped throughout chapter 2 and presides over most of the ritual activities that amount to the gift of manuscripts; at the same time, it is not clear whether the master is regarded as being clearly separated from the yogin, as the form of yoga promoted by the texts, besides being called ‘sixfold yoga’ (see above), is also denoted as a jñānayoga, here better intended as the ‘method of knowledge’, after which both chapters 3 and 10 of the Śivadharmottara are named. This ambiguity is also evoked when the Śivadharmaśāstra describes the proper ‘Śaiva recipient’ (śivapātra) as threefold:[170] ‘The one who is a śivayogin, a holder of the Śaiva knowledge (śivajñānin) and devoted to the Śivadharma (śivadharmarata): thus has to be known this threefold characteristic of the Śaiva recipient.’ In spite of the simplicity of this description, it remains unclear whether this stanza describes the śivayogin alone, or gives a brief outline of the three layers of the Śaiva community: the lay devotee at the base, then the teacher (ācārya), ‘holder of Śaiva knowledge’, and on top the yogin, who also epitomizes the first two figures. The passage from Śivadharmottara chapter 12, on the several recipients all culminating in the Pāśupata, considered both simple devotees and renunciants as suitable recipients of gifts. The centrality of ‘Śaiva knowledge’ (śivajñāna) becomes prominent in the Śivadharmottara’s chapter on the gift of knowledge for defining not only the prime recipients of this gift, but also the object to donate and worship, which is mostly denoted simply as ‘Śaiva knowledge’ (śivajñāna/śivavidyā; see § 2.5). During the rite, the lay devotees attend and sponsor the ritual activities, whereas teachers (ācārya) supervise the ceremony, are worshipped several times together with the manuscript and eventually receive the Śaiva knowledge, embodied in the manuscript, when this is donated to the ‘Śaiva hermitage’ (śivāśrama). Throughout the chapter, teachers and śivayogins are furthermore designated as the addressees of the various donations that overall qualify as gifts of knowledge (see § 2.4).

The Śivadharmottara devotes the whole of the fourth chapter to praising the donation addressed to the śivayogins and those who are experts of the Śaiva knowledge, both by remarking on the meritoriousness of this act and by stressing the identity of these recipients with Śiva. This expedient is used to justify why only a gift made to them corresponds to a gift made to Śiva: the underlying idea is that the yogins should meditate on Śiva when receiving or enjoying the gift, so that it will automatically result in a donation to the god. Therefore, in the case of a gift of food (annadāna), the Śivadharmottara maintains,[171] ‘If the yogin eats food while uninterruptedly meditating upon Śiva, then this food will be eaten directly by Śiva’. The second part of the chapter is dedicated to describing the unfit recipient (apātra), while the conclusion stresses the importance of trustworthiness in compliance with the principles of the Brahmanical gift:[172] ‘It has to be known that the group of four [elements] that start with the proper recipient is based on trustworthiness.’

It comes as no surprise that the Brahmanical tradition regards the Śivadharmaśāstra and the Śivadharmottara as orthodox texts. The fact that the Purāṇas habitually include a Śivadharma in the canon of the eighteen Upapurāṇas (lit. ‘Minor Purāṇas’),[173] and mention these texts in association with traditional literature, such as the epics and the Purāṇas themselves, is proof thereof. For instance, the list available in Kūrmapurāṇa 1.1.16–20, often quoted in later digest-authors, states:[174] ‘The fourth [Upapurāṇa], whose title is Śivadharma, was recited by Nandīśa in person’, a possible reference to Nandikeśvara, the original expounder of the Śivadharmaśāstra, whose colophons often describe it as having been ‘taught by Nandikeśvara’ (nandikeśvaraprokta).[175] Śivadharmas, in the plural, are furthermore mentioned by the Bhaviṣyapurāṇa in a passage that associates them with Purāṇas and Itihāsas:[176]

The eighteen Purāṇas, as well as the Rāmayāṇa, the treatises like the Viṣṇudharma and the works of the Śivadharma, o Bhārata, and the fifth Veda of Kṛṣṇa that is known as Mahābhārata, and the Saura [scriptures] told by Manu, o great Lord, king of Dharma: for these the sages proclaim victory!

These verses are also quoted by the twelfth-century author Aparārka in his commentary on Yājñavalkyasmṛti 1.7,[177] which mentions the crucial topic of dharmamūlatva, the condition of ‘being rooted in the Dharma’. Since only those texts that are recognized as such can be considered legitimate sources of religious duty, Aparārka here discusses the notion of authoritative scriptures, and disputes the validity of ‘Śaiva, Pāśupata, and Pāñcarātra scriptures’ (śaivapāśupatapāñcarātraśāstra). The Bhaviṣyapurāṇa quotation is introduced at a point where Aparārka prohibits the practice of rituals that are prescribed in non-Brahmanical sources, only allowing the version of these rites that is available in Brahmanical texts. With specific reference to the installation procedures, Aparārka introduces the Bhaviṣyapurāṇa quotation mentioning the Śivadharma by stating,[178] ‘Thus, also regarding the ritual of installation (pratiṣṭhā), only the procedures expounded in the Purāṇas and similar [literature] have to be accepted, not others; for solely these [texts] have been ascertained in the Bhaviṣyapurāṇa as a means of knowledge regarding hybrid Dharma (vyāmiśradharma)’. Aparārka, however, admits that Brahmanical officiants might at times practice initiation according to the procedures explained in the Tantras, provided that this applies only to certain phases of the ritual, and that the officiants do not undergo Śaiva initiation.[179] These concessions, along with the acknowledgement of a form of ‘mixed’ or ‘hybrid’ dharma (vyāmiśradharma), namely a contamination of Vedic practices by means of tantric elements,[180] is the proof that such contamination between Vedic and tantric practices was unavoidable at that point.

The Śivadharmaśāstra and the Śivadharmottara enjoyed great popularity in Nepal, where they kindled the growth of a whole collection of analogous Śaiva works, probably on account of the success enjoyed by Śaivism from the seventh century onward in this region. These works are transmitted together in a large number of multiple-text manuscripts, among which are some very early and well preserved specimens.[181] This circumstance has induced scholars to speak of a ‘Śivadharma corpus’, which includes the following titles, given here according to the most common arrangement in the multiple-text manuscripts:[182] 1. Śivadharmaśāstra; 2. Śivadharmottara; 3. Śivadharmasaṃgraha, ‘Compendium of Śaiva Religious Rules’; 4. Umāmaheśvarasaṃvāda, ‘Dialogue between Umā and the Great Lord’; 5. Uttarottaramahāsaṃvāda, ‘Great Dialogue [Made of] Questions and Answers’; 6. Śivopaniṣad, ‘Essential Teachings of Śiva’; 7. Vṛṣasārasaṃgraha, ‘Compendium on the Essence of the Bull [of Dharma]’; and 8. Dharmaputrikā, ‘Daughter of Dharma’. A ninth work called Lalitavistara is so far attested only in a Nepalese manuscript preserved in Calcutta at the Asiatic Society of Bengal, which according to the colophon[183] is dated to NS 156 (1035–36 CE), thus being the earliest dated manuscript in the collection. The earliest manuscript so far identified in the bulk of the Śivadharma tradition could be dated to the late ninth century, but instead of transmitting the whole ‘corpus’ it contains only the Śivadharmottara;[184] the earliest manuscript attesting this corpus of texts, though not in its definitive form, might be from no later than the tenth century.[185] All these texts, claiming to derive their authority from Śiva himself, regulate the religious duties of the community of lay, non-initiated Śaivas; while the composition of the Śivadharmaśāstra and the Śivadharmottara does not reveal traces of tantric influence, other texts of the Nepalese corpus clearly do.[186] Tantric literature, however, never produced its own works for the laity, and presumably had to rely on the authority of the Śivadharma corpus for the religious practice of those who were not able to perform post-initiatory rites.[187]

The Śivadharmaśāstra and the Śivadharmottara are the only works of the corpus to also be attested in India, both in direct and in indirect tradition, which is evidence for the knowledge of these two texts in Kashmir, Bengal, and Tamil Nadu. This scenario could suggest that the transmission of the Śivadharmaśāstra and the Śivadharmottara bifurcated at an early stage: after being composed in India, possibly in the north, where centres of Atimārga Śaivism are well attested, they could have reached Nepal along the same paths that have recently been traced for the transmission of the Skandapurāṇa.[188] This work, strongly connected with the Pāśupata environments of early medieval northern India, shares a similar background as the Śivadharma, as well as significant textual parallels with these texts.[189] From northern India, the Skandapurāṇa manuscripts were brought to Nepal; Bakker identifies two main periods in medieval history when this could have happened, thanks to easier communication between northern India and Nepal induced by favourable political conditions. These periods are at the end of the seventh century, between 670 and 700 CE, when the later Guptas had re-established better relationships with the Licchavi of Nepal; and the eighth century, when the Pāla king Dharmapāla controlled a large part of eastern India.[190] According to his reconstruction, resting on the philological analysis made by Yokochi, the two Indian hyperarchetypes[191] of the Skandapurāṇa could have entered Nepal at these two distinct times in history, thus becoming the archetypes of the early Nepalese manuscripts of the text. Even though the work on the Śivadharma is still at an early stage,[192] these considerations on the transmission of the Skandapurāṇa could be a starting point for an analogous study on the Śivadharmaśāstra and Śivadharmottara, whose composition in northern India and transmission to Nepal before the ninth century, when the earliest manuscript is attested, may have been favoured by the same political context referred to by Bakker.

Besides the general background of the work provided in the preceding pages, the specifics of the gift of knowledge described by the Vidyādānādhyāya of the Śivadharmottara must also be understood within the immediate context of the chapters preceding and following it. As already noted by Sanderson,[193] the chapter immediately preceding the Vidyādānādhyāya contains frank injunctions on the conversion of the monarch to the Śivadharma, and thus makes an important premise to the ceremony described in chapter two. The exposition of the Śivadharmottara following Agasti’s questions starts in chapter 1 by extolling the virtues of trustworthiness (śraddhā), in this case understood as the faith constituting the essence of all Śaiva teachings and the only means through which Śiva can truly be attained.[194] This introduces the topic of the infallibility of the speech of Śiva, which is considered trustworthy because the Lord is not affected by any defects, and as a consequence he cannot say anything but the truth.[195] These teachings are ultimately condensed into the six-syllable mantra ‘oṃ namaḥ śivāya’, ‘Oṃ, praise to Śiva’, whose repetition is said to replace the knowledge of all treatises and the performance of all rites.[196] These stanzas, along with others from the following chapters, have been borrowed and variously readapted by the thirteenth-century poetic work Haracaritacintāmaṇi in its chapter 30, which is presented as a small compendium of the Śivadharmottara and other sources.[197] In fact, this text shares numerous stanzas with the early Śaiva work, either in the form of literal parallels or as faithful rewordings (see Appendix 2) in which the text of the Śivadharmottara is rearranged in order to convey slightly different contents.[198]

The two topics of the greatness of faith, by means of which all knowledge is grasped, and the trustworthiness of Śiva’s teachings, which consist solely of faith, are definitely bound together in the third step of this line of thought: a king who cares about the welfare of the state should address his faith towards the true teachings (and teachers) of the Śivadharma, thus leading his subjects to the path of justice:[199]

The king has to worship the teacher who expounds the words of Śiva as if he were Śiva, for the welfare of other beings and his own success. (47) / For the prosperity of the world, [the teacher] should bind the king to the Śivadharma; from their bond this world will be pure [and] entirely devoted to Dharma. (48) / Whatever religion the men’s chief practices with devotion, the people embrace the same one, due to his authority or out of fear. (49) / […] For the reason that, when the king’s conduct is oriented to the Dharma, [his] subjects will be entirely devoted to the Dharma [as well], for this reason [the guru] should awake the sovereign out of compassion for all beings. (55)

This functions as a piece of advice both to the kings and to the Śaiva teachers, who should do their best in order to convert even the most reluctant kings to the Dharma of Śiva:[200]

He will awake the stupid ones with a stratagem, out of fear [or] cupidity [and] with flattery; alternatively, [he] should bind the greedy [kings] to the Dharma by means of mantras, magic plants, and magic rituals, etc. (56)

Converting the king to the Śivadharma is firstly seen in light of the argumentative process whose premises are the perfection of the teachings of Śiva and the possibility of grasping them only through faith. This faith had to be addressed to the teacher (which, as often stated in the second chapter, is the same as Śiva), but in case this assertive reasoning failed to provoke the spontaneous conversion of the king, the teacher is supposed to intervene even by the use of trickery. The utilitarian reasons that lie behind this behaviour are disguised as an act of compassion towards all beings, which need to be led to the path of true Dharma. As has been observed by Sanderson, this passage is not only remarkable for the strikingly clear request of the king’s patronage, and for stressing the importance of securing his consent, but acquires even more relevance when read in connection with the expensive ceremony promoted in the following chapter, which focused on the veneration of the Śaiva scriptures and the fostering of Śaiva institutions.

A partial confirmation of the thematic connections existing between chapters 1 and 2 is given by the parallel of the Haracaritacintāmaṇi, which inserts Śivadharmottara 1.49 (‘Whatever religion the men’s chief practices with devotion, the people embrace the same one, due to his authority or out of fear’) exactly within a group of stanzas on the gift of knowledge modelled on the Vidyādānādhyāya (for more details on the exact correspondences, see Appendix 2). The adaptation of the original text of the Śivadharmottara brought about by the Haracaritacintāmaṇi does not only stress the link between the practice of the gift of knowledge and the involvement of monarchical donors, a requirement which is often evoked in the Vidyādānādhyāya; it more specifically connects the king with the soteriological power of pure knowledge—namely a knowledge that has been recovered or corrected by a wise person, as the Śivadharmottara elaborates—almost identifying the sovereign with the teacher:[201]

The wise man who, being a knowledgeable person, would recover or correct the Śaiva knowledge that has disappeared in the course of time, this is Maheśvara himself. (33ab)/ The one who, through the power of the Śaiva knowledge, saves a man who is drowning in the mud of transmigration, which ancestor could be compared to him? (34ab)/ Nobody will be able to tell the greatness of his merits. Śiva, in order to favor the world, took the form of this man. (35ab) / The one who gently sprinkles with the nectar of knowledge [a man] who is burnt by the fire of ignorance, who would not worship this as a king? By his command this world will be pure, entirely devoted to Dharma. (36) / Whatever religion the best of men practices with devotion, the people embrace the same one, due to his authority and out of fear. (37) / The one who, having copied the Śaiva treatise, would donate the manuscript, he gets the fruit of the gift of knowledge, with certainty. (38) / As high is the number of letters in the manuscript of the Śaiva knowledge, so many thousands of years the donor will live in the town of Śiva. (39) / In the place where the treatise of Śiva is venerated by the devotees as well as taught, there will be no calamities like famine and so on. (40) / There is the prosperity of the king and victory every day. For all the citizens there will be understanding of Dharma and happiness (41).

The overlap between the figure of the teacher and that of the king appears in Haracaritacintāmaṇi 30.36, the only stanza in this passage that does not have a direct parallel in the Śivadharmottara. It is invoked for eulogistic reasons, comparing the teacher, who saves people from transmigration by imparting them pure knowledge, to a king, but then it refers to the latter as a political figure by quoting Śivadharmottara 1.49. The following stanzas briefly mention the basic actions that constitute a gift of knowledge—the copying, veneration, and donation of the manuscript—and the benefits granted to the kingdoms and the king by the performance of these activities that are centered on the ‘treatise of Śiva’. This arrangement highlights the nature of the connection between the teacher and the king as established by the author of the Haracaritacintāmaṇi: as the teacher protects the knowledge of Śiva by saving it from corruption, then uses it to save others, so the king preserves that same knowledge by having it written down and making it the focus of ritual activities that he will support. Like the teacher, he also contributes to the spread of Dharma, and thus to the salvation of others, because the religion he chooses will automatically be adopted by all his subjects. Therefore, the author of the Haracaritacintāmaṇi sees a strong interdependence between the first two chapters of the Śivadharmottara, and links the practice of vidyādāna to the broader necessity of converting the king to the ‘true’ Dharma. This was arguably not too far from the intentions of the authors of the Śivadharmottara: through the performance of the gift of knowledge, the king is required to confirm his acceptance of the Śaiva religion by presiding over the veneration of its scriptures and by showing support to the main actors involved in the process of knowledge production and circulation.

In at least two cases, the benefits obtained from the performance of these meritorious actions are not limited to the usual, though impressive, set of afterlife enjoyments, since the text also envisages the possibility of achieving emancipation (mokṣa) for lay devotees. These passages deserve attention because they never mention, nor seem to imply, initiation as a requirement for attaining emancipation from rebirth, as if the text would admit the possibility that lay forms of religious practice could nonetheless pave the way to the end of transmigration. This is clearly expressed at least twice in the text. One passage is in stanzas 2.158–61, which state that due to the support given to the building of the ‘town of Śiva’ (on Earth), namely a Śaiva hermitage (see § 2.4), the devotee—in this case a king, as we understand from the reference to the queens who will accompany him in the afterlife (which he will reach ‘surrounded by his courtiers’, sāntaḥpuraparicchadaḥ, 2.159)—will actually reach the supramundane town of Śiva, where he will enjoy a long existence spent among pleasures and endowed with supernatural powers. Then,[202] ‘after a long time, by the power of the gift of knowledge, having practiced the jñānayoga, he is liberated in this very place’. Liberation is thus associated with the practice of the jñānayoga, the yoga/method of/through knowledge, which in this case does not seem to require going through a special initiation. Another reference to the possibility of achieving liberation without being reborn as an ascetic Brahmin is notably connected with teaching and listening to the śivajñāna, and is again included in the chapter on the gift of knowledge. Stanza 2.177, in accordance with the procedures for setting up the three maṇḍalas in the teaching hall, states:[203]

The one who, according to this procedure, listens to and recites the Śaiva knowledge, having obtained supreme happiness, at the end of [his] material life will attain liberation. (177)

The knowledge whose recitation is said to confer liberation is the ‘Śaiva knowledge’ (śivajñāna) that is donated as a gift of knowledge both in the form of a manuscript and by imparting oral teachings. The recitation of (texts belonging to) this branch of knowledge is based on the practice of reading from a manuscript, and is tightly connected with the worship and donation of the latter (§ 2.4). The statements on attaining liberation without having undergone any form of initiation, but by the sheer power of the teachings of the Śivadharma, are mainly connected to the practice of the jñānayoga, to which the Śivadharmottara often seems to refer by simply using the word jñāna. When the Śivadharma is defined as a means for liberation (mokṣopāya) in chapter 10 of the Śivadharmaśāstra, it is made clear that the liberating power is attributed to the jñānayoga, and that this knowledge arises from the teachings of the Śivadharma (Śivadharmaśāstra 10.43–44); at the same time, in chapter 3 of the Śivadharmottara, it is the jñānayoga, as opposed to the karmayoga, that is said to confer liberation on earth after several rebirths in the celestial worlds (see Śivadharmottara 3.3–11). The same chapter gives a very plain definition of this yoga of knowledge, whose constitutive elements are said to be five, namely ‘teaching, learning, explaining, listening, meditating’ (adhyāpanam adhyayanaṃ vyākhyāśravaṇacintanam, Śivadharmottara 3.14ab). In this form, therefore, the jñānayoga comes close to what the Dharmaśāstra tradition had called the ‘sacrifice of the brahman’ (brahmayajña), the daily recitation of the Vedic text that plays a role in the Purāṇic construction of the gift of knowledge (see § 3.2). At the same time, the understanding of jñānayoga proposed by this chapter, which is continuous with the chapter on vidyādāna, attributes to the practice of teaching and learning the salvific value of liberation from rebirth. Since this was ultimately the scope of the gift of the manuscript, as shown by the many references to its recitation found in the literary and inscriptional accounts on the gift of knowledge (see § 2.4), we understand why chapter 2 had gone so far as to predict the attainment of emancipation for those who took part in the teaching process.

Read in the light of chapter 3, however, the form of the knowledge whose transmission guarantees liberation is no longer mundane, text-based knowledge, but one that is purified of false notions (vikalpa 3.21), pure and focused (3.23), untouched by attachments (rāga 3.24). In this form, knowledge becomes an ascetic practice, and thus the opposite of the practice of ritual (karmayoga), which is what had initially allowed its production, preservation, and transmission: ‘By means of ritual’, reads the text of chapter 3,[204] ‘one reaches the gods, by means of ascetic practices the stage of the brahman; by gifting, [one receives] various enjoyments; from knowledge one attains liberation (41)’. The notions of gift and knowledge, which the text had bound together in the construction of the gift of knowledge, are split into two diverging ideas when the practice of knowledge equals that of ascesis. This idea is stretched so far that the text denies any ultimate validity to the practice of rituals, which are only meant for the observance of the ‘ignorant’, those who are not endowed with the salvific knowledge of Śiva, unlike the yogins, namely those who are involved in teaching, learning, and meditating upon it:[205]

The yogins who investigate theirself do not take refuge in the sacred places (tīrtha) rich in water, [nor] in the gods made of stone and clay (64) / Gods reside in fire for those who practice sacrifice; gods reside in the sky for the common people; [gods] are in the icons for the non-awakened; for the yogins, they reside in their own self. (65) / Yogins see Śiva in their own self, not in the icons; icons have been forged for the meditation of the ignorant. (66)

The icon, to which the manuscript can be assimilated in worship, is thus meant to be ultimately transcended in order for the devotee to reach the gods who enliven these images—just like the manuscript, the material embodiment of knowledge and worshipped on the model of the icons, will have to leave room for the emergence of a pure, all-encompassing, liberating knowledge.

An account of vidyādāna that is very close to that of Śivadharmottara chapter 2 is presented in chapter 91 of the Devīpurāṇa (‘Purāṇa of the Goddess’), a Śākta Śaiva scripture for the laity. The Devīpurāṇa and the Śivadharmottara are linked by a number of textual connections that extend far beyond the scope of these chapters alone, and the level of literality of these borrowings (see Appendix 2) proves that the people who composed the Devīpurāṇa had direct access to the text of the Śivadharmottara, which they must have considered an authority on certain topics. The Śivadharmottara chapters from which the Devīpurāṇa draws materials are essentially three: chapter 2 of the Śivadharmottara is reused in chapter 91 of the Devīpurāṇa, while chapter 12 of the Śivadharmottara, limited only to a portion of little more than 40 stanzas on the ritual recitation of manuscripts (see §§ 2.4 and 2.5), is reused in chapter 128, the last one in the Devīpurāṇa; another important textual borrowing comes from chapter one of the Śivadharmottara, of which 17 stanzas—especially those on the conversion of the monarch—are found in Devīpurāṇa’s chapter 127 (see Appendix 2 for details). The Śivadharmottara is thus reused by the Devīpurāṇa exactly where it concerns those topics constituting one of the main original aspects of the early Śaiva work, namely the veneration and ritual use of manuscripts, as well as the necessity of converting the monarch to the righteous path. The Devīpurāṇa, as will be shown, was after all a politically oriented Purāṇa, and therefore the choice of dealing with these specific subjects is not surprising, as they can all be deemed relevant from a political perspective.

Historical research has proven that the cult of the warrior goddess, such as the one that is also depicted by the Devīpurāṇa,[206] had had a strong appeal to north Indian royal families since the fifth century, and that this trend was also strengthened in the eastern regions in late medieval times. In her study on the figure of the warrior goddess of the Devīmāhātmya (‘Praises of the Goddess’) of the Mārkaṇḍeyapurāṇa, based on iconographic and textual sources, Yokochi argues that the evolving image of the demon-slaying goddess is based on a kingship model that can be traced back to the Vedic royal coronation (rājasūya), and that the Devīmāhātmya (early eighth century) succeeds in establishing such a warrior goddess as an accessory to royal power in early medieval times.[207] According to Yokochi’s reconstruction, this cult will further grow during the sixth to the eighth century, when the warrior goddess not only became popular but was even regarded as a protector of royal families in northern India. A connection with monarchical power is in fact a feature of many rituals described by the Devīpurāṇa, which are often linked to topics of war and statecraft. Multiple examples of this commitment are available in the text: to mention just a few, we recall here the three chapters devoted to the kingship ritual of the puṣyasnāna, the ‘bath of prosperity’ (chapters 65–68), or the frequent involvement of the monarch in worship rituals for the goddess. In the long chapter 50, devoted to the veneration of the different forms of the goddess, monarchical power is variously evoked both as a result of this worship and as a prerequisite of the worshippers: stanza 50.126ab, for instance, states that ‘the goddesses are granters of all desires, [they] increase the king’s kingdom’ (sarvakāmapradā devyo nṛparāṣṭravivardhanāḥ); at 50.143, the text prescribes that the goddess ‘has to be worshipped by the best among kings’ (pūjanīyā nṛpottamaiḥ). Furthermore, chapter 98 prescribes that rituals for the goddess Cāmuṇḍā must be performed ‘by kings for the sake of victory’ (vijayārthaṃ nṛpaiḥ, Devīpurāṇa 98.9). The text also gives several instructions on the methods of empowering weapons and royal insignia for the protection of the king and his kingdom.[208] The importance of monarchical figures in the Devīpurāṇa is after all stressed by the frame narrative of the text, which is unveiled in chapter 2, when king Nṛpavāhana asks the sage Agastya about[209] ‘the activity thanks to which one would become Lord of the Vidyādharas’; to this request, Agastya replies by promising to reveal[210] ‘that supreme teaching (vidyā) that was imparted by Śiva to Viṣṇu and by Viṣṇu to the Great Ancestor [Brahmā], [and] by this was further expounded to the Mighty [Indra]’.

The political dimension of religion is in fact so highly valued in the Devīpurāṇa that its authors carefully copied from Śivadharmottara’s chapter 1 a number of stanzas on the necessity of converting the king to the religion of Śiva: the first 17 stanzas of chapter 127 of the Devīpurāṇa are modelled on as many stanzas from Śivadharmottara’s first chapter, of which the Devīpurāṇa reuses stanzas 1.48–56, on the king’s conversion; stanzas 1.74cd–75, on the importance of teachings and devotion to the teacher; and stanzas 1.17–22ab, on faith (śraddhā) as the foundation of the validity of the teachings (see Appendix 2 for more details). Therefore, the author of the Devīpurāṇa chose to rearrange the stanzas of the Śivadharmottara in order to give priority to the main topic, the conversion of the king, and then logically connects this with the eulogy of śraddhā, the core of lay devotion and hence the means for forging an effective link between the king and the cult of the goddess. This link was less strong in the Śivadharmottara, where the verses on faith were placed at the beginning of the chapter and were thus not necessarily read together with the stanzas on the conversion of the monarch. The authors of the Devīpurāṇa, however, did not just copy these stanzas, but tried to adapt their contents to their audience, albeit using very simple expressive strategies. One way to realize this adaptation was by converting the occurrences of the word śiva into devī: thus the hemistich jagaddhitāya nṛpatiṃ śivadharme niveśayet (Śivadharmottara 1.48ab) becomes jagaddhitāya nṛpatiṃ devyā dharme niyojayet, ‘For the benefit of the world, [the teacher] should bind the king to the religion of the goddess’ (Devīpurāṇa 127.1ab). Still, a small number of references to Śiva and the ‘Śaiva knowledge’ (śivajñāna) slipped into the text unaltered, proving that the Śivadharmottara was indeed the source of these quotations. Significant are the Devīpurāṇa hemistichs 127.10cd and 11ab (corresponding to Śivadharmottara 1.75):[211] ‘The one who listens to the Śaiva knowledge according to rule and [the one who] proclaims it, these two go to the Śaiva knowledge; in the opposite case, [they go to] hell’.

Śiva is acknowledged as the author of the teachings forming the core of the revelation of the Devīpurāṇa, which has been described in secondary literature as belonging to the broad and rather vague category of the so-called ‘minor’ Purāṇas (Upapurāṇas), despite not being mentioned in any of the traditional lists.[212] This work is in fact associated with Śāktism, a religious and philosophical current that in the course of time was mainly subsumed under Śaivism; its focus was on the cult of Śiva’s divine power (śakti), embodied by his feminine counterpart Umā or Pārvatī.[213] The cult of female deities, dating back to early times, that had grown exponentially during the post-Gupta era[214] represents the main religious background of this work. On the other hand, the Devīpurāṇa proves to be rather eclectic: besides the prominent presence of royal rituals, myths, and prescriptions linked to the cult of the goddess, it also gives a number of practical instructions on the building of fortresses and towns, where images of the goddess or other tutelary deities have to be installed to ward off danger (chapters 72 and 73); chapters on traditional medicine are based on borrowings from the Carakasaṃhitā.[215] The cult of the goddess in her various aspects,[216] as envisaged by the Devīpurāṇa, thus has a patent worldly dimension, conferring protection against perils and the enjoyment of supramundane rewards on her devotees.[217] Hypotheses on the provenance of the Devīpurāṇa plausibly place it in present-day Bengal,[218] an area where the cult of the goddess is still prominent in contemporary practice, finding its utmost expression in the autumnal festival of the Navarātri.[219] As proven both by literary and inscriptional data, the worship of the goddess in the East Indian regions enjoyed the patronage of Pāla kings, who at the same time styled themselves as devotees of the Buddha and actively fostered Buddhist institutions.[220]

The text also gives great relevance to the cult of the divine Mothers —female deities worshipped in India from early times—,[221] which constitutes the background against which Devīpurāṇa’s chapter 91 on the gift of knowledge was composed. Chapter 91 of the Devīpurāṇa is part of a series of short chapters mainly devoted precisely to the cult of the Mothers; the first eight stanzas are a straightforward continuation of the topic of the preceding ones, while from stanza 91.8 onward the gift of knowledge is introduced exactly as a means of pleasing the Mothers:[222]

Reading [or] meditating upon treatises on the descents of the goddess[223] and those concerning Rudra and Viṣṇu, o dear son, the desired fruit is obtained; (8) / But the one who always performs the gift of knowledge in the house of the goddess, this person becomes venerable for everyone; he will reach the condition of being a seat of veneration (pūjāpada). (9) / The one who, in honour of the Mothers, would fall down [again] to the wealth-holding [Earth], right here on Earth he will become the only sovereign, o dear son! (10) / Moreover, the one who will provide, in honour of the Mothers, an umbrella, [as well as] a supply of water [and] fire at the approaching [respectively] of the rainy season, of summer, and winter, he will obtain everything he desires. (11) / I will explain the gift of knowledge, by means of which the Mothers are pleased; according to which procedure it should be copied [and] donated, hear this from us! (12)

Here, the simple reading and meditation upon a text is contrasted with a gift of knowledge, which implies the copying and donation of manuscripts (91.12), and is intended as a ceremony to be performed in a temple, therefore assuming a more public and religious dimension. Another main difference is that, while the activities mentioned at 91.8 are addressed to the three classes of texts belonging to the main religious currents of medieval devotion, the proper description of the gift of knowledge that starts after stanza 91.12 takes into consideration a greater variety of religious and mundane literature (see stanzas 91.13–15, discussed in § 2.5). Like the Śivadharmottara, the Devīpurāṇa does not introduce the description of the ritual from the very beginning of the chapter: it declares the intention of dealing with it at stanza 91.12, but then starts a proper account only at 91.37.

A comparison between chapter 91 of the Devīpurāṇa and chapter two of the Śivadharmottara reveals that at least 28 out of the 83 stanzas of the Devīpurāṇa chapter either literally parallel or have been modelled on stanzas from the Śivadharmottara, all from the Vidyādānādhyāya, with only one stanza corresponding to Śivadharmottara 1.74 (see Appendix 2). On closer inspection, the Devīpurāṇa only reused stanzas included in the range between Śivadharmottara 2.13 and 2.94, which means that the text included no more than the instructions focussed on the production, veneration, and donation of manuscripts, while excluding other aspects that enriched Śivadharmottara’s understanding of the gift of knowledge, such as the financial support offered to book recitations or to teaching activities, as well as to teachers and ascetics in general. Stanzas 91.16–39, preceding the account of the gift of knowledge, contain eulogistic statements on this gift and the practical advantages offered by the circulation of knowledge. As in the incipit of Śivadharmottara chapter 2, these stanzas from the Devīpurāṇa also seem to refer to the donation of knowledge as happening within the framework of a traditional teacher-pupil model, although the Devīpurāṇa then highlights the presence of manuscripts and their importance in the process of knowledge circulation:[224]

For the knowledgeable person does not [think that there are] gifts [that are] tantamount to the gift of knowledge, I think that that condition that only knowledge [bestows] is supreme. (22) / Listening, devotion emerges; [urged] by devotion, one sits intent upon the teacher, and this explains the scriptures of knowledge. Knowledge resides in manuscripts, o king! (23) / Those who discriminate between pure and impure by being aware of the distinctions of knowledge find the realisation of all desires; therefore, knowledge has been spread. (24) / A gift [that is] better than the gift of knowledge, by donating which one reaches Śiva, who is the supreme cause, has never and will [never] exist. (25)

In spite of the richness of these accounts, the most quoted single source on vidyādāna by the medieval digest-writers is neither the Śivadharmottara (almost unknown to the authors of digests) nor the Devīpurāṇa (which, on the contrary, was very popular), but the Nandipurāṇa. This work, like the other two sources, gives a long and detailed account of vidyādāna, keeping the focus on knowledge in its written form, though it also encompasses rather large sections devoted to the praise of the traditional aural fruition of teachings. Its parallels with the Śivadharmottara are rather loose as far as the literal text is concerned, but when it comes to the main structure of the ritual the two texts could almost be read in parallel, and they both offer a rather complex understanding of the procedures to consider under the label of the gift of knowledge. The long passage on the gift of knowledge, as quoted by Lakṣmīdhara, has an almost tripartite structure, in which an introduction on the identification of the books and fields of knowledge that should be donated as a gift of knowledge (Dānakāṇḍa 12.61–84NP)[225] is followed by praise of the gift of knowledge, and by a long eulogy of the teacher (Dānakāṇḍa 12.85–107NP). The main bulk of the text gives a description of the different variants of a ritual called the gift of knowledge, all of them involving the use of manuscripts (Dānakāṇḍa 12.108–181NP).

Due to the loss of the whole work and the survival of only some quotations through the medieval digest-writers, there is not much we know about this text. That the Nandipurāṇa was also a ‘book of Śiva’ can be assumed not only on the basis of its title, but also from the many references that the 121 stanzas on vidyādāna make to Śiva and Śaivism: the stanzas on the praise of the teacher, for instance, often celebrate the latter by comparing him to Śiva, called Pinākin (Dānakāṇḍa 12.92NP), Mahādeva (Dānakāṇḍa 12.94NP), Śiva (Dānakāṇḍa 12.99NP), and Śaṅkara (Dānakāṇḍa 12.102NP). Before addressing the preparation of the manuscript for copying, the text prescribes the veneration of three gods, i.e. Rudra, Brahmā, and Janārdana, another name for Viṣṇu (Dānakāṇḍa 12.108 NP). It is then designated as a ‘temple of Śiva’ (śivamandira), the place where knowledge is donated, and where the sponsor should subsequently provide food to ‘Brahmins and devotees of Rudra’ (Dānakāṇḍa 12.132 NP). Hazra notes the existence of other Nandipurāṇa stanzas, quoted by twelfth- and thirteenth-century digest-writers, that seem to reveal a Śaiva affiliation for the authors of this Purāṇa, as they recognize Śiva as the ultimate recipient of donation.[226] Further stanzas attributed to the Nandipurāṇa by the digests on gifting—as the Nandipurāṇa is mostly quoted with regard to this topic—refer to Brahmins and gods in general as recipients of gifts.[227] Still, one of these passages clearly attributes to Śiva a primacy over the other gods: after stating that the merits earned with gifts of food are multiplied tenfold when this gift is addressed to the chosen deity, the text declares,[228] ‘For one who would give food to Brahmā, the fruit is doubled; having given food to Viṣṇu, one enjoys a fruit [that is] two times bigger than that. By giving food to Rudra, this fruit is quadruplicated’.

The three most exhaustive literary sources in which the gift of knowledge is described thus present the reader with three accounts that are reciprocally close as far as the main ritual procedures are concerned. In the following chapter, this will facilitate an attempt at an almost synoptical reading of the three sources, along with several other minor accounts, while examining the technical details of this ceremony. At the same time, each of the texts insert their treatment of the gift of knowledge into a different context and, despite their common devotion to Śiva, the position of these sources within the broader context of medieval Śaivism is significantly diversified. One may thus rightly expect that their doctrinal differences would also substantially affect their understanding of a ritual that was primarily focused on the worship of manuscripts of scriptural authorities. This deduction is right, and the study of the procedures connected with the ritual treatment of manuscripts can indeed also offer an insight into sectarian strategies of scriptural legitimation, as I will argue in the following chapters.

2The Task of Writing and the Art of Giving

2.1The Gift of Knowledge

In its simplest form, the gift of knowledge in the Purāṇic tradition is a ritual focused chiefly on manuscripts: the main steps of their production are ritualized and culminate in the public donation of the newly produced manuscript to a religious institution, usually a hermitage or a temple. This brief description does not cover all the variants of the ritual and the implications at stake in the notion of ‘donation of knowledge’. The same category of dāna not only includes both the financial support of public manuscript readings and the fostering of institutions and people devoted to teachings; the sources also admit a further possibility, namely that the gift of knowledge could also consist of the oral transmission of teachings from teacher to students. This is what seems to be implied by the incipit of Śivadharmottara’s Vidyādānādhyāya, which defines the gift of knowledge as follows:[229]

[The gift] that awakens disciples who are devout to Śiva, after having taught them step by step, this is called a gift of knowledge, according to the authority of the knowledge of Śiva. (2) / The one who, depending on the disciples, would teach [them] using words in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and local languages, is traditionally held as teacher. (3)

The context of this definition is certainly that of traditional teaching, and it is possible that the notion of the gift of knowledge, which also includes the practical support offered to teachers, may have been extended, by analogy, to the traditional method of oral instruction. Literary sources often evoke this interplay between tradition and innovation, oral recitation and fruition of texts versus their materiality, especially in their attempt to integrate the traditional recitation of the Veda with the Purāṇic ritual of the gift of manuscripts (see in particular § 3.2). For now, it suffices to state that, when the gift of knowledge is intended in the sense of a ritual, it is univocally connected with knowledge in its written form, as testified by stanza 2.13 of the Śivadharmottara, which is the proper starting point for the ritual account. Here the text proclaims its programmatic intentions, stating,[230] ‘To the advantage of wealthy people, I will explain the gift of knowledge, which is based on [the use of] manuscripts: the procedure according to which [a manuscript] is copied and donated, and what is the fruit of that.’ This procedure thus selected the rich sponsors as its audience, as well as the manuscripts to be written down and donated as the main ritual focus. This concise though comprehensive definition accurately delineates the boundaries of the understanding of this practice in the early Śaiva text; nonetheless, it will have to be updated several times throughout the chapter.

2.1.1The Introductory Procedures

The Śivadharmottara does not specify which period of the year is appropriate for performing a gift of knowledge, nor whether it has to be carried out within a fixed amount of time: the overall time span of the rite depends on that of the copying, since it is only at its conclusion that the donation can actually take place. According to all the descriptions of the gift of knowledge available in literary sources, the most relevant ritual activities are carried out on the first and last day of copying. An initial stage of the first-day rites is the preparation of a specially arranged pavilion provided with auspicious embellishments (see Śivadharmottara 2.14–22), where the worship and copying of the manuscript will take place. The Nandipurāṇa, which begins its description of a gifting ritual at stanzas 105 to 107, introduces it by praising knowledge as a ‘chief gift’ (vidyā mukhyaṃ dānānāṃ, Dānakāṇḍa 12.105NP), and by highlighting that its donation is in compliance with the basic norms on gifting taught in the Dharmaśāstra.[231] This is the source that gives more details on the location of the main ritual activities of the gift of knowledge, though the information it supplies is very generic: the right place for the donation is identified with the ‘perfect temples of the gods’ (surālayeṣu siddheṣu, 12.107NP), while the appropriate time for its performance is simply given as ‘during an auspicious asterism (nakṣatra), as well as at the time of the auspicious [observation of a] day-planet’ (śubhe nakṣatradivase śubhe cāpi dinagrahe, 12.108NP), which resembles what is found in other sources;[232] the ritual transcription preceding the donation will happen in a ‘solitary, beautiful building’ (gṛhe manorame gupte), besmeared with unguents and incences and variously embellished.[233] The Śivadharmottara and the Devīpurāṇa do not make any remarks on the time of the ritual performance, and scatter throughout the text the other bits of information that the Nandipurāṇa introduces at the very beginning.

The Śivadharmottara prescribes that preparing a proper location for copying the manuscript and for the performance of the first day rites should start with the worship of Śiva, the teacher, and ‘knowledge’ (vidyā, Śivadharmottara 2.14–15), a term often used in this chapter with reference to the manuscript to be donated (see § 2.5). In this case, however, the allusion refers to the manuscript that will function as exemplar, since in this phase of the ritual the other manuscript, the one onto which the text is going to be copied and that will then be donated, has not been introduced yet. The Śivadharmottara identifies the location where these first ritual activities will take place as a temporary maṇḍapa, as is suggested by the reference to a tent that has to hang above the hall (Śivadharmottara 2.19).[234] Besides recommending the purity of the place, the text further requires the arrangement of various decorations, among which a so-called vidyāmaṇḍala (Śivadharmottara 2.16, literally ‘maṇḍala of knowledge’), eight or four hands, round or square, with a lotus flower drawn in the middle along with various floral embellishments on the outer side.[235] Similar instructions on the drawing of a maṇḍala on the first day of the ritual are given by the Devīpurāṇa, the Agnipurāṇa, and the Bhaviṣyottarapurāṇa, although they do not refer to it as a vidyāmaṇḍala.[236] The Śivadharmottara prescribes the arrangement of a vidyāmaṇḍala on several occasions: besides the opening day of the ritual (Śivadharmottara 2.16), a vidyāmaṇḍala must be re-built on the second day and, accordingly, on any other day on which the transcription takes place (Śivadharmottara 2.37). However, this is a smaller version of the original vidyāmaṇḍala, since it is just half the size of the one built on the first day; an even smaller, two-hand-long vidyāmaṇḍala must be drawn for the occasion of the public reading of the book, as attested in Śivadharmottara 2.96ff. and 2.174ff. (see below § 2.4).

2.1.2The Manuscripts

Following these initial procedures, two manuscripts, called lekhya and likhita, respectively, make their appearance on the ritual scene (Śivadharmottara 2.25). Given their function during the copying, as well as the literal meaning of these two verbal derivatives from the root likh, ‘to write’—lekhya, a gerundive, meaning literally ‘to be written’, and likhita, a passive past participle, ‘written’—one can deduce that the latter denotes the manuscript that will function as exemplar, while the former is the one that is still blank and will become the apograph. This pair of terms, as we shall see, is often attested in the Purāṇic accounts of the gift of knowledge and, along with the different seats and thrones mentioned in the various phases of the ritual, is among the stock terms characterizing descriptions of the gift of knowledge, as well as of writing procedures in general.

In Sanskrit literature, the word lekhya is also attested simply in the meaning of ‘written text’: starting with the Yājñavalkyasmṛti (fourth to fifth century) this denotes, within the Dharmaśāstra tradition, a written document that functions as evidence.[237] In the Śivadharmottara , the word lekhya is not used to denote a finished document, but rather a text ‘to be written’—and thus, by synecdoche, a manuscript to write on; this can mainly be deduced on account of its association with the ‘written’ one (likhita). The same also occurs in Devīpurāṇa 91.46, which mentions both a ‘written manuscript’ (pustakaṃ likhitaṃ) and one ‘to be written’, for which it uses the equivalent expression ālekhyaṃ, from ālikh. In both the Śivadharmottara and the Devīpurāṇa, the manuscripts are mentioned as a pair in the same phase of the ritual, namely when they are placed on a support and worshipped before the transcritpion can start. The same happens in the Agnipurāṇa, which refers to lekhyaṃ ca likhitaṃ pustaṃ in stanza 1.63.10, again literally a ‘manuscript to be copied and an [already] written one’, which have to be worshipped by the sponsor of the ritual along with other implements.

The Nandipurāṇa offers a greater variety of options in this regard and, despite also using the term lekhya, it attributes a different meaning to it. When referring to the manuscript before the ritual, the text employs the expression pūrvapustaka, literally ‘old manuscript’ (Dānakāṇḍa 12.116NP). Unlike the other sources, the Nandipurāṇa does not prescribe the worship of the manuscripts at the beginning of the ritual, although in this phase it does refer to two manuscripts placed on two different thrones: the one that will function as an apograph is the object of a more detailed description in Dānakāṇḍa 112–116NP, while the pūrvapustaka is mentioned in stanza 116 as yantrasthitaṃ, literally ‘placed on a foldable lectern’. The gloss that the twelfth-century digest-author Lakṣmīdhara appended to this verse also confirms that the term pūrvapustaka, never used by other sources on vidyādāna, most likely means ‘exemplar’. The digest-writer explains the term with the compound ādarśapustaka, literally ‘mirror manuscript’, and the term ādarśa is attested in various early sources as denoting a manuscript from which other copies derive, namely an exemplar.[238] In addition to the most common and generic term pustaka, the Nandipurāṇa refers to the manuscript by using the word lekhya. However, unlike the Śivadharmottara and other sources, the Nandipurāṇa does not contrast this term with likhita, but uses it to denote both manuscripts (ubhayaṃ … tallekhyaṃ, ‘both these manuscripts’, Dānakāṇḍa 12.122NP) after transcription, when prescribing that a ‘competent person’ should compare the two copies and correct the mistakes (see § 2.2). Here, the Nandipurāṇa is in keeping with the Dharmaśāstra tradition and uses the word in the simple meaning of ‘written document’. Note that this is also the choice made by the twelfth-century digest-author Ballālasena: while commenting on—or, better, paraphrasing—the Nandipurāṇa in the concluding statements of chapter 43 of the Dānasāgara (see Dānasāgara, p. 489), he glosses the word śāstra (literally ‘treatise’, but also ‘field of study’) with lekhya, and thus understands the latter as denoting the exemplar. This can be deduced from the fact that Ballālasena contrasts lekhya with the expression patrasaṃcaya, literally a ‘stack of leaves’, which is the definition that he gives to the apograph:[239] ‘having placed there (scil. ‘on the śarayantra’) the manuscript (lekhya), i.e. the above mentioned treatise (śāstra), and the collection of leaves (scil. the exemplar and the prospective apograph) […]’. This lexical choice does not stem from the text of the Nandipurāṇa. Rather, it is specific to Ballālasena’s commentary, first appearing amid the brief remarks on a stanza from the Nandipurāṇa (Dānasāgara 43.53NP, corresponding to Dānakāṇḍa 12.112NP) ordering that the text used for the gift of knowledge should be transcribed. However, it seems primarily to imply that the manuscript should be assembled as part of the ritual, and thus devotes several stanzas to the description of its external features. In these stanzas, the Nandipurāṇa refers to the manuscript only as pustaka, a word that Ballālasena glosses with patrasaṃcaya (Dānasāgara, p. 478), thus hinting at this manuscript being nothing more than a ‘stack’ of leaves, as it is still in the stage of pre-production. Henceforth, Ballālasena groups the stanzas in which the Nandipurāṇa describes the manuscript that will be used for the ritual transcription under a paragraph called ‘Instructions on the Stack of Leaves’ (patrasaṃcayavidhiḥ), namely ‘Instructions on the Manuscript’. Another attestation of the word patrasaṃcaya, in the commentary on Dānasāgara 43.62NP (= Dānakāṇḍa 12.120NP), confirms that, for Ballālasena, this term designated a blank manuscript that would become the apograph during the process of copying. The text prescribes that:[240]

[The scribe] should start [writing] at the sound of musical instruments after worshipping the gods as well as the ancestors. (119Lak=61Bal) / After the competent person addresses a benediction to the Brahmins, [he] should transfer the treatise.

The very terse comment that the digest-author added to stanza 62 reads:[241] ‘This [is] the meaning: the competent person, namely the sponsor, having worshipped both the gods and the ancestors, should copy the treatise into a blank manuscript’. Ballālasena’s phrasing of this sentence amplifies the ambiguity of the text, which had mentioned a professional scribe in Dānasāgara 43.60NP, but now refers to a more generic subject, the ‘competent person’ (budhaḥ), who according to Ballālasena must be identified with the sponsor of the ritual (yajamāna). As confirmed by the parallel in the Śivadharmottara, the material author of the copying is actually the scribe, whereas the commentary of Ballālasena seems to imply that the sponsor is also responsible for at least a part of the transcription. It is also relevant that the digest-writer uses the expression ‘to copy onto a blank manuscript’ as a gloss on ‘to transfer the treatise’, which the Vidyādānādhyāya of the Śivadharmottara attests in a similar way as a technical expression used to denote the activity of copying a manuscript (Śivadharmottara 2.31).

The word pattrasaṃcaya recalls a term that is used in the Devīpurāṇa for denoting a manuscript that is still in a ‘pre-philological’ phase. Ballālasena refuses to consider this a source of trustworthy authority and thus does not cite it in his digest (see chapter 3). The Devīpurāṇa, just like the Nandipurāṇa and unlike the Śivadharmottara, introduces some lines on the outward appearance of the manuscript, which directly precede the prescriptions concerning the ritual. This will become typical of the accounts of the ritual installations of manuscripts, where the description of the object that is to be installed regularly follows the depiction of the ritual’s location while preceding the ritual itself (see chapter 4). In this description, the Devīpurāṇa does not specify whether the activity of assembling the manuscript is included in the rite, but provides other relevant pieces of information on writing substance and terminology:[242]

The person who, having available a uniform and well assembled stack (saṃce) of śrītāḍi leaves, on whose side are variegated [wooden] tables [and] that is covered with red or black leather, (37) / Either soft or embossed, strongly tied with a thread, and [therefore] made in the proper manner, (38)/ Would copy a text consisting of twelve thousand [verses] and give [it] to a suitable person, he reaches the supreme state. (39)

The noun saṃca, of rare attestation, can be analyzed as a derivative from the verb saṃci, ‘to pile up’,[243] attested in the same stanza in the form susaṃcite, ‘well assembled’ (Devīpurāṇa 91.37b). This root is also the basis of the substantive saṃcaya (‘collection’, ‘heap’), which is attested in the compound patrasaṃcaya. The Devīpurāṇa specifies that they must be palm leaves, for the word śrītāḍī can be considered a variant of tāḍī, which is usually interpreted as the designation of one of the known variants of palm leaves that are suitable for writing, namely the talipot.[244] The Śivadharmottara uses the word saṃcaya twice in the Vidyādānādhyāya with reference to a writing tool; while in both cases it is clear that this term is used to denote a manuscript, the text never gives enough information to understand the specific identity of this writing support.[245] As observed previously, the Śivadharmottara’s account includes no information either on writing materials, nor on the outer appearance of manuscripts. In contrast, the majority of the other sources do. This also applies to those that are based on the text of the Śivadharmottara, like the Devīpurāṇa or, notably, the Uttarakāmika, which has a rather extensive list of possible materials to be used in the production of manuscripts (see § 4.2). Once again, this list immediately precedes the description of the ceremony. Whether the assembly and decoration of the manuscript are considered part of the ritual is not made absolutely clear by the Devīpurāṇa, whereas the Nandipurāṇa, which has a similar and more extensive account, seems to make it much more explicit: one of the first steps of the rite is, in this case, to ‘give knowledge the shape of a manuscript’ (vidyāṃ […] kuryāt pustakasaṃsthitāṃ, Dānakāṇḍa 12.112abNP), i.e. to assemble and decorate the manuscript:[246]

[One] should give knowledge laid there (scil. on the ‘knowledge-holder’, vidyādhāra) the shape of a manuscript and should assemble the manuscript. Of this he should write for an extension of one aṅgula; and [he should prepare it so that it is] endowed with thin letters and beautiful, black or dark blue; (112) / Or having the brightness of a red lotus, decorated with the peacock’s eyes, beautiful, held together by a cotton thread, perfumed with various fragrances (113) / As well with various inks of four colours, mixed with a steadying substance, as well as of dark-blue colour, in great numbers. (114) / And with celestial pens, decorated with gold, the colour of the manuscript must be made pleasant on the outside. (115) / Or it should be well wrapped in yellow, red, or ochre, nicely embellished, beautiful, light but of imposing size, with or without knots [on its cord]. (116)

The manuscript referred to in this text is arguably no longer the ‘old manuscript’, but the new one, which will host the apograph text. In the description of the Nandipurāṇa, the pūrvapustaka is placed on a second ‘knowledge-holder’ (vidyādhāra) mentioned in stanza 12.116eNP, immediately followed by the description of the place where the ritual transcription will be performed (Dānakāṇḍa 12.117NP). According to the formulation of the preceding stanzas, the decoration of the manuscript might already count as a ritual activity. These instructions also include recommendations concerning the shape of the letters and the extension of the writing surface, which must therefore refer to a later stage in the ritual, as the copying will only be started at Dānakāṇḍa 12.119NP. By suggesting that particular attention should be paid to external, decorative aspects of preparing the manuscripts that are ritually donated as well as of the writing tools employed during the ritual transcription, these stanzas reflect the importance of the materiality of the manuscript as the embodiment of knowledge.

Ballālasena’s commentary on the Nandipurāṇa (for additional considerations on this subject, see § 3.1) also attests another term denoting the exemplar: this is the compound lekhanīyaśāstra, the ‘treatise to be copied’, which the digest-author uses in the concluding commentary of the chapter with reference to the text (rather than the manuscript) that has to be transcribed; the result of this process, namely the manuscript that has just been copied and will be brought to the temple and donated, is further called likhitaṃ pustakaṃ, ‘written manuscript’. If one compares this terminology to that of Śivadharmottara 2.25, Devīpurāṇa 91.46, and Agnipurāṇa 1.63.10, the reason for this difference will appear evident: in the case of these Purāṇas, the opposition between lekhya and likhita, at the moment preceding the start of the transcription, suggests that the former has to be read as a reference to the blank manuscript that will fulfil the function of the apograph, and the latter as the one that already contains a text, namely the exemplar in the copying process. By contrast, Ballālasena uses the passive past participle likhita to refer to the apograph after the transcription, when the previous stage’s ‘collection of leaves’ has developed into a complete, ‘written’ manuscript, which might potentially become an exemplar from which other copies will be derived. Thus, the value of the denominations lekhya and likhita is merely functional, as they can both be used to qualify the same manuscript in different phases of its life.

2.1.3The Thrones of Worship

When the Śivadharmottara first mentions the two manuscripts, it is in order to prescribe their worship, one of the non-fungible ritual requirements preceding the transcription of the text. According to the Śivadharmottara, the two manuscripts must be placed on the ‘lion-throne of knowledge’ (vidyāsiṃhāsana), or on a possibly less expensive version called the ‘stick-throne’ (daṇḍāsana), while the teacher sits on another throne nearby (2.23–31):[247]

Having placed (st. 25) the auspicious lion-throne of knowledge (vidyāsiṃhāsana), made of ivory and so on, inlaid with golden jewels, furnished with a cushion made of dukūla fabric, (23) / Or this auspicious stick-throne (daṇḍāsana), embellished with golden jewels, veneered with ivory [produced] from the most noble elephants, made with the wood of red sandal trees; (24) / [Having placed one of these thrones] on a bunch of flowers, and having worshipped [it] with fragrances and flowers, one should place there both manuscripts, [that is] a blank manuscript and one containing the text. (25) /And one will worship [them] using yellow pigments, sandal and so on, as well as with flowers and incenses, with ghee, lamps and garlands, with food and beautiful clothes. (26)

The two thrones on which the manuscripts must be venerated are presented as two alternatives, which suggests that both manuscripts are supposed to be laid on the same throne, either the vidyāsiṃhāsana or the daṇḍāsana. Neither is fully described by the text, which only briefly lists their materials and embellishments. The ‘lion-throne’ (simḥāsana), a type of royal seat with lions as supports, is a well-known and early iconographic feature in Indian art.[248] The siṃhāsana is also quite important in ritualistic procedures that make use of the visualization—both with internal and external supports—of thrones of worship on which the deity has to be enthroned.[249] The fact that such a throne is prescribed for the veneration of the manuscripts indicates their status as divine icons and sources of power and authority, which will emerge several times in the course of the chapter. As for the daṇḍāsana, this term has little attestation in ritual and iconography;[250] one hypothesis is that the word ‘stick’ (daṇḍa) refers to its shape, or to the shape of its support. A daṇḍāsana is also mentioned by the Devīpurāṇa among the tools that have to be donated to the professional who is devoted to the reading of books (Devīpurāṇa 91.80). The Śivadharmottara does not distinguish this pair of thrones, except on the basis of their materials—the daṇḍāsana is said to be made of sandal wood and merely veneered with ivory, while the vidyāsiṃhāsana is made entirely of ivory. The latter is mentioned again in the same chapter as a support for the daily worship of the manuscripts, which allows us to draw a possible parallel with an early canonical Buddhist text, the Cīvaravastu (see § 2.3). A simpler version of the same throne, or the same throne with a simplified designation, might be the vidyāsana, lit. ‘seat for knowledge’, mentioned in Śivadharmottara 2.46 as the support on which the manuscript is said to lie for worship after the transcription is complete, and on which the same manuscript will then be paraded in procession. The daṇḍāsana and the vidyāsiṃhāsana are mentioned together again in chapter 12 of the Śivadharmottara (for which see §§ 2.4 and 2.5), where they function as supports for the manuscript during a ritual public reading:[251]

Having worshipped the knowledge of Śiva [placed] on the beautiful lion-throne of knowledge, embellished with clothes, flowers, and so on, one should listen or recite [it]; (262) / Or, having made a glorious stick-throne, consisting of gold, well embellished, covered by a golden tablet, adorned with various precious stones; (263) / [Or] consisting of silver, or of red and white copper, [or either] produced with brahmarīti-brass; made of heart-wood, [or] produced with horn, leather, and so on; (264) / Adorned on the bottom and on the top [by ornaments] assembled according to one’s own ability, completely pierced by many lines, having a coloured thread as fastening (265) / And well stable on all feet (pratipādeṣu), which resemble full moons, measuring two aṅgulas in height, [painted] in various colours and carved. (266)

According to this description, the daṇḍāsana does not consist of poorer material, and the only distinguishing features are the shape and dimentions of its feet. These thrones were not only used during public recitations or to worship the manuscripts, but they also seem to have been used as a support for the transcription during the first day of ritual (Śivadharmottara 2.33). Starting from the second day, according to the Śivadharmottara, the manuscript will then be worshipped daily and copied on a different seat called śarayantrāsana (2.39), which is again mentioned at Śivadharmottara 2.85 within a list of ‘subsidiary implements of knowledge’ (vidyāṅga), whose donation will bestow on the donor the same fruit as the gift of knowledge (see below).

Even though the Devīpurāṇa follows the account of the Śivadharmottara rather closely, it does not prescribe the use of different supports for the first-day rituals than for the daily transcription of the text, but calls for laying the two manuscripts on a stand called yantra, which is supposedly also the stand on which the copying will be done. The text provides a simple description of this implement:[252]

Then, in the middle of it, the competent person should place a beautiful ivory stand (yantra) (44) / That is anchored to something below, strongly fastened above, embellished by a tight thread, and bound with cords. (45) / On top of it, this person should place a beautiful manuscript that contains a text (pustakaṃ likhitaṃ), as well as a blank one (ālekhyaṃ), and then has to pay homage there [to both manuscripts] according to rule. (46)

2.1.4The Scribes

Both in the Śivadharmottara and in the Devīpurāṇa, the person in charge of the performance of these introductory activities is qualified solely as a ‘competent person’ (see budha in Śivadharmottara 2.28, and buddhimān in Devīpurāṇa 91.46), most likely the sponsor or a priest acting as his proxy. After the worship of the manuscripts, however, both texts introduce the figure of a professional scribe (lekhaka), who will be in charge of starting the copying; only a limited amount of text will be transcribed on the first day, then the transcription is continued on a daily basis until its completion. In this regard, we must observe that the copyist seems to be regarded as one of the writing tools that are put to use in the transcription of a text: we are thus provided only with very brief and standardized sketches of the characteristics of a good scribe, which encompass his technical abilities and his broader knowledge of technical literature and metrics. In particular, this is emphasized in the Devīpurāṇa, where the description of the scribe is immediately followed by that of the script, an association that is often found in the literature on administration and politics.[253] The Śivadharmottara, on the other hand, does not refer to the ability of the scribes, the main focus being on his ritual purity:[254]

Having performed a propitiatory benediction (svastyayana)[255] with auspicious prayers and with the sound of musical instruments, a scribe, pure, after taking a bath, dressed in white, crowned with a garland, embellished with perfumes and so on (32) / And with golden finger-rings on his hands, adorned with two bracelets — after bowing to the lord of the gods, he should write five stanzas. (33)

The Devīpurāṇa, by contrast, insists on the skills required of a copyist in order to perform his profession, and refers to a ‘scribe of manuscripts’ (pustakalekhaka) by borrowing from Śivadharmottara 2.62 the description of the ‘reciter of manuscripts’ (pustakavācaka):[256] ‘Versed in technical literature, (51) / Real knower of the characteristics of metrics, good poet, endowed with a sweet voice: the best scribe of manuscripts remembers a book [even if it has] been lost (52)’. This description is placed at the apex of a list of human and superhuman beings to whom, according to the Devīpurāṇa, the sacrifier (yajamāna) has to pay homage after worshipping the two manuscripts mentioned at stanzas 91.45–46 and before the copying gets started. These beings that are worthy of worship are the protectors of the worlds (lokapāla, 91.49), the Divine Mothers (91.50), and again the book along with ‘gods and goddesses’ (pustakaṃ devadevīṃ ca, 91.50), the king, and the citizens (nṛpaṃ paurāṃś ca pūjayet, 91.51). The sponsor will then have to offer a fee to the Brahmins commensurate with his means (91.50–51), and eventually worship the copyist. The worship of the scribe before he starts copying the text also finds confirmation in the account given by the Bhaviṣyottarapurāṇa which, however, prescribes the worship of the scribe both at the beginning and at the end of the process.[257] The Śivadharmottara, on the contrary, does not envisage this form of worship, rather instructing the sacrificer to worship the manuscripts and the teacher (2.27–29), and then to address a formal request to the teacher who presides over the whole ceremony to allow the scribe to copy the text:[258]

Having made a triple circumambulation, he will prostrate himself to the ground in a straight line. [Then] he will proclaim — kneeling on the ground after raising, (30) / Having once again respectfully bowed to the teacher, with [his] hands in the añjali position —: ‘O Bhagavan, with your favour I will transfer the treatise [from one manuscript to the other]’. Authorised by the [teacher’s] ‘yes’, he should proclaim the day auspicious for the manuscript. (31)

The expression śāstraṃ saṃcāraya, ‘to transfer the treatise’, also occurs in the Nandipurāṇa (Dānakāṇḍa 12.119NP), where it is also used to give a general definition of the activity of the scribe. The verb saṃcāraya is the causative root of the verb car, ‘to move’, to which the prefix sam-, literally ‘together’, is added. Its basic meanings ‘to circulate’, ‘to transmit’ highlight the function of the scribe as a channel transmitting the text from one receptacle to the other. The use of this verb recalls that of the analoguous pracar, formed by the same root but with a different prefix, which in certain Mahāyāna Sūtras is consistently used to refer to the ‘circulation’ of the Sūtras within a specific area, which is largely believed to be the Jambudvīpa.[259] Śāstra, literally ‘treatise’, refers in this expression to the contents of the text that have to be transferred, rather than to the manuscript; in the subsequent stanza 31, however, the same word śāstra is also intended as a material object, to which the scribe is supposed to address a ‘meritorious day’.[260] The Nandipurāṇa uses śāstra more often with a meaning that reflects or encompasses that of ‘manuscript’, a book in its material form, like in Dānakāṇḍa 12.122NP, where the expression samāpte śāstre, ‘when the book has been completed’, is used to mark the end of the copying; or in Dānakāṇḍa 12.128, where the sacrificer is said to have honoured the book (śāstraṃ satkṛtya) by correcting the mistakes that had their origins in the process of copying (see § 2.2). As the meaning of the word śāstra suggests, its usage in a more concrete sense never refers to the blank manuscript, the patrasaṃcaya or saṃca, but to a manuscript that already contains text.

Parallel to the Śivadharmottara and the Devīpurāṇa, the Nandipurāṇa devotes some stanzas to delineating the features of the scribe immediately before he starts copying. Analogously to the other sources, these stanzas do not provide any information on the social extraction or the hierarchical status of the copyist, but focus rather on his technical skills and ritual purity:[261]

Following the worship of the lords of the gods, Rudra, Brahmā, and Janārdana, the best among scribes, a knower of scripts, should write with his face turned to the east. (108Lak) / [He is] in control of [the movements of his] hand and arm, having full acquaintance with [the use of] an inkwell; a person with a concentrated mind, to whom [all] the [writing] implements belong, this is the best among scribes. (109Lak) / […] The scribe, an intelligent person, purified by a bath, splendid in his garments [adorned with] white flowers, wearing bracelets of gold and pearls, whose fingers are embellished by seal-rings, (118Lak) / When the inkwell is complete, along with the pen and the manuscript, should start [writing] at the sound of musical instruments, following the worship of the gods and the ancestors. (119Lak)

Among the available sources on the topic, only the Vahnipurāṇa quoted by Hemādri provides a few more details on the social status of the copyist involved in the ritual. This text defines them, referring to a plurality of agents, as ‘wise Brahmins, knowledgeable of the Vedas, experts on metrics’.[262] Neither the Nandipurāṇa nor the Devīpurāṇa show any trace of the instructions given by the Śivadharmottara, according to which the scribe only eventually starts copying the manuscript after the sacrificer has obtained the teacher’s permission. However, the writing process described so far by the three texts offers a reasonable amount of significant parallels. The first one concerns the instruction that only a limited number of stanzas have to be copied on the first day. Both the Śivadharmottara and the Devīpurāṇa set the limit at a ‘group of five stanzas’ (ślokapañcaka), while the Nandipurāṇa, though using the same expression, alternatively offers the possibility of copying ten stanzas.[263] The limit of the ślokapañcaka is maintained by the Agnipurāṇa in its account of manuscript installations[264] (see § 4.2), while the Bhaviṣyottarapurāṇa quoted by Aparārka proposes five stanzas as the minimum number for the first day of copying only. Nevertheless, it also allows that[265] ‘the person in charge (st. 9Apa) [should copy] five, or even ten, or twenty, (8Apa) / Or thirty, or forty, [or] up to a maximum of fifty stanzas’. Such a small detail highlights the connections existing between the sources dealing with the gift of knowledge, even in those cases where there are no extensive textual parallels.

2.1.5The Copying

According to the Śivadharmottara, the first-day rituals must be followed by night celebrations (2.32–36), while work on the transcription is resumed on the following morning and carried out day by day (dine dine) until its completion (2.37–44). The Śivadharmottara only provides a few substantial details on the writing procedures that have to be adopted daily: it specifies that Nandināgara is the script to be used, of which a brief description is provided, and that, in order to copy the text, the two manuscripts must be placed on a new support called śarayantrāsana. Daily worship is the only ritual activity required at the beginning and at the end of a copying session. Plausibly, it is carried out by two people, a copyist and a reader:[266]

Having worshipped the manuscript lying in the middle of a śarayantra seat, day by day he will write, or read aloud, in the following way, after having performed worship. (39) / One should transcribe the manuscript of Śiva with letters belonging to the Nandināgara script (st. 2.41), that are quadrangular, aligned in the upper part, [whose strokes are] not too thick nor thin, whose elements are well filled, smooth, not too disjointed nor joined together, (40) / Characterised by [correct] metrical quantities, anusvāras and combined consonants, with [appropriate] signs for short and long vowels. (41)

If we understand pustakam in Śivadharmottara 2.39b as the object of both the verbs ‘to write’ and ‘to read’ (evaṃ likhed vācayed vā, 2.39c) then, due to a synecdochical use of the singular instead of the dual, it can be argued that both manuscripts are also arranged on the same support during the transcription. This hypothesis might also be supported by autoptic evidence.[267] The use of the two verbs could imply that at least two people are involved in the process of copying: one who reads aloud from the exemplar and another one who writes; arguably, the disjunctive particle vā separating the two verbs can also distinguish the two subjects. The term śarayantrāsana/śarayantra occurs only infrequently in Sanskrit literature. When there are such occurrences, they are all somehow connected with manuscripts and their use, while not always conveying the same meaning. In the Śivadharmottara it is clear that this implement is actually a desk (āsana, ‘seat’) on which the manuscript is copied. The first part of the compound, ‘reed’ (śara), which also acquires the secondary meaning of ‘arrow’,[268] can be understood as a reference to the raw material of which this lectern is supposed to consist, while the second part of the compound literally means ‘mechanism’ (yantra). Thus, a ‘seat that is a tool made of reeds’ or a ‘reed-seat that is endowed with a mechanism’ are the two most plausible interpretations. The word śarayantra is used twice in the Agnipurāṇa (1.63.10 and 3.382.69cd). In both cases, the word occurs in texts dealing with the transcription, veneration, and donation of manuscripts, whereas it is only used once (1.63.10) in composition with āsana. In the section known as the Agnipurāṇamāhātmya (‘Celebration of the Agnipurāṇa’), the śarayantra is mentioned within a list of writing tools whose donation will bestow Heaven on the donor. This parallels Śivadharmottara 2.85ff.: [269]

He who would donate, for the manuscript, a śarayantra, a thread, a bunch of leaves, textiles like silk cloths, bandages, and so on, he will reach Heaven.

All these gifts are targeted at, and the various utensils intended for, the manuscript. The other reference traceable in the Agnipurāṇa (1.63.10) is closer to Śivadharmottara 2.39, since it depicts the manuscript as lying on what the printed edition calls a śarapatrāsana (that can hypothetically be translated as ‘seat made of śara leaves’); yet at this point the apparatus reports the variant śarayantrāsana, which has to be considered primary in light of the Śivadharmottara’s testimony.[270] The relevant stanza thus reads:[271]

Having revered in a propitious maṇḍala the manuscript lying on a śarayantra seat, [both] the one containing a text and[272] the blank [manuscript], one will worship the teacher, knowledge, Hari. (10)

This stanza echoes Śivadharmottara 2.15 and 2.176, in which the teacher, knowledge (vidyā), and Śiva form a triad (śivavidyāgurūṇāṃ) that has to be worshipped (see § 2.5). Other sources on the gift of knowledge do not explicitly mention a śarayantrāsana, but refer to similar tools. The Devīpurāṇa, for instance, uses the word yantra to denote the seat on which both manuscripts are placed (91.44cd–46), and yantrakam āsanam, a ‘seat with a mechanism’ (Devīpurāṇa 91.80), as one of the objects to donate to a person whose main job is reading from manuscripts, along with the daṇḍāsana; the Nandipurāṇa attests the use of the word vidyādhāra (literally, ‘holder of knowledge’, Dānakāṇḍa 12.110–111NP) for such a stand. Nevertheless, Ballālasena, commenting upon this occurrence of vidyādhāra in the Nandipurāṇa, glosses it with śarayantra (Dānasāgara, p. 478). Again, in the final prose summary of chapter 43, where the digest-author recapitulates the contents of the quoted texts in order to indicate the stand on which the two manuscripts are placed, he uses only the synonym śarayantra.[273] In his eyes, a vidyādhāra is thus the same as a śarayantra, and for this reason one may apply to the latter the description of the vidyādhāra found in Dānakāṇḍa 12.110-11NP. What we find in these stanzas of the Nandipurāṇa are again mainly references to the materials of which this desk should consist—but there is no mention of reeds; the allusion to a ‘closure mechanism’ (saṅkocayantra) in stanza 12.111NP, even though manuscript tradition is inconsistent on this point, might be conducive to explaining the second part of the compound (°yantra): [274]

He should arrange a beautiful vidyādhāra, made of gold or silver, or even made of ivory, as well as of beautiful wood. (110) / Nice, light, pleasant, smooth, produced with [perfumed] powders, provided with a closure mechanism, endowed with splendour. (111)

Our sources thus agree that the śarayantra is to be understood as a foldable desk, used as a support for writing—and possibly also for reading. The Nandipurāṇa seems to acknowledge the use of two such vidyādhāras, the one described in Dānakāṇḍa 12.110-11NP, on which the blank manuscript of stanzas 12.112-116NP will most likely be laid, and a second one mentioned at stanza 12.116eNP for the ‘old manuscript’ (pūrvapustaka), namely the exemplar. The latter is coherently qualified as yantrasaṃsthitam, ‘placed on a foldable stand’. Confirmations of these features of the book stands used for worshipping or simply reading the manuscript also come from visual art, where cross-legged book stands are represented at least as early as the seventh century.[275] However, apparently there were other available models, as depicted in scenes of manuscript worship with book stands constructed with a single or double staff, upon which a large quadrangular support is placed.[276] An early description of a ‘reciter of manuscripts’ (pustakavācakaḥ) found in the Harṣacarita of Bāṇa (seventh century) mentions a śaraśalākāyantraka, namely a ‘foldable stand [made] of reed stalks’, as the lectern on which the reciter Sudṛṣṭi lays the manuscript of the Vāyupurāṇa: after untying the threads with which the manuscript is bound, Sudṛṣṭi is depicted as placing the entire manuscript on this desk, and then separating from it a small amount of folios that he will hold in his hands while reading (chanting) the text of the Purāṇa.[277] Incidentally, this poetic depiction also informs us that the reciter starts reading from a leaf on which a sign marked the end of the portion that had been read in the morning, and compares the brightness of the reciter’s teeth to the white flowers used to worship the manuscript.

The word śarayantra, in its synonymic variant śarayantraka, is also attested in the meaning ‘reed-thread’. An example is in the early Sanskrit novel Vāsava-dattā, which depicts the following scene:[278] ‘When a mendicant, resembling a blossoming lotus, with his robe like red rays, possessing a book [made of] a hundred leaves of unevenly grown water lilies, bound together by a reed[-thread] […].’. This translation follows the interpretation given in the commentary Vāsavadattādarpaṇa by Śivarāma Tripāthin,[279] reproduced both in the first (Hall 1859) and in the 1933 edition of the Vāsavadattā. This commentary defines śarayantraka as ‘the string placed in the middle of a palm-leaf manuscript’ (tālapatrīyapustakamadhyastharajjuḥ). This interpretation was adopted both by Gray in his translation of the Vāsavadattā[280], and apparently also by Böhtlingk in his definition of śarayantra as ‘die Schnur, auf welche die Palmblätter einer Handschrift gereiht sind’.[281] Nevertheless, another Sanskrit commentary, which accompanies the 1906 edition by Srinivasachar and is authored by the same editor of the text, puts forward a further interpretation of the term śarayantraka, one that is closer to that of the Śivadharmottara and related sources, since it defines it as sarasvatīpīṭha, the ‘throne of Sarasvatī’.[282] The reference to Sarasvatī is clearly an allusion to the manuscript, which has been part of Sarasvatī iconography from early times.[283] The gloss sarasvatīpīṭha could imply that this commentator assigned to the verb °anugata the meaning of ‘placed on’ instead of ‘bound together’, given in the previous translation in accordance with the Vāsavadattādarpaṇa.

As a consequence, we have two distinct meanings for śarayantra. Both fall into the semantic field of manuscripts and their use, and there is thus possibly a mutual relationship in their origins. However, the use of the word °yantra seems to be more justifiable when applied to a proper mechanism, such as the one that enables folding and unfolding a lectern, which probably makes the identification of the śarayantra with a desk (thus an āsana, as in the compound śarayantrāsana) more original. Other unsystematic references to the word śarayantra do not seem to be strictly related to this context.[284] Before moving on with the account of the ritual, it might be worthwile to observe that Śivadharmottara 2.39, which mentions the śarayantra, is also quoted by the sixteenth-century ritual digest Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati (see § 4.3). It is preceded by some stanzas from the Dīptāgama describing a stand for a manuscript. The digest-author Vedajñāna II introduces the quotation from the Dīptāgama by stating, ‘the seat for the Śaiva knowledge is described in the Dīptāgama’ (śivajñānāsanaṃ dīptāgame pradarśitam), and the fact that he places Śivadharmottara’s mention of the śarayantra right after this description can be construed as a sign that he associated the two implements. The features of this seat as described in the Dīptāgama are that its staff (daṇḍa) measures eighteen aṅgulas (approximately 38 cm) in length and two aṅgulas (approximately 4 cm) in width, and might be either circular or square.[285] These measurements imply that the person would be seated when using such a stand. The top of this staff, made of precious metals, has to be provided with a junction, ‘adorned with lotus petals’, which probably allows the object to be opened and closed.[286] This allusion could thus confirm the idea that the °yantra element of the various compounds denoting the stands refers to a folding mechanism.

Thus placed on this foldable stand, the manuscript must be copied by using a specific script called nandināgara. The fact that the ‘letters of Nandinagara’ are mentioned and their features are described concisely plays an important role, as it is a consistent aspect in the Śivadharmottara’s account of the gift of knowledge that is attested, with virtually no changes, in many other descriptions of these ritual procedures.[287] Moreover, this is a piece of information that can have an external validation because it has been interpreted as a reference to the script known as Nandināgarī, whose use is attested in the south of India from the Middle Ages until recent times. The Devīpurāṇa’s description of the script of the same name made in the chapter on vidyādāna is very close to that of the Śivadharmottara, and by referring to the thickness and density of the letters both sources seem to imply the knowledge of the type of ink-based scripts widespread in northern India, rather than the scratched scripts attested in the south, such as the Nandināgarī.[288] As the Devīpurāṇa observes:[289]

[The scribe] should write the manuscript of Śiva with letters belonging to the Nandināgara script, which are neither too tight nor too disconnected, neither blurred nor dense. (53) / At the beginning he should copy five ślokas, then he should take a break. He should stay awake at night [and] arrange entertainments for all, (54) / With actresses, wandering bards, and minstrels who perform the tales of the goddesses. At dawn he should worship the people [attending], then he should send them all away. (55) / In a solitary place, with a good, tranquil mind, day by day, having accomplished [the transcription] according to this procedure, during an auspicious day in conjunction with an auspicious constellation. (56)

The ‘manuscript of Śiva’, which is mentioned in Devīpurāṇa 91.53, establishes an even stronger connection with the Vidyādānādhyāya, as it is one of the most typical ways for the Śivadharmottara to refer to the manuscript used during the ritual (see § 2.5). At this point, however, the Devīpurāṇa adds two details which have no parallels in the Śivadharmottara: the recommendation of concluding the transcript on an auspicious day, which implies that, when arranging such a ceremony, attention has to be paid to the time of the year; brief reference is also made to the place where the copying must take place. By exhorting the scribe to work ‘in a solitary place’, the text seems to suggest that the transcription could be carried out in a different space than the hall where the manuscripts and the gods had been venerated the day before, and where the night celebrations might have taken place. The solitude of writing is contrasted with the celebrations that open and close this task.

The use of a script called nāgara is also prescribed in Agnipurāṇa 1.63.12 (see § 4.2) for the ritual transcription, for which the scribe should also use ‘silver ink (?) and a golden pen’,[290] an instruction that is reminiscent of Bhaviṣyottarapurāṇa 4Apa on the use of a golden pen and silver inkpot (see fn. 36). The Bhaviṣyottarapurāṇa, in turn, does not provide any specific names indicating which script is to be used, but the description it gives—inserted among the features of a good scribe—fully resembles that of the Śivadharmottara and the Devīpurāṇa.[291] The prescription for the use of the nandināgarī script even emerges in the Pauṣkarasaṃhitā, a Pāñcarātra text that does not describe a gift of knowledge, but rather a ceremony for the installation of manuscripts that has little in common with the gift of knowledge, bar some instructions, such as one commanding the use of[292] ‘letters of the Nandināgarī [script]’ (see § 4.2). Furthermore, the use of a script called nāgara is recommended by the Nandipurāṇa, which calls it[293] ‘the main writing system that is specific of a place’. Therefore, the Nandipurāṇa seemingly classifies the nāgara as a script with a distinctiveness derived from its compliance with local writing norms.

It seems extremely unlikely that the script described by these sources can actually be identified with the type of Nāgarī script whose attestations Bühler has traced back to the thirteenth to sixteenth century under the kings of Vijayanāgara. [294] Both Hazra and Magnone tried to connect the southern Nandināgarī to the nandināgarakair vaṛnair mentioned by the Śivadharmottara;[295] this attempt strongly influenced Magnone’s evaluation of the text, since he goes so far as to propose for the Śivadharmottara a terminus post quem of the twelfth century—namely later than some of the manuscripts of the text—and prefers to place the location of its composition in the south.[296] However, even if one proceeds on the assumption that the terse and generic description given by the Śivadharmottara could provide a solid basis for an argument, it seems more likely that the script which it describes—and the same applies to the one described by the Devīpurāṇa—was inked and not scratched. In contrast and customary to the south, however, the Nandināgarī was scratched into the palm leaf and not smeared. Nevertheless, no solid conclusion can be drawn concerning its identification with the almost homonymous script mentioned by the Śivadharmottara and other sources on the gift of knowledge.

The word nandināgara and its variants are not commonly attested. However, when the Śivadharmottara was composed, they were known in Buddhist literature for denoting objects other than a script. An occurrence is found in the Mahāmāyūrī Vidyārājñī, one of the five dhāraṇī texts that at least from the late eighth to ninth century have formed the ‘Five Protections’ (Pañcarakṣā; see § 1.1). The Mahāmāyūrī had already been translated into Chinese in the fourth century, and the testimony of the poet Bāṇa proves that this work was used and recited in the seventh century.[297] The text mentions a nandinagara within a list of tutelary divine beings (yakṣa), each associated with the town that they protect, stating,[298] ‘Nandin is assigned to Nandinagara’ (Mahāmāyūrī 104, nandī va nandinagare [...] sthitaḥ). Lévi remarks that the list of places mentioned in this portion of the work, reflecting a pre-Gupta toponomastic, though not exactly systematic, is nevertheless not completely casual: the preeminence attributed to Pāṭaliputra and, in general, the dominance of northwestern toponyms emerges from it.[299] Nandinagara, however, has been known as a toponym since an earlier date, with abundant attestations in Buddhist donative epigraphs even dating back to the third century BCE.[300] The toponym nandinagara could be read as meaning the ‘town of Nandi’, namely of Nandikeśvara, which would comply nicely with the prescription on the use of a homonymous script for the transcription of the ‘manuscript of Śaiva knowledge’ in the Śivadharmottara.

2.1.6The Donation

After the completion of the transcription (Śivadharmottara 2.42), the next steps in the ritual procedure envisage that the apograph should be placed on a lavishly adorned chariot called the ‘vehicle of knowledge’ (vidyāvimāna) and taken to a śivāśrama (Śivadharmottara 2.45-50), a ‘Śaiva hermitage’, where it would be donated to the resident teacher (Śivadharmottara 2.59-60). This phase of the ritual discloses the identity of the two main agents involved in the donative procedures, namely the donor and the donee. As for the former, the Śivadharmottara had already declared that this ceremony was intended for ‘wealthy people’ (2.13); now, while describing the procession that parades the manuscript through town on its rich vehicle and exposes it to the veneration of all (Śivadharmottara 2.51-56), the text prescribes that it should be led by the king, who ultimately qualifies as the main sponsor and donor of the whole ritual:[301]

And the king, endowed with all ornaments, should participate himself in the procession, with a big quantity of people and at their head, together with the experts of Dharma; (51) / Alternatively, having placed the manuscript on a vehicle led by an elephant, he should lead [it] through the main royal street, in circular direction within the town. (52) / And with his personal wealth the king should enable the performance of the worship of all sanctuaries; he should make offerings in the ten directions, all around the town. (53) / While still on the way, he should proceed in first row [and] uninterruptedly give offering mixed with fragrances, flowers, and unhusked barley-corns, together with water. (54) / In the first row behind him all the residents of the temples should proceed. [The king] will remember the mantra of Śiva in front of the knowledge of Śiva (scil. the manuscript). (55)

Common people will participate not only by taking part in the procession, but also by organizing private feasts and visiting the Śaiva hermitage (Śivadharmottara 2.57), while the king should also approve of extraordinary measures, such as an amnesty for all prisoners (Śivadharmottara 2.58). The act of parading the manuscript in a procession and making it the focus of this entire civic ceremony equates the manuscript with a divine icon. The scheme of this procession can be easily compared to those designed for the chariot processions (rathayātrā) of statues of the deities in traditional religious literature. A possible term of comparison is the procession described for the icon of the goddess in chapter 31 of the Devīpurāṇa,[302] which shows several parallels to the one described in the Vidyādānādhyāya of the Śivadharmottara. Both accounts start with the description of the chariot, variously adorned with banners and flags, among other things, and arranged on different levels (five or three for Śivadharmottara 2.45, seven for Devīpurāṇa 31.3). The next step is the worship of the chariot with perfumes and incense, and the installation of the manuscript (Śivadharmottara 2.46) or of the icon of the goddess (Devīpurāṇa 31.4-6) on top of it. Moreover, both processions are described as civic ceremonies involving the participation of the king, along with many subjects (see Devīpurāṇa 31.28, using the expression mahatā janasaṃghena, ‘with a big quantity of people’, also attested in Śivadharmottara 2.51), and their performance requires bali offerings in the cardinal directions (see Devīpurāṇa 31.15 and Śivadharmottara 2.53), the playing of music and singing of chants, and various moments of worship for the main cultic focus (the manuscript in Śivadharmottara 2, the goddess in Devīpurāṇa 31). Eventually, both processions are believed to bestow protection on the participants, and in both cases the king is required to promulgate extraordinary measures, such as amnesty for prisoners and the banning of all violence. In this regard the two sources even show a textual parallel, since Śivadharmottara 2.58, in which these measures are prescribed, is almost identical with Devīpurāṇa 31.32-33ab.[303]

That said, the two procedures also reveal important differences. The description of the Devīpurāṇa puts a substantially greater stress on devotion towards the ritual focus, resulting in the prescription of a series of cultic activities addressed to the image of the goddess—from invoking her protection to the bathing and smearing of the icon (see Devīpurāṇa 31.17-22)—that are not echoed in the ceremony described by the Śivadharmottara. Moreover, the basic scheme of the procedure is substantially different: in the same manner that it occurs in the majority of processions concerning images of deities,[304] the latter are taken from the temple where they are usually installed, and then returned at the end of the procession. In the case described by Devīpurāṇa 31, the icon is removed from its temple, brought to and installed in a pavilion specifically prepared for this purpose (Devīpurāṇa 31.12), from which it will eventually be carried back to the temple (Devīpurāṇa 31.28). By contrast and on the basis of the information which can be extracted from the Vidyādānādhyāya, the manuscript on which the Śivadharmottara’s procession focuses is taken on a different route, for it was removed from the pavilion where it had previously been copied and then brought to the hermitage (āśrama) of Śiva (Śivadharmottara 2.48). Thus, unlike the itinerary of the icon of the goddess in the Devīpurāṇa, that of the manuscript of Śiva is not circular but linear. However, we might want to consider a further possibility: Śivadharmottara 2.117 alludes to the existence of a small building that is apparently annexed to the compound where the donation of the manuscript is to take place, and which may qualify as a small manuscript repository (see § 2.3). The Śivadharmottara does not provide any information concerning the provenance of the manuscript that functioned as exemplar in the process of copying, nor is the reader informed as to its fate after the copying. This is due to the fact that, from that point on, the text focuses only on the apograph. Supposing that the exemplar had been removed from that same ‘library’ and brought to the pavilion where its transcription takes place, the procession would then eventually return the apograph to its exemplar’s original location. The material support, namely the manuscript, was not the same, but as the repeated worship and the same procession shows, the apograph had in the meantime received the same cultic status as its exemplar.

Chapter 91 of the Devīpurāṇa prescribes similar activities for the post-production phase, although its description is deeply influenced by the profound differences characterizing the Devīpurāṇa’s sectarian understanding of the gift of knowledge. Following the completion of the transcription, this text also prescribes that the manuscript should be venerated and placed on a very sumptuous ‘vehicle of knowledge’ (vidyāvimāna, Devīpurāṇa 91.57), then be brought to the place where it is to be donated:[305]

He should place that manuscript, worshipped according to procedure, on a cloth. Having done this, the [Mothers] have to be meditated upon [by thinking:] ‘May the Mothers be merciful to me!’ (61) / He should imagine the manuscript exactly [in the form of the deity] to which that manuscript belongs.[306] At this point the ascetics, experts in the contents of all treatises, have to be venerated, (62) / Starting with the followers of the Śaiva observance, [then] those who are entirely devoted to the Dharma of Viṣṇu. [Accompanied by] a big quantity of people this manuscript, standing on a chariot [pulled] by strong draught animals, (63) / Or alternatively by young people, has to be led to the āśrama[307] of that god to whom [it belongs], as well as to the tīrthas of Śiva and the temples of the Mothers. (64)

The Devīpurāṇa replaces the ‘Śaiva exclusivism’ characterizing the approach of the Śivadharmottara with a more eclectic attitude towards religious sectarianism, and places stronger emphasis on the cult of the divine Mothers. The manuscript which is to be used in the rite can therefore belong to any of the main currents of medieval devotion (for more details, see § 2.5) in the same manner that the place where the actual gift is performed is dedicated to the god of one’s own choice. Moreover, the Devīpurāṇa highlights the iconic value of manuscripts by prescribing that they should function as external supports for the visualization of the deity to whom they are dedicated (see Devīpurāṇa 91.62). Another striking difference from the account of the Śivadharmottara, although it occurs in the context of an almost identical ritual scheme, is the absence of any specific references to the king as being involved in these procedures, an absence that becomes even more meaningful once we shift our attention to the following steps. In the Śivadharmottara, the Śaiva hermitage is the final destination of the procession carrying the manuscript: here, the manuscript is presented to the teacher, who in turn is in charge of celebrating a ‘Great Appeasement’ (mahāśānti) ritual for the king, the royal family, the town, and the entire kingdom. This is a procedure that completes the donation of the manuscript:[308]

Having reached the temple of Śiva, he should offer this [manuscript] placed on the vehicle, declaring the day auspicious and uttering formulas of victory, and with a big tumult. (59) / Having gently placed it in a purified, pleasant place in the presence of Śiva, having bowed to this [manuscript] with the [same] devotion addressed to a teacher, he should make offerings. (60) / The best among reciters should read one chapter with the aim of ensuring appeasement for the cows, the Brahmins, and the king, as well as for the towns of the kingdom. (61) / True knower of the characteristics of metrics, good poet, endowed with a sweet voice, knower of music, and a clever man: [this is] the best reciter of manuscripts. (62) / After that, with the water of appeasement the teacher, having risen, should sprinkle the king a little on [his] head, and then the people standing there; (63) / Having ascertained the appeasement of the world and, once again, at the end, of the king, now the king has to provide food for the teachers, accompanied by fees. (64) / At this point indeed [the king] himself should eat, together with his courtiers, and a varied public entertainment has to be arranged after the people have eaten too. (65) / Having thus acted, a great appeasement (mahāśānti) arises for the king and the town and the entire country: no doubt about it! (66)

The information concerning the chapter (adhyāya) to be read at this point by a professional reciter (pustakavācaka) for the performance of the appeasement rite is an important key to understanding this passage and the whole ritual. The Śivadharmottara does not specify whether this chapter belongs to the same manuscript that had previously been copied and donated (on this, see § 2.5); however, the sixth chapter of the Śivadharmaśāstra, the text immediately preceding the Śivadharmottara in the corpus (§ 1.3), is indeed titled ‘Chapter on Appeasement’ (Śāntyadhyāya), and essentially it consists of a long mahāśāntimantra, an invocation to the deities who are pleaded with to bestow protection and welfare on human beings.[309] This is most likely the text whose reading is required by the Śivadharmottara for the performance of the great appeasement following the donation of the manuscript. The various pieces of evidence, which come equally from the manuscript transmission and from historical records, suggest that the Śāntyadhyāya of the Śivadharmaśāstra was indeed used for ritualistic or apotropaic purposes, and also speak in support of this interpretation.[310] The Śāntyadhyāya of the Śivadharmaśāstra is often transmitted independently from the work to which it belongs, both in a number of single-text manuscripts and in multiple-text manuscripts containing various Purāṇic excerpts. This peculiarity of its manuscript transmission can both depend on functional needs, hinting at the use of the Śāntyadhyāya in ritual practice, as well as rest on the particular auspiciousness attached to this text. A late Nepalese chronicle does provide external confirmation that the Śāntyadhyāya was used in public recitations in the far north of the Indian cultural world, since it records the recitation of the Śivadharmaśāstra’s Śāntyadhyāya in the year NS 796, corresponding to 1676 to 1677 CE.[311] At the same time, a twelfth-century epigraph from the southern region of Karnataka (Rice 1902, EC 7, Skt 185; see § 2.4 for a detailed discussion) explicitly prescribes the recitation of the Śāntyadhyāya in a context showing important similarities with Śivadharmottara chapter 2, and the recitation of a ‘Śivadharmapurāṇa’ is recorded in a substantial number of inscriptions from the Coḻa kingdom (see § 2.4). The fact that, according to the Śivadharmottara, only the power of the Śivadharmaśāstra’s appeasement mantra can make appeasement possible aggrandizes the efficacy of the text, thereby making its preservation and dissemination more appealing to potential sponsors. By doing so, the Śivadharmottara not only presents the Śivadharmaśāstra as a text generically endowed with apotropaic functions but, on the model of the Mahāyāna Sūtras, confers to it the specific power of protecting the state. Consequently, this attributes this text with a crucial function in the patron-client relationship between the king and the Śaiva officiants. Moreover, carrying out this function as part of a ritual focused on a manuscript, and its production and donation, casts this manuscript as a tool for reinforcing the status of the communities that foster its production and maintenance.

The Devīpurāṇa’s description lacks any trace of a monarchical figure financing the ritual and leading the procession that brings the manuscript to the place where it is to be donated; instead, the text mentions a generic ‘donor’ (dātā 91.68) as the addressee of the mahāśānti:[312]

There, having practiced worship for the spear-holder god of gods, one should honor the Lord after having bowed [to him], [thinking:] ‘May the Mothers be merciful to me!’ (65) / He has to offer this to [a teacher] who is always reciting [the Vedas], who relishes the gift of knowledge, who masters the totality of sciences and has worked hard on the whole of technical literature, (66) / For the benefit of one who only lives off this. Then [one] will recite an appeasement for the benefit of the world. (67) / And with that water [of śānti], he will sprinkle the donor on the forehead. Afterwards he will pronounce a beneficial (śaiva) formula, uttering [it] also for the world. (68) / Having acted in this way, a great appeasement arises for the region and the town, no doubt about it, and all obstacles are appeased. (69)

In spite of the great importance this text attributes to monarchy, the Devīpurāṇa thus seems to offer a less politically relevant variant of the ritual that the Śivadharmottara describes. Even so, the Devīpurāṇa remarks that the practice of the gift of knowledge and of the attached appeasement rite results in a great benefit to the whole country. Chapter 91 of the Devīpurāṇa only mentions kings in order to highlight the attainment of monarchical status as a reward for the donors in their future lives on earth (see e.g. 91.10, 91.20, 91.81); moreover, the king and the citizens are mentioned in stanza 91.51, in an enumeration of beings to be revered before the copying of the manuscript commences. While the Devīpurāṇa does not mention the monarch among the performers of the ritual, a rather generic allusion to his connection with the practice of the gift of knowledge is made at 91.26, where the text states,[313] ‘The kings who really master the examination of knowledge walk on the right path; they also take delight in enjoyments and they head to a supreme destiny (26)’. This verse may be interpreted as implying that a king should support the gift of knowledge on account of the great advantages that he will be able to obtain. Nevertheless, in compliance with the open attitude observed in Purāṇic literature towards the participation in rituals by members of the various castes, the Devīpurāṇa generically declares at the end of the chapter that everybody is entitled to practice the gift of knowledge:[314] ‘For this [reason], knowledge has to always be donated with all efforts by people’. The Śivadharmottara makes a similar statement at the end of the Vidyādānādhyāya,[315] with the difference that in this text the donors had previously been identified as the ‘wealthy people’ (Śivadharmottara 2.13). In the Devīpurāṇa, the gift of knowledge is still regarded as a powerful way of demonstrating the donor’s devotion and wealth by contributing to the cult of the gods and the maintenance of Brahmins and teachers. However, the most political aspect of the ritual, namely the use of the gift of knowledge as a medium of exchange between the ruling class holding political power and their religious counterparts, seems to wane. This difference may also explain why the Devīpurāṇa assumes a remarkably less sectarian attitude in the selection of the texts to donate (see § 2.5) or the designation of the temples where the manuscript should be donated (Devīpurāṇa 91.64). The gift of knowledge endorsed by the Devīpurāṇa exalts the status of manuscripts from material objects to receptacles of the divine presence, but they are not used as a strategy to convert the kings to the right path of devotion to the goddess. The fact that the Devīpurāṇa also based its text on the account of the Śivadharmottara, and extracted numerous significant parallels from it, makes the king’s exclusion seem to be a deliberate choice.

This may contrast with the depiction of the Devīpurāṇa as a ‘politically oriented Purāṇa’ offered and motivated in § 1.3, where it was shown that the Devīpurāṇa was in fact generally aware of the necessity of consolidating the connections between the cult of the goddess and the dominant power. It would also be possible to quote one example from the text in which the power of a manuscript gives rise to such a consolidation, yet the example is not found in the chapter on the gift of knowledge. Chapter 28 includes this crucial passage. The Devanāgarī printed edition reads the chapter’s title as ‘Glorification of the Recitation of the Praises of the Goddess’ (p. 109, devyā<ḥ> stavapaṭhanamāhātmyaṃ); the essential apparatus of the edition reports a variant reading, attested in two manuscripts, which instead cite the title of the chapter as ‘Glorification of the Recitation of the Manuscript of the Goddess’ (devyāḥ pustakapaṭhanamahātmyam). Regardless of the reading we opt for, this rewording can be deemed significant. For the short chapter 28, containing only 17 stanzas, indeed prescribes that ritual readings have to be performed[316] ‘in the house of the goddess, [in that] of the god Śaṅkara as well as [in the house] of Hari’, where the main cultic focus, besides the goddess, is represented by a manuscript. Prior to the proper reading, the performer is instructed to pay homage to the goddess, feed the attendants, and worship the Brahmins,[317] ‘who are intent on devotion towards her, who have good conduct, and are all devoted to the śāstras’. The character of this chapter, unlike chapter 91 on the gift of knowledge, is thus more firmly dominated by the cult and devotion to the goddess. The worship ceremonies are not over yet, since two chief elements are still missing: the manuscript (pustaka), of which the text prescribes worship, and the reciter (vācaka), who in turn also becomes a focus of worship:[318]

Then, having addressed a benediction to them, having worshipped the manuscript with well-scented perfumes and incense, with garlands of flowers, with nice sandal oils, (7) / He should lay it on a daṇḍayantra, embellished by mirrors that are rich in decorations like bells and chowries, whose ornament is a dukūla cloth; (8) / Having then worshipped the reciter with riches according to his means [...]

These worship ceremonies, which take place in the presence of an image of the goddess, are conceived as a preparation for the reading of the manuscript, as can be deduced by the presence both of the reciter and the daṇḍayantra, literally a ‘stick-tool’, a ‘stick-shaped tool’, a lectern, or any kind of physical support for the manuscript. This word recalls the daṇḍāsana mentioned by the Śivadharmottara (2.24) as one of the two possible supports for the worship of the manuscripts, and is again attested in the Devīpurāṇa in the context of the gift of knowledge (91.80). In spite of the presence of a professional reciter, and while everything seems to be arranged so as to allow him to read the manuscript, the text prescribes that this reading should be performed by the king instead:[319]

Then the king should read the foremost praise of the goddess (devīmāhātmya). (9) / At the end of it, a formula of appeasement [should be uttered] for the people along with their king, and the worships of cows and Brahmins, and to the foremost among the forest trees, (10) / For the kṣatrya, vaiśya, śūdra, and the children; may all be good to you! Listen to the fruit of the merits of that king who would recite, (11) / As well as listen, meditate, or also read according to the procedure.

The merits subsequently listed are huge: the king will get one hundred times the fruits bestowed by one hundred Aśvamedhas, one hundred Vājapeyas, and by the ‘main sacrifices’, of which the text mentions the Agniṣṭoma, the Mahāṣṭoma, and the Rājasūya (28.12-13). Regardless of the king’s role in this ritual, whether it be that of an active reader or a passive listener, and as the text prescribes, his mere attendance is expected to produce fruits that are eminently superior to those of the main Vedic royal rituals. Moreover, these procedures also conclude with the recitation of a śānti, which contains formulas slightly resembling those attested in the Śivadharmottara and Devīpurāṇa’s chapters on the gift of knowledge.

According to chapter 28 of the Devīpurāṇa, the manuscript from which the king must read contains the ‘Praises of the Goddess’. In addition to being an expression that as such refers to a eulogistic composition devoted to the goddess, it is also used to denote the Devīmāhātmya par excellence. This is a short work of 13 chapters that is included in the Mārkaṇḍeyapurāṇa (corresponding to chapters 81 to 93) and has become an independent work. It is considered one of the main scriptures of the Durgā cult and is often referred to under the titles of Durgāsaptaśatī and Caṇḍīsaptaśatī.[320] Given the uncertain relative and absolute chronology of these texts,[321] it is almost impossible to establish whether this mention in chapter 28 of the Devīpurāṇa was actually meant as a reference to the Devīmāhātmya of the Mārkaṇḍeyapurāṇa, or whether it can rather more broadly be seen as a reference to any eulogistic text or portion of texts dedicated to the praise of the goddess, the reading of which is believed to bring appeasement to the whole kingdom. It is, however, relevant to recapitulate that the Devīmāhātmya of the Mārkaṇḍeyapurāṇa was intended to attract an audience of powerful people,[322] in the same way as the Devīpurāṇa (see § 1.3). Nor did it fail to conclude with a long section describing the impressive efficacy and apotropaic value of its hymns, which would also be invoked by performing various ‘appeasement’ procedures.[323]

In conclusion, the Devīpurāṇa does indeed also target monarchical sponsors for the performance of rituals focused on the use of manuscripts, but this aspect becomes less relevant in the practice of the gift of knowledge. One main difference, which possibly also influenced the choice made in this regard by the Purāṇic authors, is that the gift of knowledge as intended in the Devīpurāṇa does not just include the scriptures of a specific sectarian group, as the Śivadharmottara does, but, as observed above, is rather ecumenical in its approach. It even includes mundane literature, which makes it less valuable as a strategy aimed at attracting powerful supporters for the Dharma of the goddess, as chapter 127 expressly requests. By contrast, when the involvement of a monarch in the performance of a ritual focusing on manuscripts is stressed, which happens in chapter 28 as well as in chapter 128 of the Devīpurāṇa (see § 2.5 and Appendix 2) with its parallels to the Śivadharmottara, the manuscripts that are mentioned are the scriptures of the goddess, to which the king is called to offer his exclusive support.

Given its focus on the Śaiva scriptures (see § 2.5), the Śivadharmottara highlights the function of the king as the donor in the context of a gift of knowledge, prefiguring that the practice of this ritual will grant him and his relatives many eons to spend in the world of Śiva after death (2.77-79). In spite of this, the Śivadharmottara in no way restricts the performance of the gift of knowledge to rich and powerful people, but insists on the possibility that everybody can practice it, regardless of gender, wealth, and caste, as long as honesty and faith are respected.[324] Less expensive versions of this rite are envisaged for people who cannot afford to finance the big and costly ceremony described in the first half of the chapter. For this reason, stanzas 2.85 to 87 list writing instruments and other ‘subsidiary implements of knowledge’ (vidyāṅga), which, once donated, confer the same fruit as the gift of knowledge:[325]

Having presented, according to [his] faith and wealth, even just one of the auxiliary instruments of knowledge —which [are] leaves, stands, threads and so on, ink-pot and pens, a śarayantra seat, unguents, beds, good food, a salary, and so on, (85) / And anything else that is employed for this purpose; everything, big or small, that would conform to the procedure (86) /—He is honoured in the world of Śiva with great enjoyments. (87) / Having donated a carpet for the manuscript and a beautiful cloth, proportionate to the measures [of the manuscript], or a cover for its box, he is honoured in the world of Śiva. (88) / As many are the whole number of threads in the cloth of this [manuscript], for so many thousand yugas he will obtain great enjoyments. (89)

A wooden box and a tablet for writing are other writing implements that can be made in lieu of the donation of a manuscript (2.105-106).[326] Similar statements are made by the Devīpurāṇa. The remaining stanzas of Devīpurāṇa chapter 91, following the donation and the performance of the śānti, mainly contain eulogistic statements on the gift of knowledge and considerations on its performers, specifying that their main feature should be their honesty, and that the gift of knowledge has to be performed according to one’s own financial means (91.75). This opens the door, as in the Śivadharmottara, to the mention of several other objects that can serve as instruments for writing or can be connected with the manuscript in various other ways. Their donation is suggested as an alternative form of the gift of knowledge. These are: [327]

A seat endowed with a mechanism, as well as a stick-throne: the gift [of these objects] to one who constantly practices the recitation of manuscripts will bestow kingship. (80) / The unguent for eyes and feet donated to one who is versed in knowledge, as well as the earth, a house or a field, will bestow all kingship. (81)

These verses introduce some notions that are almost entirely missing from the account of the Devīpurāṇa. Instead, they are central to the understanding of this ritual in the Śivadharmottara. As observed in the previous chapter, the gift of knowledge is mainly subject to two possible interpretations: it is either a gift that has knowledge—a manuscript, but also a writing instrument—as its object, or a gift that supports knowledge, in the sense that it is addressed to the people charged with the production and dissemination of knowledge, i.e. mainly teachers, reciters, and all those who work with knowledge both in written and oral form. The only source, however, that pays strong attention to this second interpretation, which is neither secondary to nor disconnected from the previous one, is the Śivadharmottara, which dedicates the entire second part of its second chapter to this typology of gift of knowledge (see § 2.4). A similar notion also emerges from the brief prescriptions of Devīpurāṇa 91.80-81, where the references to the provision of food and water, as well as to the donation of other material benefits to recipients qualified as being versed in knowledge, points at the second type of gift of knowledge. This aspect is thus not completely absent from the Devīpurāṇa, yet it is not attributed the same relevance as that by the Śivadharmottara.

Sources on the gift of knowledge indicate quite clearly that the recipients of the gift of manuscripts, or of other writing tools, were, rather unsurprisingly, Brahmins.[328] This happens in conformity with the general definition of the ‘six components of gifting’ given in the Devalasmṛti and quoted consistently by subsequent medieval digest-writers (§ 1.2). On the basis of how the text qualifies these Brahmins, one can also deduce that they were supposed to be teachers. This, in turns, gives rise to further considerations regarding the purposes of the gift of knowledge and the ways these manuscripts and writing tools that are ritually donated (§ 2.4) are used. See, in this regard, the description given by the Devīpurāṇa:[329]

He has to offer this to [a teacher] who is always reciting [the Vedas], who relishes the gift of knowledge, who masters the totality of sciences and has worked hard on the technical literature, (66) / For the benefit of one who only lives off this.

This person, clearly identified as a professional teacher, is the same one who performs the appeasement ritual after receiving the manuscript in the temple. The Śivadharmottara also seemingly suggests that the recipient of the manuscript is a Brahmin teacher, since it qualifies the donee of various items in the context of a gift of knowledge as a śivajñānābhiyukta (Śivadharmottara 2.83c, 2.90a and 2.106a), ‘one versed in the Śaiva knowledge’; this was also the definition of the recipient of a manuscript in Śivadharmaśāstra 12.81 (see § 2.5). The Nandipurāṇa, like the Devīpurāṇa, clearly indicates that the recipient is a teacher by stating that the main procedure for the performance of a gift of knowledge is the donation of a manuscript ‘to a very virtuous Brahmin, a teacher endowed with intelligence, knower of logic, who recites the Veda’.[330] However, this text had introduced a further detail regarding the donation of the manuscript. Following the transportation of the manuscript to the temple on a chariot (Dānakāṇḍa 12.129-30), the Nandipurāṇa prescribes that:[331]

Performing dances and songs in [his] presence, and various music accompanied by auspicious prayers and recitations of the Vedas, one should offer that splendid [manuscript] to the god.

The first recipient of the gift of the manuscript is, therefore, the god.

2.2The Corrections

Although the Śivadharmottara makes its first reference to a ritual focused on the use of manuscripts in stanza 2.13, the text already alludes to written knowledge in stanzas 2.6 to 2.12. The text stresses here the importance of preserving the integrity of the Śaiva knowledge and, consequently, of the manuscripts through which this is transmitted. This concern finds expression in a list of faults (doṣa) that can damage the transmission of knowledge, and that a teacher is supposed to emend in order to restore its former correctness. This notion is formulated in the text of the Śivadharmottara with the word saṃskāra, which evokes a context of ritual and linguistic purity. The only word attested in the following stanzas that can be linked coherently to the semantic field of ‘correction’ is the causative passive past participle śodhita, literally ‘made pure’, from the verbal root śudh, ‘to purify’, ‘to polish’ from defects. The errors mentioned in this short passage range from mechanical mistakes (for example, the omission of syllables or the presence of redundancies) to logical contradictions and metrical inaccuracies, which are all considered as ultimately being rooted in human carelessness and incompetence:[332]

The one who, having himself learned a corrupt [teaching], would teach [this] knowledge to somebody else, this most miserable man, destroyer of knowledge, goes to the frightful hell. (6) / The teacher who completely restores, as before, the correctness (saṃskāra, see 2.11) of the Śaiva knowledge, which has been damaged due to carelessness over the course of time and which has been wrongly written, with too little or too many syllables, by people who were confused; (7) / Whose readings have been erroneously learned; which has been spoiled by stupid people, and has been corrected by masters who are blinded by being proud in their knowledge; (8) / Which, with respect to the sense, is endowed with meaningless statements and contains repetitions, which contains internal contradictions [or is] in contradiction with its own theses; (9) / Which has been severely damaged with respect to the metrics, and which lacks words and meanings; [the teacher who properly restores the former correctness of this knowledge of Śiva], endowed here and there with these and other defects, (10) / Is the knower of the meaning of the Śaiva scriptures, a sage, the supreme lord of knowledge, (11) / And no one will be able to describe the greatness of his merits. He is exactly like Śiva, [and] Śiva abides permanently in him. (12)

This passage does not only reveal awareness of the perils implied in the textual transmission, but also sketches early medieval philological practice. In a few stanzas, the text outlines a scene where ‘stupid people’ slip mistakes into the texts, followed by even more stupid masters who further corrupt this transmission by trying to correct those mistakes, and do so with very meagre success. The fact that these stanzas do not necessarily nor exclusively associate the corruption of a text with the alteration of its written form, but rather seem to envisage a situation in which wrongly written readings are just one of the causes that compromise a text’s integrity, is the most relevant aspect at play here. The work of professional scribes, referred to in stanza 2.7, is surely seen as a context from which textual faults may originate, but at the same time significance is attributed to the interaction between pupils and teachers, as well as to the direct interventions of the latter in the text, an activity bearing both negative and positive results depending on the teacher’s quality. This is not to say that these stanzas diminish or underestimate the role of manuscript transmission. On the contrary, stanzas 2.6-12 function as a premise to the manuscript rites described immediately afterwards, in a chapter that, by and large, highlights the role of manuscripts as ritual foci, while also stressing their use in teaching activities and for the aural fruition of knowledge. The authors of these contents clearly felt the need to rely on manuscripts for the correct transmission of the knowledge underlying their belief system. They also show awareness of the importance of preserving its literal integrity. At the same time, they know how the use of the text and its manuscripts, as well as the people handling them, can and do interfere in the process of textual transmission by altering the form and contents of a manuscript. Preserving a manuscript is thus more than a matter of mechanically copying it into a new manuscript. Rather, it also requires avoiding interferences from the interpretative process, which were arguably regarded as common practice in the life of a text. Ultimately, the functions of ritualizing the actions which focus on the use of manuscripts include the protection of the text from the alterations that are most likely to take place during these activities. The Śivadharmottara frequently applies such prescriptions to activities ranging from transcription to public recitations. The fault of corrupting the transmission of a text is thus shared by all the professionals handling the manuscript—scribes, teachers, reciters, and pupils—and the gates of hell are wide open for such destroyers of knowledge.

These stanzas from the Śivadharmottara count at least two other parallels in two works dealing with manuscript rituals:[333] of these, one is found in chapter 67 of the Uttarakāmika and is strongly dependent on the text of the Vidyādānādhyāya, from which the southern scripture has taken literal borrowings (see §§ 1.3, 4.2, and Appendix 2). The less literal parallel found in the Nandipurāṇa is most noteworthy. Like the other parallels with the Śivadharmottara found in this work, it shows only a vague resemblance to the early Śaiva work, and presents the reader with an original text and independent interpretations. The rules for correcting a manuscript are introduced in Dānakāṇḍa 12.122–127NP, to which Ballālasena in his Dānasāgara appends the rubric ‘Procedures for Correction’, śodhanavidhi (Dānasāgara, p. 480). They compile the mistakes which are to be avoided or emended, and list the criteria applicable to this operation. The instructions given by the Nandipurāṇa in these stanzas are close to those of the Śivadharmottara, yet only show a slight overlap with the latter. However, one major difference between the two texts is the position that these stanzas occupy with regard to the gift of knowledge rite: while the Śivadharmottara seems to exclude the correction of the manuscript from the procedures for the gift of knowledge by placing the passage immediately before their inception, the Nandipurāṇa inserts the prescriptions for the revision of the manuscript within the broader context of the gift of knowledge. Chronologically, it is the step that immediately follows the transcription of the manuscript and precedes the procession to the temple and the actual donation. According to the Nandipurāṇa’s author, who was seemingly inspired by the awareness that,[334] ‘whenever a manuscript is copied, some mistakes will almost certainly be made’, a manuscript should thus be corrected—or, as the text puts it, the two manuscripts have to be ‘made uniform’—just after its copying is accomplished:[335]

Furthermore, one should make both these manuscripts uniform and read [them] aloud. (122) / One should examine [the text] endowed with lacking or excessive syllables and metrical quantities, and with appropriate and inappropriate anusvāras and visargas; one should emend [it] on the basis of the application of grammatical rules (śāstra),[336] [and] on account of redundancies; (123) / Because of a meaningless expression, as well as on account of the appropriate use of words for [that] context (prasaṅga). [One should correct the text] by understanding the meaning by means of another text (sūtra); by accurately distinguishing questions and answers; (124) / And when the treatise has no parallels, [one has to correct it] by grasping the general meaning (samudāyārtha) by using references to the topic under discussion [from other parts of the text], by means of brief summaries [of the subject], and even by means of the objections that are raised; (125) / And, for words that can have many meanings, by determining [the meaning] that is coherent to the context. At places, one should assess the primary meaning, just like the primary expression (12.127ab), through an overall examination of the text, [and] on account of [grammatical functions] like the kārakas, [if] they are originally correct. (126) / Alternatively, on the basis of metrics, one should understand the desired connection of metres. (127) / A competent person should know in this way, and then after having thoroughly honoured the book, [he] will donate [it], along with marvelous riches, in the abodes that are the temples of the gods. (128)

In spite of the uncertain conditions of the manuscript tradition regarding these stanzas, it is possible to extract from them some pieces of information on how the process of correction is to be conducted according to the Nandipurāṇa. In first place, the text does not specify who is supposed to peruse the manuscripts. The only nominative of the whole passage is medhāvī (12.128NP), a ‘learned’ person, in this case most likely in the sense of a man who is ‘competent for’, or ‘in charge of’, the ritual. The Śivadharmottara expressly assigns the responsibility for correcting the text to the teachers, while the Nandipurāṇa seemingly leaves it open to the possibility that, besides the teacher, also the scribe, who is mentioned in Dānakāṇḍa 12.118–19NP and is the agent in stanzas 12.120–21NP, may have played a role in the correction of the newly produced copy. It must be noted that the scribes’ responsibility for producing a correct copy of the text, and thus presumably also for their ability to restore a faulty one, is stressed by the features that these and other sources attribute to them (see § 2.1), also including the fact that they are required to be well educated in technical literature and metrics. In fact, one can surmise that at least two people are involved in the correction of the manuscripts as envisaged by the Nandipurāṇa. According to a possible interpretation of Śivadharmottara 2.39, two people are presumably also active in the transcription of the manuscript. In that case (see § 2.1), the text seems to establish that one person is in charge of reading from the apograph, and another is entrusted with writing down what he hears; here, the two actions expressed by the verbs samīkuryāt and vācayet suggest that the correction, or ‘normalization’ (from samīkṛ, ‘to make equal’), of the text is also performed on the basis of it being read aloud. In spite of the construction of the pāda, the two verbs are therefore most likely to be read as conveying not consecutive, but rather simultaneous activities.[337]

The Nandipurāṇa uses three different expressions to denote the activity of correcting a manuscript. One is the more common verb śudh (see the optative śodhayet at 12.123NP), ‘to purify’, ‘to polish’, also attested in the Śivadharmottara and used in Ballālasena’s rubric on that passage, śodhanavidhi. We then encounter the cvi formation samīkṛ (12.122NP), ‘to make uniform’, which is used to introduce the entire passage; and, in conclusion, the compound satkṛ (12.128NP), literally ‘to set right’, ‘make beautiful’, ‘treat respectfully’. This last verse is conducive to conceiving the whole process of correcting a text within the range of the ritual actions that form the structure of a gift of knowledge. More specifically, the ‘purification’ of a manuscript from its mistakes, resting on the idea that a proper exegetical and editorial work is a way to honour the text, is an essential requirement to make the manuscript suitable for the next phase, when its iconic use and consequent ‘deification’ will reach a final peak. A similar notion underpins the Vidyādānādhyāya of the Śivadharmottara: although the emendation of the text is not expressly considered a component of the ritual, the position of stanzas 2.6 to 12, immediately before the beginning of the worship, suggests that only those books that are the true reflection of the knowledge of Śiva (not that of his teachers!) and, as such, of Śiva himself, are admitted to the ritual.

In parts, the Nandipurāṇa verses remain obscure with regard to the technical aspects involved in making the two texts uniform. While we may logically deduce that the correction happens with the apograph being checked against the exemplar, one cannot exclude that ‘leveling’ the two texts may also mean that, in this phase, errors could also be corrected in the exemplar when spotted. The accusative ubhayaṃ […] tallekhyaṃ, ‘both these manuscripts’, a morphological singular used instead of the dual, is after all the object of the two verbs samīkuryāt and vācayet. Again, this can be read in parallel with Śivadharmottara 2.39, where the accusative singular pustakam, ‘manuscript’, has to be read as the object of the two verbs likhet (‘[one] should write’) and vācayet (‘[one] should read’), and understood as a dual referring to both manuscripts. The idea of comparing the manuscript to its exemplar is no longer evoked in the Nandipurāṇa and, as the instructions given in this passage seem to imply, it may well be possible that this collation was not deemed essential to correcting the text. For such instructions, as well as those of the following stanzas, exhort the reader to assess the correctness of a text either on the basis of its orthographic, grammatical, and stylistic faults, or by virtue of hermeneutical criteria. In contrast, the comparison with the other manuscript is not evoked again in any other case; and, in fact, in none of these cases would such a comparison be necessary. The person in charge of correcting the manuscript is rather instructed to check the text against different sections of the work under examination, or even other works altogether, while at the same time being requested to evaluate the internal coherence of topics as well as linguistic and metrical choices. These stanzas are echoed by Dānakāṇḍa 12.139–142NP, where a teacher is mainly described as a knower of metrics (‘knower of the treatises on metrics’, vṛttaśāstrajñaḥ, 12.139NP) and grammar (‘well versed in grammatical treatises’, śabdaśāstraviśāradaḥ, 12.139NP), and as the chief person responsible for interpreting the semantics of the text.[338] The question of the internal consistency of the contents, along with the choice of a logical connection between words and meanings, is also raised by the Śivadharmottara (see especially 2.9) which, like the Nandipurāṇa, closes the paragraph by exhorting the production of a metrically correct text. The authors of both works thus show more concern about having a consistent, flawless, and non-contradictory text, rather than one that would be faithful to its exemplar. The outcome of this process is the production of a ‘purified’ manuscript, one that could rightly be used later on in the ritual in the same manner as an icon of the gods.

The direct association of knowledge (and, thus, the manuscript) with Śiva, by furthermore stating the sameness between the former two and the teachers, is meant to confer divine authority on the human agents and their intellectual creations, and is asserted by the Śivadharmottara more than once. For instance, in the first lines of the account of the gift of knowledge, as a sort of simple theological premise to its performance, the text says:[339]

Having worshipped Śiva according to rule, one should then worship his knowledge, and [worship] with devotion the teacher as if he were Śiva, because this triad is similar: (14) / Like Śiva is knowledge, like knowledge is the teacher. For [one can gain] the same kind of fruit from the worship of Śiva, knowledge, and the teacher. (15)

The last stanza asserts the oneness of the triad formed by Śiva, the teacher, and knowledge and prescribes that it be worshipped, meaning that it is envisioned as a material object, a manuscript. It has close parallels in Śaiva literature,[340] and a direct model in a verse from the Śivadharmaśāstra, where the text establishes the equivalence between Śiva and the yogin.[341] It is on the basis of this identity that the gift addressed to the yogin is declared to be undecaying and, according to a similar pattern, the Vidyādānādhyāya compares the infiniteness of Śiva to that of a successful gift of knowledge.[342]

The assimilation of the teacher and the manuscript to the divinity of Śiva not only confers authority upon them but, at least theoretically, it helps to protect both against damages and disrespectful acts. This notion, which is the same underlying the necessity of ‘purifying’ the manuscript of Śiva by correcting the mistakes of the text, is epitomized by the sixth chapter of the Śivadharmottara, the ‘Chapter on the Categories of Sins’ (pāpabhedādhyāya), some portions of which are strictly connected with the topics of chapter two. One of the main concerns of chapter 6 is that of providing an outline of the sinful actions that can cast a person into hell. Among the sins listed by the text, great relevance is given to those regarding the sphere of religious life, especially in the cases where revilement (nindā) is addressed to three main targets: Śiva, the teacher, and the Śaiva knowledge. Stanzas 6.8 to 12 give a generic definition of the ‘six great crimes’ involving the triad:[343]

Those who hate Mahādeva, the one who allows the crossing of the ocean of transmigration, they go to the fire of hell, charged with great guilt. (8) / Those who ruin the Śaiva knowledge, which accomplishes all goals: they, who head to hell (niraya), commit a very great sin. (9) / Those people who hate the teacher expounding the Śaiva knowledge, they, guilty of a great crime, go to hell (naraka). (10) / The revilement of Śiva, the revilement of the teacher, the corruption of the Śaiva knowledge, the theft of a temple’s wealth, destroying the teacher’s wealth (11) / And those who, because they are completely deluded, steal a manuscript of the Śaiva knowledge: they say [these] six great crimes [have] endless consequences (12).

Once again, these stanzas establish a connection between Mahādeva, the śivajñāna, and the teacher, i.e. the three pillars of the religious life of the lay devotee. The latter can commit a sin against these three either by offending them directly (and stanzas 6.13 onward will explain in which way this offence is perpetrated) or, as the text puts it, by stealing from their properties. The terminology used in 6.11 to refer to the three categories accounting for the first of the six ‘great crimes’, which constitute the direct offences, is substantially varied. For example, the text uses the noun nindā, ‘offence’, ‘revilement’, to define the sins committed to the detriment of Śiva and the teacher, while selecting the word dūṣaṇa, ‘corruption’, to refer to the crime against Śaiva knowledge. This noun derives from the same verbal root duṣ (literally ‘to soil’) as the word doṣa, which is used in chapter 2 of the Śivadharmottara to define the mistakes which are to be corrected and avoided in a written text. This terminological variance is also accurately reflected by stanzas 6.8 to 10, where those who commit sins against the god and the teacher are said to ‘despise’ them (using the same verb dviṣ at 6.8 and vi-dviṣ at 6.10), while those who sin against the Śaiva knowledge corrupt it (dūṣayanti, again from duṣ). This choice highlights the difference in the relationship that a human agent establishes with an anthropomorphic god or a person on the one hand, and a text on the other, although these are ultimately believed to hold the same ontological status.

The second category of sins replicates this duality. In the case of the god and the teacher, the ‘indirect’ offences (an expression that is not used in the text, but that seems to properly define the nature of this second triplet of sins) consist of stealing from their material goods. With regard to the god, the wealth of the temple (devadravya, literally ‘substances of the god’) consists of these goods. In the case of the teacher, these are his personal belongings (gurudravya, literally ‘substances of the teacher’). When it comes to the Śaiva knowledge, the sixth ‘great crime’ corresponds to the theft of its manuscripts. This implies that the relationship between the Śaiva knowledge, namely the set of Śaiva teachings that has to be transmitted without faults and corruptions, and the manuscript through which this transmission is performed, hinges on the notion of ownership, as the manuscript becomes a form of property of the teachings that it contains. This notion, however, does not indicate a subordinate status for the manuscript, as the identification between knowledge and the manuscript is complete. Chapter 2 of the Śivadharmottara, with its frequent prescriptions concerning the worship of Śaiva knowledge (and thus of Śiva himself) in the manuscripts, and its ritualization of the practice of textual transmission, makes this identity rather explicit. However, this is also plainly expressed in chapter 6 of the Śivadharmottara, particularly in stanzas 6.17 to 6.20, which detail the different cases of the sin against knowledge (now called jñānanindā); according to these stanzas, in almost all circumstances an offense against knowledge is committed by those who do not deal carefully with its manuscripts, or fail to respect the compulsory ritual obligations for handling them:[344]

Those who read or write the Śaiva knowledge without having worshipped [it], unlawfully give [it] away, listen and proclaim [it]; (17) / And [those who] sell it out of greed and because of the limitation of [their] faulty knowledge; and [those who] place [it], as they please, in non-purified places; (18) / The one who, speaking ill of the Śaiva knowledge, will proclaim another [teaching], and the one who, although capable, does not recite it, and [the one] who does it carelessly; (19) / And the one who, being impure, recites and listens [to it] in an impure place: all this is succinctly taught as being equal to the revilement of knowledge (jñānanindā). (20) / The one who, not having performed the worship of the teacher, wants to listen to the treatise, one who doesn’t do service and doesn’t carry out the command of the teacher, and the one who doesn’t truly have devotion (21); / [The one who] does not rejoice in his speech and answers back, and who is deceitful with regard to the ritual duties towards the teacher and is negligent towards him (22) / […]

This passage, which proceeds with a description of the different offences amounting to the gurunindā, plainly identifies the manuscript with the Śaiva knowledge, as an improper treatment of the manuscript results in an offence perpetrated against the śivajñāna. At the same time, and precisely due to this identification, the text explicitly shows that the handling of such manuscripts and their use in the transmission of texts, as well as in teaching activities and in public performances, are always mediated by ritual and bound by purity restrictions. The actions that chapter 2 describes in a highly ritualized way within the broader context of performing the gift of knowledge—writing and reading the manuscript, donating it, attending or performing its reading or teaching—have therefore to be ritualized, in a much simpler way, even when they are performed outside a gift of knowledge. According to chapter 6, this ritualization requires that a worship ritual and the ascertainment of the agents’ purity and of the places involved in the use of manuscripts of the śivajñāna initiate each performance. Such behaviour ensures that the manuscripts and their contents are truly regarded as the embodiment of the Śaiva knowledge that ultimately corresponds to Śiva. Thus, they are preserved against loss and corruption. Coherently with these instructions, the text forbids the sale of such manuscripts.[345] They can only be donated within a ritualized context; the reference to the greed that would push some to sell manuscripts is a hint that they were ultimately viewed as costly items.

2.3The Abode of Knowledge

Following the donation of the manuscript, stanzas 2.109 to 24 of the Śivadharmottara prescribe the construction of a precious box (2.109–113); afterwards, the manuscript, which is again placed on the lion-throne, is worshipped together with the receptacle (2.114–15) into which it will eventually be inserted (2.116). In describing all these procedures and tools, the text makes use of a unique technical terminology:[346]

The person in charge (budhaḥ, st. 2.113), who would commission the construction of a nice golden box, complete in all its parts, embellished with all jewels, provided with a cover, [which functions as] a shelter for the manuscript (vidyākośasamāśraya), [made] of silver and copper, square-shaped, (109) / Or made of white copper, brass and iron, of wood, bamboo and so on; and, with new, red-coloured leather, (110) / Would polish inside and outside that new house in which knowledge abides (vidyāvāsagṛha), furnished with handles [made] with all [precious] stones, fastened by a strong thread; (111) / [Or who] would make a jewel box of knowledge (vidyāratnakaraṇḍaka), provided with a lock; having had [this] built in the proper manner, according to one's own wealth, (112) / Having purified with fragrant water the supreme house of the manuscript (vidyākośagṛha), having set up a wonderful tent provided with flowers inside; (113) / Having worshipped there the lion-throne of knowledge, according to procedure, he will place on this [throne] the abode of the manuscript (vidyākośagṛha) by proclaiming the day auspicious; (114) / And then he will besmear [it] with sandal, camphor, saffron and so on, [and] worship [it] with fresh flowers, once it has been provided inside with garments [and] incense; (115) / Then, accompanied by the sound of musical instruments, he should fill [the treasure-house of knowledge] with the treasure of knowledge (vidyākośa); [and] afterwards he should worship knowledge with abundant substances and, having made a circumambulation, the person in charge should, at the end, bow with all his members. (116)

The compounds used in these stanzas to denote the precious case assembled for the manuscript, made either of different sorts of metals or of wood,[347] are semantically based on its similarities with a ‘treasure box’, a ‘storehouse’, or a ‘dwelling place’, in which the manuscript, embodiment of the vidyā, will be stored from now on and will abide. Parallel to the events of the preceding stanzas, the text habitually prefixes the word vidyā° to various nouns that are used to denote specific implements in the ritual: there is a vidyāsiṃhāsana (‘lion-throne of knowledge’, 2.23, 114), a vidyāvimāna (‘vehicle of knowledge’, 2.45), and the vidyāṅgas (‘subsidiary implements of knowledge’, 2.87), while we now encounter the vidyāratnakaraṇḍaka, (‘jewel box of knowledge’ 2.112),[348] used as a synonym of vidyākośasamāśraya (‘storehouse of knowledge’, 2.109), vidyāvāsagṛha (‘house in which knowledge abides’, 2.111) and vidyākośagṛha (‘treasure-house of knowledge’, 2.113), whereas vidyākośa (‘treasure of knowledge’, 2.116) is arguably used here to denote the manuscript itself. These words, while seemingly only indicating the container of a manuscript in this case, could indeed also be employed to designate a ‘larger’ repository for more texts, which in fact we would call a library. This is confirmed by the following stanzas, which determine the procedures for bringing the manuscript inside its box into a small room called vidyāyatana, the ‘abode of knowledge’, where worship is resumed:[349]

Also for the treasure-house of knowledge there is a wonderful abode of knowledge (vidyāyatana): [this] should be very beautiful, pleasant, measuring eight hands; (117) […] Having brought this [manuscript] there, [accompanied] by the sound of tūryas and by various auspicious prayers, he will place [there] with devotion the jewel box of knowledge, (121) / And then he will worship the Śaiva knowledge with fragrances, flowers, and so on, like Śiva, continuously, at dawn, noon and sunset, with reverence. (122)

The name ‘abode of knowledge’ (vidyāyatana, 2.117) strongly resembles the compounds used in the previous stanzas to describe the precious box into which the manuscript is inserted. However, here it is undoubtedly intended as a place with dimensions amounting to eight hastas. This measurement roughly corresponds to 3.6 meters, but the reader is not informed whether it applies to breadth, length, or both. Although the text is not explicit about the functions of this place and never clearly refers to the storage of manuscripts (which, however, could be implicit in its name), such dimensions would be sufficient to qualify the small building mentioned by Śivadharmottara 2.117 as a ‘library’ that could serve as a storage place for manuscripts rather than a place suitable for studying them. This is confirmed by the scarce archaeological remains in the territories of Indic culture.[350] The small buildings annexed to the eastern entrances of Cambodian temples are a pertinent example: as remarked by Goodall, secondary literature has often identified these spaces with libraries, on the sole basis of two tenth-century Sanskrit epigraphs (K. 958 and K. 355) mentioning a pustakāśrama, literally a ‘resting place for manuscripts’;[351] the second of these records even seems to identify as pustakāśrama the particular building where it is inscribed, in the southeast of a Śaiva temple compound. Goodall further notes that two inscriptions from Angkor accounting for the ‘hermitages’ (āśramas) founded by the king Yaśovarman in the mid-tenth century (K. 701 and K. 279) refer to the provision of writing implements and the employment of scribes (lekhaka), librarians (pustakarakṣiṇa), and ‘preparers of leaves’ (pattrakāraka).[352]

The connection with a hermitage is functional to our analysis of the account provided by the Śivadharmottara. The latter does not give further details on the location of the small ‘abode of knowledge’. However, this reference can be connected with the following description (see 2.128ff.) of the complex of buildings that the text calls śivāśrama (‘Śaiva hermitage’) and which is associated with educational and social functions (see § 2.4). The aforementioned example from Cambodia illustrates that historical evidence has proven from an early date that there were ‘storerooms’ of manuscripts that were attached to religious and educational institutions and financed through private donations.[353] The terminology attested in epigraphs, moreover, confirms the idea that libraries are intended as ‘storehouses’, as exemplified by the use of terms such as pustakabhaṇḍāra or sarasvatībhaṇḍāra /°bhāṇḍāgāra, literally ‘storehouse of manuscripts’ or ‘storehouse of Sarasvatī’, the latter being intended both as a metaphor for manuscripts and as the goddess presiding over learning.[354] In other cases, words for ‘library’ are formed by the term °kośa (‘treasure’/’treasure-house’) in composition with nouns such as jñāna° (‘knowledge’) or cit° (‘thought’).[355] The expressions attested in inscriptions are thus close to those that the Vidyādānādhyāya freely uses to describe not only the ‘abode of knowledge’ but also, metaphorically, the manuscripts and their containers.

If we accept that the ‘abode of knowledge’ is a small manuscript-repository attached to the Śaiva hermitage described in the following stanzas, the Śivadharmottara would actually prescribe the ritualization of all the main activities connected to the conservation of the manuscript: from the construction of its case, to the insertion of the manuscript into the container and its arrival at the location, happening after veneration and ‘[accompanied] by the sound of tūryas and by various auspicious prayers’ (2.121). Although no direct link is established with the preceding ceremony of donation, the identity of the manuscript, which is called śivavidyā at 2.122, and of the ritual implements, especially the lion-throne mentioned at 2.114, makes it possible to connect these ritual activities with the foregoing ones, and to hypothesize that the manuscript that has been donated to the āśrama has now reached its final destination in the ‘abode of knowledge’. This is furthermore described as a place where the manuscript(s) of the Śaiva knowledge will, ‘like Śiva’ (śivavat, 2.122), be worshipped daily. Additionally, following the suggestion that the ‘abode of knowledge’ could be a place in which manuscripts are also stored, this chapter of the Śivadharmottara would reflect a situation in which, coherently with the historical records of the inscriptions, private donations of rich sponsors support the formation of a manuscript collection (in this case of a single class of texts, i.e. those falling into the category of Śaiva knowledge, for which see § 2.5), joined to a religious and educational institution; and in which places intended for the storage of manuscripts might also have hosted the practice of ritual activities focussed on the manuscripts.

Even though, once again, the Śivadharmottara does not offer an explicit qualification of the ‘abode of knowledge’ as a storage-room, a parallel with an extant ‘manuscript repository’ from the early history of Indian manuscript cultures might shed some light on this point. I am referring to the renowned Buddhist ‘library’ at Gilgit, which is ‘the only one extant from ancient India’.[356] The hypotheses about the functions and formation of the Gilgit collection furnish an instructive point of comparison with the Śivadharmottara’s ‘abode of knowledge’. The hypotheses presented by scholars to date consist of the idea (which has indeed been met with support) that the Gilgit manuscripts were produced and used for ritual purposes, and that the collection might have emerged as a result of the manuscripts’ ritual functions. A famous passage from the Cīvaravastu of the Vinaya of the Mūlasarvāstivādins, which was preserved in a manuscript from Gilgit, is another element that invites comparison with the Vidyādānādhyāya of the Śivadharmottara and, in particular, with its part about the worship and hypothetical storage of manuscripts. This text refers to the existence of private collections of manuscripts as well as collections administered by the Buddhist monastic community (saṅgha), and is framed by a story concerning inheritance matters;[357] while referring to the monastic ‘library’, the Cīvaravastu evokes the cultic uses of manuscripts by mentioning an implement—the ‘lion-throne’, siṃhāsana[358]—to which the Śivadharmottara alludes in the stanzas concerning the veneration of manuscripts, even when the cultic use happens in the ‘abode of knowledge’ (2.114). In spite of the almost self-evident differences separating the testimony of the Śivadharmottara from that of the Gilgit collection, these parallels nevertheless make it possible to link the two sets of evidence. In itself, this circumstance does not imply any contact between the texts, or between the communities which had produced them, but it does highlight a shared background in early medieval Indian practices related to the cultic use of manuscripts.

In his insightful study on the archaeological site where the Gilgit collection manuscripts were retrieved, Fussman rejects the theory that had previously identified the ruins of the building originally containing the manuscripts as a stūpa.[359] This hypothesis entailed that the presence of the manuscripts at this location was due to the performance of a ritual burial in accordance with the Tibetan custom of the gter ma (‘concealed treasures’).[360] According to Fussman’s reconstruction, the building should rather be interpreted as a tower.[361] He described it as[362] ‘une chapelle isolée, chapelle d’ermitage ou chapelle détachée d’un monastère plus compact comme on a tant d’exemples dans le sites de montagne, au Gandhāra (Takht-i Bahai), au Ladakh, au Tibet’, where only a hermitic teacher (ācārya), part of a lineage of ācāryas officiating rituals for the laypeople, could have lived before it was abandoned for good.[363] This is relevant to our study because Fussman links the nature of this building, the ‘bâtiment C’, to the function of the manuscripts stored there.[364] He concluded that, in addition to the manuscripts used by the ācārya for ordinary monastic practice, others had been ritually donated to this place as meritorious acts, while yet others consisted of protective formulas (dhāraṇīs) that were copied and recited for rituals of protection performed by the resident ācārya.[365] Essentially, the evidence that he cites in support of his theory comes from a general assessment of the Gilgit collection, in which Fussman observes the presence of manuscripts of the same texts, the abundance of dhāraṇīs, and the existence of ‘miscellaneous’ manuscripts, whose production would have required that certain texts were read aloud in a specific order, for instance on the occasion of the performance of rituals of healing;[366] furthermore, his evidence comes from an evaluation of the colophons of the manuscripts, some of which attest formulas that indicate that the manuscript had been the object of a pious donation for the accretion of merits for the donors and the people associated with them.[367]

The reconstruction proposed by Fussman for this collection of manuscripts at the boundaries of the Indian world thus implies that it had emerged and grown mainly thanks to the ritual function attributed to the composition, donation, and/or recitation of the manuscripts, and that all this happened through the medium of a monastic community, albeit a small one. This is comparable to the picture painted by the Vidyādānādhyāya of the Śivadharmottara, a text that was written by Śaiva communities in search of power and prestige in a different yet still unspecified geographical area of northern India, at a not so different time in history;[368] their doctrines were significantly divergent from those of the Buddhist Mahāyāna communities, but the ritual patterns and political strategies, as also shown elsewhere, might well have been comparable.

Meanwhile, several adjustments have been proposed to Fussman’s theory on the formation of the Gilgit collection,[369] while not questioning the ritual function of many of its manuscripts. The most relevant critique has been expressed by Schopen. In particular, he observes how Mahāyāna texts mentioning the cult of the manuscript do not allude to manuscripts being remitted to monasteries after worship, nor do they prescribe that the performance of ritual healing through Buddhist sūtras would necessarily require the mediation of a monk.[370] As already observed in § 1.1, Schopen’s claim is thus a lay dimension for the ritual uses of manuscripts in the context of Mahāyāna Buddhism: emphasizing the absence of archaeological remains to account for the presence of a monastic building in the area of the ‘bâtiment C’, which Fussman also acknowledges ‘un inconvénient’ to his reconstruction,[371] Schopen proposes to understand this building as[372] ‘[…] a kind of sacred workshop, a combination of genizah and scriptorium, where old, unusable, or returned manuscripts (i.e., those with donor colophons or donors’ names in them) were kept, along with some master copies, and where new manuscripts were manufactured and were for sale (i.e., those without donor colophons or donors’ names in them)’. Relying on an analysis of the surviving colophons of the manuscripts, Schopen therefore hypothesizes that this was a place where, on the model of the Hebrew genizah, worn-out manuscripts that were nonetheless considered sacred (because they had been produced and used as amulets or had been the focus of ritual worship) were disposed. This theory has also been proposed for other collections of early Buddhist manuscripts, which, however, exhibit specific features that are not shared by the Gilgit collection (see § 1.1). Moreover, according to Schopen, this building was also a place where new manuscripts were produced and sold. Regardless of the interpretation given to the building where the manuscripts were stored, and the nature of the collection itself, the evidence still confirms a ritual function for most of the manuscripts collected at Gilgit. As Schopen himself admits,[373] this is a feature that cannot be disregarded in the assessment of how this collection was formed; furthermore, this circumstance evokes the instructions found in the Vidyādānādhyāya of the Śivadharmottara.

The Cīvaravastu, a section from the Vinayavastu of the sixth-century canon of the Buddhist Mūlasarvāstivādin,[374] is another work that contains parallels to the functions of the ‘abode of knowledge’ as it’s described in the Vidyādānādhyāya, as well as the rituals characterizing both its formation and its daily cultic functions—the manuscripts of the Śaiva knowledge are supposed to be worshipped there three times a day, according to Śivadharmottara 2.122. Its sole connection with Gilgit consists of the fact that it is the source of the only extant Sanskrit manuscript of the text of our interest. The Cīvaravastu narrates a situation in which the Buddha is in charge of distributing the property of a wealthy layman who passed away before having children and completing his ordination as a monk. The items of his estate are duly identified by the layman in a written document that is sent to the Buddhist saṅgha. The Buddha bequeaths some of the estate to the king, while leaving the major part to the monastic community. According to the following passage, which is often discussed in the context of how matters pertaining to property, Buddhist libraries, and writing culture in general are to be handled,[375] some of the items left by the deceased are to be divided into several parts, which are to be used as follows:[376]

One is for the Dharma. The second for the monastic community. Through that [portion] that is for the Dharma, the teaching of the Buddha (buddhavacana) has to be committed to writing and used on the lion-throne. [The share] that is of the monastic community has to be enjoyed by the monks. Of the manuscripts, the books on the teaching of the Buddha, without being separated, have to be placed in the common storeroom, to the advantage of the universal community of monks. The books on the other doctrines have to be enjoyed by the monks by being sold. A written will that can be quickly liquidated in the division of his substances has to be enjoyed by the monks.[377] [If this] is not possible, it must be placed in the common storeroom to the advantage of the universal community of monks. And the gold and other precious metal, coined or uncoined, has to be divided into three shares. One is for the Buddha, the second for the Dharma, and the third for the monastic community. Through that [share] that [was granted] for the Buddha, the torn and split parts in the room of perfumes and in stūpas containing hair and fingernails have to be repaired. Through [the share] that [was granted] for the Dharma, the teaching of the Buddha has to be committed to writing and used on the lion-throne. [The portion] that [was granted] for the monastic community has to be enjoyed by the monks.

The text presents two ways of enriching the monastery’s collection of manuscripts, which both rely on the intervention of a private benefactor: by investing money (in this case, the revenue from the sale of the jewels that had been inherited) to finance the copying of scriptures, or by inheriting somebody else’s library. The money addressed to the Buddhist religion (Dharma), one of the three ‘legal persons’ distinguished as beneficiaries of the profits made through the legacy, is used for the transcription of the Buddhist scriptures, which have to be joined to or used on the lion-throne, as the text says. This information, though somewhat cryptic, can be read as a reference to the enthronement of scriptures on the lion-throne for their veneration, as reported by the Śivadharmottara. Moreover, according to the latter, the vidyāsiṃhāsana does not just serve for the veneration of manuscripts, but is also used for transcribing a very small portion of text during the first-day rituals and before the manuscripts are moved to a presumably less pretentious seat (see 2.23). Eventually, in chapter 12 of the Śivadharmottara, a siṃhāsana is used for the ritual recitation of manuscripts (st. 12.262, see § 2.4). These are some of the practices to which the Cīvaravastu could allude with its mention of the lion-throne in the context of manuscript production and storage.

This segment from the Cīvaravastu has been paraphrased in the Record of Buddhist Practices (dated to 691 CE)[378] by the Chinese Buddhist monk Yijing (635–713 CE), who gives a slightly different interpretation of the passage on the lion-throne,[379] as he writes that the resources had to be used[380] ‘in copying the Scriptures and in building or decorating the lion-throne’. Although my understanding of Yijing’s text is informed by the necessity of resorting to an English translation, it nevertheless seems that the Chinese monk deviated on this point from the Sanskrit text, at least from the one reflected in the Gilgit manuscript. This is not only the case due to the rendering of upayoktavyam (‘has to be used’) with two verbs, but mainly because, unlike in the Sanskrit text from Gilgit, these verbs do not refer to ‘Scriptures’ (buddhavacana) as a subject.[381]

The fact that the Cīvaravastu gives such instructions does not necessarily mean that they were applied literally in the place where the text was preserved. As observed by von Hinüber,[382] the above translated passage on the inheritance of manuscripts in fact provides a good example that the library of Gilgit did not apply at least one rule found in the Vinaya, namely the alienation of non-Buddhist texts, which are, by contrast, extant in the Gilgit collection.

The fact that this passage from the Cīvaravastu mentions the storeroom where Buddhist manuscripts should be preserved is one of the legitimate reasons for its prominence. It refers to a building that, according to the reading of the first (and only) editor of the text, is called *dhāraṇakoṣṭhikā, recalling the function of this place as a storehouse (koṣṭikā), and as a place also intended for the preservation (dhāraṇa) and maintenance of the manuscripts. However, this reading only gains partial support in the Gilgit manuscript, and it has been rejected by Schopen on the basis of a re-reading in the light of the sTog Tibetan translation of the Cīvaravastu.[383] This is a relevant point since, as Schopen also notes, the word *dhāraṇakoṣṭhikā as conjectured by Dutt has even entered the Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Dictionary, where it has been interpreted as ‘a place for storing and keeping (sacred manuscripts)’.[384] In the context of the Cīvaravastu story, it functions as a library that was the property of a Buddhist monastic institution. The two occurrences of *dhāraṇakoṣṭhikāyāṃ (the locative case of *dhāraṇakoṣṭhikā) found in the text reproduced by Dutt[385] actually correspond to two different readings in the Sanskrit manuscript: in one case we have the very close dhāraṇākoṣṭhikāyāṃ, whereas the second occurrence actually corresponds to sādhāraṇaṃ koṣṭhikāyāṃ in the manuscript. The corresponding Tibetan translation for this term, as reported by Schopen, is spyir mdzod du, which would support a reading such as sādhāraṇakoṣṭikāyāṃ and is thus very close to the second one attested in the Gilgit manuscript, and which Schopen translates as ‘in the depository as common property’. The implication of this emendation, which I have accepted in my rendition of the text, is that the storeroom in which the manuscripts are preserved is meant to contain the common belongings of the monks. The text does not provide the readers with further details as to whether this place was meant only as a sort of archive for written documents, nor which other purposes were attributed to it.

In discussing the functions and formation of monastic libraries according to textual sources, and with specific reference to these lines from the Cīvaravastu, one cannot avoid mentioning a loose parallel found in the Adhikaraṇavastu of the same canon. This text replaced the reference to a library with one to people in charge of the ‘preservation’ of the Dharma:[386]

Therefore, through that [share] that [was granted] for the Buddha, unguent has to be offered in the room of perfumes; that [share] that [was granted] for the Dharma [has to be used] for the people who are engaged in the preservation of the Dharma; the whole monastic community has to take a share in that [portion] that [was granted] to the monastic community.

The expression dharmadharāṇām, ‘engaged in the preservation of the Dharma’, reintroduces the use of the verbal root dhṛ, from which the word °dhara is formed and from which the first member of the compound *dhāraṇakoṣṭhikā is also derived; the idea of ‘preservation’ could hint at the material conservation of the Dharma in written form, but could also refer to its memorization and oral-aural transmission of it.[387]

The heterogeneous sources examined so far highlight some constant features that can be regarded as main characters of this aspect of medieval manuscript culture: above all, the link existing between the emergence of manuscript collections and the attribution of ritual and apotropaic functions to the manuscripts; and the idea of a library, annexed to religious institutions or in some way administered by religious figures, as a treasure-house, a place in which manuscripts are guarded and worshipped.

A Sanskrit document from overseas, linking the ritualistic donation of manuscripts to a temple for storage purposes as well as for their ritual recitation, serves as further indication that the ‘abode of knowledge’ of Śivadharmottara 2.117 could indeed be a small library in which the donated manuscripts were stored (and worshipped). This is an early Sanskrit inscription (possibly datable to the sixth century) from the Strung Teng province,[388] issued by the Brahmin Somaśarman (st. 3a), ‘foremost knower of the Sāmaveda’ (sāmavedavidagraṇīḥ, st. 2b). It accounts for the erection of a liṅga, then refers to the donation of manuscripts:[389]

He donated the entire Mahābhārata [together] with the Rāmāyaṇa and the Purāṇa, and fostered an uninterrupted performance of their recitation, day by day.

The text of the inscription becomes fragmentary after this point, but one of the preserved portions contains a warning against the removal of manuscripts:[390]

But the pervert who would remove from here even only one manuscript […].

Thus, this document, which predates the Śivadharmottara, seems to attest some of the main ritual activities that are accounted for in the Vidyādānādhyāya of the Śivadharmottara, namely the donation of manuscripts to a temple and their preservation in a spot from which, as the intimidating character of the last line suggests, nobody is allowed to remove them. Along with the Cīvaravastu and the testimony of the Gilgit manuscripts, this inscription points to the existence of a shared background of knowledge and practices from which texts and documents of various traditions have drawn. Furthermore, the importance of the recitation of the manuscripts as an activity connected with their donation is firmly stressed by the Vidyādānādhyāya, which on this point offers an ideal basis for comparing the information it provides with that of the epigraphical records.

2.4On Ritual Readings and Teachers’ Salaries: The Gift of Knowledge and its Social Roots

As with the Sanskrit inscription from Strung Teng examined above, literary sources establish a connection between the practice of donating manuscripts and their performative and semantic use in public reading and teaching sessions, thus introducing the reader to a further interpretation of the notion of the gift of knowledge, one that also highlights its social function in the religious and cultural life of the communities which practiced it. While the Devīpurāṇa makes no mention of the public recitation of manuscripts (pustakavacana) in its chapter 91 on the gift of knowledge (but see § 2.5 for other references available in this text), both the Śivadharmottara and the Nandipurāṇa deal with this topic contiguously with that of manuscript donation (pustakadāna). The fact that both do so in their respective chapters devoted to the gift of knowledge implicitly means that manuscript recitation is also regarded as falling into this category. However, neither is clear about whether the same manuscript that is donated to the temple is read afterwards, as a further development of the same ritual, or if the recitation is rather intended as a temporally and materially distinct ritual activity from the gift of manuscripts. In the first scenario, which seems to be the one envisaged in the above-mentioned epigraph from Strung Teng, the implication would be that the public ritual reading of the manuscript is one of the aims of its donation, suggesting a further shift in the function attributed to the manuscript, from the purely iconic role played during the donation and worship to a performative and semantic one. The manuscript, however, had already been treated as a text, not just an icon, during its production phases, when the copying and correction alternated with its worship, and those activities were in fact regarded as ways to further honour the manuscript. On the other hand, if we were to separate the donation of the manuscript from its reading, establishing neither a material connection nor temporal sequence, then the act of donating the manuscript would mark the conclusion of the ritual started by the transcription. If the recitation of the manuscript is not part of this ritual sequence, however, it still has to be intended in and of itself as a form of gift of knowledge, given that the Śivadharmottara and the Nandipurāṇa then seemed to include the public recitation of manuscripts and their use in teaching sessions within this gifting category. That the recitation or the teaching of the contents of the manuscripts may equal their donation as material objects is however not immediately consequential, and this is what prompts Vijñāneśvara’s observations when commenting upon the notion of ‘gift of the brahman’ expounded in Yājñavalkyasmṛti 1.212 (see § 1.2).[391] If the gift of knowledge also corresponds to an oral transmission of teaching, as it is mostly the case of the ‘gift of the Veda’ (see § 3.2), then the donation fails to respect the essential principle of creating a new ownership by ending the preceding one. While the donation of a manuscript is, in accordance with the Brahmanical rules on gifting, a non-reciprocated alienation of a material object, recitation and teaching are clearly not, and in this case the donation would only be metaphorical. Yet the Śivadharmottara and the Nandipurāṇa, as well as the medieval digest-writers, had no apparent problems with this theoretical impasse. This circumstance points to a fracture between theory and practice, but also suggests that there might be more implications at play when sources recommend considering teaching as a form of dāna.

With regard to this point, the Śivadharmottara and the Nandipurāṇa behave differently, although their views comply with each other. The Śivadharmottara seals the donation of the manuscript with the performance of a great appeasement (2.60ff.)—brought about through the recitation of the Śāntyadhyāya of the Śivadharmaśāstra (see § 2.1)—after which it lists the many advantages and rewards bestowed on the performers of the mahāśānti and the gift of knowledge, conceived here as the donation of either a manuscript or a substitutive object connected to the field of writing (Śivadharmottara 2.67–79). The references to ritual manuscript readings are found further on in the Vidyādānādhyāya, where the context is no longer that of a public donation (see 2.92 and 2.101–102, both discussed below); moreover, both in this chapter and in chapter 12, which deals with the topic of recitation in stanzas 12.272–97, the manuscript reading, with its dedicated procedures and aims, exhibits all the hallmarks of a ritual that is independent from the donation. By contrast, in the Nandipurāṇa, the donation of the manuscript is immediately followed by the performance of a public recitation (Dānakāṇḍa, 12.133–35NP), which proceeds from the feasts (utsava) that donors have to host upon donating the manuscript. The public reading of the Nandipurāṇa, unlike that of the Śivadharmottara, is furthermore described as less of a ritual than an event in the style of an everyday teaching session, which requires the involvement of a reciter (vācaka, described at Dānakāṇḍa, 12.136–37NP) and a teacher (guru, described at Dānakāṇḍa, 12.138–39NP). Stanzas 12.140–167NP are entirely devoted to sketching the procedures and habits that teachers and reciters, along with their audience, are supposed to adopt while the explanation and reading of the text is carried out. The rather ordinary nature of the reading described in the Nandipurāṇa is also confirmed by one of the final stanzas of this section, which states,[392] ‘In this way, a disciplined person should attend a teaching [session] every day’ (12.165cdNP). However, the following references could be interpreted as hints that the Nandipurāṇa treats the recitation of a manuscript as a conceptual expansion on its donation: the absence of a real hiatus after the foregoing donation; the recitation of an appeasement formula at the conclusion of the reading session (see Dānakāṇḍa 12.161–163abNP), while this reference is dropped at the end of the ritual gifting section (which was where, on the contrary, the Śivadharmottara had placed a similar formula); and the concluding stanza of the section, stating,[393] ‘this is said to be the main procedure for a gift of knowledge’.

In the first place, the sequence of activities leading to the description of the manuscript recitation in the Nandipurāṇa is different than the one presented by the Śivadharmottara. However, this point shows possible parallels between the two texts. After the donation of the manuscript in the temple of Śiva and the payment of fees to the Brahmins (12.132NP), the Nandipurāṇa prescribes:[394]

And, according to one’s own ability, [everybody] has to host feasts in their own domains: the king in the town, likewise the heads of the village in the village. The householders have to throw a feast together with [their] relatives. (133) / Then, a text has to be listened to by pure people, white-dressed, sprinkled with unguents, positively minded, very attentive, joyous, provided with faith. (134)

Śivadharmottara 2.57 prescribes that feasts (utsava) have to take place in private houses on the day on which the manuscript is donated to the temple, presumably in concomitance with the procession. This could still apply to the Nandipurāṇa, if one imagines that the actions in stanza 12.132NP (the donation) and 12.133NP (the feasts) are not arranged in chronological order. Stanza 12.134NP starts a longer description of a teaching and reading session, but the concise style of this stanza makes it difficult to understand whether the activities described in the following verses are still considered part of the celebrations held on the occasion of the gift of knowledge, or if the text has started describing a different form of gift of knowledge, which focuses on the use of manuscripts not as objects to donate but as texts to be read and interpreted. What follows is the description of the qualities of the teacher (Dānakāṇḍa 12.138–144NP), the correct behaviour of students (Dānakāṇḍa 12.149–56NP and 164–67NP), and the techniques of reciters (Dānakāṇḍa 12.157–163NP), which highlights the three different fields into which the manuscript is now inserted, and which mediate relations with it. This is presented as the prime object of the interpretive work of the teacher, whose main task is that of engaging with the meaning of a text and overcoming the problems caused by its complexity (see also § 2.2).[395] At this point, and given that teaching is presented as an essentially oral activity, the Nandipurāṇa also contains a few remarks on the languages of communication. Parallel to Śivadharmottara 2.3, according to which the transmission of teachings must take place in Sanskrit, Prakrit, or a regional language depending on the students, the Nandipurāṇa states:[396]

The teacher who teaches students a text in Sanskrit by means of simple conversations and textual explanations in Sanskrit, as well as a text in Prakrit by means of simple conversations and textual explanations in Prakrit, (143) / And also the teacher who would instruct by means of [explanations] arranged in local words, this is remembered as a [true] teacher, this is father, mother, this is the gem of thought. (144)

According to these stanzas, the choice of the languages of instruction is thus dependent on the works to be taught, rather than the provenance of the students. The latter are exhorted to have faith in their teacher’s words, which should not be doubted, nor opposed; students should furthermore never forget the teachings, nor turn to another teacher.[397] The master is thus the sole interpreter to be trusted with a hermeneutical process that does not allow for opposing views: the deification of the teacher, along with that of the text, that is brought about by ritual provides an ontological justification for this authoritive stance. It should be observed, however, that no ritualistic elements are introduced in the description of the teaching session, barring a reference to an appeasement formula that the text inserts in concluding the reading of the text (12.161NP, but see below). Texts still have the power of magically influencing human existence when also functioning properly as a vehicle of learning: as the Nandipurāṇa puts it, if somebody knows a text,[398] ‘whatever he does, may it be good or impious, this will become hundredfold’.

The reciter, who will read the text that is explained in detail by the teacher, is instructed to do so in an expressive way in order to invoke the contents of the manuscript.[399] The brief rules outlined by the text at this point emphasize the performative function that is now played by the manuscript: eventually, once the reading is over, the reciter is in charge of performing the sole liturgical activity prescribed for this section, consisting of the recitation of the final blessing and the ‘appeasement of the world’ (jagacchānti):[400]

Once the reading is concluded, [that] clever man should praise the chosen deity. Having established the appeasement of the world, in the end he should sprinkle the water of appeasement. (161) / He should say: ‘Well heard! Well heard! May the teaching last forever! May the world prosper in the law, and the king always be victorious! (162) / And may the lawful teacher always be wealthy [and] healthy!’

Reciting an appeasement formula and sprinkling the water of appeasement, as well as the presence of a ‘reciter of manuscripts’ (pustakavācaka) who is in charge of these activities, are the main characteristics of the procedure that de facto concludes the gift of manuscripts in the Śivadharmottara (see stanzas 2.61–63ff.). This circumstance, however, does not necessarily also imply that in the case of the Nandipurāṇa the ritual of manuscript donation should be considered as extending up to the recitation of the appeasement formula. In spite of the proximity of the descriptions of the gifting and reading procedures, there is in fact no need to connect the instructions on the teaching session given in Dānakāṇḍa 12.140–167NP with the immediately preceding donative ceremony. The rules given in the last stanzas, as already observed, are easily applicable and most likely refer to an everyday teaching session, not necessarily a special one held on a particular occasion; nor can one suppose that each teaching session should be preceded by the donation of a manuscript in a grand style. Still, the Nandipurāṇa explicitly considers this a form of gift of knowledge comparable to the manuscript donation, as stated in Dānakāṇḍa 12.168abNP and quoted above. In doing so, the Nandipurāṇa is most likely mixing up two forms of the gift of knowledge which the Śivadharmottara distinguishes more coherently, and the actual ceremony of manuscript donation therefore has to be considered as being complete in stanza 12.132NP, which is when the manuscript is remitted to the temple.

As also shown by the testimony of Devīpurāṇa 28 examined in the preceding paragraph, the proclamation of an appeasement formula may be made at the end of a public reading and without necessarily being connected to a manuscript donation. This is further confirmed by the Śivadharmottara, whose last chapter’s final 25 verses are devoted to the description of the public reading of a manuscript that is identified, as in the chapter on the gift of knowledge, as the ‘Śaiva book’. The description in chapter 12 is the most detailed one of a public recitation in the whole work. It merits being quoted in full as it significantly matches the context of the gift of knowledge, while not implying any form of ritual gifting, and at the same time allows for a comparison with Dānakāṇḍa 12.133–168NP:[401]

Having carefully arranged the decorations in accordance with the procedures for the gift of knowledge, having gone [there] with cleansed hands, sitting on a splendid seat, (272) / One reciter should read the supreme Dharma in the courts, in the sanctuaries, and in the sacred sites (tīrthas), or in the residences of the king, as well as in houses, villages, and towns. (273) / And the listeners have to keep worshipping the Śaiva knowledge with incense and flowers day by day, and bowing with their hands in the añjali position. (274) / All of them, sitting in low seats, pacified, arranged by age, according to Dharma, are entitled to listen, avoiding any other conversation. (275) / At the beginning of the [reading of the] Śaiva knowledge, and at the end, after the listeners or the reader have uttered the mantra of Śiva, which accomplishes all good, (276) / [Each] listener, one by one, in sequence, has to offer incense, flowers, and so on. Alternatively, one [should] make an offer to the hall of knowledge (jñānasattra), for the benefit of all virtuous people. (277) / The reader should give to the teachers three blossoms in their hand; these [teachers], in turn, by means of these [flowers] will address worship to the manuscript at the beginning, in the course of, and at the end [of the reading]. (278) / Having thus performed worship according both to one’s own possibilities and to devotion, along with the distribution of fees, whoever enables a public reading of the manuscript of Śiva, (279) / For the sake of benefiting all and aiming at one’s own prosperity, I will tell the fruit of his merits, [as well as those] of the listeners and the reciter. (280) / Having abundantly earned in this life wealth, life, progeny, renown, wisdom, intelligence, glory, happiness, at the end of the material existence one will attain appeasement. (281) / If the recitation should happen without having revered the knowledge of Śiva, as well as in an impure place, one goes to hell. Therefore, the recitation should take place after purifying [a place]. (282) / Having ascertained day after day the appeasement of the world [that comes] from the recitation they, all devoted to the worship of and meditation on Śiva, should go to provide kuśa-grass and flowers [for the worship]. (283) / Then, having performed a specific worship at the completion of the treatise, with devotion to Śiva, knowledge, and the teacher, as well as for the śivayogins, (284) / One should provide food for these, and for the poor and the blind everywhere; eventually, for friends, kinsmen, and relatives, as well as for the servants. (285) / He should pay as fee to the teacher a white, auspicious cow,[402] a ring together with a couple of clothes, and a recipient full of ghee. (286) / To the reciter one has to give the fee that has been previously negotiated. In case nothing has been explicitly agreed upon, half of the teacher’s fee should be given to him (scil. the reciter); (287) / And according to one’s own ability, the sacrifier should give a fee to the remaining śivayogins; following [this], he should light 108 lamps. (288) / He should offer all the rest to Śiva along with water with flowers. This merit [coming from] knowledge is greatly protected; therefore, the fruit is undecaying. (289) / Listen to the fruits that one, freed from all faults, will get having thus devoutly performed the explanation of the Śaiva knowledge. (290) / Having saved 30 members of [his] family, along with wife, sons, and so on, with relatives, kinsmen, friends, servants, [and] slaves all together, (291) / [He] will live in the splendid town of Śiva along with all these, [provided] with high, big palaces containing everything that they desire. (292) / There [he] enjoys great enjoyments at his will, as powerful as Śiva, the donor, the destroyer, and the creator, as long as the great support [of the Universe lasts]. (293) / Then, after the re-absorption, having obtained the yoga of knowledge, he is liberated to the delight of the Lord, no doubt about it. (294) / Since [things are] like that, then one should perform the reading of the manuscript of Śiva, whose fruits are enjoyment and emancipation, out of devotion to Śiva, day by day. (295) / [There will be] no pestilence, no famine, no evil spirits, no calamities; the king does not die before his time and is not oppressed by his enemies. (296) / Where the lord of men listens to the Śivadharma uninterruptedly, in this place there will always be prosperity for all sentient beings (297).

These stanzas are also reused, with only a few adaptations concerning the manuscript to be read (see § 2.5), by the Devīpurāṇa in chapter 128 (Appendix 2). A few parallels can be drawn between the above-quoted stanzas from the Śivadharmottara and the session described by the Nandipurāṇa in Dānakāṇḍa 12.133–168NP: both texts prescribe the performance of an appeasement of the world (jagacchānti) at the end of the reading, requiring the presence of a teacher and a reciter, and both describe attitudes and behaviours of the listeners. At the same time, the Śivadharmottara places a stronger emphasis on the devotional aspects of this performance, during which the manuscript has to be constantly worshipped by all the people involved in return for the ultramundane rewards promised by the text. The Śivadharmottara, however, does not give any details on the behavior of the teacher and his students, nor on the reciter’s reading techniques because, in the account of the Śivadharmottara, the manuscript is regarded solely as an icon, a magic object that will grant security and health to the devotees and the king (see Śivadharmottara 12.296–97, very similar to 2.67–70 on the effect of the mahāśānti). When describing the ways in which a text should be treated while being used in a public context, both the Śivadharmottara and the Nandipurāṇa eventually engage with the necessity of establishing the book’s authority beyond doubt. While the Nandipurāṇa deals with this by prohibiting a critical approach to the teacher’s authority, the Śivadharmottara insists on the sacredness of the manuscript as an embodiment of the god, and on the mundane and ultramundane consequences that right behaviour (or misbehaviour) towards it may cause. In this long passage from chapter 12, the Śivadharmottara promotes the reading of the text both as a public ceremony, hosted in sacred places as well as in the king’s palaces, and on a smaller scale, as a private cult to be performed at home, in the tighter circle of one’s own family. These stanzas reiterate the exposition of chapter 2 on many points, and 12.272 directly alludes to the gift of knowledge. Although chapter 12 does not prescribe any gifts of manuscripts and these procedures are not technically labelled as a gift of knowledge, the manuscript recitation and the manuscript donation ultimately lead to the same fruits, which are, according to Śivadharmottara 12.281, ‘[…] in this life, wealth, life, progeny, renown, wisdom, intelligence, glory, happiness’; analogously, the mundane reward prescribed by chapter 2 of the same work for the performers of a gift of knowledge are[403] ‘in this life, renown, glory, divine strength, knowledge, prosperity, wealth, happiness’.

An answer to the question as to whether the recitation and teaching of a manuscript are in and of itself forms of gift of knowledge, or whether these activities have only a secondary connection with it, can be found in the previously mentioned Dānakāṇḍa 12.168NP, which is the stanza concluding the section on the teaching session in the Nandipurāṇa:[404]

This is said to be the main procedure for a gift of knowledge. Just by means of this method, out of desire to obtain great merits one should bestow a beautiful manuscript on a very virtuous Brahmin, a teacher, endowed with intelligence, knower of logic, who recites the Veda; (168–69) / Alternatively, one should support the teacher with abundant riches; having made [him] very satisfied, [the teacher] would teach good, noble, intelligent students. (170) / A gift of knowledge of this kind is traditionally held as the best among gifts.

While the first statement, ‘This is said to be the main procedure for a gift of knowledge’, must be referred to all the prescriptions given above, the subsequent lines single out two main understandings of the gift of knowledge, which are presented as distinct alternatives. In the first case, the gift of knowledge corresponds to the donation of the manuscript to a Brahmin, a definition that sums up, in nuce, the donative ceremony described both by the Śivadharmottara and by the Nandipurāṇa. Note that also the Śivadharmottara presents a similarly condensed definition of the gift of knowledge in stanza 2.83, where the merits of a gift of knowledge are prescribed for[405] ‘that person who, having transcribed the best among the auspicious manuscripts, would present [it] to someone who is versed in the knowledge of Śiva’. In the second case foreseen by the Nandipurāṇa in Dānakāṇḍa 12.170NP, the gift of knowledge does not correspond to the transmission of oral teachings, but rather to the bestowal of a livelihood on the teachers, who are thus allowed to perform their teaching duties. Hence, the activity of teaching students does not directly qualify as a gift of knowledge, as the latter coincides more literally with the material provisions endowed by a sponsor to the teachers. This explains the reason why public readings and teachings are often subsumed under the umbrella of the gift of knowledge, both in the Śivadharmottara and in the Nandipurāṇa. It also helps to solve the dilemma posed by Vijñāneśvara. For it is not the teachings that function as the immaterial object of the gifting, but rather the provisions made by the donors in favour of the performance of readings and other educational activities. In this case, vidyādāna should be intended as a ‘gift for knowledge’ rather than a ‘gift of knowledge’, being defined by its recipient rather than by its object. To be more precise, an early attestation of the term vidyādāna in the epigraphical records helps us frame the meaning of this word as a ‘donation addressed to learned people’. I refer here to a document dated to śaka year 930 (1008 CE) and originating from Kharepatan (Ratnagiri district, Maharashtra), in which the king Raṭṭarāja of the Śilāhāras from South Konkan is said to have donated three villages[406] ‘to the learned teacher, the illustrious Ātreya, as a form of gift of knowledge’. This gift of knowledge, or ‘reward for learning’ according to Mirashi’s translation of the same passage,[407] does not imply any donation nor other ritual use of manuscripts, but is simply regarded as a way to benefit learned people, as also suggested by the context in which manuscript recitation and teaching are mentioned in the Śivadharmottara. One stanza from the above-quoted passage of chapter 12, namely 12.277, suggests that the donor, as an alternative (presumably to the financing of the manuscript reading), should ‘make an offer to the hall of knowledge (jñānasattra), for the benefit of all virtuous people (sarvasādhujana°)’. The clarification of this point is tightly connected with the examination of the second part of the Vidyādānādhyāya, which in turn allows us to anchor the prescriptions provided by our textual sources to the historical records of the epigraphs.

In chapter 2 of the Śivadharmottara, the recitation of a manuscript (pustakavacana) is mentioned in the context of the activities offered in support of teachers and yogins, and in this context such a practice is associated with the gift of knowledge:[408]

One who offers a gift of food to one who is versed in the knowledge of Śiva will take the fruit of a gift of knowledge without interruption, until the end. (90) / The assistance intended only for the renunciants, [consisting of the provision of] shoes, parasols, undergarments, beds, covers and seats, oils for the feet, collyria, unguents, baths, food, and medicine; cleaning and painting the monastery; the recitation of the manuscript of Śiva, accompanied by [offerings of] lamps, fire, water, flowers; (91–92) / The one who would regularly do this for five people whose souls rejoice in the Śaiva knowledge, for five years, this one will obtain the fruit of the gift of knowledge. (93) / […] Having made a vidyāmaṇḍala, round or square-shaped, measuring two hands or more, with cow dung of good quality and water, (96) / Embellished on all sides with white and red powders, and others of different colours, with a white lotus-flower in the middle, adorned with a cover of good quality, (97) / Abundant in colourful flowers, furnished with lamps and unhusked barley-corns; the one who, having worshipped [it] in this way, would read the knowledge of Śiva with faith, (98) / From the beginning to the end, following the right sequence, everything uniformly, gradually, with the aim of helping all people [and] aiming at the accumulation of their own merits; (99) / And [the one who], once this [reading] is accomplished, would worship Śiva, knowledge, and the teacher [and,] after that, would prepare food for all the śivayogins; (100) / The one who would recite the Śaiva knowledge in this way, with devotion, and would pay for having [it] read [by a professional reciter], will obtain the fruit of a gift of knowledge (101).

These stanzas are an ideal sequel to 2.81–89, which include a brief list of objects, mainly writing implements, that may replace the manuscript as a donative object in the performance of a gift of knowledge. From stanza 2.90 onward, the gift is removed from the semantic field of ‘writing’ and inserted into that of ‘assistance’: starting with the gift of food, all the activities referred to in the following stanzas as conferring the results of a gift of knowledge (2.101) are intended as services financed for the benefit of people ‘whose souls rejoice in the Śaiva knowledge’ (2.93), a definition matching the one given for the recipient of a gift of knowledge (usually called a śivajñānābhiyukta, ‘one who is well versed in the Śaiva knowledge’, throughout the text). However, in the context of practical assistance provided to teachers and renunciants, and among the provisions of food and medicine, the text first mentions (2.92) and then describes (2.96 onward) the ‘recitation of the manuscript of Śiva’ (śivapustakavacana). The idea of establishing a connection between the support provided to manuscript recitations and teaching activities and the maintenance of teachers and ascetics is further stated from stanzas 2.128–147 onward, which describe a building complex—whose installation is described in stanzas 2.148–57—that the text calls pura (‘town’, 2.128), śivapura (‘town of Śiva’, 2.158), and śivāśrama, (‘Śaiva hermitage’ 2.137, 148, and 168). The word āśrama has been used since the epics in order to refer to places where ascetic Brahmins live.[409] The descriptions available in literary sources usually qualify these hermitages as extraordinary places whose inhabitants stand above the laws of nature. They thus constitute ‘an idealized vision’ of Brahmanical settlements.[410] None of this emerges in the Śivadharmottara, which gives a rather plain and pragmatic account of the institution of the āśrama. At first, the connection with the gift of knowledge described so far seems rather vague, limited to the circumstance that the ‘Śaiva hermitage’ is also cited as the final destination reached by the procession parading the manuscript (2.48), as well as the place where the manuscript is subsequently venerated (2.81). Even so, stanzas 2.148–157, on the description of the hermitage, are not simply meant to complete the information regarding the place where the gift of manuscripts should take place. For this building is also the object of a ritual gifting that the sponsor has to finance and bestow on recipients that the text calls śivajñānaratātmas (2.128, ‘those whose souls rejoice in the Śaiva knowledge’) and śivayogins (2.157), like the recipients of stanzas 2.91–101:[411]

Then, the sponsor of the ritual should himself worship the teacher with devotion, offering fees and various sorts of food and so on, as before. (156) / Afterwards, he should offer [this] place, fully equipped, for the benefit of all the śivayogins, having repeatedly bowed. (157) / Thus, the one who is the first to have a big, auspicious town of Śiva built, being freed from all evil, [this person] is celebrated in the world of Śiva. (158)

Stanzas 2.159–67 are then devoted to the enumeration of the rewards awaiting the sponsor, as well as the workers and servants from what the text now calls the ‘Śaiva sanctuary’ (śivāyatana; see the compounds śivāyatanakarmiṇaḥ, ‘servants of the Śaiva sanctuary’, at 2.163, or śivāyatanaparyante, ‘within the border of the Śaiva sanctuary’, at 2.167). The hermitage described by the Vidyādānādhyāya includes a variety of facilities to meet the everyday needs of its inhabitants and visitors, such as a kitchen and a lunch room (2.131), storerooms and water tanks (2.132–33), as well as a guesthouse (2.134). On the premises of this compound there should also be a garden (2.137–143) and, what is of particular relevance for the topic of our study, a[412] ‘pillared pavilion for the teaching of knowledge (vidyāvyākhyānamaṇḍapa), provided with round windows and doors, beautiful’, namely a hall where teaching and reading sessions should take place. That this space has to host such activities is not only inferable from its name, but is also confirmed by some stanzas concluding the description of the Śaiva hermitage. Hence, the ritual recitation of the ‘manuscript of Śaiva knowledge’ is described as follows:[413]

Having made a vidyāmaṇḍala in the pillared pavilion for the teaching of knowledge, having there worshipped the Śaiva knowledge, one will then listen to its teaching. (174) / Having made a wonderful gurumaṇḍala according to a procedure that starts with a śivamaṇḍala, one is magnified in the world of Śiva; (175) / And shining is the knowledge of the one who, having made a triple maṇḍala, for Śiva, knowledge, and the teacher, listens to the Śaiva knowledge. (176)

The explanation of the Śaiva knowledge thus has to be conveyed within a ritual protocol requiring the drawing of maṇḍalas and the repeated veneration of the manuscript. Note that compounds such as vidyāmaṇḍalaka, śivamaṇḍalaka, or gurumaṇḍalaka do not necessarily refer to painted maṇḍalas, as was clearly the case of the vidyāmaṇḍalaka described at stanzas 2.17 and 2.96, but can also be intended as the ‘offerings’ made for the manuscript, Śiva, and the teacher, respectively. However, the testimony of the Talagunda inscription (see below) provides indication that these expressions were intended as references to proper maṇḍalas realized with colourful powders, at least in that document. We are not informed whether this manuscript is also used in the course of the teaching process or if it merely presides over it in order to guarantee the authority of the instruction. The text emphasizes that the building, which a munificent donor erected and donated to the ascetics, includes this hall. It does so because it is precisely this hall which facilitates the teaching and reading of the Śaiva knowledge, and thus properly qualifies the entire building as a gift of knowledge. The description of the Śiva Lakulīśvara icon that has to be installed in the valabhī (pinnacle)-style building within this Śaiva complex also stresses the importance of teaching. The effigy of the god is depicted in the act of instructing his disciples:[414]

There, according to rule, one should install Śiva, made of clay, wood, or stone, who is the author of all knowledge, omniscient, Lord bearing a club, (146) / Surrounded by pupils and pupils of pupils, with his hands raised in the act of teaching, seated in the lotus position, lord of the gods, a master whose speech is vivid. (147)

The prescriptions given by the Śivadharmottara concerning the construction of a building complex that, besides providing housing for the Śaiva ascetics, would also fulfill educational purposes, is in agreement with what we learn from a range of medieval records on Śaiva and non-Śaiva monasteries.[415] They also attest to the use of a terminology that is close to that used in the Vidyādānādhyāya. This is the case, for instance, of the vyākhyāśālā (‘teaching hall’) of the queen Alhaṇadevī,[416] mentioned in the Sanskrit inscription from Bheṛaghāṭ, Jabalpur district (Madhya Pradesh); in the twelfth century,[417] the queen founded a Śaiva temple to which a maṭha, a teaching hall, and a garden were attached, and entrusted the management of this complex to the ‘Pāśupata ascetic Rudrarāśi, descending from the Lāṭas’.[418] References to vidyāmaṇḍapas as places where teaching activities were fostered are found in thirteenth-century epigraphical records from Andhra Pradesh, documenting donations to the master Śāntaśiva, pontiff of the monastery called Abhinavagolakīmaṭha at Śrīśaila, where a famous liṅga of Śiva is venerated in the Mallikārjuna temple.[419] The famous Malkāpuram stone pillar inscribed in Sanskrit on three sides comes from a nearby location, i.e. the Guntur District (Andhra Pradesh), and it can be dated to the same period (śaka 1183, corresponding to 1261 CE; see lines 20–21s2). In this inscription, the Śaiva teacher Viśveśvaraśambhu is confirmed to have been ‘residing in a vidyāmaṇḍapa’ (vidyāmaṇḍapavarttinaṃ l. 18s2).[420] This Viśveśvaraśambhu—also called Viśveśvaradeśika (see l. 16s2), Viśveśvaradeva (see l. 52s2), or Viśveśvaraśiva (see l. 30s3) in the inscription[421]—was ‘the teacher who imparted initiation on Gaṇapati, lord of the Earth’ (gaṇapatikṣmāpāladīkṣāgurum, ll. 18–19s2).[422] Viśveśvaraśambhu was, therefore, the king’s chaplain (rājaguru) in the Durvāsas lineage[423] attached to the important Golakīmaṭha.[424] This long record offers a detailed description of an endowment made directly by the Śaiva teacher. It comprises the functions which the Śivadharmottara attributes to the Śaiva hermitage described in the Vidyādānādhyāya as a place for worship, teaching, and offering material assistance to the ascetics. After recording a grant endowed to Viśveśvaraśambhu by the Kākatīya kings of Andhra,[425] the text of the inscription documents the foundation of a monastery and a settlement (called grāma, a ‘village’, L. 41s2) by Viśveśvaraśambhu. He named it Viśveśvaragoḷakī, mixing his proper name with that of the monastery from which his lineage originates. The teacher then divides the incomes from the two villages he has received into three parts, and assigns them as follows: [426] ‘Having divided into three parts the gifted [village] called Mandara, along with Velaṅgipūṇḍi, Viśveśvaraśiva, an expert on the Śaiva Siddhāntas, donated one portion left from that [grant] to the Archer [god], the second portion to the students and to the monastery of the śuddhaśaivas, the rest to an infirmary with a maternity [hall] and to a refectory for Brahmins’. In the following description of the categories to which smaller segments (puṭṭikas) of this land should be assigned, we further find the mention of[427] ‘three reciters accurately teaching the Ṛgveda, the Yajurveda, and the Sāmaveda, five teachers of words, sentences, and logic, rhetoric and scriptures, two expert physicians and clerks’.

The mention of a ‘hospital’ creates a further parallel with the Śivadharmottara, whose final stanzas (2.178–192) are dedicated precisely to the description of a ‘health centre’ (ārogyaśālā) that is primarily intended for Brahmins and śivayogins,[428] although the text then specifies that its services are addressed to the members of the four varṇas.[429] The epigraphical evidence shows that monastic complexes were indeed also outfitted with infirmaries,[430] and thus the description of such a place in the Śivadharmottara must be related to the hermitage that is sketched in the preceding lines. Even though this undertaking is technically intended as a gift of health (ārogyadāna, 2.179), it is nonetheless linked to the gift of knowledge due to its connection with the āśrama. This is also observed in the text, which ends the exposition of the gift of knowledge concurrently with the last stanza of the chapter (2.193), thus subsuming all the preceding topics under this one.[431] A connection between the practice of the gift of knowledge and that of the gift of health (in this case gift of medicines, bhaiṣajyadāna), along with that of the main royal donations, is also attested in what is to date one of the earliest known epigraphic mentions of the gift of knowledge. This is plate A of the copper plates found at Gaonri (southeast of Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh),[432] which is engraved with a 22-line inscription of the Rāṣṭrakūṭas recording that the donor, king Govinda IV (l. 1), on the occasion of a lunar eclipse (ll. 7–8), after having performed various acts of munificence such as a gift of land (pṛthivīdāna, l. 8), a gift of knowledge (vidyādāna, l. 8), a gift of food (āhāradāna, l. 8), a gift of the wish-granting tree (kalpavṛkṣadāna, l. 8), and a gift of medicines (bhaiṣajyadāna), and after furthermore donating his weight in gold (tulāpuruṣadāna, l. 9, one of the main ‘great gifts’), granted the village of Payalīpattana (l. 13) in order to establish a sattra (l. 9), a ‘charitable house’, ‘guesthouse’, in which numerous Brahmins could be fed. The document is dated (see ll. 6–7) to Sunday, the full-moon day of Māgha, śaka year 851, equivalent to Sunday, January 17, 930 CE. The connection with the foundation of a sattra is not an isolated case, and is of historical significance in and of itself. The word sattra has been attested in epigraphs since the fifth century to denote institutions attached to temples in which Brahmins, renunciants, and the poor could be hosted and offered food and garments as a component of worship.[433] A further joint attestation of sattra and vidyādāna is found in a stone inscription from Kolagallu, Bellary taluk (Bellary district, Karnataka), dated to the year śaka 888 (984 CE; see ll. 2–4), during the reign of the Rāṣṭrakūṭa mahārājādhirāja Akāḷavarśadeva (ll. 4–5).[434] It records a donation of land, a garden, and an oil mill (ll. 10–13) by the king to a Brahmin named Śatyarāsibhaṭṭāra.[435] The following lines specify the purpose of the donation, which ‘was offered for a monastery endowed with a charitable house (sattra) as a gift of knowledge’ (ll. 17–18: vi[L18]dyādānasatravāge maṭhakke koṭṭaṃ). Alternatively, the compound vidyādānasattra could also be interpreted as ‘a charitable house for [the practice of] the gift of knowledge’. With this interpretation one could reconnect the compound jñānasattra used in Śivadharmottara 12.274, which I have understood (see translation at p. 162) as a reference to the hall in which public readings take place and where, as conveyed by the word sattra, other services to the community of Brahmins and ascetics can also take place. Willis observes that the institution of sattras attached to temples, from the Gupta times on, may be read as one of the strategies adopted by orthodox institutions to strengthen the function of the temple in order to counter the Buddhist support system developed for Buddhist monasteries (vihāras).[436] According to the analysis of Zysk (1991),[437] medicine was traditionally practiced in the Buddhist institutions in ancient times. Its practice had been appropriated by the Brahmanical traditions, a process for which both the Śivadharmottara’s Vidyādānādhyāya and the epigraphical attestations on the development of sattras and monasteries provide evidence. By contrast, the Nandipurāṇa, at least the portion of it that has survived through the quotations of the digest-writers, lacks the stanzas on the building of the hermitage to host religious, teaching, social, and recreational activities; it has a few stanzas, however, on the ‘gift of health’. Eleven of those are quoted by Lakṣmīdhara in his chapter devoted to the topic, which is based entirely on this short quotation from the Nandipurāṇa.[438] Also for this text, the gift of health consists of the construction of a hospital.

To summarize, the gift of knowledge, as conceived in the second part of Śivadharmottara’s chapter 2, is intended for the financing of ritual manuscript readings, as well as for supporting teaching activities and, by analogy, the holders of the Śaiva knowledge, the teachers, who also qualify as the recipients of the donation of manuscripts. This financial support is then further extended to include the yogins, who are at the top of a hierarchy of spiritual advancement. This interpretation strongly evokes the alternative meaning attributed to the gift of knowledge by the brief definition of the Nandipurāṇa, i.e. a means of support for teachers that makes it possible for them to fulfill their functions (Dānakāṇḍa 12.170NP). The Śivadharmottara, however, does not just generically exhort the donors to support Śaiva teachers, but urges them to found proper institutions (the Śaiva hermitage) that fulfill religious, pedagogical, and social functions, thus supporting a strategy that would, in the course of time, lead to the development of[439] ‘a far-reaching network of interconnected seats’ to which the rise of Śaivism owes a major part of its success.

According to this understanding, the gift of knowledge can thus also be described as a gift with knowledge (and knowledgeable people) as its purpose. Indirect support for this interpretation is granted by the inscriptions recording the endowments of monasteries devoted to educational purposes, as well as places specifically meant for teaching activities, variously referred to in inscriptions as vidyāsthāna (literally, ‘place of knowledge’), ghaṭikā, khaṇḍika, or bhaṭṭavṛtti (literally, ‘maintenance of Brahmins’).[440] Among the various records, the bilingual (Sanskrit verses and Tamil prose) Bahur copper plates of king Nṛpatuṅgavarman (ca. 860–870 CE), recording the grant of three villages to the residents of a vidyāsthāna at Vagur,[441] is particularly relevant to our inquiry. The stanzas of these copper plates propose a simple etymology for the word vidyāsthāna that could easily be applied to the vidyādāna, as the text states,[442] ‘[t]hus this place for scholars is called a place of knowledge’. Vidyā°, the first word in the compound vidyāsthāna, is here interpreted as a reference to the vidvans, ‘knowledgeable people’, which could also apply to the case of the vidyādāna when intended as an offering of support to learned people. The Tamil portion of the inscription then sets the boundaries of the granted area (see ll. 56–65), while also specifying that the land enclosed in said boundaries, with all its buildings, natural resources, and animals, are to be intended (in Hultzsch’s translation)[443] ‘as a source of revenue for the promotion of learning (vidyābhoga) to the residents of the seat of learning at Vagur’. The notion of vidyābhoga (literally, ‘enjoyment of knowledge’) invoked in this document is explained by Sircar as a synonym of vidyādhana, and defined as[444] ‘land assigned as a reward for learning’. Hence, it refers to the income used for the benefit of the teachers and the students of the vidyāsthāna. The Śivadharmottara, though never resorting to this terminology, promotes something similar in the second part of its chapter 2, where vidyādāna can be interpreted as denoting the process of property transfer of which the vidyādhana /vidyābhoga is the theoretical construct, expressing the particular rights enjoyed by those who so benefit. The vidyādhana, as a type of property enjoyed by learned people, was first regulated by classical law texts, which are then followed by Anglo-Hindu law.[445]

One famous description of a Śaiva monastery from southern India may help us to advance our inquiry into the procedures prescribed by the Śivadharmottara. The few epigraphical documents taken into consideration so far originate from different regions of India and, on average, they are all from a significantly later date than the one attributed to the composition of the Śivadharmottara. Even though they facilitate the verification of some of the instructions provided by the Śaiva text, they generally lack any direct mention of the gift of knowledge. The case of an inscription from 1162 CE, and which is linked to the so-called Kōṭimaṭha/Kōḍiyamaṭha of Baḷḷigāvi, Shikarpur Taluq (Shimoga district, Karnataka), is different. In addition to offering an impressively detailed account of the religious, cultural, and social activities of a Śaiva monastery, it also expressly mentions the gift of knowledge within a more or less fixed, formulaic list of activities financed through the grants endowed to the Śaiva temple of Daṣiṇakēdarēśvara (‘Lord of the Southern Kedāra’).[446] As will be shown in the following lines, this document is not an isolated case. Similar expressions have been detected in other inscriptions, some of which are connected with the same monastery, were issued in the same time span, and were found in the enclosure of the southern Kedāra temple[447] as well as in other nearby areas.[448] The Kōḍiyamaṭha monastery and the temple of Daṣiṇakēdarēśvara were administered by a lineage of Śaiva teachers that inscriptions call mūvarakōṇeya saṃtati, whose first master, Kēdāraśākti, is mentioned in a document of 1112 CE from the village of Ablūr/Abbalūru, Dharwad district (Karnataka) as affiliated with the Kālamukha sect.[449] The fact that the gift of knowledge is mentioned in formulaic expressions in several inscriptions originating from the same place suggests that a fixed epigraphic style had been established. At the same time, however, one can not completely neglect the success enjoyed in this area by the aforementioned Kālamukhas, a division of non-tantric Śaivism that, as also supported by the Śivadharmottara, reconnected itself with the cult of Lākula. This was known in the areas where the Kālamukha sect was attested, as documented by the testimony of another important epigraphic document produced in the Shikarpur Taluq,[450] which is contemporary with the set of evidence provided by the Kōḍiyamaṭha inscriptions. It confirms a more detailed knowledge of the practice of vidyādāna, and the acquaintance of these people with the Śivadharmaśāstra and the Śivadharmottara. The Kannada-speaking world thus proves to be a good arena for examining the interrelations between textual prescriptions and recorded religious practice, allowing—in spite of all the limits of the available documentation—a more balanced evaluation of the historicity hidden in textual instructions.

The document that is the point of departure for our inquiry is the previously mentioned inscription issued in 1162 CE. It offers, in strongly Sanskritized Kannada, a detailed account of the Kōḍiyamaṭha.[451] The text attributes a religious function to it, since it describes the Kōḍiyamaṭha as the abode of the god and of the Śaiva ascetics who perform their religious duties there; a pedagogic function, as the seat devoted to the teaching of disciplines covering a vast area of Indian learning; and a ‘social’ function, which is carried out by offering ‘gifts of food’ (annadāna) to the needy, as well as medical care to the sick: [452]

There is the Kōḍiyamaṭha, the place of Dakṣiṇakēdāra (dakṣiṇakēdārasthāna), location of a beautiful field of crops [which are] like hairs bristling for the worship of the Śivaliṅga; the established place (niṣṭhitasthāna) for the ritual practice of the Śaiva ascetics who are perpetual chaste students; a place for the self-recitation (svādhyāyasthāna) of the four Vedas—the Ṛg, Yajus, Sāma, and Ātharva—along with their ancillary treatises; a place for teaching (byākhyānasthāna) grammar, like the systems of Kumāra, Pāṇini, Śākaṭāyana, and the Śabdānuśasana; a place for teaching the six systems of philosophy—namely the Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika, Mīmāṃsā, Sāṃkhya, Buddhist, etc.; a place for teaching the treatises on Yoga—namely the Lākulasiddhānta, the work of Patañjali, and others; a place for various [branches of] learning (vividhavidyāsthāna), such as the 18 Purāṇas, the Dharmaśāstras, all Kāvya compositions, drama, dance, and so on; a place for the provision of food (annadānasthāna) to the poor, the helpless, the crippled, the blind, the deaf, story-tellers, singers, musicians, flute-players, dancers, Vaitāḻikas, the naked, the injured, the mendicants coming from various regions, like Jain mendicants, those bearing a single or triple staff, the haṃsa and paramahaṃsa mendicants; a place for the medical treatment (bhaiṣajyasthāna) of the diseases of the many helpless and sick; a place for offering protection (abhāyapradānasthāna) to all living beings.

The document is dated to the year 1162 CE, which marks an important change in the history of the western Cāḷukya rulers reigning over the historical region of Kuntala, the area in which the Kōḍiyamaṭha was located. For in this year, the Cāḷukya king Tailapa III (also known as Trailokyamalla III, who gained power in śaka 1072, 1150–51 CE)[453] is overruled by his Kalacuri mahāmaṇḍaleśvara Bijjala, who from that point on appears in inscriptions with the attribution of the royal titles.[454] Bijjala, whom this document calls ‘lord of the Earth’ (bhūpati, l. 8), is said to have arrived in Baḷḷigave in order to conquer the southern region (dakṣiṇadigbhāgamaṃ sādhisal endu bijjalamahārājaṃ, l. 34) after hearing the praises of Dakṣiṇakedāra and the Kōḍiyamaṭha, and to have made a grant of Kiṟugeri (l. 47) for the following purposes:[455]

For the decoration and illumination of the god, lord of the southern Kedāra, for the donation of food to the ascetics, for the gift of knowledge, for the renovation of the damaged, cracked, or worn-out [parts] of the [temple], for the satisfaction of the learned and the loved ones.

In addition to the gift of knowledge, the list of aims for which a wealthy sponsor donates to a religious institution includes the renovation of the buildings and, as often established in epigraphical records in connection with the gift of knowledge, the gift of food to the ascetics. Although this formulaic expression, or almost identical expressions attested in similar epigraphs, do not clarify the nature of the gift of knowledge, the context of the document, particularly the description of the Kōḍiyamaṭha as a place renowned for the teaching of many different disciplines and texts, suggests that the gift of knowledge mentioned here might have corresponded to one of the activities considered by the Śivadha-rmottara, which could have been the (ritual) provision of manuscripts and other learning supplies, the financing of manuscript recitations, or the support of teachers and students.

An other inscription found in the enclosure of the Dakṣiṇakēdāra temple and dated to the same year mentions the gift of knowledge in a similar formula.[456] This one, however, though dated to 1162 CE, is still attributed to the rulership of Taila (l. 21), meaning that it was issued some months earlier than the former, at a time when Bijjala had not yet risen to power over Kuntala. The text of this document is severely damaged; we read, however, that the author of the grant to Dakṣiṇakēdāra is Mahādeva, the daṇḍanāyaka ruling over Banavase (l. 43). After worshipping the master Vāmaśakti of the Kōḍiyamaṭha (l. 104), he makes a grant[457] ‘for the decoration and illumination of the god, lord of the southern Kedāra, for the donation of food to the ascetics, for the gift of knowledge, for the platform-worship, for the renovation of the damaged, cracked, or worn-out [parts] of the [temple]’.

Among the inscriptions belonging to the enclosure of the southern Kedāra temple, the earliest to expressly mention the gift of knowledge is dated to 1128–29 CE and ascribed to the reign of the western Cāḷukya king Someśvara III,[458] who reigned from śaka 1048 to 1060, (1126–39 CE).[459] The main focus of the inscription is the praise of the town of Baḷḷigave as a ‘seat of Dharma’,[460] of which the text further praises the temple of Dakṣiṇakēdāra, compared to the Kēdāra on the Ganges (ll. 50–51), and its monastery, administered by the lineage called mūvarakōṇeya saṃtati (l. 59).[461] Along with Taila, lord of Banavasi, Somēśvara makes a grant of Tadavaṇale and the Hakkaḷe field (l. 71) to the Dakṣiṇakēdāra[462] ‘for the renovation of the damaged, cracked, or worn-out [parts] of the [temple] of that place, for the donation of food to the ascetics, for the gift of knowledge, for the worship of the god’. A similarly terse expression is attested in an inscription from the same place dated to 1149 CE.[463] This is ascribed to the Śāntara rulers, supporters of Jainism.[464] According to this document, king Jagadeva heard his son Bammarasa praising Dakṣiṇakēdāra as a place for the absolution of all sins (ll. 34–35), and so they went there to pay homage to the ācārya Gautama, of the mūvarakōṇe lineage, and made a grant of Kundūr in the Śāntalige 1000 (l. 43), with enjoyment valid for three generations. The revenue was again to be employed[465] ‘for offerings to the god, for the renovation of the damaged, cracked, or worn-out [parts] of the [temple] of that place, for the donation of food to the ascetics, for the gift of knowledge’.

A further Kōḍiyamaṭha inscription of the time of Bijjala,[466] dated to 1168 CE,[467] celebrates a grant made by the daṇḍanāyaka Kēśava (l. 26), depicted as ruling over Taddavāḍi 1000, Hānugal 500, and Banavase 12000 (l. 27). In this inscription, the vidyādāna is mentioned twice, both times in connection with the gift of food (annadāna). The first mention occurs in a passage celebrating the glory of the Kēdareśvara temple, which was seen in all its splendour by Kēśava when he came to inspect the country: [468] ‘having seen […] the performance of uncountable duties like the gift of knowledge and the gift of food of the glorious Kēdarēśvara god of the South of the royal seat of Baḷḷigāve.’ After revering the already mentioned teacher Vāmaśakti (l. 35), Keśava granted the village of Chikka Kaṇṇugi (l. 39), whose revenue had to be addressed to various activities connected with the temple, as well as spent[469] ‘for the decoration and the service to the glorious god Kēdāra of the South, for the renovation of broken, cracked, or worn-out [parts], for the gift of food and the gift of knowledge to the Brahmin ascetics (brāhmaṇatapodhanarannadānavidyādānakka).’ This last passage rewords the formulaic expressions attested in the other epigraphs by inserting both the gift of knowledge and the gift of food in the same compound as the beneficiaries of these gifts (brāhmaṇatapodhanaru). In the other attestations, only the ascetics were clearly referred to as the addressees of the gift of food (in the expression tapōdhanarāhāradānakkaṃ).

Analoguous expressions such as those attested in the Kōḍiyamaṭha inscriptions also occur in other documents from the same geographical area. They are not connected with the Kōḍiyamaṭha, but are still related to Kāḷamukha lineages. The Gaddak inscription no. 2 is such an example.[470] It is in Sanskrit and recorded a donation made in śaka year 1115 (1193 CE) by the Hoysaḷa king Vīraballāḷa to the temple of Trikūṭeśvara, to which the Kāḷamukhācārya Siddhānticandrabhūṣaṇa was attached; again, the donation is made[471] ‘for the purpose of repairing anything that might be broken, torn, or worn out with age, for the purpose of providing for instruction, and for the purpose of providing food for ascetics, Brāhmaṇs (sic!), and others’. On the other hand, a more literal juxtaposition between the gifts of food and of knowledge is further attested in the record referring to the rulership of Bijjala, this time in the village of Ablur/Abbalūru,[472] which is located in the Nagarakhanda 70 in Banavāse 12,000 (l. 77). The context is closer to that of the Kōḍiyamaṭha inscriptions, since the gift of knowledge and the gift of food are again referred to as activities to be financed in connection with the funding of a religious institution. Fleet proposes to date this document to ‘about 1200’, or even earlier, due to the mention of Kādamba Kāmadeva (at ll. 81, 90 and 99), and of Keśavarāja as the composer of the record.[473] This epigraph is particularly important for the history of Śaivism in the Kannada-speaking world, since it recounts the locally famous story of Ēkānta Rāmayya, also called Rāma, and is connected with the emergence of the Vīraśaiva tradition.[474] Rāma is said to have come to Earth during the rulership of Bijjala, in a period of crisis for Śaivism, and to have defeated the Jains, who gained the support of the same Bijjala.[475] Although depicted as a supporter of Jainism, Bijjala seals the victory of Rāma against the Jains by paying homage to him and granting a village to the temple of Vīra Sōmanātha. Then the document relates that Tribhuvanamalla Someśvara (IV),[476] after hearing the story of Rāma, invites him to come to his palace and eventually pays homage to him. Together, the two perform several rituals in order to repair the damages perpetrated by the Jains; additionally, the king grants the same Abbalūru village to the temple of Vīra Sōmanātha (l. 71). The revenues are used[477] ‘for the occasion, among others, of the purificatory ceremony of the month Caitra and the festival of spring, and for the gift of food and the gift of knowledge—saying that the village was to belong to that god;’ the village of Abbalūru is then granted to Parameśvara (ll. 78–79).

The expression which again mentions the gift of knowledge in connection with the gift of food is different from those attested in the Kōḍiyamaṭha inscriptions, but can still be reconnected with a formulaic pattern attested in other inscriptions. It is remarkable that other records from the same area may replace the word vidyādāna with a reference to a more specific activity instead of reproducing this identical sentence. One example is provided by an inscription of Someśvara III (called mahārājādhirāja Bhūlōkamalladēva at ll. 16–19) from the village of Iṅgaḷēśvar, Bagevadi taluk (Bujapur district, Karnataka)[478] dated to śaka 1054 (1128 CE, see ll. 25–26). This document records a donation provided by Hermāḍiyarasa (l. 34), who was a member of the Kalacuri family, as was Bijjala, and was likewise described as ‘lord of the fortress of Kāḷāñjara’ (l. 20, kāḷāñjarapuravarādhīśvara), and occupied the office of mahāmaṇḍaleśvara (ll. 33–34). The donation was addressed to the god Nīlakaṇṭha[479] ‘for the offerings destined for the worship of the deity and the decoration [of his icon], of such kind and quantity [to be used] for a Purāṇa class and for the Caitra and Pavitra festivals’. This phrase is close to the one used in the Abbalūru inscription, but it replaces the gift of knowledge with a reference to the study of the Purāṇas. Only some years earlier, another document, issued under the rulership of Tribhuvanamalladēva (Vikramāditya VI), seems to have recorded a similar formula, although the fragmentary conditions of the text make a complete verification impossible.[480] According to the introduction, this inscription is located in the Vīrabhadra temple of Ālūr, in the Dharwar district, and is tentatively dated to 1124 CE.[481] The donor is called Permaḍiyaresaru, and the goods he grants are destined ‘for the offerings for the decoration of the [icon] of the goddess, classes of the Ṛgveda …<missing>’ (l. 24: dēviyaṃgabhōganivēdyakke rugvēdada khaṇḍika<....>). The rest of the line is unfortunately not extant, and the editor does not give the exact extent of the missing portion, making it impossible to guess with any degree of certainty how the sentence might continue. The donees are the local Brahmins.

These last cases propose the financing of two activities that the Śivadharmottara has in fact included in the category of gift of knowledge, namely the public recitation of texts and the support of teaching activities; significantly, they do so by using a formula with which an almost contemporary record from the same area makes express reference to the gift of knowledge. A further example that deserves to be mentioned here is a document issued at Kuṟgōḍ / Kuṟugōḍu (Bellary district, Karnataka), attributed to the rulership of Someśvara IV.[482] The record celebrates the Sinda family ruling in Kuṟgōḍ as mahāmaṇḍaleśvara, in particular the current ruler Rachamalla II and his father Rachamalla I. It records that the latter had granted an estate to the temple of Śiva in the year śaka 1095 (1173–75 CE), which was in favour of the teacher Bāla Śivācārya, described as proficient in the ‘scriptures of Lākulīśvara’ and the Kālamukha doctrine (ll. 37–38: lākulīśvarāgamakāḷāmukha[L38]darśanaṁgaḷantāḷdi). The second part of the epigraph (ll. 44–47) reports that his son, Rachamalla II, had made several donations, including[483] ‘offerings, renovation of ancient [buildings], recitations of the Vedas during the Caitra and Pavitra festivals, classes on the Vaiśeṣika teaching, readings of the Śivadharmapurāṇa, gifts of food’ on the occasion of the grant of an agrahāra and after having shown devotion to said teacher. According to a note reported by Fleet, who is the editor of this inscription, this happened on a date that he interprets as October 24, 1181 CE (corresponding to śaka 1103).[484] The third and last part of this inscription registers another grant to the same temple (l. 48–end). As already pointed out (see § 1.3), the Purāṇic tradition knew the Śivadharma as one of the Upapurāṇas, hence its identification as Śivadharmapurāṇa. However, it is also possible to interpret this compound as a dvandva. This epigraph can therefore be counted among those that attest to the actual use of the Śivadharma—either a reference to one of the two works of the Śivadharma corpus known in the region, namely the Śivadharmaśāstra and the Śivadharmottara, or both texts collectively—for public readings. Inscriptional evidence from the South for the practice of public recitation of these works is particularly rich in the Tamil-speaking areas, dating back to documents of the early eleventh-century Cōḻa kings;[485] further records from Nepal attest that this phenomenon also spread to such a distant area and at a much later time in history.[486] Moreover, the Kuṟgōḍ grant refers to the reading of the Śivadharmapurāṇa and the institution of classes by using an expression that resembles the one used in the Abbalūru grant with reference to the vidyādāna.

Thus, the few examples examined so far offer some confirmation, albeit partial, of the information conveyed by the Vidyādānādhyāya. These documents do attest the existence of the notion of the gift of knowledge with reference to endowments intended as a means of support for the actors within the circulation of knowledge. The inscriptions examined seem, at least partially, to have known the gift of knowledge both in the sense of material aid for teaching activities and as the financing of public ritual readings, which are identical with two of the interpretations given by the Śivadharmottara and the Nandipurāṇa. No other details can be extracted from these documents in this regard, apart from the epigraphic attestations examined so far, which almost unanimously show a connection with Śaiva environments, more specifically with the Lākula-worshipping Kālamukha sects mostly prevalent in Karnataka; in one case, the Śivadharma is expressly mentioned, although the connection with the gift of knowledge is a mere conjecture there.

Another Kannaḍa inscription attesting the combined use of the words sattra and vidyādāna, despite the fact that they are not included in the same compound, comes from a rather different area. This inscription belongs to the Malleśvara temple of Nandikotkur (Kurnool District, Andhra Pradesh),[487] is dated to śaka 980 (1057 CE, see ll. 27–30), and referred to the reign of the western Cāḷukya king Trailokyamalla I (l. 3ff.), who is the first of his lineage to have been documented as the ruler of the town of Kalyāṇa.[488] The donation recorded by our epigraph took place[489] ‘when the honorable Niriyarasi Maiḻaladevī and the honorable Ballavarasa went to the glorious Mallikārjunadeva [temple]’, and was addressed to the god Ādibhairava (see ll. 34–35, ādibhaira[L35]vadevarggaṃ) of the said temple. It consisted of a ‘town of Śiva’ (śivapura, l. 36) and other villages. The purposes of this endowment are listed as follows: ‘for a water-house (a water-tank?) for the ascetics, with the purpose of [achieving] a gift of knowledge’ (ll. 31–33: tapōdhana[L32]rggavaṃ vāriśatrakkaṃ vidyā<dā>nani[L33]mityadiṃ). The beneficiaries of the donation are the same mentioned in the previously examined records, namely the ascetics; this time, the sattra is not linked to the gift of knowledge, but rather used in reference to a different kind of arrangement. The gift of knowledge, here in composition with the noun nimitya, which is used to express purpose, must most likely be interpreted as a label attached to the donation as a whole. In accordance with the prescriptions of the Śivadharmottara and simply on account of its recipients, i.e. the Śaiva ascetics, it meets the requirements of a gift of knowledge. An undated inscription from the Arkalgud taluk (Hassan district, Karnataka),[490] which refers to the kingdom of Nītimārga Nanniyagaṅga (ll. 2–5)[491] and mentions the vidyādāna, can be interpreted in a similar way. This epigraph registers a gift of land addressed to the Brahmin Mākhaṇḍabhaṭāra[492] as a vidyādāna (l. 7, vidyādānagoṭṭamaṇṇa). However, further details that could justly give rise to speculations on the connection between the gifted land (whose borders are established at ll. 8–15) and the gift of knowledge are lacking. The only plausible deduction is that the donee constitutes this link and it is thus to be found in the function of this gift: providing a means of sustenance for said Brahmin, thus enabling him to engage in recitations and teaching activities, and possibly also providing an appropriate location for fulfilling these duties as part of the donation.

Admittedly, the inscriptions examined so far only provide limited verification for the practices dealt with profusely in the Śivadharmottara and other literature—it is very unfortunate that, when it comes to rituals, Indian inscriptions mostly provide us with lists, and little more. These documents only enable us to make some assumptions, but at least provide firm chronological and geographical evidence for knowledge of the vidyādāna. There is, however, one further document to take into consideration, which could prove conclusive for linking the literary and the epigraphical evidence analyzed so far. This is another inscription from Karnataka found in the Shikarpur taluk, the same district as the Kōḍiyamaṭha, and was issued in the same years as those epigraphs. The importance of this document for the present inquiry is that it makes it possible to prove beyond doubt not only that the Śivadharmaśāstra and the Śivadharmottara were known in the area, but also that the gift of knowledge was practiced, and that this was performed in adherence to some of the procedures taught in the second chapter of the Śivadharmottara. The author of our epigraph must have had direct access to both the Śivadharmaśāstra and the Śivadharmottara, as proved by literal references to prescriptions found in the Vidyādānādhyāya, but also through direct quotations of verses from these texts. The inscription I refer to is located on a stone close to the northwestern wall of the Praṇaveśvara temple in the Karnataka village of Tāḷagunda, which the inscription calls the ‘village of Sthāṇugūḍha’ (sthāṇugūḍhagrāma, l. 47 and 52).[493] The site is in north-central Karnataka, close to Banavasi, in the Shikarpur taluk of the Shimoga district. The village of Tāḷagunda is an important, albeit small, epigraphical site, in which three dynasties ruling over Karnataka, namely the Kadambas, the Cāḷukyas, and the Kalacuris, are attested.[494] The document records an agrahāra, which is the donation of a village to Brahmins who will then be in charge of its administration. The village donated is called Hiriya Tagulaṭṭi, and is located in the district of Banavase 12000 (l. 58). The document further specifies how to distribute the income of the local temple among different Brahmanical schools, for the maintenance of teachers, students, and various workers (ll. 60–68). It is bilingual, with Sanskrit and Kannada stanzas opening the text, while only Kannada is used in the documentary prose section.[495] The document is dated to[496] ‘śaka year 1079, Jovian year of Īśvara, full-moon day of the month Pauṣa, Monday, on the occasion of the uttarāyaṇasaṅkramaṇa [festival], under the vyatipatayōga’ (l. 57), corresponding to Monday, December 16, 1157 CE.[497] The inscription mentions the ruler Bijjala of the Kalacuri family as mahāmaṇḍaleśvara (his eulogy is at ll. 15-18), while the region was still ruled by the western Cāḷukyas, of whom the document provides a concise genealogy.[498]

The person who composed this epigraph was acquainted with the Śivadharmaśāstra and the Śivadharmottara, and quotes stanzas from both works. The initial Sanskrit stanzas broadly correspond to the incipit of the Śivadharmaśāstra,[499] while some of the stanzas inserted before the long prose section in which the grant is established are traceable in the Śivadharmaśāstra and the Śivadharmottara as well. The quoted Sanskrit verses concern the eulogy of different kinds of dāna: the gift of land (bhūmidāna);[500] the gift of a village (grāmadāna), on which stanzas from Śivadharmaśāstra’s chapter 8 are quoted;[501] the gift of food, praised through lines partly traceable in Śivadharmottara’s chapter 7;[502] and the gift of knowledge. The Sanskrit stanzas on the gift of knowledge are on the other hand not detectable in the extant version of the two Śaiva works, but a short parallel can be traced in the Agnipurāṇa:[503]

The three worlds, the four castes [and] each of the four stages of life, [as well as] all the gods beginning with Brahmā are established in the gift of knowledge. / For those who seek Dharma, pleasure and wealth, what gift has not been given by the one who, granting a livelihood to the teacher, allows him to instruct people? / Having donated food, unguent, clothes, as well as alms to the students, a person fulfills all [his] desires, no doubt! / The merit [residing] in the pilgrimage to the sacred places, as well as the merit that the performers of rituals [obtain], that merit, multiplied by ten million, a person will obtain from the gift of knowledge.

The Kannada text further specifies that the most suitable place for the performance of all these deeds is[504] ‘the shining village called Sthānagūḍha’. The quoted stanzas are coherent with the description of the grant in ll. 48–67. It consists of the donation of a village, and specifies the dimensions of land assigned to different schools,[505] as well as how to divide the produce and income of the local temple in order to maintain teachers and students, also giving a breakdown of the costs to bear in order to guarantee a salary for the workers orbiting around this establishment—like cooks, barbers, or ‘a teacher of Kannada’ (l. 66). Therefore this grant patently qualifies as a ‘gift of a village’ (grāmadāna), a gift of food and a gift of knowledge.

Following the technical part of the grant, the document prescribes the rituals that have to be carried out in the newly granted area by the people attached to the different schools. The first lines of this section are highly important for our inquiry:[506]

From month to month, on the eighth and fourteenth lunar days, on the new- and full-moon days, and on the festive days (parvan) that are called the Vyatipātayoga and the Saṅkramaṇa [conjunctions], after performing the constant and occasional worships, the teachers of the śāstras, having recited the Śāntyadhyāya, the sixth [chapter] of the Śivadharma, in due succession, having made maṇḍalas on the eight sides of the god, by means of the mantra from this [text] placing the offering of food, will be blessing the king who rules the country, [addressing a benediction] to the cows, the Brahmins, and to the sponsor of the rite. And during the year [in] the mahāparvans, which are the two equinox days, the two solstices, on the day of the eclipses of moon or sun, on the full-moon days of Āṣāḍha, Kārttika, Māgha, and Vaiśākha; thanks to the merits of worship on each of these days, the fruit of six months will be bestowed. In these parvans, having erected thousands of platforms to the god, having performed the proclamation of a meritorious day, the inhabitants of the schools (śāstrakhaṇḍikas), having, by means of colours, drawn three maṇḍalas called the vidyāmaṇḍala, the gurumaṇḍala and the śivamaṇḍala, having revered them, they will be reciting the Śāntyadhyāya.

Among the prescribed rituals, the text thus requires the reading of the Śāntyadhyāya, specifying that this is the sixth chapter of the Śivadharmaśāstra. A first reference to the presence of maṇḍalas on the occasion of the public readings of the text invokes Śivadharmottara’s prescriptions on the recitation of the ‘manuscript of Śaiva knowledge’, which is to be performed after the setting up of a maṇḍala (Śivadharmottara 2.96, 2.169). Echoes of the Vidyādānādhyāya prescriptions can also be detected in the brief list of addressees of the blessing bestowed on ‘the king who rules the country, the cows, the Brahmins, and the sponsor’ during this ritual. Likewise, Śivadharmottara 2.61 lists ‘the cows, the Brahmins, and the king, as well as the towns of the kingdom’ (gobrāhmaṇamahībhṛtām | rāṣṭrīyanagarāṇāṃ) as the recipients of the mahāśānti blessing. However, the strongest, most unquestionable parallel to Śivadharmottara’s chapter 2 is detectable in the last lines of the quoted text, which outline further prescriptions for the recitation of the Śāntyadhyāya. According to them, the inhabitants listed in the various sections of the grant who are devoted to the study of the śāstras have to perform the reading of the Śāntyadhyāya after drawing three maṇḍalas, called vidyāmaṇḍala, gurumaṇḍala, and śivamaṇḍala. This is clearly a reference to the practice described in Śivadharmottara 2.172–75 (see above), where of maṇḍalas with the same names are required on the occasion of the ‘reading of the śivajñāna’.

The document thus attests that this is an area of Karnataka where the practice of the gift of knowledge is known also thanks to other contemporary inscriptions, and is at the same time an area where the Śivadharmaśāstra and the Śivadharmottara circulated. This occurred most likely due to the favour that they must have enjoyed among the already mentioned Kālamukhas, who were Lākula-worshipping adherents to non-Tantric forms of Śaivism. From what can be deduced on the basis of the information provided by the Tāḷagunda inscription, the gift of knowledge is intended here as a means of financial support for the benefit of educational institutions, although the public readings of texts, which the Tāḷagunda inscription specifically identifies with the Śāntyadhyāya of the Śivadharma, also seem to be at stake; such is mentioned in the Śivadharmottara, and can also be detected on the basis of the scattered references available in the inscriptions examined. The information gained from epigraphs thus completes what we know from other sources, like the testimony of the manuscripts analyzed in § 1.2, or that of ritual manuals (see chapter 4), and helps to fill the gap between prescriptive texts and performative practice. In this particular case, the evidence conclusively shows that the prescriptions of the Śivadharmottara and related sources concerning the gift of knowledge were deeply rooted in the religious and social life of medieval and early modern India.

2.5The Books of Knowledge

One crucial element in assessing the function of the gift of knowledge in the environments where this ritual was known and prescribed is the identification of the knowledge, vidyā, namely the text that is given the shape of a manuscript and then made an object of worship, teaching, and donation. As a rule, the sources dealing with manuscript rituals, whether included in the broader context of the gift of knowledge or conceived as simpler ritual donations, do not consider the manuscript a generic entity, but specify the titles, sometimes the literary genres or the fields of knowledge of the texts that are transcribed into the manuscripts which are to be donated. By doing so, literary sources show their concern regarding the correct application of the rules of gifting, which are not pertinent to all objects but, as already observed (see § 1.2), only to those which the Brahminical tradition has considered a ‘proper gift’ (deya) in the context of a ‘lawful donation’ (dharmadāna). This kind of concern is also addressed towards manuscripts, since only certain categories—at times very broad, other times restricted— qualify for a proper gift of knowledge. A substantial number of examples on this topic have been collected by the medieval digest-writers in their relevant chapters (see chapter 3), especially by Hemādri, who shows a deeper interest in the establishment of the ‘allowed’ fields of knowledge rather than in detailing the ritual itself. One may think, for instance, of the lengthy and important chapter 53 of the Matsyapurāṇa, where all 18 major Purāṇas are listed and identified by their contents and number of verses, each accompanied by the prescriptions for the donation of the manuscripts; or the shorter account of Saurapurāṇa 1.15–40, analogously concerned with the identification and donation of Purāṇas, but never quoted by the digest-writers (at least not with reference to the section containing the list of the Purāṇas).[507] Neither of these texts describe such donations as a gift of knowledge, nor give detailed accounts of a single, unitary ceremony in which the gift of manuscripts has to take place, but only make generic references to the obligation of donating them in certain periods of the year, accompanied by a specific fee. Texts such as the Śivadharmottara, the Devīpurāṇa, and the Nandipurāṇa are different insofar as they systematically adapt the fixed, shared ritual pattern of the gift of knowledge to the needs of the communities that form the backdrop of their composition. As is to be expected, one of the main adjustments that these texts make to the ritual consists precisely of the prescriptions regarding the works whose worship, production, and donation constitute the main context of the gift of knowledge.

Some stanzas from the Viṣṇudharmottara, a Purāṇa used by Hemādri among his sources on the gift of knowledge, make a brief reference to this gifting category (in total, only 13 stanzas), while containing several specifications on the knowledge which is to be donated:[508]

Knowledge is the cow that yields [all] desires, knowledge is the unsurpassed eye. There has never been, nor is there a gift superior to the gift of knowledge. (1) / A knowledgeable person will be the vessel of all desirable things. Therefore, everything is donated in this world by one who donates knowledge. (2) / The suffering that a person experiences by teaching other people, which is the supreme ascesis (tapas), this is held to be the supreme world of Brahmā. (3) / In [this] world the gift of knowledge [is] supreme among [all] gifts, because of the ascesis; o Mahābhāgas, [the gift of knowledge] bestows, as reward, the [fulfillment] of all desires. (4) / From the gifting of the Vedas a person obtains the fruit of all sacrifices. By gifting the Upavedas, one rejoices with the Gandharvas; (5) / And due to the gift of the Vedāṅgas one reaches Indra’s Heaven. Thanks to the gifting of the Dharmaśāstras, one rejoices together with Dharma; (6) / Due to the gifting of the Siddhāntas, one attains liberation, without doubt; and having donated the other treatises, he is magnified in Heaven. (7) / One performs a gift of knowledge through the gift of a manuscript. [The one] who would teach crafts will obtain the fruit of a lotus-flower [sacrifice] (puṇḍarīka). (8) / Having taught archery, one will get the fruit of a horse sacrifice (aśvamedha). Due to the gifting of craft tools, one will get the fruit of the gift of crafts. (9) / Having prevented the one who is involved in bad actions [from continuing with these], it is taught that the reward of the gift of knowledge is attained, this is absolutely certain. (10) / One, having stopped a sinner, is magnified in Heaven obtaining the fruit of a gift of knowledge. (11) / A person should teach the activity through which one can make a living; having taught [this], o Mahābhāgas, one is magnified in the heavenly world; (12) / The one who donates that tool through which he earns [his own] living, he obtains the fruit of the sacrifice which abundantly bestows all desirable things. (13)

These stanzas of the Viṣṇudharmottara do not present us with a complete, systematic description of the gift of knowledge. However, its frequent mentions at stanzas 3.303.1, 4, 8, 10 and 11 prove that the gift of knowledge is the context in which the donations referred to in such verses was conceived. The ritual structure of the donation of knowledge envisaged by the Viṣṇudharmottara is narrow and mainly evoked by the references to the Vedic rites of which the gift of knowledge would confer the fruits. Nevertheless, the information provided by these stanzas serve to outline some basic features. In the first place, the Viṣṇudharmottara conceives the gift of knowledge as a donation of manuscripts (see 3.303.8), while at the same time connecting it with teaching activities, as shown by the reference to the act of ‘teaching others’ (parādhyāpanataḥ, 3.303.3), which the text regards as a form of ascesis. These general connotations, along with the great attention paid to the knowledge to be donated, comply with the prescriptions given by more extensive sources. On this point, the Viṣṇudharmottara reveals the same eclectic approach shared, with due differences, by the Devīpurāṇa and the Nandipurāṇa, as it encompasses Vedic and Dharmaśāstric literature along with the Siddhāntas, but also technical disciplines such as archery and handicraft, which are all connected with the appropriate rewards. Regarding the latter, it is noticeable that liberation is exclusively associated here with the Siddhānta (3.303.7), i.e. the ‘established doctrines’. The ritual boundaries are so diluted that even the simple donation of a work tool (3.303.9 and 13) or the teaching of a productive activity (3.303.12) can be deemed an appropriate manner to practice a gift of knowledge. This is reminiscent of the lesser alternatives proposed by the Śivadharmottara and other texts, like the donations of pens and any other writing tools (§ 2.1), but while in those cases the substitutive objects are nonetheless connected with the activities of writing or preserving a manuscript, the same is not true for the stanzas of the Viṣṇudharmottara quoted above, where the gift of knowledge is ultimately focused on the transmission of knowledge of any kind, whether it correspond to the founding texts of Indian traditional societies, or to the impartation and acquisition of practical skills. The Śivadharmottara, on the other hand, stands out from this scenario by restricting the field of worship and ritual to the sole texts identifiable under the category of ‘Śaiva knowledge’. This selective approach marks a clear-cut discrepancy between the Śivadharmottara and the parallel Purāṇic sources, highlighting the increased level of ‘Śaiva sectarianism’ of the early Śaiva text more strongly than any other part of the ritual.

‘Śaiva knowledge/wisdom’ (śivajñāna or śivavidyā), namely knowledge belonging to, or originating from Śiva, is the sole qualification that the Śivadharmottara provides for the texts that are the focus of worship and donation. The following survey of the occurrences of the terms referring to knowledge and manuscripts attested in the Vidyādānādhyāya, [509] considered within their own contexts, demonstrates the vagueness and, at the same time, the consistency of the Śivadharmottara on this point:

A. In the meaning of ‘knowledge’, without reference to its written form:

vidyā (‘knowledge/wisdom’): In 2.1, vidyā is the equivalent of ‘knowledge (jñāna) ensouled by Śiva’; in the compound vidyāparameśvara (st. 2.11), ‘supreme lord of knowledge’, it qualifies the teacher; st. 2.176 teaches that the ‘knowledge’ (vidyā) of those who properly listen to and teach the ‘Śaiva knowledge’ (śivajñāna) is bright. Moreover, the term occurs in the compound śivavidyāguru, ‘Śiva, knowledge and the teacher’, attested in stanzas 2.15 and 2.176.

jñāna (‘knowledge’): In 2.1, jñāna is qualified as ‘ensouled by Śiva’ (śivātmaka); it is regarded as an equivalent of vidyā. In 2.6, it denotes a teaching that has been received from a false source; in the same vein, one who destroys the teaching by transmitting false knowledge to somebody else is called jñānanāśaka, ‘destroyer of knowledge’. It is furthermore attested in the compound jñānāvalepamānāndha, ‘blindfolded by being proud of their knowledge’ (2.8), referring to the teachers;

śivavidyā (‘Śaiva knowledge’): Attested in 2.2, this occurs in the compound śivavidyānusareṇa, ‘in accordance with the Śaiva knowledge’;

śivajñāna (‘Śaiva knowledge’): Attested in the compound śivajñānaprakāśaka (2.29), ‘the illustrator of the Śaiva knowledge’, qualifying the teacher; in the compound śivajñānābhiyukta (2.83, 90, 106), ‘the one versed in the Śaiva knowledge’, denoting the recipient of a gift of knowledge; it is then used in the compound śivajñānaratātma (2.93), ‘one whose soul rejoices in the Śaiva knowledge’, to denote the recipients of a gift that is equivalent to the gift of knowledge;

B. With reference to a manuscript:

śivajñāna (‘Śaiva knowledge’): In 2.7, this is the designation of the manuscript that has to be cleansed from the mistakes listed in the following stanzas (2.7-10).

B. 1 With express reference to the exemplar during the ritual transcription:

vidyā (‘knowledge’): In 2.14 and 2.15, vidyā is worshipped along with Śiva and the teacher;

likhita (literally, ‘written’): This is worshipped together with the still blank manuscript (2.25), which will become the apograph;

śivajñāna (‘Śaiva knowledge’): This is attested in 2.28, again as a focus of worship, together with the teacher;

śāstra (literally, ‘technical treatise’): In 2.31 the scribe proclaims that he will ‘transfer the śāstra’ (to another manuscript), and addresses a ‘meritoriousday’ ritual to it;

pustaka (‘manuscript’): In 2.39 the pustaka is placed on a stand called śarayantrāsanam during the copying.

B. 2 With express reference to the apograph during the ritual transcription and donation:

lekhya (literally, ‘to be written’): A lekhya is worshipped together with the exemplar at 2.25, before the transcription is started;

śivapustaka (‘manuscript of Śiva’): Stanza 2.41 gives instructions on the script which should be used for writing it;

śivavidyā (‘Śaiva knowledge/wisdom’): In 2.45, the vehicle on which the manuscript is placed after the transcript is called a ‘vehicle of Śaiva knowledge’ (śivavidyāvimāna). The term śivavidyā is also used in 2.55 to designate the manuscript in front of which the king has to recite mantras during the procession;

śivajñānasya pustakam / śivajñānapustaka (‘manuscript of Śaiva knowledge’): In 2.46, a śivajñānasya pustakam is ‘placed on the throne of knowledge’ (vidyāsanastha), which in turn is put on the vehicle that will lead it in procession to the temple. The manuscript is simply called pustaka at 2.52, when it is put on an elephant cart to be carried in procession.

B. 3 Other references in ritual, but not necessarily connected to the account of the main ritual:

śivajñānasya pustakam / śivajñānasya pustakam (‘manuscript of Śaiva knowledge’): The donation of a śivajñānapustaka is prescribed in 2.71, while a śivajñānasya pustakam is mentioned as an object for donation in 2.75. In st. 2.81, the śivajñānapustaka is placed on flowers and worshipped in the Śaiva hermitage (śivāśrama). Note that the alternation of the two expressions śivajñānasya pustakam and śivajñānapustaka is most likely due only to metrical reasons.

śivajñāna (‘Śaiva knowledge’): Stanzas 2.98 and 2.101 mention the ‘recitation of the Śaiva knowledge’ (śivajñānasya vācanam). The compound is again attested at 2.102 and 2.104, which enumerate the merits earned by studying and copying the śivajñāna. In 2.174, the śivajñāna is worshipped and listened to in the ‘pillared hall for the teaching of knowledge’ (vidyāvyākhyānamaṇḍapa), and in the following stanzas (2.176-77) śivajñāna is again taught and read;

śivavidyā (‘Śaiva knowledge/wisdom’): This compound occurs again in 2.122, where the śivavidyā is said to be venerated after its installation. Stanza 2.124 states that building a ‘dwelling place’ (āyatana) for the śivavidyā will bestow the same fruit as a gift of knowledge;

vidyā (‘knowledge’): The term vidyā is used at 2.100, where its veneration is prescribed together with that of Śiva and the teacher (ācārya) at the end of a ritual reading. This word is also used at 2.109ff., describing the ceremony for the construction of a precious box for the manuscript. Here the text makes use of several compounds, all of which imply the use of vidyā with reference to the manuscript: vidyākośasamāśraya, ‘storehouse of knowledge’ (2.109); vidyāvāsagṛha, ‘house in which knowledge abides’ (2.111); vidyāratnakaraṇḍaka, ‘jewel-box of knowledge’ (2.112); vidyākośagṛha, ‘treasure-house of knowledge’ (2.113, 2.116 and 2.117).

Most of the references to knowledge in the Vidyādānādhyāya thus denote knowledge in its written form; moreover, there is no exact lexical choice distinguishing the manuscript used in the diverse phases of the ritual or in the different rituals, not even in order to highlight a distinction between the functions of the exemplar and that of the apograph. The only exception is represented by the pair of terms likhita and lekhya, discriminating in this case the ‘already copied’ manuscript (thus, the exemplar) from the apograph ‘to be copied’. However, to be precise, and as observed in § 2.1, this distinction is only made clear at a point when the apograph is not yet an apograph, as the transcription has not yet started by stanza 2.25, and lekhya thus still denotes a bunch of empty pages, which have already been arranged in the shape of a manuscript and are to be filled by a scribe. In all steps of the ritual, the manuscript is identified as the sole, material embodiment of the knowledge of Śiva.

Chapter 6 (see § 2.2) also confirms the pervasive use of the expression ‘Śaiva knowledge’ for referring to the manuscript which was used as a focus of worship and other ritual activities. Moreover, the mastery over Śaiva knowledge is the main characteristic of the recipient of the gift of knowledge, which in the Vidyādānādhyāya is designated exactly as ‘one devoted to the Śaiva knowledge’ (śivajñānābhiyukta). This term occurs three times in the dative (2.83c, 2.90a, 2.106a), once for denoting the recipient of a gift of manuscripts, then the recipient of a gift of food, and eventually of a box or a small tablet ‘for the purpose of teaching’ (tadadhyāpanahetunā). In a few cases, the Śivadharmottara also uses the term śivajñāna in the plural, to denote ‘fields’ of Śaiva knowledge or, more generically, Śaiva teachings: in one of these cases, occurring in chapter 1, the śivajñānas are juxtaposed with the well-known category of vidyāsthāna, literally ‘seats of knowledge’, [510] which represent the fourteen established fields of Brahmanical learning and form the core of the Nandipurāṇa’s disquisition on the objects of a gift of knowledge (see below).

Since all the scriptures of the Śaivas are ultimately conceived as having been authored by Śiva, the term śivajñāna can theoretically be applied to all Śaiva scriptural texts. When, for instance, the sixteenth-century Vīraśaiva master Nīlakaṇṭha wrote the Kriyāsāra, which Appayya Dīkṣita then heavily relied upon in his Śivārcanācandrikā (see § 4.3), he devoted a chapter of this work to the ‘Procedures for Worshipping the Śaiva Knowledge’ (śivajñānapūjāvidhi). In dealing with this matter, Nīlakaṇṭha uses some technical terms that are only attested in the Vidyādānādhyāya of the Śivadharmottara, either deriving them from the Śivadharmottara itself or from an intermediate source based on the Śivadharmottara. Lexical parallels with the Śivadharmottara include the compound śivajñānapustaka, which is used with reference to the manuscripts to worship. However, the author’s first concern before starting the description of the ritual is to give an unambiguous definition of śivajñāna, by stating that ‘Śaiva knowledge [is] the divine scriptures starting with the Kāmika’ (śivajñānāni kāmikādayo divyāgamāḥ), namely the 28 Siddhāntatantras, which the text then enumerates and identifies one by one. This simple example, to which many more could be added, helps to underline the deep cultural relations of the concept of śivajñāna, and how an elucidation of this notion in the Śivadharmottara is strictly dependent on an inquiry into the direct context of Vidyādānādhyāya’s prescriptions.

With the expression ‘Śaiva knowledge’ the Śivadharmottara could arguably be referring to itself, or else to itself and the Śivadharmaśāstra, which must have been known to the authors of the Śivadharmottara. A strong focus on the texts of the Śivadharma corpus in the procedures of the gift of knowledge is highlighted by the celebration of an appeasement rite ‘for the world’ (jagacchānti), required by both chapter 2 (see Śivadharmottara 2.60ff.; see § 2.1) and 12 (12.283; see § 2.4). In both cases, this happens by reciting a text, which only in chapter 2 is identified with the Śāntyadhyāya—most likely referring to chapter 6 of the Śivadharmaśāstra—to which the Śivadharmottara acknowledges a strong apotropaic function in the protection of the king and his kingdom (see § 2.1), and whose public use is variously attested in a variety of sources, also with reference to the gift of knowledge (see references in § 2.1 and the Tālagunda inscription in § 2.4). The powers of the śivadharma are therefore used in the ritual as a form of reciprocation of the king’s munificence, and and are used with the end of achieving one of the main goals, which is attracting rich sponsors for the promotion of this rite; at the same time, the Śivadharmottara does not specify that the Śāntyadhyāya has to be read from the manuscript that has just been placed ‘in the presence of Śiva’, leaving it open to the possibility that the text of the donated manuscript and the one recited during the procedures for appeasement may or may not be the same. In this way, the author of the Śivadharmottara manages to exalt the value of its lineage of texts, while at the same time claiming their place among canonical Śaiva scriptures.

It is established that manuscripts of the Śivadharma texts were indeed used for ritual purposes, as attested by the paratexts of some of them and by the presence of a devotional decorative program discerned on many of the surviving wooden covers of the early Nepalese specimens. As I have observed elsewhere,[511] the production of several of the dated Nepalese manuscripts of the Śivadharma corpus can be straightforwardly linked to the rulership of specific kings, either those belonging to the still obscure Thākurī kings or to the Malla monarchs. Among these, we can argue that at least in one case the king could have been the sponsor of the production of the manuscript: this is the Nepalese palm-leaf manuscript of the Śivadharma corpus identified as NAK 1-1075 (NGMPP B 7/3, dated to 1170 CE), and used as manuscript B in the collations of the texts of the Śivadharmaśāstra and the Śivadharmottara quoted throughout the present work. The concluding colophon does not specify that the king has commissioned the production of this manuscript, but since it consists of a short eulogistic poem dedicated to the king Rudradeva (ca. 1167-1175),[512] one could easily surmise that this monarch initiated the composition of this manuscript. The colophon dates the end of the copying to a date corresponding to January 4, 1170.[513] On the other hand, the final colophon of a later manuscript of the corpus (NAK 5-737, NGMPP A 3/3, dated to 1201 CE)[514] clearly states that this work had been accomplished at the behest of a certain Somadeva, who was[515] ‘longing for Heaven, pleasures, wealth, and liberation for [his] mother, father, teachers, and their sons and grandsons’. This manuscript is dated to the first year of king Arimalla’s reign (ruled ca. 1200-1216 CE), praised here with his full monarchic title.[516] Admittedly, manuscripts of the Śivadharma corpus do not reveal much about the devotional motivations that might have prompted their own production. Nevertheless, there is a further feature that we should take into consideration, on account of the observations made in § 1.1 regarding the votive reasons for the decoration of the wooden covers protecting the palm-leaf manuscripts: several Nepalese palm-leaf manuscripts of the Śivadharma corpus are still preserved along with their original wooden covers, which not only show external signs of having been venerated; their inner sides are also decorated with religious icons. This is also true for the earliest surviving manuscript of the collection, the fragmentary NAK 5-892, NGMPP A 12/3, which is dateable on palaeographical grounds to the ninth to the tenth century: this manuscript is preserved between two wooden covers whose inner panels depict scenes of liṅga worship on the front cover, and the worship of Śiva, along with his consort Pārvatī and his mount Nandi on the back cover.[517] The same motifs, with stylistic changes, are on the covers of the already mentioned manuscript NAK 1-1075 (NGMPP B 7/3), the one whose colophon reproduces a versified eulogy of king Rudradeva. The Calcutta manuscript of the Śivadharma corpus G 4077, the earliest dated manuscript in the collection (being dated to July 6, 1036 CE in the final colophon),[518] is also preserved between covers reproducing these scenes,[519] while the Cambridge manuscript Add. 1645, dated to 1139-40 CE on fol. 247r[L6], is accompanied by two wooden covers whose inner panels depict Śiva with Pārvatī and Nandi (front cover), and Viṣṇu being worshipped by Garuḍa and Lakṣmī. Only one, partially ruined cover survives of the palm-leaf manuscript Kesar 218 (NGMPP C 25/1), showing lay devotees while venerating deities, among which the main group is formed by Śiva along with his consort and mount. Moreover, Pal had identified an example of an early portraiture on one of the wooden covers of a manuscript of the Śivadharma, and surmised that a lavishly clad couple depicted in the right corner of the panel of the wooden front cover could actually represent the two rich donors who had commissioned the manuscript.[520] Unfortunately, Pal does not record the siglum of the manuscript to which this cover belongs, only generically attributing it to the twelfth century; at the same time, none of the sets of pictures in my possession, covering the entirety of the Nepalese Śivadharma collection known so far, contains the same images reproduced in Pal 1978 as fig. 52. Knowing to which manuscript this cover originally belonged would have allowed matching the possible depiction of the donors on the covers with the information on the identity of the sponsors of the manuscripts provided by the paratexts. Among the more recent paper manuscripts, the case of Kesar 597 (NGMPP C 57/5) is noteworthy. It is dated to 1742-43 CE, and its covers represent several tantric deities, always on the inner panels.

The scenes represented on the wooden covers of the manuscripts of the Śivadharma corpus since its earliest attestations in Nepal certainly require a more in-depth study in order to establish whether they are contemporary with the manuscripts to which they are attached (from Gilgit, we know that the covers were actually later than the manuscripts; see § 1.1), and to assess these pieces of art within the broader context of Nepalese painting. Nonetheless, we can at least observe that the depiction of scenes of liṅga worship on these covers speaks against Pal’s assumptions regarding the absence of connections between the contents of the texts and the images decoraring the manuscript (§ 1.1). The existence of these painted covers—along with the information provided by the paratexts, however scanty, and the other external evidence pointing to the ritual recitations of the ‘Śivadharma’ or portions of it (see, above all, the inscriptions mentioned at § 2.4)—may be read as a hint that these manuscripts were indeed used for ritual purposes in compliance with the instructions provided by the Śivadharmottara itself. However, this is not sufficient evidence for stating that the ‘Śaiva knowledge’ or the ‘manuscript of the Śaiva knowledge’ on which all the procedures of the gift of knowledge are centered necessarily (or exclusively) corresponds to the Śivadharmaśāstra and/or the Śivadharmottara. In order to clarify this notion, we must now make our way from the manuscripts back to the texts.

The topic of the cult and recitation of manuscripts is dealt with, albeit briefly, at another point of the Śivadharma corpus, namely the twelfth and last chapter of the Śivadharmaśāstra ‘On the Primary and Secondary Branches of the Devotion to Śiva’ (Śivabhaktyādyaśākhopaśākhādhyāya). This chapter treats the subject of donations rather extensively, introducing in st. 12.66 a list of gifts mainly addressed to the śivayogins, although one stanza (12.77) also prescribes the gifting of shoes and sandals to Śaiva devotees (śivabhakta). The donations to the yogins consist of objects connected to their daily routine, such as clothes (12.66-69), filters (pavitras) to protect them from insects (12.70), a water jar (12.71), clay or clay vessels (12.72-73), a tooth stick (12.74), a yogapaṭṭa (a piece of garment used during yoga, 12.75), a vessel for alms (12.76), a stick (12.78), and an umbrella (12.79). At the end of this list, the text mentions the donation of a ‘manuscript of Śiva’, an expression that part of the tradition replaces with ‘big manuscript’: [521]

He who would donate a manuscript of Śiva to one versed in the knowledge of Śiva will be magnified in the world of Rudra for many hundreds of celestial yugas. (81) / Once he has come back to Earth, he will become eminent, rich, expert in the Veda, and one who explains the contents of all knowledge, equal to Bṛhaspati as regards intelligence. (82)

The donor of the manuscript is therefore rewarded with a future as a wise teacher, while the recipient of the manuscript is possibly himself a teacher: the series of datives śivayogine/śivayogibhyaḥ (‘to the Śivayogin/to the Śivayogins’), which in the foregoing stanzas denote the recipients, is now interrupted by śivajñānābhiyuktāya, ‘to one versed in the Śaiva knowledge’ which, as observed above, is also the only term used in the Vidyādānādhyāya for explicitly referring to the recipient of a gift of knowledge. The same chapter 12 of the Śivadharmaśāstra treats proficiency in Śaiva knowledge as one of the three characteristics of the ideal ‘Śaiva recipient’, the others being the practice of the Śaiva yoga and devotion to the Dharma of Śiva, namely the devotional practices exposed in the Śivadharma corpus, which form the basis of lay people’s religious life.[522] This means that chapter 12 of the Śivadharmaśāstra matches the same gift (the manuscript) with the same recipients (the masters of Śaiva knowledge) as the Vidyādānādhyāya of the Śivadharmottara; at the same time, the identification of the three characters of the recipients show that śivajñāna and śivadharma are regarded as two distinct, though strongly related notions. As a further stanza in the same chapter reminds the reader, three persons—the śivayogin, the master of Śaiva knowledge, and the devotee of the Dharma of Śiva—are ultimately endowed with similar qualities, as their level of attainment of Śiva is the same.[523]

The gift of a manuscript to a Śaiva master is not the only parallel that can be traced between chapter 12 of the Śivadharmaśāstra and chapter 2 of the Śivadharmottara. A short passage from Śivadharmaśāstra’s chapter 12, which recommends building a dwelling place for the yogins, also gives the following instructions:[524]

Having offered even little support, [but intended] exclusively for the ascetics, with devotion, he is magnified in the world of Śiva for a hundred thousand years, with great enjoyments. (92) / [One] should make a dwelling place, auspicious, well protected, for the śivayogins; the merit will be the same as for the building of a Śaiva sanctuary (śivāyatana). (93) / Like Śiva is the yogin, like the yogin is Śiva: therefore, a gift, even a small one, [given] to the receptacles who are the best among yogins, is undecaying. (94)

This passage touches upon a topic that is of central importance in the Vidyādānādhyāya, where the expression yatimātropakaraṇam (‘support [intended] exclusively for the ascetics’) is used at stanza 2.92; at the same time, Śivadharmaśāstra 12.94ab (‘Like Śiva is the yogin, like the yogin is Śiva’) may have been the direct model for Śivadharmottara 2.15ab (‘Like Śiva is the knowledge, like knowledge is the teacher’, yathā śivas tathā vidyā yathā vidyā tathā guruḥ).[525] Moreover, only a few verses farther in chapter 12 of the Śivadharmaśāstra, we encounter four stanzas giving prescriptions for the building of a maṇḍala on the occasion of the ‘teaching of the Śivadharma’ (vyākhyāne śivadharmasya):[526]

On the occasion of the teaching of the Śivadharma, having made a big maṇḍala embellished with flowers, leaves, and so on, having placed a big seat for the Śivadharma in front of this teacher, [one] should then worship both. (96) / [One] should always worship the teacher, who is the expounder of the Śivadharma, and the Śivadharma as if [they] were Śiva, because these two are the same. (97) / And a devotee who listens to the Śivadharma in a proper way, having obtained long life, knowledge, success, happiness, he eventually reaches Śiva. (98) / Thus, this eternal Śivadharma has been related to you; one who has acquired [this] knowledge must relate it to all the Śaiva devotees (99).

These lines are followed by a short sequence of concluding verses celebrating the merits of listening to the Śivadharma, and evoking the circumstances of its composition by Candrātreya (12.102):[527] in these final stanzas, the word śivadharma is thus used to denote the title of the work, and not as a generic reference to the set of teachings for lay Śaivas.[528]

The strongest connection between the Śivadharmaśāstra and the Vidyādānādhyāya is accounted for by stanzas 12.96-98. The pattern sketched here for the public reading of the manuscript is in fact very close to the one evoked on various occasions by Śivadharmottara’s chapter 2: a maṇḍala is built, a manuscript is placed on a throne and worshipped, and a teacher is there to be worshipped simultaneously.[529] The latter forms a ‘dyad’ along with the manuscript, and both are considered identical with Śiva, as expressed in very close terms by Śivadharmottara 2.14-15. Unlike the Śivadharmottara, however, the Śivadharmaśāstra specifically calls this manuscript śivadharma, which is the same word used as the title of the whole work in the final stanzas, thus leaving no room for any doubt concerning its identification. The ritual thrones that the Śivadharmottara calls a ‘lion-throne of knowledge’ (vidyāsiṃhāsana, 2.23), a ‘stick-throne’ (daṇḍāsana, 2.24), or a ‘seat of knowledge’ (vidyāsana, 2.46), are never mentioned by the Śivadharmaśāstra, which rather opts for a ‘seat of the śivadharma’ (śivadharmāsana, 12.96). The expression ‘teaching of the śivadharma’ (vyākhyāne śivadharmasya) is reminiscent of the ‘pillared pavilion for the teaching of knowledge’ (vidyāvyākhyānamaṇḍapa) that the Śivadharmottara mentions twice (2.144 and 2.174). Furthermore, the Śivadharmaśāstra refers to the teacher as the ‘reciter of the Śivadharma’ (śivadharmapravaktṛ), while the Śivadharmottara calls him the ‘illustrator of the Śaiva knowledge’ (śivajñānaprakāśaka, 2.29). In conclusion, the Śivadharmottara seems to have systematically replaced the occurrences of śivadharma with śivajñāna, in nearly identical contexts.

On account of these observations, we can safely deduce that the above-cited short passage from the Śivadharmaśāstra exhorts its readers to venerate and recite the Śivadharma itself; furthermore, ideally by connecting stanzas 12.82-84, which mention the donation of a ‘big manuscript’, with stanzas 12.96-98, which speak of the veneration and recitation of the Śivadharma, one obtains the same basic sequence of actions prescribed by the Vidyādānādhyāya. However, to be precise, it must be stated that the Śivadharmaśāstra establishes no explicit link between these phases. When reading both texts together, it may seem as if the long account of the Śivadharmottara has emerged as an expansion of the brief and scattered references found in the conclusion of the Śivadharmaśāstra. However, the main structural difference in the Śivadharmottara account would not only consist of the latter’s inclusion of more details, but also the different positions that the two passages occupy in the corresponding texts. The stanzas on the manuscript donation and manuscript cult of the Śivadharmaśāstra belong to the final segment of the last chapter, which corresponds to the part of a text where one might easily encounter the typical self-praising stanzas that, in the Purāṇas just as in other traditional literature, eulogise the text and its transmission (see §§ 1.1 and 1.2). The Śivadharmaśāstra thus acts in compliance with the norms followed by other Purāṇas when it dedicates this section of the work to praising the cult of its own text and the powers attributed to it. The Śivadharmaśāstra does so by sketching the contours of a proper ritual sequence around these praises. On this basis, and at the beginning of its text, the Śivadharmottara then elaborates and constructs a more complex dāna ceremony, which places the emphasis on the cult of the manuscript in the context of the relationship between the Śaivas and the political authority. Moreover, a slight but explicit change happens in the ritual focus, which seems to have been consciously shifted from the śivadharma to the śivajñāna, from a self-centered point of view to a more comprehensive stance that potentially includes all Śaiva scriptures considered suitable for being used in a public ceremony. By doing so, the author of the Śivadharmottara, who presumably worked with the model of the Śivadharmaśāstra in mind, broadens the scope of the gift of knowledge, transforming it from the exclusive self-celebration strategy that is in the Śivadharmaśāstra into a more versatile tool that, thanks to the broadness of the notion of śivajñāna, becomes potentially representative of all the texts of the Śaiva traditions.

According to our previous considerations, information that might prove crucial in the treatment of this topic is very likely to be found in the final chapter of the Śivadharmottara. Fortunately, the text does not betray our expectations, since the end of Śivadharmottara’s twelfth and last chapter, ‘On the Procedures for the Worship of Śiva’ (Śivārcanavidhyadhyāya), offers a rather conspicuous description of ritual procedures in public readings of a manuscript, which are related to the practice of the gift of knowledge (see § 2.4). While the Śivadharmaśāstra avoids any explicit mention of the gift of knowledge in the conclusion of the work, the Śivadharmottara also turns to this category in chapter 12, albeit briefly; however, in addition to this occurrence of the term, this section is linked to the Vidyādānādhyāya through several similarities and textual parallels. One important, and perhaps predictable, difference is that chapter 12 of the Śivadharmottara, unlike chapter 2, straightforwardly links the vidyādāna procedures with the worship and public reading of the Śivadharmottara itself. This is likely to be the direct consequence of these stanzas being positioned at the end of the work, although it is not irrelevant to observe that the mention of the title occurs only once, while throughout this section the manuscript is further denoted as śivajñāna, śivapustaka (‘manuscript of Śiva’), and parama dharma (‘supreme doctrine’). Therefore, all these terms are ultimately used as synonyms of Śivadharmottara:[530]

The one who recites or listens to the treatise of the Śivadharmottara, this one, freed from transmigration, reaches the supreme seat. (261) / One has to listen to or recite the Śaiva knowledge after worshipping [it] on the beautiful lion-throne of knowledge, which is embellished by clothes, flowers, and so on; (262) / alternatively, having made a splendid stickthrone (daṇḍāsana), consisting of gold, well embellished, covered by a golden cloth, adorned with various precious stones; (263) / [...] / Having thus made a cushion he should lay [it] on the stick-throne. Once the Śaiva knowledge is placed on top of it, one should worship [it]. (271) / Having carefully arranged the decorations in accordance with the procedures for the gift of knowledge, having gone [to the prescribed places], with cleansed hands, sitting on a splendid seat, (272) / One should read the supreme Dharma in the courts, in the sanctuaries, in the sacred sites (tīrthas), or in the residences of the king, as well as in the houses, in the villages, in the towns. (273)

The reference to the gift of knowledge is very brief, yet the textual and lexical parallels are significant. Mentioning the ‘procedures for the gift of knowledge’ (vidyādānopacāra, 12.272) does create an explicit connection with the account of chapter 2, but chapter 12 includes no reference to the proper donation of manuscripts. In fact, the latter draws on some of the ‘procedures for the gift of knowledge’ attested in chapter 2, such as the names of the thrones used for the worship ceremony (in stanza 12.262 onward), their use in the worship of the manuscript, and the public reading. It then shifts the focus solely to this last aspect, namely the public performance of manuscript recitations, as described in verses 12.273ff. and examined in § 2.4. The performance described in chapter 12 is a public event in which everybody has the right to participate. It is aimed at the fruition of the text and its teachings through oral recitation and aural reception, as well as at the sacralization of the text by means of the worship of its manuscript. The latter, as the above stanzas show, is denoted through a terminology that displays a wide range of parallels with the words used in chapter 2: the same manuscript that is called śivadharmottara in 12.261 becomes ‘Śaiva knowledge’ in 12.262 and 271, while it is called the ‘supreme Dharma’ in 12.273; in the lines following the quoted text, the manuscript is alternatively addressed as ‘Śaiva knowledge’ (12.274, 276, 290), ‘manuscript of Śiva’ (12.279, 295), and treatise (śāstra, 12.284). It is only the very last stanza that, finally, exhorts the king to uninterruptedly listen to the śivadharma (12.297). This can be regarded both as a synonym of Śivadharmottara and, more likely, as a term generally denoting the teachings pertaining to lay devotion to Śiva, thus also including the Śivadharmaśāstra (see § 1.3). All the words encountered in the reviewed textual evidence referring to the manuscript are now used interchangeably, so that the śivadharma, the ‘easy means’ for the accomplishment of all good, which has found its concrete expression in the Śivadharmaśāstra and the Śivadharmottara (and in the texts following their composition), is now automatically subsumed under the category of śivajñāna. As such it is presented to the wide audience of devotees, including the king.

This long excursus is yet to provide a specific answer to the initial question as to the identity of the manuscript (or the manuscripts) on which the Śivadharmottara based its construction of the ceremony of vidyādāna and all the related ritual activities focusing on manuscripts. Provided that śivajñāna is a generic notion, and that the Śivadharmottara has replaced the references to the donation and cult of the śivadharma with the donation and cult of the śivajñāna, is it possible to arrive at more specific conclusions? The most likely accurate answer to this question is probably that the gift of knowledge described in chapter 2 of the Śivadharmottara, as well as the references contained in chapter 12, promote the veneration of a scriptural category that includes, while not being restricted to, the two texts which were to become part of the Śivadharma corpus, i.e. the Śivadharmaśāstra and the Śivadharmottara. That those works are ‘Śaiva knowledge’ is implicit in their claim of having been authored by Śiva (see § 1.3). This is then also highlighted by chapter 12 of the Śivadharmottara, in which its title is used as a synonym of śivajñāna, among others.

The stanzas of chapter 12 on the worship and reading of the Śaiva knowledge have been reused by the Devīpurāṇa in chapter 128, which is the last chapter in both available printed editions. This, together with the parallels between Śivadharmottara 2 and Devīpurāṇa 91, means that the Devīpurāṇa takes from the Śivadharmottara all its relevant references to the ritual uses of manuscripts, treating the early Śaiva text as an authority on this subject. However, the parallel traceable in chapter 128 is the most substantial one among those existing between the two works, since it covers stanzas 128.3-46 of the Devīpurāṇa (with the sole exception of st. 35 and 38, which do not have any parallel in the Śivadharmottara), corresponding to stanzas 12.260-297 of the Śivadharmottara, with almost all parallels being very literal (see Appendix 2). A major difference, which reveals the work of adaptation performed by the author of the Devīpurāṇa, consists of the replacement of the Śaiva references with mentions of the cult of the Devī or with allusions to the Devīpurāṇa. These easy but effective changes give rise to the interpretation of the whole passage as a celebration of the Devīpurāṇa and a praise of its transmission. A telling example of this is Śivadharmottara 12.261ab, ‘The one who would recite or listen to the Śivadharmottaraśāstra’,[531] which in Devīpurāṇa 128.4ab is changed into,[532] ‘The one who would read or listen to the first descent of the goddess’; or in Śivadharmottara 12.279cd, [533] ‘Whoever finances the public reading of the manuscript of Śiva’, which Devīpurāṇa 128.23ab modifies as,[534] ‘Whoever finances the public reading of the manuscript of the goddess’. The hemistich of Śivadharmottara 12.284cd,[535] ‘And with devotion towards Śiva, knowledge and the teacher, and for the śivayogins’ also has a parallel in Devīpurāṇa 128.30ab:[536] ‘With devotion towards the goddess, as well as towards knowledge and the teachers, and for the Śivayogins’. However, some specific references to the cultural context of the Śivadharmottara have remained unchanged. For example, the mention of the śivayogins as the recipients of fees[537] and, above all, that of the śivadharma playing a protective function towards kings in Śivadharmottara 12.296-97 (=Devīpurāṇa 128.45). This reference was probably overlooked by those who worked on chapter 128 of the Devīpurāṇa, and its presence may be proof that these textual borrowings were made from the Śivadharmottara to the Devīpurāṇa, rather than the other way around. However, the mention of the Dharma of Śiva instead of that of the goddess is balanced by the following verse. There the goddess is again regularly mentioned in a position that the Śivadharmottara assigns to Śiva:[538]

The king does not die before his time, nor is he killed by enemies; and the protector of men who listens to the eternal Dharma of Śiva, (45) / In that highly auspicious place the goddess is present, o king!

The Devīpurāṇa thus adapts Śivadharmottara 12 in order to present all the public and private ritual uses of texts alluded to in this chapter as centered on the cult of the goddess and the Devīpurāṇa itself, and thus as aids to its preservation and dissemination. This chapter from the Devīpurāṇa thus replicates the level of self-referentiality that we have also observed in chapter 12 of the Śivadharmottara and in chapter 12 of the Śivadharmaśāstra. At the same time, chapter 91 of the Devī-purāṇa, whose stanzas on ritual are directly modelled on Śivadharmottara’s Vidyādānādhyāya, reveals a wider scope. One of the important adaptations made by the author of the Devīpurāṇa when borrowing from the Śivadharmottara consists precisely of the choice of the texts and fields of knowledge that are admitted to the ritual. The Devīpurāṇa, resembling the Viṣṇudharmottara and the Nandipurāṇa in this respect, introduces the description of the ritual by presenting a list of texts that also includes the founding scriptures of orthodox Brahmanism. Unlike the Nandipurāṇa, however, the texts whose donation is supported by the Devīpurāṇa also include tantric scriptures:[539]

The Siddhāntas are treatises conducive to liberation (mokṣaśāstrāṇi), [and] the Vedas are effective for [reaching] Heaven and so on; the Vedāṅgas and the Itihāsas should be donated for the purpose of increasing Dharma. (13) / The Garuḍa[tantras] and the Bālatantras, the Bhūtatantras [and] the Bhairavatantras: from the reading [and] donation of [these] treatises the Mothers will bestow rewards on people. (14) / From the gift of astronomy[540] [and] treatises on medicine, one attains good health; from the gift of arts and crafts, poetry (kāvya) and the beautiful authoritative treatises (āgama),[541] one reaches the seat of the Gandharvas. (15)

In addition to the Vedas, the Vedāṅgas, and the Upaniṣads (which the ‘treatises on liberation’ mentioned at 91.13 are most likely to be identified with), the Devīpurāṇa refers to the epics as well as to one of the two main divisions of the tantric ‘Path of Mantras’ (Mantramārga), namely the Bhairavatantras. The mention of the latter is especially pertinent in this context. The Bhairavatantras are the first tantric scriptures to detail the cult of the Mothers allied with Bhairava, which plays an important role in the Devīpurāṇa.[542] Their association with the Mothers, who will bestow rewards on those who read and donate the texts, also concerns the Garuḍatantras, the Bālatantras, and the Bhūtatantras, medicallyoriented classes of Śaiva Tantras.[543] These bodies of literature are still insufficiently known due to the almost complete loss of their original texts; however, the influence they had on subsequent extant works on the same topics has proven to be extensive.[544] They must have been rather popular in the circles that composed the Devīpurāṇa, since their names also occur together at other points in the text. In chapter 32, for instance, ‘treatises of the goddess’ (devīśāstra), possibly including the Devīpurāṇa itself, are mentioned along with the same tantric scriptures listed at 91.14 among the texts with which the performers of installations must be conversant:[545] ‘He should bathe the goddess by means of jars containing the remnants of the offerings of clothes, gold, and water; he will have the utmost experts on the treatises of this [goddess] perform the installation. (41) / Fine knowers of the contents of the treatises of the goddess, specialists on the circles of the Mothers, those who have toiled over the Bhūtatantras, the Graha[tantras], the Bāla[tantras] and the Garuḍa[tantras] […].’ In chapter 39 of the Devīpurāṇa, some of these scriptures are again mentioned as the receptacles of the presence of the goddess. Before introducing the famous story of the demon Bala’s delusion by Viṣṇu, this chapter associates the many forms of the goddess with a list of sacred sites, and eventually states that:[546] ‘The ubiquitous goddess is thus constantly present in the mantras, in the spells (vidyās), and in the scriptures, as well as in the Tantras of the Mothers,[547] and in the best Bhairavatantra’. These lines serve as the introduction to a story where the main role is played by the ‘infatuating spell’ (mohinī vidyā), imparted by Śiva on Viṣṇu, within a chapter dealing extensively with the power of vidyās and their veneration. It is also expressly stated that the presence of the goddess is to be sought not only in sacred places, but also in the manuscripts connected with her cult.[548] Such manuscripts, and their identity with the goddesses, are also referred to in the incipit of chapter 88, where it is declared,[549] ‘These (scil. the Mothers) are worshipped through the divine Śaiva scriptures by those who seek liberation, and are worshipped in the Garuḍatantras, in the Bhūtatantras, and in the Bālatantras.’ Their importance in the formation of the experts on installations, as stated in chapter 32, along with the belief that the goddess and the Mothers are present in the texts and can thus be worshipped through them, are the reasons why these tantras are correspondingly considered in the gift of knowledge.

The manuscripts that the Devīpurāṇa considers as fit objects for a gift of knowledge are thus a rather varied set from which the Vedic tradition is not rejected—in the Devīpurāṇa, the goddess is after all also celebrated as ‘mother of the Vedas’[550]—but rather integrated with tantric texts. At the same time, not all texts are considered to be on the same level: the Siddhāntas are said to confer emancipation, the Vedas and the Upaniṣads are conducive to attaining Heaven. These are at the top of a hierarchy in which texts are associated with rewards that are sometimes reminiscent of their functions or attributes. Thus, when donated, the Vedāṅgas and Itihāsas are said to cause an increase of Dharma; the Garuḍatantras, the Bālatantras, the Bhūtatantras, and the Bhairavatantras, all popular in Śākta circles, generate rewards from the Mothers. On the lowest levels of this ranking, the text mentions more mundane, broader fields of knowledge rather than classes of texts, including the science of astronomy, which, along with the donation of treatises on medicine, confers good health on the donors; as well as visual arts, handicrafts, and poetry, which lead to the world of the Gandharvas, among whose main attributes, according to traditional mythology, are their skills in music. The non-religious literature mentioned at 91.15 is also significant inasmuch as it contrasts with the view of the Śivadharmottara, where the gift of knowledge is regarded as a ritual uniquely concerned with religious texts and purposes.

In the rest of the chapter, the Devīpurāṇa only resorts to very generic words, such as pustaka or śāstra, in order to refer to the manuscript used during the ritual, or to the more technical terminology discussed in § 2.1, partly overlapping with that used in the Śivadharmottara, but always avoiding the reference to the notion of Śaiva knowledge, which was central in the Vidyādānādhyāya. The openness of the Devīpurāṇa to a less sectarian use of the gift of knowledge is further proved by the final steps of the ritual, where the text prescribes that one (see § 2.1) ‘should imagine the manuscript exactly [in the form of the deity] to which that treatise belongs […] (62)’ and then bring the manuscript ‘to the hermitage of that god to whom [it belongs], as well as in the tīrthas of Śiva and in the temples of the Mothers (64)’. Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava attendants had been mentioned together in st. 91.63, although more relevance was attributed to the Śaivas. Therefore, the Devīpurāṇa seems to have made a further expansion on the one already made by the Śivadharmottara: while the latter had apparently taken inspiration from the Śivadharmaśāstra, but enlarged the aim of its ritual by potentially including all the Śaiva scriptures within its purview, the Devīpurāṇa conceives the gift of knowledge as encompassing the Śaiva scriptures and everything else, expressly extending this practice to tantric texts. Thus, both works share the notion that the gift of knowledge should be conceived in an ample perspective, rather than being just a self-celebrating stratagem: in this sense, it is striking that the Devīpurāṇa does not even mention the Purāṇas, the genre to which the work itself is ascribed, in the list provided in the beginning of chapter 91.

The case of the Nandipurāṇa resembles that of the Devīpurāṇa insofar as both provide lists of several texts, to which technical disciplines and sciences are also added. In the same way as in the Devīpurāṇa, the details on the vidyās that are suitable for donation precede the description of the ritual itself in the Nandipurāṇa. The Nandipurāṇa, however, stands out as the source that devotes the greatest attention to the identification of the accepted books and fields of knowledge, dedicating a total of 25 stanzas to the topic. In contrast with the other cases examined so far, and as regards the Nandipurāṇa, the fields of learning that should be admitted to a gift of knowledge ultimately correspond to the traditional 14 established ‘seats of knowledge’ (vidyāsthāna): [551]

The [established] disciplines have been taught [to be] 14. According to the sequence attested in tradition, [they are:] the six [Ved]ānġas, the four Vedas, Dharmaśāstric [and] Purāṇic literature, Mīmāṃsā, as well as Nyāya: these are renowned as the [established] disciplines.

This perfectly aligns the Nandipurāṇa with the tradition of the Dharmaśāstra, which, on this point, has its locus classicus in Yājñavalkyasmṛti 1.3 and the commentaries upon it.[552] The 14 disciplines listed by the text form the core of Brahminical scriptural orthodoxy, to the extent that Sāyaṇa, the fourteenth-century commentator on the Veda, living under Vijayanagara rulers, presented the mastery of the 14 vidyāsthānas as an essential requirement in order to become a vedavid, a true knower of the Vedas.[553] The Nandipurāṇa does not restrict the accepted fields of study to the established 14 disciplines, but rather hints at the existence of ‘thousands’ of others (Dānakāṇḍa 12.65NP), expressly naming among these only medicine (āyurveda, 12.65NP ), agriculture (sasyaveda, 12.65NP ), and the ‘knowledge of the Self’ (ātmavidyā 12.66NP), then further adding the disciplines grouped under the category of ‘fine arts’ (kalās, 12.67NP) and those belonging to that of ‘crafts’ (śilpavidyā, 12.67NP), whose names are not specified.

The ‘knowledge of the Self’ is praised more than once in the text as the highest form of knowledge, and is linked to emancipation from rebirth;[554] even though Purāṇa and Dharmaśāstra are also associated with the primacy of the ātmavidyā,[555] only the latter is said to confer liberation, while the donation of all other disciplines, including the Veda, is only associated with the obtainment of ultramundane rewards.[556] The Knowledge of the Self is likely to correspond to the Upaniṣads and, more generally, to the sources of the Vedānta tradition, which the Purāṇas quoted by Aparārka in his commentary on Yājñavalkyasmṛti 1.3 also add to the traditional 14 vidyāsthānas.[557] A stanza that Aparārka attributes to the Brahmapurāṇa[558] increases this number to 16 by adding precisely Vedānta and vidyā, a term that Aparārka interprets as a reference to the Upaniṣads, while a non-specified source[559] further adds medicine, archery, music, and politics, collectively known as ‘Upavedas’[560] in traditional literature. The system known to the Nandipurāṇa thus saw a hierarchy of fields of knowledge that, starting from the Knowledge of the Self, the Purāṇas, and the Dharmaśāstras, extended to cover all the traditional fourteen ‘seats of knowledge’, to which medicine, agriculture, and arts and crafts were added. The text does not expound this hierarchy in a systematic manner, so that the only indisputable feature is the supremacy of the first three and the absolute primacy of the ātmavidyā over all.

The choices made by the Śivadharmottara, the Devīpurāṇa, and the Nandipurāṇa regarding the central question of which texts to promote in the ritual, and which ones to leave out, strongly influenced their later success. In the case of the Śivadharmottara, we can argue that its use of the broad but still sectarian category of śivajñāna, instead of specific work titles, made it easier for this ritual to be successful among the Śaivas, and thus to be often reused in the texts of the later Śaiva tantric traditions. These, as will be highlighted in chapter 4 (see especially §§ 4.2 and 4.3), base the descriptions of their own manuscript rituals on the texts of the Vidyādānādhyāya of the Śivadharmottara, remove the elements that would not fit in a tantric ritual (for example, all the references to the actual donation of the manuscripts), and integrate the rest within the framework of a tantric installation procedure. One element they could leave untouched consisted precisely of the references to the śivajñāna, a term that could easily be used to refer to tantric scriptures (see the example from Nīlakaṇṭha/Appayya Dīkṣita in the beginning of this paragraph) or, more generically, the knowledge authored by Śiva. This is how the term is used, for instance, in the very beginning of the Mūlasūtra of the Niśvāsatattvasaṃhitā, an early Śaiva scripture of the Mantramārga that in at least one of its layers shows textual connections with the environments that produced the works of the Śivadharma corpus.[561] Here, however, in compliance with the secrecy and exclusiveness of tantric teachings, the Śaiva knowledge is defined a ‘supreme secret’ right from the incipit of the text.[562] In the Śivadharmottara this notion, on the contrary, is afforded a patently public nature, and therefore it is no surprise that the tantric texts that mostly rely on the Śivadharmottara for the rules concerning the ritual uses of manuscripts are framed within the Śaiva Siddhānta as focusing on temple rites rather than on private worship. The Nandipurāṇa, on the other hand, thanks to its proximity to the orthodox Weltanschauung, which emerges clearly in the selection of the vidyās introducing the gift of knowledge, becomes the most quoted text on the topic by the medieval digest-authors. The importance of this quotation is increased by the circumstance that the Nandipurāṇa, like many of the authorities on which the digest-writers rely (see chapter 3), is itself a lost text, and the long passage on the gift of knowledge quoted in the Dharmanibandhas is the longest passage that has survived from this little known Purāṇa, in which devotion to Śiva is deeply embedded into the strongholds of post-Vedic Brahmanism. On the other hand, the Devīpurāṇa, which, in addition to its acknowledgement of the authority of the Veda, shows clear signs of a tantric influence and acceptance of tantric scriptures, has been quoted by the digest-writers (unlike the Śivadharmottara, never quoted on the topic of the gift of knowledge), but also openly rejected by some of them precisely due to its tantric influences. Dissent against the Devīpurāṇa is famously voiced by the twelfth-century author Ballālasena, author of one of the most important and earliest extant digests on dāna, but the text is also mainly avoided by Madanasiṃhadeva, author of another rather extensive treatise on gifting in the fourteenth century. The testimony of the digest-writers, whose work covers the entire late medieval period until the dawn of the British Empire, is responsible for the preservation and diffusion of the knowledge of textual sources on many aspects of the Brahminical worldview and religious life. In this, the practice of gifting had a special relevance, so that it was made the subject of many important ‘monographic’ digests or sections of broader digests, where the gift of knowledge stands out as one of the topics for which they reserve the most extensive and articulated treatment, carrying an old idea into modern worlds.

3Manuscripts, Ritual, and the Medieval Literature on Dharma

One of the fields of Sanskrit literary production in which the topic of the gift of knowledge has received considerable attention is that of the Dharmaśāstra, literally ‘scholastic literature on Dharma’, which by the turn of the first millennium and throughout the late medieval era found its main vehicle of expression in works such as the commentaries and digests interpreting and collecting authoritative sources. The composition of more or less systematic expositions on the various aspects of Dharma attributed to the authority of great Vedic sages—such as the Manusmṛti, the Yājñavalkyasmṛti, or the Bṛhaspatismṛti—which characterized the nature of Dharmaśāstra production from the first millennium BCE onwards, had thus given way to the emergence of forms of ‘secondary literature’; in the case of the commentaries, the main scope of this secondary literature was that of commenting upon the primary sources on the knowledge of Dharma; in the case of the digests, that of selecting and arranging those sources thematically, while interspersing the texts with a few original glosses.[563] The digests, collectively referred to as Dharmanibandhas (‘composition’ or ‘digest’ on Dharma), are by far among the most informative sources for the study of ritual, customs, and legal procedures; they can be primarily likened to anthologies of quotations from texts that are considered authoritative on the vast subject of Dharma, namely those falling into the expansive category of ‘Smṛti’. These are the above-mentioned works on Dharmaśāstra, to which traditional and modern scholarship may sometimes apply the word Smṛti tout court, but also the epics and the Purāṇas, which had grown into a heterogeneous, ever expanding body of literature. The topics of interest for the digest-writers (nibandhakāra) and their audience were most disparate: the several categories of donations, the pilgrimages to holy sites (tīrthas), and the appropriate time and place for the prescribed rituals, just to mention a few. Among all the subjects that are relevant to a discussion on Dharma, gifting receives special attention, and the gift of knowledge is one of the categories of gifts in which the digest-authors regularly classify their sources on dāna.

In order to treat this and their many other subjects, medieval authors were faced with several heterogeneous ‘primary’ sources, conveying a large amount of information and sometimes displaying reciprocal and internal contradictions. This situation had already triggered a first attempt of systematization formalized in the composition of the commentaries on Dharmaśāstra starting from the eighth century. These commentaries, while commenting upon one specific work, made regular use of quotations from other authoritative texts in order to complete and reinforce the argumentation. The reliance on quoted sources then became imposing in some commentaries (like the commentary by Aparārka on the Yājñavalkyasmṛti of the twelfth century, for which see below), where the quoted text ultimately surpassed the proper commentarial sections in length and also acquired a certain thematic independence. This development was predominant in the digests which, in the second millennium, formed the most popular literary genre among the new compositions in the field of Dharmaśāstra.[564] However, the emergence of a commentarial tradition predates the earliest known digests on Dharma.[565] Despite the fact that no conclusive statement can be made concerning the method for dating the emergence of the digests, it can nevertheless be argued that the appearance of the latter may be stylistically dependent on the existence of the former. A view that Kane proposed and Lingat followed took into consideration precisely this stylistic continuity between commentaries and Dharmanibandhas as a possible explanation for the emergence of the digests.[566] In the opinion of Kane, later commentaries that made an increasing use of quotations ultimately stimulated the composition of independent digests, which therefore cannot be unequivocally distinguished from the commentaries.

According to this view, the twelfth-century commentary on the Yājñavalkyasmṛti attributed to Aparārka (see below) is a case of a ‘transitional’ work bridging the two genres of the commentary and the digest. Its commentarial style can be illustrated with one example of close thematic relation to this essay. Originally, the scripture that Aparārka comments upon devotes only a few stanzas to the topic of gifting, corresponding to Yājñavalkyasmṛti 1.198–216. This topic had been crucial for the Purāṇas, which were composed both at the time of the Smṛti of Yājñavalkya—whose composition Olivelle would tentatively date to approximately the fifth century[567]—and in the centuries separating this Smṛti from the commentator Aparārka. The commentator cannot ignore this authoritative tradition, at least not completely, and therefore uses stanza 1.208 of the Yājñavalkyasmṛti, which praises the donation of healthy cows,[568] as a chance not only to quote a selection of Purāṇic passages on the gift of different kinds of cows, after a brief prose commentary, but also to start a long section dealing with the ‘great gifts’ (mahādānas) and the ‘mountain gifts’ (parvatadāna), along with other minor types of donations. The commentary on stanza 1.208 eventually amounts to 63 pages in the current printed edition of the text,[569] and it consists of quotations that mostly retain only a very shallow connection to the stanza itself. The base text thus seems to function as a mere suggestion, a starting point from which Aparārka moves on to deal with related topics on the basis of more recent authorities and some of his original remarks. The same is true for Aparārka’s treatment of vidyādāna, which he carries out by quoting different sources—the Bṛhaspatismṛti, the Yamasmṛti, the Bhaviṣyottarapurāṇa, the Matsyapurāṇa, and the Nandipurāṇa[570]—in the commentary on Yājñavalkyasmṛti 1.212, a stanza dealing with the gift of the brahman (brahmadāna), which broadly corresponds to the teaching of the Veda (see § 3.2); moreover, since the verses are followed by a section on the ‘gift of the kalpas’ (kalpadāna), the stanzas on vidyādāna are not the only digression that Aparārka inserts in the commentary on 1.212.[571]

When Aparārka composed his digest, most likely in the twelfth century (but see below for more details), the genre of the Dharma digest was already in existence, as some of the earliest and most significant works belonging to this literary genre illustrate; among these are the Dharmanibandhas dealing with dāna—and, consequently, with the gift of knowledge. They are renowned both for their exhaustiveness and for the influence they will exert on later literature. These are the ‘Section on Gifting’ (Dānakāṇḍa) of the Kṛtyakalpataru[572] by Lakṣmīdhara, minister of the king Govindacandra of the Gāhaḍavāla dynasty (ruled ca. 1109–1168 CE);[573] the ‘Ocean of Gifting’ (Dānasāgara),[574] an independent text solely devoted to gifting attributed to Ballālasena, a king of the Sena dynasty ruling over modern Bengal and western Bihar (ruled ca. 1158–79 CE);[575] and the ‘Section on Gifting’ (Dānakhaṇḍa) of Hemādri’s Caturvargacintāmaṇi,[576] minister under the Yādava kings Mānadeva (ruled ca. 1260–1270 CE) and Rāmacandra (ruled ca. 1271–1311 CE).[577] Besides these earlier works, other texts that contribute to our understanding of Dharmaśāstra sources on the gift of knowledge are the Dānavivekoddyota attributed to Madanasiṃhadeva, tentatively identified with a fifteenthcentury Rajput king from the Delhi area;[578] the Dānakriyākaumudī of Govindānanda, a Bengali author from the first half of the sixteenth century;[579] and the ‘Ray of Gifting’ (Dānamayūkha) of Nīlakaṇṭha Bhaṭṭa’s Bhagavantabhāskara, a work named after Bhagavantadeva, a seventeenth-century ruler of the Rajput clan of the Seṅgara in the historical region of Bundelkhand.[580] The special importance of the Dharmanibandhas lies in the fact that these works are proof of the state of knowledge and relevance given to a certain topic in the period of their composition, which in many cases can be assessed with a fair degree of certainty; moreover, chiefly being based on quotations from earlier texts, the digests on Dharma also contribute enormously to understanding the previous stages of the tradition, which the digest-authors present us as a pre-selected and arranged set of sources. Some of these, in spite of their importance in medieval times, are no longer extant in direct transmission, or have only survived in different recensions.[581] Dharmanibandhas, therefore, prove to be an effective guide to reconstructing, investigating, and digging out information from a partly lost body of traditional literature that plays a fundamental role in depicting our view of the Indian medieval religious landscape.

The fact that the majority of the works that have to be considered for this study of the gift of knowledge were associated with leading political figures, and are also among the main compositions ever written on the topic of gifting in Indian societies,[582] merits attention. The earliest works, to which we should also add Aparārka’s commentary, are systematically accompanied by terse self-reflective statements by the authors who introduce their work and their patrons—or their ancestors, in the case of kings (see below)—in the prefatory verses of their works. Moreover, the status of the earliest works, those of Aparārka, Lakṣmīdhara, Ballālasena, and Hemādri, all dateable from the twelfth to the early fourteenth century, is particularly relevant for the assessment of the digests as a genre, and in order to understand their historical significance in the cultural milieu of late medieval India. This is due to the fact that, in spite of the existence of previous digests mentioned by Lakṣmīdhara and which have also partly survived,[583] the above-mentioned Dharmanibandhas are among the first specimens of this genre that are available to us in their entirety. As observed by Pollock—who also includes the commentary Mitākṣarā by Vijñāneśvara, written under the Western Cāḻukya king Vikramāditya VI (twelfth century),[584] and the Parāśara by Mādhava, minister during the early days of the Vijayanagara kingdom (fourteenth century)[585]—this ‘vast intellectual outpost’ was flourishing at a specific time in Indian history that ‘surely needs to be theorized in some way’.[586]

Brick, the author of the most recent edition of the Dānakāṇḍa of Lakṣmīdhara (2014), rightly cautions against the risk of assuming—based on the historical data yielded from the evidence of the surviving Dharmanibandhas—that the emergence of such digests was rooted in the political situation at the time of their composition.[587] On this point he criticizes the interpretation of Pollock, who—focusing especially on the Kṛtyakalpataru of Lakṣmīdhara, whom he calls the ‘first great nibandha’[588]—suggests that there may be a link between the emergence of the genre of the digests as a form of ‘totalizing conceptualizations of society’ and the military invasions of the Turkish rulers from Central Asia, which had shaken the political scene of northern India from the tenth century on, becoming more aggressive in the twelfth century.[589] The path along which the Sultanate advanced, Pollock notes, follows that of the production of the Dharmanibandhas, since the places of origins of Lakṣmīdhara, Hemādri, and Mādhava correspond to the regions of the Doab, the town of Devagiri, and the Deccan, which were first outposts of the Sultanate in northern and central India. According to this view, it is the contrast with a cultural other, carrying different values and social structures, that made this grand work of defining power in accordance with the Dharma, as is reflected in the Dharmanibandhas, possible.

This analysis stresses the discontinuity and novelty of the Dharmanibandhas in the context of India’s medieval politics. In response, Brick has called attention to diverse aspects that have been overlooked, and that would point at a more complex picture than the one depicted by Pollock. The existence of Dharmanibandhas that predate Lakṣmīdhara’s, or that have been written in the same centuries, but in areas that had not come in contact with the foreign armies,[590] is in and of itself a sufficient argument to dismantle the idea that there might have been a causal relationship between the clash with the military powers from Central Asia and the emergence of the digests as a ‘new’ literary genre, simply because the latter was ultimately already in existence. Brick, moreover, despite calling attention to Kane’s view on the stylistic continuity existing between commentaries and digests, rejects it as ‘unsuited’ to explain the composition of digests as collections of quotations which are independent from a commented text.[591] The straightforward association of commentaries with digests, in Brick’s opinion, would be a questionable operation, since it misses a fundamental point—namely that digest-writers do not consider their work as exegetical; the fact that the commentarial sections of the earliest digests are very poor and mostly consist only of a few glosses proves this point. However, this observation, when referring to the earliest digests, cannot apply to the Dānasāgara of Ballālasena, who in some specific chapters adds extensive and more in-depth commentaries on the quoted texts (see § 3.1) in an attempt to make his sources the basis for actual ritual practice.

In order to correctly identify the function that the chapters on the gift of knowledge might have had for digests on gifting and the audience to which these texts were addressed, we need to take into consideration a further relevant point that Brick makes with reference to the Dānakāṇḍa of Lakṣmīdhara, but which he applies to the Dharmanibandhas as a whole. He proposes that the composition of the Dharmanibandhas, as well as of commentaries that relied heavily on scriptural quotations, might have to be framed within a ‘crisis of scriptural authority’ that was increasingly felt from the beginning of the second millennium: at this time, the proliferation of Purāṇas, on the one hand, and the direct competition from other indigenous traditions, on the other, had become a crucial hermeneutical problem.[592] Focusing his attention on the Kṛtyakalpataru, Brick argues that, in order to understand the appeal that a work like the one of Lakṣmīdhara, i.e. a ‘modestly annotated anthology’, might have had on its audience, one should take into account the Dharmaśāstric view of scriptures, which relied predominantly on the teachings of the Mīmāṃsā, as well as the condition of Dharmaśāstra and Smṛti literature in general on the verge of the new millennium.[593] By selecting specific sources on given topics, the digest-authors indicated to their readers which scriptures were to be considered trustworthy.

Before making further considerations on this last point at the end of this paragraph, it must be observed that Pollock’s argument concerning the necessity of evaluating the influence exerted by the political instability on the composition of the digests cannot be completely ruled out if one wants to achieve a broader understanding of the intellectual operation undertaken by the authors of the digests. Apart from the oversimplification that Brick points out and that undoubtedly hinders this argumentation, Pollock’s remarks on the new political conjuncture experienced by the authors of some key works in the history of the Dharmanibandhas are not suitable to account for the emergence of the genre as a whole. However, they help to understand these works in a historical perspective by posing the question as to why certain texts were produced in specific places; as Pollock asks,[594] ‘[…] why should an encyclopedic synthesis of an entire way of life be undertaken—precisely in that time and place?’ If one attentively considers the contexts of some of the digests produced in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it would not be far-fetched also to regard them as the product of an age of crisis—a crisis that was certainly internal to the Brahmanical tradition, as Brick underlines, but that, given the stature of the people involved in the composition of the digests, also presupposes a political fracture. It is no surprise that Indian authors do not elaborate on the cultural and political contexts of their works; in spite of that, the digest-writers do apprise their readers of their bond with contemporary politics. An in-depth discussion of the impact that these works were meant to have (or did have) in the cultural world in which they were conceived would be speculative and premature at this point, as these imposing works have not been adequately studied yet, and since, in compliance with the Dharmaśāstra tradition, these texts are not exactly prescriptive—they are not the same as law codes or ritual manuals—but descriptive of an ideal, orthodox Brahminical worldview with which a society is required to comply. In spite of that, looking at the digests from the point of view of the political and historical contexts in which their authors worked, insofar as this is possible to reconstruct, and highlighting the crisis that they (and their patrons) had to face, may indeed contribute to assessing the nature of these works and the role attributed to the practices related in their texts within the broader scope of a systematization of Brahminical knowledge at that time and place in history.

In some cases, the digests’ claimed impact on religious life can partly be measured through external evidence, as applied to Hemādri’s gargantuan Caturvargacintāmaṇi, in particular his section on gifting, the Dānakhaṇḍa, which includes a long chapter on vidyādāna. It is a known fact[595] that the opening stanzas of the Caturvargacintāmaṇi identify Hemādri as the officer in charge of the administrative records (śrīkaraṇaprabhu, st. 13) of king Mahādeva (ruled ca. 1260–70 CE) of the later branch of the Yādava dynasty ruling from Devagīri, modern Daulatabad.[596] Hemādri is also referred to as a minister of Rāmacandra (ruled ca. 1271–1311 CE), one of the last rulers of the imperial Yādavas, in a contemporary inscription from Thane, in West Maharashtra, dated to śaka 1194 (1272 CE).[597] However, both Mahādeva and Rāmacandra find little attestation in the inscriptions of their times, most of which were issued by minor feudatory rulers; the available documents attest their activity as sponsors of donations to Brahmins.[598] Rāmacandra is also known from chronicle sources, as he—probably taking advantage of a power vacuum in the Gangetic plain between the death of the Mamluk sultan Balban in 1286 CE and the rise to power of the Khalji dynasty towards the end of the century—seized Varanasi for some years before being banished to the south by the second Khalji sultan Alā-ud-Dīn (ruled ca. 1296–1316 CE).[599] After the latter had attacked Devagīri, Rāmacandra would become a tributary of Alāud-Dīn; according to sources, an attempt at escaping this duty in a moment of weakness for the Khalji dynasty resulted in the military defeat of the Yādavas in 1307 CE and the capture of Rāmacandra, who was allegedly brought to Delhi to meet the sultan and then restored to power in his kingdom as a tributary by the same sultan.

That an ideological connection was felt between Hemādri and this later phase of the history of the Yādavas is shown by the circumstance, as noted by Bhandarkar, that the manuscripts of Hemadri’s Vratakhaṇḍa transmit paratexts containing different genealogies of the Yādavas attributed to Hemādri’s authorship, which were not reproduced in the edition of the text.[600] These genealogies are not always in mutual agreement, and some of them are incomplete; in spite of this, the testimony offered by these paratexts added to the manuscripts of a specific section of the Caturvargacintāmaṇi is historically relevant, since they claim that the early Yādavas and the later ones formed one family. This claim is only attested once elsewhere, in an inscription of Kṛṣṇa II, which is dated to śaka 1176 (1254–55 CE).[601] Moreover, the work of Hemādri is referred to as an authority on gifting in more than one inscription.[602] Different attestations date back to the time of Vijayanagara, such as the Porumāmiḷḷa Sanskrit inscription of Bhāskara Bhavadūra, dated to śaka 1291 (1369 CE).[603] In this text, which is not much later than the composition of the Caturvargacintāmaṇi, the king Bhāskara, son of Bukka I (1344–77 CE), cofounder of the Vijayanagara empire together with his brother Harihara I,[604] is remembered for having built a tank as a ‘gift of water’ (jaladāna) in accordance with the teachings of Hemādri (v. 22, l. 39), in the Andhra town of Porumāmiḷḷa:[605] ‘Performing gifts in various ways in accordance with the procedure [taught by] Hemādri, having heard that the uppermost fruit is [the one conferred] on the occasion of the gift of water […]’. Other records issued in the Vijayanagara kingdom are the Timmancherla Sanskrit inscription,[606] undated, recording the donation of a village performed by Harihara—who, according to the editor, corresponds to Harihara II (1377–1404 CE)—in favour of the Brahmin Gopālarādhya; the text declares that the monarch practiced gifting according to the ‘treatise of Hemādri’ (hemādriśāstra). In the same period, Hemādri is mentioned twice in a Sanskrit epigraph from Vanapalli (East Godavari District, Andhra Pradesh) dated to February 6, 1380 CE,[607] in which Vema, a local ruler of the Reḍḍi dynasty, is praised as one ‘who performed all the gifts [described by] Hemādri’ (pl. 1, l. 17 v. 9: hemādridānāny akarod aśeṣāṇy […] [L18] yas); his son Anna Vema is likewise described as one ‘who was devoted to the gifts [described by] Hemādri’ (pl. 2, l. 23, v. 11: hemādridānavratī).[608] A further inscription connected with the Reḍḍis and dated to 1413 CE defines Vema as ‘proficient in the gifts that have been taught according to Hemādri’s procedures’ (pl. 1, l. 16: hemādrikalpoditadānadakṣaḥ).[609]

In a study on temple patronage under the Kākatīya dynasty in Andhra, Talbot refers to these epigraphical mentions of Hemādri’s works as a confirmation of the gap existing between the Dharmaśāstra and the information reflected in the epigraphs.[610] As she points out, while prescriptive literary sources like the Dharmanibandhas continue to stress the importance of Brahmins as the best recipients for gifting, inscriptions show that temples, rather than single Brahmins, were chosen as beneficiaries of gifts. Most Brahmins still designated as recipients of donations were connected to temples in a subsidiary position. Also, concerning the donors, Talbot argues that epigraphs demonstrate the prominence of nonroyal givers, both in Buddhist and Hindu institutions, while literary sources, on the other hand, emphasize royal donations. The references to the Dānakhaṇḍa of the Caturvargacintāmaṇi must therefore be primarily understood as endorsing the ideology expressed by this and analogous texts, rather than revealing a literal compliance with its teachings. There are, however, signs that at least some of the Dharmanibandhas—see the case of the Dānasāgara of Ballālasena illustrated in § 3.1—aimed at impacting the actual ritual practice.

The Konkan coast—where Aparārka, the author of the above-mentioned commentary on the Yājñavalkyasmṛti, most likely lived approximately one century earlier than Hemādri—belongs to the same geopolitical area as the territory of the Yādavas, at the intersection between the northwest and the south, and was thus open to influences on both sides. Aparārka can be identified with a homonymous king of the Śilāhāras of north Konkan, and belongs to the earliest of the three branches of this family, which was already attested in the ninth century.[611] In the fifth stanza of the introduction to his commentary-digest, Aparārka defines himself as an ‘ornament of the family of Jīmūta’ (jīmūtānvayabhūṣaṇa). This Jīmūta may correspond to Vidyādhara Jīmūtavāhana, son of Jīmūtaketu, the mythical founder of the Śilāhāras from whom all three branches of the family claim descendance.[612] In the inscriptions of the Śilāhāras from north Konkan, the epithet ‘offspring of the family of Jīmūtavāhana’ (jīmūtavāhanānvayaprasūta) is attested; the first to use it is Aparājita, but it is then also attested for later kings, including both Aparārka/Aparāditya I (ruled ca. 1127–48 CE) and Aparārka /Aparāditya II (ruled ca. 1170–97 CE).[613] Most likely, one of the two must be identified with the author of the commentary on the Yājñavalkyasmṛti; as noted by Kane and Mirashi, however, our commentator is more likely to be Aparārka I, as the Aparārkaṭīkā is referred to and criticised in the Smṛticandrikā, composed around 1200 CE.[614] The epigraphical documents of this family show that, until the eleventh century, inscriptions referring to north Konkan Śilāhāras were dominated by copperplates, 60% of which are donations to Brahmins.[615] Stone inscriptions, mostly connected with grants made to temples, are attested from the year śaka 982 (1060–61 CE). Starting from the mid-twelfth century, these are the only surviving documents for these late rulers.[616] In most cases, these later stone inscriptions testify to both local and translocal support of Śaivism as well as to the influence of Śaiva teachers at court. One example is provided by the same Aparāditya II who, as attested by two stone inscriptions from the Bombay-Thane area, financed grants to the famous Somanātha temple on the Kathiawar coast of Gujarat, in the year śaka 1107 (1185–86 CE) and 1108 (1186–87 CE).[617] The Śilāhāras already enjoyed connections with this temple, and it plays a symbolic role insofar as the chronicles alledge that it was destroyed and looted by the troops of Maḥmūd of Ghazni in 1025 CE.[618] The entire area, including the towns of Thanesvar, Mathurā, and Kanauj, had been the target of these initial, aggressive campaigns at the onset of the eleventh century, and in the twelfth century became the battlefield for the expeditions of Quṭb al-Dīn Aibak, acting on the behest of the new sultan Muhammad of Ghor. At the turn of the twelfth century, the defence of northern India fell to the responsibility of the Gāhaḍavālas of Kanauj, whose mention takes us a step further into our inquiry on the earlier digest-writers and the political context of their literary activity.

Lakṣmīdhara and Ballālasena are perhaps the digest-authors that are better known to scholars, as they were both active, though with different roles and perspectives, in the animated political sphere of the Gangetic plain in the twelfth century. Profiles of Lakṣmīdhara and his work, which stressed the connection of the digest-writer with the Gāhaḍavāla dynasty, specifically with his patron Govindacandra, have appeared since the first edition of the Dānakāṇḍa of the Kṛtyakalpataru. Starting with the introduction to the same critical edition (Aiyangar 1941), which first makes a general assessment on the basis of the internal and external evidence from the text, the topic of Lakṣmīdhara and the political situation of his times has been treated by Kane (1975), then by Bakker and Isaacson (2004) in their learned reconstruction of the cultural history of Varanasi, and eventually by Brick (2014) in the introduction to his critical edition of the Dānakāṇḍa. The relevant data that can be extracted from the available information is that the context of Lakṣmīdhara’s life and work seems to have been the vibrant town of Varanasi, a prosperous commercial centre by virtue of its strategic position in the Gangetic plain, which had progressively also become a sacred pilgrimage site thanks to the patronage of various lines of sovereigns.[619] As Bakker and Isaacson remark, Varanasi had become part of the kingdom of Kanauj in the third quarter of the sixth century, under the rulership of the Maukharīs, and would remain so for the coming 400 years, although it was sometimes annexed by the rulers of Magadha.[620] Under the same kings, the town of Kanauj also became one of the main cultural centres of northern India, the control over which, alongside that of Varanasi, was a matter of great political power and prestige, not only for Indian monarchs. We know, for instance, that the sultan Maḥmūd of Ghazni sacked Kanauj in 1018 and 1019, during a period in which the Pāla king Mahīpāla (977–1027 CE) controlled the Varanasi area, which thus, along with the easternmost regions of India, evolved into a bastion of Indian culture.[621] Having resisted the attacks of Ibrāhīm of Ghazni, Candradeva Gāhaḍavāla (ruled ca. 1089–1103 CE) then seized power in Kanauj. He presented himself as a dutiful protector of Indian holy sites, including Varanasi.[622] Lakṣmīdhara, who lived under the greatest of the Gāhaḍavāla kings, famously celebrates Govindacandra in the introduction to his Brahmacārikāṇḍa as the king of Kāśī (=Varanasi, st. 9), leader of a war campaign against the Pālas in Magadha (st. 4), and victorious over the Muslim sultans, the ‘valiant Hammīras’ (st. 7, hammīravīra).[623] In this tense and unstable political situation, under threat by the Mamluks in the West and the Pālas in the East, it would not be inappropriate to think that the work of Lakṣmīdhara, who boasted of being Govindacandra’s counselor,[624] was also conceived with a wider cultural ambition. This is confirmed if one looks, for instance, at his efforts in the Tīrthavivecanakāṇḍa of the Kṛtyakalpataru to exalt the status of Varanasi, the capital and main centre of his kingdom.[625] His words must therefore also be understood within that specific cultural context, which the Kṛtyakalpataru reflects and possibly aims at influencing.

The same may be true for Ballālasena. During the reign of Vijayacandra Gāhaḍavāla (1155–69 CE), the Senas, a family whose origins are likely to reach back to the Deccan,[626] had overcome the Pālas with king Ballālasena (ruled ca. 1158–1179 CE), who became ‘Lord of the Gauḍas’ (gaudeśvara).[627] We have already mentioned the strong support that the Pālas offered to Buddhism, which thrived under these kings especially in its tantric forms, however coexisting with Śākta Śaivism. This is the cultural and religious landscape that Ballālasena, who declares his support to Śaivism in inscriptions,[628] encountered upon his rise to power in 1162 CE. The new king of Gauḍa was not supportive of the success enjoyed by Tantrism under his reign, and unequivocally expresses this view in the Dānasāgara. In the introductory stanzas of his digest on gifting, he firstly celebrates his grandfather Hemāntasena (st. 3) and his father Vijayasena (st. 4), then his master Aniruddha, the source of Ballālasena’s knowledge (st. 6). Afterwards, the author programmatically declares which sources he has accepted in his digest, which ones he has rejected, and why he has done so.[629] One of the reasons for his rejection of some sources that were (and would later be) used without problems by his colleagues is that he recognizes them as heterodox (pāṣaṇḍa). Notable is the case of the Devīpurāṇa, a Śākta Śaiva scripture that, as has been observed (see chapter 1 and 2), is often quoted on the topic of dāna, and very frequently on that of vidyādāna. The reason why the Devīpurāṇa ‘is not included in the group of the various Purāṇas and Upapurāṇas’ is that ‘it accepts the teachings of the heretics’, which, according to the same explanation provided by Ballālasena, is a reference to the tantric influence observable in this and other rejected works.[630] The work of Ballālasena is thus deeply informed by the need to establish a precise barrier between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, with direct consequences for his choice of sources and, as we will see below (§ 3.1), for the way in which he comments on the texts he has selected. However, Ballālasena also shows stylistical concerns, as he wants to restrict the number of sources quoted in order to avoid redundancy and promote synthesis.[631] In these introductory verses, he also shows awareness of the uninterrupted growth of the Purāṇic corpus through the composition of new works disguised under the titles of older Purāṇas, or by adding new sections to earlier works, expressing a desire to discern the spurious from the authoritative sources. This recalls the notion of scriptural crisis that Brick, also on the basis of this passage, proposes as one of the motives prompting the composition of digests in late medieval times. Citing the example of the Viśiṣṭādvaita philosopher Vedānta Deśika, Brick highlights how the topic of the proliferation of Smṛti literature, and the need to distinguish authoritative sources from the many forgeries, was sincerely perceived as the basis of correct hermeneutics.[632] This, combined with the predicament of the political scenario of North India and the Deccan, contributes to creating a demand for a new systematization of Dharma and its sources that could bring order to a shaken world. Following the account of the Tabaqāt-i-Nāsirī by Abū-Umar-i-Usmān, Lakṣmaṇasena (ruled ca. 1179–1205 CE), son of Ballālasena and co-author of the Adbhutasāgara, was eventually defeated by Muhammad Bakhtyār Khilji, who occupied most of his country, thus marking the beginning of a new political era.[633]

While I disagree with Brick when he maintains that the lack of extant manuscripts of many of the sources quoted in the digests is sufficient grounds for surmising that those manuscripts were also scarce at the time when Lakṣmīdhara and others composed their works,[634] I agree with his suggestion that competition with the tantric traditions and their sources might be one of the reasons why earlier digest-writers embraced their work of systematizing Brahminic knowledge—under the concrete threat that their worlds could soon crumble due to the impact of a cultural other. However, a further point that needs to be discussed, and which takes us back to the topic of the gift of knowledge, is Brick’s observation that, in the eye of the digest-authors—whose scholastic background was mainly in Mīmāṃsā philosophy—scriptures could not possibly contradict each other, and thus they had to be interpreted in a way that would have disproved the incongruities that did in fact exist. I think that this notion not only influenced the original selection of the sources, but also the way in which they were used.[635] Lakṣmīdhara and Hemādri’s treatment of the gift of knowledge, as we will explain in § 3.1, shows an emblematic case. Despite quoting fewer texts than Hemādri, Lakṣmīdhara apparently had no problem with quoting in direct succession texts that can be seen as reciprocally contradictory. In the section on vidyādāna, which corresponds to chapter 12 of the Dānakāṇḍa, he juxtaposes the text of the Devīpurāṇa, a Śākta source rejected by Ballālasena, with that of the Nandipurāṇa. As highlighted in the preceding chapter, this source is aligned with Brahminical orthodoxy, and thus accepted in the Dānasāgara. Lakṣmīdhara, furthermore, quotes these texts together with the Matsyapurāṇa. The contradiction between these sources is particularly evident in the chapter on the gift of knowledge due to the ‘lists of scriptures’ that precede the accounts of the ritual, and further stress the divergences between these Purāṇas. Thanks to these lists of scriptures and established fields of learning (see § 3.1), the chapters on the gift of knowledge from the various Dharmanibandhas allow a sort of ‘cross-analysis’ of the digest-writers’ notion of authoritative texts and ‘canonicity’. The fact that the Devīpurāṇa, the Nandi-purāṇa, and the Matsyapurāṇa propose different ‘canons’ of books to use in the ritual, as well as different ritual procedures, yet are quoted together in the same chapter, implies that Lakṣmīdhara, in compliance with the general tenets of Mīmāṃsā mentioned above, did not regard them as contradictory. I think there is even room to surmise that quoting reciprocally contradictory sources in the same chapter (see also the many cases in Hemādri, § 3.1) may, in and of itself, be a way to resolve those contradictions. This is a strategy that suggests to scholars that those sources are, ultimately, reconcilable.

Seen from this perspective, the Dharmanibandhas are a manifesto of Brahmanical knowledge and scriptural authority and the banner of a culture that tried to reaffirm its relevance through the weight of its entire tradition. At the same time, they remain scholastic works that do not pursue a complete and balanced treatment of the topics under investigation, but offer privileged access to the worldview of the authors and the communities they wrote for. In this context, the gift of knowledge acquires special relevance due to the cultural significance of this practice. However, while the digests cover a broad range of sources, some of them otherwise lost, at the same time they also exclude vital pieces of evidence. A striking example is that of the Śivadharmottara, which is never quoted on the topic of vidyādāna despite being the most relevant source on this subject. At the same time, most of the above mentioned digests include quotations from the Devīpurāṇa, whose chapter on vidyādāna shows substantial borrowings from the Śivadharmottara. The exclusion of the Śivadharmottara from the set of sources to quote on this subject automatically rules out, for Lakṣmīdhara as well as the works of his successors, the broader interpretation of the gift of knowledge given in the second part of the Vidyādānādhyāya, according to which all the material support given to ascetics and teachers would qualify as a vidyādāna. Therefore, apart from the cursory references made to this interpretation in the Nandipurāṇa (see § 2.1), the gift of knowledge is mainly encountered in its ‘primary’ sense here, namely that of a ritual donation of manuscripts. Ballālasena is an exception to this since, in his commentaries on the Nandipurāṇa, he also considers the notion of gift of knowledge as the fostering of teaching activities and recitation, seen as the aim of manuscript donation. With Hemādri, moreover, the identification of the gift of knowledge with an oral impartation of teachings acquires importance: he quotes at length from the Harivaṃśa on the matter of ritual recitation of the Mahābhārata and, in a more extensive way than the others, also tries to make sense of the so-called ‘gift of the Veda’ (vedadāna), which necessarily implies taking into more serious consideration a notion of the gift of knowledge that is not manuscript-related. Although there are scattered references to it in the works of Lakṣmīdhara and Ballālasena, this notion is only fully developed with Hemādri’s work. However, as proof of the strong material value that the notion of ‘donation’ has in these works, even the vedadāna, at a certain point, will encompass worship and donative procedures towards a material object, which Hemādri’s sources explicitly present as a substitutive practice for those who are not entitled to deal with the Vedic text (see § 3.2).

3.1Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed: Law-Digests on the Gift of Manuscripts

Lakṣmīdhara deals with the gift of knowledge in chapter 12 of his Dānakāṇḍa, devoting a rather lengthy though little elaborate treatment to the topic. The structure of the chapter is in fact very simple, as the author does not divide the quoted texts into paragraphs, but simply juxtaposes them, interspersing some glosses throughout the text. In order to introduce the topic, Lakṣmīdhara quotes four stanzas, one from each of four sources, praising knowledge and the ‘gift of brahman’ (brahmadāna)[636]—a notion that, as we mentioned, will be further developed by Hemādri, and which corresponds, in short, to the teaching of the Veda (see § 3.2). These first stanzas make no express reference to manuscripts, nor to their donation or ritual use; only the last of the four introductory verses, attributed to the Yamasmṛti, contains what can be read as a hint in that direction, since it compares the donation of the earth (pṛthvīdāna) to the gift ‘of a treatise’ (śāstra) to Brahmins.[637] On the topic of the donation of Vedic knowledge, Lakṣmīdhara further inserts two stanzas from the Mahābhārata between two major quotations from the Devīpurāṇa and the Nandipurāṇa. Again, the first of these couplets refers to the donation of the Veda by mentioning the ‘brāhmic’ (brāhmī) knowledge, which Lakṣmīdhara explains as a reference to the ‘contents of the Veda’ (vedārtha):[638]

One who relates to the student a knowledge (sarasvatī) that complies with Dharma, namely related to the Veda (brāhmī), enjoys a similar fruit [as the one obtained] from the donation of earth and cattle. (12) /—Brāhmī [means] ‘referring to the contents of the Veda’.

The second, contiguous quotation from the Mahābhārata praises those who impart the Veda on the ‘knowers of proper [behaviours]’ (nyāyavid).[639] Lakṣmīdhara does not treat the topic of the gift of the Veda in a systematic way, limiting his references to the few initial quotations and to the two stanzas of the Mahābhārata, which however do not describe any specific procedures for it. The nibandhakāra’s understanding of the gift of knowledge therefore consists for the most part of the rituals and ceremonies focusing on manuscripts as reflected in the major sources on which chapter 12 of the Dānakāṇḍa is based. This consists of chapter 91 of the Devīpurāṇa, from which Lakṣmīdhara omits the purely eulogistic stanzas or those not directly connected to the ritual; following that, Lakṣmīdhara introduces the long quotation from the Nandipurāṇa that has been analyzed in chapter 2 of this work, as well as a selection of stanzas from chapter 53 of the Matsyapurāṇa, regarding the identification of the 18 Mahāpurāṇas and the rules for the ritual donation of each of them (see Table A for more details on the stanzas quoted from these Purāṇas). This chapter of the Matsyapurāṇa is the only source on the topic of the gifting of manuscripts to which all the nibandhakāras refer.[640] In shorter or longer form, all the digest authors thus defer to the authority of chapter 53, which, according to Hazra, forms a single unit with the following chapters on vows and gifts (54–57, 61, 68, and 83–92); [641] in the view of this scholar, this means that the above mentioned chapters belong to a contemporary layer within this rather composite Purāṇa.[642] All the chapters belonging to this supposed layer are conceived as a response to the request that the sages (munis) make to Sūta in 53.1:[643] ‘O Sūta, tell [us] at length the titles of the Purāṇas, in due sequence, as well as the whole set of rules on gifting, in a proper manner, starting from the beginning’. The donation of the Purāṇas is thus presented as the starting point for a subsection about gifting in general. Lakṣmīdhara skips this verse, as he does the entire mythological account on the origins of the Purāṇas contained in stanzas 53.5–10, which Hemādri by contrast quotes in full with reference to the gift of knowledge. The verses that Lakṣmīdhara selects from chapter 53 of the Matsyapurāṇa concern two main topics: a brief description of each of the 18 Mahāpurāṇas, identified by their titles and main distinguishing features, like the total number of stanzas, and/or one central topic of the work, as well as the name of the narrator; a quick outline of the rules for the donation of their manuscripts, in which the text highlights the correct time of year for this performance; the object that has to accompany the donation of the manuscript—presumably in the function of a fee (dakṣiṇā) for the Brahmins performing the ritual; and the reward that the donor will receive. For instance, the Brahmapurāṇa, the first Purāṇa in the list, is identified as the one taught by Brahmā to Marīci, and comprises 10,000 stanzas; the person who had it written down and donated it, along with a water-cow, on the full-moon day of the vaiśakha month (April–May), will be honoured in the world of Brahmā.[644] The Bhaviṣyapurāṇa has to be donated in the month of Pauṣa, together with a pot of guḍa, which will cause the sponsor to earn the fruit of an agniṣṭoma; this ‘big’ work (bahu, Dānakāṇḍa 12.203) is identified with one of 14,500 stanzas, mostly concerning with future events, in which Brahmā talks to Manu about the deeds of Āditya.[645] All the practical pieces of information given in Matsyapurāṇa 53.11– 57, including those on the fees associate with the donation of each Purāṇa, are summed up in Table B. As far as the appropriate time for the donation of these manuscripts is concerned—a topic that was missing both from the Devīpurāṇa and from the Nandipurāṇa—the first 11 Purāṇas are associated with an equal number of lunar months: the first one is omitted (caitra, corresponding to March– April), while the others are listed in due order from vaiśakha, (April–May; see Dānakāṇḍa 12.186 = Matsyapurāṇa 53.13) to phalguna (February–March; see Dānakāṇḍa 12.208 = Matsyapurāṇa 53.38). The remaining Purāṇas refer to other fixed astrological events, such as equinoxes and solstices (the Matsyapurāṇa itself must be donated ‘during an equinox’, viṣuve, according to Dānakāṇḍa 12.222 = Matsyapurāṇa 53.52), or the transit of the sun across a constellation (see the case of the Skandapurāṇa in Dānakāṇḍa 12.214 = Matsyapurāṇa 53.44). The only Purāṇa whose donation is not set for a specific time is the Garuḍapurāṇa (Dānakāṇḍa 12.223–24 = Matsyapurāṇa 53.53–54). The Matsyapurāṇa, which never refers to these donations as a gift of knowledge, omits information concerning the recipients. One could, however, easily guess that these were supposed to be Brahmins, not only because this was a general feature of the gifting rituals according to the Dharmaśāstra, but also on the basis of the rule that a precious object has to accompany the donation of each manuscript, possibly functioning as a fee for those who, playing their role as recipients, enabled the performance of the ritual. The three main sources through which Lakṣmīdhara expounds the gift of knowledge—the Devīpurāṇa, the Nandipurāṇa, and the Matsyapurāṇa—are thus in a way completing each other: in spite of the contradictions that divide them, some pieces of information given by one—on the exact time for the donation of the Purāṇas, for instance, or on the rightful recipients and the correct way of copying a text—are not given by the others, and vice versa.

Only some decades after Lakṣmīdhara had completed his Dānakāṇḍa, another digest-writer followed in his footsteps. Ballālasena wrote the Dānasāgara, which was based on many of the same sources as the Dānakāṇḍa, in a different, though not geographically distant, political and cultural environment. The distinctive contexts in which the two works were conceived explains some of the differences separating Ballālasena’s work from that of his predecessor Lakṣmīdhara. The most evident divergence is in Ballālasena’s rejection of the Devīpurāṇa from the range of sources on which his Dharmanibandha is based. The immediate result of this policy is that the only two major quotations on which Ballālasena relies in treating the topic of the gift of knowledge are the same Matsyapurāṇa and Nandipurāṇa stanzas that Lakṣmīdhara had already used. [646] However, the outcome is not identical, thanks to the work of the author, who arranges and, above all, comments upon his sources in a way that highlights the different function that his Dharmanibandha was meant to have, at least in his intentions. First of all, Ballālasena divides the quotations on vidyādāna into two chapters: chapter 42, on the ‘Study of the Gift of the Purāṇas [Addressed] to the Goddess Sarasvatī’ (sarasvatīdaivatapurāṇadānāvartaḥ, pp. 463–71), solely based on Matsyapurāṇa 53.3–4 and 53.11–56, to which the author adds some stanzas from the Kūrmapurāṇa; and chapter 43, the ‘Study of the Gift of Knowledge [Addressed] to the god Brahmā’ (brahmadaivatavidyādānāvartaḥ, pp. 472–91). The titles of both chapters highlight the name of the gods to whom the donation of manuscripts has to be addressed, a piece of information that was missing in Lakṣmīdhara’s text. This is further clarified in the prose commentaries accompanying the quotations. Before examining the contents of this commentary, we should observe that chapter 43 is more sophisticated in its internal subdivision, as the author divides it into multiple paragraphs. The first one, the ‘Eulogy of the Gift of Knowledge’ (vidyādānapraśaṃsā, p. 472), is based on the same quotations from the Smṛtis on the ‘gift of the brahman’ as found in Lakṣmīdhara, to which the eulogistic Viṣṇudharmottara 3.303.1–4 is added. Starting with the paragraph on the ‘Inner Nature of the Gift of Knowledge [and] its Fruit’ (vidyādānasvarūpaṃ tatphalaṃ ca, pp. 473–76), the author quotes the text of the 128 stanzas from the Nandipurāṇa used by Lakṣmīdhara, and does so by organizing its contents into 20 shorter thematic paragraphs (see Table A). This arrangement allows Ballālasena to index the text of the Nandipurāṇa, and thus makes it easier to consult for prospective readers and users.

That Ballālasena might be more focussed on the applicability of the teachings of the Purāṇas is not only hinted at by this structural detail, but also suggested by the commentaries that Ballālasena appends to both these chapters. In these commentaries, Ballālasena not only sums up the contents of the quotations in prose, but also explains the procedures taught in the sources by adding new information on their performance. This marks a big difference with the work of Lakṣmīdhara and Hemādri, who only insert very short glosses in the text of their quotations, glosses that Hemādri in many cases merely pedantically copies from Lakṣmīdhara.[647] By adding more extensive comments on the practical application of the instructions detailed in the sources, Ballālasena thus highlights the performative aspect of the Purāṇic texts, and to a certain extent tries to bridge the gap existing between literature on Dharma, a category comprising his digest on dāna, and the handbooks on ritual—i.e. between traditional literature and religious practice. As a consequence of the rejection of tantric teachings that Ballālasena had programmatically declared in the introduction of his work, the effort of anchoring the ritual practice to the text of the orthodox authorities thus had the dual purpose of attempting to influence the religious life of the audience of the Dānasāgara, while at the same time trying to ‘clean up’ the performance of rituals from the influence of Tantrism.

A good example of how these commentarial sections are planned is provided by the observations concluding chapter 42 (see pp. 469–71), on the ‘Gift of the Purāṇas [Addressed] to the Goddess Sarasvatī’, which also help us better understand the chapter’s title. Here Ballālasena outlines the procedures for donating the different Purāṇas, basing his instructions on the text of Matsyapurāṇa 53, but only gives detailed explanations for the Brahmapurāṇa, the first one in the list:[648]

Regarding this, having copied the 18 Purāṇas, the sponsor, on the full-moon day of the month of vaiśakha, having revered a Brahmin [who is] pure, able to read the Purāṇas, faithful, belonging to a good family, should give him the Brahmapurāṇa, which has been revered, along with the water-cow, according to the Purāṇic teaching.

‘Oṃ, now I, whose wish is to obtain the excellent world of Brahmā, will give to you, who belong to such and such lineage, who teach such and such Veda in the such and such Vedic school, who take refuge in such and such god, this Brahmapurāṇa along with a water cow’. The recipient, having said ‘Svasti!’, having recited the Sāvitrī, having declared, ‘This Purāṇa belongs to the goddess Sarasvatī’, should read a praise of his preference, depending on his own Vedic school: ‘Therefore, now I should give you this gold as a fee in order to establish this gift that has been performed’. The recipient, having said ‘Svasti!’, should touch the Purāṇa. Thus, also concerning the donation of the other 17 Purāṇas, the impartation of the fee has to be accompanied by the touching of the Purāṇa [which has been declared to] belong to the goddess Sarasvatī, and the appropriation has to be inferred by analogy.

The text concerning the donation of the other Purāṇas is shorter, possibly implying that these prescriptions can be applied to each Mahāpurāṇa. The basic information concerning the combination of time, fee, and book is coherent with the teachings of Matsyapurāṇa 53, while the procedure for the donation is much more detailed, and implies instructions that are not in the quoted text. Firstly, Ballālasena specifies the recipient of the gift, a detail that, as observed above, was missing from the Matsyapurāṇa. This is identified, rather unsurprisingly, with a Brahmin, who must be worshipped along with the manuscript before the donation takes place—information that was also absent from the text of the Matsyapurāṇa. The formulaic invocations that the sponsor and the recipient are supposed to pronounce while donating and receiving the manuscript are completely new. The use of impersonal expressions (amuka°, here translated with ‘such and such’), which in the practice of the ritual is supposed to be replaced with the required information, emphasises that these are standardised expressions meant to be used in different ritual contexts and for different ritual agents. It follows from this that the Brahmin has to formally declare the manuscript as property belonging to the goddess Sarasvatī (hence the title of the whole section), and then touch the manuscript in order to mark his acquisition.

Similar invocations meant for the donors are also available in the comment that concludes chapter 43, whose main scriptural source is the Nandipurāṇa. The commentary on these stanzas tends to stay faithful to the Purāṇic text; at the two points describing the actual donation of the manuscript, however, Ballālasena inserts an important detail that helps to clarify the nature of the gift of knowledge in the understanding of the author and his audience, as here Ballālasena openly declares that the gift of the manuscript is aimed at its recitation and study. The first of such statements follows the description of the procession that carries the manuscript to the temple:[649]

[…] And there, having worshipped this god, having placed the manuscript in front of him, he should offer [it] to the god. Then, [he says] like that: ‘Oṃ! now on an auspicious day, I, whose wish is to acquire such and such fruits of the gift of knowledge taught in the Nandipurāṇa, which have been addressed to my ancestors, shall give this knowledge to the venerable Brahmin such and such, with the aim of accomplishing the reading of this knowledge.’ Therefore, he should give the desired quantity of gold to the Śaiva devotees, and to the devotees of other deities, and to the desired number of Brahmins.

In Ballālasena’s interpretation, the recitation that follows the donation of the manuscript to the temple in the Nandipurāṇa is neither debatable nor unconnected with the donation of the manuscript, but represents its aim. For this reason, the devotee is also required to pay an additional fee to the Brahmins who will carry out the recitation. The author also very straightforwardly links these ritual procedures to the Nandipurāṇa by inserting the title of the work directly in the invocation uttered by the donor. A similar invocation, but in a rather different context, is repeated at the end of the paragraph. Here Ballālasena introduces information that is missing from the text of the Nandipurāṇa, but that is nonetheless coherent with it. The digest-author then prescribes a private version of the gift of the manuscripts, namely by envisaging the possibility that the donor, instead of donating to a temple, should go directly to a Brahmin’s house and honour him with various gifts. The list of items that one should provide to the teacher is given at the end; this list is consistent with the Nandipurāṇa, but expands on it, as donations addressed to teachers, from food to the instruments for writing and reading, here also qualify as a gift of knowledge:[650]

[…] According to one’s own means, having revered the teacher by means of many items like clothes, gold, and so on, at the desired time he should arrange the study of the desired knowledge. Then, [he says] like that: ‘Oṃ! I, whose wish is to attain the fruit of the gift of such and such knowledge, as taught in the Nandipurāṇa, will arrange the study of such and such knowledge.’ Therefore, the preparation of the money and the arrangement of festivals and so on [should take place] as before. The one who is competent in the gift of knowledge, out of desire for the superhuman powers taught in the Nandipurāṇa, should donate to those versed in this and the other knowledge, according to his means, a covered basket and so on for carrying ink-pots, pens, nail-scissors (nakharañjanīs?), suitable for writing this and the other knowledge, and manuscripts.

Prose paragraphs at the end of a section are a feature of many chapters of the Dānasāgara, specifically those dealing with the most relevant donations, such as the already mentioned ‘great gifts’ and ‘mountain gifts’,[651] while chapters on some of the minor rites tend to lack any commentary.[652] By commenting extensively on both chapters devoted to the gift of knowledge, the author, who does not classify the gift of knowledge among the main royal rites, nonetheless attributes great relevance to it. One may regard those instructions that diverge from the text of the scriptural authorities as being rooted in ritual practice, on which this Dharmanibandha seems to be particularly focused.

The Caturvargacintāmaṇi of Hemādri does not contain this sort of direct reference to the actual performance of the rites, but nonetheless has a prominent position when compared to both previous and later works. Even if we restrict our analysis solely to the topic under investigation, various reasons can account for Hemādri’s primacy. The first of these reasons is the richness and abundance of the selected materials, as is evident just by looking at the sheer number of pages devoted to the subject of the gift of knowledge (52 in the Bibliotheca Indica edition, almost double that of the Dānasāgara and the Dānakāṇḍa—28 and 25, in their resepctive editions) and at the summary of the quoted sources given in Table A. This long disquisition on the gift of knowledge actually forms one ‘chapter’ within a vast section of the Dānakhaṇḍa, corresponding to the seventh adhyāya (pp. 397–563), which is devoted to the so-called ‘excellent gifts’ (atidāna). Not only does Hemādri use more previously unquoted sources on the gift of knowledge, such as the Viṣṇudharmottara and the Saurapurāṇa, he also notably expands on Lakṣmīdhara’s tendency to prefer completeness over consistency, thus quoting numerous texts that are originally not connected to the topic under the label of the gift of knowledge. This wider array of sources seems to fulfil two main requirements that Hemādri and his audience must have felt as lacking: the enrichment of the ritual procedures by including possibilities that the works of the other nibandhakāras had left out, and a more comprehensive definition of the notion of vidyā. This last point, which practically translates to a more precise identification of the texts that can be donated during a gift of knowledge, is crucial to Hemādri’s understanding of the ‘hermeneutical’ implications of the rituals focused on manuscripts and textual transmission. This is due to the fact that defining ‘knowledge’ means declaring which works can be regarded as established sources of knowledge and assessing the boundaries between scriptural orthodoxy and heterodoxy. If this is true for all sources on ritual in which manuscripts are worshipped in the same way as gods, the urge to ascertain the ritual focus of vidyādāna in the most exhaustive manner possible becomes even more compelling for Hemādri, to the degree that he, unlike the other digest-authors, widens the scope of his definitions by turning to texts that, though unrelated to the topic of manuscript worship, are in any case conducive to him finding better definitions for the objects of these procedures. Overlapping, sometimes even contradictory lists of Purāṇas and Dharmaśāstra works, as well as of Vedic texts and schools, enter the Dānakhaṇḍha’s chapters on vidyādāna even though their original sources did not prescribe or conceive any ritual uses for these texts.

Hemādri’s digest differs from the work of his predecessors not only in the variety of the sources considered and the greater precision sought in his exposition, but also in the ways he choses to arrange his textual materials; the nibandhakāra arranges the sources according to subtopics, at times even fragmenting the texts of his authorities. One of the consequences of this ‘topic-driven’ procedure in arranging the quoted sources is that Hemādri, for the first time, attempts to classify the gift of knowledge of the Purāṇic tradition into distinct basic subcategories—the gift of the Veda (vedadāna), the gift of Smṛti literature (smṛtidāna), and the gift of the Purāṇas (purāṇadāna)—based on the classification of the deyas, i.e. the appropriate object to donate, with which he tries to associate different ritual procedures. Still the outcome is not as systematic as it may sound. This is due to the simple reason that orderliness and consequentiality are not the key principles that informed the composition of Purāṇic texts, on which this section of the Dānakhaṇḍa still mostly relies, as the author comments only very scarcely on his sources. Nevertheless, the very effort of pursuing these aims reveals a need for clarity and exhaustiveness in the treatment of a topic that was arguably perceived as vital to the broader project of systematizing brahminical knowledge as undertaken by the composers of Dharma digests.

One can observe small yet telling examples of Hemādri’s style of constructing his text already in the ‘Eulogy of the Gift of Knowledge’ (vidyādānapraśaṃsā), the first of the paragraphs into which Hemādri divides his exposition of vidyādāna (pp. 513–16). The contents of the quotations falling under this category are mostly eulogistic and simply centre on the superiority of the gift of knowledge over other traditional gifts. The first sources used are short quotations from the Nandipurāṇa, the Garuḍapurāṇa, and the Bṛhaspatismṛti; Hemādri then introduces Viṣṇudharmottara 3.303.1–4[653] and Devīpurāṇa 91.24–25,[654] further eulogies of the gift of knowledge. These however are immediately followed by Devīpurāṇa 91.13–16, Viṣṇudharmottara 3.303.6cd–7, and Nandipurāṇa, Dānakāṇḍa 12.62–85Lak, whose topic is no longer the simple eulogy of the gift of knowledge but rather, as amply discussed above (see § 2.5), that of the fields of knowledge to be donated. Thus these verses are all extracted from their contexts and grouped here into a paragraph actually concerning a slightly different topic than the one they originally address: the identification of the vidyās, not simply the praise of vidyādāna. However, the eulogistic element is not absent from the selected passages, inasmuch as they match the donation of certain texts with specific rewards to be obtained in the afterlife. Hemādri, by inserting these verses into a paragraph devoted to the praise of the gift of knowledge, mainly highlights these eulogistic aspects, while in the original sources as well as in Lakṣmīdhara’s and Ballālasena’s works, these stanzas represented the core section in the definition of the objects of a gift of knowledge. On the other hand, Hemādri postpones the task of definition to the relevant paragraphs. He nonetheless coherently keeps these stanzas from the Devīpurāṇa, the Nandipurāṇa, and the Viṣṇudharmottara together, placing them one after the other, pointing to their inner unity of contents. They are then followed by the last quotation of the paragraph, a few stanzas attributed to the Varāhapurāṇa, which again mention the titles of works that a devotee is exhorted to donate.

The contents of this set, which consists of sources that each list texts to donate and their matching rewards, might look—and in fact is—redundant. As observed with reference to Lakṣmīdhara, however, these sources only work well together if the focus is shifted to the (sometimes rather minute) differences which separate them and which contribute additional information to the broader picture. Considering the obvious limitations of a genre whose main expressive means are quotations, redundancy and pleonasms might be regarded as an unavoidable fault. Differences and analogies between the lists of manuscripts given in the Devīpurāṇa and the Nandipurāṇa have already been discussed (§ 2.5) and, in spite of some overlap, it is undoubtable that they convey different pieces of information. In this context, the Viṣṇudharmottara thus seems to play a mediating role between the two, as the quoted verses (3.303.6cd–7) refer both to Siddhānta scriptures, whose mention occurs in the preceding Devīpurāṇa quotation but is avoided by the Nandipurāṇa, and to the Smṛtis, which by contrast are mentioned by the Nandipurāṇa but not in the Devīpurāṇa.[655] In the same manner as the Devīpurāṇa places the scriptures of the Siddhāntas on top of a ‘hierarchy’ of scriptures (Devīpurāṇa 91.13a), the Viṣṇudharmottara contemplates only the Siddhāntas as a means of attaining liberation. Hemādri has extracted these stanzas of the Viṣṇudharmottara from a longer passage on the ‘Fruits of the Gift of Knowledge’ (vidyādānaphala, corresponding to Viṣṇudharmottara 3.303.1–15), whose disiecta membra are scattered throughout the whole chapter: the first part (Viṣṇudharmottara 3.303.1–4) is quoted just a few stanzas ahead, in the same paragraph as the eulogy of the gift of knowledge; a second portion (Viṣṇudharmottara 3.303.5–6ab), with the mention of several other ‘fields of learning’ to donate, is postponed and quoted in the section on the gift of the Vedas (vedadāna);[656] while a further part, corresponding to Viṣṇudharmottara 3.303.8–13, is cited at the very end of the chapter on the gift of knowledge (Dānakhaṇḍa p. 559). No mention is made of the parallel stanzas from Agnipurāṇa 2.211; more precisely, none of the Agnipurāṇa stanzas on vidyādāna is quoted by the digest-writers, who attribute to this Purāṇa only a brief citation on the gift of knowledge that is untraceable in the extant Agnipurāṇa.[657]

As for the function of the stanzas from the Varāhapurāṇa, which close the paragraph on the ‘Eulogy of the Gift of Knowledge’, it is also possible to assume that they are quoted in this case because they mention works that are not expressly referred to in the foregoing texts; notable is the reference to the Śivadharma, mentioned in the same line as the Veda and the Mīmāṃsā: [658]

Moreover, having donated the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata, he is magnified in Heaven. Having donated a Purāṇa, a treatise on logic as well as one on metrics, (1Hem) / The Veda, the treatises of Mīmāṃsā, and the Śivadharma, o king, he becomes king of kings on the earth divided into seven land masses. (2Hem)

These few quotations thus serve the eulogistic purpose of exalting all the main branches of traditional literature, and presenting them as fit objects of donation for a gift of knowledge right at the beginning of the chapter. Hemādri does this by accumulating sources, each conveying a small piece of new information, and by dismembering and reconstructing texts; sometimes he does not even mind repeating the same quotation more than once, though in different contexts. This happens with the previously mentioned Nandipurāṇa quotation used in the paragraph on the ‘Eulogy of the Gift of Knowledge’, which Hemādri will then partly reuse for introducing the paragraph on the donation of the Dharmaśāstra, the second of the three categories into which he classifies the gift of knowledge (Dānakhaṇḍa, pp. 526–29). Here Hemādri constructs a new, coherent text by selecting and joining together stanzas from different parts of the Nandipurāṇa’s excerpt, as the parallel with Lakṣmīdhara’s quotation shows; however, at least two of these five stanzas (nos. 29Hem and 33Hem) are not available in the digest of Lakṣmīdhara, which indicates that Hemādri might still have had access to a more complete version of the Nandipurāṇa:[659]

The Revelation and Tradition are renowned as the two eyes of the sages; here the person who is deprived of one [of them] is known as one-eyed, one [who is] deprived of both is known as blind. (29Hem) /—Moreover—A man, donating the Dharmaśāstra, is magnified in the vault of Heaven; a mortal will save [his] ancestors from hell for ten manvantaras. (30Hem=12.74Lak) / And the knowledge of the self, the Purāṇic lore, and the science of the Dharmaśāstra: these are the three primary sciences, because [they bestow] the fruits of all acts of giving. (31Hem=12.80Lak) / A man, knowing the Dharmaśāstra, will rely on some Dharma;[660] [but] the Dharma of a man who donates the Dharmaśāstra will be a hundred times better than his own. (32Hem=12.81Lak) / Therefore, wise scholars must always know the Dharmaśāstra, and not even Brahmā is able to tell the quantity of merits of the one [who donates it]. (33Hem)

The nibandhakāra takes the liberty of directly intervening in the text of his sources by changing their internal arrangement, or enriching and modifying their meaning by quoting them in different contexts than their original one. As observed above, several of the texts that Hemādri quotes are actually completely unrelated to the gift of knowledge, a case that is well exemplified by the sources that he further uses to treat the gift of the Dharmaśāstras. This paragraph has a very simple structure: between two eulogistic sections, placed at the beginning and at the end,[661] Hemādri concatenates a few excerpts from Dharmaśāstra literature enumerating the titles (or authors) of the authoritative Dharmaśāstra works, but never refers to their donation. Here the nibandhakāra manages to give an account of some of the different views existing on the topic of the established sources on Dharmaśāstra, quoting from sources whose integral text is in many cases no longer extant. As is the case of the texts quoted in the section on the eulogy of the gift of knowledge, the lists of authors of Dharmaśāstra quoted in the Dānakhaṇḍa, despite some occasional cases of overlap, differ from each other. This is further indication of the approach chosen by Hemādri, who is concerned with offering a broader range of possibilities and quotes ample sources, despite the redundancy that this may create. The principle according to which these lists of authors have to be understood is that those who are mentioned in one source, but omitted in another, are still to be included within the scope of textual authorities accepted by Hemādri. The consequence is a revision and enlargement of the canon of 36 Dharmaśāstra works presented by some of the authorities that Hemādri also cites, such as the now lost works of Śaṅkha-Likhita[662] and Paiṭhīnasi, who enumerate 36 ‘composers of Dharma’ (dharmapraṇetṛ) each as in the list below (overlapping names are underlined):[663]

Śaṅkha-Likhita: Manu, Viṣṇu, Yama, Dakṣa, Aṅgirasā, Atri, Bṛhaspati, Uśana, Āpastamba, Vasiṣṭha, Kātyāyana, Parāśara, Vyāsa, Śaṅkhalikhita, Saṃvarta, Gautama, Śātātapa, Hārīta, Yājñavalkya, Pracetas, Budha, Devala, Soma, Prajāpati, Vṛddhaśātātapa, Paiṭhīnasi, Chāgaleya, Cyavana, Marīci, Vatsa, Pāraskara, Pulastya, Pulaha, Kratu, Ṛṣyaśṛṅga, Ātreya.

Paiṭhīnasi: Manu, Aṅgiras, Vyāsa, Gautama, Likhita, Yama, Vasiṣṭha, Dakṣa, Saṃvarta, Śātātapa, Parāśara, Viṣṇu, Āpastamba, Hārīta, Śaṅkha, Kātyāyana, Guru, Pracetas, Nārada, Yogin, Baudhāyana, the two Pitāmahas, Sumantu, Kāśyapa, Babhru, Paiṭhīnasi, Vyāghra, Satyavrata, Bharadvāja, Gārgya, Kārṣṇājini, Jāvāli, Jamadagni, Laugākṣi, Brahmasambhava.

Hemādri quotes these two lists in sequence; adding up all the non-overlapping names, we obtain a total of 53 authors of Dharma. Proof that the canon can indeed be flexible, and that the different lists of dharmapraṇetṛ do not invalidate each other, is that Hemādri additionally quotes two further variants of this list, which are introduced by a quotation taken from the Bhaviṣyapurāṇa:[664]

It has been shown in the Bhaviṣyapurāṇa that the Smṛtis exceed 36 in number—O son, having considered those statements which are in the 18 Purāṇas and in other Smṛtis, o longarmed, (2Hem)/ And having examined all together the statements of those which are the celebrated 36 Smṛtis of Manu and so on, in turn, I speak to you. (3Hem)

The reference to the ‘other Smṛtis’ made by this stanza of the Bhaviṣyapurāṇa validates Hemādri’s inclusive approach, functioning as an introduction to the following quotations. The next quoted list is attributed to Manu, but unfortunately it is untraceable in the extant text of the Manusmṛti. The quoted verses moreover reflect a later stage in the scholarship on Dharma than the one to which the Manusmṛti refers, for the extant text of this Dharmaśāstra does not contain any lists of Dharmaśāstra authors, but only unsystematically mentions some of the acknowledged dharmapraṇetṛ, the ‘authors of [works on] Dharma’.[665] This lack of information on other works, and the absence of a structured list, which will become a typical feature in later texts,[666] is actually coherent with the early dating of the Manusmṛti (see above fn. 563). Although the names mentioned in these stanzas that the Dānakhaṇḍa attributes to Manu could in a way be considered ‘atemporal’, because they ultimately all go back to Vedic sages, some of the Dharmaśāstra works circulating under these names have been proven to be from much later than the extant Manusmṛti.[667]

The quoted text reads as follows:[668]

Manu said: ‘Viṣṇu, Parāśara, Dakṣa, Saṃvarta, Vyāsa, Hārīta, Śātātapa, and Vasiṣṭha, Yama, Apastamba, Gautama, (1Hem) / Devala, Śaṅkha-Likhita; Bharadvāja, Uśanas, and Atri; Śaunaka and Yājñavalkya are the 18 authors of Smṛtis. (2Hem)’ Moreover: ‘The four collections (saṃhitās) of Bhṛgu and Nārada, as well as [those] of Bṛhaspati and Aṅgiras, are believed to belong to the treatise of Svayambhu (3Hem).’

The question of whether these stanzas are a later addition to the Manusmṛti that was subsequently expunged, but were still available when Hemādri used it, or whether they belong to a now lost recension or—an equally possible hypothesis—whether Hemādri attributed some traditional stanzas he knew to the authority of Manu cannot be answered. Furthermore, the contents of these stanzas are merely pleonastic within the paragraph on the donation of Dharmaśāstra works, since all of the authors to whom this shorter list refers were already mentioned in the previous quotations. The last source quoted on this topic is a different case. It is the now lost Aṅgirasasmṛti, from which Hemādri quotes a passage reporting the names of 16 authors of the so-called Upasmṛtis, the ‘minor’ Smṛtis.[669] The paragraph on the gift of Dharmaśāstras ends without any reference to the ritualistic norms that should regulate the donation of these manuscripts.

The same comprehensive look at the scriptural tradition and creative attitude towards authoritative texts, this time with a focus on ritual, is observed in the final category into which Hemādri divides the different types of gift of knowledge, namely the gift of the Purāṇas (purāṇadāna, Dānakhaṇḍa, pp. 529–40), which additionally encompasses what Hemādri calls the ‘Gift of the Hearing of the Purāṇas’ (purāṇaśravaṇadāna, Dānakhaṇḍa, pp. 540–43). As in the case of the preceding donations, this paragraph is also firstly devoted to the identification of the manuscripts that fall into this specific literary category; by contrast with the previous exposition, however, which lacked reference to any ritual procedures, this chapter and many of the sources on which it is based also focuses on ritual and donation.

According to Hemādri’s interpretation, the category of the purāṇadāna is not only open to including the gifts of the ‘Main Purāṇas’ (Mahāpurāṇas) and ‘Minor Purāṇas’ (Upapurāṇas)—of which his sources provide numerous, sometimes divergent lists,[670]—but also the epics (Itihāsa). Two stanzas roughly corresponding to Nāradīyapurāṇa 2.24.18 and 20–21ab introduce this topic by stating the importance of Purāṇas and Itihāsas at the top of a simple hierarchical arrangement of scriptures whose basis is the Veda:[671]

O goddess, the Vedas are strengthened (pratiṣṭhitā) by the Purāṇas, no doubt about it! The Veda is afraid of an ignorant person, [thinking]: ‘This man will destroy me’. (18) / And in ancient times this [Veda] was made stable by Itihāsas and Purāṇas. For what is not seen in the Veda, this is seen truly through the Smṛtis; (20) / What is not seen by means of both, this is in fact chanted in the Purāṇas.

The topic of these stanzas, according to which Purāṇas and Smṛtis are a reinforcement of the Veda, is very common in Indian philosophical thought. The question is, in nuce (but see § 3.2 for more details), the one discussed at length in Kumārila’s Tantravārttika:[672] Smṛtis and Purāṇas are considered to be entirely based on the Veda. They ‘reinforce’ the Veda, not in the sense that they are superior to it, but due to the belief that they have preserved information rooted in now lost Vedic passages. These stanzas from the Nāradīyapurāṇa thus represent the perfect link connecting the treatment of vedadāna and smṛtidāna, with which Hemādri had just dealt, with that of the purāṇadāna. It also justifies the sequence in which the three sections are presented.

The topic of the relationship between the Purāṇas and the Veda is again the subject of the following stanzas, namely Matsyapurāṇa 53.3–12ab (omitted both by Lakṣmīdhara and Ballālasena), but this time from a mythological perspective. Here, the Purāṇic author reiterates the different phases in the creation of the branches of orthodox knowledge by Viṣṇu assuming his various aspects. According to this story, Brahmā initially only remembered one Purāṇa as the first of all treatises. The four Vedas were then spread from his mouths.[673] Subsequent steps in this process were the proclamation of the Vedāṅgas, the four Vedas, the Purāṇa, the very extensive [treatises on] logic (nyāyavistaram), Mīmāṃsā, and Dharmaśāstras, namely the 14 vidyāsthānas, by the god in the disguise of a Vedic deity (vājin).[674] In the end the god, this time assuming the aspect of a fish, had again revealed ‘all this’ to Brahmā, during the deluge at the beginning of the kṛtayuga,[675] giving rise to the ‘activation of all śāstras and the Purāṇa’.[676] Having eventually assumed the aspect of Vyāsa, Viṣṇu revealed all 18 ‘canonical’ Purāṇas (Matsyapurāṇa 53.9–11) in the course of different eras (yuga).

The quotation from the Matsyapurāṇa ends here, exactly where the text starts enumerating the 18 Purāṇas together with the procedures for their donation, as announced in the first two stanzas of the chapter, which Hemādri had omitted here.[677] However, instead of inserting the titles of the Purāṇas according to Matsyapurāṇa 53.12–57, as Lakṣmīdhara and Ballālasena do, Hemādri introduces some stanzas from theVarāhapurāṇa. In just a few verses, they list all the Purāṇas mentioned in the 40 stanzas of the Matsyapurāṇa, while avoiding all reference to ritual procedures.[678] Hemādri’s choice thus seems to be compelled by the will to separate the verses on the identification of the canonical texts—which correspond exactly with the texts to donate—from those singling out procedural details, which will be dealt with later. This would explain why the quotation from the Matsyapurāṇa is abruptly interrupted in favour of a simpler list of Mahāpurāṇas in exact correspondence with the ritual donations of the 18 Purāṇas. This passage is moved to the very end of the paragraph (Dānakhaṇḍa, pp. 564–69).

Hemādri quotes four slightly different lists of Mahāpurāṇas,[679] while mentioning only one Purāṇic version of the Upapurāṇa lists (Kūrmapurāṇa 1.1.17–20).[680] If we sum up the titles of the different Mahāpurāṇas enumerated by each of the quoted texts, the total number of accepted works amounts to 21 and consists of the following: Brahmapurāṇa, Padmapurāṇa, Viṣṇupurāṇa, Śivapurāṇa, Vāyupurāṇa, Bhāgavatapurāṇa, Nāradīyapurāṇa, Mārkaṇḍeyapurāṇa, Agnipurāṇa, Bhaviṣyapurāṇa, Brahmavaivartapurāṇa, Liṅgapurāṇa, Varāhapurāṇa, Skandapurāṇa, Vāmanapurāṇa, Kūrmapurāṇa, Matsyapurāṇa, Garuḍapurāṇa, Brahmāṇḍapurāṇa, Kālikāpurāṇa, and Saurapurāṇa.

The titles listed by the Varāhapurāṇa and the Matsyapurāṇa are very similar, so replacing the remaining stanzas of the Matsyapurāṇa with the Varāhapurāṇa quotation does not create any inconsistency. However, there is one difference, namely that the Varāhapurāṇa simply gives the name of the fourth Purāṇa as śaiva, the ‘Purāṇa of Śiva’ (Śivapurāṇa), while the Matsyapurāṇa mentions the Vāyupurāṇa in the same position (53.17cd–18). The omission of the Vāyupurāṇa from certain Mahāpurāṇa lists, and its replacement with the Śivapurāṇa, is indeed a known problem in the early canons of Purāṇas.[681] As for the following lists of Purāṇic texts quoted by Hemādri, possibly as an attempt to reconcile the two variants,[682] the Kālikāpurāṇa defines the ‘Purāṇa of Śiva’ as ‘the one proclaimed by Vāyu’ (śaivaṃ yad vāyunā proktaṃ), while the Saurapurāṇa unambiguously calls the fourth Purāṇa Vāyupurāṇa. The Kālikāpurāṇa and the Saurapurāṇa lists of Mahāpurāṇas otherwise roughly correspond to that of the Varāhapurāṇa, except for some small innovations introduced by these texts, which strived to introduce themselves into the Purāṇic canon.[683] Chapter 1.9 of the Saurapurāṇa, which Hemādri only quotes with reference to the list of the Mahāpurāṇas, also provides instructions on the donation of their manuscripts (see Saurapurāṇa 1.9.15–40), just like the Matsyapurāṇa. Hemādri keeps this portion out of his digest —with the exception of stanzas 1.9.15-17ab, which are placed after the Matsyapurāṇa quotation (see Table A)— and lets Kūrmapurāṇa 1.16–20 immediately follow Saurapurāṇa 1.9.3–14, which constitutes the sole enumeration of Upapurāṇas in the entire chapter.[684] The description of the donative procedures for the Purāṇas are therefore derived only from the usual Matsyapurāṇa 53,[685] just as in Hemādri’s predecessors Lakṣmīdhara and Ballālasena. The choice of avoiding Saurapurāṇa 1.17cd–40, whose style is similar to that of Matsyapurāṇa 53, is most likely driven by the need to avoid contradictions with what had traditionally been considered the main source on this topic. The account of the Saurapurāṇa does in fact convey different information from that of the Matsyapurāṇa, especially with reference to the times at which the donation of the various Purāṇas is prescribed; moreover, the mention of fees accompanying the donation of the manuscripts is absent from the prescriptions of the Saurapurāṇa. In some cases, the Saurapurāṇa distinguishes specific recipients in accordance with the Purāṇas to be donated, while the Matsyapurāṇa does not make any reference to the recipients. According to the instructions of the Saurapurāṇa, for instance, the Viṣṇupurāṇa must be donated to an expert on the Vedas (1.9.19), the Bhāgavatapurāṇa to a devotee of the Sun (1.9.20), the Nāradapurāṇa (1.9.26) and the Brahmāṇḍapurāṇa (1.9.36) to a Śaiva, and the Brahmavaivarta[purāṇa] to a Vaiṣṇava devotee (1.9.27):[686]

The one who would donate to a Brahmin ascetic devoted to Śiva those gifts that are well established in the world, o twice-borns, (16) / On the fourteenth [lunar day], he will without doubt gain the fruit of all [gifts]. Endowed with trust he will first give the [Purāṇa of] Brahmā: (17) / Freed from all sins he prospers in the world of Brahmā. The one who donates the [Purāṇa] of Padma on a Thursday, in the name of Brahmā, (18) / To a twice-born knower of the Vedas, he will take the fruit of a Jyotiṣṭoma. A pure, pious person (19) / Who, on the twelfth [lunar day], would give the [Purāṇa] of Viṣṇu in the name of Viṣṇu to a person very well versed in the Vedas, [he] will reach the seat of Viṣṇu. The one who would give the Bhāgavatapurāṇa to a devotee of the Sun, o twice-borns, (20) / Freed from all sins and all ailments, he will live a hundred years, [his] whole life until the end in the seat of the Sun (21) / The third [lunar day] of the bright fortnight in the month of Vaiśakha is called ‘unperishable’; on this lunar day a self-controlled person [who], endowed with trust, gives (st. 23) to a Brahmin holder of the perpetual fire (22) / The Purāṇa called Bhaviṣya, he gets the unsurpassed fruit of the Aśvamedha sacrifice (23) / Whereas a person with an active soul, who will donate the [Purāṇa] of Mārkaṇḍeya on the seventh [lunar day], reaches the world of the Sun, freed from all sins. (24) / Having acquired the [Purāṇa] of Agni, [one] should give [it] to a [Brahmin] holder of the perpetual fire: [in this way] the fruit of the Rājasūya sacrifice becomes eternal. (25) / The person with a concentrated mind who would donate the [Purāṇa] of Nārada on the fourteenth [lunar day] to a twice-born devotee of Śiva, [he] prospers in the world of Śiva. (26) / The person with a concentrated mind who will donate the Brahmavaivarta[purāṇa] to a Vaiṣṇava [devotee], [he] reaches the world of Brahmā, which is difficult to be obtained among the rebirths. (27) / On the fourteenth [lunar day] of the bright fortnight of the month Kārttika, o virtuous men, [one] should donate the [Purāṇa] of the Liṅga to the best of the twice-borns, one who enjoys the worship of Śiva (28) / Freed from all sins, endowed with power over everything, [he] goes to the seat of Maheśvara, placed above all worlds. (29) / One who gives the Varāha[purāṇa] on the twelfth [lunar day] to a Brahmin ascetic, being self-controlled, he goes to the world of Viṣṇu. (30) / One who would give the [Purāṇa] of Skanda to a śivayoginon the fourteenth [lunar day] dedicated to Śiva, [he] becomes a knowledgeable person, o Brahmins, favoured by Mahādeva. (31) / On the twelfth or on the fourteenth day [one] should give the unsurpassed Vāmana[purāṇa], [and he] reaches this imperishable, unsurpassed world of that god (32) / [If one] would donate the [Purāṇa] of Kūrma on the fourteenth [lunar day] to a Yogin who has an active soul, that merit [deriving] from all gifts, [he obtains] [that] fruit [deriving] from all sacrifices (lit. sing.). (33) / In the end, the sage obtains that fruit [which is] the seat of Śiva. And [if] a religious person would give the [Purāṇa] of Matsya to the best among the twice-borns during the summer solstice (34) / Freed from all sins he prospers in the world of Śiva. [If one] would give the [Purāṇa] of Garuḍa, in the name of Śiva, on the lunar day dedicated to Śiva, o twice-borns, (35) / [He] obtains the unsurpassed fruit of one thousand Vājapeya. [If one] would donate [the Purāṇa] which is known as Brahmāṇḍa[purāṇa] to a Śaiva devotee, (36) / With devotion towards Śiva, on the occasion of the winter solstice, as well as during an eclipse of moon or sun, o pious men, (37) / [He] obtains the sovereignty over the Gaṇas of the spear-holder god of the gods. Thus the series of the Purāṇas has been told, [and] the fruit which [is obtained] through the gift [of them], (38) / Which the Sun himself expounded, has been concisely taught, o Brahmins. The one who would read this chapter in the proximity of Mahādeva, (39) / Freed from all sins [he] will obtain the fruit of a Vājapeya. (40)

Hemādri’s paragraph on the gift of the Purāṇas is closed by a sequence of short eulogistic quotations from the Brahmapurāṇa and the Kūrmapurāṇa, praising the gift of the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa, which the digest-writer therefore also considers to be among the manuscripts to donate in a purāṇadāna. That the Mahābhārata was included in the category of the gift of the Purāṇas is further confirmed in the following paragraph on the purāṇaśravaṇadāna, literally ‘Gift of the Hearing of the Purāṇas’ (Dānakhaṇḍa, pp. 540–43), in which Hemādri quotes a long passage from the Harivaṃśa, a composite work recounting the life of Kṛṣṇa and several other topics, which was traditionally considered a supplement (khila) to the Mahābhārata.[687] The ritual reading of the various sections of the Mahābhārata and the worship of their manuscripts are the subject of the verses that Hemādri quotes.

The Harivaṃśa is presumably an early work, dated by Vaidya to the fourth to the fifth century,[688] whose earliest layers might well date back to the second or third century.[689] It was critically edited, along with the 18 divisions (Parvans) of the Mahābhārata, relatively recently.[690] It is relevant to refer to the critical edition of the Harivaṃśa, as the stanzas quoted by Hemādri on the ritual readings of the Mahābhārata and the fruits deriving from this activity are all located in the so-called ‘first appendix’ (prathamaṃ pariśiṣṭam) to the critical edition (more precisely, text passage no. 40 of Appendix 1). This is where the editor, Vaidya, moved the textual passages that he expunged from the main text of the edition; the reason for this expunction was their being in disagreement with the criteria of authenticity previously established by the editors of the Mahābhārata.[691] These expunged passages were thus supposed to be ‘inauthentic’ and ‘later’: in the words of the editor, the text of the Harivaṃśa had been ‘inflated’ by additions from at least the fourth century onwards.[692] Besides the accordance of the three main branches of the manuscript tradition, another criterion used to expunge passages in the reconstruction of the earliest text is their absence from Kṣemendra’s Bhāratamañjarī, a summary of the Mahābhārata and the Harivaṃśa from eleventh-century Kashmir.[693]

This is not the appropriate context to discuss the validity of such criteria or the notion of an ‘authentic’ earlier version as opposed to an ‘inauthentic’ later one; it should, however, be noted that the text of Appendix 1.40 fails to meet at least one of the norms proposed by Vaidya, because the text presented in the Appendix is in fact summed up in Bhāratamañjarī 19.1475–82,[694] a short section on the parvapūjā, literally ‘Veneration of the Sections [of the Mahābhārata]’, whose unabridged text corresponds to that quoted extensively, though not in its entirety, by Hemādri. The topic of Appendix 1.40 of the Harivaṃśa is established in the first stanzas, which read:[695]

O Bhagavān, according to which procedure do wise people have to listen to the Bhārata? (1) / What is the fruit [of it] and which gods have to be worshipped here during the readings (pāraṇa)? (2) / And, o Bhagavān, what has to be donated in the end [of the reading] of each section [of the Mahābhārata]? (3) /And which kind of reciter is desirable for this purpose? Tell me this! (4)

By quoting stanzas on the topic of ritual reading, Hemādri thus extends his interpretation of the gift of knowledge also to include the practice of the public recitation of manuscripts. The title, which mentions the ‘Hearing of the Purāṇas’, is nonetheless deceptive, as the chapter of the Harivaṃśa, on which Hemādri entirely bases the paragraph, only mentions the Mahābhārata, but never the Purāṇas. The topic of verses 40 to 103 is that of the rewards obtainable through a sponsorship of the recitations, of which the text exhorts financing at least 10 in order to secure all the supramundane rewards listed from verse 81 to 99. Attention is devoted to the description of the professional reciter (vācaka, v. 40), endowed with standard features such as good moral and religious conduct (‘rejoicing in truth and rectitude, patient’, satyārjavarato dāntaḥ, v. 35; he is also ‘rich in faith’, śraddhadhānaḥ, v. 36, and ‘with his senses refrained’, jitendriyaḥ, v. 37), ritual purity (he is ‘pure’, śuciḥ, and ‘ritually purified’, saṃskṛtaḥ, in vv. 37–38), and knowledge (‘knower of all disciplines’, sarvaśāstrajñaḥ, v. 38). This brief portrayal is followed by the description of his reading performance and a brief reference to the text he has to read:[696]

Prompt and zealous, the reciter should read (v. 44) not in an indistinct way, with calm, powerfully, this [Mahābhārata] (41) / Whose letters and words are not disconnected, endowed with [the correct] rasas and bhāvas, (42) / Provided with [all the correct] 63 phonemes [and] eight cases. (43) / [The scribe should read when he is] in good health conditions, comfortably seated, well focused. (44) / Having bowed to Nārāyaṇa and to Nara [and] Narottama, (45) / As well as to the goddess Sarasvatī, he should then shout ‘Victory!’ (46) / Having heard the Bhārata from such a reciter, o king Bhārata, (47) / A listener who is constant in determination, pure, he gets his fruit by listening. (48)

As in the Nandipurāṇa (see § 2.4), the Harivaṃśa recommends that the reciter read with expressiveness and competence, and to refer to a manuscript with correct orthography and grammar; the allusion to the gods to be worshipped, which are often found in the benedictory verses inscribed in the beginning of manuscripts of the Mahābhārata,[697] gives this activity a proper religious context.

Hemādri starts his quotation of this Harivaṃśa chapter in medias res, namely from v. 103, postponing references to the preceding stanzas to the last part of his paragraph. The verses from which he starts quoting are those dealing with the gifts that one should give to Brahmins on the occasion of the ritual readings of the Parvans of the Mahābhārata. Once again, gifting procedures are thus at stake, but not in the form of a gift of manuscripts:[698]

After this I shall further explain, o Bhārata, those things that have to be donated / To the Brahmins when this and the other Parvan are read, o king. (1Hem=103–104HV) / Having at the beginning said ‘svāsti’ to the twice-borns, then the rite must be performed; once the Parvan has been concluded, he should please the twice-borns according to one’s own ability. (2Hem=107–108HV) / Then, at the beginning, having worshipped the reciter, provided with myrrh, one should feed sweet, utmost food, o king! (3Hem=109–10HV) / Afterwards, according to the rule, he should feed a devotee with a big portion of roots and fruits, milk with honey and ghee, o king, and should offer the guḍaudāna (boiled rice and coarse sugar), (4Hem=111–12HV)/ Together with incenss, and cakes and sweets. (5abHem=113HV)

The text quoted by Hemādri presents some remarkable differences with the one in Harivaṃśa’s critical edition. In the first place, Hemādri skips vv. 105–106, in which the text specifies that the following activities have to be performed[699] ‘having ascertained the birth-class and place of origin, the pureness and magnanimity, […] the religion and occupation [...]’ presumably of the Brahmins that have to be worshipped at the end of the readings. Moreover, in Harivāṃśa v. 3Hem, corresponding to Harivaṃśa App. 1.40, vv. 109–10, the mention of the twice-borns is replaced with a reference to the veneration of the reciter. The corresponding verses in the Harivaṃśa edition read: [700] ‘Then, at the beginning, o best among the Bhāratas, he should, according to procedures, feed sweet, utmost food to the twice-borns, revered with perfumes and garlands, o king!’. Hemādri’s rendition of this verse does not appear among the variant readings of the manuscript tradition of the text.

The verses that Hemādri quotes next (corresponding to Harivaṃśa, App. 1.40, vv. 114–136) list the different gifts that have to be offered on the occasion of the recitation of each of the Parvans of the Mahābhārata. It is at this point that the text makes reference to the worship of the manuscripts. Consistently with what we learn from the Śivadharmottara and other sources (see § 2.4), the performance of ritual recitations is not disconnected from the material dimension of the text, whose manuscript is not only regarded as instrumental to the performance, but also treated as a focus of worship and veneration. This must conclude the reading of each manuscript, as the text prescribes:[701]

Having concluded each text (saṃhitā), a pious man, well versed in the treatises, having brought [this manuscript], wrapped in a line-cloth and so on, to a beautiful place; (18Hem=141–42HV) / There, wearing a white cloth, being pure, well adorned, the pious man, with his mind very focused (see 20Hem=145HV), should worship according to rule, with perfumes and garlands, one by one (19Hem=143–44HV) / The manuscripts of the texts, with joy, food, entertainments, and drinks [and] various beautiful celebrations, (20Hem=145–46HV) / And at this point [he] should give precious metals and gold as a fee. [He] should honour all gods, as well as Nara and Nārāyaṇa. (21Hem=147–48HV) / Then having adorned the best among the twice-borns with perfumes and garlands, [he] should please [them] with various enjoyments and gifts, as well as jewels and so on. (22Hem=149–50HV) / And once the Brahmins have been satiated, [he] should dismiss [them] in the proper way, after feeding the well-adorned reciter, o best among the Bharatas. (23Hem=151–52HV) / If the Brahmins are favourable, the gods are favourable to him; but once the reciter is pleased, there is great, unsurpassed joy. (24Hem=153–54HV) / Then, o bull of the Bharatas, the explanation of the collections has to be performed. (25abHem=155HV)

The worship of the manuscripts prescribed in this section of the Harivaṃśa thus follows the usual procedures, which envisage the offering of various stock items (incense and garlands in this case), then the payment of the fees and the offering of food and amusements to the Brahmins and the people attending the ritual. The reciter is mentioned again, this time as the recipient of food offerings, at Harivaṃśa 23Hem=152HV. However, he does not seem to be the only professional figure entitled to handle the manuscripts in the description of the parvapūjā of the Harivaṃśa, for in a verse that is not quoted by Hemādri (Harivaṃśa, App. 1.40, v. 100), and which is connected with the account of the rewards awaiting the sponsors of such ritual, the text also instructs the devotee that[702] ‘Whatever [he] desires with his heart, it should be donated to the scribe.’ The latter is unfortunately an isolated reference, and the text does not specify the role of the scribe during these procedures; however, his mention seems to have a context similar to that of the Nandipurāṇa, where the manuscripts have been ritually produced before being recited. The materiality of the text is thus stressed even in the context of its oral fruition, not only because manuscripts have to be worshipped ‘one by one’ (pṛthak pṛthak, Harivaṃśa 19Hem= App. 1.40, v. 144HV) after the reading, but also because the mention of a professional scribe evokes his direct intervention in the text, which does not just play the role of an icon to worship, but is fully used in its semantic values. We can, however, gather more information on this point once we turn our attention to the text that Vaidya expunged from the appendices, and preserved in the thick critical apparatus appended to the text.

Vaidya marks the stanzas that are excluded from the edition with a double star because they were transmitted only in isolated manuscripts. Before venturing into their reading, it must be observed that the text known to Hemādri is in fact closer to that of some of the expunged stanzas in the apparatus, at least in the case of the last verses that he quotes. Here the text of the Dānakhaṇḍa is identical or very close to that of passages 43**, 44**, and 47**, which are generally well attested in the manuscript tradition of the Harivaṃśa.[703] Following the mention of the scribe at Harivaṃśa App. 1.40, v. 100 and the prescription to donate to him, a Devanāgarī manuscript belonging to the K series inserts some stanzas reintroducing a topic that had been left out of this Harivaṃśa chapter, namely that of the gift of manuscripts:[704]

The manuscript of the Harivaṃśa has to be donated along with fees. (1) / One should donate a cover [for the manuscript] along with a cord, according to [one’s own] power and nature, (2) / And in a beautiful small basket, as an infinite source of [positive] fruits. (3)

The text does not provide any further details on the recipients of this donation, although significantly it inserts this reference directly after the scribe is mentioned. These expunged verses, like most of the following ones referring to ritual procedures involving the use of manuscripts, are only attested in single manuscripts, and are thus likely to be either the outcome of scribal intervention or of textual contamination. The fact that more scribes, involved in the transmission of the text in different places and times, felt the need to integrate the prescriptions given by the Harivaṃśa with those known to them via tradition or through other works—or other manuscripts of the same work—makes these supplemented stanzas significant evidence of the liveliness of such ritual instructions. Following the contents of these stanzas, one learns some technical features that speak to the reality of manuscript worship, reading, and donation within the ritual practice of Vaiṣṇava communities in the Middle Ages.

After line 139 of Harivaṃśa, App. 1.40, which prescribes,[705] ‘When the [reading of the] Harivaṃśa is concluded, one has to feed the twice-borns one thousand times’, we learn that, according to one manuscript whose variant reading is reproduced as ‘passage 38**’, the manuscript has to be donated along with gold, and that the reading and the donation of the manuscript will cause the sponsor to get a male offspring.[706] A passage that has a slightly wider attestation (no. 39**) specifies that the recipient of the gift of the manuscript is the reciter himself, and additionally remarks on the apotropaic values of the Harivaṃśa:[707]

One should give one cow along with money to a Brahmin; (1) / As alternative, a poor person may also give half as much, o lord of the earth! (2) / At the end of each Parvan then, o wise man, (3) /One has to donate the manuscript to the reciter along with gold. (4) / [The one who] would listen, with a concentrated mind, to a stanza, or to a quarter of a stanza, or to a letter, o son of kings, Viṣṇu will protect him. (5–6)

That the reciter is considered the addressee of the final donation of the manuscript is also attested in 39A**.[708] The following passage 40**, again preserved in a single Devanāgarī manuscript, is inserted by this manuscript soon after stanza 143 (corresponding to Dānakhaṇḍa 19Hem), namely following the prescription on carrying the manuscripts to a ‘beautiful place’ for their veneration. Passage 40** refers to the worship of the manuscript ‘with golden jewels and fine cloths’,[709] then reports a prayer to be recited for the obtainment of sons (vv. 4–7), after which the worship of the manuscript is again prescribed along with its donation, which this time is addressed to the god Viṣṇu.[710]

The association with gods, and more specifically with icons of the gods, is dealt with more profusely in the following passage 41**, which in a further Devanāgarī manuscript is placed after Harivaṃśa, App. 1.40 v. 144, in a context still related to manuscript veneration. Here, the text prescribes building and installing statues of Nārāyaṇa and Nara, introducing the worship of the Harivaṃśa manuscript at the conclusion of this ceremony; the icons of the god and the manuscript are worshipped together and, eventually, the manuscript seems to be donated to a teacher:[711]

With 16 karṣas one should make an icon of Nārāyaṇa, (1) / With 10 karṣas of gold, [an image] of Nara, o ruler of men. (2) / Having abundantly decorated [them] with ornaments, one should perform the installation of both (3) / And practice the consecration by [recitation of] the mahāpuruṣasūkta. (4) / Having worshipped with fragrant garlands, preceded by the uttering of ‘svasti!’ (5) / He should make oblations with the 108 Vaiṣṇava mantras [and] with sesame seeds. (6) / At the end of the oblation one should worship the manuscript of the Harivaṃśa along with the icons, (7) / Being a pious man, [endowed] with faith and intelligence. (8) / He will make efforts to give [it] to the teacher along with all ornaments, together with an icon, accompanied by the pair [of statues?] magnificently decorated with colours. (9–10)

The phrasing of the last two verses does not make the understanding of this step particularly perspicuous: the text seems to suggest that the manuscript is donated ‘along with the icons’, a notion that would be redundantly restated in the following reference to the ‘magnificently decorated couple’. This interpretation seems to be confirmed by passage 46**, which manuscript D3 inserts after line 153, apparently referring, though very briefly, to an analogous situation.[712]

Regardless of the recipient—be it the scribe, the reciter, the teacher, or the god—all the instructions scattered throughout the different passages appended to Appendix 1.40 univocally indicate that, at the end of a public reading, a manuscript—possibly the one used for the recitation—has to be worshipped and donated. A reference to the worship of the manuscript before the reading starts, and not at its conclusion, is found in passage 49**,[713] included by some manuscripts after v. 157.[714] The pattern described by this set of sources is thus opposite to the one observed in the Śivadharmottara and in the Nandipurāṇa, where the texts first describe the donation and then the reading, implying that the two phases had to be conceived in this temporal sequence. In the case of the Harivaṃśa, the donation of the manuscript seems to be rather ancillary to its recitation, almost being conceived as one of the fees to be paid to the people involved in the performance (the reciter, the teacher), or as an offering to the god, rather than as an independent ritual.

Hemādri does not quote any of the Harivaṃśa verses concerning the donation of manuscripts: this means that he was either not aware of these additional stanzas, or chose to select only the verses dealing with recitation, as he had already dealt with the gifting of manuscripts at several other points in his work. The final verses that he quotes roughly correspond to Harivaṃśa, App. 1.40, vv. 21–37, on the gifts to donate during the performance of the recitation. The gift of the hearing of the Purāṇas ends the treatment of the three different categories into which the extensive digest of Hemādri classifies vidyādāna. With this paragraph, the digest-writer also concludes the section of his work that deals with the definition of vidyā, the object of the ritual, while the next and final paragraph (Dānakhaṇḍa, pp. 544–63) will solely be devoted to worship. Hemādri, who had distinguished some specific ritual procedures, both in the case of the vedadāna (for which see § 3.2) and for the purāṇadāna, chooses to present the rules for the ‘Gifting Procedures that are Common to All Disciplines’ (sarvaśāstrasādhāraṇadānavidhi, p. 543) in the last paragraph. Hemādri thus considers the following rules to be valid for technical literature (śāstra), a category under which he has mainly included the Dharmaśāstra and for which he has so far failed to give specific ritual prescriptions. The sources he quotes, however, do not conceive of such a sharp distinction between literary genres, and prescribe their procedures for a broader body of Sanskrit literature. This paragraph is based on some of the well-known authorities on vidyādāna that we have examined in chapter 2: the long accounts from Devīpurāṇa 91 and the Nandipurāṇa, describing the copying, donation, and recitation of manuscripts (the longest quotations are at pp. 544–56), as well as the shorter descriptions attributed to the Varāhapurāṇa and the Vahnipurāṇa (see pp. 556–58). These descriptions, which in the works of Hemādri’s predecessors were the core of the definition of vidyādāna, now become only one of the many possibilities. It is noteworthy that Hemādri is the only one of the digest-writers to quote stanzas from the Śivadharmottara’s Vidyādānādhyāya, although he does so indirectly, since a quotation that he attributes to the Skandapurāṇa (see pp. 559–61) in this paragraph, in fact, contains numerous literal parallels with the early Śaiva text. These are some of the verses in which the Śivadharmottara describes the possible alternatives to the expensive ceremony in the first part of the chapter—when the donor is a poor man (Śivadharmottara 2.73), or a different object related to the manuscript is donated (Śivadharmottara 2.87–89, 2.105–106)—but also concerning the construction of a precious case for the manuscript and its veneration on the lion-throne (Śivadharmottara 2.109–14). The stanzas of the Skandapurāṇa quoted by Hemādri also mention the residence of the ascetics (Śivadharmottara 2.124) and the reading of the knowledge of Śiva in the ‘hall for the exposition of knowledge’ (vidyāvyākhyānamaṇḍapa, Śivadharmottara 2.174). The text of the Vidyādānādhyāya, or at least part of it, was therefore known to Hemādri in thirteenth-century Deccan, although clad in the new garment of some later accretions of the Skandapurāṇa. The end of this paragraph, with a quotation from the Vahnipurāṇa, also ends the long chapter on vidyādāna, whose conclusion, just as its starting point, is dedicated to the eulogy of the gift of knowledge and the restatement of its superiority. With the gift of knowledge, Hemādri also concludes his bulky exposition of the ‘Excellent Gifts’, leaving room for the depiction of the great gifts.

One of the reasons that accounts for Hemādri’s relevance among the authors of Dharmanibandhas is the influence that his work had on later writers. This is particularly evident in the Dānavivekoddyota attributed to Madanasiṃhadeva, as well as, albeit to a lesser extent, in the much shorter essays that Govindānanda and Nīlakaṇṭha dedicate to the topic of the gift of knowledge. Their dependence on Hemādri’s text can be measured by taking into consideration two parameters: one is the choice of the sources that they quote, while the other is the application of the same taxonomic categories used by Hemādri. As far as the first factor is concerned, and limiting our observations to the sections on the gift of knowledge, these later Dharmanibandhas reveal the tendency of only quoting sources that were already available in Hemādri’s text, with just few, yet sometimes significant, exceptions. Furthermore, Hemādri’s categorization of the gift of knowledge is still entirely valid for these later works. This raises the question as to whether these later authors had actually gone back to the texts of the sources they quoted, or if they had just borrowed them from Hemādri’s digest; a question that is all the more pertinent when it concerns textual passages belonging to now lost works.

The Dānavivekoddyota of Madanasiṃhadeva is a good example of the impact of the Caturvargacintāmaṇi on later literature. The structure that Madanasiṃhadeva gives to his discussion of the gift of knowledge is overall very close to that adopted by Hemādri, starting from the opening paragraph on the ‘Fruits of the Gift of Knowledge’ (vidyādānaphalāni; see Dānavivekoddyota, vol. 3, pp. 157–60), which is parallel to Hemādri’s ‘Eulogy of the Gift of Knowledge’ (vidyādānapraśaṃsā). In this first paragraph, Madanasiṃhadeva in fact only quotes sources that had already been used by Hemādri in the corresponding section, turning to the Viṣṇudharmottara, the short Bṛhaspatismṛti passage, and the longer paragraph from the Nandipurāṇa regarding the several fields of learning (see Table A). The author of the Dānavivekoddyota, however, significantly avoids the Devīpurāṇa, ending this paragraph with the few Varāhapurāṇa stanzas praising the donation of Vedas, Vedāṅgas, Vedānta, Mīmāṃsā, Dharmaśāstra, and the Śivadharma, as Hemādri did in the conclusion of his paragraph on the ‘Eulogy of the Gift of Knowledge’.[715]

Parallel to Hemādri’s Dānakhaṇḍa, the Dānavivekoddyota structures the subject matter into three main categories, which are the ‘Gift of the Veda’ (vedadāna, Dānavivekoddyota, vol. 3, pp. 161–63), the ‘Gift of the Smṛti’ (smṛtidāna, Dānavivekoddyota, vol. 3 pp. 164–65), and the ‘Gift of the Purāṇas’ (purāṇadāna, Dānavivekoddyota, vol. 3, pp. 172–81). Unlike Hemādri, however, Madanasiṃhadeva tries to better distribute the quoted texts between paragraphs defining the various gift categories, and those centred on ritual procedures. This is carried out with the use of captions highlighting, for each of the three categories of scriptures, the shift of the focus to ritual.[716] Moreover, the digest-writer adds a further section on the ‘Gifting Procedures of the Śaiva Treatises and So On’ (śivaśāstrādidānavidhi; Dānavivekoddyota vol. 3, 186–188), which is mainly based on the long Nandipurāṇa quotation from the Dānakhaṇḍa’s ‘Gifting Procedures That Are Common to All Treatises’ (sarvaśāstrasādhāraṇadānavidhi). Hemādri’s paragraph on the ‘Gift of the Hearing of the Purāṇas’ (purāṇaśravaṇadāna) is called, more coherently, ‘Procedures for the Hearing of the [Mahā]bhārata’ (bhārataśravaṇavidhi; Dānavivekoddyota, pp. 182–85). In this section, the Dānavivekoddyota relies entirely on the same quotations from the Harivaṃśa found in Hemādri’s Dānakhaṇḍa (pp. 540–43), also respecting Hemādri’s arrangement of the stanzas, which did not correspond to that of the original text. This can be regarded as another strong hint that Hemādri’s text, not the Harivaṃśa itself, was the direct source for this quotation. The differences between the works of Hemādri and Madanasiṃhadeva thus mainly concern some details of the general structure, as well as the internal arrangement of the quoted texts, though only in certain cases, which however do not imply any difference in the interpretation of the contents.[717] Madanasiṃhadeva’s choice of expunging certain texts from the range of his sources is more relevant, significantly the Devīpurāṇa and the Kālikāpurāṇa, two Purāṇas that Hemādri also extensively used in some cases. However, this exclusion, which for Ballālasena was motivated by a programmatic rejection of the tantric influences contained therein (see above), is less strict in the case of the Dānavivekoddyota, as the digest does quote from the Devīpurāṇa: therefore, the exclusion of the stanzas on vidyādāna seems to be less likely dictated by a cultural choice than by reasons of brevity. At the end of the chapter on the śivaśāstrādidānavidhi, for instance, the author mentions the Devīpurāṇa in a small remark attached to the Nandipurāṇa passage on the description of the gift of knowledge ceremony, followed by the actual quotations of a few stanzas from Devīpurāṇa ’s chapter 91.

The latest Dharma digests to take into consideration, namely the Dānakriyākaumudī by Govindānanda (sixteenth century) and the Dānamayūkha by Nīlakaṇṭha (seventeenth century), offer very terse accounts of the procedures of manuscript worship and donation, quoting only a limited number of sources in comparison with the previous generations of authors, and not always arranging the subject matter in different subsections according to topic. These later works are nonetheless endowed with a few original traits, adding elements that are totally new to the discourse on vidyādāna. This is certainly true of the work of Govindānanda. In structuring his chapter on the gift of manuscripts (pustakadāna), Govindānanda, while partly quoting from some of the same texts used by earlier authors,[718] also relies on the authority of a Pāñcarātra work, a class of texts that had never been previously quoted on this topic. He reports some stanzas attributed to the Hayaśīrṣapāñcarātra,[719] in which the donation of Pāñcarātra literature is equated with that of Purāṇas, Itihāsas, and Dharmaśāstras:[720]

He who will donate a Pañcarātra to the best among twice-borns, after having [it] transcribed, thanks to the merits bestowed by the gift of knowledge he dissolves into Vāsudeva [at the end of his life]. (1Gov) / He who will donate a Purāṇa to a Brahmin, after having [it] transcribed, thanks to the merits bestowed by the gift of knowledge he dissolves into Vāsudeva [at the end of his life]. (2Gov) / He who will donate the Rāmāyaṇa and the Bhārata to the best among twice-borns, having obtained the merit bestowed by the gift of knowledge, he is absorbed into Viṣṇu. (3Gov) / He who will donate the collections of texts on Dharma to the best among twice-borns, after having transcribed them, he will obtain all the merit produced by the gift of knowledge. (4Gov) / He who will donate the Vedāṅgas to an eminent Brāhmin, after having transcribed [them], he reaches the heavenly world until the dissolution of creatures. (5Gov) / Having transcribed that knowledge which is held to produce the perfection of Dharma, wealth, desire, and emancipation, and having donated [it] to a Brahmin, [one] reaches Heaven without doubt. (6Gov) / Just as the end of space is not perceived even by the siddhas, in the same way there is no end to the gifting of knowledge; [this] is endowed with all qualities. (7Gov)

Govindānanda’s choice of quoting a text from the Pāñcarātra tradition acquires additional meaning if read in the light of the other texts quoted immediately afterwards. Taken as a whole, the sources that Govindānanda selects in the chapter on the pustakadāna seem to account for a preference for Vaiṣṇava sources. These are a small array of verses from chapter 1 of the Harivaṃśa[721] and Matsyapurāṇa

53. However, from these the author only selects the stanzas that describe the donation of three Vaiṣṇava Purāṇas, namely the Viṣṇupurāṇa (Matsyapurāṇa 53.17), the Bhāgavatapurāṇa (Matsyapurāṇa 53.20–22), and the Matsyapurāṇa itself (Matsyapurāṇa 53.52). The quotation concluding the chapter is attributed to the Kāśikhaṇḍa of the Skandapurāṇa, a later sthālapurāṇa (Purāṇas centred on the eulogization of one site) focused on the eulogy of Varanasi (Kāśi);[722] these verses do not generally address the gift of manuscripts, but more specifically the gift of the Kāśikhaṇḍa, while also making reference to the gifts of all other Purāṇas:[723]

In the Skandapurāṇa, on the gift of the Kāśīkhaṇḍa: ‘He who, having transcribed this beautiful manuscript, would donate [it], by him all Purāṇas are donated, not otherwise. (1Gov)/ As many stories [are] in this [manuscript], as many stanzas, and also as many words, as many syllables, (2Gov)/ And also as many leaves, as many lines in a leaf, as many good threads, as many threads in the cloths, (3Gov) / As many variegated pictures [are] on the manuscript’s cover, so many yugas the donor will be honoured in Heaven. (4Gov)

The different quotations in the text of the Dānakriyākaumudī are separated from each other by short prose commentaries in which the digest-author paraphrases the contents of the sources, adding information that seems more likely to have been borrowed from Ballālasena’s much longer remarks, rather than being an original production of Govindānanda. As observed in § 1.2, these remarks are reproduced in manuscripts on the pustakadāna: once, independently from the text of the quotations (NGMCP E 78–1), and another time (NGMCP E 132–37), along with the sources quoted by Govindānanda. In these short prose paragraphs the author simply reproduces with few variations the contents of the quotations, which then end with a formulaic reference mentioning the title of the manuscript to be donated, the goddess Sarasvatī, and the obligation to accompany each donation with a fee.[724] Thus, his approach is distinguished by the fact that, instead of generically prescribing the worship and donation of all the established categories of authoritative texts, Govindānanda prefers to concentrate on some specific works, such as the Vaiṣṇava Purāṇas or the Kāśikhaṇḍa. By doing so, he demonstrates an attitude that resembles Hemādri’s pursuit of exhaustive definitions. Only the quotation from the Hayaśīrṣapāñcarātra actually mentions the donation of different classes of scriptures, giving the highest relevance to the Pāñcarātra. The introductory and concluding sentences added by the author further highlight that the texts he quotes are intended solely with reference to the gifting of their own manuscripts. It has already been observed with reference to the Kāśikhaṇḍa stanzas that, when Govindānanda introduces the quotations, he not only specifies the title of the source, but also briefly outlines their topic: ‘In the Matsyapurāṇa, having undertaken the [treatment of] the gift of the Viṣṇupurāṇa’; ‘In the Matsyapurāṇa, on the gift of the Śrībhāgavata[purāṇa]’; and ‘In the Matsyapurāṇa, on the gift of this [same] manuscript’ are the three captions introducing as many quotations from the Matsyapurāṇa.[725]

The Dānamayūkha of Nīlakaṇṭha is perhaps the least original source on the topic of the gift of knowledge. Its only innovation is the style adopted by the author, who opts for a greater use of prose passages in which he abridges the contents of his textual sources without directly quoting them. Here, the gift of knowledge is classified into three categories: these are the usual purāṇadāna (Dānamayūkha, pp. 241–43), the vedadāna (Dānamayūkha, p. 243), and a more generic gift of manuscripts (pustakadāna; Dānamayūkha, p. 244.). In the first category, Nīlakaṇṭha includes the 18 Mahāpurāṇas and Upapurāṇas, epics, Mīmāṃsā, Dharmaśāstra, logic, and the Śivadharma, in accordance with Varāhapurāṇa 112.69cd–72, which is the only textual authority that he quotes in his support. As has been observed above, the list of Mahāpurāṇas given by the Varāhapurāṇa differs from that of the Matsyapurāṇa insofar as the fourth Purāṇa is identified with the Śivapurāṇa by the Varāhapurāṇa, and with the Vāyupurāṇa by the Matsyapurāṇa. Nīlakaṇṭha does not seem to regard this as a contradiction, for he uses the Matsyapurāṇa as a reference text in the construction of a short prose commentary on the stanzas of the Varāhapurāṇa. In this commentary, the nibandhakāra reproduces a selection of the procedures for the donation of Purāṇas found in Matsyapurāṇa 53, concluding the section by declaring,[726] ‘The source of this is in the Matsyapurāṇa’. In this commentary, Nīlakaṇṭha provides a very succinct summary of the contents of chapter 53 of the Matsyapurāṇa, while nonetheless adding some discrepancies: besides the mention of the Śivapurāṇa, which is in fact missing in the Matsyapurāṇa[727]—and Nīlakaṇṭha observes at this point that his sources are in fact divergent[728]—some other incongruities are apparent in the attribution of the fees accompanying the donation of the different Purāṇas, as well as in the appropriate time for such donations. It is still in this prose paragraph that the author mentions the donation of the Upapurāṇas, without alluding to any authorities on the topic;[729] then, the two stanzas that Hemādri ascribes to the Varāhapurāṇa (see Dānakhaṇḍa, pp. 516–17), on the donation of the Itihāsas and other texts, are quoted without attribution, alongside a hemistich on the donation of the Dharmaśāstras that all other digest-writers attribute to the Nandipurāṇa.[730] The following section on the vedadāna is limited to a selection from the same Garuḍapurāṇa stanzas quoted by Hemādri in the Dānakhaṇḍa, (pp. 523–24; but see below § 3.2) on the ways to worship the four Vedic collections. The paragraph concludes with Yājñavalkyasmṛti 1.212 on the brahmadāna (see § 3.2).

The fact that the author concludes the chapter with a short section on the ‘gift of manuscripts’, in which some general norms about the veneration of manuscripts are given,[731] suggests that not all of the preceding types of donations were understood as taking place in the form of a gift of manuscripts. This is specified by Nīlakaṇṭha in the sentence that closes the chapter, in which he states that:[732]

The gift of knowledge is thus of three kinds: the gift of manuscripts, the gift of icons, and the impartation of teachings.

This simple statement enables an assessment of how the idea of the gift of knowledge had changed in the course of about ten centuries, from its attestation in the Śivadharmottara, where it corresponds either to a gift of manuscripts or to material aid offered to teachers and ascetics, to this seventeenth-century definition given by Nīlakaṇṭha, who, like the earlier digest-writers, may associate the gift of knowledge with the teaching activities themselves. However, the word adhyāpana (‘teaching’), though used in a general sense here, can evoke the specific teaching activity that is the traditional recitation of Vedic texts, which the nibandhakāras from Hemādri onward will denote as a ‘Gift of the Veda’ (vedadāna). This gifting category, as surprising as it may sound, is however also at stake when Nīlakaṇṭha refers to the ‘gift of the icons’ (pratimādāna) as one of the three types of donations that concur with the definition of the gift of knowledge. The gift of the Veda has so far only received cursory attention. However, it is indeed the most intricate question to solve for our digest-writers, as in traditional Indian culture this is the oral text par excellence, its transmission being the main prerogative of a single caste. To understand how this concept was harmonized with the medieval practice of the ritual donation of manuscripts, and tentatively subsumed under the notion of gift of knowledge, while at the same time making more sense of Nīlakaṇṭha’s inclusive definition of vidyādāna, we need to take a step back, and turn our attention again to the text of Hemādri.

3.2‘Vedam non sunt libri’,[733]or: How To Give What You Cannot Have

The relationship between the Dharmaśāstra—and, in general, all the works falling into the category of Smṛti—and the texts of the revelation (Śruti), namely the Veda and Vedic literature, is a central hermeneutical issue in the debate on scriptural authority, to which both Indian authors and their modern interpreters have justly devoted considerable attention. If it is true that, in an attempt to define the boundaries of orthodoxy and find legitimation for the uninterrupted composition of new texts claiming the status of scriptures, ‘virtually all Brahmanical learning in classical and medieval India comes to view itself in one way or another as genetically linked to the Veda’, [734] which gives rise to the notion of vedamūlatva (‘the condition of being rooted in the Veda’), a core problem emerges for the exegetes of the Smṛti, which can be epitomized by this question: if these scriptures derive their authority from their reliance on the Veda, then why is it not possible to detect a corresponding Vedic passage for each of the rituals and the prescriptions contained in the many different Purāṇas, Dharmaśāstra, and so on? The classical argument proposed by the Mīmāṃsakas in order to overcome this impasse is that of the ‘inferred Śruti’ (anumītaśruti), according to which practices and teachings not supported by the Veda, but regarded as authoritative in the traditional scriptures and in the customary usage of true Brahmins, lead to inferring the existence of now lost Vedic passages in which these were rooted.[735] It is according to this hermeneutical strategy that the treatise of Yājñavalkya can state that[736] ‘Revelation, tradition, and the behavior of the Brahmins, as well as what is dear to one’s own self [and] the desire originating from right intentions: this is traditionally held as rooted in Dharma’. The reliance on the Veda and Vedic literature is thus the core principle on which all other acknowledged sources for the knowledge of the Dharma have to depend in order to legitimize their authority, even when the connection might not appear that straightforward.

This is why medieval digest-writers, when faced with the option of including the Veda among the texts to be donated in the context of a gift of knowledge, create a separate category for it, requiring different ritual procedures; on the other hand, in spite of the limited expressive means at their disposal, they identify a Vedic antecedent that justifies the practice of the Purāṇic gift of knowledge. The reasons why a special category of the gift of knowledge had to be created for the Veda are linked to the peculiar status of the Vedic text and its transmission: the text, in fact, has traditionally been handed down by means of sophisticated pedagogical techniques based on oral recitation, which however have been supported by manuscript transmission since relatively early times.[737] Much has been said on the ideological implications connected with the supposedly exclusive orality of the transmission of the Vedic texts, and how this might not entirely have corresponded to reality. It is of no concern here to investigate this vast topic, which has aroused the interest of modern scholars since their first encounters with Indian traditional cultures.[738] What is relevant is that, to the mind of Hemādri and his colleagues, ‘Vedas are not manuscripts’, even though they eventually became such, and as a consequence the usual ritual activities required for a gift of knowledge would not suit the nature of the Vedic text. This drives Hemādri to elaborate a distinct new section on the Purāṇic notion of the gift of the Veda (Dānakhaṇḍa, pp. 517–25) that, consistently with the idea of the primacy of the Veda over other scriptures, precedes the sections on the gift of the Dharmaśāstras and the Purāṇas. Lakṣmīdhara had only dealt with the topic in passing by quoting the few stanzas on the ‘gift of the brahman’ (brahmadāna) with which Hemādri will start his longer disquisition. At the same time, although the procedures established for a gift of the Veda are respectful of the ‘oral status’ that the Brahminical tradition attributes to these texts, the element of worship, which constitutes an important feature of medieval rituals of donation, is not even entirely removed from this gifting category. The developments of ritual practice were often independent from theory and ideology, and the privileged status of the Veda did not prevent its being subsumed into the varied world of Purāṇic mythology and the all-pervading domain of medieval devotion, which ended up assigning a material form to the four collections of Vedic hymns (saṃhitās), and turning this ‘body’ into one of the numerous substrata of worship.

At first, the solution adopted by the digest-writers in order to elude the problem posed by the irreducibility of the Vedic text to the written word was to include the traditional oral recitation and teaching of the Vedas under the category of the gift of the Veda. This does not happen without contradiction, since a long tradition of prescriptive literature had already codified Vedic recitation as part of the set of obligatory rites that Brahmin householders were bound to perform daily. Thus, a first notion for the digest-writers to engage with is that of the so-called gift of the brahman (brahmadāna), which Lakṣmīdhara evokes at the beginning and in the middle of his chapter on the gift of knowledge, and which Hemādri uses to open the paragraph on the gift of the Veda. Both authors quote from the Manusmṛti, the Yājñavalkyasmṛti, and the Mahābhārata,[739] which mention the gift of the brahman and the ‘gift of Sarasvatī’ (sarasvatīdāna), while Hemādri also adds Viṣṇudharmottara 3.303, which is the first of the quoted sources to explicitly mention a vedadāna instead. This would suggest that the gift of the brahman and the gift of the Veda are regarded as synonyms. Our sources devote relatively little attention to clarifying the notion of the gift of the brahman but, in spite of that, this category is particularly significant to explaining the historical development of the gift of knowledge, as the digest-writers seem to use it as a trait d’union between Vedic and Purāṇic ritual.

Hemādri’s paragraph on the gift of the Veda opens with Manusmṛti 4.233, which extols the gift of the brahman as the most superior of all gifts, superior to the donation of essential goods such as food, water, and cattle, as already observed with reference to its occurrence in Lakṣmīdhara’s Dānakāṇḍa.[740] In commenting upon this stanza, Medhātithi, the author of the earliest extant commentary on the Manusmṛti, possibly originating from Kashmir and active between the eighth and tenth century,[741] states that the gift of the brahman is tantamount to two activities, namely the study and the teaching of the Veda (brahmadānaṃ vedādhyayanavyākhyane). Hemādri, as Lakṣmīdhara before him, simply rests on Medhātithi’s interpretation by adding a brief gloss: brahmadānaṃ vedadānam. Therefore, the idea of dāna is used here to recall an act of transmitting and receiving teachings in a ritualized context, as was the one in which the teaching and learning of the Vedic text was supposed to happen. The Manusmṛti had already referred to a ‘donor of the brahman’ (brahmadaḥ) in stanza 4.232, which is not quoted by the digest-writers. Here Manu states:[742] ‘The donor of a chariot or a bed [obtains] a wife, the donor of protection [obtains] power; the donor of grains [obtains] eternal happiness, the donor of the brahman [obtains] equality with Brahmā’. The commentary of Medhātithi on this point is slightly different than the one that he will give for the following stanza. While identifying the brahman with the Veda (‘Brahman [means] Veda’), he defines the activity of donating it by using some additional terms:[743] ‘its donor is the one who teaches and explains [it].’ The action nouns which Medhātithi uses in commenting on 4.232, deriving from the verbal roots adhyāpaya and vyākhyā respectively, thus denote the ‘impartation’ and ‘exegesis’ of the Vedic text; on the other hand, the two actions defining the gift of the brahman in the commentary on 4.233 are adhyayana, ‘studying’, and again vyākhyā. The latter can be interpreted as meaning ‘teaching’ when matched with adhyayana, ‘studying’, but when it is associated with the causative root adhyāpaya, ‘teaching’ (literally, ‘to make learn’), as in the commentary on 4.232, one has to attribute to vyākhyā the slightly different sense of ‘explaining’—meaning not a mechanical mnemonic teaching, but a proper exegesis. Excluding any corruptions from the text, we may conclude that Medhātithi defines the gift of the brahman through three distinct though related notions, namely teaching and learning (adhyāpana and adhyayana), both implying the recitation of the text, and explanation (vyākhyā), which can be read as a hint at the exegetical tradition of the Vedic text, namely the one represented by the Mīmāṃsā schools. Further mentions of these activities throughout the text and its commentary provide more insight that allow for enriching and delimiting this definition.

This idea of a gift of the brahman that also corresponds to Vedic recitation, though understood in a ‘pedagogic’ sense, recalls a notion that has already been mentioned with reference to the gift of knowledge of the Śivadharmottara (see § 1.2), namely the doctrine of the ‘five great sacrifices’ (pañcamahāyajña) and, more specifically, the ‘sacrifice of the brahman’ (brahmayajña). This doctrine is expounded in chapter 3 of the Manusmṛti where, according to stanza 3.70[744] (which rests on an earlier Vedic tradition), the sacrifice of the brahman is said to be tantamount to the adhyāpana, namely the recitation of the Vedic text that corresponds to its teaching.[745] The notion thus seems to overlap, at least partially, with that of the gift of the brahman, as confirmed by Medhātithi’s commentary on Manusmṛti 3.70:[746]

With the word ‘teaching’ (adhyāpana) is also meant the study (adhyayana) [of the Veda], because here [the author] will say: ‘The continuous repetition [of the Veda] (japa) is the oblation without fire’.[747] And the continuous repetition does not require students. And it is commonly known from the Revelation that ‘[one is born owing] the personal recitation of the Veda (svādhyāya) [as debt] to the Vedic seers (ṛṣis)’. So [it is stated] in the Vedic text teaching about debts.[748] Therefore, both the teaching and the study [are], in accordance to the possibilities [of each person], a sacrifice of the brahman.

Surely, the idea of the gift of the brahman is echoed by references to the activities of teaching and studying the Veda through recitation, so that we can conclude that the gift and the sacrifice of the brahman, if not completely identical notions, are however overlapping for at least three-quarters of the elements concurring with their definitions. Medhātithi makes no mention here of the exegetical activity he will evoke in the definition of the gift of the brahman given in the commentary on stanza 4.232, while introducing here, with the help of a famous passage from the Śatapathabrāhmaṇa, a further notion that the commentator uses as a synonym of ‘study’ (adhyayana) and ‘continuous repetition’ (japa), namely that of ‘personal recitation’ (svādhyāya). That this is also included in the definition of ‘sacrifice of the brahman’ is made clear at another point in Medhātithi’s commentary, on 3.70 (=3.60), where he raises an objection to his own definition, asking:[749]

[...] How is it possible that the personal recitation of the Veda is a sacrifice? For in this [recitation of the Veda] the deities are not offered a sacrifice, nor are they taught [to be present]. [Here] the syllables of the Veda are merely pronounced, with no intention of expressing their meanings. And it has been stated, ‘Some [authorities] say that during the constant repetition of the Veda (āmnāyaśabdābhyāse) [words] are meaningless’.[750]

The objector thus points out the identification between the sacrifice of the brahman and the personal recitation of the Veda (svādhyāya), in which no recipient or pedagogic purpose is involved (it is ‘independent from students’, as Medhātithi had said in the previous portion of the commentary on this stanza); stressing this equivalence, the hypothetical adversary wonders whether, under these premises, the sacrifice of the brahman can indeed still be considered a sacrifice, namely a ritual activity, given the absence of deities in this process. Medhātithi’s reply to this objection will be that both the word ‘sacrifice’ and the word ‘great’ in the expression ‘five great sacrifices’ do not have to be interpreted literally but, rather, have to be intended in a figurative meaning with eulogistic purposes; they are, technically speaking, arthavāda.[751]

To summarize, the Manusmṛti, reflecting an early stage in the tradition, knows of the notions of sacrifice of the brahman and the gift of the brahman; in the context of the gift of knowledge, the post-twelfth century digest-writers, whose expressive tools do not allow them to make explicit all the complexity of this development, only mention the gift of the brahman, and understand it as a synonym of the gift of the Veda. Thanks to Medhātithi’s commentary, which preceded the digests, we are aware that medieval exegesis associated three notions with the gift of the brahman, scil. of the Veda, namely its teaching (adhyāpana) and studying (adhyayana), which are both implemented through recitation, and its exegesis (vyākhyā). At the same time, Medhātithi associates the teaching and the study of the Veda with another form of Vedic recitation, the ‘personal recitation’ (svādhyāya), and these three form the definition of sacrifice of the brahman, one of the five early ritual practices of the lay householder which are already prescribed in Vedic literature. This connection with the sacrifice of the brahman is significant insofar as it facilitates reconnecting the gift of knowledge, of which we only find attestations in medieval Purāṇic sources, with a purely Vedic practice, via the association of both the gift of knowledge and the sacrifice of the brahman with the gift of the brahman. In this way the digest-writers act consistently with the hermeneutical principle evoked at the beginning of this paragraph, namely that the Purāṇas, and thus their teachings, derive their authority from the Veda. The gift of the brahman and its understanding according to the medieval commentarial tradition indicate that the Vedic roots of the Purāṇic gift of knowledge can be found in the sacrifice of the brahman.

In the most complete study dedicated to the topic of the personal recitation of the Veda, Malamoud (1977) stresses the exact correspondence between the latter and the sacrifice of the brahman in Vedic literature, basing his deductions primarily on two passages from the Śatapathabrāhmaṇa and the Taittirīyāraṇyaka on the teaching of the five great sacrifices, both giving great relevance to the sacrifice of brahman.[752] As observed by Malamoud, the peculiarity of the latter lies in the perfect identity that it presupposes between ritual substance (dravya) and the deity involved (devatā): since this sacrifice corresponds to a personal recitation of the Veda, which was not intended for pedagogic purposes but as one of the daily obligatory rites that the householder performs in order to repay his innate debt towards the Veda itself, the brahmayajña, i.e. the ‘offering to the Veda’, coincides with its recitation, not with a material oblation to honour a deity or divinized being.[753] The objection raised in Medhātithi’s commentary regarded exactly this point, questioning whether a yajña could really exclude the involvement of the gods. When Medhātithi specifies that this notion of ‘sacrifice’ only serves eulogistic purposes, he is rejecting any attempts at subsuming the sacrifice of the brahman under the domain of worship.[754] Malamoud observes that Vedic literature maintains a clear distinction between the personal recitation of the Veda and the pedagogic recitation aimed at teaching and learning the text, specifying that[755] ‘C’est la récitation-personelle du Veda qui est le signe constant de l’appartenance à l’orthodoxie brahmanique, que l’on se place au coeur du système ou bien à sa périphérie, que l’on choisisse le mārga de la vie dans le monde ou celui qui doit aboutir à la délivrance’. According to this interpretation, it is only with the Pūrvamīmāṃsā, which never considers the sacrifice of the brahman in its speculation, and which has a strong influence on the commentarial tradition on Dharmaśāstra, that the personal recitation is somehow detached from the sacrifice of the brahman by stressing the function played by the recitation in the transmission of the Vedic text within a given Vedic school (śākhā): the solitary recitation (adhyayana) is meant to impress in the memory the text that is always taught through recitation (adhyāpana).[756] Hence the understanding of the pair of terms adhyayana and adhyāpana as ‘studying’ and ‘teaching’ in post-Vedic literature, such as the commentary of Medhātithi, and the identification of these pedagogic recitations with the sacrifice of the brahman, which almost becomes a synonym of the gift of the brahman, a notion that closely hints at the trasmission of teachings by the same idea of gifting. This does not imply that the meaning of svādhyāya as a personal sacrifice dissolves in favour of its being conceived in a ‘school-based’ sense: the ambiguity underlying the understanding of this notion in medieval texts is shown by the same commentary of Medhātithi, in which the sacrifice of the brahman is at times connected to the study and teaching of the Veda, but also superimposed on the personal recitation, and at the same time called a ‘perpetual sacrifice of the brahman’ (brahmasattra, Manusmṛti 2.105ff.).

The gift of the brahman, which presupposes this bifurcation pointed out by Malamoud, qualifies thus as a more recent version of the Vedic sacrifice of the brahman, in which the category of dāna amplifies not only the pedagogic but also the devotional aspects. This becomes evident once we return to the work of the digest-writers, and in particular if we shift our attention to a more modern text than the Smṛti of Manu, namely the Yājñavalkyasmṛti, whose testimony is used by medieval authors to seal the connection between the gift of the brahman and the gift of knowledge.

Immediately following Manusmṛti 4.233, Hemādri quotes Yājñavalkyasmṛti 1.212, which is a source that had already been used by Lakṣmīdhara. This functions as a sort of expansion on the Manusmṛti quotation, since it connects the brahmadāna with the reward of the world of Brahmā, and exalts the superiority of this gift that is ‘made of all dharmas’.[757] As already observed, it is in the commentary on this stanza that Aparārka, the twelfth-century commentator on the Yājñavalkyasmṛti, discusses the topic of the gift of knowledge by means of quotations from Purāṇic sources, thus confirming that the medieval tradition saw a connection between the brahmadāna and the vidyādāna. Regarding this, Aparārka understands the gift of the brahman, consistently with the Dharmaśāstric tradition, as a synonym of the teaching of the Veda.[758] The transition to the gift of knowledge in his commentary on Yājñavalkyasmṛti 1.212 is mediated by two quotations from the Bhṛaspatismṛti and the Yamasmṛti praising the gift of knowledge, and by a very simple connective sentence where Aparārka states:[759] ‘Because we happen to be talking about the gift of the brahman, the procedure for the gift of other fields of study is also explained’. At this point, Aparārka inserts a series of Purāṇic stanzas on the gift of knowledge, from the already examined Bhaviṣyottarapurāṇa, Matsyapurāṇa, and Nandipurāṇa, all of which, as we have had multiple opportunities to observe, deal with the gift of knowledge in the form of a gift of manuscripts. This testifies de facto that, for the interpretive medieval tradition, it was not problematic to link the gift of the brahman of the earlier Smṛtis with the Purāṇic ritual of the gift of knowledge, and that the traditional teaching of the Veda, which is rooted in the five great sacrifices of Vedic literature, is now considered a branch of the same tree to which the various procedures for the gift of manuscripts belong. Moreover, by inserting the quotations on the gift of knowledge in the commentary upon a stanza of Yājñavalkya, Aparārka creates an exegetical connection between the traditional teaching of the Veda and the gift of manuscripts.

Also, the Smṛti of Yājñavalkya deals with the topic of the five great sacrifices, which are called mahāmakha instead of mahāyajña here, and does so from verse 1.100 onward. In this section the author resorts to the concept of japayajña, the ‘sacrifice of the continuous repetition’, arguably used as a synonym of sacrifice of the brahman, which, in turn, is explained as a personal recitation of the Veda (svādhyāya).[760] However, these old notions are enriched by differences that are the product of a new cultural climate, as Yājñavalkya prescribes that: [761]

In order to obtain perfection in the sacrifice of continuous recitation, one should recite as much as possible the [three] Vedas, the Atharvan, and the Purāṇas along with the Itihāsas, as well as the knowledge of the self (101).

Yājñavalkya’s work thus bolsters the Veda with the literary works of the Smṛti composed in the late antiquity and early Middle Ages as a ‘fifth Veda’ in the practice of the personal recitation. This association undermines the exclusivity of the Veda at its very basis. A similar feature can be observed in a Purāṇic source, namely the Garuḍapurāṇa, which associates the gift of the brahman with the donation of Smṛti texts, specifying that the latter happens in the form of the donation of manuscripts. Hemādri does quote from this work with reference to the gift of the Veda, but not these specific stanzas, in which the gift of the brahman and the donation of manuscripts are associated to the point that it turns out difficult to distinguish between the two:[762]

The donor of the brahman reaches the world of Brahmā, which is difficult to obtain [even] for the gods. And having commissioned the copying [to somebody], or having copied himself the treatises teaching the contents of the Veda and the Dharmaśāstras, he will reach the world of Brahmā. Since Īśvara, in the past, emanated the universe, which is rooted in these [Vedas], (14–15) / For this reason the collection of the contents of the Veda has to be carried out with all efforts. The one who, having copied the Itihāsas and the Purāṇas, donates them, (16) / He obtains a similar merit to that obtained through the gift of Brahman, multiplied by two.

While Aparārka does not expressly state the equivalence of brahmadāna and vidyādāna (or vidyāntaradāna, the ‘gift of other fields of study’, as he calls it), the Garuḍapurāṇa makes the distinction between the two slightly more nebulous. That this Purāṇa considers them to be two different categories is made clear in the last lines, prescribing that the copying and donation of Itihāsas and Purāṇas might bestow a fruit that is even superior to that of the gift of the brahman. Therefore, the latter lost its primacy according to the Garuḍapurāṇa, while the gift of the brahman has become potentially inferior to a ritual category that seemed to have been modelled after it. The brahmadāna is associated with the world of Brahmā, but at the same time an equal fruit is said to be bestowed by copying and donating the treatises (1.98.14–15). These verses seem to regard the two procedures of Vedic teaching and manuscript donation as almost being in a form of competition with each other, a competition that, though not rejecting the importance of the brahmadāna, hints at the primacy of the ritual gift performed by committing the texts to writing and donating their manuscripts—hence, of the gift of knowledge.

The contrast between the two kinds of donation is highlighted by the reference to the ‘treatises teaching the contents of the Vedas’ (vedārthayajñaśāstrāni), which unlike the Veda itself must be transmitted in written form along with the Dharmaśāstra. The compound vedārthayajñaśāstrāni is reminiscent of the Manusmṛti’s ‘sacrifice of the brahman’ mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph. However, closer parallels are more likely to be found in later literature. A well-known passage from Bhagavadgītā’s chapter four, for instance, which reinterprets the traditional teaching of the Dharmaśāstra, lists different kinds of yogic practices called ‘sacrifices’, yajñas. Among these, the text also mentions a svādhyāyajñānayajña (Bhagavadgītā 4.28).[763] Commentaries on the Bhagavadgītā agree in explaining this compound as a ‘sacrifice’, a ‘religious practice’ consisting of the mnemonic study of the Veda (svādhyāya) and knowledge of their meaning. This second part implies the teaching of Vedic exegesis, as explained, among others, by the philosopher Bhāskara, a Vedāntin supporter of the ‘monism with dualism’ (bhedābhedavādin) in his comment on this stanza in the Bhagavadāśayānusaraṇabhāṣya:[764]

The sacrifice of studying corresponds to the mnemonic recitation of the Veda. The sacrifice of knowledge corresponds to the knowledge of the contents of the Veda (vedārthajñānaṃ). Those who have [this] as [their] sacrifice [are called in the text] jñānayajñāḥ. The ascetics, [which means] those who made efforts, who explain the [teachings] of the [Pūrva]mīmāṃsā, of the Śārīraka[mīmāṃsā], and so on, have taken firm vows, which means that their vows are unbroken.

In the words of Bhāskara, the ‘sacrifice’ of the ‘knowledge of the meaning of the Veda’ therefore corresponds to the two major divisions of Mīmāṃsā philosophy, both of which were considered exegeses of the contents of the Veda (vedārtha). The Garuḍapurāṇa inserts the compound vedārthayajña within a brief eulogy of the Veda and the study of its contents, which could be considered indication that, also in the interpretation given by the Purāṇic author, this compound is meant to refer to the treatises of the Mīmāṃsā tradition. At any rate, these verses from the Garuḍapurāṇa, along with the greater attention that medieval authors on Dharmaśāstra devote to the gift of knowledge as compared to its earlier Vedic version that is the brahmadāna/brahmayajña, suggest that the Purāṇic gift of knowledge competes with the practice that the digest-writers seem to claim as its antecedent. The two main consequences of this are the celebration of non-Vedic literature as equally authoritative, and a shift in the focus from oral recitation to written transmission. On this topic, we should observe that the Mahābhārata stanzas quoted by the digest-writers on the ‘gift of sarasvatī’, intended as a synonym of brahmadāna, are echoed in the Agnipurāṇa, a later, composite Purāṇa that, as already observed, has very rarely been quoted by the digest-writers on the topic of the gift of knowledge, in spite of devoting more than one chapter to the topic (for more details see also § 4.2). Specifically on the topic of the donation of the Veda, the Agnipurāṇa mentions it in a few lines that are very close to Mahābhārata 13.68.4; these however are followed by stanzas generically praising the gift of knowledge and the donation of manuscripts, in which the donation of the Veda and other Vedic literature is again mentioned without being distinguished from the other texts and fields of learning included in the broader category of vidyādāna:[765]

Three [gifts] bestow equal fruits in this world: [the gifts of] cattle, land, and knowledge. (51) / A pure man, having donated the knowledge of the brahman [becomes] an inhabitant of the world of Brahmā; the one who donates the knowledge of the brahman, he [is equal to] one who donates the earth [consisting of] seven continents. (52). / The man who would provide safety for all beings, he gets his share in everything. Having copied a Purāṇa or the Mahābhārata, as well as the Rāmāyaṇa, [and] having donated the manuscript, [he] will obtain pleasures and the emancipation from saṃsāra. [The one] who teaches the treatises of the Veda, and [the art] of dancing and singing, will attain the heavenly world. (53–54) / [One] should give to the teacher a recompense [like] food for [his] pupils and so on. What would not be donated by one who knows Dharma, kāma, etc.? (55) / The fruit coming from a thousand Vājapeya sacrifices that have been rightly offered, this fruit [one] obtains in its entirety from the gift of knowledge, no doubt about it! (56) / He who would read a manuscript in the temple of Śiva, in the house of Viṣṇu as well as in that of the Sun, would be [the equivalent of] a donor of all gifts. (57) / In the three worlds, the four castes and the four stages of life, one by one, [and] all deities beginning with Brahmā, are fixed in the gift of knowledge. (58) / Knowledge is the cow that yields [all] desires, knowledge is the unsurpassed eye. Through the gift of Upavedas [one] rejoices with the Gandharvas; (59) / And due to the gift of the Vedāṅgas one reaches the world of Indra. Through the gift of the Dharmaśāstra one rejoices with Dharma. (60) / Due to the gifting of the Siddhānta [Scriptures], [one] attains liberation, without doubt. One [can] achieve a gift of knowledge through the gift of a manuscript. (61) / And donating treatises and Purāṇas [one] will obtain [the fruit of a gift of knowledge] in its entirety, and one who teaches pupils will obtain the fruit of a puṇḍarīka sacrifice. (62)

Again, it is as if the boundaries between the impartation of the Vedic knowledge and the donation of manuscripts of other works had been diluted at a certain point: the ‘treatises on the Vedas’, probably the same as the vedārthayajñaśāstrāṇi of Garuḍapurāṇa 1.98.14, permit reaching Heaven in a similar way as the teaching of the arts of singing and dancing do.

The style adopted by the digest-writers is not fit for expressing complex connections and levels of interaction, but one could argue that the internal disposition of the quotations, according to which those on the vedadāna (or brahmadāna) normally precede texts on the Purāṇic types of donation, not only highlight the role of the Veda as the root of Dharma but also hint at a sort of chronological development. Hemādri, for instance, still praising the donation of Vedic (here called ‘brāhmic’) knowledge, places the two stanzas from the Mahābhārata that Lakṣmīdhara had also quoted after the two quotations on the gift of the brahman. The following quotations from the Viṣṇudharmottara, associating the vedadāna with the gift of Upavedas and Vedāṅgas, deal with the traditional teaching of the Veda— although the gift of the Veda is said to be more important as it bestows ‘the fruit of all sacrifices’;[766] those from the Garuḍapurāṇa praise the excellence of the brahmavidyā over all other branches of knowledge; and those from the Devīpurāṇa, chapter 107, are taken from the most important single source quoted on the topic of the gift of the Veda.[767]

The quotations from chapter 107 of the Devīpurāṇa raise a different subject, which is that of the procedures for the actual worship of the Veda: this is where the text abandons the subject of Vedic recitation and re-enters the field of the Purāṇic ritual. Hemādri seems to follow a sort of chronological and conceptual development when, after stating the equivalence between the gift of the Veda and the gift (and, thus, the sacrifice) of the brahman, he inserts two text passages (from the Devīpurāṇa and the Garuḍapurāṇa) that introduce the Vedic text into the domain of medieval devotion. Consistently with the basic principle of the orality of the Vedic text, however, the focus of worship cannot be a manuscript, but rather the iconic representations of the four collections of Vedic hymns.

The long excerpt from Devīpurāṇa 107, which is the core of Hemādri’s treatment of vedadāna, mentions the scriptures and schools of the Vedic tradition, as well as the different brāhmaṇical lineages (gotras) and tutelary deities (adhidevatās) corresponding to the four Vedas.[768] In his typical style, Hemādri uses this text for giving a clear and exhaustive definition of the object of the gift; it should be noted that, as in the case of the texts quoted in the section on the gift of the Dharmaśāstra, the expression vedadāna never occurs in the chapter of the Devīpurāṇa that he uses precisely to illustrate the gift of the Veda, nor does the text mention anything comparable to a gifting ritual. Once again, therefore, the digest-writer encourages the reader to read these verses through the lens of a topic that was not included in the original source, and to interpret it in the context of the more general category of the gift of knowledge. However, this chapter of the Devīpurāṇa is not completely devoid of ritualistic elements, because starting with stanza 107.50 it gives an account of the icons of the four collections of Vedic hymns, and prescribes their worship. These stanzas, with which Hemādri ends his quotation from Devīpurāṇa 107, are worth being quoted in full here, as they account for an important development in the traditional understanding of the Vedic text, which is personified and, as such, transported into the ritual arena. At the same time, this passage from the Devīpurāṇa accounts for a substantial transformation in the gift of the Veda: if in the first sources quoted by Hemādri this corresponded to the gift of brahman, and thus to the recitation—both the personal recitation and the teaching—of the Veda, now the introduction of a material element fills the vacant gap caused by the absence of the usual worship focus, namely the manuscript:[769]

The Ṛgveda has eyes shaped like a lotus leaf,[770] a pendulous belly; [he] is pure, his neck is curved, his hair and beard are twisted. His measure is five vitastis, is made of silver and pearls; or rather, [he] has to be worshipped as a bestower of boons to a devout twice-born. The Yajurveda has yellowish eyes, a thin waist, thick neck and cheeks, his colour is based on red copper, has black feet, has a length of six pradeśas; or rather he has to be worshipped as a painted liṅga. [Doing so], one will satisfy all his desires. The Sāmaveda always wears a garland, is a pious observant, pure, clothed in pure garments, indulgent, and made of ivory, bearing a big staff, the pupils of the eye made of gold. [He] is of the colour of the sun, measuring six aratnis in length; or, rather, [is made] of copper or of diamond. Once worshipped, he will bestow auspicious rewards. The Atharvaveda has a sharp staff, a slender figure, is the creator of all things, being made of all things, has [his] flames raised; [he is] one who acts vilely. He is the author of treatises; he is †in standing position†. He has the colour of blue water-lilies. He is happy with his own wife, not desiring the wives of others; or, rather, [he] consists of rubies. The one who would worship it fulfills all his desires, as well as the Atharvan prescriptions.

The Vedas are thus worshipped through substitutive objects slightly recalling each collection of hymns. In the same manner as gods can be worshipped in the manuscripts of the texts that are attributed to them, so the Vedas are venerated through their icons, thus creating a correlation between manuscripts and images that informs many aspects of the Indian rituals of manuscripts. The Devīpurāṇa does not clarify whether there is any connection between the teaching of the Vedic texts and their veneration in the form of icons, as opposed to the Garuḍapurāṇa, which Hemādri quotes immediately after. Unlike chapter 107 of the Devīpurāṇa, the following stanzas of the Garuḍapurāṇa have also been quoted by later digest-writers, such as Madanasiṃhadeva and Govindānanda (see Table A), but they are untraceable in the available printed editions of the Purāṇa. In the very first verse of this quotation, the author announces his intention to describe[771] ‘the procedure of gifting that is considered the supreme secret’, thus announcing straight from the beginning its intentions of dealing with a donative ceremony. Moreover, this quotation from the Garuḍapurāṇa seems to start exactly where Devīpurāṇa 107 ends, as the second stanza quoted by Hemādri with attribution to the Garuḍapurāṇa prescribes the proper arrangement of the images of the Vedas, then exhorts their veneration through the offering of clothes and various items:[772]

Having properly arranged the images of the Vedas, made of gold, possessing the characteristics explained above, embellished with purified, numerous precious stones; having arranged [them] according to the sequence beginning with the Ṛgveda […] (10Hem) /—The characteristics of the Ṛgveda and so on have been expounded in the section about the gift of jar of the five elements. — Clothes have to be donated […]/

Hemādri briefly comments upon these lines by making a cursory reference to the mahābhūtaghaṭadāna, the gift of the jar to the five elements, where the features of the Vedas would be described. This is one of the 16 great gifts with which Hemādri, like all the contemporary nibandha-authors of treatises on gifting do, addresses the beginning of his text. The chapter on the mahābhūtaghaṭadāna,[773] which is entirely based on the Matsyapurāṇa—which is the main source concerning the topic of the great gifts—does present a brief description of the Vedas in which these are again regarded as divine icons. In order to perform the gift of the jar, one should first have a golden jar filled with milk and butter (Matsyapurāṇa 289.3), and then place inside it the icons of the gods, which are Brahmā, Viṣṇu, and Śiva, all sitting on lotuses, Varāha carrying the Earth, Varuṇa, Agni, Vāyu and Vināyaka on their mounts, and Kāma (Matsyapurāṇa 289.5–7ab). Furthermore,[774]

[One] should place in the middle of the jar these [icons] along with the five Vedas. (7) / [In the hand] of the Ṛgveda there will be a rosary, [in that] of the Yajurveda a lotus-flower, the Sāmaveda will have a vīṇā. [One] should place a flute on the right side. (8) / Moreover, in the hand of the Atharvaveda there will be the Sruc, Sruva, and the lotus. The Purāṇaveda [is represented] as a boon-granter, having a rosary and a water-gourd. (9)

This description is much simpler than the one given by the Devīpurāṇa, being limited to assigning an emblem to each of the Vedas, also including the ‘Purāṇaveda’, the single Purāṇa symbolizing the entire Purāṇic tradition. The description of the ritual donation is rather brief: after arranging some items around the jar and invoking the Lord of All Beings (sarvabhūteśa, Matsyapurāṇa 289.13), the sponsor should then give this precious vase away. These verses further attest to the practice of the worship of the Vedas in the form of icons, which the Matsyapurāṇa actually refers to at other points in its long account of the great gifts, and which are all quoted by Hemādri: in the more complex gift of the Brahmā’s egg (brahmāṇḍadāna),[775] the text prescribes that, after wrapping the egg in silk cloth, one should then install various deities around it, including the Vedas in the western direction (Matsyapurāṇa 276.9). At the same time, icons of the four Vedas, together with those of the 12 Ādityas, are installed in the fourth out of eight rings of which the ‘Universal Wheel’ consists, as related by the Matsyapurāṇa in the description of the gift of the universal wheel (viśvacakradāna).[776] However, the only proper descriptions of such icons are those of Devīpurāṇa 107 and of Matsya-purāṇa 289. Hemādri refers the reader to the latter twice, once in a commentary appended to the mention of the icons of the Veda in the context of the brahmāṇḍadāna, and another time with reference to the Garuḍapurāṇa stanzas on the vedadāna. It is rather curious that he does so in this case, since he quotes the text of the Garuḍapurāṇa immediately after the description of the four Vedas given in the Devīpurāṇa.

Having provided an account of the worship procedures and of the mantras that have to be addressed to these images,[777] the Garuḍapurāṇa prescribes that these are to be donated to Brahmins, one to each of them, accompanied by three palas of gold.[778] This prescription allows the reintroduction of a proper ritualistic dāna among the procedures for the vedadāna so far described. The text eventually observes:[779]

But this procedure for the gift of the Veda is for one who has not studied the Veda (20Hem) / Because for the one who is always devoted to [its] study [the gift happens] in the form of an impartation of teachings to a student.

The veneration of the Vedas in the form of icons and their donation, an aspect that was missing from the account of the Devīpurāṇa, is thus considered an ‘easier’ alternative for their study, and a means to perform the vedadāna even for those who are not entitled to learn the Veda. This does not mean that the text in any way diminishes the value of Vedic recitation, as attested in the immediately following stanzas:[780]

One who is himself pure, having taken a bath in the morning, with his senses refrained, (14Hem) / Holding kuśa grass in his hands, he should teach those pure Brāhmins who are also like that, leaving aside those who do not perform Vedic recitation, also excluding inferior men from his teachings. (15Hem) / In this way, the one who gives even only one Vedic verse according to the procedure, gives the earth full of the three types of wealth, no doubt about it! (16Hem) /— Moreover: —As many Vedic chants [are sung] and [as many] auspicious Vedic vows [have been taken], so many the one who is pervaded by devotion will receive by means of a vedadāna. (17Hem) / The one who, by giving a livelihood to the teacher, enables [him] to teach [other] people: what has not been donated by him of the things that are taught [to belong to the fields of] Dharma, enjoyment and material wealth? (18Hem)

These stanzas are used to open the description of the gift of the Veda in the Dānavivekoddyota of Madanasiṃhadeva, as the inversion of the order of the verses highlights the primacy of Vedic recitation before accounting for its alternative procedures.[781] However, the Devīpurāṇa and the Garuḍapurāṇa quoted by our digest-writers are not the only sources attesting this form of Vedic cult, as this also occurs in other Purāṇic texts, and has survived in contemporary religious practice, although the attestations of this practice are admittedly rare. For example, in a 1997 article Piano recounts his encounter with a temple dedicated to the Vedas (Shri Veda Mandir) in the town of Ujjain, in which the four Vedas are worshipped in the form of icons—whose features however do not correspond to the description that we have just read in the Devīpurāṇa—accompa-nied by a female figure.[782] Larios (2011) wrote about another such temple, called Shri Guru Gangeshwar Ved Mandir, which is located in the outskirts of Nashik, in Maharashtra: this is a modern construction of the early seventies and it does not enshrine the idols of the four Vedas in human or animal form but, rather ironically if one thinks of the ideology of orality that has surrounded the Vedic text for millennia, as ‘a two meter-tall representation of the vedas bound in contemporary style and crafted in white Italian marble’.[783] More precisely, what this huge marble manuscript represents is the ‘Bhagavān Ved’, a collection of the Vedic mantras from the four collections of hymns compiled by Guru Gangeshwar Maharaj, a popular Indian saint of the twentieth century, who inspired this and other temples; the gāyatrīmantra, as well as Ṛgveda 1.1.9, are carved in golden characters on the surface of this book, which is regularly worshipped along with other icons of the temple.[784]

Furthermore, Piano lists several examples from Purāṇic literature providing instances of the personification of the Vedas, especially from the Viṣṇudharmottara, which prescribes that images of the Vedas should be part of the iconography of Hayagrīva, but which also at times presents the four Vedas as divine animals, or as gods themselves.[785] The Viṣṇudharmottara introduces the icons of the Vedas into ritual practice when it prescribes that the cult of Vibhū (Brahmā) is practiced by placing him in the pericarp of an eight-leaved lotus, and then positioning the four Vedas on four of its leaves: the Ṛgveda in the east, the Yajurveda in the south, the Sāmaveda in the west and the Atharvaveda in the north.[786] That the Viṣṇudharmottara is aware of the existence of anthropomorphic icons of the four Vedas, which are furthermore connected with the cult of Brahmā, is not entirely surprising, since the Viṣṇudharmottara is a Kashmiri text:[787] a further Kashmiri text, the Netratantra, also describes images of the four Vedas, which in this case are depicted as flanking Brahmā (see Netratantra 13.33–34), thus providing a unique textual attestation for an iconographic model that has also been identified in actual bronze images from Kashmir.[788]

The Viṣṇudharmottara does not provide any description of the icons, which are rather described profusely in the account of a similar ritual given in the Vaiṣṇavakhaṇḍa of the Skandapurāṇa. The description contained in these verses does show parallels with the other two Purāṇic descriptions identified so far, in particular with that of chapter 107 of the Devīpurāṇa, albeit only for a few features. As in the case of the examples from the Devīpurāṇa or the Garuḍapurāṇa quoted by Hemādri, the Vaiṣṇavakhaṇḍa does not present the cult of the Vedas as ancillary to other ritual procedures, as the Matsyapurāṇa did, but the representations of the Vedic collections are regarded as the main focus of worship:[789]

On the top of eight leaves then [one] should place the Vedas and the treatises; in this regard, he should place the Vedas in the cardinal directions and the treatises in the intermediate points (51). / In the east one should place the Ṛgveda, bearing a rosary and a garland, white, short, with a pendulous belly, benevolent, with lotus-shaped eyes, whitedressed. (52) / In the southern direction he should place the Yajurveda, with a middlesized body, a thin waist, yellowish eyes, and a thick neck, yellow, [wearing] red clothes (54) / Holding a rosary in the left hand and a vajra in the right one. And in the west [he should place] the Sāmaveda, tall, as bright as the sun, (55) / Holding a rosary in the right and in the left hand a conch, with a golden cloth, bright eyes, trained in singing. (56) / In the northern direction he should place the Atharvan, with a white body, a blue vest, holding in the left hand a rosary and in the right a khaṭvāṅga, and as vigorous as the fire, with copper-coloured eyes, an old man in age. (57)

This chapter of the Vaiṣṇavakhaṇḍa is entirely devoted to the installation and worship of icons of the gods, mostly by placing their images on drawings representing lotus-flowers. Therefore, the Vedas are also among the gods whose images have to be installed and venerated; moreover, in the following stanzas, the Vaiṣṇavakhaṇḍa prescribes the worship of four of the main branches of Sanskrit knowledge, the same that the many sources on vidyādāna analyzed above exhorted to be worshipped in the form of ritually produced and lavishly adorned manuscripts. This time, their material embodiments have long beards and carry several different attributes in their hands:[790]

And in the southeast quarter one should place the Dharmaśāstra, sitting on a lotus-flower and dressed in white, carrying strings of pearls and a balance from the two forearms. (58) / He should place Sāṃkhya, with long beard and nails, having a prominent navel, in the southwestern direction, holding in both hands a rosary, and a white stick. (59) / Then in the northwestern direction he should place Yoga, gold-coloured, with a thin waist, with the two hands placed on the thighs, [turning] his eyes at the tip of his own nose. (60) / Further, in the northeast he should place the Pañcarātra, white, wearing a garland of forest-flowers, and holding a rosary and a plough in his two hands. (61) / For these four a multitude of white, thin clothes have to be realized, as well as imperishable, of the extent of a lotus-leaf. (62) / In the intermediate spaces between the summits one should place the great seers, along with their wives, reciting the Vedas, according to the sequence starting from east, southeast, and so on (63).

These stanzas describe a situation that is similar and complementary to that envisaged by the sources on vidyādāna: there, manuscripts are produced, decorated, and worshipped in the same way as icons of the gods; the texts that these manuscripts transmit, along with the manuscripts themselves, are empowered through ritual—they, like gods, partake both in the mundane and in the ultramundane level of existence, bestow material and immaterial benefits, and are ultimately believed to contribute to save humanity from the beginningless ocean of saṃsāra. Here, the cult of knowledge takes a new, though not unexpected shape, as the texts have finally become those divine icons. In a way, this brief passage from the Vaiṣṇavakhaṇḍa seems to reflect the culmination of a process of sacralization and ritualization of knowledge in the form of its material embodiments.

The overlapping between the notion of manuscripts and that of icons, between the domain of writing culture and that of visual culture, which has always characterized the use of manuscripts in rituals since its inception, is brought to full completion by the texts of the Purāṇic tradition, as the above mentioned cases show. However, this process reaches its peak with the bloom of the literature on the tantric rituals of installation, where the manuscripts are no longer objects to give, but to protect, install, and worship as tangible tokens of the gods’ immanence.

4The Throne of Knowledge: Aspects of the Cult of the Book in the Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava Tantric Traditions

Rituals centered on the worship of scriptures in the form of the veneration of their manuscripts are fairly well attested in the sources belonging to the main Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava tantric traditions, ranging from medieval Kashmir to early modern South India. Literary sources attest a variety of rites prescribing the use of manuscripts, from cases in which manuscripts are just one of the many ‘ritual tools’ (dravya) or one of the different substrata of worship, to those rituals in which manuscripts play the role of the main worship focus. Parallel to the attestations found in the literature for the non-initiated, tantric sources, both Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava, univocally support the practice of worshipping scriptures,[791] and are fully aware of the magic and divinatory powers attributed to manuscripts.[792]

When entering the realm of tantric ritual, the cult of the manuscripts undergoes profound change in the general structure given to it by the Purāṇic tradition. The main difference consists of its being removed from the context of the Brahmanical institution of dāna, and connected to practices that enjoyed a large popularity in tantric environments, such as the worship and installation of thrones.[793] In spite of this, the ritual institutionalization of the donation of manuscripts is consistently performed but, as the frequently attested instructions on the gifting of a manuscript to the future teacher (ācārya) show, this occurs in the framework of tantric initiation.[794] The impartation of a manuscript to an initiant does not however show any of the features characterizing the practice of dāna attested in Purāṇas and Dharmaśāstras, but it could instead have a parallel in non-tantric initiations, whose scanty textual evidence seems to contain a reference to this.[795]

The lesser emphasis placed on dāna in the construction and performance of manuscript rituals can primarily be linked to the esotericism of tantric teachings and, consequently, of manuscripts carrying tantric scriptures: the vast and all-pervading notions of the secrecy of the scriptures and the exclusiveness of the ritual, uniquely addressed to an audience of initiated practitioners, form two of the essential underpinnings on which esoteric religion is founded, and which Śaivism of the Mantramārga also extends to the religious practice of lay householders.[796] The emphasis placed on the sectarian transmission of the teachings has various consequences for the attitude towards knowledge in general and manuscripts in particular: tantric sources register a more accentuated urge to ‘protect’ the texts from people who are not entitled to access them, an attitude which translates into frequent exhortations to guard the tantra in the same way as wealth that has to be kept away from thieves.[797] As shown by examples taken from the sources that will be examined in this chapter (see in particular §§ 4.2 and 4.3), tantric sources recommend preventing non-initiates from copying manuscripts of the scriptures (Uttarakāmika 67.8), and not teaching in their proximity (Uttarakāmika 67.8, Svacchandatantra 5.51 and Mṛgendra, Caryāpāda 1.31, all dealt with below; note that the teaching sessions described in some of the sources do involve the reading or the veneration of manuscripts). This does not mean that a protective attitude towards manuscripts is a prerogative of tantric texts, since the idea of preserving the purity of the tradition, also in order to guarantee its prestige, is similarly at play in scriptures for the non-initiated, as shown by the case of the Śivadharmottara and its prescriptions not to corrupt the Śaiva knowledge or to sell its manuscripts (see § 2.2)—which is reminiscent, as we observed at that point, of the famous traditional injunctions against the ‘sellers of the Vedas’. Furthermore, we observe that the teachings on the cult of the liṅga in chapter 9 of the Śivadharmaśāstra were deemed ‘secret’, ‘not to be transmitted to anybody’ (see § 1.3). Tantric sources, however, are more concerned, on the one hand, with the issue of sectarian rivalry and, on the other, with the maintenance of an internal hierarchy which preserves the status of the higher levels of initiates. One of the behaviours that tantric texts reprehend is the autonomous access to manuscripts as a source for learning mantras: in commenting upon Netratantra 8.59, referring to ‘ineffective (literally, ‘stabbed’) mantras’ (mantrāḥ … kīlitāḥ), the eleventh-century Kashmiri Śaiva author Kṣemarāja explains these as mantras[798] ‘Whose phonemes and words are in disorder, destitute of the teachers’ tradition, taken by the pupils from a book on their own initiative […]’. Similarly, on the authority of the Siddhayogīśvarīmata, in the Tantrāloka Abhinavagupta points out more than once the ‘lack of virility’ (nirvīrya) of mantras in a book.[799] However, this rule is not without exceptions, as the text foresees the existence of a category of people, albeit small, who can acquire the effective power of a mantra just by learning it from books;[800] as Abhinavagupta states at a previous point in his work, once again deferring to the authority of the Siddhayogīśvarīmata, mantras learned from books might be defective but, strictly speaking, they are not prohibited (na niṣiddhatā, 4.66).[801] The risks incurred by the written circulation of powerful tools such as the mantras depend on the possibility that people who have not undergone initiation (dīkṣāsamayavarjitāḥ, 4.67) will be able to access these mantras, and therefore use them to commit violence and damage others (parahiṃsādi vaśyādi ca, 4.68).[802]

In spite of these caveats, manuscripts are considered a substratum of worship in the sphere of private cult by the utmost authorities on Śaiva rite, such as the same Abhinavagupta and the eleventh-century master Somaśambhu, author of an influential ritual manual (paddhati).[803] Starting from the twelfth century, prominent authors of the Śaivasiddhānta tradition, to which Somaśambhu also belongs, such as Aghoraśiva, Jñānaśiva and Trilocanaśiva, more systematically refer to the cult of the manuscripts of sacred scriptures as the cult of the ‘throne of knowledge’ (vidyāpīṭha),[804] an expression that authors of this period tend to use simply as a synonym for manuscripts. However, at least in one case, Jñānaśiva, and then Tri-locanaśiva quoting him, uses this expression not to indicate the manuscripts of scriptures, but a support (pīṭha) on which manuscripts are laid and worshipped (see § 4.2). References to the cult of the throne of knowledge are already traceable in pre-twelfth century works, such as the above-mentioned Tantrāloka of Abhinavagupta or the Mṛgendra (especially Kriyāpāda 3.56cd–57ab; see below for more references to both texts), a relatively early[805] tantric scripture included in the canon of the 28 tantras acknowledged by the Śaivasiddhānta tradition.[806] These scriptures, from which much of the textual evidence provided in the following pages is extracted or based upon, are a heterogeneous class of texts including both earlier works that were also transmitted in northern India, the earliest of which possibly originated in the fifth to sixth century,[807] and later texts produced in the south. These later, post-twelfth century Śaivasiddhānta scriptures were, unlike the earlier ones, mostly focused on temple rites rather than on private worship;[808] their composition is univocally connected to the Tamil-speaking regions of South India, and the emergence and development of temple religion. It is only in these later works devoted to public rites that the few, scattered references to the worship of the throne of knowledge made by authors and scriptures up to the twelfth century develop into the depiction of a more complex ritual of installation (pratiṣṭhā). The ‘Installation of the Throne of Knowledge’ (vidyāpīṭhapratiṣṭhā) thus finds firm attestation in the accounts of later Siddhāntatantras such as the Uttarakāmika, the Acintyaviśvasādākhya, the Aṃśumat, the Vīra and the Santāna, with the last three reproducing almost identical texts. An important section on the installation of the throne of knowledge, which is centered on the worship of the ‘manuscript of the Śaiva knowledge’ (śivajñānapustaka) and was found in the later ritual manual Śivārcanācandrikā by the sixteenth-century Saiddhāntika teacher Appayya Dīkṣita, draws on some of these scriptural authorities. Substantial parts, including those on the cult of the throne of knowledge, were copied from the Kriyāsāra (‘Essence of Rituals’), an epitome of Śaiva rites authored by the Vīraśaiva teacher Nīlakaṇṭhaśivācārya (see § 4.3). Furthermore, much attention is devoted to the subject in the digest-style ‘Ritual Manual of Private Worship’ (Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati) by the sixteenth-century author Vedajñānaguru II of Cidambaram, who constructs his ritual manual by quoting mostly from the Siddhānta scriptures. As pointed out by Sanderson and Goodall, it is in the work of this author that, for the first time, the majority of the scriptures of the Siddhānta have been quoted, and the text of these quotations can also be traced in the original sources.[809]

The evolution of the worship of the throne of knowledge as an independent cult and its re-definition as an installation type of rite is thus mostly a post-twelfth century development, a circumstance reflecting major changes internal to the Śaivasiddhānta tradition. Rituals for the installation of icons and consecration of temples had been one of the main areas of expertise of Saiddhāntika officiants[810] since the earliest phases of the emergence of the Śaivasiddhānta. However, as amply shown by Sanderson, the advent of a specialised literature on installations, and of the figure of the Saiddhāntika experts officiating those practices (sthāpaka), in the course of time came to be connected in a relation of reciprocal influence with the growth of temple-centred religion in South India, as a way through which south and southeast Asian sovereigns sought and found legitimacy.[811] From this perspective, the expansion of the Śaiva temple cult under the Cōḻa emperors in Tamil Nadu has to be seen not only as having happened under the influence of, but also the main impetus for, the emergence of new scriptures regulating the ritual duties of the Śaiva temple officiants from the twelfth century onward, and thus introducing their cult to the public sphere. It is on account of these reasons that, despite the rather uncertain chronology of the Śaivasiddhānta scriptures, the twelfth century can be indicated as marking a watershed in the historical development of the Śaivasiddhānta and, consequently, of its literature; given the strong connection established with temple religion in the south, the production of the Siddhāntatantras, originally a pan-Indian phenomenon,[812] has only survived in southern India after this date[813] where the living Śaiva tradition still presents itself as part of the Siddhānta.

However, the practice of installation rites is a wider phenomenon than the Śaivasiddhānta itself, both diachronically, as installations are already attested in the Vedic ritual literature of the Śrauta and Gṛhyasūtras,[814] and on a synchronic level, because, like many of the Vedic ritual practices, the installations enter the domain of the Smārta rite in the early medieval era, and thus are also dealt with in Purāṇic literature.[815] Ample treatments of installations are also available in the Vaiṣṇava and Buddhist tantric body of texts.[816] Although rituals of installation can also be performed for buildings, the installation emerges in early literature as a ritual concerning divine icons. In Śaivism, it is mainly constructed around the installation of the aniconic representations of Śiva in the liṅga, as exemplified by the rather lengthy descriptions of liṅgapratiṣṭhās available in some of the pretwelfth century Siddhāntatantras such as the Raurava, the Mataṅga, the Kiraṇa and the Svāyambhuva.[817] This fact is crucial in order to understand the value awarded to this ritual when performed for manuscripts, and as a consequence the function acquired by the manuscripts of scriptures through the ritual for their installation. Independently of the connection established between the gods and their (iconic or aniconic) representations, which according to the different interpretations mainly oscillate between the idea of a superimposition and that of identification,[818] and apart from the aspects that are stressed during the performance of the installation,[819] it is undeniable that, in the Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava traditions, this procedure is needed in order to establish the material presence of the gods in the artifact, with which the devotee can thus form a direct connection during regular worship. Among the many steps required for the performance of an installation, this aspect is vividly illustrated by the so-called ‘opening of the eyes’ (netronmīlana) of the icon, which corresponds to the moment when the officiant invokes the god and invites him or her to descend into the image.[820] This practice, which in the case of the installation of the liṅga has its counterpart in the ‘extraction of the features’ (lakṣaṇoddhāra),[821] is prescribed by at least two of the available textual sources (the Agnipurāṇa and the Vīratantra; see below for both) to also be performed for the manuscript at the moment in which the installation reaches its peak. Although it is not specified how the opening of the eyes of a manuscript should be carried out in practice, a parallel practice attested in the Buddhist Vajrāvalī suggests that this was done by anointing the image of the manuscript reflected in a mirror. [822] The opening of the eye is an action that concretely equates the manuscript with an image of the gods, and thus with their material embodiment in the cult. More similarities between the installation of icons and that of the manuscripts, although descriptions of the latter are far less elaborate when compared to the procedures for the liṅga installation, can be read, for instance, in the ritualization of the construction of the item to be installed—the construction and transcription of the manuscripts counting as the first step in their installation—or in the prescriptions concerning their worship and anointment with various ritual substances (note that the Agnipurāṇa, similarly to the Vajrāvalī, remarks that, in order to perform this procedure, one has to bathe the image of a manuscript reflected into a mirror). Moreover, the accounts of the installation of the throne of knowledge are preceded by the physical description of the manuscript—see the Uttarakāmika, the Aṃśumat, or the Śivārcanācandrikā, discussed below (§§ 4.2 and 4.3)—corresponding to the instructions concerning the iconography of the gods in the procedures for the installation of their images.

The installation of the throne of knowledge is the most frequently attested ritual in tantric texts that is entirely focused on manuscripts. It can therefore be considered an equivalent of the gift of knowledge in non-tantric sources. It is thus no coincidence that textual materials are abundantly drawn from the Śivadharmottara and reused by these later sources in order to structure their prescriptions for the installation ceremony: this is especially evident in the frequently overlapping texts of the Uttarakāmika and the Acintyaviśvasādākhya, which integrate substantial portions from the Śivadharmottara’s Vidyādānādhyāya, conveniently ‘purified’ of its references to dāna. Although other tantras seem to be more resilient to this integration, this was not the case with the ritual treatises and manuals: Nīlakaṇṭha and Appayya Dīkṣita’s descriptions reveal the influence of the Śivadharmottara’s gift of knowledge in the use of a specific terminology, while the Paddhati of Vedajñāna acknowledges the role of the early Śaiva text in a far more explicit way, namely by quoting (with attribution) long portions of this text alongside later tantric scriptures. Through a careful selection and a systematic intertwining of the texts to quote, Vedajñāna successfully superimposes a more modern, tantric-style interpretation on the ritual practices and some of the tools and elements described by the Śivadharmottara’s Vidyādānādhyāya.

Early Śaivism is thus certainly one of the interlocutors in the construction of this ritual procedure, but at the same time there are two other important participants in this textual and religious dialogue: besides further mentions in Buddhist sources,[823] important parallels are offered by the Vaiṣṇava tantric tradition of the Pāñcarātra, whose attestations will be discussed in the following pages. The Pāñcarātra texts, as well as those that are demonstrably older due to the fact that they, like the Jayākhyasaṃhitā, had been transmitted in the north,[824] attest to the use of manuscripts in ritual contexts along the same lines of development observed in the Śaivasiddhanta tradition. This consisted of the creation—although apparently on a smaller scale—of an installation rite which focused on the manuscripts of scriptural authorities and designated, among other denominations, as śāstrapīṭha[825] and vidyāpīṭhapratiṣṭhā. The longest Pāñcarātra version of this ritual is attested in the Pauṣkarasaṃhitā. This work, together with the Jayākhyasaṃhitā and the Sātvatasaṃhitā, is traditionally considered a part of the ‘triple gem’ (ratnatraya)—meaning the three most authoritative and supposedly earliest scriptures[826]—of the Pāñcarātra. Sanderson’s arguments for the composition of the earliest Pāñcarātrika scriptural sources in the wake of Mantramārga Śaivism[827] are central to understanding the emergence and growth of the Pāñcarātra. This is illustrated by their retention of numerous elements of the Śaiva ritual system, including some that would only make sense in the context of Śaivism, while sounding inappropriate in that of the Pāñcarātra.[828] According to this reconstruction, the Pauṣkarasaṃhitā and the Sātvatasaṃhitā would belong to the latest phase of the formative period in the development of the Pāñcarātra, in which the assimilation of Śaiva practice took place at a more mature level. Although originating from the north of India, possibly from Kashmir, the Pāñcarātra tradition is subsequently only attested in the south, where the northern works were given more recent layers of text, and new scriptures such as the Lakṣmītantra or the Pādmasaṃhitā were composed.[829]

Under these premises, it comes as no surprise that the Pauṣkarasaṃhitā, as well as the later Hayaśīrṣapāñcarātra, describe similar manuscript rituals as those found in Śaivasiddhānta sources, even sharing with them a few elements that ultimately go back to the Śivadharmottara. This is however not to say that their accounts are identical with those of Śaiva sources, as they in fact show some noteworthy independent traits that reconnect them to the Pāñcarātra tradition on the one hand, and to Purāṇic literature on the other.

4.1The Cult of the Book in the Context of Obligatory and Occasional Rites

The worship of manuscripts is considered part of the daily routine of Śaiva initiates from various traditions, as well as one of the phases of the annual reparatory rite consisting of the offering of the pavitras (literally ‘purifier’), circles of knotted cotton threads, to the gods, during a ceremony called pavitrāropaṇa or pavitrārohaṇa (‘offering of the pavitras’).[830] The Kashmiri Śaiva teacher Abhinavagupta (fl. ca. 975–1025 CE),[831] in chapter 27 of his Tantrāloka, briefly mentions the worship of manuscripts within the broadest topic of the obligatory liṅga worship. After detailing the different kinds of liṅgas and vessel skulls, Abhinavagupta describes the adoration of the rosary and then lists some other objects that can be used to aid worship (Tantrāloka 27.44), such as a sword (khaḍga), the sacrificial knife (kṛpāṇikā), scissors (kartarī), and a mirror (makura). ‘Alternatively’—as the text of stanza 49 reads[832]— ‘a manuscript that contains a sequence of such secret scriptures, very pure, copied by initiates. Also in this case, this [same] procedure is prescribed.’ The procedure explained in the preceding stanzas for the sword and the other objects envisaged the projection of mantras; referring to the Bhairavakulatantra, Abhinavagupta adds (27.45) that all kinds of religious services (upacāra) can be offered to the said objects during the adoration performed on the days established by the Kaula observance. Already in chapter 6 of the Tantrāloka, manuscripts had been referred to as a receptacle of worship, within a list including 11 objects in the same category (see 6.2–3). Here the author discusses the three different types of sthānas, classified into three groups, which are prāṇa (breath), deha (body), and bahis (outer object), a category comprising, among other things, material worship aids such as maṇḍalas, the rosary, manuscripts (pustaka), an image traced on a human skull (tūra),[833] an image painted on a cloth (paṭa), and the icon of a deity (pratimā).[834]

Besides being the object of regular daily worship and meditation (see Tantrāloka 12.8), the presence of manuscripts is also envisaged for the performance of the annual offering of pavitras, a rite aimed at repairing all the infringements that might have been made in the performance of past rituals.[835] Chapter 28 of the Tantrāloka specifies that, according to the description of the ceremony given by the Ratnamālātantra, the throne of knowledge and the rosary have to be offered a pavitra that is ‘like [that] of the teacher’ (guruvat, 28.133),[836] meaning that it had to be provided with 108 knots, as stated in the preceding verse. Later on, in the description of this ritual according to the Triśirobhairavatantra, the throne of knowledge is first mentioned in a list of the recipients of the pavitras (28.156), then the text prescribes that it has to be offered a pavitra provided with 50 knots (28.158).[837]

The same situation, in which manuscripts of scriptures are venerated as part of the daily ritual schedule of an initiate and are offered a pavitra during the annual rite, but where no specific ceremony entirely focused on the manuscripts is prescribed, is reflected in the influential ritual manual (paddhati) of an almost contemporary of Abhinavagupta, the mid-eleventh century Śaivasiddhānta teacher Somaśambhu. He worked far from Kashmir—though a Kashmiri origin has been claimed for him by manuscript sources[838]—being a member of the Durvāsas lineage attached to the Golakīmaṭha, according to the already examined Malkota pillar inscription from the Guntur District, Andhra Pradesh, dated to 1155 or 1156 CE (see § 2.4).[839] Somaśambhu is the author of the widely known ritual manual that goes by the name of Kriyākāṇḍakramāvalī, commonly also referred to as the ‘Ritual Manual of Somaśambhu’ (Somaśambhupaddhati), composed according to a recent estimate in 1048–49 CE.[840] In spite of the differences separating Somaśambhu’s Śaivism ‘of the right’[841] from Abhinavagupta, and the diversity of the two works that we take into consideration—the Tantrāloka was conceived as a doctrinal, liturgical, and ritual treatise, the Kriyākāṇḍakramāvalī as a ritual manual of private worship[842]—the particular ritual aspects concerning the use of manuscripts remain almost unaltered, thus testifying to a certain uniformity at this level of the practice. However, a major difference is marked by the circumstance that Somaśambhu never resorts to the expression ‘throne of knowledge’ (vidyāpīṭha), rather referring to ‘manuscript’ (pustaka) instead—a possible hint that the two words might have been understood as synonyms. The seventh step of the daily ritual routine outlined by Somaśambhu consists of the ‘Worship of Knowledge and the Teacher’ (vidyāgurupūjā), following the ‘Worship of a Brown Cow’ (kapilāpūjā), and preceding the ‘Midday Rites’ (mādhyāhnikavidhi). In this context the term vidyā has to be intended, as in the Śivadharmottara, as a synonym of knowledge’s material embodiment in the manuscript:[843]

Then, having revered knowledge with flowers, incense, garlands, and so on, he should worship in a proper way, with devotion, the two lotuses of the feet of the teacher (1).

The manuscript is listed among the established substrata for worship in 1.3.102;[844] as observed by Brunner-Lachaux in her commentary ad loc.,[845] this has to be intended as the cult of the vidyāpīṭha, which another important medieval manual of Śaivasiddhānta rite, the Kriyākramadyotikā by Aghoraśiva (mid twelfth century),[846] also refers to as part of the daily Śaiva routine. Aghoraśiva, however, places it immediately after the procedures for the adoration of Śiva (śivārcanavidhi), and then splits the vidyāgurupūjā into the ‘Homage to one’s own teacher’ (svagurusaparyā) and the ‘Adoration of the Throne of Knowledge’ (vidyāpīṭhārcana). Unlike Somaśambhu, who never actually refers to a cult of the throne of knowledge, Aghoraśiva evokes it right away as part of the daily worship, giving for it the following basic prescriptions:[847]

Following this, in the sector [placed] in the western direction of the god, [he should say:] ‘Oṃ hāṃ, obeisance to the Throne of Yoga’. Having venerated the throne of knowledge like this: ‘Oṃ hāṃ hauṃ, obeisance to the throne of knowledge!’; having venerated the Lord as the destroyer of all ignorance, the bestower of all knowledge, residing in the throne of knowledge […]

Parallel to the attestations of the Tantrāloka, the Somaśambhupaddhati also testifies to the use of manuscripts during the annual ceremony of the pavitrarohaṇa.[848] In st. 2.1.26 of the section on the annual offering of the pavitras, the author mentions the deities who will be invoked in the maṇḍapa during the ceremony and who will receive a pure pavitra:[849] ‘For himself, for Gaṇādhīśa, for the teacher and his circle, for the manuscript, one [pavitra] each; the same for the doors, the guardians of directions, the vases, and so on’. The main recipients of pavitras that had been previously described were Śiva, the liṅgas, Caṇḍeśa, Ravi, and Vahni (2.1.25). Starting with 2.1.51, a further section called the ‘Procedures for the Offering of Objects Aimed at the Religious Observance and Rejoicing of Śiva’ (śivasya vratabhogāṅgadravyanivedanavidhiḥ) begins. After the instructtions on the ‘protection of the ritually prepared pavitra’ (saṃskṛtapavitrarakṣā), a section on the vidyāgurupūjādikam is then introduced, in which the manuscript of the Siddhānta scriptures, along with the teacher, is again the recipient of only one pavitra, unlike the major deities mentioned before.[850] Always in the context of pavitra offering and among the ‘procedure for the rites focused on Śiva who resides in fire’ agnisthaśivārthakriyāvidhiḥ (2.1.112–117), a siddhāntapustaka is again made an object of worship at the end of the pūjā of Śiva residing in fire (agnistha).[851]

Based on the pavitra ritual is the damanapūjā,[852] an annual reparatory offering of damana plants to Śiva; Somaśambhu deals with it in connection with the pavitraropaṇa and the prayaścitta,[853] but in this case he does not envisage manuscripts as recipients of damanas. By contrast, the author of a later ritual manual also relying on the Kriyākāṇḍakramāvalī, namely the Keralan Īśānaśiva,[854] inserts the throne of knowledge among the recipients of damanas in his ritual manual Siddhāntasāra (also known as Īśānaśivagurudevapaddhati), and establishes that this has to be offered ‘to the throne of knowledge, with its own mantra’ (vidyāpīṭhe ca svamantreṇa).[855]

Despite attributing to manuscripts the same ritual functions as Abhinavagupta does, Somaśambhu thus never refers to the ritual uses of manuscripts in the context of the worship of the throne of knowledge. This notion must have grown in importance in the Śaivasiddhānta ritual manuals of the following century, since not only does Aghoraśiva refer to it—and does so exactly where Somaśambhu alludes to the ‘worship of knowledge’—but so does Trilocanaśiva, a pupil of Aghoraśiva and the author of the ‘Explanation of the Ritual Manual of Somaśambhu’, Somaśambhupaddhativyākhyā, a work conceived as an elucidation of the Kriyākāṇḍakramāvalī.[856] In this work Trilocana describes the vidyāgurupūjā, the ‘worship of knowledge and the teacher’, directly before the midday rites, immediately linking this pūjā to the veneration of the throne of knowledge, and quoting in support a stanza attributed to the Mṛgendra, which corresponds to Kriyāpāda 3.56cd–57ab:[857]

Now the worship of knowledge and the teacher. Now [one should worship] knowledge and the one devoted to knowledge at the same [time]. This has been said in the honorable Mṛgendra: ‘The one who opts for a condensed form [of the rite] will worship the Lord also on a throne of knowledge, with a single utterance, (56) / Making offers by means of garlands, perfumes, incense, and food’.

Trilocanaśiva then goes on by describing the worship of the teacher (gurupūjā, pag. 76–77), for which he relies on a quotation from Kiraṇa 24.4–5 associating this practice with the worship of the yogapīṭha. Before switching to the description of the midday rites, Trilocanaśiva devotes a few lines to the procedures for the śāstrādhyayana, the ‘study of the treatises’ (pag. 77). Despite having just prescribed the worship of manuscripts, but consistently with the principle of the initiatic transmission of knowledge, the process of learning is said to happen ‘solely from the explanation of the teacher’ (guruvākyād eva). The manuscript seems therefore not to play any textual function, but a purely ritualistic one.

That throne of knowledge can be used as a perfect synonym for a manuscript had already been stated by Trilocanaśiva in the chapter on ritual substances, where the term is used as a gloss of pustaka (pag. 63); in commenting upon this statement, Trilocanaśiva refers again to Mṛgendra, Kriyāpāda 3.56cd, this time cited without attribution, followed by a half stanza quoted from the Jñānaratnāvalī, a work of Jñānaśiva, also referred to as Jñānaśambhu:[858]

Alternatively, one should worship a throne of knowledge of incalculable measure, provided with its texts.

Note that the phrasing of this line suggests that the throne of knowledge is not understood as a synonym of manuscript tout court, but rather as the cultic throne on which the manuscripts are laid. This is the meaning with which the term will be mostly used in twelfth- and post-twelfth-century scriptures and ritual manuals. Jñānaśiva was, along with Aghoraśiva, a teacher of Trilocanaśiva, and is identified in manuscript sources as a Brahmin originating from South India but living in Varanasi.[859] The above cited line from the Mṛgendra is also quoted in the Jñānaratnāvalī.[860] In the same way as his contemporaries, Aghoraśiva and Trilocanaśiva, Jñānaśiva does not devote much attention to the description of a ritual focused on the throne of knowledge, but limits his references to some interspersed mentions. Since the manuscript is considered one of the ‘six substrata of worship’,[861] the throne of knowledge is referred to among the various recipients of worship and offerings, such as the teachers and the yogins,[862] which again points at throne of knowledge being a synonym of pustaka manuscript. Note that the verse quoted by Trilocanaśiva is traceable in two points of the work: one in the form that Trilocana quotes, and a second time within a quotation attributed to the Bṛhatkālottara, in which the line is however reported with a slightly different variant.[863]

These aspects of twelfth and pre-twelfth-century Śaiva rite find partial confirmation in the Pāñcarātra tradition, which attests the use of manuscripts or of the throne of knowledge during the pavitra offerings. An example of this is provided by the Jayākhyasaṃhitā and the Nāradīyasaṃhitā. The first simply mentions the throne of knowledge, along with vases, sacrificial spoons, bells, and the rosary (see 21.23), as one of the implements that have to be adorned in the preparatory phases of the pavitra ceremony. A more exhaustive reference can be found in the Nāradīyasaṃhitā, again in the description of the preparation of the same rite. After the setting up of a maṇḍapa (36), provided with a vedī-altar in the east (43), the teacher is impelled to prepare a throne (pīṭha) on which he will place vessels containing different types of water; then, after worshipping god in a vase, he will have to worship a manuscript on a throne especially built for it: [864]

Having made a throne (pīṭhikā) with rice, provided with the features explained above; (46) / Having enveloped a manuscript in a cloth, there the teacher, facing eastward, should worship the sattva, [reciting] the mūlamantra, by means of fragrances and so on, o twice-born! (47)

Unlike the attestations documented both in the Śaivasiddhānta and in the Tantrāloka of the Trika school, this occurrence in the Pāñcarātra confirms the presence of manuscripts of the scriptures during the reparatory pavitra offerings, but does not explicitly regard them as recipients of pavitras.

4.2The Installation of the Throne of Knowledge

An important shift in the tantric accounts of the cult of manuscripts is marked by the Kāmika, one of the Siddhāntatantras that were first composed in the south. Contrary to previous beliefs, the Kāmika, which is divided into a Pūrvakāmika and an Uttarakāmika,[865] seems to have been known at early times, since passages that are still extant in the text have recently been identified among the citations which were made without attribution by Jñānaśiva in the already mentioned Jñānaratnāvalī.[866] Therefore, it follows that at least those portions had been composed and were known by that time. Analogously to the hitherto examined sources, the Uttarakāmika mentions manuscripts as recipients of the pavitras during the pavitraropaṇa,[867] and lists manuscripts among the objects to impart on an initiate during the consecration of ācāryas (ācāryābhiṣeka; see Uttarakāmika 24.44a); at the same time, this scripture, mainly conceived for detailing public temple rituals, gives an exhaustive description of the installation of the throne of knowledge.

The ‘installation of the throne of knowledge’ (vidyāpīṭhapratiṣṭhā) is dealt with in chapter 67 of the Uttarakāmika; this chapter is divided into two parts, of which only the last, and also shortest, section actually deals with an original ritual of installation (67.39–48). The initial aim of the first 38 stanzas is an exhaustive definition of vidyā, which encompasses many of her formal aspects: the languages in which knowledge finds expression (67.1 and 18–21), the external appearance of manuscripts (67.3–6), the people who are authorised to copy a manuscript (67.7–8), the procedures and rules for writing (67.10–18), and the advantages brought about by this operation (67.26–38). Literal references to the gift of knowledge are made in stanzas 19 and 22–23. As is foreseeable, it is in this first part of the chapter that the borrowings from Śivadharmottara’s Vidyādānādhyāya are concentrated. Among all southern tantras attesting the ritual of the installation of the throne of knowledge, the Uttarakāmika is unique insofar as it juxtaposes the instructions on the installation with those on the gift of knowledge, which are deeply inspired by—sometimes entirely borrowed from—the Śivadharmottara. As already observed in the introduction to this chapter, the only other text from the same cultural background apart from the Acintyaviśvasādākhya that mixes the two topics of the gift of knowledge and the vidyāpīṭhapratiṣṭhā is the manual Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati by Vedajñāna II, with one big difference: while the Uttarakāmika borrows and readapts the text from the Śivadharmottara silently, just as the Devīpurāṇa does (see §§ 1.3 and 2.5), the ritual manual by Vedajñāna is a digest based on the practice of extensively quoting from its authorities, which are acknowledged in most cases (always in the case of the quotations from Śivadharmottara chapter 2). Unlike chapter 91 of the Devīpurāṇa, however, which uses the stanzas dealing with the main ritualistic phases of the gift of knowledge from the Śivadharmottara, the Uttarakāmika selects different portions from the early Śaiva work (see Appendix 2): though referring to the gift of knowledge, the southern scripture avoids reference to the actual donation of manuscripts, and try to present the gift of knowledge as a sectarian impartation of Śaiva teachings, both in oral and written form, from teacher to pupil. Ritual procedures for the copying of the text are described in this chapter of the Uttarakāmika as completely independent from the Śivadharmottara, while other sections concerning the mistakes to avoid in the transcription, the definition of vidyādāna, and its eulogy are strongly dependent on the early Śaiva work.

The Uttarakāmika’s account starts by introducing details on the ‘place of the vidyā’ (vidyāsthāna, 67.2),[868] a temporary construction where the ritual will take place, then on the measurements of the manuscript (67.2–4). This is typical for other Siddhānta sources, and is required by the procedures of an installation ritual. The reader receives further information on the materials of which this manuscript should consist (67.5–7). These prescriptions encompass a wide range of possibilities, from the most attested writing substance—birchbark and palm leaf—to harder supports such as metal and stones.[869] While specifying that only teachers and pupils are allowed to write, the text especially forbids access to such activity by the non-initiates, by stating that: [870] ‘The wise should not allow a non-initiate to write this Śaiva knowledge, nor should he read in the presence of non-initiates (8).’ The instructions concerning the transcription are very essential: the copying must take place after worshipping Śiva, ‘the alphabet’ (mātṛkāṃ, 67.10) and the teacher, in a perfumed room and ‘surrounded by pure Śaiva initiates’ (śuddhaśaivasamāvṛte, 67.12). The text also pays attention to the mistakes to be avoided while copying a manuscript, reporting almost literally the injunctions of Śivadharmottara 2.7–11, with some adaptations (and corruptions, in spite of the recommendations given by the text):[871]

The wise will not allow writing anything wrong, thanks to reciters [who read] exactly what is written. The one who would restore the former correctness (st. 17) of the Śaiva knowledge, which in the course of time has been damaged due to carelessness (13) / [And], containing too few or too many syllables (ūnātiriktavarṇasya), has been carelessly copied; whose readings have been rendered careleslessly, which has been destroyed by people with little intelligence, (14) / And has been corrected by masters who are endowed with little knowledge; which is endowed with meaningless statements and contains repetitions, (15) / Which, on the level of meaning, contains internal contradictions [or is] in contradiction with its own doctrines; which has been severely damaged with respect to the metrics and that doesn’t have words and meanings that are connected; (16) / [The man who properly restores the former correctness of this knowledge of Śiva], endowed here and there with these and other defects, is a clever teacher. (17)

The following verses reproduce the definition of the gift of knowledge given by the Vidyādānādhyāya of the Śivadharmottara in its initial stanzas, in which the gift is essentially seen as consisting of an oral impartation of teachings from teacher to pupil, specifying that the languages of instruction could have been either Sanskrit or Prakrit. On the one hand, the author of chapter 67 of the Uttarakāmika remains faithful to this definition, while, on the other hand, broadening it by extending the range of possible languages to be used in the teaching process. In addition to ‘pure Sanskrit words’ and Prakrit, the text states that it is also possible to construct sentences in Dravidian and local languages (deśabhāṣā), as well as to resort to scriptural authorities written in those languages: [872]

One who knows the meaning of the reality of Śiva, that one, supreme lord of knowledge, will gradually teach students [and] awaken the devotees of Śiva (18) /—On the authority of the Śaiva knowledge this is called a gift of knowledge—by means of sentences in Sanskrit, Dravidian languages, [and] various types of local languages; (19) / By means of words originating in the Prakrit languages, as well as using pure Sanskrit [words] and, for this purpose, [even] common words; [as well as one] who would instruct a pupil in a proper way (20) / Regardless of where he resides, and by means of local languages as well as through scriptures of this kind, which are [namely] adapt to [the different] regions. (21)

The succinct observations made by the Uttarakāmika, based on the model of the Śivadharmottara, contextualise the latter in the socio-linguistic reality of medieval south India, where the rise of Sanskrit as a vehicle of literature takes place side by side with the growth of local languages as a means of high expression. The chapter, after all, had started with a definition of vidyā as divided into two categories on a language basis: a knowledge expressed in Sanskrit, and a knowledge that finds expression in all other languages.[873] The Uttarakāmika does not only conceive of a variety of languages but, coherently, also of a variety of scripts, prescribing that manuscripts could be copied by means of ‘letters originating from different regions’, provided that these letters are beautifully made, and that the margins of the manuscript are left blank.[874]

This passage is followed by a eulogy of the gift of knowledge based on further parallels from Śivadharmottara chapter 2, without substantial changes: in a purely Purāṇic style, the sponsors and material executors of the gift of knowledge are promised to be rewarded after death with the attainment of the town of Śiva.[875] The addressee of the exhortations to practise the gift of knowledge is designated as the king in stanzas 30cd–32, which have no parallel in the Śivadharmottara. Here the Uttarakāmika urges not only the practise of the gift of knowledge, but also the protection of those who are involved in it, a protection that will result in the increase of the king’s power and an enlargement of his kingdom: [876]

And [he who], by means of food, covers and so on, (30) / Would duly protect somebody versed in the Śaiva knowledge, he will get the fruit of a gift of knowledge; or else, [one who] will finance it gains exactly that fruit. (31)/ The king in whose kingdom the Brahmins perform the explanation of the Śaiva knowledge, this king thrives, [as well as] the kingdom; he [becomes] a powerful supreme chief. (32)

After eulogising the knowledge of the ‘pure Śaivas’ (śuddhaśaivas), which is said to bestow fruits on all the people, the Uttarakāmika eventually focuses on the procedures for the installation of the throne of knowledge (67.39–48). The Purāṇic-like gift of knowledge treated in the first part of the chapter and the tantric ceremony of the installation expounded in the final ten stanzas are not explicitly connected, the junction between the two sections being exemplified by a half stanza reading: [877] ‘Thus is the power of knowledge; now [its] installation will be described’. On the basis of the observations made above, concerning the similarities between the procedures for the installation of icons and those for the installation of the throne of knowledge, one can deduce that the first stanzas of Uttarakāmika 67, on the description of writing substances, as well as of the script and the language to be employed in a manuscript, fulfil exactly the function of establishing the external features of the ritual focus of the installation rite. Starting with the stanzas on the copying of the manuscript, the text no longer describes the ritual tools, but the ritual itself: on the basis of the comparison with the Śivārcanācandrikā and other sources (see also the Pauṣkarasaṃhitā and the Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati), which foresee the copying of the manuscript immediately before its installation, one can, however, regard these procedures as a preparatory act to the ritual itself (see below and § 4.3).

The procedures for the actual installation again start with considerations on the place where the ritual will be performed. This is designated as a ‘hall of knowledge’ (vidyāśālā, 67.40), on the model of the words attested in the Śivadharmottara and in inscriptions when they denote the space where teaching activities take place (see § 2.3); or simply a prasāda, or a pillared hall (maṇḍapa, 67.40). These indications are followed by the dimensions of the throne (Uttarakāmika 67.41cd–42). The procedures explained in this part of the chapter avoid any direct reference to manuscripts, as the installation of the throne of knowledge mainly happens through the worship of Śiva, Rudra, and other minor deities, the practice of homa and the projection of mantras. The first step after the preparation of the throne is the purification of the hall by sprinkling the five products of the cow (67.44); following this, the sacrificer should prepare a sthaṇḍila[878] and introduce the pīṭha, then placing it on the top of a cloth. After preparing a seat (āsana) and other paraphernalia for Śiva, one is urged to worship Śiva in the ‘Śiva sector’ and Rudra in the ‘Rudra sector’, respectively.[879] After the worship of different vases, the executor of the ritual has to worship the Lords of Knowledge (vidyeśa, 67.46)[880] and then to practice homa (67.47). In the final stanza, the subject of the ritual actions is referred to as ‘one who has taken the fee’ (saṃprāptadakṣiṇaḥ, 67.48), and the ritual is ended by the projection of mantras.

The text of chapter 67 of the Uttarakāmika is reproduced almost identically in chapter 65 of the Acintyaviśvasādākhya (see Appendix 2). One remarkable difference regards the location that the latter designates as appropriate for the performance of the ritual, although this information mostly derives from a textual corruption of Uttarakāmika 67.2. The Acintyaviśvasādākhya establishes that the worship of scriptures has to take place:[881] ‘Either in a palace, or in a monastery, in a pure place, as well as in a house, or else in a place that is [well] taught by [other] devotees, or within all tīrthas (2)’. Furthermore, in the description of the installation ritual, the Acintyaviśvasādākhya makes a more explicit reference to the worship of the ‘Śaiva knowledge’ in the course of the installation.[882]

A Pāñcarātra equivalent of the Śaivasiddhānta ritual of the installation of the throne of knowledge is described in chapter 41 of the Pauṣkarasaṃhitā, which accounts for a procedure called jñānapratiṣṭhāna in the first stanza of this section (actually corresponding to stanza 78 of the chapter) and vidyāpīṭhapratiṣṭhāna in the last one. This version presents significant differences with the Śaiva equivalent of the Uttarakāmika, though still providing some parallels. Firstly, the core of the ceremony is the same, since the ritual in the Pauṣkarasaṃhitā is also constructed around the veneration of manuscripts on a seat or throne. The Uttarakāmika had called the object to install the ‘Śaiva knowledge’, and in the references to the śivabheda and the rudrabheda one could read an allusion to the renowned taxonomy of the 28 Śaiva tantras. On the contrary, the Pauṣkarasaṃhitā starts the paragraph on the installation of the throne of knowledge with a prescription to collect for this purpose works of a different nature: these are called the ‘true scriptures’ (sadāgama, 41.79), and those to be directly mentioned are the Pāñcaratra texts, followed by all the Vedas and the Vedāṅgas, the Smṛtis, and the Upasmṛtis, along with the Itihāsas and philosophical treatises.[883] Therefore, the ritual described in the Pauṣkarasaṃhitā resembles the Purāṇic descriptions more closely than the Śaiva tantric version. The influence of the Śivadharmottara is also clear in this source, though limited to some scattered references. For instance, a reference to the external aspects of their manuscripts is made by mentioning the use of nadīnāgarakair (sic!) varṇair, the ‘letters of the Nandināgari’ (Pauṣkarasaṃhitā 41.80), a feature shared by many of the Purāṇic descriptions of the gift of knowledge. Its first attestation ultimately dates back to the Śivadharmottara (§ 2.1). The procedures that are singled out in the following verses envisage inserting the manuscript into a box that should be sealed by tying it with a resistant cord.[884] Once the manuscript has been prepared, the Pauṣkara gives generic information on the location where the main pūjā should take place, which is to be a ‘well-known place’, well-attended by twice-borns, provided with a building made of stones, variously embellished.[885] The text then describes the iconography of Vāgīśvarī, the goddess of speech, whose representation is one of the decorations of this place and who also counts among her emblems a collection of treatises (śāstrasaṃcaya, 41.84). In this place, a white-dressed, pure officiant should place the śāstrasaṃgrahapustakas (41.86), enveloped in a cloth, on a foldable seat of iron (lohayantrāsana 41.86), and worship them there by means of the twelve-syllable mantra. Note that at 41.82 the place where the ritual is supposed to take place is described as ‘endowed with an iron tool’ (lohayantrasamanvitam), probably referring to the seat on which the manuscripts will be laid and worshipped. After an invocation to Viṣṇu, one is instructed to again venerate the[886] ‘Vedic and Vedāntic [texts], adorned with the true scriptures starting with the Purāṇa of the Bhagavān’. The final part of this section seems to allude to the act of ‘donating knowledge’, though it is not completely clear if this implies an act of donating manuscripts or imparting teachings: the reader is told that one ‘should donate this teaching for preserving / in an act of preserving’ the jñānakośa, a term that is attested in Sanskrit texts as a synonym for manuscripts (see for instance § 2.3).[887] The following half-verse clearly alludes to a reading that should take place in a temple, thus reproducing a sequence of activities (donation of a manuscript to a temple and its recitation) that would be coherent with the procedures taught by the Śivadharmottara.

The procedures taught in the Pauṣkarasaṃhitā and their echoing of some of the Śivadharmottara’s instructions are features shared by a further textual source, which is a Pāñcarātra text that has been partially subsumed under a late Purāṇa, and is now accessible in part only thanks to this case of extensive textual borrowing. I refer here to the eclectic work that goes by the title of Agnipurāṇa, whose composite and encyclopaedic nature has been a known fact to scholars since early times: Hazra, who calls the text ‘a cyclopaedia in miniature’, rightly noted the ‘spurious character’ of chapters 21–106, which abruptly break the narrative of the first 20 chapters, suggesting, on account of parallels existing between these Agnipurāṇa chapters and the Hayaśīrṣapāñcarātra, that a first group (corresponding to chapters 21–70) contains ‘most probably summaries of one or more of the Pāñcarātra Saṃhitās’.[888] Hazra further observes that the following chapters 71–106 do not seem to be connected to the former, and comments upon the encyclopaedic nature of the Agnipurāṇa by calling attention to the many summaries contained in it—abridgements of the main Itihāsas, but also of works like the metrical treatise attributed to Piṅgala and the Amarakośa—as well as to the subsumption into the Agnipurāṇa of entire chapters from the Nāradasmṛti, the Yājñavalkyasmṛti and the Viṣṇupurāṇa.[889] More recently, Sanderson has recognised that chapters 72–90 and 92–103 of the Agnipurāṇa depend entirely on the Somaśambhupaddhati, while Rastelli could document the connections existing between the Agnipurāṇa and the Pāñcarātra tradition by detecting and examining textual borrowings from the Jayākhyasaṃhitā and the Hayaśīrṣapāñcarātra.[890]

The Śivadharmottara also seems to have been known to the redactors of the Agnipurāṇa: as Goodall remarks, the depiction of the throne of worship in chapter 10 of the Śivadharmottara has numerous literal parallels in Agnipurāṇa 373, to the point that the majority of the lines of the latter can be found in the former.[891] Lexical similarities show that the gift of knowledge account of the Śivadharmottara may have inspired the description of the throne of knowledge installation in Agnipurāṇa 63, although this might also be the result of secondary influence. According to Rastelli’s reconstruction of the textual borrowings from the Hayaśīrṣapāñcarātra traceable in the Agnipurāṇa, chapter 63 of the latter belongs to a block of text that was strongly influenced by the Pāñcarātra work.[892] It is thus more likely that the Hayaśīrṣapāñcarātra was influenced by the Śivadharmottara, and that that part of the work was then subsumed under the Agnipurāṇa. However, caution is needed on this point: the relevant section of the Hayaśīrṣapāñcarātra is in fact still unpublished, and Rastelli’s deductions, while convincing, are for that matter only based on a comparison between the contents of Agnipurāṇa 62–69 and the titles given by Smith for chapters 1–39 of Hayaśīrṣapāñcarātra’s saṃkarṣaṇakāṇḍa.[893] However, this comparison shows that the Agnipurāṇa in fact seems to follow the Pāñcarātra text very closely. With regard to the topic of this study, Rastelli shows that Agnipurāṇa 63.12–26b corresponds to Hayaśīrṣapāñcarātra’s saṃkarṣaṇakāṇḍa 27–31, bearing the following titles (quoted from Rastelli’s translation): 27. ‘Installation of Immovable Idols’ (acalapratimāpratiṣṭhā); 28. ‘Installation of Movable Liṅgas’ (calaliṅgapratiṣṭhā); 29. ‘Installation of an Idol in the Form of Writing’ (lekhārcāpratiṣṭhā); 30. ‘Chapter [Dealing with] the Installation of Painting’ (citrapratiṣṭhāpaṭala); 31. ‘Installation of Knowledge’ (vidyāpratiṣṭhā).

The chapter on the installation of knowledge in the Agnipurāṇa / Hayaśīrṣapāñcarātra reveals striking similarities with the accounts of the Devīpurāṇa or the Nandipurāṇa; this chapter, however, has never been used by the medieval nibandhakāras, who were most likely aware of a different version of the text with the same title, as proved by the stanzas they quote from an Agni- or Āgneyapurāṇa, which are not identifiable in the present Agnipurāṇa.[894] References to the gift of knowledge are available in more points of this work, as it has been shown in § 3.1. The first notable element in the ritual described by the Agnipurāṇa is that it is inserted in a section dealing with the installation of icons of the gods. Starting from stanza 9 of chapter 63, the text then declares:[895] ‘I will describe the installation of manuscripts, and the appropriate way for writing them.’ Like the Uttarakāmika, and the later manual of the Śaivasiddhānta rite (see below), the Agnipurāṇa juxtaposes the two ritual procedures of the writing (lekhana) and the pratiṣṭhā, making the connections between the two moments of the ritual more explicit than the tantric sources did. The description of the Agnipurāṇa starts with the veneration of two manuscripts, a blank one (lekhya) and one that already contains a text (likhita), which are to be used during the copying as the apograph and the exemplar, respectively: [896]

Having revered in a propitious maṇḍala the manuscript lying on a śarayantra seat, [both] the exemplar and the apograph, [he] will worship the teacher, the knowledge, Hari.

The terminology used by the Agnipurāṇa is thus very close to that of the Śivadharmottara’s Vidyādānādhyāya (see § 2.1), but the resemblances do not stop here. After the worship, and using the Nāgarī script and a golden pen, the sacrificer is allowed to start inscribing the manuscript, but only five stanzas of the text.[897] In analogy with the Śivadharmottara, of which the Agnipurāṇa reproduces both the technical terminology and the main ritual pattern, we might assume that with stanza 12 a first part of the ritual, possibly corresponding to the first day, is concluded with the instructions of feeding the Brahmins. In 63.13, the text again prescribes a ceremony of pūjā, whose foci are this time vidyā, the teacher, and Hari, and then instructs copying ‘the Purāṇas and so on’,[898] adding that the manuscript has to be placed on the bhadrapīṭha, the ‘auspicious throne’.[899] At this point in the ritual—presumably when the transcription is completed—the Agnipurāṇa partly deviates from the scheme of the Śivadharmottara by prescribing for the manuscript the ritualistic treatment that would be reserved for icons. This is also highlighted by the use of the adverbial expression ‘like before’ (pūrvavan 1.63.13), pointing to the procedures on the installation of gods’ images that had been described in the preceding chapters. At the same time, the main ritual context is still offered by the scheme outlined in the Śivadharmottara and in other Purāṇic sources, as the manuscript is subsequently brought in procession to a temple, where both the donation and the performance of an appeasement rite are performed:[900]

Having revered the master, knowledge, Hari, [that] man should copy the Purāṇas and so on, [after having made a pūjā] in the previous way, i.e. in a maṇḍala etc., on an auspicious pedestal in the northeast direction. (13) / Having seen the manuscript [reflected] in a mirror [he] should sprinkle [its reflection in the mirror] like before, with the use of vases [containing empowered water]; having made the ceremony of endowing it with eyesight, one should lay [the manuscript] on [its] bed. (14) / Then, [he] should [mentally] lay the Puruṣasūkta [and] the syllable oṃ on this manuscript; having performed the vivification and having revered [the manuscript], having made oblations, [having] then eaten the caru, (15) / He should let the Brahmins, like the teacher and the others, eat while bestowing fees. Men have to move the manuscript around with a chariot or with an elephant. (16) / Having placed the manuscript in a building, like a temple and so on, [he] should worship [it]. He should honour [the manuscript], enveloped in a cloth and so on, at the beginning and at the end of the reading. (17) / And having ascertained a protection from dangers for the world, one should read the manuscript. The sponsor and so on should sprinkle one chapter using jars and other [vessels containing empowered water]. (18) / Having given the manuscript to a twice-born there is no end of the fruit [he will get]. Three are the great gifts, they say: the [gifts] of cows, land, and knowledge. (19) / The fruit of the gift of knowledge [is obtainable] donating a collection of leaves together with ink. As big is the quantity of leaves, as well as of letters, o sinless one, (20) / So many thousands of years [the donor] is magnified in the world of Viṣṇu. One, donating the Pāñcarātra, the Purāṇas, the Itihāsas, having saved 21 families is [then] merged in the supreme principle (21).

The ritual prescribed in the Hayaśīrṣapāñcarātra/Agnipurāṇa thus proves to be a good combination of the Purāṇic elements that had also emerged from the Pauṣkarasaṃhitā version and the tantric cult, while at the same time all this is combined with the use of Vedic mantras and the transposition of this ritual to a Vaiṣṇava background. Furthermore, the Agnipurāṇa is the source that possibly places more emphasis on the contamination between rituals of images and rituals of manuscripts in medieval religion, aided by the strong liberty with which textual sources and the ideas they express are borrowed and readapted to different contexts.

4.3On the Threshold of Modernity: Ritual and Manuscripts in Sixteenth-Century South India

The success enjoyed in South Indian sources by rituals of installation of scriptures did not diminish in the course of time, in spite of the changes undergone by Śaivism through the centuries. From a doctrinal perspective, later Siddhāntatantras show that under the strong influence of non-dualist Vedānta, the Śaiva Siddhānta had shifted from a purely dualistic view to embrace a monistic one.[901] Parallel to what happens in the later works of the Pāñcarātra, a further pattern emerging from works of the early modern time is a higher concern with subsuming the Śaiva tradition into the domain of Vedic religion as a legitimizing strategy.[902] Considering the developments of Śaivism in sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury South India, a picture is evoked of a religion facing a heated sectarian competition with the several other Vaiṣṇava lineages that characterised the religious landscape of the area and are all competing for patronage in the context of a rapidly changing world. This situation led Śaiva scholars of the time to work towards a systematization of their doctrines, which were not only aimed at the local communities of Tamil Nadu, but rather conceived for a translocal audience. This is exemplified by the work of the highly influential Śaiva teacher and polymath Appayya Dīkṣita (1520–1593 CE),[903] who himself claimed to have written more than a hundred works,[904] including most notably a commentary on Śrīkaṇṭha’s Brahmasūtrabhāṣya, the Śivārkamaṇidīpikā, which, in conjunction with other works of Appayya on the subject, revived a line of thinking that strived to present Śaivism, and not Vaiṣṇavism, as the true interpreter of monistic Vedānta.[905] He carried out this agenda while also engaging in a debate with the late exponents of the southern Śaivasiddhāntika school, whom Appayya tries to defeat on some of their core philosophical tenets.[906] His life and activity are geographically confined to the Tamil country,[907] and his work is embedded in the sectarian polemics and the scholarly interests of that cultural area;[908] however, his choice of Sanskrit as the sole working language reveals his intention to surpass the purview of the regional and engage with a transregional environment.

Appayya Dīkṣita did not agree with some fundamental tenets of the Saiddhāntikas, but he still knew and practiced the Śaivasiddhānta ritual in accordance with the Siddhāntatantras, as witnessed by his ritualistic work Śivārcanācandrikā; and no part of his work attests more explicitly his endorsement of the Śiddhānta scriptures as the chapter on the ‘Procedures for the Worship of the Śaiva Knowledge’ (śivajñānapūjāvidhi). In the atmosphere of competition and renaissance briefly sketched in the preceding lines, it is of no surprise to learn that the practice of rituals ultimately aimed at extolling the status of one’s own scriptural tradition is well attested not only in the private, but also in the public Śaiva ritual of this time. Relying on the authority of tantric, as well as non-tantric scriptures, texts such as that of Appayya Dīkṣita or the ritual manual of his contemporary Vedajñānaguru II testify to the continuity of the tradition of manuscript worship and installation, and their urge to push it forward into the modern world. However, the textual history of the Śivārcanācandrikā is not an easy one, as a substantial portion of the text, in which also the chapter on the veneration of scriptures is included, is actually available word by word in another work, the Kriyāsāra, authored by the Vīraśaiva Nīlakaṇṭhaśivācārya. According to some recent findings it seems possible to surmise that it was Appayya who copied from Nīlakaṇṭha, rather than the other way around, although stronger evidence on this point is still needed.[909]

The Kriyāsāra is described by Brunner-Lachaux as divided into two parts, the first one being an exposition of the Vīraśaiva doctrine in the form of a continuous commentary on the Brahmasūtra, while the second part is devoted to ritual practice.[910] Its author lived under the medieval South Indian kingdom of Vijayanagara, which emerged in Karnataka in the first half of the fourteenth century also as a result of the clash with the Khalji sultanate, and disintegrated into smaller sovereignties in the late sixteenth century.[911] The sponsorhip offered by these monarchs facilitated the growth of the Vīraśaiva tradition which, originating in the twelfth century,[912] kept a dialectic relationship with the Śaivasiddhānta that had meanwhile tightened up its bonds with the Tamil region, as these simple cases of extended textual borrowings testify. Regardless of the correct attribution of the text on the veneration of the Śaiva scriptures, its significance in the cultural environments to which it was addressed and, supposedly, in which it was used is of interest here.

The chapter on the ‘Procedures for the Worship of the Śaiva knowledge’ opens with a long section devoted to the definition of the object of the ritual, namely the tantric scriptures: ‘the ‘Śaiva Fields of Learning’ (śivajñāna)—reads the text—are the great divine Āgamas like the Kāmika and so on’.[913] This statement is followed by a list of the 28 scriptures, each one associated with the number of sections into which they are hypothetically divided and a rough, hyperbolic amount of total stanzas.[914] After this merely descriptive section, the text prescribes to have these scriptures written down in manuscripts:

One should have all such divine scriptures copied, according to [one’s own] earnings, often times or even only once, anywhere, or just restricted to the measure of a [single] collection that is suitable for their own worship, in manuscripts richly endowed with the [right] features. [915]

The first step allowing the performance of the worship of the manuscripts is thus, logically, committing them to writing. As usual, there is a certain level of flexibility concerning the frequency with which this activity has to be financed, and the quantity of manuscripts that should be produced. In addition to this, it should be noted that the information obtained from this text is indeed parallel to that provided by the Uttarakāmika, mentioning the (ritual) transcription of manuscripts before their installation, although in that case it is not clear if this was part of the same ritual or not. This aspect also remains doubtful in the Śivārcanācandrikā, since the text does not give any other information about the copying, so that it is difficult to know whether this was conceived as a ritualized or just an ordinary process. The author does, however, specify what are the ‘right features’ that the manuscripts should be endowed with, providing a list of nine different typologies of manuscripts according to their measures.[916]

The Kriyāsāra/Śivārcanācandrikā further prescribes that the performer of the ritual should pick up a manuscript in one of these formats and should then proceed with the ritual, whose main steps are:

1. Building, ‘in the southwest or northeast of Śiva, a treasure-house of knowledge […] for the worship of these manuscripts of the Śaiva knowledge’;[917]

2. Placing ‘a lion-throne of knowledge, produced with ivory and so on, decorated with golden lines and so on, in the middle of this [building], whose walls are smeared with [unguents] like well scented sandal’;[918]

3. After spreading there a fine cotton cloth, in the middle of which one should place a box made of various precious and less precious materials, ‘which has the nature of a treasure-box of knowledge, one should lay the manuscripts inside [it]’;[919]

4. Worshipping ‘by means of perfumed flowers, incenses, lamps and offerings of food, by uttering ‘Obeisance to all the śivajñānas!’, having praised [Śiva] by saying ‘I defer to Śambhu, bestower of all knowledge, destroyer of all knowledge, residing in the throne of knowledge with body, mind, [and] voice’, he should bow’.[920]

The same terminology used in the Vidyādānādhyāya of the Śivadharmottara, in particular stanzas 2.109 onward, which had also been reused in the Uttarakāmika, is easily detectible in these lines. The scheme of the ritual styled by the Śivārcanācandrikā/Kriyāsāra has so far indeed been close to the one described in the Uttarakāmika; but the following lines of the text testify to a further evolution in the rite, since they also envisage the possibility of performing the worship of the Śaiva scriptures without manuscripts (‘in absence of manuscripts’, pustakālābhe). In this case, the sacrificer is instructed to draw a lotus provided with 18 leaves, enclosing a smaller one provided with only 10 leaves. Then, he should first worship Śiva and the goddess of speech in the pericarp of the lotus by uttering the respective mantras, following which he will worship the 10 scriptures belonging to the śivabheda in 10 of the leaves of the lotus, starting from the east, and the 18 scriptures belonging to the rudrabheda in the remaining 18.[921] Once this pūjā has been accomplished, the sacrificer has to worship his teacher—if he has more than one, he should worship both—and then Śiva, by offerings of flowers and viśeṣārghya. The worshipper invokes at this point Śiva’s grace and mercy, and reveres his five faces. The ritual ends with the final offering of the parāṅmukhārghya[922] ‘Also to the teacher, the house, the throne of knowledge, the seven gurus, to Mahālakṣmī, to Gaṇapati, and to the guardians of the doors’, among others, then to the gods of the circles, who are dismissed afterwards. From this point on, the procedures are no longer connected with the worship of scriptures, but rather with the worship of Śiva through caṇḍa (caṇḍapūjā), the five auxiliary means (pañcopacāra), or by means of the ‘eight flowers’ (aṣṭapuṣpikā), which are presented as the cheapest worship implement, meant for those who cannot afford the preceding ones. The chapter ends with the usual praises of the merits of teaching and reading the scriptures.

Sixteenth-century Tamil Nadu has produced what is possibly the most comprehensive treatment of the subject of manuscript worship and manuscript rituals in premodern India. It is contained in the ‘Ritual Manual of Private Worship’ (Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati), a work by Vedajñāna II of Cidambaram.[923] The text is, in and of itself, not particularly original: being composed in the style of a digest, it mostly relies on quotations from authoritative sources, which are combined one after the other in order to convey information about the relevant topics. Its meagre originality is not due solely to its reliance on quoted texts, which is a specific feature of certain literary genres still leaving room for creativity and inventiveness, as the case of the Dharma digests examined in the previous chapter has shown. At least in the case of the rituals under investigation, Vedajñāna also strongly relied on his predecessors’ manuals of worship and commentaries on tantras, a circumstance that is reflected both in the choice of the sources to be quoted and in the few prose sections with which the quotations are interspersed. As it will be highlighted below, some of these prose passages, which are supposed to be an original commentary by the author, go back in a few cases to the text of the Śivārcanācandrikā by Appayya Dīkṣita, while another case echoes very closely Nārāyaṇakaṇṭha’s commentary on the Mṛgendra. As shown by a similar choice of sources at certain points and their almost identical arrangement, the Somaśambhupaddhativyākhyā by Trilocanaśiva is another work that was surely kept at hand by Vedajñāna. Vedajñāna, however, only acknowledges the reuse of the scriptural sources, while manuals and commentaries—the ‘secondary literature’, so to speak—were silently embedded in and adapted to his text.

Nevertheless, Vedajñāna expands much on the works of his predecessors, dealing in more than one section not only with manuscript worship, but also with material aspects connected to the production of manuscripts and their use in the process of writing, as well as with the role played by manuscripts in the transmission of the teachings from teacher to pupil within an initiatic environment; to the last topic the author dedicates the section on the ‘Procedures for Listening to the Śaivasiddhāntas’ (śaivasiddhāntaśravaṇavidhi),[924] which is then closed by a eulogy of the gift of knowledge and manuscript circulation directly borrowed from the Vidyādānādhyāya of the Śivadharmottara. This is due to the fact that Vedajñāna regards the Śivadharmottara as an authority on tantric ritual, quoting it alongside tantric scriptures like the Kāmika, the Mṛgendra, and the Mataṅga. The stanzas of the Śivadharmottara thus acquire new meaning and are open to alternative interpretations, as they are quoted to support and illustrate practices that were not supported by the authors of the Śivadharmottara. The method of selecting texts and quoting them in a new context, as also observed in the case of the Dharmanibandhas, proves to be a creative source of additional signification. This is by far one of the most innovative aspects of Vedajñāna’s work in the construction of his ritual manual.

The sections dealing with the ritualistic use of manuscripts in the Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati are the one on the worship of the throne of knowledge (vidyāpīṭhapūjā),[925] the already mentioned section on the listening to the Siddhāntas, which details rules on how and when to teach the scriptures, and a final chapter on the installation of the throne of knowledge.[926] These are not contiguous in the text, though presenting various points of convergence. Although they all contain ritual elements, only the shorter chapter on the cult of the throne of knowledge and the final chapter on its installation are mostly concerned with ritual procedures, while in the paragraph on the siddhāntaśravaṇa a larger role is played by the definition of the scriptures to study, the establishment of the auspicious and inauspicious times to do so, as well as the praise of the preservation, diffusion, and protection of knowledge in the form of manuscripts. Moreover, the contents of the first of these paragraphs, on the devotion towards the throne of knowledge, are still inherent to the sphere of ‘private’ rites, carried out to the advantage of the sole sponsor, while the description of the other two procedures allow us to enter the public domain of Śaiva ritual life. The topics immediately preceding that of the listening to the Siddhānta scriptures are the service to the Śaiva temple (śivālayasevā),[927] as well as the performance of pradakṣiṇas and the public cult of the liṅga. Similarly, the section on the installation of the throne of knowledge is preceded by a chapter on the installation of the monastery (maṭhapratiṣṭhā), where the author profusely cites from Śivadharmottara’s second chapter stanzas on the description of the śivāśrama and the installation of the statue of Lakulīśvara (see Śivadharmottara 2.146–47);[928] and followed by a chapter on the installation of (images of) the seers (ṛṣipratiṣṭhā).[929]

As is usual for these texts, and following a pattern that we have already observed in other sources, the description of the ritual starts with an account of the location where this has to take place. In the paragraph on the ‘worship of the throne of knowledge’ (vidyāpīṭhapūjā), a quotation from the Kāmika, which is not traceable in the published text, establishes that a jñānakośa, a ‘treasure of knowledge’, has to be arranged either in the northwest or in the south.[930] On the authority of Śivadharmottara 2.109–16, one can construe this jñānakośa as a metaphor for a manuscript (see § 2.3), as it also seems to be pointed out by the following verse, which states that ‘a spot for the Śaiva knowledge, which starts with the Kāmika, has to be located in the south’.[931] The section of the Śivadharmottara which extends from 2.109 to 2.118 and deals with the insertion of the manuscript into its box and its ritualised conveyance into a small building, the ‘abode of knowledge’ (vidyāyatana, 2.117), is amply quoted in this chapter of the Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, which mixes the description of the vidyāyatana in Śivadharmottara 2.118 with Uttarakāmika 67.40–43, on the dimensions of the ‘hall of knowledge’ (vidyāśālā, see above) and of the throne of knowledge.[932] Thus, in the interpretation given by the Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, the ‘abode of knowledge’ described by the Śivadharmottara has only ritual functions, and is specifically employed for the veneration of the manuscript on its throne. This role complies with the prescriptions given by Śivadharmottara 2.118–22, although in this case we argued that this place could have in fact also functioned as a storehouse for the manuscripts (§ 2.3). In the Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, this reference is immediately followed by the Śivadharmottara’s description of the lion-throne of knowledge (vidyāsiṃhāsana, 2.21–22), an implement that is now eventually subsumed under the tantric pīṭha-worship. This subsumption is additionally stressed by the line that Vedajñāna attaches to this quotation, in which the author gives a mantra for the veneration of the manuscripts and some instructions: [933] ‘Oṃ hāṃ, obeisance to the descents of the Śaiva knowledge starting with the Kāmika! [Obeisance to their] seat! Having thus worshipped, one should later place on top of it a case [containing] the treasure of knowledge.’ Due to the assimilation of the lion-throne of knowledge and the throne of knowledge, Śivadharmottara 2.109–116 now becomes the core ritual description in this section of the Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, so that the procedures of insertion of the manuscript in its box—manuscripts that, in Vedajñāna’s interpretation, are those of the 28 tantric scriptures ‘starting with the Kāmika’—and its installation in the ‘abode of knowledge’ now have to be reinterpreted as the basic sequence of activities of which the cult of the throne of knowledge consists.

At this point, the author observes that the worship of the throne of knowledge is twofold, since it can be ‘directly perceivable’ (aparokṣa), namely ‘having as its object the scriptures starting with the Kāmika, which are directly experienced in their written form’; and ‘not directly perceivable’ (parokṣa), meaning that the pūjā[934] ‘has as its object a maṇḍala, a lotus, a throne, and so on’. He further specifies that in the first case, namely the worship to be performed with manuscripts, one can choose either to have all the collections of scriptures, or only the one of their preference.[935] To support his view, the author now quotes the same verses from the Jñānaratnāvalī alluding to the cult of the throne of knowledge together with the collections of scriptures, and from the Mṛgendra (Kriyāpāda 3.56cd–57ab), stating the legitimacy of worshipping Īśvara in a throne, which had already been quoted together by Trilocanaśiva with reference to the cult of the throne of knowledge (see above).[936] These quotations are followed by Uttarakāmika 67.45cd, on the worship of Śiva and Rudra in the śivabheda and rudrabheda, respectively. It is at this point that the author refers to the cult of the scriptures in a quadrangular maṇḍala and the ways of worshipping the two divisions of the Śaiva tantras, by using portions of the text of Appayya Dīkṣita without acknowledging him as the author, and then citing as scriptural support a passage from the Vātula where this form of worship of the Scriptures is again referred to.[937] A quotation from Śivadharmottara 2.28–29, stating that the worship of knowledge has to be followed by the worship of the teacher,[938] marks the passage to the next section, on the guru worship.

The siddhāntaśravaṇavidhi is more complex, as it involves topics that, from a simple ritualistic scheme, branch out into questions concerning scriptural authority and its classification. However, Vedajñāna maintains a taxonomic approach, never venturing into an elaborate doctrinal analysis. Connections with the chapter on the throne of knowledge, even though the two sections are not contiguous, can be immediately discerned in the first stanzas, which Vedajñāna attributes to a ‘section on rituals’ (Kriyākāṇḍa), stating that the study (of scriptures) has to take place at midday, after worshipping knowledge with flowers, perfumes and garlands, and after the veneration of the lotus-feet of the teacher.[939] The manuscript of the scriptures is therefore ushered in to play its iconic role immediately before its teaching begins. The prescriptions concerning the procedures for studying and teaching the scriptures are started by the injunctions of Svacchandatantra 5.50–51ab, according to which[940] ‘one should constantly meditate upon the scripture, and constantly teach it to devotees. A rite to be performed at the junction of the sun (saṃdhi) should not break off the daily rite, o beautiful face! One should not proclaim the practical illustration of a scripture (śāstrapaddhati) in front of the non-initiates!’. The text of the Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati continues by establishing some basic notions about the identification of scriptures according to their internal division into sections (bheda).[941] After this, Vedajñāna again shifts the focus of attention to the material aspects of the transmission of knowledge, for manuscripts are regarded as the main focus of the whole process of teaching and learning, as will be stated later on by means of a quotation from the Mṛgendra (see below). As Vedajñāna simply puts it,[942] ‘the Śaiva scriptures (śivajñānāni), after having been produced as manuscripts with leaves made of copper and so on, or with birchbark leaves, or with leaves made of Śrītāla; having produced manuscripts according to one’s own wealth and so on and to possibilities, with these characteristics; having written into them with a pen or with ink and so on, by using the Nāgara script and so on, they have to be recited’. Before illustrating the process of learning, the author therefore quotes texts that describe the different steps of the production of a manuscript, its copying, and its reading. This replicates the same basic pattern illustrated by the Vidyādānādhyāya—notably also the reference to the ‘Nandināgara’ script—although the crucial element defining the Śivadharmottara’s version of the ritual, the gift, is missing here as in all of the tantric accounts on the worship of manuscripts, in conformity with the idea of the secrecy and initiatic nature of knowledge. The arrangement of the topics of this section of the Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati thus seems very close to the basic scheme of the activities described in the second chapter of the Śivadharmottara; the latter is also quoted several times in the treatment of the śravaṇavidhi, and this time the quotations are not limited to the second chapter, but also regard the first, third, and sixth.

As a first step, Vedajñāna thus lists some passages concerning the outward appearance of manuscripts. One is an extract from the Santāna, reproducing the same classification of manuscripts according to their measures as proposed by the Aṃśumat and other tantras,[943] and also reported by the Śivārcanācandrikā and the Kriyāsāra. A brief excerpt from chapter 6 of the Acintyaviśvasādākhya, corresponding to stanzas 121–23, refers to writing supports made of palm leaf (tāla) or copper (tāṃra), before illustrating the technique for punching stringholes into the leaves.[944] Two further passages from the Santāna and the Acintyaviśvasādākhya give the measures of two other writing tools, namely the cords—classified into three types according to the number of cotton threads of which they are made[945]—and the pens. The description of the foldable stand to be used as a support for the manuscript during the writing process according to Dīptatantra (see § 2.1) serves the purpose of introducing the next topic, that of the transcription.

While the foregoing stanzas on the material components of manuscripts are devoid of any ritual elements, the situation changes when it comes to the phase of transcription, as the act of copying and ‘transferring the scripture’ has to be carried out in the domesticated arena of the ritual. However, the Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati chooses not to rely on the lengthy procedures taught in the Śivadharmottara, the latter only being mentioned in stanzas 2.39–41, concerning the worship of the manuscript on the śarayantra and the injunctions to use the script ‘from the town of Nandi’. As for the writing procedures, Vedajñāna resorts to the already mentioned Uttarakāmika 67.7–18,[946] while a brief citation from chapter 3 of the Śivadharmottara concerning the five divisions of the daily ‘sacrifice of knowledge’ (jñānayajña)[947] marks the shift to the paragraph on reading and teaching procedures. The first part of this subsection of the siddhāntaśravaṇa is called the ‘sequence of teaching’ (vyākhyākrama), and is introduced by a short prose passage by Vedajñāna borrowing directly from Mṛgendra, Caryāpāda 1.31–33, and Nārāyaṇakaṇṭha’s commentary on it. Vedajñāna refers to this chapter from the Mṛgendra more than once while treating this topic and deals extensively with the rules to follow when teaching the tantras, establishing in the first place that the recipients of such teachings are the Śaiva devotees who adhere to the rules (śivabhaktebhyas … nyāyavartibhyaḥ, 1.29). Pureness of the teacher (1.30) and of the spot where the teaching takes place (1.31) are essential requirements for starting; the teaching session can be carried out ‘in a place whose soil has been purified (pūte mahītale, 1.31)’, and ‘far from the ears of the non-initiates’ (paśuśravaṇavarjite, 1.31). It is at this point that the text makes its sole reference to the use of manuscripts as teaching tools, when it prescribes that, after worshipping Śiva, Ganeśa, and the teacher,[948]

Having placed the manuscript, the secret, good scripture, on top of this [spot of earth], (32) / He should say [to a student] ‘Come, my son, read!’. Once he has fulfilled his duty, with his face turned towards the east or towards the north, the teacher should start [his] explanation by first stating the connections, the object, and the intention [of the scripture] (33).

The text of the last stanzas is borrowed literally in the introductory prose passage by Vedajñāna. He mixes it with portions from Nārāyaṇakaṇṭha’s commentary,[949] and the commentator explains the expression guptasatsūtra, literally ‘[provided with] a good thread that is concealed’, with which the text of the stanzas refers to the manuscript as ‘endowed with a tied cord for [its] protection and embellishment’ (saṃrakṣitaśobhanagrathitasūtram); the support on which the manuscript has to be placed, which is not specified by the text, can be ‘a throne, a foldable instrument, and so on’ (pīṭhayantrakādeḥ) according to Nārāyaṇakaṇṭha’s gloss.

Following the prescriptions of the Mṛgendra, the manuscript therefore exercises its textual function during the teaching, in which a student is charged with the reading. Vedajñāna only evokes these stanzas of the Mṛgendra in the introductory passage, but then he quotes it immediately after a block of quotations dealing with the five different currents (srotas) that correspond to the five faces of Śiva. The scriptures are classified according to the five faces of Sadāśiva from which they have allegedly been emitted. [950] The prescriptions concerning the beginning of a teaching session are then drawn from the Mataṅga (Caryāpāda 3.7cd–8), the Sarvajñānottara, and the Kiraṇa (31.16–23); [951] while the first two sources reiterate some of the prescriptions that Vedajñāna has summarized in his introductory note to this section—namely that the teaching must be conducted in a pure place and separate from the non-initiates[952]—the quotation from the Kiraṇa adds the information that a yogapīṭha has to be built for the teacher, who is venerated on it before the teaching can start.

After listing the names of the scriptures according to Mṛgendra, Caryāpāda 1.43–47, and giving some prescriptions on the teaching procedures as in Mṛgendra, Caryāpāda 1.48–51,[953] Vedajñāna remarks on how the students can be instructed:[954] ‘By sentences taking the shape of the languages which are appropriate for this and the other place, like Sanskrit, Prakrit, and so on, according to the students.’ This introduces the quotation of Uttarakāmika 67.11–21 on the different languages to use during the gift of knowledge and its eulogy. Only at this point the author introduces Mṛgendra, Caryāpāda 3.29–33,[955] whose commentary by Nārāyaṇa is echoed in Vedajñāna’s short introduction to the section on the vyākhyākrama.

After dealing with the definition of the ‘connections’ (sambandhas),[956] the text returns to the reading of the Śaiva scriptures by regulating in which periods this may not take place, or on which occasions it can be interrupted and for how long.[957] This topic leads to the conclusion of the chapter, which is arranged in two main subparagraphs: one collecting quotations advocating for teaching and studying the Śaiva knowledge in a proper way, and another one on the eulogy of the transmission of the Śaiva knowledge by means of writing and manuscripts. As regards the first topic, the texts quoted in this section mainly exhort not to transmit knowledge to non-initiates, and to protect it from people who are not entitled to deal with it. In this context, Vedajñāna manages to insert some stanzas from the Śivadharmottara (6.17–20) on the ‘revilement of knowledge’ (jñānanindā).[958] These verses, as is to be expected, do not originally address the topic of initiation, nor do they prohibit the access to manuscripts of non-initiates. Rather, they are concerned with the purity of the place and the people handling it, or with the fulfilment of the ritual duties before reading, writing, or meditating upon the manuscript of Śiva. The quotations following these two passages, one from Ratnatrayaparīkṣā 12 and the other from the Sarvajñānottara, replace this notion of purity by introducing the tantric notions of ‘power fall’ (śaktipāta) and the secrecy of scriptures: the Sarvajñānottara recommends not to give the scriptures, which are the utmost secret, to one who is not an initiand, to a non-devotee, to a nihilist, to one who reviles his teacher, or to one who is fond of other texts.[959] Such an exclusivist approach, perfectly integrated in a tantric environment, is not traceable in the Śivadharmottara, which nonetheless is consistently quoted until the very end of the chapter. Vedajñāna extracts a sequence of stanzas from Śivadharmottara 2.76–88 regarding the merits bestowed on those who write, donate, or listen to the manuscript of the Śaiva knowledge. These stanzas of the Śivadharmottara, together with analogous verses from the Sūtasaṃhitā, praising the diffusion of manuscripts and their reception by devotees whose highest goal is the attainment of the town of Śiva, sound out of place in connection with the previously quoted passages from tantras such as the Mṛgendra, the Mataṅga, and the Kiraṇa, which all understood teaching in a purely initiatic context, and for which religious observance had the function of perfecting the path towards emancipation, rather than allowing one to reach different levels of ultramundane existence. The eclectic approach of Vedajñāna, who compiles passages reflecting different visions, reflects, despite some incongruences, the analogous character of the broad category of tantric rite, which thrives on such eclecticism regardless of doctrinal contradictions, and thus channels ancient practice into modern religious observance.

Vedajñāna is not yet done with the topic of manuscript worship, as he inserts a chapter on the installation of the throne of knowledge towards the end of his work.[960] The main difference from the first chapter on the throne of knowledge procedures is that now the described ritual is a proper installation, whereas in the previous case it was more appropriately designated as a worship ceremony (pūjā). The choice of sources will consequently be different, in spite of some overlap. The first part of the chapter, where the author relies on quotations from the Acintyaviśvasādākhya, the Santāna, the Uttarakāmika, and the Yogaja, is dedicated to the description of the ‘place of knowledge’ (vidyāsthāna)[961] and, above all, of the material features of the manuscript, as well as of the writing tools and material. Once again, we thus find a strong focus on the materiality of the writing preceding instructions on the ritual uses of manuscripts. The production of the manuscript is here clearly considered as part of the ritual, and this is illustrated by the prescriptions concerning the choice of the most auspicious moment for the construction of the manuscript. One stanza from the Vīratantra quoted by Vedajñāna reads: [962] ‘According to the zodiac sign of the sacrificer, and [in correspondence with] a favourable constellation; having thus observed, an utmost manuscript will be variously produced’. That the text refers here to the material production of the manuscript, and not to its copying—which is addressed in some subsequent lines—can be deduced by the contents of the following quotations, which focus on the materials of which a manuscript should consist and, once again, the types of cords it should be provided with.[963] However, the ritual procedure marks a bigger change in comparison with the account on the worship of the throne of knowledge.

In the first place, the installation of the throne of knowledge, in addition to the production of a manuscript, also encompasses its copying, which is then followed by a revision, modelled precisely after the ceremony outlined in Uttarakāmika 67. In order to describe (and prescribe) the transcription of the manuscript, Vedajñāna quotes from Acintyaviśvasādākhya 65.7cd–11ab, parallel to Uttarakāmika 67.6cd–9 (see Appendix 2), on the use of letters ‘originating from various places’ (nānādeśasamudbhūtair, see above, Uttarakāmika 67.9), and Śivadharmottara 2.40–41, on the use of letters of the Nandināgari script (see § 2.1);[964] additionally, a line from the Vīratantra prescribes writing five or six lines on a page,[965] while also echoing the considerations found in Uttarakāmika 67.32 on the copying of manuscripts as an action that enriches a kingdom (rājarāṣṭravivardhanam).[966] The exhortation of the Acintyaviśvasādākhya to copy the manuscript of Śiva ‘after a long time, due to [its] old age’[967] opens the section devoted to the correction of the manuscript, for which the author does not rely on the text of Uttarakāmika 67.13–17—although the ceremony described in that chapter has been, as observed above, the real model for the construction of this ritual in the Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati—but rather on Śivadharmottara 2.7–12 (see § 2.2).[968] These stanzas were actually the source of the Uttarakāmika verses (§ 4.2 and Appendix 2), and the fact that they are used here instead of the Uttarakāmika stanzas might be a possible sign that this borrowing had also been identified by Vedajñāna, who at this point returns to the original text.

The description of the ritual procedures of which the installation of the throne of knowledge essentially consists relies in part on the account given by Uttarakāmika 75.38–48, and in part on a parallel account provided by the Vīratantra.[969] The first to be quoted is a passage from the latter dealing with setting up the ground where the ritual will take place: a pillared pavilion has to be built in front of (the temple) of Śiva, either in the northeast or in the south and, dividing this maṇḍapa into three sections, a vedī-altar has to be arranged in the middle, and five kuṇḍas all around; the sacrificial ground has to be prepared with rice in the southwest. [970] The officiant will then lay the manuscripts of the Scriptures on a bed, accompanying this operation by the recitation of their ‘seed mantras’ (bījamantra), which are expounded in the following stanzas. At this point, Vedajñāna quotes Uttarakāmika 67.45–48, prescribing the different steps of the installation (see above): the worship of Śiva’s eight aspects and the deities presiding over them, as well as the worship of Śiva in the Śaiva section of the scriptures and of Rudra in the Raudra section, then the worship by means of vases, the worship of the Vidyeśas, and the performance of a homaoblation.[971] The Vīratantra further prescribes that, after the oblation, one should sprinkle the manuscripts of the Scriptures with the vardhanī-water—note that the Uttarakāmika had referred to a worship of two vardhanī-vessels in 67.46b; however, in order to perform their consecration (abhiṣeka), it is not the manuscripts that are directly sprinkled, but the reflection of their images in a mirror.[972]

Appendix 1

The ‘Chapter on the Gift of Knowledge’ (Vidyādānādhyāya), being the second chapter of the Śivadharmottara

For the convenience of the reader, I have decided to present here, in their entirety, the English translation and Sanskrit text of one of the most important textual sources of the present work, i.e. the Vidyādānādhyāya of the Śivadharmottara. The Sanskrit text reproduced in the following pages is a product of my critical edition of this chapter from the Śivadharmottara, conpiled on the basis of some Nepalese manuscripts and the paper transcripts of the IFP (see De Simini 2013). This edition is currently under revision, however, now that I have acquired reproductions of previously unknown manuscripts that are proving crucial to understanding of the text's transmission. For this reason, I have decided to reproduce the text of this chapter without its critical apparatus, postponing the publication of a proper critical edition to future date.

English Translation and Sanskrit Text*

Summary

I.

Introduction

stanzas 2.1–12

II.

Beginning of the ritual

stanzas 2.13–15

III.

Preparation of the location

stanzas 2.16–22

IV.

Worship of the manuscripts

stanzas 2.23–31

V.

Transcription

stanzas 2.32–44

VI.

Procession of the manuscript to the Śaiva hermitage

stanzas 2.45–58

VII.

Donation and performance of the great appeasement

stanzas 2.59–69

VIII.

Benefits of the gift of knowledge

stanzas 2.70–108

IX.

Worship of the manuscript and its preservation in a repository

stanzas 2.109–127

X.

Building of a Śaiva hermitage

stanzas 2.128–145

XI.

Procedures for the installation

stanzas 2.146–157

XII.

Merits of building a Śaiva hermitage

stanzas 2.158–177

XIII.

Building of an infirmary

stanzas 2.178–192

XIV.

Praise of the gift of knowledge

stanza 2.193

1.1English Translation

I.Introduction

And now, [the word] vidyā comes from the root vid, and this [means] the knowledge ensouled by Śiva. The gift of this [knowledge] is a great gift (mahādāna), the most excellent among all gifts. (1)

[The gift] that awakens disciples who are devout to Śiva, after having taught them step by step, this is called a gift of knowledge, according to the authority of the knowledge of Śiva. (2)

The one who, depending on the disciples, would teach [them] using words in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and local languages, is traditionally held as teacher (guru). (3)

As there is no end to Śiva, who is completely accomplished [and] has a great soul, in the same way there is no end to the gifting of knowledge, which is endowed with all good properties. (4)

The superhuman powers of the supreme eight qualities of Śiva: this is the fruit [obtainable] from a gift of knowledge [in the ultramundane existence]. In this life, renown, glory, divine strength, knowledge, prosperity, wealth, happiness. (5)

The one who, having himself learned a corrupt [teaching], would teach [this] knowledge to somebody else, this most miserable man, destroyer of knowledge, goes to the frightful hell. (6)

The teacher who completely restores, as before, the correctness (saṃskāra, see 2.11) of the Śaiva knowledge, which has been damaged due to carelessness over the course of time and which has been wrongly written, with too little or too many syllables, by people who were confused; (7)

Whose readings have been erroneously learned; which has been spoiled by stupid people, and has been corrected by masters who are blinded by being proud in their knowledge; (8)

Which, with respect to the sense, is endowed with meaningless statements and contains repetitions, which contains internal contradictions [or is] in contradiction with its own theses; (9)

Which has been severely damaged with respect to the metrics, and which lacks words and meanings; [the teacher who properly restores the former correctness of this knowledge of Śiva], endowed here and there with these and other defects, (10)

Is the knower of the meaning of the Śaiva scriptures, a sage, the supreme lord of knowledge, (11)

And no one will be able to describe the greatness of his merits. He is exactly like Śiva, [and] Śiva abides permanently in him. (12)

II.Beginning of the ritual

To the advantage of wealthy people, I will explain the gift of knowledge, which is based on [the use of] manuscripts: the procedure according to which [a manuscript] is copied and donated, and what is the fruit of that. (13)

Having worshipped Śiva according to rule, one should then worship his knowledge, and [worship] with devotion the teacher as if he were Śiva, because this triad is similar: (14)

Like Śiva is knowledge, like knowledge is the teacher. For [one can gain] the same kind of fruit from the worship of Śiva, knowledge, and the teacher. (15)

III.Preparation of the location

On a portion of earth which is flat, beautiful, devoid of all [possible] flaws, having made a vidyāmaṇḍala with fragrances, cow dung and water, (16)

Which is eight hands long, or half of this, round or square-shaped; in the middle of this, one will draw with white powder a very beautiful lotus flower. (17)

On its external surface, one should arrange a variegated embellishment with polychrome paintings, and adorn it with lotuses of five colours, so that it has a good appearance. (18)

Above this [place], one will arrange a tent, white or colourful, overspread with nets of pearls, endowed with little bells and chimes, (19)

And with pendants [such as] threads and wreaths, as well as strings of pearls, balls, wreaths of garlands of colourful flowers, adorned with bells and cāmara; (20)

Held by four sticks enveloped in colourful clothes, embellished by bubble-like ornaments and half-moons, mirrors and so on; (21)

Adorned with four beautiful jars pouring out white lotuses from their mouths, with white earthen vessels from which the sprouts of barley-corns and rice arise. (22)

IV.Worship of the manuscripts

Having placed (st. 25) the auspicious lion-throne of knowledge (vidyāsiṃhāsana), made of ivory and so on, inlaid with golden jewels, furnished with a cushion made of dukūla fabric, (23)

Or this auspicious stick-throne (daṇḍāsana), embellished with golden jewels, veneered with ivory [produced] from the most noble elephants, made with the wood of red sandal trees; (24)

[Having placed one of these thrones] on a bunch of flowers, and having worshipped [it] with fragrances and flowers, one should place there both manuscripts, [that is] a blank manuscript and one containing the text. (25)

And one will worship [them] with yellow pigments, sandal and so on, as well as with flowers and incenses, with ghee, lamps and garlands, with food and beautiful clothes. (26)

One should make offers with musk, aloe and camphor, white sandalwood and bdellium oils, raising again and again [these] five kinds of incense. (27)

Afterwards, having circumambulated from left to right, the person in charge should bow with all his members. Having worshipped in this way the knowledge of Śiva, he should then worship the teacher. (28)

He will worship with devotion [the teacher] who illustrates the knowledge of Śiva, sitting on the glorious seat on the second bunch of flowers, as if he were Śiva. (29)

Having made a triple circumambulation, he will prostrate himself to the ground in a straight line. [Then] he will proclaim — kneeling on the ground after raising, (30)

V.Transcription

Having once again respectfully bowed to the teacher, with [his] hands in the añjali position —: ‘O Bhagavan, with your favour I will transfer the treatise [from one manuscript to the other]’. Authorised by the [teacher’s] ‘yes’, he should proclaim the day auspicious for the manuscript. (31)

Having received a propitiatory benediction (svastyayana) with auspicious prayers and with the sound of musical instruments, a scribe, pure, after taking a bath, dressed in white, crowned with a garland, embellished with perfumes and so on (32)

And with golden finger-rings on his hands, adorned with two bracelets — after bowing to the lord of the gods, he should write five stanzas. (33)

Then, with different sorts of food, drinks, condiments and so on, he will first feed the teacher, the ascetics [and] also the Brahmins, (34)

And, in the end, he should satisfy all: the afflicted, the blinds, the miserable, the helpless, the children, the old, the poor, the sick, [his] mother, father, friends and relatives. (35)

And then, having asked the teacher’s permission, he should eat together with his wives. Having made an offering to the Gaṇas by night, he should sleep during the night avoiding sexual intercourse. (36)

The day after, in the forenoon, the person in charge, having made a vidyāmaṇḍala that measures two hands, embellished with various colours, (37)

Decorated with cups and other [vessels] containing the sprouts of grain, with colourful flowers, endowed with incenses, lamps and a wide cloth as cover; (38)

Having worshipped the manuscript lying in the middle of a śarayantra seat, day by day he will write or read aloud, in the following way, after having performed worship. (39)

One should transcribe the manuscript of Śiva with letters belonging to the Nandināgara script (st. 2.41) that are quadrangular, aligned in the upper part, [whose strokes are] not too thick nor thin, whose elements are well filled, smooth, not too disjointed nor joined together, (40)

Characterised by [correct] metrical quantities, anusvāras and combined consonants, with [appropriate] signs for short and long vowels. (41)

Once [the transcription] is completed, he should again perform worship, according to the former procedure, for Śivāgni, the teacher, and knowledge, having fasted with effort. (42)

And at this point he should celebrate an all-night vigil with sweet sounding musical instruments, with songs and dances and various tales about Śiva, (43)

And with various Vedic chants and beautiful spectacles, enjoying puppet theatres and so on; in this way, he should spend the night. (44)

VI.Procession of the manuscript to the Śaiva hermitage

And, at dawn, he should make a vehicle for the śivavidyā, very beautiful, with five niches and three stories, made of wood, bamboos and so on, entirely enveloped in coloured clothes, furnished with all ornaments. (45)

Placed on the throne of knowledge, in the middle of that [vehicle], is the manuscript of Śaiva knowledge, covered with golden jewels, wonderful, or rather embellished with ivory, or decorated with various paintings on its external surface, with a pierced cover (46)

Provided with leather on the side, fastened by a strong thread; the person in charge, having worshipped [it] with fragrances, flowers, and so on, according to the previously explained procedure, (47)

Having raised the vehicle of this [manuscript], he should bring [it] with devotion to the hermitage of Śiva, well firm by the best chariots or strong men, (48)

Adorned (st. 50) with umbrellas, banners, flags (patākā) and so on, with canopies, music played by tūryas, auspicious prayers, Vedic chants and so on, nice jars containing incenses, (49)

[Together] with wandering singers, bards, musical instruments, songs performed by women, girls with beautiful chowries in their hands, painted sticks with mirrors. (50)

And the king, endowed with all ornaments, should participate himself in the procession, with a big quantity of people and at their head, together with the experts of Dharma; (51)

Alternatively, having placed the manuscript on a vehicle led by an elephant, he should lead [it] through the main royal street, in circular direction within the town. (52)

And with his personal wealth the king should enable the performance of the worship of all sanctuaries; he should make offerings in the ten directions, all around the town. (53)

While still on the way, he should proceed in first row [and] uninterruptedly give offering mixed with fragrances, flowers, and unhusked barley-corns, together with water. (54)

In the first row behind him all the residents of the temples should proceed. [The king] will remember the mantra of Śiva in front of the knowledge of Śiva. (55)

All the town people will be in white cloths, and people who live in this region should raise flags. (56)

And after having worshipped the home deities, a festival has to take place in the house, too, and the householders will feed the Brahmins in [their] houses with food and drinks, and people of the country will go on a pilgrimage to the Śaiva hermitage. (57)

It will be declared improper to cut the trees. [The king] should banish all kind of violence and the prisoners have to be freed, the [internal] enemies like anger and so on have to be abandoned. For two days he should celebrate a kaumudī at an improper time, for the Lord. (58)

VII.Donation and performance of the great appeasement

Having reached the temple of Śiva, he should offer this [manuscript] placed on the vehicle, declaring the day auspicious and uttering formulas of victory, and with a big tumult. (59)

Having gently placed it in a cleansed, pleasant place in the presence of Śiva, having bowed to this [manuscript] with the [same] devotion addressed to a teacher, he should make offerings. (60)

The best among reciters should read one chapter with the aim of ensuring appeasement for the cows, the Brahmins, and the king, as well as for the towns of the kingdom. (61)

True knower of the characteristics of metrics, good poet, endowed with a sweet voice, knower of music and a clever man: [this is] the best reciter of manuscripts. (62)

After that, with the water of appeasement the teacher, having risen, should sprinkle the king a little on [his] head, and then the people standing there; (63)

Having ascertained the appeasement of the world and, once again, at the end, of the king, now the king has to provide food for the teachers, accompanied by fees. (64)

At this point indeed [the king] himself should eat, together with his courtiers, and various public entertainments have to be arranged after the people have eaten too. (65)

Having thus acted, a great appeasement (mahāśānti) arises for the king and the town and the entire country: no doubt about it! (66)

And calamities cease and no pestilence spreads, all frightening things cease and dangers come to an end. (67)

All evil demons are eradicated and the enemies disappear. Diseases get dissolved and there will be no risk of famine, (68)

And the obstacles disappear. There will be a supreme prosperity, and the wealth of the kingdom [will be] large and the king [will] forever [be] victorious. (69)

VIII.Benefits of the gift of knowledge

He becomes rich in sons and grandsons and [his] mind is enriched with Dharma by the grace of the gift of knowledge, for the king and the common people. (70)

The king who will donate the manuscript of that Śaiva knowledge, according to this procedure, to one who is versed in it, it will get the fruit of a gift of knowledge; (71)

Or whoever else, man or woman, who, endowed with trust and wealth, would perform this procedure, will get the fruit of a gift of knowledge; (72)

And [also] a poor person who applies this procedure in accordance [with his personal wealth], without deceitfulness in money matters, with devotion, will obtain the fruit of a gift of knowledge. (73)

A person who owns a certain amount of money, [if] he would act honestly, [that is] conformably to those [substances he owns] in this world, he will gain a meritorious fruit that is as abundant [as his substances]. (74)

As many letters are in the manuscript of the knowledge of Śiva, so many thousand years the donor will live in the town of Śiva (śivapura). (75)

Having rescued ten ancestors and the ten descendants, having brought to Heaven [his] mother, father and lawful wife, he will attain Śiva. (76)

Surrounded by his courtiers, accompanied by all [his] wives, the king, through the power of the gift of knowledge, will reach the town of Śiva; (77)

He will have fun for an imperishable time with countless auspicious [flying] chariots, furnished with everything he desires, swift as thought. (78)

[He will be] endowed with the superhuman powers of the supreme eight qualities, powerful on everything, omniscient, fully satisfied, like a second Śaṅkara. (79)

As the supreme Lord is the supreme [chief] among all immortals, in the same way the gift of knowledge is traditionally held as supreme among all gifts. (80)

The one who, having placed — in exact accordance with this procedure — the manuscript of the knowledge of Śiva on a bunch of flowers, would worship it in the hermitage of Śiva, (81)

In the day of full moon of the month Āṣāḍha, making light with garlands of lamps, and having worshipped [the manuscript] in the day of full moon in the month Vaiśākha as well, this person will take the fruit of a gift of knowledge. (82)

Listen to the fruit resulting from the merits of that person who, having transcribed the best among the auspicious manuscripts, would present [it] to someone who is versed in the knowledge of Śiva: (83)

As big is the number of this [manuscript’s] extremely auspicious leaves in the manuscript, for so many thousand yugas he is honoured in the world of Śiva; (84)

Having presented, according to [his] faith and wealth, even just one of the auxiliary instruments of knowledge — which [are] leaves, stands, threads and so on, ink-pot and pen, a śarayantra seat, unguents, beds, good food, a salary, and so on, (85)

And anything else that is employed for this purpose; everything, big or small, that would conform to the procedure (86)

— He is honoured in the world of Śiva with great enjoyments. (87)

Having donated a carpet for the manuscript and a beautiful cloth, proportionate to the measures [of the manuscript], or a cover for its box, he is honoured in the world of Śiva. (88)

As many are the whole number of threads in the cloth of this [manuscript], for so many thousand yugas he will obtain great enjoyments (89)

One who offers a gift of food to one who is versed in the knowledge of Śiva will take the fruit of a gift of knowledge without interruption, until the end. (90)

The assistance intended only for the renunciants, [consisting of the provision of] shoes, parasols, undergarments, beds, covers and seats, oils for the feet, collyria, unguents, baths, food, and medicine; cleaning and painting the monastery; the recitation of the manuscript of Śiva, accompanied by [offerings of] lamps, fire, water, flowers; (91–92)

The one who would regularly do this for five people whose souls rejoice in the Śaiva knowledge, for five years, this one will obtain the fruit of the gift of knowledge. (93)

Having rescued twenty-one members of the family, he will establish [them] in the town of the Lord: there they have fun with the huge enjoyments of that [city], as long as there are moon and stars. (94)

Together with [his] wife, kids and good servants [this] man is happy for an undecaying time in the town of Śiva, with flying chariots which fulfill all desires. (95)

Having made a vidyāmaṇḍala, be it round or squared, measuring two hands or more, with cow dung of good quality and water, (96)

Embellished on all sides with white and red powders, and others of different colours, with a white lotus-flower in the middle, adorned with a cover of good quality, (97)

Abundant in colourful flowers, furnished with lamps and unhusked barley-corns; the one who, having worshipped [it] in this way, would read the knowledge of Śiva with faith, (98)

From the beginning to the end, following the right sequence, everything uniformly, gradually, with the aim of helping all people [and] aiming at the accumulation of their own merits; (99)

And [the one who], once this [reading] is accomplished, would worship Śiva, knowledge, and the teacher [and,] after that, would prepare food for all the śivayogins; (100)

The one who would recite the Śaiva knowledge in this way, with devotion, and would pay for having [it] read [by a professional reciter], will obtain the fruit of a gift of knowledge. (101)

The person who would study even [only one] or half stanza of the knowledge of Śiva, [who] would read it, as well as meditate on it, would write [it] or would have [somebody] write [it] (102)

And would listen very concentrated and reflect upon its meaning, and who would have people listen to [it]: listen to the fruit of the merit of this person! (103)

One who studies half stanza of the knowledge of Śiva will obtain the same fruit as one who donates the earth filled with all jewels. (104)

One who will donate with devotion a box made of śrīparṇī wood, dug out, well fit [to contain a manuscript], as well as made of leather, (105)

To one who is versed in the knowledge of Śiva, with the purpose of teaching this [Śaiva knowledge], as well as [if he donates] a very smooth tablet for writing on, will obtain the fruit of a gift of knowledge. (106)

Once established for the longest time in the world of Rudra, he has fun with big auspicious flying chariots fulfilling all desires. (107)

Then, having reached the earth [again] after some time, he becomes a pious king, or rather a handsome, true Brahmin, well versed in the contents of all branches of knowledge. (108)

IX.Worship of the manuscript and its preservation in a repository

The person in charge (budhaḥ, st. 2.113), who would commission the construction of a nice golden box, complete in all its parts, embellished with all jewels, provided with a cover, [which functions as] a shelter for the manuscript (vidyākośasamāśraya), [made] of silver and copper, square-shaped, (109)

Or made of white copper, brass and iron, of wood, bamboo and so on; and, with new, red-coloured leather, (110)

Would polish inside and outside that new house in which knowledge abides (vidyāvāsagṛha), furnished with handles [made] with all [precious] stones, fastened by a strong thread; (111)

[Or who] would make a jewel box of knowledge (vidyāratnakaraṇḍaka), provided with a lock; having had [this] built in the proper manner, according to one's own wealth, (112)

Having purified with fragrant water the supreme house of the manuscript (vidyākośagṛha), having set up a wonderful tent provided with flowers inside; (113)

Having worshipped there the lion-throne of knowledge, according to procedure, he will place on this [throne] the abode of the manuscript (vidyākośagṛha) by proclaiming the day auspicious; (114)

And then he will besmear [it] with sandal, camphor, saffron and so on, [and] worship [it] with fresh flowers, once it has been provided inside with garments [and] incense; (115)

Then, accompanied by the sound of musical instruments, he should fill [the treasure-house of knowledge] with the treasure of knowledge (vidyākośa); [and] afterwards he should worship knowledge with abundant substances and, having made a circumambulation from left to right, the person in charge should, at the end, bow with all his members. (116)

Also for the treasure-house of knowledge there is a wonderful abode of knowledge (vidyāyatana): [this] should be very beautiful, pleasant, measuring eight hands; (117)

Made either of stones, bricks, clay or of fresh wood, furnished with door-pins, embellished with a garden [provided] with ramparts, (118)

Furnished with flags and banners, adorned with a ceiling of high quality, furnished with bells and chowries, resonating with the jingling of little bells; (119)

Completely besmeared with fragrances like sandal, aloe and so on; one should always perfume [it] with well fragrant incenses and with flowers. (120)

Having brought this [manuscript] there, [accompanied] by the sound of tūryas and by various auspicious prayers too, he will place [there] with devotion the jewel box of knowledge, (121)

And then he will worship the Śaiva knowledge with fragrances, flowers, and so on, like Śiva, continuously, at dawn, noon and sunset, with reverence. (122)

Afterwards he should feed all the assembled śivayogins, and then, having satisfied the poor, the blind, the miserable and so on, he should perform a ritual of reparation. (123)

The person who would build, in the way described above, a nice place for the knowledge of Śiva, he, freed from all sins, will take the fruit of a gift of knowledge. (124)

Having rescued twenty-one members of the family, surrounded by his wives, having obtained the superhuman power of the eight qualities, he will be honoured in the world of Śiva. (125)

The one who, having obtained knowledge there (scil. in the world of Śiva), would abandon the sensual pleasures, as if they were poison, he reaches the supreme liberation; [but] the one who still has attachments, he will again enjoy pleasures (scil. will be reborn). (126)

At the next emanation of the universe, he will be the only king on earth, endowed with all the qualities of lordship and well versed in the meaning of all knowledge. (127)

X.Building of a Śaiva hermitage

The person who would have built, for those whose souls are pleased by the knowledge of Śiva, a very beautiful five- or three-storied complex, provided with a well-levelled platform, (128)

Furnished with inner apartments [and] a common room, and divided into regular parts according to [the rules of] architecture, surrounded by compound walls; (129)

The platform of this [building] [should have] a vertical extent of two hands, be provided with columns on the sides, be fully paved with baked bricks: this [constitutes] a nice, small ambulatory. (130)

In front of a nicely built terrace, in the Agni direction (southeast), a kitchen endowed with a chimney has to be built; in the East, a pillared pavilion for the sattra. (131)

In the Śiva direction (northeast) there must be a greenhouse of fragrant flowers, provided with cloths, and a treasury-house [has to be built] in the Kubera direction (north), and a store-room in the Vāyu direction (northwest); (132)

And in the Varuṇa direction (west) [there should be] a well, furnished with water and windows; a place with fuel, such as firewood and kuśa grass, and a [place] for weapons [should be built] in the Nirṛti direction (southwest). (133)

A nice guest-house, with beds, seats and sandals, endowed with water, fire, lamps and good servants, should be placed in the southern direction. (134)

One should embellish all the gateways with bunches of appropriately irrigated plantains, and flowers of five colors. (135)

Inside and outside the compound wall, for [an extension] of five hands, one should leave [a free area]; And outside of the ramparts one will plant, all around, (136)

A wonderful garden for the Śaiva hermitage, embellished with various flowers, endowed with all the good qualities of each season, furnished with various trees, (137)

Such as: priyaṅgus, śirīṣas, asok trees, putrañjīvakas and rañjakas, punnāgas, nāga flowers and bakulas, pāṭalas, bilvas, campakas, (138)

White coral trees and vijayas, jātīs, tagaras and kubjakas, with reeds (bāṇa), āmrata(ka)s and kuruṇṭakas, [which are] golden, white and grouped in heaps, (139)

With oleanders and karṇikāras, of various colours [and] in great quantity, displayed according to the arrangement of the place, furnished with nice access pathways and watering basins, (140)

Provided with many sorts of trees, with water on every side, endowed with white-coloured water day-lotuses [and] with indigo-coloured night-lotuses, (141)

[And] with small structures covered with creepers, placed here and there, splendid for the bunches of plantain stems, pomegranates and so on. (142)

Having done this, outside this garden one should build a big compound wall, furnished with a door and a monumental gate (gopura), endowed with a moat channel. (143)

Beyond the third complex one should make a pillared pavilion for the teaching of knowledge, furnished with round windows and doors, beautiful. (144)

In the middle of the complex, a fifth [building] has to be made, i.e. a pinnacle-style building for Śiva, which is long six or eight hands, produced with wood, cloths and other materials. (145)

XI.Procedures for the installation

There, according to rule, one should install Śiva, made of clay, wood, or stone, who is the author of all knowledge, omniscient, Lord of the Lakulas, (146)

Surrounded by pupils and pupils of pupils, with his hands raised in the act of teaching, seated in the lotus position, lord of the gods, a master whose speech is vivid (147)

Having in this way made a Śaiva hermitage, with devotion, according to one’s wealth, one should then perform an installation of this, by means of worship and purification; (148)

In front of the monastery, having provided embellishments with the same kind of precious things prescribed for the gift of knowledge, having in sequence smeared Śiva five times with the five products of the cow, in the Śiva direction, (149)

One should bathe [it], provided with a bath-vest, with fragrant waters and so on; having carried it, accompanied by the sounds of tūryas, one should place it in a pillared pavilion with flowers. (150)

Then, after worshipping [him] with sandal, flowers and so on, one will perform the incubation [of the image in the temple]. Having recited the five stotras, one should then address Śiva [in this way]: (151)

‘O God, today is the incubation, tomorrow your installation. Please, be present to bestow your grace on the devotees!’ (152)

Having made the ablutions early in the morning [and] worshipped the deity again, one should let [the god] in. One should install [the god] on the altar with the five pavitras, beginning from the foot. (153)

Then, [the icon] should always be in the temple of Śiva [surrounded] by very nice fragrances and so on, and one should worship Śiva with nice fragrances and flowers, without bathing [him]. (154)

The teacher, surrounded by his students, after bowing to this Lord should start teaching, with his face turned to the east or to the north, for the purpose of making the day auspicious, in front of Śiva. (155)

Then, the sponsor should worship himself the teacher with devotion, offering fees and various sorts of food and so on, as done previously. (156)

Afterwards, he should offer [this] place, fully equipped, to all śivayogins, having repeatedly bowed [to them]. (157)

XII.Merits of building a Śaiva hermitage

Thus, the one who is the first to have a big, auspicious town of Śiva built, being freed from all evil, [this person] is celebrated in the world of Śiva. (158)

Together with thirty members of his clan, accompanied by his wives, together with sons, friends and so on, surrounded by his courtiers, (159)

With marvelous, innumerable big vehicles fulfilling all desires, like Śiva he has fun with [his] material enjoyments, endowed with powers like aṇimā and so on. (160)

Then, after a long time, through the power of the gift of knowledge, having practiced the jñānayoga he is liberated in this very place. (161)

The chief architect, [his] assistants, the trees, the bulls, the good workers, all go to the town of Rudra, and [also] those men who have been supervising [on the construction of the monastery], (162)

As well as those servants of the Śiva’s sanctuary who receive a salary for this occupation: they too, once dead, go to Heaven, as a consequence of [their] service to Śiva. (163)

Once one has reached the condition of being the slave of Śiva, may they be men, women, or both, they also go to the big town of Rudra, by [sheer] connection with his name. (164)

The women of the Śiva’s temple, donated [to it], purchased and entered [willingly], procured by violence [or] taken by force, have to be regarded as courtesans of Rudra. (165)

The woman who is born as a Rudra courtesan, she too, together with her offspring of sons and grandsons, once dead, goes to Heaven, on the sole authority of [her] mother. (166)

Those people who die within the border of the Śaiva sanctuary, they too go to the world of Śiva: so what about those who are attached to this [sanctuary]? (167)

The one who would make even a very small, extremely nice Śaiva hermitage that consists of two or one room, he too goes to the town of Śiva. (168)

After having well paved the ground in front of the Lord's sanctuary, there one should make a maṇḍala, well round, with cow-dung and water. (169)

Having accurately measured it with a thread, embellished with various paintings, abounding in colourful flowers, embellished by a lotus-flower in the middle, (170)

Having with [his] hand moved the water, furnished with lamps and barley-corns, after bowing with the forehead to the ground he should make offers to Śiva. (171)

The man who would in this way make a śivamaṇḍala, even only once, is magnified in the world of Śiva together with everything he desires. (172)

After a while, once he has come back to earth, he will become a glorious king, wise, handsome, opulent, [or] a good Brahman. (173)

Having made a vidyāmaṇḍala in the pillared pavilion for the teaching of knowledge, having there worshipped the Śaiva knowledge, one will then listen to its teaching. (174)

Having made a wonderful gurumaṇḍala according to a procedure that starts with a śivamaṇḍala, one is magnified in the world of Śiva; (175)

And shining is the knowledge of the one who, having made a triple maṇḍala, for Śiva, knowledge, and the teacher, listens to the Śaiva knowledge. (176)

The one who, according to this procedure, listens to and recites the Śaiva knowledge, having obtained supreme happiness, at the end of [his] material life will attain liberation (177)

XIII.Building of an infirmary

Listen to the fruits resulting from the merits of one who would build an infirmary, frequented by great physicians, furnished with all resources! (178)

Since health is a means to accomplish Dharma, wealth, pleasures and liberation, therefore this set of four [human goals] will be donated through the gift of health. (179)

Having healed with effort even only one sick Brahmin, one earns a very big merit, [which is] endless [and] indestructible. (180)

The man who heals a śivayogin who is devoted to the jñānayoga, pacified [but] afflicted by sickness, will take the fruits of all the yogas. (181)

All the gods, [like] Brahmā and Viṣṇu, [are] kings, the diseases their subjects; diseases are big obstacles for the yoga, for that reason [they are obstacles] for the yogin [as well]. (182)

The great merit that one obtains making efforts in protecting the Brahmins, the Kṣatriyas, Vaiśyas, [and] Śūdras afflicted by ailments is not [obtainable even] by means of all the great sacrifices: (183)

Like even the gods do not perceive the end of the sky, in the same way one cannot find the end of the gift of health, o muni! (184)

A man, having reached the town of Śiva thanks to this great merit, has fun with manifold enjoyments, [like] flying chariots fulfilling all desires. (185)

Together with twenty-one generations, surrounded by his servants, he abides in the town of Śiva until the dissolution of the universe. (186)

Then, once the dissolution takes place, through the remainder of his dharma knowledge arises for him from the Rudras as a consequence of a deliberation [on it]. (187)

If, when [still] in the realm of transmigration, he was detached from knowledge [and made] stable in the meditation on Śiva, having abandoned his own material existence like a blade of grass, he will obtain the end of all sufferings; (188)

Freed from all sufferings, pure, abiding only in his own Self, omniscient and accomplished, he is defined as ‘liberated’. (189)

Therefore, for the sake of enjoyment and emancipation, one should take care of a person who is affected by diseases, and especially the chief yogin, both in person and by means of money. (190)

The wise should not be afraid of the sick person, and he should always look at his impurities, wherever they originate from, like a teacher; in this way the Dharma proceeds. (191)

He who, thinking everyday that he has received a grace, reaches the end of the diseases, he has crossed the ocean of transmigration. (192)

XIV.Praise of the gift of knowledge

Thus this multiform gift of knowledge has been explained; it should be [practiced] according to this procedure for people of each and every varṇa. (193)

1.2Sanskrit Text

atha vidyā vider dhātos tac ca jñānaṃ śivātmakam |

tasya dānaṃ mahādānaṃ sarvadānottamottamam || 1

adhyāpya yac chanaiḥ śiṣyān śivabhaktān prabodhayet |

śivavidyānusāreṇa vidyādānaṃ tad ucyate || 2

saṃskṛtaiḥ prākṛtair vākyair yaḥ śiṣyasyānurūpataḥ |

deśabhāṣādyupāyaiś ca bodhayet sa guruḥ smṛtaḥ || 3

yathā śivasya naivāntaḥ sampūrṇasya mahātmanaḥ |

tathā vidyāpradānasya nāntaḥ sarvaguṇātmanaḥ || 4

śivāṣṭaguṇam aiśvaryaṃ tad vidyādānataḥ phalam |

iha kīrtiḥ śriyā brāhmī prajñā vṛddhir dhanaṃ sukham || 5

yo ’śuddham ātmanādhītya jñānam adhyāpayet param |

sa yāti narakaṃ ghoraṃ pāpīyāṃ jñānanāśakaḥ || 6

śivajñānasya kālena vinaṣṭasya pramādataḥ |

ūnātiriktavarṇasya mūḍhair durlikhitasya ca || 7

pramādādhītapāṭhasya nāśitasyālpabuddhibhiḥ |

jñānāvalepamānāndhair ācāryaiḥ śodhitasya ca || 8

vyarthaiḥ padair upetasya punaruktasya cārthataḥ |

pūrvottaraviruddhasya svasiddhāntavirodhinaḥ || 9

chandasātīvanaṣṭasya śabdārtharahitasya ca |

ityevamādibhir doṣair upetasya kva cit kva cit || 10

yaḥ karoti punaḥ samyak saṃskāraṃ pūrvavad guruḥ |

śivatantrārthavid dhīmān sa vidyāparameśvaraḥ || 11

na cāsya puṇyamāhātmyaṃ vaktuṃ śakyaṃ hi kena cit |

yathā śivas tathaivāyam asmin nityaṃ śivaḥ sthitaḥ || 12

vidyādānaṃ pravakṣyāmi dhanināṃ pustakāśritam |

likhyate dīyate yena vidhinā tatphalaṃ ca yat || 13

śivaṃ sampūjya vidhivat tadvidyāṃ pūjayet tataḥ |

guruṃ ca śivavad bhaktyā tulyam etat trayaṃ yataḥ || 14

yathā śivas tathā vidyā yathā vidyā tathā guruḥ |

śivavidyāgurūṇāṃ hi pūjayā sadṛśaṃ phalam || 15

bhūmibhāge same ramye sarvadoṣavivarjite |

vidyāmaṇḍalakaṃ kṛtvā gandhagomayavāriṇā || 16

aṣṭahastaṃ tadardhaṃ vā vṛttaṃ vā caturasrakam |

tanmadhye sitacūrṇena likhet padmaṃ suśobhanam || 17

tadbahir varṇakaiś citrair nānāśobhāṃ prakalpayet |

pañcavarṇaiś ca kusumair yathāśobham alaṅkṛtam || 18

sitaṃ vitānaṃ citraṃ vā tadūrdhvam upakalpayet |

muktājālaparikṣiptaṃ kiṅkinīravakānvitam || 19

lambakaiḥ sūtradāmaiś ca muktāhāraiś ca kandukaiḥ |

vicitrapuṣpasragdāmair ghaṇṭācāmarabhūṣitam || 20

citravastraparicchannaiś caturbhir daṇḍakair vṛtam |

budbudair ardhacandraiś ca darpaṇādyupaśobhitam || 21

sitapadmamukhodgāraiś caturbhiḥ kalaśaiḥ śubhaiḥ |

śobhitaṃ sitamṛtpātrair yavaśālyaṅkurodbhavaiḥ || 22

vidyāsiṃhāsanaṃ śrīman nāgadantādinirmitam |

suvarṇaratnanicitaṃ dukūlāstaraṇānvitam || 23

daṇḍāsanaṃ vā śrīmat tad dhemaratnopaśobhitam |

nāgendradantanicitaṃ raktacandanadārujam || 24

sthāpya puṣpagṛhasyānte gandhapuṣpaiḥ prapūjya ca |

lekhyaṃ ca likhitaṃ cātra vinyaset pustakadvayam || 25

rocanācandanādyaiś ca puṣpair dhūpaiś ca pūjayet |

ghṛtapradīpamālābhir bhakṣair vastraiś ca śobhanaiḥ || 26

turuṣkāgurukarpūraiḥ sitacandanakauśikaiḥ |

dadyāt pañcavidhaṃ dhūpaṃ samutthāpya punaḥ punaḥ || 27

tataḥ pradakṣiṇaṃ kṛtvā namet sarvāṅgikaṃ budhaḥ |

sampūjyaivaṃ śivajñānaṃ guruṃ sampūjayet tataḥ || 28

dvitīye puṣpagṛhake śrīmadāsanasaṃsthitam |

śivavat pūjayed bhaktyā śivajñānaprakāśakam || 29

tridhā pradakṣiṇīkṛtya daṇḍavat praṇamet kṣitau |

vijñāpayet samutthāya jānubhyāṃ dharaṇīgataḥ || 30

kṛtāñjalipuṭo bhūtvā praṇipatya punar gurum |

bhagavaṃs tvatprasādena śāstraṃ saṃcārayāmy aham |

tatheti samanujñātaḥ śāstraṃ puṇyāham ācaret || 31

maṅgalais tūryaghoṣaiś ca kṛtasvastyayanaḥ śuciḥ |

snātaḥ śuklāmbaradharaḥ sragvī gandhādyalaṅkṛtaḥ || 32

hemāṅgulīyapāṇiś ca kaṭakābhyām alaṅkṛtaḥ |

likhet praṇamya deveśaṃ lekhakaḥ ślokapañcakam || 33

tato vividhabhakṣānnapānavyañjanakādibhiḥ |

bhojayec ca guruṃ pūrvaṃ vratinaḥ saddvijān api || 34

dīnāndhakṛpaṇānāthabālavṛddhakṛśāturān |

mātāpitṛsuhṛdbandhu ante sarvāṃś ca dakṣayet || 35

kṣamāpya ca guruṃ paścād bhuñjīyād bhṛtyasaṃyutaḥ |

dattvā gaṇabaliṃ rātrau brahmacārī niśi svapet || 36

apare ’hani pūrvāhṇe vidyāmaṇḍalakaṃ budhaḥ |

kṛtvā dvihastamātraṃ tu nānāvarṇakaśobhitam || 37

yavāṅkuraśarāvādyaiś citrapuṣpair alaṅkṛtam |

sadhūpaṃ dīpasaṃyuktaṃ vitānavitatāmbaram || 38

śarayantrāsanāsīnaṃ tanmadhye pūjya pustakam |

evaṃ likhed vācayed vā kṛtvā pūjāṃ dine dine || 39

caturasraiḥ samaśīrṣair nātisthūlair na vā kṛṣaiḥ |

sampūrṇāvayavaiḥ snigdhair nātivicchinnasaṃhataiḥ || 40

mātrānusvārasaṃyogahrasvadīrghādilakṣitaiḥ |

nandināgarakair varṇair lekhayec chivapustakam || 41

sampūrṇe pūrvavidhinā punaḥ pūjāṃ prakalpayet |

śivāgniguruvidyānāṃ sopavāsaḥ prayatnavān || 42

kalpayej jāgaraṃ cātra vāditrair madhurasvanaiḥ |

gītanṛtyair bahuvidhair ākhyānaiś ca śivātmakaiḥ || 43

vedaghoṣaiś ca vividhaiḥ prekṣaṇīyaiś ca śobhanaiḥ |

krīḍāyantraprayogādyair ity evaṃ kṣapayen niśām || 44

śivavidyāvimānaṃ ca kuryāt prātaḥ suśobhanam |

pañcāṇḍakaṃ tribhaumaṃ ca dāruvaṃśādinirmitam |

vicitravastrasaṃcchannaṃ sarvaśobhāsamanvitam || 45

vidyāsanasthaṃ tanmadhye śivajñānasya pustakam |

hemaratnacitaṃ divyam athavā dantaśobhitam |

vicitracitrayuktaṃ vā bahir utkīrṇakambikam || 46

pārśve carmasamāyuktaṃ dṛḍhasūtranibandhanam |

sampūjya gandhapuṣpādyaiḥ purvoktavidhinā budhaḥ || 47

samutkṣipyānayed bhaktyā tadvimānaṃ śivāśramam |

susthitaṃ rathamukhyena puruṣair vā balānvitaiḥ || 48

chattradhvajapatākādyair vitānais tūryanisvanaiḥ |

maṅgalair vedaghoṣādyaiḥ sadhūpaiḥ kalaśaiḥ śubhaiḥ || 49

cāraṇair bandibhir vādyaiḥ strīsaṅgītair vibhūṣitaṃ |

cārucāmarahastābhiś citradaṇḍaiḥ sadarpaṇaiḥ || 50

mahatā janasaṅghena purataś ca mahīpatiḥ |

dharmavṛddhaiḥ svayaṃ gacchet sarvaśobhāsamanvitaḥ || 51

athavā hastiyānasthaṃ kṛtvā pustakam ānayet |

rājamārgeṇa mahatā nagarāntaḥ pradakṣiṇam || 52

sarvāyatanapūjāṃ ca svadhanaiḥ kārayen nṛpaḥ |

daśadikṣu baliṃ dadyān nagarasya samantataḥ || 53

mārge ’pi purato gacched baliṃ dadyān nirantaram |

gandhapuṣpākṣatonmiśram udakaṃ ca tadānugam || 54

gaccheyur purataḥ paścāt sarvāyatanavāsinaḥ |

purataḥ śivavidyāyāḥ śivamantram anusmaret || 55

śuklāmbaradharāḥ sarve bhaveyuḥ puravāsinaḥ |

ucchrayeyuḥ patākāś ca janās taddeśavāsinaḥ || 56

gṛhadevāṃś ca sampūjya kāryaś cāpy utsavo gṛhe |

brāhmaṇān bhojayeyuś ca gṛheṣu gṛhamedhinaḥ |

annapānair janapadā yātrāṃ kuryuḥ śivāśrame || 57

acchedyās taravaḥ kāryāḥ sarvahiṃsāṃ nivārayet |

bandhanasthāś ca moktavyā varjyāḥ krodhādiśatravaḥ |

akālakaumudīṃ kuryād divasadvayam īśvare || 58

śivāyatanam āsādya vimānasthaṃ tam arpayet |

puṇyāhajayaśabdaiś ca mahatā tumulena ca || 59

sthāne susaṃskṛte ramye śivasya purataḥ śanaiḥ |

sthāpayitvā guror bhaktyā taṃ praṇamya nivedayet || 60

śāntyartham ekam adhyāyaṃ gobrāhmaṇamahībhṛtām |

rāṣṭrīyanagarāṇāṃ ca vācayed vācakottamaḥ || 61

chandolakṣaṇatattvajñaḥ satkavir madhurasvaraḥ |

gāndharvavid vidagdhaś ca śreṣṭhaḥ pustakavācakaḥ || 62

śāntitoyena rājānaṃ samutthāya gurus tataḥ |

śirasy abhyukṣayed īṣat tatrasthaṃ ca janaṃ tataḥ || 63

avadhārya jagacchāntiṃ punar ante nṛpasya ca |

ācāryabhojanaṃ cātra nṛpaḥ kuryāt sadakṣiṇaṃ || 64

svayam atraiva bhuñjīta sāntaḥpuraparicchadaḥ |

kāryā ca vividhā prekṣā bhuktavatsu janeṣu ca || 65

evaṃ kṛte mahāśāntir nṛpasya nagarasya ca |

deśasya ca samastasya jāyate nātra saṃśayaḥ || 66

ītayaś ca praśāmyanti na ca mārī pravartate |

śāmyanti sarvaghorāṇi praśamanti bhayāni ca || 67

unmūlyante grahāḥ sarve pranaśyanti ca śatravaḥ |

upasargāḥ pralīyante na durbhikṣabhayaṃ bhavet || 68

vināyakāś ca naśyanti saubhāgyaṃ paramaṃ bhavet |

rājyavṛddhiś ca vipulā nityaṃ ca vijayī nṛpaḥ || 69

vardhate putrapautraiś ca matir dharme ca vardhate |

vidyādānaprasādena nṛpasya ca janasya ca || 70

anena vidhinā rājā yaḥ śivajñānapustakam |

dadyāt tadabhiyuktāya vidyādānaphalaṃ labhet || 71

yo vānyaḥ puruṣaḥ kaścic chraddhāvittasamanvitaḥ |

kuryād vidhim imaṃ strī vā vidyādānaphalaṃ labhet || 72

daridraś cānusāreṇa vittaśāṭhyavivarjitaḥ |

kṛtvā vidhim imaṃ bhaktyā vidyādānaphalaṃ labhet || 73

yasya yāvad bhaved vittaṃ sa tasyehānusārataḥ |

aśāṭhyenācaret puṇyam āḍhyatulyaphalaṃ labhet || 74

yāvad akṣarasaṃkhyānaṃ śivajñānasya pustake |

tāvat varṣasahasrāṇi dātā śivapure vaset || 75

daśa pūrvān samuddhṛtya daśa vaṃśyāś ca paścimān |

mātāpitṛdharmapatnīḥ svarge sthāpya śivaṃ vrajet || 76

sāntaḥpuraparivāraḥ sarvabhṛtyasamanvitaḥ |

rājā śivapuraṃ gacched vidyādānaprabhāvataḥ || 77

vimānayānaiḥ śrīmadbhiḥ sarvakāmasamanvitaiḥ |

manojavair asaṃkhyātaiḥ krīḍate kālam akṣayam || 78

paramāṣṭaguṇaiśvaryair upetaḥ sarvataḥ prabhuḥ |

sarvajñaḥ paripūrṇātmā dvitīya iva śaṅkaraḥ || 79

yathāmarāṇāṃ sarveṣāṃ paramaḥ parameśvaraḥ |

tathaiva sarvadānānāṃ vidyādānaṃ paraṃ smṛtam || 80

anenaiva vidhānena yaḥ śivajñānapustakam |

kusumagṛhake sthāpya pūjayīta śivāśrame || 81

āṣāḍhyāṃ pūrṇamāsyāṃ tu dīpamālāvibodhanaiḥ |

vaiśākhyāṃ cāpi sampūjya vidyādānaphalaṃ labhet || 82

yaḥ śrīmatpustakavaram ālekhya vinivedayet |

śivajñānābhiyuktāya tasya puṇyaphalaṃ śṛṇu || 83

yāvat tatpatrasaṃkhyānaṃ saṃcaye ’tīva śobhane |

tāvad yugasahasrāṇi śivaloke mahīyate || 84

yat patrayantrasūtrādyaṃ maṣībhājanalekhanī |

śarayantrāsanābhyaṅgaśayyāsadbhaktavetanam || 85

ityevamādi yac cānyat tadartham upayujyate |

yadvā tadvā mahat sūkṣmaṃ vidhānena tu yad bhavet || 86

tad ekam api vidyāṅgaṃ śraddhāvittānusārataḥ |

nivedya sa mahābhogaiḥ śivaloke mahīyate || 87

pustakāstaraṇaṃ dattvā sadvastraṃ ca pramāṇataḥ |

tadvāsanavitānaṃ vā śivaloke mahīyate || 88

yāvat tadvastratantūnāṃ parisaṃkhyā samantataḥ |

tāvad yugasahasrāṇi mahābhogān avāpnuyāt || 89

śivajñānābhiyuktāya bhaktācchādaṃ dadāti yaḥ |

ā samāpter avicchinnaṃ vidyādānaphalaṃ labhet || 90

upānacchatrakaupīnaśayyāprāvaraṇāsanam |

pādasnehāñjanābhyaṅgasnānabhojanabheṣajam || 91

yatimātropakaraṇaṃ maṭhasammārjanāñjanam |

dīpāgnitoyapuṣpādyaṃ śivapustakavācanam || 92

yaḥ kuryād etad akhilaṃ śivajñānaratātmanām |

pañcānāṃ pañcavarṣāṇi vidyādānaphalaṃ labhet || 93

trisaptakulam uttārya sthāpayed aiśvare pure |

tatra tadvipulair bhogaiḥ krīḍanty ācandratārakam || 94

kalatraputrasadbhṛtyair yuktaḥ śivapure naraḥ |

akṣayaṃ modate kālaṃ vimānaiḥ sārvakāmikaiḥ || 95

vidyāmaṇḍalakaṃ vṛttaṃ yadi vā caturasrakam |

dvihastam adhikaṃ vāpi kṛtvā sadgomayāmbhasā || 96

sitaraktādibhiś cūrṇaiḥ samantād upaśobhitam |

sitapadmayutaṃ madhye sadvitānavibhūṣitam || 97

vicitrakusumākīrṇaṃ pradīpākṣatasaṃyutam |

sampūjyaivaṃ śivajñānaṃ śraddhayā vācayīta yaḥ || 98

ādyantataḥ kramāt sarvam ekarūpaṃ śanaiḥ śanaiḥ |

sarvalokopakārārtham ātmanaḥ puṇyavṛddhaye || 99

tatsamāptau śivaṃ vidyām ācāryaṃ ca prapūjayet |

kalpayed bhojanaṃ paścāt sarveṣāṃ śivayoginām || 100

ya evaṃ bhaktitaḥ kuryāc chivajñānasya vācanam |

mūlyena kārayed vāpi vidyādānaphalaṃ labhet || 101

api ślokaṃ tadarddhaṃ vā śivajñānasya yaḥ paṭhet |

vācayec cintayed vāpi likhed vā lekhayīta vā || 102

śṛṇuyād ekacittaś ca tadarthaṃ ca vicārayet |

janebhyaḥ śrāvayed yaś ca tasya puṇyaphalaṃ śṛṇu || 103

yaḥ pradadyāt mahīṃ pūrṇāṃ sarvaratnais tu yat phalam |

ślokārddham śivajñānasya paṭhan tat phalam āpnuyāt || 104

yaḥ śrīparṇīsamudbhūtaṃ nimnakhātaṃ susaṃcayam |

dadyāt sampuṭakaṃ bhaktyā carmaṇā vāpi nirmitam || 105

śivajñānābhiyuktāya tadadhyāpanahetunā |

suślakṣṇaṃ phalakaṃ vāpi vidyādānaphalaṃ labhet || 106

mahāvimānaiḥ śrīmadbhis sarvakāmasamanvitaiḥ |

krīḍate paramaṃ kālaṃ rudraloke vyavasthitaḥ || 107

tataḥ kālāt kṣitiṃ prāpya rājā bhavati dhārmikaḥ |

surūpaḥ sudvijo vāpi sarvavidyārthapāragaḥ || 108

yaḥ sauvarṇaṃ susaṃpūrṇaṃ sarvaratnopaśobhitam |

sapidhānaṃ sumañjūṣaṃ vidyākośasamāśrayam |

kārayed vāpi raupyeṇa tāmreṇa caturasrakam || 109

kāṃsyārakūṭalohair vā dāruvaṃśādinirmitam |

tat kaṣāyānuraktena carmaṇābhinavena ca || 110

antar bahiś ca maṭhayed vidyāvāsagṛhaṃ navam |

sarvāśmakaṭakopetaṃ dṛḍhasūtranibandhanam || 111

kuryāt tālakasaṃyuktaṃ vidyāratnakaraṇḍakam |

evaṃ vittānusāreṇa kārayitvānurūpataḥ || 112

prakṣālya gandhatoyena vidyākośagṛhaṃ param |

kṛtvā vastragṛhaṃ divyam antaḥpuṣpagṛhānvitam || 113

vidyāsiṃhāsanaṃ tatra sampūjya vidhivad budhaḥ |

tasmin puṇyāhaśabdena vidyākośagṛhaṃ nyaset || 114

tataś candanakarpūraiḥ kuṅkumādyaiḥ pralepayet |

antarvastrayutaṃ dhūpyaṃ satpuṣpair abhipūjayet || 115

tato vāditranirghoṣair vidyākośeṇa pūrayet |

tataḥ saṃpūjayed vidyāṃ mahāvibhavavistaraiḥ |

kṛtvā pradakṣiṇaṃ cānte namet sarvāṅgikaṃ budhaḥ || 116

vidyākośagṛhasyāpi vidyāyatanam uttamam |

bhavet suśobhanaṃ ramyam aṣṭahastapramāṇataḥ || 117

śileṣṭakāmṛṇmayaṃ vā saddārukṛtam eva vā |

kapāṭārgalasaṃyuktaṃ prākārārāmaśobhitam || 118

patākādhvajasaṃyuktaṃ sadvitānavibhūṣitam |

ghaṇṭācāmarasaṃyuktaṃ kiṅkiṇīravakānvitam || 119

candanāgarugandhādyair anuliptaṃ samantataḥ |

nityaṃ sugandhakair dhūpaiḥ puṣpaiś cāpy adhivāsayet || 120

tatra taṃ tūryaghoseṇa maṅgalair vividhair api |

ānīya sthāpayed bhaktyā vidyāratnakaraṇḍakam || 121

tataḥ sugandhapuṣpādyaiḥ śivavat pratipūjayet |

śivavidyāṃ sadākālaṃ trisandhyam upacārataḥ || 122

tataḥ samāgatān sarvān bhojayec chivayoginaḥ |

dīnāndhakṛpaṇādyāṃś ca dākṣayitvā kṣamāpayet || 123

evaṃ yaḥ śivavidyāyāḥ kuryād āyatanaṃ śubham |

sa muktaḥ pātakaiḥ sarvair vidyādānaphalaṃ labhet || 124

kulaikaviṃsad uttārya sabhṛtyaparivāritaḥ |

prāpyāṣṭaguṇam aiśvaryaṃ śivaloke mahīyate || 125

yas tatra jñānam āsādya viṣayān viṣavat tyajet |

sa prāpnoti parāṃ muktiṃ rāgī bhogān punar labhet || 126

sṛṣṭyantare punaḥ prāpte pṛthivyām ekarāṅ bhavet |

sarvaiśvaryaguṇopetaḥ sarvajñānārthapāragaḥ || 127

yaḥ kārayen mahāramyaṃ suvedīsaṃsthitaṃ puram |

pañcabhaumaṃ tribhaumaṃ vā śivajñātātmanām || 128

guhāpavarakair yuktaṃ maitrasthānasamanvitam |

vāstuvidyāvibhaktaṃ ca prākāraparivāritam || 129

tasya vedī dvihastoccā paryantastambhasaṃyutā |

pakveṣṭakāparicchannā tat suramyabhramantakam || 130

suvīthyāḥ purataḥ kāryaṃ diśy āgneyyāṃ mahānasam |

dhūmanirgamanopetaṃ pūrvataḥ satramaṇḍapam || 131

gandhapuṣpagṛhaṃ kāryam aiśānyāṃ paṭṭasaṃyutam |

bhāṇḍāgāraṃ ca kauberyāṃ koṣṭhāgāraṃ ca vāyave || 132

udakāśrayaṃ ca vāruṇyāṃ vātāyanasamanvitam | c.m.

samitkuśendhanasthānam āyudhānāṃ ca nairṛte || 133

abhyāgatālayaṃ ramyaṃ saśayyāsanapādukam |

toyāgnidīpasadbhṛtyair yuktaṃ dakṣiṇato bhavet || 134

gṛhāntarāṇi sarvāṇi sajalaiḥ kadalīgṛhaiḥ |

pañcavarṇaiś ca kusumaiḥ śobhitāni prakalpayet || 135

prākārāntar bahir dadyāt pañcahastapramāṇataḥ |

prākārāc ca bahiḥ kuryāt sarvadikṣu samantataḥ || 136

divyaṃ śivāśramārāmaṃ nānāpuṣpopaśobhitam |

sarvartukaguṇopetaṃ nānāvṛkṣasamanvitam || 137

priyaṅguśirīṣāśokaputrañjīvakarañjakaiḥ |

punnāganāgabakulaiḥ pāṭalābilvacampakaiḥ || 138

śvetamandāravijayair jātītagarakubjakaiḥ |

suvarṇaśvetayūthībhir bāṇāmrātakuruṇṭakaiḥ || 139

karavīrakarṇikārair nānāvarṇair anekaśaḥ |

sthānavinyāsaracitaiḥ sanmārgādhārasaṃyutaiḥ || 140

vṛkṣair bahuvidhair yuktaṃ digvidikṣu jalānvitam |

sitaraktābjakumudair nīlaraktotpalair yutam || 141

latāvitānagṛhakaiḥ kvacit kvacid avasthitaiḥ |

kadalīstambhaṣaṇḍaiś ca dāḍimādyair virājitam || 142

iti kṛtvā bahiḥ tasya prākāraṃ kalpayet mahat |

kapāṭagopuropetaṃ parikhāvaṃśasaṃyutam || 143

tṛtīyāc ca purād ūrdhvaṃ vidyāvyākhyānamaṇḍapam |

gavākṣanirgamopetaṃ vicitraṃ parikalpayet || 144

purārddhaṃ pañcamaṃ kāryaṃ śivasya valabhīgṛham |

ṣaḍḍhastam aṣṭadīrghaṃ vā dārupaṭṭādinirmitam || 145

tatra mṛddāruśailaṃ vā sthāpayed vidhivac chivam |

sarvavidyāvidhātāraṃ sarvajñaṃ lakulīśvaram || 146

vṛtaṃ śiṣyapraśiṣyaiś ca vyākhyānodyatapāṇikam |

padmāsanasthaṃ deveśaṃ prasannavadanaṃ gurum || 147

evaṃ śivāśramaṃ kṛtvā bhaktyā vittānusārataḥ |

tatpratiṣṭhāṃ tataḥ kuryāt pūjāsaṃskāralakṣaṇām || 148

vidyādānoktavibhavaiḥ śobhāṃ kṛtvā maṭhāgrataḥ |

pañcabhiḥ pañcagavyena snāpyaiśānyāṃ śivaṃ kramāt || 149

snāpayed gandhatoyādyaiḥ snānavastreṇa saṃyutam |

tūryaghoṣais tam ānīya sthāpayet puṣpamaṇḍape || 150

tataś candanapuṣpādyaiḥ pūjayitvādhivāsayet |

japtvā pañcavidhaṃ stotraṃ śivaṃ vijñāpayet tataḥ || 151

adyādhivāsanaṃ deva svaḥ pratiṣṭhāvidhiḥ tava |

bhaktānām anukampāyai sāṃnidhyaṃ kartum arhasi || 152

prātaḥ snāpya punar devaṃ pūjayitvā praveśayet |

pavitraiḥ sthāpayed vedyāṃ pādād ārabhya pañcabhiḥ || 153

tataḥ sugandhagandhādyair nityaṃ bhāvyaṃ śivālaye |

śivaṃ ca pūjayet puṣpaiḥ snānavarjyaṃ sugandhibhiḥ || 154

saśiṣyas taṃ praṇamyeśaṃ gurur vyākhyāṃ pravartayet |

prāṅmukhodaṅmukho vāpi puṇyāhārthaṃ śivāgrataḥ || 155

tatas saṃpūjayed bhaktyā yajamānah svayaṃ gurum |

dakṣiṇābhir vicitrābhir bhojanādyaiś ca pūrvavat || 156

nivedayet tataḥ sthānaṃ sarveṣāṃ śivayoginām |

sarvopakaraṇopetaṃ praṇipatya punaḥ punaḥ || 157

evaṃ yaḥ kārayed ādyaḥ śrīmac chivapuraṃ mahat |

sarvapāpavinirmuktaḥ śivaloke mahīyate || 158

sagotratriṃśakopetaḥ sabhṛtyaparivāritaḥ |

putramitrādisaṃyuktaḥ sāntaḥpuraparicchadaḥ || 159

suvicitrair mahāyānair asaṃkhyaiḥ sārvakāmikaiḥ |

śivavat krīḍate bhogair aṇimādiguṇānvitaḥ || 160

tataḥ kālena mahatā vidyādānaprabhāvataḥ |

jñānayogaṃ samāsādya tatraiva parimucyate || 161

sthapatiḥ sthāpakā vṛkṣā balīvardhāḥ sukarmiṇaḥ |

yānti rudrapuraṃ sarve tadadhyakṣāś ca ye narāḥ || 162

ye cāpi vṛttibhṛtakāḥ śivāyatanakarmiṇaḥ |

te ’pi yānti mṛtāḥ svargaṃ śivakarmānubhāvataḥ || 163

śivadāsatvam āpannā naranārīnapuṃsakāḥ |

te ’pi tannāmasaṃyogād yānti rudrapuraṃ mahat || 164

dattāḥ krītāḥ praviṣṭāś ca daṇḍotpannā balāhṛtāḥ |

vijñeyā rudragaṇikāḥ śivāyatanayoṣitaḥ || 165

yā rudragaṇikotpannā putrapautrādisaṃtatiḥ |

sā ’pi yāti mṛtā svargaṃ mātur evānubhāvataḥ || 166

śivāyatanaparyante mriyante ye ’pi jantavaḥ |

te ’pi yānti śivaṃ lokaṃ kiṃ punas tatsamāśritāḥ || 167

atyalpam api yaḥ kuryād atiramyaṃ śivāśramam |

dvirekavasatīmātraṃ so ’pi yāti śivaṃ puram || 168

kṛtvā sukuṭṭimāṃ bhūmim īśvarāyatanāgrataḥ |

tatra maṇḍalakaṃ kuryāt suvṛttaṃ gomayāmbhasā || 169

sūtreṇa sumitaṃ kṛtvā nānāvarṇakaśobhitam |

vicitrakusumākīrṇaṃ madhye paṅkajaśobhitam || 170

pradīpākṣatasaṃyuktam udakaṃ bhrāmya pāṇinā |

mūrdhnā praṇamya medinyāṃ śivāya vinivedayet || 171

yaḥ kuryāt sakṛd apy evaṃ śivamaṇḍalakaṃ naraḥ |

sasarvakāmasaṃyuktaḥ śivaloke mahīyate || 172

kālāt punar ihāyātaḥ śrīmān arthapatir bhavet |

jñānavān rūpavān bhogī supriyaḥ sudvijaḥ sukhī || 173

vidyāmaṇḍalakaṃ kṛtvā vidyāvyākhyānamaṇḍape |

tatrābhyarcya śivajñānaṃ tadvyākhyāṃ śṛṇuyāt tataḥ || 174

śivamaṇḍalakādyena vidhinātīvaśobhanam |

gurumaṇḍalakaṃ kṛtvā śivaloke mahīyate || 175

śivavidyāgurūṇāṃ ca kṛtvā maṇḍalakatrayam |

yaḥ śṛṇoti śivajñānaṃ tasya vidyā prasīdati || 176

anena vidhinā jñānaṃ yaḥ śṛṇoti pravakti ca |

sa saṃprāpya śriyaṃ saukhyaṃ dehānte muktim āpnuyāt || 177

ārogyaśālāṃ yaḥ kuryāt mahāvaidyapuraskṛtām |

sarvopakaraṇopetāṃ tasya puṇyaphalaṃ śṛṇu || 178

dharmārthakāmamokṣāṇām ārogyaṃ sādhanaṃ yataḥ |

tasmād ārogyadānena dattaṃ syāt tac catuṣṭayam || 179

apy ekam ārtaṃ vidvāṃśaṃ svasthīkṛtya prayatnataḥ |

prāpnoti sumahat puṇyam anantaṃ kṣayavarjitam || 180

jñānayogarataṃ śāntaṃ rogārtaṃ śivayoginam |

yaḥ karoti naraḥ svasthaṃ sarvayogaphalaṃ labhet || 181

brahmā viṣṇuḥ surāḥ sarve vyādhayaḥ svajanā nṛpāḥ |

yogasyaite mahāvighnā vyādhayas tena yoginām || 182

brahmakṣatraviśaḥ śūdrān rogārttān pālya yatnataḥ |

yat puṇyaṃ mahad āpnoti na tat sarvair mahāmakhaiḥ || 183

ākāśasya yathā nāntaḥ surair apy upalabhyate |

tadvad ārogyadānasya nāntaḥ samvidyate mune || 184

puṇyenānena mahatā gatvā śivapuraṃ naraḥ |

modate vividhair bhogair vimānaiḥ sārvakāmikaiḥ || 185

ekaviṃśakulopetaḥ sabhṛtyaparivāritaḥ |

āste śivapure tāvad yāvad ābhūtasaṃplavam || 186

tatas taddharmaśeṣeṇa saṃprāpte pralaye tadā |

jñānam utpadyate tasya rudrebhyaḥ pravicārataḥ || 187

jñānād viraktaḥ saṃsāre śivadhyānasamāśritaḥ |

svadehaṃ tṛṇavat tyaktvā sarvaduḥkhāntam āpnuyāt || 188

samastaduḥkhanirmuktaḥ suddhaḥ svātmanyavasthitaḥ |

sarvajñaḥ paripūrṇaś ca mukta ity abhidhīyate || 189

tasmād bhogāpavargārthaṃ rogārttaṃ samupācaret |

viśeṣeṇa ca yogīndram ātmanā ca dhanena ca || 190

rogiṇo nodvijet prājñaḥ tanmalānāṃ ca sarvaśaḥ |

sampaśyed guruvan nityam evaṃ dharmaḥ pravartate || 191

yo ’nugṛhītam ātmānaṃ manyamāno dine dine |

upasarpati rogāntaṃ tīrṇaḥ tena bhavārṇavaḥ || 192

evam etad bahuvidhaṃ vidyādānaṃ prakīrtitam |

sarveṣām eva varṇānāṃ vidhinānena tad bhavet || 193

Appendix 2

Tables of Textual Parallels with Chapters 1, 2 and 12 of the Śivadharmottara*

Atharvavedapariśiṣṭa 19 B

Śivadharmottara Chapter 2

2.3cd-4

2.16cd-17

tato maṇḍapamadhye tu vartayed divyamaṇḍalam || [caturaśraṃ caturdvāraṃ vṛttākāram atha api vā] || 2.3

vidyāmaṇḍalakaṃ kṛtvā gandhagomayavāriṇā || 16 aṣṭahastaṃ tadardhaṃ vā vṛttaṃ vā caturasrakam |

sitacūrṇena tanmadhye likhet padmaṃ suśobhanam | bahiś ca varṇaiḥ śubhrair nānāśobhāṃ prakalpayet || 2.4

tanmadhye sitacūrṇena likhet padmaṃ suśobhanam || 17 tadbahir varṇakaiś citrair nānāśobhaṃ prakalpayet | pañcavarṇaiś ca kusumair yathāśobham alaṅkṛtam || 18

3.1cd-3.3ab

2.26-28ab

rocanācandanādyaiś ca puṣpair dhūpaiś ca pūjayet || 3.1 ghṛtapradīpamālyaiś ca vastrair bhakṣaiś ca śobhanaiḥ |

rocanācandanādyaiś ca puṣpair dhūpaiś ca pūjayet | ghṛtapradīpamālābhir bhakṣair vastraiś ca śobhanaiḥ || 26

sitacandanakarpūraṃ dadyād vāpi hi guggulam || 3.2 pradakṣiṇaṃ tataḥ kṛtvā namet sarvāṅgakair naraḥ |

turuṣkāgurukarpūraiḥ sitacandanakauśikaiḥ | dadyāt pañcavidhaṃ dhūpaṃ samutthāpya punaḥ punaḥ || 27 ataḥ pradakṣiṇaṃ kṛtvā namet sarvāṅgikaṃ budhaḥ |

4.3-4.4ab

2.49cd-50

phalasnānaṃ ca kurvīta yukto maṅgala- vādibhiḥ | bandibhir vedavidbhiś ca strīsaṇgītair manoramaiḥ || 4.3 cārucāmarahastābhiś citradaṇḍaiḥ sadarpaṇaiḥ |

maṅgalair vedaghoṣādyaiḥ sadhūpaiḥ kalaśaiḥ śubhaiḥ || 49 cāraṇair bandibhir vādyaiḥ strīsaṅgītair vibhūṣitaṃ | cārucāmarahastābhiś citradaṇḍaiḥ sadarpaṇaiḥ || 50

4.5ab

2.30

tataḥ pradakṣiṇāṃ kṛtvā jānubhyāṃ dharaṇīṃ gataḥ |

tridhā pradakṣiṇīkṛtya daṇḍavat praṇamet kṣitau | vijñāpayet samutthāya jānubhyāṃ dharaṇīgataḥ || 30

5.1ab

2.32 ab

tūryaghoṣeṇa saṃyuktaḥ kṛtasvastyayanas tathā |

maṅgalais tūryaghoṣaiś ca kṛtasvastyayanaḥ śuciḥ |

5.4cd-5.6ab

2.57-58abcd

gṛhadevās tu saṃpūjyāḥ kāryaś cāpy utsavo gṛhe || 5.4

gṛhadevāṃś ca sampūjya kāryaś cāpy utsavo gṛhe |

yogino bhojayet paścād gṛhesu gṛhamedhinaḥ | achedyās taravaḥ kāryāḥ prāṇihiṃsāṃ ca varjayet || 5.5

brāhmaṇān bhojayeyuś ca gṛheṣu gṛhamedhinaḥ | annapānair janapadā yātrāṃ kuryuḥ śivāśrame || 57 acchedyās taravaḥ kāryāḥ sarvahiṃsāṃ nivārayet |

bandhanasthāś ca moktavyā baddhāḥ krodhāc ca śatravaḥ |

bandhanasthāś ca moktavyā varjyāḥ krodhādiśatravaḥ |

Devīpurāṇa

Śivadharmottara

91.12

2.13

vidyādānaṃ pravakṣyāmi yena tuṣyanti mātaraḥ | likhyate yena vidhinā dīyate tat śṛṇusva naḥ || 12

vidyādānaṃ pravakṣyāmi dhanināṃ pustakāśritam | likhyate dīyate yena vidhinā tatphalaṃ ca yat || 13

91.35

1.74

yaḥ kṛtsnāṃ tu mahīṃ dadyān merutulyaṃ tu kāñcanam | sa yadanyāyataḥ pṛcchen na tasyopadiśet kvacit || 35

A fol.3v[L2] B fol.48v[L2], P2[P296] yaḥ pradadyāt mahīṃ kṛtsnāṃ [mahī° A B] mahāmeruṃ ca kāñcanam | sa ced anyāyataḥ [anyayataḥ a.c. anyāyataḥ p.c. B] pṛcchen na tasyopadiśed guruḥ || 74

91.40-44

2.16-23

purvottaraplave deśe sarvabādhāviva- rjite | gomayena śubhe lipte kuryān maṇḍalakaṃ budhaḥ || 40

bhūmibhāge same ramye sarvadoṣavivarjite | vidyāmaṇḍalakaṃ kṛtvā gandhagomayavāriṇā || 16

caturhastapramāṇena śubhaṃ tu caturastrakam | tasya madhye likhet padmaṃ sitaraktarajādibhiḥ || 41

aṣṭahastaṃ tadardhaṃ vā vṛttaṃ vā caturasrakam | tanmadhye sitacūrṇena likhet padmaṃ suśobhanam || 17

sarvartukaśubhaiḥ puṣpair bhūṣayet sarvato diśam | vitānaṃ dāpayen mūrdhniṃ śubhacitravicitritam || 42

tadbahir varṇakaiś citrair nānāśobhāṃ prakalpayet | pañcavarṇaiś ca kusumair yathāśobham alaṅkṛtam || 18 sitaṃ vitānaṃ citraṃ vā tadūrdhvam upakalpayet | muktājālaparikṣiptaṃ kiṅkinīravakānvitam || 19

pārśvataḥ sitavastraiś ca samyakśobhāṃ prakalpayet | kandukair ūrdhvacandraiś ca darpaṇaiś cāmalais tathā || 43

tadbahir varṇakaiś citrair nānāśobhāṃ prakalpayet | pañcavarṇaiś ca kusumair yathāśobham alaṅkṛtam || 18 […] lambakaiḥ sūtradāmaiś ca muktāhāraiś ca kandukaiḥ | vicitrapuṣpasragdāmair ghaṇṭācāmarabhūṣitam || 20 citravastraparicchannaiś caturbhir daṇḍakair vṛtam | budbudair ardhacandraiś ca darpaṇādyupaśobhitam || 21 sitapadmamukhodgāraiś caturbhiḥ kalaśaiḥ śubhaiḥ | śobhitaṃ sitamṛtpātrair yavaśālyaṅkurodbhavaiḥ || 22

ghaṇṭākiṃkiṇīśabdaiś ca sarvatra upakalpayet | tasya madhye likhed yaṃtraṃ nāgadantamayaṃ śubham || 44

vidyāsiṃhāsanaṃ śrīman nāgadantādinirmitam | suvarṇaratnanicitaṃ dukūlāstaraṇānvitam || 23

91.46-48

2.25-27

tasyordhvaṃ vinyaset devyāḥ pustakaṃ likhitaṃ śubham | ālekhyam api tatraiva pūjayed vidhinā tataḥ || 46

sthāpya puṣpagṛhasyānte gandhapuṣpaiḥ prapūjya ca | lekhyaṃ ca likhitaṃ cātra vinyaset pustakadvayam || 25

nirudakais tathā puṣpaiḥ kṛmikīṭavivarjitaiḥ | candanena sadarbheṇa bhasmanā cāvadhūnayet || 47

rocanācandanādyaiś ca puṣpair dhūpaiś ca pūjayet | ghṛtapradīpamālābhir bhakṣair vastraiś ca śobhanaiḥ || 26

dhūpaṃ ca guggulaṃ deyaṃ turuṣkāgurumiśritam | dīpamālāṃ tathā cāgre naivedyaṃ vividhaṃ punaḥ || 48

turuṣkāgurukarpūraiḥ sitacandanakauśikaiḥ | dadyāt pañcavidhaṃ dhūpaṃ samutthāpya punaḥ punaḥ || 27

91.50

2.28

kanyā striyas tu saṃpūjya mātarāḥ kalpayec ca tāḥ | pustakaṃ devadevīṃ ca viprāṇāṃ dakṣiṇā tathā || 50

tataḥ pradakṣiṇaṃ kṛtvā namet sarvāṅgikaṃ budhaḥ | sampūjyaivaṃ śivajñānaṃ guruṃ sampūjayet tataḥ || 28

91.52

2.62

chandolakṣaṇatadvaṃgaṃ satkaviṃ madhurasvaram | pranaṣṭaṃ smarate granthaṃ śreṣṭhaḥ pustakalekhakaḥ || 52

chandolakṣaṇatattvajñaḥ satkavir madhurasvaraḥ | gāndharvavid vidagdhaś ca śreṣṭhaḥ pustakavācakaḥ || 62

91.53

2.40-41

nāptisantatavicchinnair na śuklair na ca karkaśaiḥ | nandināgarakair varṇair lekhayec chivapustakam || 53

caturasraiḥ samaśīrṣair nātisthūlair na vā kṛṣaiḥ | sampūrṇāvayavaiḥ snigdhair nātivicchinnasaṃhataiḥ || 40
mātrānusvārasaṃyogahrasvadīrghādilakṣitaiḥ | nandināgarakair varṇair lekhayec chivapustakam || 41

91.54ab

2.33cd

prārambhe pañcaślokāni punaḥ śāntiṃ tu kārayet |

likhet praṇamya deveśaṃ lekhakaḥ ślokapañcakam || 33

91.54cd-55ab

2.43-44

rātrau jāgaraṇaṃ kuryāt sarvaprekṣāṃ prakalpayet || 54 naṭacāraṇalagnaiś ca devyāḥ kathanasambhavaiḥ |

kalpayej jāgaraṃ cātra vāditrair madhurasvanaiḥ | gītanṛtyair bahuvidhair ākhyānaiś ca śivātmakaiḥ || 43 vedaghoṣaiś ca vividhaiḥ prekṣaṇīyaiś ca śobhanaiḥ | krīḍāyantraprayogādyair ity evaṃ kṣapayen niśām || 44

91.57cd-58ab

2.45

tathā vidyāvimānaṃ tu saptapañca- tribhūmikam || 57 vicitravastraśobhā- ḍhyaṃ śubhalakṣaṇalakṣitam |

śivavidyāvimānaṃ ca kuryāt prātaḥ suśobhanam | pañcāṇḍakaṃ tribhaumaṃ ca dāruvaṃśādinirmitam | vicitravastrasaṃcchannaṃ sarvaśobhāsamanvitam || 45

91.63cd-64ab

2.51-52

mahatā janasaṅghena rathastaṃ dṛḍhavāhanaiḥ || 63 pradhānair vāpi taṃ neyaṃ yasya devasya aṃśajam |

mahatā janasaṅghena purataś ca mahīpatiḥ | dharmavṛddhaiḥ svayaṃ gacchet sarvaśobhāsamanvitaḥ || 51
athavā hastiyānasthaṃ kṛtvā pustakam ānayet | rājamārgeṇa mahatā nagarāntaḥ pradakṣiṇam || 52

91.68

2.63

tena toyena dātāraṃ mūrdhni samabhiṣiṃcayet | śivaṃ vadet tataḥ sarvam uccārya jagatas tataḥ || 68

śāntitoyena rājānaṃ samutthāya gurus tataḥ | śirasy abhyukṣayed īṣat tatrasthaṃ ca janaṃ tataḥ || 63

91.69

2.66

evaṃ kṛte mahāśāntir deśasya nagarasya tu | jāyate nātra sandehaṃ sarvabādhāḥ śamanti ca || 69

evaṃ kṛte mahāśāntir nṛpasya nagarasya ca | deśasya ca samastasya jāyate nātra saṃśayaḥ || 66

91.72cd-73ab

2.75, 84

yāvat tatpatrasaṃkhyāni akṣarāṇi vidhīyate || 72 tāvat sa viṣṇulokeṣu krīḍate vividhair sukhaiḥ |

yāvad akṣarasaṃkhyānaṃ śivajñānasya pustake | tāvad varṣasahasrāṇi dātā śivapure vaset || 75 yāvat tatpatrasaṃkhyānaṃ saṃcake ’tīva śobhane | tāvad yugasahasrāṇi śivaloke mahīyate || 84

91.74cd

2.161

vidyādānaprabhāvena yogaśāstraṃ daded yadi |

tataḥ kālena mahatā vidyādānaprabhāvataḥ | jñānayogaṃ samāsādya tatraiva parimucyate || 161

91.75cd

2.74cd

aśāṭhyāt phalam āpnoti āḍhyatulyaṃ na saṃśayam || 75

aśāṭhyenācaret puṇyam āḍhyatulyaphalaṃ labhet || 74

91.76

2.72cd

striyā vānena vidhinā vidyādānaphalaṃ labhet | bhartur anujñayā dattaṃ vidhavā vā samuddiśan || 76

kuryād vidhim imaṃ strī vā vidyādānaphalaṃ labhet || 72

91.79

2.88

pustakāstaraṇaṃ dattvā tatpramāṇaṃ suśobhanam | vidyādānam avāpnoti sūtrabaddhan tu buddhimān || 79

pustakāstaraṇaṃ dattvā sadvastraṃ ca pramāṇataḥ | tadvāsanavitānaṃ vā śivaloke mahīyate || 88

127.1-9

1.48-56

jagaddhitāya nṛpatiṃ devyā dharme niyojayet | tanniyogād ayaṃ loka śuciḥ syād dharmatatparaḥ || 1

(A fol. 2v[L5], B fol. 47v[L5], P2[P294]) jagaddhitāya nṛpatiṃ śivadharme niyojayet | tanniyogād ayaṃ lokaḥ śuciḥ [śuddhi B] syād [syā B] dharmatatparaḥ || 48

yaṃ yaṃ dharmaṃ naraśreṣṭhaḥ samācarati nityaśaḥ | taṃ tam ācarate lokas tatprāmāṇyād bhayena ca || 2

yaṃ yaṃ dharmaṃ naraḥ [BL6] śreṣṭhaḥ samācarati [samācararati B c.m.] bhaktitaḥ | tat tam ācarate lokas tatprāmāṇyād bhayena ca [bhavenna vā P2] || 49

dharmaniṣṭhaḥ kṛte rājā dharmapādaikaśāsitaḥ | yugatrayaṃ saṃvijñeyas tasmād rājā caturyugam || 3

dharmaniṣṭhaḥ [dharmaniṣṭhī P2] kṛto rājā [AL6] dharmapādaikahrāsataḥ [°hrāsakaḥ P2] | yugatrayaṃ sa vijñeyas
[vijñeya B] tasmād rājā caturyugaḥ [caturyugam B P2] || 50

dharmajñaḥ satataṃ rājā prajāṃ nyāyena pālayet | nyāyataḥ pālyamānās tu dhyāyanti svāminaṃ śivam || 4

dharmajñaḥ satataṃ rājā prajā nyāyena pālayet | nyāyataḥ [nyāyena P2] pālyamānās [pālamānās B] tā dhyāyanti svāminaḥ śivam || 51

dharmam arthaṃ ca kāmaṃ ca mokṣaṃ ca prāptum iṣyate | tattad āpnotyayatnena prajā dharmeṇa pālayet || 5

dha[B48rL1]rmam arthaṃ ca kāmaṃ ca yac cānyat [yadyat P2] prāptum īhate [samīhate P2] | tat tad āpnoty ayatnena prajā dharmeṇa pālayet || 5

prajāsu dharmayuktāsu caturthāśaṃ bhajen nṛpaḥ | adharmiṣṭhāṣvadharmasya caturthāṃśena lipyate || 6

dharmayuktāsu catūrthāṃśaṃ bhajen [labhet P2] nṛpaḥ | adharmiṣṭhaṃ [adharmiṣṭā B adharmiṣṭhas P2] svadharmasya caturthāṃśena lipyate [c.m.] || 53

tasmād adharme majjaṃtaṃ lokaṃ rājā nivārayet | dharme niyojayen nityam udayārthaṃ vicakṣaṇaḥ || 7

tasmād [tasmad a.c., tasmād p.c. A] adharme sajjantaṃ rājā lokaṃ [lokaṃ rājā P2] nivārayet | dharme niyojayen nityam [niyojayety evam P2] ubhayārthaṃ vicakṣaṇaḥ [ tu paṇḍitaḥ P2] || 54

dharmaśīle nṛpe yasmāt prajā svadharmatatparāḥ | nṛpatiṃ bodhayet tasmāt sarvalokānukampayā || 8

dharmaśīle nṛpe ya[BL2]smāt [tasmāt A] prajāḥ syur [tad P2] dharmatatparāḥ [°paraḥ a.c., parāḥ p.c. A] | nṛpatiṃ [nṛpam eva P2 c.m.] bodhayet tasmāt sarvalokānukampayā || 55

upāyena bhayāllobhān mūrkhaṃ chandena bodhayet | mantrauṣadhikriyād yair vā labdhaṃ dharmaṃ niyojayet || 9

upā[AL2]yena bhayāl lobhān mūrkhān [bhupaṃ P2] chandena [em.; sadānu° A B –dena P2] bodhayet | mantrauṣadhikriyādyair vā lubdhān [lubdhaṃ P2] dharme niveśayet || 56

127.10-11

1.74cd-75

sa cedanyāyataḥ pṛcchen na tasyopadiśed guruḥ | yaḥ śṛṇoti śivaṃ jñānaṃ nyāyatas tat pravakti ca || 10

(A fol.3v[L2] B fol.48v[L2], P2[P296]) sa ced anyāyataḥ [anyayataḥ a.c. anyāyataḥ p.c. B] pṛcchen na tasyopadiśed guruḥ || 74 yaḥ śṛṇoti śivajñānaṃ nyāyatas tat pravakti ca |

tau gacchataḥ śivaṃ jñānaṃ narakaṃ tadviparyaye | tasmād bhaktiṃ samāsthāya gurudevyā prapūjane || 11

[BL3] tau gacchataḥ śivasthānaṃ narakan tadviparyayāt [°viparyaye P2] || 75

127.12-17

1.17-22ab

vidyāyāḥ paramo yatna kāryaḥ śāstrasya vedane | śraddhāpūrvāḥ smṛtā dharmā śraddhāmadhyāntasaṃsthitā || 12

(A fol.1v[L6], B fol.46v[L6], P2[P291]) śraddhāpūrvāḥ sarvadharmāḥ [sarve dharmāḥ P2] śraddhāmadhyāntasaṃsthitāḥ [°saṃsthitā B] |

śraddhāniṣṭhā pratiṣṭhāś ca dharmāḥ śraddhaiva kīrttitaḥ | śrutibhāvagatāḥ sūkṣmāḥ pradhānapuruṣeśvarā || 13

[B47rL1] śraddhāniṣṭhapratiṣṭhāś [°niṣṭhā a.c., °niṣṭha p.c. A °niṣṭhā P2] ca dharmāḥ [dharmā A] [A2rL1] śraddhaiva [śraddhaika B] kīrtitāḥ || 17 śrutimātrarasāḥ sūkṣmāḥ pradhānapuruṣeśvarāḥ |

śraddhābhāveṇa gṛhyante na tarkena na cakṣuṣā | kāyakleśena bahubhir na caivārthasya rāśibhiḥ || 14

śraddhāmātreṇa gṛhyante na kareṇa na cakṣuṣā || 18 kāyakleśair na bahubhir [makhaiś caiva P2] na caivārthasya rāśibhiḥ |

dharmaḥ saṃprāpyate sūkṣmaḥ śraddhāhīnaiḥ surair api | śraddhā dharmaḥ paraḥ sūkṣmaḥ śraddhājñānaṃ hutaṃ tapaḥ || 15

dharmaḥ [dharma B] samprāpyate sūkṣmaḥ śraddhāhīnaiḥ surair api || 19 śraddhā dharmaḥ paraḥ sūkṣmaḥ śraddhā jñānaṃ hutaṃ tapaḥ |

śraddhā svargaś ca mokṣaś ca śraddhā sarvam idaṃ jagat | sarvasvaṃ jīvitaṃ cāpi yadi dadyād aśraddhayā || 16

[BL2] śraddhā [śraddhātaḥ a.c., śraddhā p.c. A] svargaś ca [svargā° a.c., svargaś ca p.c. A] mokṣaś ca śra[AL2]ddhā sarvam idaṃ jagat || 20 sarvasvaṃ jīvitaṃ vāpi [cāpi B] dadyād aśraddhayā yadi |

nāpnuyāt saphalaṃ kiñcit śraddhadhānas tato bhavet | evaṃ śraddhā samāsthāya devyāguruhutāśane || 17

nāpnuyāt sa phalaṃ kiṃcic chraddhaadhānas tato bhavet || 21 evaṃ śra-ddhāmayāḥ [°mayā B] sarve śivadharmāḥ prakīrtitāḥ |

128.3

12.259

ghorotpatti vadhādīni devyārādhanam uttamam | karmayogaś ca yogaś ca caturvargaprasādhakam || 3

(A fol. 51v[L1], B fol. 100r[L3], om. P2) ity āha karmayogasya jñānayogasya tat[BL4]tvataḥ | dharmādharmagatīnāṃ ca svarūpam upavarṇitaṃ || 259

128.4-14

12.261-272

ādyaṃ devyavatāraṃ ca vācayed yaḥ śṛṇoti vā | sa saṃsārād vinirmuktaḥ prāpnoti paramaṃ padam || 4

(A fol. 51v[L1], B fol. 100r[L4], om. P2) śivadharmottaraṃ śāstraṃ vācayed yaḥ śṛnoti vā | sa saṃsārād vinirmuktaḥ prāpnoti paramaṃ [AL2] padam || 261

vidyāsiṃhāsane madhye vastrapuṣpādiśobhite | pūjayitvā śivaṃ jñātaṃ śṛṇuyād vācayet tathā || 5

vidyāsiṃhāsane ramye vastrapuṣpādiśobhite | pūjayitvā śivajñānaṃ [śivaṃ jñānaṃ A] śṛṇuyād vācayīta vā || 262

śrīmaddaṃḍāsanaṃ vāpi kṛtvā hemaṃ suśobhanam | hemapaṭṭaparicchannaṃ nānāratnavibhūṣitam || 6

śrīmaddaṇḍāsanaṃ vāpi kṛtvā haimaṃ suśobhanam | hemapaṭṭaparicchannaṃ [em., hemapaṭṭā A B] nānāratnopaśobhitaṃ [°vibhuṣitam B] || 263

rājataṃ tāmrakāsyaṃ vā brahmarītyā vi-nirmitam | tarusārasamudbhūtaṃ śṛṃgavaṃśādisambhavam || 7

rājataṃ tāmrakāṃsyaṃ vā brahmarītyā vinirmitam | tarusārasa[BL6]mudbhūtaṃ śṛṅgacarmādini[AL3]rmitaṃ || 264

ratnahemasamāyuktaṃ śaṃkhasphaṭikamoktikaiḥ | yathāsambhava sambhūtair adhaścordhvaṃ vibhūṣitam || 8

yathāsambhavasambhūtair adhaś corddhvam vibhūṣitam |

samutkīrṇaṃ vicitraṃ ca sūtracinha nibandhanam | dviguṇe dvipramāṇeṣu pū-rṇacandranibheṣu ca || 9

nānābhaktisamuktīrṇaṃ citrasūtranibandhanaṃ || 265 dvyaṅguloccapramāṇeṣu pūrṇacandranibheṣu ca |

citrotkīrṇaṃ suvarṇeṣu pratipādeṣu saṃsthitam | dukūlaṃ paṭṭadevāṃgaṃ citrapaṭṭādisambhavam || 10

vicitrotkīrṇavarṇeṣu pratipādeṣu saṃsthitam [saṃsthitā A] || 266 dukūlapaṭṭadevāṅga[B100vL1]citrapaṭṭādisaṃbhavam |

biddhaṃ kusumaraktaṃ vā prākāraśikharāntivam | caurbhiś candrakair yuktaṃ paṃcavarṇaiḥ suśobhanaiḥ || 11

baddhaṃ kusumbharaktaṃ vā prākāraśikharānvitaṃ || 268 [AL4] caturbhiḥ kandukair yuktaṃ pañcavarṇais suśobhanaiḥ |

kiṃkiṇīravakpetaiḥ catuṣkoṇasamāśritaiḥ | giriprākāraśikharaiḥ sulakṣaiḥ paṃcavarṇakaiḥ | sarvavastrasamudbhūtaiḥ kandukaiś ca pralamvibhiḥ || 12

kiṅkiṇīravakopetaiś catuḥkoṇasamāśritaiḥ || 269 giriprākāraśikharaiḥ sumūrdhnaiḥ pañcaraṅgikaiḥ | sadvastrāṃśasamudbhūtaiḥ kandukārddha[BL2]pralambitaḥ [kandukādha° A] || 270

ittham āśravaṇaṃ kṛtvā vinyaset daṇḍakāsane tasyopari mahāśāstraṃ devyākhyaṃ sthāpya pūjayet || 13

ittham āstaraṇaṃ [itthaṃ sāstaraṇaṃ A] kṛtvā vinyased daṇḍakāsane | tasyopari śivajñānaṃ saṃsthāpya [sasthāpya A] pra[AL5]tipūjayet || 271

vidyādānopahāreṇa śobhāṃ kṛtvā prayatnataḥ | gandhādivāsitakaraḥ śrīmadāsanasaṃsthitaḥ || 14

vidyādānopacāreṇa śobhāṃ kṛtvā prayatnataḥ | gatvā ’dhivāsitakaraḥ śrīmadāsanasaṃsthitaḥ || 272

128.16-26ab

12.273-282

svakāyena tīrtheṣu narendrabhavaneṣu ca | bhāvayetparamaṃ dharmaṃ gṛhagrāme pureṣu ca || 16

sabhāyatanatīrtheṣu narendrabhavaneṣu vā | vāca[BL3]yet paramaṃ dharmaṃ gṛhe grāmapureṣu ca [vā B] || 273

śrotāraṃ ca gurudhyānaṃ śivaṃ dhyātvā yathāvidhiḥ | gandhapuṣpaiś ca sambhāraiḥ pratyahaṃ tu yuge yuge || 17 pūjayitvā namitvā ca kṛtājalipurāḥ sthitā | sarve nīcāsanāḥ śāntā yathāvṛddhakramānugāḥ || 18

śrotāraś ca śivajñānaṃ dhūpapuṣpair dine dine | pūjayitvā namitvā ca kṛtāñjali[AL6]puṭāḥ sthitāḥ || 274 sarve nīcāsanāḥ śāntā yathāvṛddhakramāgatāḥ |

dharmataḥ śrotum icchanti kathāntaravivarjitāḥ | jñānārambhe samāpatu ca śrotṛbhir vā ca kena ca || 19

dharmataḥ śrotum arhanti kathāntaravivarjitāḥ || 275 jñānārambhe [jñānārambhā° B] samāptau ca [BL4] śrotṛbhir vācakena vā [vacikena ca B] |

devyā maṃtraṃ śivākhyaṃ ca uccārya sarvasiddhaye | ānayed dhūpapuṣpādyair ekaikaḥ śrāvakaḥ kramāt || 20

śivamantraṃ samuccārya [samuccāryam A] aśeṣārthaprasādhakam || 276 ānayed dhūpapuṣpādyam ekaikaṃ śrāvakaḥ kramāt [śravakakramāt B] |

sarvasādhujanārthāya jñānamantraprado’pi vā | ācārebhyaḥ karaṃ dadyāt vācakaḥ kusumatrayam || 21

sarvasādhujanārthāya [A52rL1] jñānasattraprado’pi [jñānasata° B] vā || 277 ācāryebhyaḥ kare dadyād vācikaḥ [vācakaḥ B] kusumatrayam |

te’pi tair ādimadhyāntaiḥ kuryuḥ pūjāṃ tu mastake | iti śaktyā ca bhaktyā ca pūjāṃ kṛtvā sadakṣiṇām || 22

te ’pi tair ādimadhyānte kuryuḥ pūjāṃ tu pustake || 278 [BL5] iti śaktyā ca bhaktyā ca [ca om. B] kṛtvā pūjāṃ sadakṣiṇām |

pravartayati yaḥ kaścit devyāḥ pustakavācanam | sarvasattvopakārāya ātmanaś ca vimuktaye || 23

pravartayati yaḥ kaścic chivapustakavācanam [°vācakam A] || 279 sarvalokopakārārtham ātmanaś ca vivṛddhaye [vimuktaye B] |

tasya puṇyaphalaṃ vakṣye śrotṛṇāṃ vācakasya ca | dhanam āyuḥ prajā kirttiḥ prajñāṃ buddhiṃ priyaṃ sukham || 24

tasya puṇyaphalaṃ vakṣye śrotṛ[AL2]ṇāṃ vācakasya ca || 280 dhanam āyuḥ prajāṃ kīrtiṃ prajñāṃ buddhiṃ śriyaṃ sukham

iha samprāpya vipulaṃ dehānte śāntim āpnuyāt | asampūjya mahājñānaṃ pradeśe cāpy asaṃsthite || 25

iha saṃprāpya vipulaṃ dehānte śānti[BL6]m āpnuyāt || 281 asaṃpūjya śiva[CL5]jñānaṃ pradeśe cāpy [cāpyi° A] asaṃskṛte |

vācayan narakaṃ yāti tasmāt saṃskṛtya vācayet |

vācayan narakaṃ yāti tasmāt saṃskṛtya [satkṛtya B] vācayet || 282

128.28cd-34

12.282-288

vācanāt tu jagacchāntir avadhārya dine dine || 28

vācanāt te jagacchāntim avadhārya dine dine |

gaccheyuḥ kuśapuṣpārthaṃ śivomāpūjanāya ca | tataḥ śāstraṃ samāpyaṃ tu pūjāṃ kṛtvā viśeṣataḥ || 29

gaccheyuḥ kuśapuṣpārthaṃ śivārcā[AL3]dhyānatatparāḥ || 283 tataḥ śāstrasamāptyante [°samāpyante B] pūjāṃ kṛtvā viśeṣataḥ |

devyā vidyāguruṇāṃ ca bhaktyā ca śivayoginām | kanyakā dvijabandhūnām anyeṣām api buddhimān || 30

śivavidyāgurūṇā[B101rL1]ṃ ca bhaktyā ca [ca bhaktyā ca: B unreadable] śivayoginām || 284

bhojanaṃ kalpayeccaiṣāṃ dīnārthānāṃ ca sarvaśaḥ | mitrasvakulasādhūnām ante bhṛtyajanasya ca || 31

bhojanaṃ kalpayec caiṣāṃ dīnāndhānāṃ [dīnāndhāñ B] ca sarvataḥ | mitrasvajanabandhūnām [mitrasvaja° a.c., mitrasvajana p.c. B] ante bhṛtyajanasya ca || 285

gurave dakṣināṃ dadyāc chivo gomithunaṃ śubham | vastrayugmāṃguloyakaṃ ghṛtapūrṇaṃ tu bhojanam || 32

gurave dakṣiṇāṃ dadyāc chvetaṃ gomiṣu taṃ śubham | vastrayugmāṅgulīyaṃ [vastrapuṣpā° B] ca [AL4] ghṛtapūrṇaṃ ca bhājanam || 286

vācakāya pradātavyaṃ dakṣiṇā pūrvabhāṣitā | abhāṣitasya dātavyā guror ardhena dakṣinā || 33

vācakāya pradātavyā dakṣiṇā pūrvabhāṣitā | abhāṣite ’sya dā[BL2]tavyā guror arddhanadakṣiṇā || 287

śeṣāṇāṃ ca yathāśaktyā dakṣiṇāṃ śivayoginām | dadyāt prabodhayet paścāt pradīpādeḥ śataṃ budhaḥ || 34

śeṣāṇāṃ ca yathāśaktyā dakṣiṇāṃ śivayoginām [°yogine B] | dadyād vibhodhayet paścāt pradīpāṣṭaśataṃ bu-dhaḥ || 288

128.36-37ab

12.289-290ab

nivedayec chive devyaṃ aśeṣaṃ puṣpavādinām | jñānaṃ puṇyaṃ mahāśāntiṃ śravaṇān nātra saṃśayaḥ || 36

nivedayec cchivāyaiva tad [chivāyaitad B] aśeṣaṃ puṣpavāriṇā [°vāriṇe a.c., °vāriṇā p.c. B] c.m. | jñānapuṇyam [AL5] [jñānapuṇya A] mahāśāntaṃ tat tasmād akṣayaṃ phalam || 289

evam uddyotanaṃ kṛtvā devyāḥ śāstrasya bhaktitaḥ |

evam uddyotanaṃ [udyomantanaṃ B] kṛtvā śivajñānasya bhaktitaḥ |

128.40-46

12.291cd-297

bahubhi svajanaiḥ snigdhair bhṛtadāsaiḥ samāśritaiḥ | ity ebhiḥ sahitaiḥ sarvaiḥ śrīmac chivapure vrajet || 40

bandhūbhiḥ svajanair snigdhair [mitrair B] bhṛtyair [bandhūbhiḥ … bhṛtyair: B unreadable] dāsaiḥ samāśritaiḥ || 291 ity etais sahitaiḥ [sahitaḥ B] sarvaiḥ śrīmacchivapure [AL6] vaset |

mahāvimānarārūḍhaḥ sarvakāmasamanvitaḥ | tatra bhuktvā mahābhogaṃ yā-vad ācandrapāvakam || 41

mahāvimānair ārūḍhaiḥ [ārūḍaḥ B] sarvakāmasamanvitaiḥ || 292 tatra bhuṅkte mahābho[BL4]gān icchayā śivavad vaśī [cchivavacchasī A] |

dātā hartā ca kartā ca yāvat sākṣāllaye mahat | pralayānte tataḥ jñānaṃ prāpya yogam anuttamam || 42

dātā hartā ca [ca om. B] kartā ca yāvat sampālanam mahat || 293 pralayānte tataḥ prāpya jñānayogam anuttamam |

tato devyā prasādena mucyate nātra saṃśayaḥ | yasmād avagataṃ kuryāt de- vyāḥ pustakavācanam || 43

parameśapramodena mucyate nātra saṃśayaḥ || 294 yasmād evam ataḥ kuryāc chivapustaka[A53vL1]vācanam |

bhogāpavargaṃ phaladaṃ śivabhaktyā dine dine | na mārī na ca durbhikṣaṃ na rakṣāṃsi na vyādhayaḥ || 44

bhogāpavargaphaladaṃ śivabhaktyā [śivabhakto B] dine dine || 295 na [BL5] mārī na ca durbhikṣan na rakṣāṃsi na cetayaḥ |

nākāle mriyate rājā hanyate na ca śaktibhiḥ |śrṇoti yaś ca satataṃ śivadharmaṃ narādhipaḥ || 45

nākāle mriyate rājā pīḍyate ca na śatrubhiḥ || 296 śṛṇoti yatra satataṃ śivadharmaṃ narādhipaḥ |

tatra deśe mahāpuṇye devyāḥ sannihitā nṛpa | śrutvā sakṛnnigadato manoyogān narādhipa || 46

tatra deśe bhaven nityaṃ sarveṣāṃ dehināṃ śivaṃ || 297

Haracaritacintāmaṇi chapter 30

Śivadharmottara

30.4-9

1.41-46ab

(fol. 113r[L5]) vidhivādam idaṃ śaivaṃ nārthavādaḥ kadācana | icchā[L6]dhīnā kriyā yasya sa mṛṣā bhāṣate kutaḥ || 4

(A fol.2v[L2], B fol.47v[L3], P2[P293]) vidhivākyam idaṃ śaivaṃ nārthavādaḥ [AL3] śivātmakaḥ | lokānugrahakartā yaḥ sa mṛṣārthaṃ kathaṃ vadet || 41

sarvaṃ sarvajñabhāvena prabhutvaṃ yasya vartate | sa kena [L7] hetunā brūyād asatyaṃ śāstravartmani || 5

sarvajñaḥ paripūrṇatvād anyathā kena hetunā | brūyād vākyaṃ śivaḥ śāntaḥ sarvadoṣavivarjitaḥ || 42

anyathāvasthitān bhāvān anyathecchati cet prabhuḥ | tat tathaiva bha[L8]vanty ete kartṛtecchātmikā yataḥ || 6

yad yathāvasthitaṃ vastu gu[BL4]ṇadoṣaiḥ svabhāvataḥ | yāvat phalaṃ ca puṇyaṃ ca [ca om. P2 c.m.] sarvajñas tat tathā vadet || 43

tasya prabhoḥ prabhāveṇa vaicitrīṃ bahudhāśritaḥ | rāgadveṣavimohā[L9]dyair yaccetaḥ kaluṣīkṛtam || 7

rāgadveṣāvṛtaḥ krodhair [rāgadveṣādibhir doṣair B rāgajñānādibhir doṣair P2] grastatvā[AL4]d anṛtaṃ [vānṛtaṃ P2] vadet | te ceśvare na [ceśvareṇa A] vidyante brūyāt sa katham anyathā [44cd om. P2] || 44

sa mṛṣā bhāṣate <’>prājñas tadgirā kaḥ pravartate | yas tu rāgādyakaluṣaḥ [L10] karuṇānidhir īśvaraḥ || 8

ajātāśeṣadoṣeṇa [apāstāśeṣadoṣeṇa P2] sarvajñena śivena yat |

tasya satyatamā vāṇī pramāṇam iti niścayaḥ | tasmān māheśvaraṃ vākyaṃ [L11] śraddheyaṃ bhaktipāvanaiḥ || 9

praṇītam amalaṃ vākyaṃ [śāstraṃ P2] tat pramāṇaṃ na saṃśayaḥ || 45 [P2P294]

tasmād īśvaravākyā[BL5]ni śraddheyāni vipaścitā |

30.10

1.22

(fol. 113r[L11]) athavā na nivarteta ghorasaṃsārakālikā | dhyānārcanādayo ye ca [L12] śivadharmā<ḥ> prakīrttitāḥ || 10

(A fol. 2r[L2], B fol. 47r[L2], P2[P281]) evaṃ śraddhāmayāḥ [°mayā B] sarve śivadharmāḥ prakīrtitāḥ | śivaś ca śraddhayā gamyaḥ pūjyo dhyeyaś ca śraddhayā || 22

30.12-13ab

1.18cd-19

(fol113v[L1]) śraddhāmātreṇa bhaktānāṃ mattyānām api sammukhaḥ | na kleśena śarīrasya draviṇasya [L2] na rāśibhiḥ || 12

(A fol. 2r[L1], B fol. 47r[L1], P2[P281]) śraddhāmātreṇa gṛhyante na kareṇa na cakṣuṣā || 18 kāyakleśair na bahubhir [makhaiś caiva P2] na caivārthasya rāśibhiḥ |

samprāpyate mahādevo vinā śraddhāṃ surair api |

dharmaḥ [dharma B] samprāpyate sūkṣmaḥ śraddhāhīnaiḥ surair api || 19

30.13cd

1.21

sarvasvam api yo dadyāt prāṇān vā śraddhayā [L3] vinā || 13

(A fol. 2r[L1], B fol. 47r[L1], P2[P281]) sarvasvaṃ jīvitaṃ vāpi [cāpi B] dadyād aśraddhayā yadi | nāpnuyāt sa phalaṃ kiṃcic chraddadhānas tato bhavet || 21

30.15cd-19ab

1.26-30

(fol113v[L4]) sa mantro bījam anyeṣāṃ mantraṇāṃ sarvasiddhidaḥ || 15 ati[L5]sūkṣmo mahārthaś ca sa jñeyo vaṭabījavat |

(A fol.2r[L3] B fol.47r[L3], P2[P292]) sadbījaṃ sa[BL4]rvavidyānāṃ mantram ādyaṃ [ādya A] ṣaḍakṣaram | atisūkṣmaṃ mahā[AL4]rthaṃ ca jñeyaṃ tad vaṭabījavat [vaṭajībījavan B c.m.] || 26

devo guṇatrayātītas sarvajñaḥ sarvakṛt prabhuḥ || 16 om i[L6]ty ekākṣare mantre sthitas sarvagataḥ śivaḥ |

devatrayaguṇātītaḥ [devaguṇatrayātītaḥ P2] sarvajñaḥ [sarvavit P2] sarvakṛt prabhu | om ity ekākṣare [ekāre a.c., ekākṣare p.c. A ekārakṣare B c.m.] mantre sthitaḥ sarvagataḥ śivaḥ || 27

iśādyā api sūkṣmāṇi vaktrāṇy ekākṣarāṇi tu || 17 mantre [L7] namaḥ śivāyeti saṃsthitāni yathākramam |

īśānādyāni [īśānādyāni A B] sūkṣmāṇi brahmaṇy ekākṣarāṇi tu [tuḥ B] | mantre namaḥ śivāyeti saṃsthitā[BL5]ni yathākramam || 28

vācyaḥ śivo prameyatvān mantras tadvācakaḥ smṛtaḥ || 18 [L8] vācyavācakabhāvo <’>yam anādis saṃsthito <’>nayoḥ |

vācyaḥ śivo [śivaḥ P2] ’prameyatvān mantras tadvācakaḥ smṛtaḥ | vācyavācakabhāvo ’yam anādiḥ saṃsthitas tayoḥ || 30

30.19cd-20ab

1.36-37

(fol113v[L8]) vede ca śivaśāstre ca mantro <’>yaṃ ca ṣaḍakṣaraḥ || 19 [L9] saṃsārasantāpaharo loke pañcākṣaraḥ punaḥ |

(A fol.2v[L1] B fol.47v[L1] P[P293]) vede śivāgame cāyam ubhayatra ṣaḍakṣaraḥ | mantraḥ sthitaḥ satāṃ [sadā P2] muktyai [mukyo P2] loke pañcākṣaraḥ smṛtaḥ || 36

kiṃ tasya bahubhir mantraiḥ śāstrair vā bahuvistaraiḥ || 20 [L10] yasmin namaḥ śivāyeti mantrābhyāsaḥ sthirīkṛtaḥ |

kiṃ tasya bahubhir mantraiḥ śāstrair vā bahu[BL2]vistaraiḥ | yasyaun namaḥ śivāyeti mantro ’yaṃ hṛdi saṃsthitaḥ || 37

30.21cd-22ab

1.39

(fol113v[L10]) śivajñānāni sarvāṇi vidyāsthānāni [L11] yāni ca || 21 ṣaḍakṣarasya mantrasya kalāṃ nārghanti ṣoḍaśīm |

(A fol.2v[L2], B fol. 47v[L2], P2[P293]) yenaun namaḥ śivāyeti mantro ’bhyasaḥ sthirīkṛtaḥ | śivajñānāni yāvanti vidyāsthānāni [vidyādānāni A] yāni ca | ṣaḍakṣarasya mantrasya [sūtrasya P2] tāni bhāṣet [bhāṣyaṃ P2] samāsataḥ || 39

30.25cd-27ab

1.95-96

(fol.114r[L2]) pūjitaṃ pūjyamānaṃ vā bhaktyā paśyati yaḥ śivam || 25 yaś cānumodate śrutvā so <’>bhīṣṭaṃ la[L3]bhate phalam |

(A fol.4r[L3] B fol. 49r[L4] P2[P298]) pūjitaṃ pūjyamānaṃ [pūjamānaṃ B] vā yaḥ paśyed bhaktitaḥ [bhaktita B] śivam | śrutvānumodayed yaś ca [yas tu P2] sa ca yāgaphalaṃ labhet || 95

(fol.114r[L3]) arcitaṃ yaḥ śivaṃ paśyet tasya naśyati pātakam || 26 harṣān namati yo bhūmau sa śaivaṃ labhate [L4] padam |

arcitaṃ śaṅkaraṃ dṛṣṭvā sarvapāpaiḥ pramucyate | harṣāt praṇamya taṃ [AL4] bhūmau śivaloke mahīyate || 96

30.28

2.2

(fol.114r[L4]) adhyāpayec chanaiḥ śiṣyāṃ chivabhaktā[L5]n prabodhayet | śivaśastrānusāreṇa vidyādānaṃ tad ucyate || 28

adhyāpya yac chanaiḥ śiṣyān śivabhaktān prabodhayet | śivavidyānusāreṇa vidyādānaṃ tad ucyate || 2

30.29-31

2.4-6

(fol.114r[L6]) yathā śivasya nāsty antaḥ paripūrṇacidātmanaḥ | tathā vidyāpradā

yathā śivasya naivāntaḥ sampūrṇasya mahātmanaḥ |

nasya pariśuddhacidātmanaḥ || 29

tathā vidyāpradānasya nāntaḥ sarvaguṇātmanaḥ || 4

vidyādātā śriyaṃ kīrtiṃ brāhmīṃ vṛ[L7]ddhim ihāpnuyāt | amutrāṣṭavidhāḥ siddhīḥ śaivaṃ padam ataḥ param || 30

śivāṣṭaguṇam aiśvaryaṃ tad vidyādānataḥ phalam | iha kīrtiḥ śriyā brāhmī prajñā vṛddhir dhanaṃ sukham || 5

[L7] aśuddham api yo dhītya jñāna[L8]m adhyāpayet param | sa yāti narakaṃ ghauraṃ pāpīyāṃ jñānanāśakaḥ || 31

yo ’śuddham ātmanādhītya jñānam adhyāpayet param | sa yāti narakaṃ ghoraṃ pāpīyāṃ jñānanāśakaḥ || 6

30.32

2.11

(fol.114r[L8]) naṣṭaṃ naṣṭaṃ śivajñānaṃ yo jānann [L9] avatārayet | saṃskārayed vā dhīmān sa svayam eva maheśvaraḥ || 32

yaḥ karoti punaḥ samyak saṃskāraṃ pūrvavad guruḥ | śivatantrārthavid dhīmān sa vidyāparameśvaraḥ || 11

30.34ab

2.12ab

(fol.114r[L10]) amuṣya puṇyamāhātmyaṃ vaktuṃ śakyaṃ na ke[L11]nacit |

na cāsya puṇyamāhātmyaṃ vaktuṃ śakyaṃ hi kena cit |

30.36

1.49

(fol.114v[L1]) yaṃ yaṃ dharmaṃ naraśreṣṭhaḥ samācarati bhaktitaḥ | lokas tam ācaraty eva tatpramāṇād bhayena ca || 36

(A fol. 2v[L5], B fol. 47v[L5], P2[P294]) yaṃ yaṃ dharmaṃ naraḥ [BL6]śreṣṭhaḥ samācarati [samācararati B c.m.] bhaktitaḥ | tat tam ācarate lokas tatprāmāṇyād bhayena ca [bhavenna vā P2] || 49

30.38

2.75

(fol.114v[L2]) yā[L3]vad akṣarasaṅkhyānaṃ śivajñanasya pustake | tāvad varṣasahasrāṇi dātā śivapure vaset || 38

yāvad akṣarasaṃkhyānaṃ śivajñānasya pustake | tāvat varṣasahasrāṇi dātā śivapure vaset || 75

30.40

2.68cd-70ab

(fol.114v[L4]] nṛpates tatra sau[L5]bhāgyaṃ vijayaś ca dine dine | matir dharme sukhaṃ ca syāt sarveṣāṃ puravāsinām || 40

upasargāḥ pralīyante na durbhikṣabhayaṃ bhavet || 68 vināyakāś ca naśyanti saubhāgyaṃ paramaṃ bhavet | rājyavṛddhiś ca vipulā nityaṃ ca vijayī nṛpaḥ || 69 vardhate putrapautraiś ca matir dharme ca vardhate |

30.43

2.91

(fol.114v[L7]) upānacchatrakau[L8]pīnaśayyāprāvaraṇāsanam | pādaprakṣālanā- bhyaṅgasnānabhojanabheṣajam |

upānacchatrakaupīnaśayyāprāvaraṇāsanam | pādasnehāñjanābhyaṅgasnānabhojanabheṣajam || 91

N.B.: Haracaritacintāmaṇi 30.46-49 parallel to Śivadharmottara 7.18, 20, 26, 28

30.50ab

2.128cd

(fol. 115r[L2]) tribhaumaṃ pañcabhaumaṃ [L3] vā yathāśāstraṃ vidhāya yaḥ |

pañcabhaumaṃ tribhaumaṃ vā śivajñānaratātmanām || 128

30.52cd-53

2.161cd-163

(fol.114v[L5]) yogajñānaṃ samāsādya labhate mokṣam akṣayam || 52

jñānayogaṃ samāsādya tatraiva parimucyate || 161

sthapatyādyā[L6]s tathā vṛkṣās tadadhyakṣāś ca ye narāḥ | te yānti rudrasya puraṃ śivakarmaprabhāvataḥ || 53

sthapatiḥ sthāpakā vṛkṣā balīvardhāḥ sukarmiṇaḥ | yānti rudrapuraṃ sarve tadadhyakṣāś ca ye narāḥ || 162 ye cāpi vṛttibhṛtakāḥ śivāyatanakarmiṇaḥ | te ’pi yānti mṛtāḥ svargaṃ śivakarmānubhāvataḥ || 163

30.54

2.165cd-166ab

(fol.114v[L6]) vijñeyā rudra[L7]gaṇikāḥ śivāyatanayoṣitaḥ | tadutpannāḥ śarīrānte labhante svargam uttamam || 54

vijñeyā rudragaṇikāḥ śivāyatanayoṣitaḥ || 165 yā rudragaṇikotpannā putrapautrādisaṃtatiḥ |

30.55cd

2.178

(fol.114v[L8]) ārogyaśālāṃ yaḥ kuryāt sarvopakaraṇānvitām || 55

ārogyaśālāṃ yaḥ kuryāt mahāvaidyapuraskṛtām | sarvopakaraṇopetāṃ tasya puṇyaphalaṃ śṛṇu || 178

30.56

2.186

[fol.114v[L9]] kulaikaviṃśaikayutaḥ sabhṛtyaparivārakaḥ | vasec chi[L10]vapure tāvad yāvad ācandratārakam || 56

ekaviṃśakulopetaḥ sabhṛtyaparivāritaḥ | āste śivapure tāvad yāvad ābhūtasaṃplavam || 186

30.57

2.179

(fol.114v[L10]) dharmārthakāmamokṣāṇām ārogyaṃ sādhanaṃ yataḥ | tasmā[L11]d ārogyadānena dattaṃ syāc ca catuṣṭayam || 57

dharmārthakāmamokṣāṇām ārogyaṃ sādhanaṃ yataḥ | tasmād ārogyadānena dattaṃ syāt tac catuṣṭayam || 179

30.58

2.184

(fol.114v[L11]) ākāśasya yathā nāntaḥ surair apy upalabhyate | ārogya[L12]dānapuṇyasya tathaiveti na saṃśayaḥ || 58

ākāśasya yathā nāntaḥ surair apy upalabhyate | tadvad ārogyadānasya nāntaḥ saṃvidyate mune || 184

Uttarakāmika Chapter 67

Śivadharmottara Chapter 2

67.13-18ab

2.6-11

nāśuddhaṃ lekhayed vidvān yathālikhitapāṭhakaiḥ | śivajñānasya kālena praṇaṣṭasya pramādataḥ || 13

yo ’śuddham ātmanādhītya jñānam adhyāpayet param | sa yāti narakaṃ ghoraṃ pāpīyāṃ jñānanāśakaḥ || 6 śivajñānasya kālena vinaṣṭasya pramādataḥ |

ūnātiriktavarṇasya likhitasya pramādataḥ | pramādīkṛtapāṭhasya nāśitasyālpabuddhibhiḥ || 14

ūnātiriktavarṇasya mūḍhair durlikhitasya ca || 7 pramādādhītapāṭhasya nāśitasyālpabuddhibhiḥ |

alpajñānasamopetair ācāryaiḥ śodhitasya ca | vyarthaiḥ padair upetasya punaruktasya cārthataḥ || 15

jñānāvalepamānāndhair ācāryaiḥ śodhitasya ca || 8 vyarthaiḥ padair upetasya punaruktasya cārthataḥ |

pūrvottaraviruddhasya svasiddhāntavirodhataḥ | chandasātīva naṣṭasya śabdārtharahitasya ca || 16

pūrvottaraviruddhasya svasiddhāntavirodhinaḥ || 9 chandasātīvanaṣṭasya śabdārtharahitasya ca |

ityevam ādibhir doṣair upetasya kvacit kvacit | yaḥ karoti pumān samyak saṃskāraṃ deśikaḥ sudhīḥ || 17

ityevam ādibhir doṣair upetasya kva cit kva cit || 10 yaḥ karoti punaḥ samyak saṃskāraṃ pūrvavad guruḥ |

śivatattvārthavidvān yaḥ sa vidyā pārameśvaraḥ |

śivatantrārthavid dhīmān sa vidyāparameśvaraḥ || 11

67.18cd-24

2.2-6

adhyāpayec chanaiś śiṣyān śivabhaktān prabodhayet || 18 śivavidyānusāreṇa vi-dyādānaṃ tad ucyate |

adhyāpya yac chanaiḥ śiṣyān śivabhaktān prabodhayet | śivavidyānusāreṇa vi-dyādānaṃ tad ucyate || 2

saṃskṛtair drāmiḍair vākyair deśabhāṣāprakārakaiḥ || 19 prākṛtaprabhavaiḥ śabdaiḥ viśuddhaiḥ saṃskṛtair api | atra laukikaśabdaiś ca yaś śiṣyam anurūpataḥ || 20 deśabhāṣādyupāyaiś ca tathābhūtāgamair api | pradeśavartibhis sarvadeśasthaṃ bodhayed yathā || 21

saṃskṛtaiḥ prākṛtair vākyair yaḥ śiṣyasyānurūpataḥ | deśabhāṣādyupāyaiś ca bodhayet sa guruḥ smṛtaḥ || 3

yathā śivasya naivāntas saṃpūrṇasya mahātmanaḥ | tathā vidyāpradhānasya nāntas sarvaguṇātmanaḥ || 22

yathā śivasya naivāntaḥ sampūrṇasya mahātmanaḥ | tathā vidyāpradānasya nāntaḥ sarvaguṇātmanaḥ || 4

śivāntaguṇam aiśvaryaṃ vidyādānasya tatphalam | iha kīrtiḥ śriyo brāhmī prajñā kāntir dhanaṃ sukham || 23

śivāṣṭaguṇam aiśvaryaṃ tad vidyādānataḥ phalam | iha kīrtiḥ śriyā brāhmī prajñā vṛddhir dhanaṃ sukham || 5

yo’śuddham ātmanādhītya jñānam adhyāpayet param | sa yāti narakaṃ ghoraṃ pāpīyāṃ jñānanāśakaḥ || 24

yo ’śuddham ātmanādhītya jñānam adhyāpayet param | sa yāti narakaṃ ghoraṃ pāpīyāṃ jñānanāśakaḥ || 6

67. 25ab

2.29cd

śivavat pūjayed bhaktyā śivajñānaprakāśakam |

śivavat pūjayed bhaktyā śivajñānaprakāśakam || 29

67. 26-28ab

2.75-76

yāvadakṣarasaṃkhyāḥ syuḥ śivajñānasya pustake | tāvadyugasahasrāṇi dātā śivapure naraḥ || 26

yāvad akṣarasaṃkhyānaṃ śivajñānasya pustake | tāvat varṣasahasrāṇi dātā śivapure vaset || 75

daśa pūrvān samuddhṛtya daśa vaṃśyāṃś ca buddhimān | mātṝḥ pitṝn dharmapatnīṃ ca tair svargaṃ samavāpya ca || 27 svarge saṃsthāpya tān sarvān svayaṃ śivapuraṃ vrajet

daśa pūrvān samuddhṛtya daśa vaṃśyāś ca paścimān | mātāpitṛdharmapatnīḥ svarge sthāpya śivaṃ vrajet || 76

67. 28cd-30ab

2.102-103

api ślokaṃ tadardhaṃ vā śivajñānasya yaḥ paṭhet || 28 vācayec cintayed vāpi likhed vā lekhayet tu vā |

api ślokaṃ tadarddham vā śivajñānasya yaḥ paṭhet | vācayec cintayed vāpi likhed vā lekhayīta vā || 102

śṛṇuyād ekacittas tu tadarthaṃ ca vicārayet || 29 anyebhyaḥ śrāvayed yas tu tasya puṇyaphalaṃ mahat |

śṛṇuyād ekacittaś ca tadarthaṃ ca vicārayet | janebhyaḥ śrāvayed yaś ca tasya puṇyaphalaṃ śṛṇu || 103

67. 30 cd-31ab

2.90

śivajñānābhiyuktaṃ ca [em.; śivajñānābhiyuktasya ed.] bhojanācchādanā- dibhiḥ || 30 ā samāptes tu saṃrakṣed vidyādānaphalaṃ labhet |

śivajñānābhiyuktāya bhaktācchādaṃ dadāti yaḥ | ā samāpter avicchinnaṃ vi-dyādānaphalaṃ labhet || 90

67. 31cd

2. 101cd

mūlyena kārayed vātha tad eva phalam aśnute || 31

mūlyena kārayed vāpi vidyādānaphalaṃ labhet || 101cd

Table A: Structure of the Chapters on the Gift of Knowledge in the Sanskrit Law-Digests

Dānakāṇḍa of Lakṣmīdhara

Chapter 12, ‘The Gift of knowledge’ (vidyādāna)

*Ādityapurāṇa

12.1Lak

Manusmṛti

4.233

Yājñavalkyasmṛti

1.212

*Yamasmṛti

12.4Lak

Devīpurāṇa

91.12–16

91.23–25

91.37–83

91.9

Mahābhārata

13.68.5

13.74.19

*Nandipurāṇa

12.31–181Lak

Matsyapurāṇa

53.3–4

53.11cd–20

53.22–57

Dānasāgara of Ballālasena

Chapter 42, ‘Study of the Gift of the Purāṇas [Addressed] to the Goddess Sarasvatī’ (sarasvatīdaivatapurāṇadānāvartaḥ)

Matsyapurāṇa

53.3–4

53.11–56

— Author’s prose commentary

Kūrmapurāṇa

2.46.122

2.46.124–126

— Author’s prose commentary

Chapter 43, ‘Study of the Gift of Knowledge [Addressed] to the God Brahmā (brahmadaivatavidyādānā-vartaḥ)

— ‘Eulogy of the gift of knowledge’ (vidyādānapraśaṃsā)

Manusmṛti

4.233

Yājñavalkyasmṛti

1.212

*Yamasmṛti

12.4Lak

*Ādityapurāṇa

12.1Lak

Viṣṇudharmottara

3.303.1–4

— ‘Characters of the gift of knowledge [and] its fruit’ (vidyādānasvarūpaṃ tatphalaṃ ca)

*Nandipurāṇa

12.31–90Lak

— ‘Eulogy of the teacher’ (gurupraśaṃsā)

*Nandipurāṇa

12.91–104Lak

— ‘Recipients of a gift of knowledge’ (vidyādānapātrāṇi)

*Nandipurāṇa

12.105–107Lak

— ‘Beginning of the transcription of the manuscript’ (pustakalikhanārambhaḥ)

*Nandipurāṇa

12.108abcdLak

— ‘Procedures dealing with the śarayantra’(sarayantravidhiḥ)

*Nandipurāṇa

12.108efLak

*Nandipurāṇa

12.110–112abLak

— ‘Procedures dealing with the stack of leaves’ (patrasaṃcayavidhiḥ)

*Nandipurāṇa

12.112cd–113Lak

— ‘Production of the ink’ (masīnirmāṇam)

*Nandipurāṇa

12.114Lak

— ‘Production of pen and strings’ (lekhanīyaṣṭikānirmāṇam)

*Nandipurāṇa

12.115–116abcdLak

— ‘Placing the exemplar [on the lectern]’ (ādarśapustakāropaṇam)

*Nandipurāṇa

12.116ef–117Lak

— ‘Beginning of the transcription, preceded by the donation of ornaments and so on to the scribe’ (lekhakasyālaṅkārādidānapūrva-kalikhanārambhaḥ)

*Nandipurāṇa

12.118–122cdLak

— ‘Procedures for the correction’ (śodhanavidhiḥ)

*Nandipurāṇa

12.122ef–128abLak

— ‘Procedures for the donation to the temple of the god’ (devāyatananivedan avidhiḥ)

*Nandipurāṇa

12.128cdef–134abLak

— ‘Procedures for the teaching session, along with the qualities of the attendants, the reader and the teacher’ (śrotṛpāṭhakaguruguṇasahitavyākhyānavidhiḥ)

*Nandipurāṇa

12. 134cd–148Lak

— ‘[Permitted] and prohibited behaviours during teaching sessions’ (vyākhyāyāṃ vidhiniṣedhavidhiḥ)

*Nandipurāṇa

12.149–156Lak

— ‘Sequence of the recitation’ (pāṭhakramaḥ)

*Nandipurāṇa

12.157–163Lak

— ‘Procedures for the self-study’ (cintāvidhiḥ)

*Nandipurāṇa

12.164–165Lak

— ‘What to do at the conclusion of the explanation of a treatise’ (śāstravyākhyāsamāptikṛtyam)

*Nandipurāṇa

12.166–168abLak

— ‘Gift to a Brahmin’ (brāhmaṇāya dānam)

*Nandipurāṇa

12.168cd–169Lak

— ‘Worship of the treatise’ (śāstrānuṣṭhānam)

*Nandipurāṇa

12.170Lak

— ‘Fruits of the gift of knowledge’ (vidyādānaphalam)

*Nandipurāṇa

12.171–181Lak

Dānakhaṇḍa of Hemādri’s Caturvargacintāmaṇi

‘Thus begins the exposition of the gift of knowledge, excellent gift’ (iti vidyādānākhyam atidānam ārabhyate)

*Ādityapurāṇa

12.1Lak

*Nandipurāṇa

12.86Lak

12.88–89Lak

Garuḍapurāṇa

1–6Hem

*Bṛhaspatismṛti

1–2Hem

Viṣṇudharmottara

3.303.1–4

Devīpurāṇa

91.24–25

Devīpurāṇa

91.13–16

Viṣṇudharmottara

3.303.6cd–7

*Nandipurāṇa

12.62–85Lak

Varāhapurāṇa

1–3Hem

— ‘[End of] the eulogy of the gift of knowledge’ (vidyādānapraśaṃsā)

— ‘The Gift of the Veda’ (vedadānaṃ)

*Ādityapurāṇa → Manusmṛti

4.233

Yājñavalkyasmṛti

1.212

Mahābhārata

13.68.5

13.74.19

Viṣụdharmottara

3.303 59–60ab

Garuḍapurāṇa

7–8Hem

Devīpurāṇa

96.3ab

107.11

107.9–10

107.12–24

107.28–31ab

107.32 107.34–40ab

107.41–55a

107.56

107.58

Garuḍapurāṇa

9–28Hem

Vahnipurāṇa

1–2Hem

Bhaviṣyapurāṇa

1Hem

‘The gift of technical literature’ (śāstradānam)

*Nandipurāṇa

12.61Lak

*Yamasmṛti

12.4Lak

2–5Hem

*Nandipurāṇa

29Hem

12.74Lak

12.80–81Lak

33Hem

Agnipurāṇa

1Hem

*Śaṅkalikhita

Dānakhaṇḍa, p. 527

*Paithīnassmṛti

1–4Hem

Bhaviṣyapurāṇa

2–3Hem

Manusmṛti

1–3Hem

Aṅgirasas

1–2Hem

Yamasmṛti

6Hem

Skandapurāṇa

1–4Hem

— ‘The gift of the Purāṇas’ (purāṇadānaṃ)

Nāradīyapurāṇa

2.24.18

2.24.20–21ab

Matsyapurāṇa

53.3–12ab

Varāhapurāṇa

112.69cd–72

Kālikāpurāṇe

1–3abHem

Saurapurāṇa

1.9.3–14ab

Kūrmapurāṇa

1.1.16ab

1.1.17ab–1.1.21

Matsyapurāṇa

53.60–62

53.63ef–72

53.1–2

53.11cd–30ab

53.31ab–54

53.55ab–57ab

Saurapurāṇa

1.9.14cd–17ab

1–3abHem

Brahmapurāṇa

1–2Hem

Vahnipurāṇa

4Hem

Kūrmapurāṇa

2.44.132ab

2.44.124–125

— ‘Gift of the hearing of the Purāṇas’ (purāṇaśravaṇadānaṃ)

Mahābhārata Harivaṃśa

App.1.40.103–104

App.1.40.107–136

App.1.40.139–150

App.1.40.152–155

App.1.40.21–34

1Hem

— ‘Gifting procedures that are common to all disciplines’ (sarvaśāstrasādhāraṇadānavidhi)

Devīpurāṇa

91.12

91.23

91.37–74ab

*Nandipurāṇa

12.86Lak

12.90Lak

12.105–151Lak

12.153–166Lak

12.168–176Lak

12.178–179Lak

Vahnipurāṇa

5–14Hem

Varāhapurāṇa

4–12Hem

Devīpurāṇa

91.75–82

*Nandipurāṇa

12.180Lak

Viṣṇudharmottara

3.303.8–11

3.303.13

Skandapurāṇa

1–14Hem

*Nandipurāṇa

12.181Lak

Devīpurāṇa

91.83

91.9

Varāhapurāṇa

13–22Hem

Vāhnipurāṇa

15–24Hem

Dānavivekoddyota by Madanasiṃhadeva

‘The Fruits of a gift of knowledge’ (vidyādānaphalāni)

Viṣṇudharmottara

3.303.1–3

*Bṛhaspatismṛti

1–2Hem

*Nandipurāṇa

12.162–64Lak

12.168Lak

12.70–76Lak

12.82efLak

12.85Lak

*Nandipurāṇa → Varāhāpurāṇa 1–3Hem

‘Gift of the Veda’ (vedadāna)

Garuḍapurāṇa

12.21cd–23Lak

12.24cd–27abLak

12.9–21abLak

‘Gift of the smṛti’ (smṛtidānam)

*Nandipurāṇa

29Hem

Manusmṛti

1–3Hem

Paithīnasismṛti

1–4Hem

Aṅgirassmṛti

1–2Hem

‘Procedures for the donation of these [fields of learning]’ (athaitāsāṃ dānavidhiḥ)

Varāhapurāṇa

4–9abHem

*Nandipurāṇa

12.122ab–123Lak

12.128abcdLak

Varāhapurāṇa

19–22Hem

*Vāhnipurāṇa

8–15abHem

‘Following, the procedures for the teaching of the treatise that has been taught to the pupils (athādītaśāstrasya śiṣyebhyo vyākhyānadānavidhiḥ)

*Nandipurāṇa

2.168cd–69Lak

12.138–39Lak

12.140ef–43Lak

12.149Lak

12.151cdLak

12.161Lak

12.164–65Lak

12.170Lak

‘Gifts of Purāṇas’ (purāṇadānāni)

Saurapurāṇa

1.9.3–4

1.9.5cd–12ab

Matsyapurāṇa

53.11–56

Vāmapurāṇa → Saurapurāṇa

1.9.12cd–14ab

Kūrmapurāṇa

1.1.16ab

1.1.17ab–1.1.21

Matsyapurāṇa

53.60–62

53.63ef–69

Saurapurāṇa

1.9.15cd

1Mad

1.9.17cd

Matsyapurāṇa

53.70–72

Brahmapurāṇa

1–2Hem

‘Procedures for the hearing of the Bhārata’ (bhārataśravaṇavidhiḥ)

Mahābhārata → Harivaṃśa

App. 1.40.103–104

App. 1.40.107–116

App. 1.40.119–136

App. 1.40.139–155

App. 1.40.21–34

1Hem

‘Gift of the Śaiva treatises and so on’ (śivaśāstrādidānam)

*Nandipurāṇa

12.108–112abLak

12.118abLak

12.119cd–122Lak

12.128abcdLak

12.129–13abLak

Devīpurāṇa

91.64cd–67ab

Nandipurāṇa

12.180Lak

Dānakriyākaumudī by Govindānanda Kavikaṅkanācārya

‘Gift of manuscripts’ (pustakadānaṃ)

*Nandipurāṇa

12.172cd–179Lak

— Author’s prose commentary

Hayaśīrṣapāñcarātra

1–7Gov

Harivaṃśa

1.6–7

— Author’s prose commentary

Matsyapurāṇa

53.17

— Author’s prose commentary

Matsyapurāṇa

53.20–22

— Author’s prose commentary

Matsyapurāṇa

53.52

— Author’s prose commentary

Skandapurāṇa, Kāśikhaṇḍa

1–4Gov

— Author’s prose commentary

Dānamayūkha by Nīlakaṇṭha

‘The excellent gift called gift of knowledge’ (vidyādānākhyam atidānam)

— ‘Gift of the Purāṇas’ (purāṇadāna)

Varāhapurāṇa

112.69cd–72

— Author’s prose commentary

Varāhapurāṇa

1–3Hem

Nandipurāṇa

12.74abLak

— ‘Gift of the Veda’ (vedadāna)

Garuḍapurāṇa

9–20Hem

Yājñavalkyasmṛti

1.212

— ‘Gift of manuscripts’ (pustakadāna)

Bhaviṣyapurāṇa

1–3Nīl

References

List of Abbreviations

A

Manuscript NAK 3–393 (NGMPP A 1082/3)

Apa

Aparārka (subscript)

ARE

Annual Reports on Epigraphy

ASB

Asiatic Society of Bengal

ĀAPP

Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati

B

Manuscript NAK 1–1075 (NGMPP B 7/3)

Bal

Ballālasena (subscript)

BHU

Banaras Hindu University

CII

Corpus Inscpriptionum Indicarum

DK

Dānakāṇḍa

DKh

Dānakhaṇḍa

DP

Devīpurāṇa

DS

Dānasāgara

EC

Epigraphia Carnatica

ECN

Epigraphia Carnatica – New Series

EI

Epigraphia Indica

EFEO

École Française d’Éxtrême-Orient

Gov

Govindānanda (subscript)

Hem

Hemādri (subscript)

HV

Harivaṃśa

IA

The Indian Antiquary

IFP

Institut Français de Pondichéry

ISC

Inscriptions Sanscrites du Cambodge

Lak

Lakṣmīdhara (subscript)

LU

Leiden University

MAT

Mataṅga

MṚG

Mṛgendra

MP

Matsyapurāṇa

MS

manuscript

NAK

National Archive of Kathmandu

NGMCP

Nepalese-German Manuscript Cataloguing Project

NGMPP

Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project

NS

nepālasaṃvat =year given according to a lunisolar calendar attested in Nepal, starting in the month of Kārtika (October–November), 878 CE

ORL

Oriental Research Library of Srinagar

P1

IFP paper transcript T32

P2

IFP paper transcript T281

SII

South-Indian Inscriptions

TAK

Tāntrikābhidhānakośa

ULC

University Library of Cambridge

VDhU

Viṣṇudharmottara

Manuscript Sources

Acintyaviśvasādākhya

IFP T152

Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati

IFP T371 and T321

Cīvaravastu

Gilgit, facsimile edition Clarke 2014

Jñānaratnāvalī

IFP T231

Devīkavaca

ULC Add. 1578

Devīpurāṇa

ASB G4566D

Pustakadāna

NAK 1/1181 (NGMCP A 1042/10)

NGMCP E 78/1

NGMCP E 132–37

Śivadharma Corpus

ASB G4077

Kesar 218 (NGMPP C 25/1)

Kesar 597 (NGMPP C 57/5)

NAK 1–1075 (NGMPP B 7/3)

NAK 5–737 (NGMPP A 3/3)

NAK 6–7 (NGMPP A 1028/4)

ULC Add. 1599

ULC Add. 1645

Śivadharmaśāstra

BHU 7/3986

IFP T32

LU 2.40

ORL 1467

Śivadharmottara

IFP T281

NAK 5–892 (NGMPP A 12/3 = A 1084/1)

Śāntyadhyāya

NAK 1–1376 (NGMPP A 1158/8)

NAK 1–1108 (NGMPP A 1299/9)

NAK 5–7344 (NGMPP A 1174/14)

NAK 6–2301 (NGMPP A 1120/12)

E 6489 (NGMPP E 321/26)

366 (NGMPP G 19/16)

I 963 (NGMPP I 54/4).

ULC Add. 2836

Saddharmapuṇḍarīka

Gilgit, facsimile edition Gnoli 1987

Somaśambhupaddhativyākhyā

IFP T170

Skandapurāṇa

NAK 2–229 (NGMPP B 11/4)

Haracaritacintāmaṇi

ORL 1510

List of Sanskrit Sources

AKṢAYAMATINIRDEŚASŪTRA

Braarvig 1993

AGNIPURĀṆA

Upadhyaya 1998

ACINTYAVIŚVASĀDĀKHYA

IFP paper transcript T152

ADHIKARAṆAVASTU

Gnoli 1978

ARTHAŚĀSTRA by Kauṭilya

Kangle 1960

ATHARVAVEDAPARIŚIṢṬAS

Bolling & von Negelein 1909–10

AṢṬASAHĀSRIKĀ PRAJÑĀPĀRAMITĀ

Wogihara 1932–35

ĀTMĀRTHAPŪJĀPADDHATI by Vedajñāna II

IFP paper transcripts T371 and T321

ĪŚĀNAŚIVAGURUDEVAPADDHATI by Īśānaśiva

Gaṇapati Śāstri 1990

UTTARAKĀMIKA

Svaminatha 1988 and IFP paper transcript T298(b)

KARMAVIBHAṄGA

Kudo 2004

KĀRAṆḌAVYŪHASŪTRA

Vaidya 1961

KIRAṆA

Goodall 1998

KUBJIKĀMATATANTRA

Goudriaan & Schoterman 1988

KŪRMAPURĀṆA

Gupta 1971

KRIYĀKĀṆḌAKRAMĀVALĪ by Somaśambhu

Brunner-Lachaux 1963, 1968, 1998

KRIYĀKRAMADYOTIKĀ by Aghoraśiva

Rāmaśāstrin & Ambalavānajñānasambandhaparāśaktisvāmin 1927

KRIYĀSĀRA by Nīlakaṇṭha

Narayanaswamy Sastri 1946

GARUḌAPURĀṆA

Dutt 1968

CĪVARAVASTU

Dutt 1942 and Clarke 2014

JAYĀKHYASAṂHITĀ

Krishnamacharya 1967

JÑĀNARATNĀVALĪ by Jñānaśiva

IFP paper transcript T 231

TANTRAVĀRTTIKA by Kumārila

Subbashastri 1930–31

TANTRĀLOKA by Abhinavagupta with TANTRĀLOKAVIVEKA by Jayaratha

Shastri & Shastri 1918–38

DĀNAKĀṆḌA (Kṛtyakalpataru) by Lakṣmīdhara

Brick 2014

DĀNĀKRIYĀKAUMUDĪ by Govindānanda Kavikaṅkaṇācārya

Smrtibhushana 1903

DĀNAKHAṆḌA (Caturvargacintāmaṇi) by Hemādri

Śiromani 1873

DĀNAMAYŪKHA (Bhagavantabhāskara) by Nīlakaṇṭha

Bhatta 1909

DĀNASĀGARA by Ballālasena

Bhattacharya 1956

DEVALASMṚTI

→ Also see DĀNAKĀṆḌA

DEVĪBHĀGAVATAPURĀṆA

Pandeya 1965

DEVĪMĀHĀTMYA

Banerjea 1851

DEVĪPURĀṆA

Sharma 1976, ms. ASB G4566D, → See DĀNAKĀṆḌA

NANDIPURĀṆA

→ See DĀNAKĀṆḌA

NĀRADĪYAPURĀṆA

→ See DĀNAKHAṆḌA

NĀRADĪYASAṂHITĀ

Chaudhari 1971

NIŚVĀSATATTVASAṂHITĀ

Goodall 2015

NETRATANTRODDYOTA by Kṣemarāja

Kaul Shastri 1936–39

PADMAPURĀṆA

Mandalik & Bhate 1893–94

PAUṢKARASAṂHITĀ

Yatiraja 1934

PRĀYAŚCITTASAMUCCAYA by Trilocanaśiva

Sathyanarayanan 2015

BRAHMAPURĀṆA

Schreiner & Söhner 1987

BHAGAVADGĪTA

Bevalkar 1945

BHAGAVADĀŚAYĀNUSARAṆA

Subhadra Jha 1965

BHAVIṢYAPURĀṆA

Sharma 1984

BHAVIṢYOTTARAPURĀṆA

→ see YĀJÑAVALKYASMṚTI with APARĀRKAṬĪKĀ

BHĀRATAMAÑJARĪ by Kṣemendra

Śivadatta and Parang 1898

MANUSMṚTI and MANUBHĀṢYA by Medhātithi

Jha 1932–39

MATAṄGA with MATAṄGAVṚTTI by Rāmakaṇṭha

Bhatt 1977, 1982

MATSYAPURĀṆA

Apte 1907

MAHĀBHĀRATA

Sukthankar 1933

MAHĀMĀYŪRĪ

Lévi 1915, Takubo 1972

MAHĀVAṂSA

Geiger 1908

MṚGENDRA with MṚGENDRAVṚTTI by Nārāyaṇakaṇṭha

Kaul Shastri 1930, Bhatt 1962

YĀJÑAVALKYASMṚTI with APARĀRKAṬĪKĀ by Aparārka

Apte 1903–04

YĀJÑAVALKYASMṚTI with MITĀKṢARĀ by Vijñāneśvara

Khiste 1930

YOGAŚĀSTRA by Hemacandra

Jambūvijaya Muni 1977–86

LIṄGAPURĀṆA

Vīrasiṃhaśāstrin & Dhīrānandakāvyanidhi 1896

VAJRĀVALĪ by Abhayākaragupta

Mori 2009

VARĀHAPURĀṆA

Shastri Hṛishikeśa 1893

VASAVADATTĀ by Subandhu

Hall 1859, Srinivasachar 1906, Gray 1913, Bhattacharya 1933, Shukla 1966

VĀMANAPURĀṆA

Gupta 1967

VIMALAPRABHĀ by Puṇḍarīka

Dwivedi & Bahulkar 1986–94

VIṢṆUDHARMOTTARAPURĀṆA

Śrīkṛṣṇadāsa 1912

VIṢṆUPURĀṆA

Sharma 1985

VIṢṆUSMṚTI

Krishnamacharya 1964

VIṢVAKSENASAṂHITĀ

Bhatta 1972

VĪRATANTRA

→ See ĀTMĀRTHAPŪJĀPADDHATI

ŚIVADHARMAŚĀSTRA

Collation between manuscripts A, B and P1

ŚIVADHARMOTTARA chapter 2 Vidyādānādhyāya

De Simini 2013

ŚIVADHARMOTTARA chapters 1, 3–12

Collation between manuscripts A, B and P2

ŚIVAPURĀṆA

Śrīrāma Śarma 1968

ŚIVĀRCANĀCANDRIKĀ

Krishnashastri & Narayanashastri 1922

SADDHARMAPUṆḌARĪKASŪTRA

Wogihara & Tsuchida 1934–35, Gnoli 1987

SAURAPURĀṆA

Lele 1924

SĀTVATASAṂHITĀ

Dwivedi 1982

SIDDHĀNTASĀRA

→ see ĪŚĀNAŚIVAGURUDEVAPADDHATI

SUVARṆABHĀSOTTAMASṺTRA

Nobel 1937

SOMAŚAMBHUPADDHATI

→ see KRIYĀKĀṆḌAKRAMĀVALĪ

SOMAŚAMBHUPADDHATIVYĀKHYĀ by Trilocanaśiva

IFP paper transcript T170

SKANDAPURĀṆA

Shrikrishnadasa 1910

SVACCHANDATANTRA and
SVACCHANDATANTRODDYOTA by Kṣemarāja

Kaul Shastri 1921–35

SVOPAJÑAVṚTTI by Hemacandra

→ see YOGAŚĀSTRA

HAYAŚĪRṢAPĀÑCARĀTRA

Dutta 1971

HARACARITACINTĀMAṆI

Ms. ORL 1510

HARIVAṂŚA

Vaidya 1969, 1971

HARṢACARITA by Bāṇa

Kane 1965

HEVAJRATANTRA

Snellgrove 1959

HEVAJRAṬĪKĀ by Vajragarbha

Sferra forth.

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Index of Authors

Prepared by Kristen de Joseph

A

Aghoraśiva, 1, 2, 3, 4

Aparārka, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

Appayya Dīkṣita, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Abhayākaragupta, 1

Abhinavagupta, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Asahāya, 1

I

Īśānaśiva, 1

U

Udayana, 1

K

Kalhaṇa, 1

Kātyāyana, 1

Kālacakrapāda the younger, 1

Kālidāsa, 1

Kumāra, 1

Kumārila, 1, 2

Kullūka, 1, 2

Kauṭilya, 1, 2, 3

Kauṇḍinya, 1, 2

Kṣemarāja, 1, 2, 3, 4

Kṣemendra, 1, 2

G

Gārgya, 1, 2, 3

Guru Gangeshwar Maharaj, 1

C

Caṇḍeśvara, 1, 2

Candrātreya, 1, 2

J

Jagannātha Tarkapañcānana, 1

Jayadratha, 1

Jayaratha, 1

Jīmūtavāhana, 1, 2, 3

Jñānaśiva, 1, 2

T

Trilocana, 1

Trilocanaśiva, 1, 2, 3, 4

DH

Dharmakīrti, 1, 2

Dharmakṣema, 1

N

Naraharinatha, 1

Nāgārjuna, 1, 2

Nārāyaṇakaṇṭha, 1, 2, 3

Nirmalamaṇi, 1

Nīlakaṇṭha (author of the Kriyāsāra), 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Nīlakaṇṭha (author of the Dānamayūkha), 1, 2

Nīlakaṇṭha Dīkṣita, 1

Nīlakaṇṭha Bhaṭṭa, 1

P

Patañjali, 1, 2

Pāṇini, 1, 2, 3

Piṅgala, 1

Paiṭhīnasi, 1

B

Bartṛhari, 1

Ballālasena, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21

Bāṇa, 1, 2, 3

BH

Bhāgavatotpala, 1

Bhāruci, 1, 2

Bhāsarvajña, 1

Bhāskara, 1

Bhūvācārya, 1

M

Madanasiṃhadeva, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Manu, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Mallaṇārya, 1

Mādhava, 1

Mita Miśra, 1

Medhātithi, 1, 2

Y

Yājñavalkya, 1, 2, 3, 4

R

Raghunanandana, 1

Rājaśekhara, 1

Rāmakaṇṭha, 1

L

Lakṣmaṇasena, 1

Lakṣmīdhara, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23

V

Vajragarbha, 1

Varāhamihira, 1, 2

Vāgbhaṭa, 1

Vālmīki, 1

Vedajñāna, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Vedānta Deśika, 1

Vijñāneśvara, 1, 2, 3, 4

Viśvarūpa, 1

Ś

Śaṅkara, 1, 2, 3, 4

Śabara, 1

Śākaṭāyana, 1

Śivarāma Tripāthin, 1

Śrīkaṇṭha, 1, 2

S

Sāyaṇa, 1, 2, 3

Somaśambhu, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Someśvara, 1

H

Haribhadra, 1, 2

Hemādri, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23

Index of Works

Prepared by Kristen de Joseph

A

Aṃśumat, 1, 2, 3, 4

Akṣayamatinirdeśa, 1

Agnipurāṇa, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18

Aṅgirasasmṛti, 1

Acintyaviśvasādākhya, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Atharvaveda, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Atharvavedapariśiṣṭas, 1, 2, 3, 4

Adbhutasāgara, 1, 2, 3

Adhikaraṇavastu, 1

Anala, 1

Anavataptanāgarājaparipṛcchā, 1

Anteṣṭividhi, 1, 2

Aparamitāyuḥsūtra, 1

Aparārkaṭīkā, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Aparimitāyuḥsūtra, 1

Abhijñānaśakuntala, 1

Abhidhamma, 1

Abhisamayālaṃkārāloka Prajñāpāramitāvyākhyā, 1

Amoghapāśahṛdayasūtra, 1

Arthaśāstra, 1, 2, 3, 4

Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Aṣṭāṅgahṛdayasaṃhitā, 1

Aṣṭādhyāyī, 1, 2

Ā

Ācārasāgara, 1

Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Ādityapurāṇa, 1, 2

Ī

Īśānaśivagurudevapaddhati. See Siddhāntasāra

U

Uttarakāmika, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14

Umāmāheśvarottarottarasaṃvāda. See Lalitavistara

Uśanaseritapurāṇa, 1

Uṣṇīṣavimaladhāraṇī, 1

Ṛ

Ṛgveda, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

E

Ēkāntarāmitandeya Ragaḷe, 1

K

Karmavibhaṅga, 1

Kāpilapurāṇa, 1

Kāmadhenu, 1

Kāmika, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Kāraṇḍavyūhasūtra, 1, 2

Kālacakrasupratiṣṭhopāyikavidhi, 1

Kālanirṇaya, 1

Kālaviveka, 1

Kālikāpurāṇa, 1, 2, 3

Kālīkulakramasadbhāva, 1

Kāśikhaṇḍa. See Skandapurāṇa

Kiraṇa (= Kiraṇatantra) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Kubjikāmatatantra, 1

Kulārṇavatantra, 1

Kūrmapurāṇa, 1, 2, 3, 4

Kṛtyakalpataru, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Kṛtyaratnākara, 1

Kauśikasūtra, 1, 2

Kriyākāṇḍakramāvalī, 1, 2, 3

Kriyākālaguṇottara, 1

Kriyākramadyotikā, 1, 2

Kriyāsāra, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

KH

Khargaviṣaṇasūtra, 1

G

Gaṇakārikā, 1

Garuḍatantras, 1, 2

Garuḍapurāṇa, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

Guhyasūtra, 1

Gṛhyasūtras, 1, 2, 3

Gautamadharmasūtra, 1

C

Caturvargacintāmaṇi, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Caturviṃśanmata, 1

Catuṣkanirhārasūtra, 1

Candrajña, 1

Carakasaṃhitā, 1

Cīvaravastu, 1, 2, 3

CH

Channabāsavapurāṇa, 1

J

Jayadrathayāmala, 1

Jayākhya. See Jayākhyasaṃhitā

Jayākhyasaṃhitā, 1, 2, 3

Jayottara, 1

Jātakas, 1

Jñānaratnāvalī, 1, 2

Jyotiḥśāstras, 1

T

Tantravārttika, 1, 2

Tantrasadbhāva, 1

Tantrāloka, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Taittirīyasaṃhitā, 1

Taittirīyāraṇyaka, 1

Taittirīyopaniṣad, 1

Triśirobhairavatantra, 1

D

Dānakāṇḍa, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30

Dānakriyākaumudī, 1, 2, 3, 4

Dānakhaṇḍa, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23

Dānamayūkha, 1, 2, 3, 4

Dānavivekoddyota, 1, 2, 3

Dānasāgara, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

Dāyabhāga, 1

Dīghanikāya, 1

Dīptatantra, 1

Dīptāgama, 1

Durvāsasoktapurāṇa, 1

Devalasmṛti, 1, 2, 3, 4

Devāmṛtapāñcarātra, 1

Devīpurāṇa, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29

Devībhāgavatapurāṇa, 1, 2

Devyāmata, 1

DH

Dharmaputrikā, 1, 2

N

Nandipurāṇa, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35

Nayasūtra, 1

Naradapurāṇa. See Nāradīyapurāṇa

Nāṭyaśāstra, 1

Nāradasmṛti, 1, 2

Nāradīyapurāṇa, 1, 2

Nāradīyasaṃhitā, 1, 2, 3

Nityācārapradīpa, 1, 2

Nidānakathā, 1

Nirṇayasindhu, 1

Niśvāsa, see Niśvāsatattvasaṃhitā

Niśvāsakārikā, 1

Niśvāsatattvasaṃhitā, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Niśvāsamukha, 1, 2, 3, 4

Nīlamātapurāṇa, 1

Nṛsiṃhapurāṇa, 1

Netratantra, 1, 2

Netratantroddyota, 1

Nyāyakusumāñjali, 1

Nyāsa, 1

P

Pañcarakṣā, 1, 2, 3, 4

Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā, 1

Pañcārthapramāṇa, 1

Pañcārthabhāṣya, 1, 2

Pañcāvaraṇastava, 1

Padmapurāṇa, 1, 2, 3, 4

Parākhya, 1

Parāśara, 1, 2, 3, 4

Parijāta, 1

Paribhāṣāprakāśa, 1, 2

Pādmasaṃhitā, 1

Pārameśvara, 1, 2

Pāśupatasūtra, 1, 2, 3

Piṅgalāmata, 1

Pauṣkarasaṃhitā, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Pratāparudracaritramu, 1

Pratiṣṭhāsāgara, 1

Prabhāvyākhyā, 1

Prāyaścittavidhi, 1, 2

Prāyaścittasamuccaya, 1

B

Basavapurāṇa, 1

Bālatantras, 1

Bṛhatkālottara, 1, 2

Bṛhatsaṃhitā, 1, 2, 3

Bṛhadāraṇyakopaniṣad, 1

Bṛhaspatismṛti, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Bodhisattvapiṭaka, 1

Bodhisattvabhūmi, 1

Brahmapurāṇa, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Brahmayāmala, 1

Brahmavaivartapurāṇa, 1, 2, 3

Brahmasūtra, 1, 2

Brahmasūtrabhāṣya, 1

Brahmāṇḍapurāṇa, 1, 2, 3

BH

Bhagavadāśayānusaraṇabhāṣya, 1

Bhagavadgītā, 1

Bhagavantabhāskara, 1

Bhagavān Ved, 1

Bhaviṣyapurāṇa, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Bhaviṣyottarapurāṇa, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Bhāgavatapurāṇa, 1, 2, 3, 4

Bhāratamañjarī, 1

Bhāvacūḍāmaṇi, 1

Bhūtatantras, 1

Bhṛaspatismṛti, 1

Bhairavakulatantra, 1

Bhairavatantras, 1, 2

Bhaiṣajyagurusūtra, 1

M

Mataṅga, 1, 2, 3, 4

Mataṅgavṛtti, 1

Matsyapurāṇa, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22

Manusmṛti, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Manusmṛtibhāṣya, 1

Mayasaṃgraha, 1

Mahādānapaddhati, 1

Mahāpratisarā, see Mahāpratisarāmahāvidyārajñī

Mahāpratisarāmahāvidyārajñī, 1, 2

Mahāpratisarāvidyārājñī, see Mahāpratisarāmahāvidyārajñī

Mahābhārata, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

Mahāmāyūrī. See Mahāmāyūrī Vidyārājñī

Mahāmāyūrī Vidyārājñī, 1, 2, 3, 4

Mahārṇava, 1

Mahārtamañjarīparimala, 1

Mahālakṣmīsaṃhitā, 1

Mahāvaṃsa, 1, 2

Mahāvastu, 1

Mahāvessantara, 1

Mārkaṇḍeyapurāṇa, 1, 2, 3, 4

Mālā, 1

Mitākṣarā, 1, 2, 3

Mīmāṃsāsūtra, 1

Mṛgendra, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Mṛgendravṛtti, 1

Mohacūḍottara, 1

Y

Yajurveda, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Yamasmṛti, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Yājñavalkyasmṛti, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

R

Ratnakūṭa, 1

Ratnaṭīkā, 1

Ratnatrayaparīkṣā, 1

Ratnamālātantra, 1

Ratnāvalī, 1

Rājadharmakhaṇḍa, 1

Rājamārtaṇḍa, 1

Rāmāyaṇa, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Rūpāvatāra, 1, 2

Rauravasūtrasaṃgraha, 1

Rauravāgama, 1, 2

L

Lakṣmītantra, 1, 2, 3

Laghukālacakratantra, 1, 2, 3

Lalitavistara, 1, 2, 3

Liṅgapurāṇa, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

V

Vajracchedikā, 1, 2

Vajrāvalī, 1

Varāhapurāṇa, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Varuṇapurāṇa, 1

Vahnipurāṇa, 1, 2, 3

Vākyapadīya, 1

Vātuḷa, 1

Vāmanapurāṇa, 1, 2, 3, 4

Vāyupurāṇa, 1, 2, 3

Vāsavadattā, 1

Vāsavadattādarpaṇa, 1

Vidyādānādhyāya, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34

Vinayavastu, 1

Vinayaviniścaya-upāliparipṛcchā, 1

Vimalaprabhā, 1, 2

Vivādabhaṅgārṇava, 1

Vivādārṇavabhañjana, 1

Viśvakarmaśāstra, 1

Viṣṇudharma, 1, 2, 3

Viṣṇudharmottara, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

Viṣṇupurāṇa, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Viṣṇurahasya, 1

Viṣṇusmṛti, 1, 2

Vīra, 1

Vīratantra, 1, 2, 3

Vīramitrodaya, 1

Vīraśaivāmṛtamahāpurāṇa, 1

Vedāṅgajyotiṣa, 1

Ś

Śaṅkhalikhita, 1, 2

Śatadūṣani, 1

Śatapathabrāhmaṇa, 1

Śabdakalpadruma, 1

Śabdaśāstra, 1

Śāntikalpa, 1, 2

Śāntyadhyāya, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Śivadharmapurāṇa, 1, 2, 3

Śivadharmaśāstra, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22

Śivadharmasaṃgraha, 1, 2

Śivadharmāgamottara. See Śivadharmottara

Śivadharmottara, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45

Śivapurāṇa, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Śivarahasya, 1

Śivārkamaṇidīpikā, 1

Śivārcanācandrikā, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Śrīkālacakrasupratiṣṭhopāyikavidhi, 1

Śrībhāgavata, 1

Śrīvidyārṇavatantra, 1

Śvetāśvataropaniṣad, 1

Ṣ

Ṣaṭṭriṃśanmata, 1

S

Saṃghātasūtra, 1

Saṃskāravidhi, 1, 2

Sakalāgamasārasaṃgraha, 1

Saṅkarṣaṇakāṇḍa, 1

Saṅghātadharmaparyāya, 1

Saddharmapuṇḍarīka, 1, 2, 3

Santāna, 1, 2, 3, 4

Samvarodayā nāma Maṇḍalopāyikā, 1

Sātvatasaṃhitā, 1, 2

Sāmaveda, 1, 2, 3, 4

Sāmbapurāṇa, 1, 2

Siddhayogīśvarīmata, 1

Siddhāntaratnākara, 1

Siddhāntasāra, 1, 2

Siddhāntasārāvali, 1

Siddhēśvaracaritramu, 1

Subāhu-paripṛcchā, 1

Subhāṣitasudhānidhi, 1

Suvarṇabhāsottama, 1, 2, 3

Sūtasaṃhitā, 1

Somaśambhupaddhati, 1, 2

Somaśambhupaddhativyākhyā, 1, 2

Sauradharma, 1

Sauradharmottara, 1

Saurapurāṇa, 1, 2, 3, 4

Skandapurāṇa, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

Spandapradīpikā, 1

Smṛticandrikā, 1, 2

Smṛtitattva, 1

Svacchandatantra, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Svacchandatantroddyota, 1, 2

Svāyambhuva. See Svāyambhuvasūtrasaṃgraha

Svāyambhuvapañcarātra, 1

Svāyambhuvasūtrasaṃgraha, 1, 2, 3

H

Hayaśīrṣapāñcarātra, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Haracaritacintāmaṇi, 1, 2

Harṣacarita, 1

Hevajraṭikā, 1

Hevajratantra, 1

Endnotes

1

The need to narrow down the range of sources on which this research is based, as well as my specialization in different doctrinal and textual traditions and the availability of unpublished Śaiva texts containing valuable information on the topics under investigation, are the main reasons for my excluding the Jaina materials from the scope of this book. However, the study of the Jaina manuscript cultures is a promising field of study in which scholars have produced and continue to publish important pieces of scholarship. Above all, I refer the reader to Cort 1995, Balbir 2010 and 2014, and Hegewaldt 2015, all contributions based on a direct study of manuscripts of Jain texts within the context of their production and uses. A relevant point of comparison for the topics in this book is the passage from the Svopajñavṛtti by Hemacandra (twelfth century) to which Cort (1995, p. 78 fn. 7) calls attention. Here, commenting on Yogaśāstra 3.119, Hemacandra names the manuscripts of Jain scriptures as one of the three main objects that lay Śvetāmbaras must donate, the other two being the images of the Jina and the temples where these images are installed.

2

In applying this opposition between the ‘iconic’ and ‘performative’ aspects of the use of manuscripts, I refer to the tripartite ‘dimension of scriptures’ illustrated in Watts 2015. The third of such dimensions, which according to this categorization are intrinsic to scriptures and necessary to their nature and function as scriptures, would be the semantic aspect, which applies to the cases in which a scripture is actually used as a text. Throughout the book I will sporadically refer to this terminology in order to highlight the different functions with which the manuscript, not necessarily of a scripture, should be used according to the sources that I examine.

3

Schopen 2010 has attempted to draw parallels between the Mahāyāna Sūtras and Purāṇas, acknowledging that the topics connected with the ritual uses of books in Purāṇic literature still need systematization (Schopen 2010, p. 47).

4

See Drewes 2007, pp. 101–102, where he lists several of the scholars who have identified the veneration of manuscripts as a Mahāyāna practice.

5

Several passages are collected in Schopen 1975, one of the most quoted studies on the topic and for which also see below; I moreover refer the reader to Schopen 2010 and Drewes 2007 and 2011, where further bibliography is also provided. One of the many possible examples of such passages on the writing and worship of the Prajñāpāramitā manuscripts is found in chapter 32 of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā, where the Prajñāpāramitā is the subject of various activities: ‘this Prajñāpāramitā must be listened to, learned, transmitted, read’, but also, ‘[…] has to be written down; by the authority of the Tathāgata, having nicely copied [this Prajñāpāramitā] into a big manuscript with letters that are very well-defined, [the Prajñāpāramitā] has to be honoured, has to be homaged, has to be respected, has to be worshipped, has to be adored, has to be revered with flowers, incences, perfumes, garlands, unguents, powders, robes, musical instruments, clothes, umbrellas, banners, bells, flags, and rows of lamps all around and multiform worship ceremonies’; (Wogihara 1932–35, pp. 989–90) iyaṃ prajñāpāramitā śrotavyodgrahītavyā dhārayitavyā vācayitavyā […] likhitavyā tathāgatādhiṣṭānena mahāpustake pravyaktapravyaktair akṣaraiḥ sulikhitāṃ kṛtvā satkartavyā gurukartavyā mānayitavyā pūjayitavyā ’rcayitavyā ’pacāyitavyā puṣpair dhūpair gandhair mālyair vilepanaiś cūrṇaiś cīvarair vādyair vastraiś chattrair dhvajair ghaṇṭābhiḥ patākābhiḥ samantāc ca dīpamālābhir bahuvidhābhiś ca pūjābhiḥ.

6

For an outline of the Prajñāpāramitā scriptures, their manuscripts, commentaries, and translations, including some thoughts on how to date the emergence of this early Mahāyāna literature, I refer the reader to Zacchetti 2015. Here the scholar remarks on the difficulty of establishing a firm chronological setting for the emergence and early development of the Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras, calling attention to the few fixed points in this chronology. These are the early Chinese translations—the earliest of which can be dated to November 24, 179 CE, and was probably based on an original text in Gāndhārī (Zacchetti 2015, p. 182)—which seem to confirm a historical primacy for what Zacchetti calls the ‘Aṣṭasāhasrikā subfamily’; the finding of ancient manuscripts has contributed other fixed chronological points. The earliest manuscript evidence for the existence of the Prajñāpāramitā literature is the fragmentary birchbark manuscript of the Aṣṭasā-hasrikā in Gāndhārī that has been carbon dated to between 47 and 147 CE (Zacchetti 2015, p. 181; on the text of this manuscript, belonging to the ‘Split collection’, see Falk and Karashima 2012 and 2013). Despite the manuscript transmitting an early version of the text, it has been argued that this text already shows traces of being the re-elaboration of an earlier version. Other early manuscript fragments are those of an ancient Sanskrit manuscript of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā, probably found near Bamiyan and dated, on paleaographical grounds, to the third century (Zacchetti 2015, p. 182).

7

See Falk and Karashima 2013, pp. 106–107 and ff. I thank Martin Delhey for drawing my attention to this point. The text edited by Falk and Karashima and the relevant bibliographical materials are available online: <https://www.gandhari.org/a_manuscript.php?catid=CKM0371> (last accessed: 10/7/2016).

8

Schopen 2010, pp. 43–44.

9

The following is the translation given by Schopen (2010, pp. 44–45), based, according to his statements, on the Sanskrit text of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka of the Gilgit manuscript as in Gnoli 1987, p. 533, plates XV–XVI, fols. 15b[L7]–16a[L2]. Schopen, however, does not reproduce the relevant Sanskrit text, of which I offer here a transcription from the manuscript reproduced in the above-mentioned plates in brackets are the portions of text that are unreadable in the manuscript and that I have supplied from the edition; in roman type the letters that are only partly readable: (fol.135v = plate XVb) ya i[L8]to dharmmaparyāyād aṃtaśa ekagāthāOm api dhārayiṣyanti vācayiṣyanti prakāśayiṣyanti saṅgrā<ha>yiṣyanti likhi[L9]ṣyanti likhitaṃ cānusmariṣyanti kālena ca kālaṃ vyavalokayiṣyanti . tasmiṃś ca pustake tathāgatagauravam utpādayiṣyanti [L10] śāstṛe gauraveṇasatkariṣyanti<guru>kariṣyanti mānayiṣyanti pūjayiṣyaṃti taṃ ca pustakaṃ puṣpadhūpagandhamālya[L11]<vi>lepanacūrṇacīva<racchatradhvajapatākāv>ai<dyādibhir namaskārā>ṃjalikarmabhiś ca pūjayiṣ<yant>i.

10

See Ludvik 2007, pp. 152–53, noting that the protective functions of this text are still given much importance in Japan.

11

This text reproduces, with minor changes, the translation of Skilling 2014, pp. 504–505. For the Sanskrit text, see Kudo 2004, § 14 p. 68: ihekatyaḥ paripṛcchakajātīyobhavati | paṇḍitān* śramaṇān* bhahmaṇān* (20v.4) sevate | du{ḥ}ṣprajñān* brāhmaṇānparivajayati | saddharma dīpayati | asa «dharmma» vigarhati | dharmabhāṇakānā vaisāradyaṃ varddhaya{ṃ}ti<|> (20v. 5) hitabhāṣitānāṃ sādhukāraṃ dadāti | asaṃhibhāṣiṇāḥ pariharati | saṃmyak*dṛṣṭi varṇṇayati | mithyādṛṣṭi vigarhati | masīpusta(21r.1)ka[l]ekh[i]ṇīpradānāni dadāti<|>na ca madyaṃ pibati ||.

12

See Edgerton 1953, p. 580, s.v. saṃbhāra, translating the latter as ‘equipment’ and, in the case of the expressions bodhisaṃbhāro or saṃbhārobodhisattvānām, ‘equipment for (those destined for) enlightenment’, consisting of puṇya and jñāna.

13

See Skilling 2014, p. 506, for the translation, p. 516 for the Tibetan text, which reproduces Braarvig 1993, 123.6.

14

Skilling 2014, pp. 511–15, observes that, in these sources, ‘When a writing surface is mentioned, it is birchbark’ (p. 511). The extent of the birchbark zone, where manuscripts of this material have been found, mostly includes Northwest India, Afghanistan, and Chinese Central Asia. In order to explain the constant mention of the birchbark as a writing material, Skilling relies on the reasoning of Salomon, according to whom birchbark was presumably cheap in the past and therefore widely used; he also recalls the association between the use of birchbark and the writing down of mantras or protective texts and dhāraṇī, to be carried on the body or installed in stūpas (see below).

15

Examples from the Bodhisattvapiṭaka (Ratnakūṭa no. 12), Vinayaviniścaya-upāliparipṛcchā (Ratnakūṭa no. 24), Subāhu-paripṛcchā (Ratnakūṭa no. 26), the Catuṣkanirhārasūtra and the Anavataptanāgarājaparipṛcchā are cited in Skilling 2014, pp. 506–508 (translations) and pp. 517–18 (texts).

16

See Vetter 1992, also referred to in Sanderson 2009, p. 103.

17

For an exhaustive, updated introduction to the Gilgit manuscripts, see von Hinüber 2014.

18

The surviving colophons of the Gilgit manuscripts have been studied in von Hinüber 1980. In this regard, see also von Hinüber 2004.

19

The names mentioned in this colophon, which have been studied in von Hinüber 1980, 2004, and 2012, seem to refer to a fairly international group of people, including both locals and devotees with an Iranian background. The donation of this manuscript was conceived as a large enterprise, as evidenced both by the large number of donors and by the presence of senior monks. Fourteen of the people mentioned as donors were dead at the time of donation, and consequently the merits they earned were obtained by transference.

20

Von Hinüber 2012, p. 56.

21

Von Hinüber 2012, pp. 58–59. The final colophon of this manuscript, unlike the one of manuscript C, does not immediately follow the end of the work, but is found on a stray folio without pagination, so its connection to the manuscript, though likely, is only tentative.

22

In von Hinüber 2014a, the scholar examines the colophons of a manuscript consisting of 396 total folios, which was discovered at the end of the nineteenth century in the proximity of Khotan, then split into different fragments and distributed to different institutions. The bulk of this manuscript had been bought by the Russian consul in Kashgar, possibly in 1903, and is therefore known as the ‘Kashgar Manuscript’. The paratexts, written in late Khotanese, were firstly examined by Emmerich, who noted the Khotanese provenance of this manuscript. The manuscript is undated; von Hinüber opts for dating it to the eighth to the early ninth century, as opposed to Emmerich who, on the basis of the language used in the paratexts, proposed to date it from the ninth to the tenth century—thus making this manuscript almost a contemporary of the earliest Nepalese manuscripts of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka, which date back to the eleventh century (von Hinüber 2014a, p. 137). The principal donor of this manuscript is identified as Jalapuñānā, accompanied by her husband Jalapuña. Several people are associated with the main sponsors in this donation, among which the deceased parents of Suviprabhā, as well as the two sons and three daughters of the couple. More family members are mentioned in the final colophon, up to a total of some 50 people. Information on the donors and the people associated with them in donating the manuscript is distributed between the fragmentary final colophon and the 18 colophons added at the end of 18 chapters of the work (which counts a total of 28 chapters, so not all of them were followed by a paratext). The manuscript also seems to have been prepared to feature paintings, which however were never realized (von Hinüber 2014a, p. 147). Von Hinüber (2014a, pp. 135–36) lists 13 manuscripts or fragments of manuscripts of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka that may have been copied in the area of Khotan, which highlights the popularity of the text in that region; nevertheless, this Sūtra has most likely never been translated into Khotanese (von Hinüber 2014a, pp. 147–48). Besides the Kashgar manuscript, two more Saddharmapuṇḍarīka manuscripts from Khotan are examined in von Hinüber 2015, who again on the basis of information in the paratexts identifies both as donations of lay devotees.

23

Among the most recent studies, see Ludvik 2007 in her survey on the Suvarṇabhāsottama (pp. 146–57), Nance 2008, Drewes 2011, and Gummer 2012.

24

On bhāṇakas in the Pāli canon, see Norman 1997, pp. 35–48; considerations on the shift to the written transmission of the canonical texts, which however did not replace the tradition of reciting and learning them by heart, are in Norman 1997, pp. 65–79.

25

Drewes 2011, pp. 331–32. On the other hand, von Hinüber has argued that bhāṇakas may also have redacted the Pali nikāyas (von Hinüber 1996, p. 25). In Buddhist sources, the dharmabhāṇakas are said to be regarded as Buddhas, and therefore the devotees are exhorted to provide them with everything they desire. On the oral transmission of early Mahāyāna texts, see also Drewes 2015.

26

See Drewes 2011, p. 339, quoting a passage from the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā stating that one should follow the dharmabhāṇaka ‘until he has this Prajñāpāramitā in either mnemic or book form’ (Wogihara 1932–35, p. 582: yāvad asyeyaṃ pajñāpāramitā kāyagatā vā bhaviṣyati pustakagatā vā).

27

See Drewes 2011, p. 361, referring among others to one case from Gilgit. Kim (2013, pp. 259–60) reports that dharmabhāṇakas are also attested among the copyists of the Buddhist manuscripts that she examines, and specifically notes that the manuscripts copied by dharmabhāṇakas stand out for the very distinguished quality of their production and design.

28

See Drewes 2011, p. 362. Here he also stresses that Mahāyāna texts never show awareness of the existence of a separate Mahāyāna institution, because these preaching circles always moved within traditional Buddhist institutions.

29

Schopen 1975, pp. 154–55.

30

Drewes 2007, pp. 104–105. Schopen has replied to this criticism (2010, p. 48) by remarking that the scholastic tradition spanning from the fifth to the eighth century overwhelmingly opts for the interpretation that he eventually adopts—that °bhūta at the end of the compound indicates a complete identification, not a mere comparison. He also supports his view on the basis of Dharmakīrti’s assertions regarding a similar compound ending in °bhūta.

31

Drewes 2007, pp. 105–107. There are, for instance, many caitya comparisons in the stories of the Buddha's conception, in which his future mother Māyā is repeatedly compared to a shrine; see Drewes 2007, p. 107, referring to the Mahāvastu, the Nidānakathā, and the Lalitavistara.

32

The reference here is to the passages in which the place where the Sūtra is worshipped is equated with a bodhimaṇḍa, where the Buddha achieved awakening (see, for instance, Aṣṭasāhasrikā in Wogihara 1932–35, pp. 205–207), as well as to the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka passages stating that one should build a stūpa wherever the Sūtra is read, memorized, written down, etc. (Wogihara and Tsuchida 1934–35, pp. 290–91 and 330–31). In this regard, Drewes argues (2007, pp. 122–23) that this statement cannot be taken literally because the foot of a tree or a monastic cell, which are very unlikely locations for the building of a stūpa, are also among the places mentioned in the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka.

33

Note that this view is in open disagreement with the arguments of Veidlinger 2006 and 2007, according to whom the reverential attitude towards writing and manuscripts promoted in the literature of the Mahāyāna and actively supported by laypeople also inspired the emergence of an analogous tendency in non-canonical Pāli literature. Veidlinger notes that early generations of Theravāda Buddhists, those responsible for composing the Pāli canon, did not intimate any knowledge of the cultic or apotropaic function of the manuscripts of scriptures. Although one should be careful not to read a general tendency in what is simply an argumentum ex silentio, Veidlinger shows that only in the twelfth-century sub-commentarial period, coinciding with the unification of the Buddhist saṅgha in Sri Lanka, do we find more instructions on the cultic status of the Pāli texts, at times also confirmed by archaeological findings. Examples of this can be drawn from all the three regions that have served as the homeland for the production of Buddhist Pāli literature until the nineteenth century, namely Sri Lanka, Burma, and Thailand. Sections of the Mahāvaṃsa composed after the thirteenth century tell stories of Sri Lankan kings worshipping Buddhist scriptures (Veidlinger 2006, p. 417). Another significant case is that of the ca. seventeenth-century Burmese Gandhavaṃsa which, in the style of Mahāyāna Sūtras, ends with verses praising the meritoriousness of producing manuscripts of scriptures, which are said to be even more important than the images of the Buddha (Veidlinger 2006, p. 425). A 1536 Thai inscription from Wat Khema in Sukhodaya attests that lay devotees gave gifts for the preservation of the Mahāvessantara manuscript, and that this was made a focus of worship (pūjā) by having a copy of the text made (Veidlinger 2006, p. 428). In Veidlinger’s analysis, this late concern with the veneration of the scriptures and the ritualization of their production developed only as a consequence of Mahāyāna Buddhist influence, whose presence is amply attested in all of the above mentioned regions. Moreover, there is substantial iconographic evidence that both Sri Lanka and Burma in the era of Pagan were influenced by the Pāla art which, as proved by Kinnard 1999 and Kim 2013, was deeply informed by the notion of making the cultic value of manuscripts equal to that of divine icons. One example mentioned by Veidlinger and particularly pertinent to the aim of this study is the unearthing, in the area of the Irrawady river in Burma, of statues representing Avalokiteśvara, on which the Bodhisattva is depicted as holding a manuscript in one of his hands (Veidlinger 2006, pp. 432–33). A similar Avalokiteśvara holding a manuscript has also been found in the area of Dvaravati, in modern-day Thailand (Veidlinger 2006, p. 438).

34

Drewes 2007, pp. 133–36.

35

With the sole exception of the Bower manuscripts, for which see below and Drewes 2007, p. 130. Here Drewes argues that in ‘all other cases in which manuscripts have reportedly been found in stūpas in South or Central Asia, either this identification seems to be incorrect or the contents of the manuscripts are unknown’, discussing the evidence in fn. 42.

36

For a study of this phenomenon, I refer the reader to Bentor 1995.

37

Bentor 1995, p. 251.

38

For considerations on the term dhāraṇī and its understanding in the context of Mahāyāna Buddhism, as well as the scholarship on it, see Davidson 2009 and 2014, Hidas 2015; observations on the topic, especially regarding the interrelationships between mantras and dhāraṇīs, are also in Skilling 1992, pp. 150–58.

39

Boucher 1991, p. 11: ‘Those dharmas which arise from a cause, the Tathāgata has declared their cause. And that which is the cessation of them, thus the great renunciant has taught’; ye dharmā hetuprabhavā hetuṃ teṣāṃ tathāgato hy avadat | teṣāṃ ca yo nirodha evaṃvādī mahāśramaṇaḥ ||.

40

For a survey of the attestations, see Boucher 1991, p. 4.

41

On the Bower manuscript, see Hoernle 1893–1912; a brief outline is also given by Drewes 2007, p. 130.

42

On this topic, see Skilling 1992, who applies to this literature the term rakṣā, since this occurs both in Sanskrit and in Pali sources (in the equivalent rakkhā); the emergence of this category of texts, which as he specifies is rather pan-Indian (see § 1.2 for more insights into the non-Buddhist sources), reflects a focus on the presence of the Buddha and a need for his protection that is well expressed in early literature and art (Skilling 1992, pp. 110–13). The classes of texts that Skilling includes into this discussion are (1992, p. 113): 1) the paritta of the Theravādins; 2) the Mahāsūtras of the Mūlasarvāstivādins; 3) the svasti-, svastyayana-, maṅgala-gāthās; and 4) the texts of some of the Pañcarakṣā collections, though he admits that these categories are often overlapping. The specific phraseology of these texts is dealt with on pp. 144–58. As for the historical background, Skilling suggests, ‘the heyday of the rakṣā movement was from the second century B.C. to the third century A.D.’, according to textual and archaeological evidence (Skilling 1992, p. 164). Buddhist ‘protective’ literature has been recently reconsidered by Strauch (2014a) in the light of the evidence of an early Gāndhārī text preserved in a manuscript of the Bajaur collection.

43

Skilling 1992, pp. 138–44. Note that Skilling observes that it would be more correct to speak of the collection in the plural, as there are two different collections, one in Sanskrit and the other one in Tibetan, which only share three out of five texts (1992, p. 138). Referring to one of the texts of the Sanskrit collection, the Mahāpratisarāmahāvidyārājñī, Hidas (2012, p. 9) observes that the earliest Chinese translation was made in 693 CE and the Gilgit manuscripts of the text date to the early seventh century. These are terminus ante quem for the emergence of this text at least in the late sixth century, although it can be assumed that earlier layers were already extant in the fifth century (Hidas 2012, p. 21 and fn. 4).

44

The five deities are Mahāpratisarā, Mahāsāhasrapramardanī, Mahāmāyūrī, Mahāśītavatī, and Mahāmantrāṇusāriṇī. However, as Hidas observes in his introduction to the critical edition of the Mahāpratisarāmahāvidyārājñī (2012, p. 27 fn. 11), the connection with a deity does not seem to be primary: although the text contains a few invocations addressed to a feminine pronoun, it does not expand much on the topic, focusing rather on the powers of the text itself and that of its mantras. The stress on the deity and the consequent deification of the text might therefore have become strengthened after its composition and during the first transmission of the text. This feature had however become so entrenched that it contributed to the development of the well defined iconography that is exemplified in the illustrated multiple-text manuscripts of the Pañcarakṣā.

45

Hidas notes that more than 20 printed or painted amulets inscribed with Sanskrit dhāraṇīs and mantras of the Mahāpratisarāmahāvidyārajñī have been found in Central Asia (Hidas 2012, p. 7 and fn. 4; these paper or silk talismans are written in Siddham script, a few also with Chinese characters). No talismans survive from South Asia, but Hidas states that he has witnessed the production of such amulets in Nepal (2012 p. 7, fn. 5). Amulets of this text were produced in Southeast Asia up to the Philippines, with the earliest attested in ninth-century Java, while eastern India and Nepal attest to the production of a great number of manuscripts of this text, which in the case of Nepal is copied until the twentieth century (Hidas 2012, p. 8).

46

Hidas 2012, p. 22.

47

See von Hinüber 2014, pp. 80–81 and fn. 13, with further bibliography on the topic. Here (p. 81 and fn. 15) von Hinüber also observes that in two manuscripts of the Mahāpratisarāvidyārājñī (nos. 6 and 15) the names of the donors are written by a hand that is clearly different from that of the scribe, a sign that these manuscripts were also prefabricated and the names of the purchasers added later. As further proof, the Gilgit collection also contains the example of a manuscript in which the names of the donors are left blank (von Hinüber 2014, p. 80 fn. 14).

48

For a study of the development of an iconographic program in the Pañcarakṣā manuscripts, and its connection with their use as objects of worship and donation, see especially Kim 2010 and 2013.

49

The earliest surviving illustrated manuscript from South Asia was produced in eastern India and is dated to 983 CE (G 4713, Asiatic Society of Bengal), corresponding to Mahīpāla’s sixth regnal year (see Kim 2013, p. 46). The practice of illustrating manuscripts was practiced in China already in the ninth century, as shown at Dunhuang; as observed by Kim (ib.), there is even earlier evidence from Korea (eighth century). It is possible that this use reached India via trade routes through Gilgit and Kashmir. Pal proposes that the Buddhist practice of illustrating manuscripts might have originated in Central Asia after interactions with the Christian communities (Pal and Meech-Pekarik 1988, p. 11), although Kim (2013, p. 47) remarks that the style of manuscript illustration in South Asia is so peculiar that it is necessary to stress the multi-directionality of this influence.

50

Pal 1978, p. 37

51

Klimburg-Salter 1990, p. 817. The two pairs of covers that she examines are identified as MSC1 and MSC2.

52

Klimburg-Salter 1990, p. 819.

53

Klimburg-Salter 1990, p. 825.

54

Salomon 1999, pp. 81–84.

55

On the Senior collection, see Salomon 2003 and Allon 2007.

56

On the Schøyen Buddhist collection, see the official webpage: <http://www.schoyencollection.com/special-
collections-introduction/buddhism-collection>. Last accessed: 7/6/2016.

57

Allon 2007, p. 4.

58

Salomon 2009, p. 29.

59

For an introduction on this collection, see Strauch 2008.

60

Strauch 2014, pp. 467–68.

61

Strauch 2014, pp. 473–74.

62

Kim 2013, pp. 24–28, fig. 1–1.

63

Kim 2013, pp. 33–36, fig. 1–4; see also Donaldson 2001, vol. 1, pp. 279–82.

64

The panels described by Kinnard 1999 (chapter 6) are: a ninth-century panel from a Buddha statue from Kiching, Orissa (Kinnard 1999, fig. 12); another image, again on the base of a Buddha statue, from Chandaur, Orissa (fig. 13, eleventh century), as well as one from Ratnagiri (Orissa), now in the Patna museum (chapter 6, fn. 75).

65

These are figs. 14 and 15 in Kinnard 1999.

66

For an outlook on the most relevant commentaries of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā—among which Haribhadra’s is considered ‘the most important Indian commentary’—see Zacchetti 2015, p. 183.

67

On this topic, see Kinnard 1999, chapter 5.

68

Although it is impossible to establish an ‘Ur-image’, and a reference to the offerings made to Prajñāpāramitā in the text of the Buddhist monk Faxian (fifth century) has been taken as a hint of the existence of Prajñāpāramitā statues in the fifth century, Kinnard notes that no surviving images of the Prajñāpāramitā can be dated with certainty any earlier than the ninth century (see Kinnard 1999, chapter 5). The preponderance of the surviving images are small bronzes from the tenth century.

69

In this regard, see his analysis of Cundā, as well as the already mentioned Tārā and Mañjuśrī (Kinnard 1999, chapters 5 and 6), the latter usually being identified with wisdom; Kinnard observes (1999, chapter 6) that the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara, though being primarily associated with compassion (karuṇā), is also depicted along with the manuscript in some instances.

70

Kinnard 1999, chapter 6.

71

Kim 2013, p. 47.

72

Kim 2013, pp. 9, 16, 37–38. Kim further notes (2013, p. 49) a possible connection between the increase in the production of illustrated Buddhist manuscripts in Nepal and the beginning of phyi dar, the second introduction of Buddhism in Tibet (960–1400 CE): a heightened demand for Sanskrit manuscripts in Tibet could be the cause for the thriving of scriptoria in Bengal and Bihar, which offered fertile ground for the cult of the book.

73

She identifies four main types of illustrated Buddhist manuscripts (see Kim 2013, pp. 54–60 for an introduction, then p. 73ff. for an in-depth analysis of the four classes): manuscripts depicting the episodes of Buddha’s life, representing his enlightenment and being thus comparable to stūpas (type A); manuscripts representing holy sites of pilgrimage in Asia, a trend started in the eleventh century in Nepal (type B); images reflecting and symbolizing the text and used to index it, a scheme that became popular by the beginning of the twelfth century in Nepal, and was soon chosen as the most popular way to illustrate a Buddhist manuscript (type C); manuscripts that equal tridimensional maṇḍalas through the images of tantric deities, which marks the culmination of the Buddhist book cult in eastern India in the fourteenth century (type D).

74

For the social implications of this study, see Kim 2013, pp. 213–70.

75

Sanderson 2009, p. 87. Most of the kings of this dynasty were described in their inscriptions as paramasaugata, ‘extremely devoted to the Sugata (scil. the Buddha)’.

76

Sanderson 2009, p. 108.

77

For a detailed account of the historical sources on these royal monasteries, see Sanderson 2009, pp. 88–107.

78

On this text and its wondrous powers, see Brown 1986, p. 75. Brown (ib., fn. 27) calls attention to the story of the redemption of the wicked Viduṅga through listening to the Śivapurāṇa, and compares this to a similar story found in the Padmapurāṇa (Uttarakhaṇḍa, 193–98), this time in praise of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa having been listened to.

79

Śivapurāṇa 1.10: etac chivapurāṇaṃ hi pāramaṃ śāstram uttamam | śivarūpaṃ kṣitau jñeyaṃ sevanīyaṃ ca sarvathā || 10.

80

On the notion of the identification of text and gods in Purāṇas, see references from the Padmapurāṇa and the Agnipurāṇa given by Brown 1986, pp. 81–83.

81

References to these and similar instructions in the Devībhāgavatapurāṇa and the Agnipurāṇa are given by Brown 1986; for the Agnipurāṇa, see also below, especially § 4.2.

82

A possible example that concerns the topic of this work is the manuscript of the Cambridge University Library Add. 2836 (pictures and record: <http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD02836/1>, last accessed: 6/6/2016), in which the sixth chapter of the Śivadharmaśāstra, used for the performance of appeasement rites (see below and §§ 2.1 and 2.5), is transmitted in a fourteenth-century Nepalese palm-leaf manuscript containing other short chapters extracted from other Purāṇas and measuring 4.5 x 21.4 cm. The majority of the Nepalese manuscripts transmitting this chapter and those I could inspect directly offer a selection of chapters from Purāṇas to which a special auspiciousness must have been attached (see De Simini 2016).

83

These are a category of religious hymns (stotras) to which a special sacrality was attached. Gonda (1977, p. 247) defines a kavaca as ‘a protective charm, a powerful mantra, believed to enable the person who, while knowing its meaning, pronounces it, to neutralise evil influences, to propitiate the planets, to protect children, to ward off death, etc.’ This sub-genre of ‘armourtexts’ became popular in tantric literature (Goudriaan-Gupta 1981, p. 4). As in the case of the Purāṇas, their protective functions mainly reside in their association with a specific deity invoked in the prayer, and from whom the protection is ultimately bestowed. Thus, it is no coincidence that kavacas are usually named after deities: we find, for instance, a Śivakavaca, a Devīkavaca, etc. The apotropaic power inherited from the deity to whom the composition is devoted can additionally be transferred to the material support of the text. A splendid example of this development comes from the aforementioned Devīkavaca. This text was copied hundreds of times, and it is not difficult to assume that the frequency of its attestations is connected both with the meritoriousness attached to it and with its use as an amulet. Only the catalogue of the Nepalese-German Manuscript Cataloguing Project reports 248 Devīkavaca manuscripts, of various types and sizes. By contrast, the Sanskrit collection of the Cambridge University Library records only two pieces, of which one (Add. 1578) is highly remarkable: this is a Nepalese manuscript made of a single birchbark folio, a very rare material in this region, and the text of the Devīkavaca is written in concentric circles, a possible hint that this manuscript was not conceived to have any textual function. Pictures of this manuscript and its record are available online: http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-01578/1 (last accessed: 6/6/2016). The use of birchbark for writing down kavacas is coherent with the instructions given, for instance, in chapter 70 of the Devīpurāṇa, on the making of a Vināyakakavaca, for which the use of this writing material is specifically required (Devīpurāṇa 70.3). The use of birchbark as a writing support for magic spells is also required by Pāñcarātra texts like the Ahirbudhnyasaṃhitā and the Lakṣmītantra. This idea is also attested in early Buddhist literature, as observed by Skilling 2014, pp. 511–15 (see above, fn. 14).

84

Schopen 2010, p. 39.

85

Schopen 2010, pp. 40–42. This is used as an argument to criticize Drewes’s translation of the expression caityabhūta in the Mahāyāna Sūtras as a comparison (‘like a shrine’), instead of interpreting it as implying a complete identification of the place where the manuscript is present within a sacred space (see § 1.1).

86

The theory of gifting presented in the Dharmaśāstra, with special reference to the work of Lakṣmīdhara, is dealt with in detail in the introduction to the critical edition of Lakṣmīdhara’s Dānakāṇḍa by Brick (2014), on which the following information on the general rules for the ritual gifting are based. I thank David Brick for his assistance in providing me with materials on the topic, and his observations on my previous work.

87

The Devalasmṛti is considered a late work composed in northwestern India due to its allusion to foreign invasions and the mention of punishments for the kidnapping of women, which have been read as a possible reference to the Turkish invasions that started in the eighth century (Lariviere 2004, p. 622).

88

Dānakāṇḍa 1.5: pātrebhyo dīyate nityam anapekṣya prayojanam | kevalaṃ tyāgabuddhyā yad dharmadānaṃ tad ucyate || 5. In the preceding stanza the Devalasmṛti enumerates six ‘bases of the gift’ (Dānakāṇḍa, p. 288): ‘Dharma, worldly gain, passion, shame, joy, and fear—these, they say, are the six bases of gifting’ dharmam arthaṃ ca kāmaṃ ca vrīḍāharṣabhayāni ca | adhiṣṭhānāni dānānāṃ ṣaḍ etāni pracakṣate || 4. Among these, only the ‘gift based on Dharma’ is the topic of the Dharmaśāstra.

89

As observed by Brick (2014, p. 24), this is a crucial point in the understanding of the theory of the gift presented in the works of Dharmaśāstra and Purāṇas in the light of the anthropological studies devoted to the practice of gifting since the publication of Mauss’s famous essay (1925). Brick has dealt extensively with the idea of the contrast that the principle of non-reciprocity establishes between the Brahmanical theory of the gift and the results of the ethnographic studies carried out in South Asia by Raheja 1988 and Parry 1994; the latter show that, in actual practice, there is more emphasis placed on the donors than the donees, based on the belief that by donating an object the donor is actually transferring his own sins to the recipients (Brick 2014, p. 26). Brick (2014, pp. 27–30) maintains, also on the basis of Geslani 2011, that a belief in sin-transfer is actually discernible in the cases of some of the gifts described in the Dharmaśāstra tradition, where it is said that the gifted object should not be kept for too long, or that the recipient becomes impure after receiving the gift. This evidence, though admittedly scanty, along with the evidence provided by the ethnographic studies, have led him to argue that the theory of the gift that forms the underpinnings of Brahmanic sources on dāna actually arose in contrast a competing theory that emphasized the purificatory function of the gifting through the transfer of sins from the donors to the donees. According to Raheja, whose observations are referred to by Brick (2014, p. 27), this would not necessarily contradict the centrality of Brahmins as recipients, since they might be chosen to fulfill that function due to their special ability to digest the sins transferred through gifts.

90

Brick observes the connection between the expectation of an ultramundane reward in the performance of ritual gifting, and the Mīmāṃsā teachings on the ‘unseen scope’ (adṛṣṭārtha) of the sacrifice (Brick 2014, pp. 32–33).

91

Donative inscriptions have been attested in India from very early times, and they often come in the form of copper plates. The earliest specimens of copper plates are those attributed to the early Pallava kings, and are dated to the fourth century (Francis 2013, p. 34). The oldest extant copper plate from the north can most likely be identified as the Kalāchalā grant of Īśvararāta, dated on palaeographic grounds to the late fourth century (see Sircar EI 33.303–6, cited in Salomon 1998, p. 114). Salomon notes that the practice of issuing donative copper plates can actually be dated significantly earlier than the extant records, since the donative cave inscriptions of Nāsik, issued by the Western Kṣatrapa and Sātavāhana kings in the first or second century, presuppose the use of original documents on portable supports, which could have been copper plates. The donative copper plate inscriptions began to rise in number from the fourth century, continuing even into the European period (Salomon 1998, p. 115). According to Sharma (1965, p. 48), the increase in the production of grants from the Gupta times onward parallels the scarcity of coins attested in the same period due to a decline in internal trade. The grants of land, observes the scholar, came to replace the religious endowments that were made in cash in the first two centuries C.E.

92

See Brick 2014, p. 34ff. He also cites a statement by Trautmann (1981, p. 279), according to which, ‘The Dharmaśāstra theory of the gift, then, is a soteriology, not a sociology of reciprocity as in Marcel Mauss’s masterwork on the gift’ (Brick 2014, p. 38).

93

On the expiatory nature of the gift, see also Geslani 2011a, p. 135ff.

94

Dānakāṇḍa 1.1: arthānām udite pātre śraddhayā pratipādanam | dānam ity abhinirdiṣṭaṃ vyākhyānaṃ tasya vakṣyate || 1.

95

Brick 2014, pp. 41–49, examines the discussions on identifying the proper recipient of a dharmadāna as found in the medieval digests on gifting. As he observes, the main concern of the Dharmaśāstra texts is to identify these recipients as orthodox Brahmins, and establish a principle of ‘virtuousness’ that enhances the value of the gift in proportion with the worthiness of its recipient.

96

The notion of ‘trustworthiness’ (śraddhā) has been subject to various interpretations by scholars dealing with theories of the gift in South Asia. Heim (2004, pp. 45–53) believes that śraddhā can be generally interpreted in at least three ways: trust in the tradition; trust in the results of ritual actions; or trust in the recipient. The latter is considered by Heim the most relevant point in the case of dāna rituals. She argues that ‘esteem’ towards the recipient is the basic feeling that is needed to make sure that the gift will be performed with the generosity and the absence of envy that are prescribed by the sources. The right attitude towards the recipients allows the donor to gift purposelessly and respectfully. Brick (2014, p. 54), on the other hand, identifies two principal meanings for the word śraddhā: a. trust in the efficacy of pious acts (which summarizes the first two points made by Heim); and b. spirit of generosity, for which Brick refers to the study of Köhler (Brick 2014, p. 56, referring to Köhler 1973), who maintains that trust in the efficacy of ritual donations is what prompts generosity in gifting. According to Brick, who faults Heim’s translation of śraddhā as ‘esteem’ for not being sufficiently grounded in textual sources, his translation as ‘spirit of generosity’ would better account for the Devalasmṛti’s definition, and would still be connected to the definition under point a. The definition that the Devalasmṛti gives for śraddhā in Dānakāṇḍa 1.14 (see below) does insist on notions such as the donors’ joy in gifting—a feature that also often appears in other literary works dealing with dāna, like the Buddhist Jātakas praising the ‘perfection of gifting’ (dānapāramitā)—and the display of facial expressions revealing the reliability of the donor. All these can be effectively expressed by translating śraddhā and the adverbial śraddhayā with ‘trustworthiness’ and ‘trustfully’, a translation that remains within the main semantic area of the words and still conveys both the sense of ‘trust in the results of the ritual action’ and of ‘positive attitude of joyfulness and absence of envy’.

97

Dānakāṇḍa 1.11–14: dātā pratigrahītā ca śraddhā deyaṃ ca dharmayuk | deśakālau ca dānānām aṅgāny etāni ṣaḍ viduḥ || 11 apāparogī dharmātmā ditsur avyasanaḥ śuciḥ | anindyājīvakarmā ca ṣaḍbhir dātā praśasyate || 12 triśuklaḥ kṛśavṛttiś ca ghṛṇāluḥ sakalendriyaḥ | vimuktoyonidoṣebhyo brāhmaṇaḥ pātram ucyate || 13 saumukhyādyabhisaṃprītir arthināṃ darśane sadā| satkṛtiś cānasūyā ca tadā śraddheti kīrtyate || 14.

98

See Dānakāṇḍa 1.27–31.

99

Mitākṣarā ad Yājñavalkyasmṛti 2.212: ‘And in this regard, concerning the gift of the brahman, the gift is solely intended as the accomplishment of the ownership of another, as it is impossible to bring one’s own ownership to cessation’; atra ca brahmadāne parasvatvāpādanamātraṃ dānaṃ svatvanivṛtteḥ kartum aśakyatvāt. This passage will be quoted below (see § 2.1) and is also discussed in Brick 2014, p. 33, where he takes it as an example of the less inclusive Mīmāṃsā theory of the gift, as they would exclude gifts (such as the gift of knowledge) that the Dharmaśāstra tradition includes without problems. However, it seems clear to me that in this case Vijñāneśvara’s objections solely concern the ‘gift of the brahman’, which represents only one aspect of the broader category of the gift of knowledge.

100

See Brick 2014, p. 34.

101

Note that authoritative texts also prescribe other expensive donations, such as the ‘mountain gifts’ (acala° or parvatadāna), dealt with in Matsyapurāṇa 83–92. As for the identification of the donors of mahādānas and similar ritual donations with kings or with very wealthy people, Brick (2014, p. 51) observes that Govindānanda Kavikaṅkanācārya, author of the Dānakriyākaumudī, declares that he has excluded from his treatise topics such as the mahādānas and similar donations ‘to be performed by the great kings and the like (mahārājetarasādhyāni),’ which are dealt with in a ritual manual called Mahādānapaddhati (see Dānakriyākaumudī p. 86).

102

The great gifts described by Matsyapurāṇa 274–289 are the ‘gift of the man on the scales’ (tulāpuruṣadāna); the ‘gift of the golden embryo’ (hiraṇyagarbhadāna); the ‘gift of the Brahmaegg’ (brahmāṇḍadāna); the ‘gift of the wish-granting tree’ (kalpapādapadāna); the ‘gift of a thousand cows’ (gosahasradāna); the ‘gift of the wish-granting cow’ (kāmadhenudāna); the ‘gift of the golden horse’ (hiraṇyāśvadāna); the ‘gift of the horse carriage’ (aśvarathadāna); the ‘gift of the golden elephant chariot’ (hemahastirathadāna); the ‘gift of the five ploughshares’ (pañcalāṅgaladāna); the ‘gift of the earth’ (pṛthvīdāna); the ‘gift of the universal wheel’ (viśvacakradāna); the ‘gift of the wish-granting vines’ (kalpalatādāna); the ‘gift of the seven seas’ (saptasāgaradāna); the ‘gift of the jewel-cow’ (ratnadhenudāna); the ‘gift of the pot of elements’ (mahābhūtaghaṭadāna).

103

The earliest epigraphic attestation of the performance of the Purāṇic great gifts can be dated to the seventh century, as its mention occurs in an epigraph of king Pāṇḍya Cendan, who claims to have castigated the Kali age by celebrating three mahādānas, namely the ‘gift of the golden embryo’, the ‘gift of a thousand cows’ and the ‘gift of the man on the scales’ (Schmiedchen 2006, p. 173). Another early record is the gift of a golden embryo that is attested in 753 CE under the reign of Dantidurga, the first imperial ruler of the Rāṣṭrakūṭa dynasty, who intended to mark with this ceremony his victory on the periphery over the Cāḷukya (Inden 2000, p. 247). For a history of the epigraphical attestations (from the seventh to the sixteenth century) of the gift of the man on the scale, during which the donor was supposed to donate the equivalent of his weight in gold, see Schmiedchen 2006.

104

Inden (2006, pp. 91–92) argues that the rituals of the great gifts originated in the context of Buddhist imperial power as a reaction to the Vedic ‘great sacrifices’ (mahāyajñas), and were then subsumed by non-Buddhist state formations in medieval times. Inden identifies the main textual evidence for the opposition between the great gifts and the Vedic sacrifice in the Kūṭadantasutta of the Dīghanikāya (= Sutta No. 5), where the practice of donation is suggested as means to achieve the appeasement of the kingdom (par. 135), and the ritual is listed as superior to the mahāyajña. The gift this text refers to is called niccadāna (par. 144), Pāli for nityadāna, ‘constant gift’. The niccadāna is explicitly taught by this text as more important than the mahāyañña (mahāyajña); more important than the niccadāna is said to be the vihāradāna (par. 145), the ‘gift of a monastery’. The acceptance of the Buddhist teachings and the arising of the knowledge on the destruction of the āsava are eventually deemed superior to these material donations (par. 147).

105

Śivadharmottara 2.1cd: tasya dānam mahādānaṃ sarvadānottamottamam || 1.

106

Dānakhaṇḍa, p. 397: ‘[Teachers] say that there are three excellent gifts: [the gift of] cows, earth [and] knowledge. Through the [activities] of reciting, sowing, and milking [these gifts] actually save from hell’; trīṇy āhur atidānāni gāvaḥ pṛthvī sarasvatī | narakād uddharanty eva japavāpanadohanaiḥ ||. This verse is very close to Mahābhārata 13.68.4, which Hemādri and his predecessors Lakṣmīdhara and Ballālasena quote on the topic of the gift of knowledge (see § 3.2), and to Agnipurāṇa 2.211.51. It establishes an equivalence among the gifts of cattle, earth, and Sarasvatī, the goddess of music and learning that is used here (as in other places) as a synonym for knowledge. The equivalence among three gifts that seem so different from each other refers to a tradition according to which the Sanskrit word for cow, go, can actually at the same time mean cow, land, and speech.

107

Note that there are also later examples of Pali texts identifying the king’s devotion to a manuscript. The Mahāvaṃsa (for which see Veidlinger 2006), a composite Sinhalese chronicle that was very important for the history of Theravāda Buddhism, includes noteworthy accounts of the tenth-century king Kassapa V venerating a golden copy of the Abhidhamma that was kept in a temple and retrieved for civic festivals (see Mahāvaṃsa 52.49–56). This passage belongs to a section of the Mahāvaṃsa, extending up to chapter 79, that was probably composed in the thirteenth century; this is followed by a section composed in the fourteenth or fifteenth century, while the final chapters were written in the eighteenth century (Veidlinger 2006, p. 417). The same text features an account of the eleventh-century king Vijayabāhu I, who had manuscripts of scriptures copied and donated to a temple (Mahāvaṃsa 99.28–25).

108

See Geslani 2011, 2011a and 2012. The following considerations on the rituals of appeasement are based mostly on these essays.

109

The main texts singled out by Geslani in studying the early stages of the development of appeasement rites (2011, pp. 4–6) are, in chronological order: the Kauśikasūtra, which describes the entire system of Atharvanic domestic rituals and refers to apotropaic rites at various points (in particular, see its 13th book); the Śāntikalpa, which still dates before the turn of the first millennium, is the first work entirely devoted to the topic, more precisely to the subject of mahāśānti and its variations; and the Atharvavedapariśiṣṭas, dealing with the ritual schedule of the king that has to be administered by an Atharvanic royal chaplain (purohita), among whose main duties is the performance of śāntis and mahāśāntis. The Atharvavedapariśiṣṭas are the latest texts on the subject from the perspective of the Atharvanic school; for considerations on their dating, see Geslani 2012, pp. 178–82, and below fn. 115.

110

These are treated in Geslani 2012 and 2011a, respectively. That of śānti is a pervasive topic in the ancient and medieval Indian literature dealing with ritual. The śānti is mentioned as the prerogative of the royal chaplain by a number of early Dharma texts such as the Gautamadharmasūtra, the Manusmṛti, the Yājñavalkyasmṛti, and the Arthaśāstra (see Geslani 2011, p. 82). In order to have an idea of the vastness of the subject, I refer the reader to Kane 1962, vol. 5.2, pp. 719–814.

111

See e.g. Geslani 2011, p. 25ff., p. 82, or 2012, pp. 334–36. There are also other features that Geslani identifies as attributes proper of the mahāśānti paradigm, such as the main ritual frame corresponding to the iṣṭi fire ritual, or the use of the remnants of clarified butter (saṃpāta) to be mixed with the waters of appeasement. The description of the appeasement rite made by the Śivadharmottara is, however, very basic, so it is not possible to read the application of the whole paradigm of the mahāśānti here.

112

The Atharvavedapariśiṣṭas 9 to 16 account for only seven of the great gifts, namely the gift of the sesame-cow, the gift of land, the gift of the man on the scales, the gift of the golden embryo, the gift of the elephants’ chariot, the gift of the horse chariot, the gift of a thousand cows (see Geslani 2011a, p. 150, fn. 38; he also adds the ‘gift of the sun-cake’, ādityamaṇḍaka, which is not included in the 16 great gifts of the Matsyapurāṇa). According to Geslani 2011a, the Atharvavedapariśiṣṭa’s accounts of the mahādānas are earlier in comparison to the one of the Matsyapurāṇa, which presupposes the Atharvanic source (Geslani 2011a, p. 178).

113

As pointed out by Sanderson (2004, p. 239), ritual duties of the Atharvan purohita were: rituals of proctection (śāntikaṃ karma) for the king and his kingdom; rituals to restore his health (pauṣṭikaṃ karma); rituals to harm his enemies (ābhicārikaṃ karma); regular and occasional rituals (nityaṃ and naimittikaṃ karma); reparatory rites (prāyaścittīyaṃ karma); and post-mortuary rites (aurdhvadehikaṃ karma). See Atharvavedapariśiṣṭa 3.1.10: yasyānyakulopayuktaḥ purodhāḥ śāntikapauṣṭikaprāyaścittīyābhicārikanaimittikaurdhvadehikāny atharvavihitāni karmāṇi kuryāt. The power of their rituals lies in the power of their mantras, as the Atharvavedapariśiṣṭas emphasize. A famous passage from Atharvavedapariśiṣṭa 2 reads (2.2.3–5): ‘The knower of the Brahmaveda [=Atharvaveda] is the appeaser (śamayitṛ) of all the omens of the sky, atmosphere, and earth, in many ways. Therefore, Bhṛgu is the protector. (3) / The brahman [=the Atharvaveda officiant] will appease, not the adhvaryu [=the Yajurveda officiant], nor the chandoga [=the Sāmaveda officiant], nor the bahvṛca [=the Ṛgveda officiant]. / The brahman protects from demons, therefore the knower of the Atharvaveda is the brahman. (4) / For this reason, in order to protect the army, for the increase of his own kingdom and for the purpose of appeasement (śānti), a sovereign has to select a teacher belonging to Bhṛgu [= i.e. an Atharvan]. (5)’; divyāntarikṣabhaumānām utpātānām anekadhā | śamayitā brahmavedajñas tasmād rakṣitā bhṛguḥ || 3 brahmā śamayen nādhvaryur na chandogo na bahvṛcaḥ | rakṣāmṣi rakṣati brahmā brahmā tasmād atharvavit || 4 senāyā rakṣaṇe tasmāt svarāṣṭraparivṛddhaye | śāntyarthaṃ ca mahīpālo vṛṇuyād bhārgavaṃ gurum || 5. On the topic of the specialization of the Atharvan officiant in matters of rituals of kingship according to the Atharvavedapariśiṣṭas, see Geslani 2011, p. 78ff. and Geslani 2011a, pp. 142–50.

114

The rivalry between the Atharvanic and Śaiva officiants is documented in Sanderson 2004 and 2007.

115

See Bisschop and Griffiths 2003, where they edit and translate, with an introduction, the pariśiṣṭa 40, on the ‘Pāśupata observance’ (pāśupatavrata).

116

See Sanderson 2007, p. 196. Here Sanderson also introduces a second corpus of Atharvanic scriptures, preserved in the Āṅgirasakalpa manuscripts of the Paippalādins from Orissa and consisting of instructions in the procedures of hostile ritual through the propitiation of post-Vedic deities and following tantric liturgical models.

117

The dating of the Atharvavedapariśiṣṭas is an issue under debate and, given that the first external evidence that incontrovertibly attests their existence is from the fourteenth century, and was a reference to the texts made by Sāyaṇa, commentator of the Ṛgveda (see Geslani 2011a, p. 182), such dating can only be assessed relatively. Geslani sums up the main views on the topic (2011a, pp. 178–82), observing that while there has generally been a consensus that the Atharvavedapariśiṣṭas were earlier than the composition of the main Purāṇas, the data do not univocally confirm this assumption. In case one should argue that the Atharvavedapariśiṣṭas are later than the Bṛhatsaṃhitā and the Purāṇas whose practices show connection with these texts, the Appendices to the Atharvaveda could thus represent a Vedic reaction against the new currents and practices emerged within Brahmanism (Geslani 2011a, p. 180). Geslani finds however more likely, as regards the topic of the great gifts and other rituals of kingship, that the rituals attested in the Atharvavedapariśiṣṭas represent an earlier version of those of the Purāṇas. If one accepts the idea that the royal rituals of the Purāṇic tradition are variations on the paradigm of śānti, then it is easier to posit that this happened via the Atharvavedapariśiṣṭas, which shows close connections with the earlier Vedic literature, like the Kauśikasūtra, in which śānti rose to preminence. Geslani however admits that ‘the logical priority of śānti does not necessarily establish the historical priority of Atharvan texts on the dānas’ (2011a, p. 181).
It is most likely that the composition of the Atharvavedapariśiṣṭas took shape in different stages: as observed, Bisschop and Griffiths (2003 and 2007), along with Sanderson (2007), as observed above, have shown that these texts provide several examples of contamination with Śaivism of the Atimārga as well as with tantric Śaivism, proving that the Vedic practice of the Appendices was also in its turn influenced by the new development in non-Vedic liturgy.

118

Geslani 2011a, p. 146.

119

This topic is treated in Geslani 2011a; the connections between the śānti paradigm and the great gifts in particular are dealt with from p. 150ff.

120

On this topic see, above all, Sanderson 2009.

121

As for the rājyābhiṣekha, Geslani (2012, p. 328) identifies two main prototypes: the Brahma/Nīlamātapurāṇa (vv. 840–865), also quoted by Lakṣmīdhara in his Rājadharmakhaṇḍa, which describes a simpler version of the ceremony; and Viṣṇudharmottara 2.19–22, which reports a more complex royal consecration but is quoted only by post-seventeenth-century authors. The rājyābhiṣekha described in the Purāṇas has been interpreted as a less violent version of the Vedic rājasūya; its outcome is the transformation of the king into the earthly counterpart of the god who symbolizes the universal monarch (Inden 1978, p. 68).

122

See Geslani 2012, p. 322. As he remarks, the śānti paradigm that is applied in the beginning of the ritual is not ancillary to the ritual, but constitutive, as it is replicated twice during the consecration proper. At the same time, the Vedic rājasūyamantra does not accompany the main sprinkling, but is used in order to introduce a new actor, the purohita, who consecrates the king with a ‘pot of remainders’ (saṃpāta), within a section of the Viṣṇudharmottara dealing with the ‘Indra appeasement’ (puraṃdaraśānti, 2.19). A connection can be seen between this and the ‘Indra appeasement’ (aindrī śānti) of the early Śāntikalpa (Geslani 2012, pp. 332–33).

123

Geslani 2012, p. 329. The puṣyābhiṣeka (‘consecration under the asterism of Puṣya—consecration of prosperity’) described in Atharvavedapariśiṣṭa 5 is an ‘apotropaic consecration’, since it uses in its main fire-offering five of the great appeasement mantras of the Śāntikalpa (Geslani 2012, p. 336).

124

See the catalogue information available at the following link: <http://catalogue.ngmcp.unihamburg.de/wiki/Main_Page> (last accessed: 29/7/2016).

125

This is ms NAK 1/1181 (NGMCP A 1042/10), a paper multiple-text manuscript of 155 folios, whose pages are however medium-sized.

126

See § 1.3 and De Simini 2016.

127

See, among others, Sanderson 2004.

128

For an estimate of the dating of the Śivadharmottara and the Śivadharmaśāstra, on which the former depends, see Bisschop 2010, p. 483 fn. 35, and Bisschop forth.

129

On topics concerning the relationship between religion and monarchy, as well as between the initiated priests, claiming control over the welfare of the state through the performance of dedicated rites, and the laity concretely pulling the strings of the economy and administration of a country, see Sanderson 2004 and forth. a. The notion of the ‘Śaiva Age’ was famously coined and developed in Sanderson 2009.

130

For an overview on the manuscript tradition of the Śivadharmaśāstra and the Śivadharmottara, along with the other Śaiva works attached to them in the so-called ‘Śivadharma Corpus’, see De Simini 2016. A few general details will also be provided below.

131

Hazra offers two appendices with the quotations from the Śivadharmottara (1983, pp. 209–10) and the Śivadharmaśāstra (1985, pp. 297–99) that he had identified in the Dharmanibandhas as well as in a few commentaries, and distinguishes the passages that he could trace back to the original texts from those for which he could not find any parallels. For instance, he identifies a total of 34 lines, mostly from chapters 4 and 12 of the Śivadharmottara, quoted by Hemādri (a short quotation is also extracted from chapter 2 and mistakenly attributed to the Śivadharma); another significant portion is the 27 lines from chapter 3 of the Śivadharmottara quoted in the commentary on the Śvetāśvataropaniṣad attributed to Śaṅkara. More conspicuous is the number of verses quoted from the Śivadharmaśāstra, especially in the case of the Caturvargacintāmaṇi of Hemādri, who quotes more than a hundred stanzas from chapters 8, 9, and 10 of the text.

132

For a list of Nibandhas quoting from the Devīpurāṇa, see Hazra 1963, pp. 72–73. Hazra further notes that a substantial number of verses on the autumnal worship of the goddess Durgā from northeastern digests have been attributed to ‘minor’ Purāṇas, such as the Kālikāpurāṇa and the Devīpurāṇa, by the digest-writers, but the quoted verses are not traceable in the alleged original sources (1963, pp. 2–3). On this see also Sarkar 2012, in particular p. 330ff.

133

Because of the ambiguity of the term śivadharma, and on account of the manuscript tradition that almost univocally attributes the title Śivadharmaśāstra to the text, I adopt the latter in referring to the work, and use śivadharma only to refer as a whole to the teachings of those texts that claim association or are associated by the manuscript tradition with the Śivadharmaśāstra and the Śivadharmottara (see below).

134

Śivadharmottara 1.3–16 (A= Fol. 1v[LL1–6], B= Fol. 46v[LL1–6], P2= [PP290–91]): bhagavan darśanāt tubhyam antajasyāpi [antyajasyāpi P2][AL2 BL2]sadgatiḥ | saptajanmāni vipras tu [saptajanmasuvipratvāt P2] svargād bhraṣṭaḥ [bhraṣṭasya P2] prajāyate [prayāyate B jayate P2] || 3 yenāsi [tenāsiA B]nātha bhūtānāṃ sarveṣām anukampakaḥ | ataḥ [ata B] sarvahitaṃ dharmaṃ saṃkṣepāt [saṃkṣepā B] prabravīhi me || 4 dharmā bahuvidhā devyā devena kathitāḥ kila | te ca śrutās tvayā sarve pṛcchāmi tvām ahan [pṛcchāmi mahaṃ P c.m.] tataḥ || 5 kiṃ pradhānāḥ śivadharmāḥ [śive dharmāḥ A P2] śiva[AL3]vākya[BL3]ṃ ca kīdṛśam | liṅge ’rcitaḥ śivaḥ kena vidhinā samprasīdati || 6 vidyādānaṃ ca dānānāṃ sarveṣām uttamaṃ kila | tac ca śrutau [śrautaṃ P2] dvijendrāṇāṃ nānyeṣāṃ samudāhṛtam || 7 tat puṇyaṃ sarvavarṇānāṃ jāyate kena karmaṇā | jñeyaṃ [jayaṃ P2] katividhaṃ tac ca vidyādānam [vidyādānām a.c., vidyādānam p.c. B] anuttamam || 8 kāni puṇyāni [karmāṇi P2] kṛtveha gṛ[BL4]hiṇaḥ [gṛhasthaḥ P2][AL4]svargināḥ [svargatāḥ A svargabhāk P2] punaḥ | manuṣyaloke sambhūtā [manuṣyalokasambhūtā B manuṣyaloke saṃbhūto P2] yogaṃ vindanti [vidanti B vindati P2] śāṃkaraṃ || 9 karmayajñas tapoyajñaḥ [°yajñāḥ B] svādhyāyo dhyānam eva ca [dhyānanirmitaḥ P2] | jñānayajñaś ca pañcaite mahāyajñāḥ prakīrtitāḥ [prīkīrtitāḥ B] || 10 eteṣāṃ [eṣāñ ca B] pañcayajñānām uttamaḥ katamaḥ smṛtaḥ | etad yajñaratānāṃ ca pradāne kīdṛśaṃ phalam || 11 dha[BL5]rmādharmaprabhedāś ca ki[AL5]yantaḥ parikīrtitāḥ | tatsādhanāḥ [tatsādhanāni P2] katividhā [kati vā P2] gatayaś ca tadātmikāḥ || 12 [P2P291]svarganārakiṇāṃ [svarginārākiṇāṃ P2] puṃsām āyātānāṃ [āgatānāṃ P2] punaḥ kṣitau | kāni cihnāni jāyante bhuktaśeṣeṇa karmaṇā || 13 saṃsārasāgarād ghorād dharmādharmormisaṃkulāt | garbhādiduḥkhaphenāḍhyān mucyante[BL6] dehinaḥ [dehina B] katham || 14 iti saṃ[AL6]coditaḥskandaḥ sarvapraśnārthabhāṣakaḥ [-śnārthabhāṣakaḥ om. P2] | pratyuvāca mahāseno [pratuvāca mahā° om. P2] namaskṛtvā [namaskṛtya B] maheśvaram || 15 svargāpavargaphaladaṃ narakārṇavatārakam | śivadharmottaraṃ nāma śāstram īśvarabhāṣitam [uttarabhāṣitam P2] || 16.

135

This is the topic of chapter 2. Note that the author of these verses attributes the teachings on the gift of knowledge to the authority of Vedic revelation. In the next lines the text will roughly list the contents of each chapter of the Śivadharmottara.

136

Chapter 3 mentions the ‘Five Great Sacrifices’, dealing extensively only with the jñānayajña.

137

Chapter 4, which the tradition titles ‘On the Proper Recipient’ (satpātrapradānādhyāya), treats the topic of the ideal recipients identified with the śivayogin.

138

The last statements could refer to chapter 5, ‘On the Religious Path Leading to the Town of Śiva’ (śivapuradharmagatyadhyāya), chapter 6, ‘On the Discrimination of Sins’ (pāpabhedādhyāya), and chapter 7, ‘On the Characteristics of the Sinful Path’ (pāpagativiśeṣādhyāyaḥ).

139

The last sentence evokes the title of chapter 9, ‘On the Marks and Non-Marks of the Inhabitants of Heaven and Hell’ (svarganārakacihnācihnādhyāya).

140

The saṃsāra, and the formation of the body starting from the embryo, are the topic of chapter 8, simply called ‘On Saṃsāra’ (saṃsārādhyāya).

141

See De Simini 2016 for the traditional accounts on the composition of these works. Note that the title Śivadharmottara is also attested in stanza 12.261 (see § 2.5).

142

Śivadharmaśāstra 1.6–8 (A fol. 1v[LL2–3], B fol. 1v[LL3–4], P1[p1]): bhagavan sarvadharmajña śivadharmaparāyaṇa | śrotukāmā[AL3]ḥ [śrotukamaḥ a.c. śrotukamāḥ p.c. A] paraṃ dharmam ime sarve samāgatāḥ || 6 agniṣṭomādayo yajñā bahuvittakriyānvitāḥ | nātyantaphalabhūyiṣṭho bahvāyāsaśramānvitāḥ [nātyanta°…°ānvitāḥ om. A and P1] || 7 na śa[BL4]kyante yataḥ [na śakyaṃ tair yataḥ P1] kartum alpavittair dvijātibhiḥ [dvijādibhiḥ P1] | sukhopāyam [tasyopāyam P1] ato brūhi sarvakāmārthasādhakam [°siddhaye a.c., °sādhakam p.c. P1] | hitāya sarvamartyānāṃ [sarvasattvānāṃ A] śivadharmaṃ sanātanam || 8.

143

Śivadharmottara 5.1–5 (A fol.15v[L6] -15r[L2] , B fol. 61v[LL3–5], P2[P334]): atha dharmāḥ śivenoktāḥ śivadharmāgamottare | jñeyā bahuvidhās te ca karmayogoprabhe[A15rL1]dataḥ || 1 hiṃsādoṣavinirmuktāḥ [hiṃsādidoṣa° P2] kleśāyāsavivarjitāḥ | sarvabhūtahitāḥ śuddhāḥ[BL4]susūkṣmāḥ sumahāphalāḥ[sumahat B] || 2 anantaśākhakalitāḥ [°kalilāḥ P2] śivamūlaikasaṃśritāḥ [śivamula ca saṃśritāḥ B śivamūlaikasaṃsthitāḥ P2] | sarve sarvaguṇopetāḥ śivadharmāḥ sanātanāḥ || 3 tārayanty [dhārayanti P2] aśivād [śive P2] yasmād dhāryante śivabhāvitaiḥ | śivadharmāḥ smṛtās tasmā[AL2]t saṃsārārṇavatāraṇāḥ [saṃsārārṇavū° A] || 4 athāhiṃsā kṣa[BL5]mā satyaṃ hrīḥ śraddhendriyasaṃyamaḥ| dānam ijyā japo [tapo P2] dhyānaṃ daśakaṃ dharmasādhanam [dharmalakṣanam P2] || 5.

144

See e.g. Śivadharmottara 2.107–108, listing the merits of a gift of knowledge: ‘Once established for the longest time in the world of Rudra, he has fun with big auspicious flying chariots fulfilling all desires. (107) / Then, having reached the earth [again] after some time, he becomes a pious king, or rather a handsome, good Brahmin, well versed in the contents of all branches of knowledge. (108)’; mahāvimānaiḥ śrīmadbhiḥ sarvakāmasamanvitaiḥ | krīḍate paramaṃ kālaṃ rudraloke vyavasthitaḥ || 107 tataḥ kālāt kṣitiṃ prāpya rājā bhavati dhārmikaḥ | surūpaḥ sudvijo vāpi sarvavidyārthapāragaḥ || 108.

145

A description of an icon of Śiva, which is venerated and offered to the Śaiva temple as a so-called rūpadāna, is found in Śivadharmaśāstra 8.22ff. Although mentioned several times in the Śivadharmaśāstra, it is the Śivadharmottara that provides more insight on how to understand the cult of the images in the broader context of lay Śaiva ritual practice; for more thoughts on this topic according to the Śivadharmottara and its connection with the cult of the book, see below.

146

The critical edition of these chapters and a study of their religious and cultural aspects is the topic of the FWF project ‘The Śivaliṅga Cult on the Eve of the Tantric Age’ (2015–18), which is currently being carried out by Nina Mirnig (Austrian Academy of Sciences).

147

On chapter 6 of the Śivadharmaśāstra, see Bisschop 2014 and Bisschop forth.; the same scholar is also completing a critical edition of this specific section in the frame of the ERC-Synergy project ‘Beyond Boundaries: Religion, Region, Language and the State’ (London, British Museum).

148

The Śivadharmaśāstra makes explicit reference to the sixfold yoga. See e.g. chapter 12.32: ‘One who is endowed with knowledge and freedom from desires thanks to a mind pacified by Śiva, [who is] committed to the practice of the sixfold yoga, [this] is known as a Śaiva yogin’; (A fol. 38v[L1], B fol. 42r[L4], P1[P145]): jñānavairāgyasampannaḥ śivaśāntena [śivaḥ P1] cetasā | yuktaḥ ṣaḍaṅgayogena śivayogī prakīrtitaḥ || 32.
The Śivadharmottara, on the other hand, deals more extensively with the topic of yoga in chapter 10, which the manuscript tradition titles jñānayogādhyāya, ‘On the yoga of knowledge’, and in chapter 3, again on the jñānayoga (see also below for more references).

149

For a definition of Atimārga (‘Outer Path’) Śaivism as one of the two great branches of Śaivism—in which salvation is accessible only to ascetics; Śiva is mainly regarded in his archaic form of Rudra; and which is principally divided into two divisions, the Pāśupata and the Lākula—I refer the reader to Sanderson 1988, p. 664.

150

This chapter, for instance, makes frequent reference to the practice of the bath with ashes, at stanzas 12.21–22 as well as at 12.27ab, where the śivayogin is described as ‘endowed with knowledge and freedom from desires, dedicated to [the sprinkling with] ashes, whose senses are refrained’; (A fol. 38r[L5] B fol. 42r[L2], P1 [P144]): jñānavairāgyasampannaṃ bhasmaniṣṭhaṃ jitendriyam |. See also the description that chapter 11 of the same text gives for the renunciant (Śivadharmaśāstra 11.16–18): ‘A Śaiva hermit, who has to be known as one isolated from common relationships, surviving on tubers, roots, and fruits, will become entirely devoted to the fire of the Śaiva worship. (16) / Deprived common relationships, this man, always pleased by meditation on Śiva, is known as a lord among the Śaiva observants, constant in the [sprinkling with] ashes, refrained with his senses. (17) / The bracelet of Rudra’s rosary in the hand, the matted hair on the top of the head, [his] abode the liṅga, the hermitage of Śiva, and the tripuṇḍra made with ashes (18)’; (A fol.34v[LL3–4]; B fol. 38r[LL1–2]; P1[P130]): sarvasaṅgavinirmuktaḥ [sarvamaṅgala° B c.m. sarvaroga° P1] kandamūlaphalāśanaḥ [skandamūlā° A B] | śivavaikhānaso jñeyaḥ sivārcāgniparo [śivārcanaparo P1] bhavet || 16 [BL2]nivṛttaḥ sarvasaṅgebhyaḥ [sarvarāgebhyaḥ P1] śivadhyānarataḥ sadā [sadāḥ B] | jñeyaḥ śivavratīndro [śivayatīndroḥ P1] ’yaṃ [śivāvratīndreyaṃ B] bhasmaniṣṭho jitendriyaḥ || 17 rudrākṣakaṃkaṇaṃ haste [°kaṇkaṇahaste B] jaṭaikāraiva [jaṭaikā caiva P2] mastake | liṅgaṃ sivāśramam[AL4] sthānaṃ [śivāśramasthānaṃ P1] bhasmanā ca tripuṇḍrakaṃ || 18.

151

These 40 holy places, introduced as places where Rudra has descended on Earth (rudrāvatārasthāna, see 12.50)—another notion that can mainly be connected with Pāśupata Śaivism (see Bisschop 2006, p. 41)—are divided into five groups of eight (aṣṭaka), and thus known to Śaiva sources as the pañcāṣṭaka, which is the lowest and possibly most archaic layer in the hierarchy of aṣṭakas presented in Śaiva tantric literature. See Bisschop 2006, pp. 27–34; Sanderson 2003–04, pp. 403–406; and Goodall 2004, pp. 314–16 fn. 620. On the antiquity of the Śivadharmaśāstra’s version, see especially Sanderson 2003–2004, p. 404. A passage from the Sarvajñānottara (adhvaprakaraṇa 63–109) quoted by Goodall (2004, pp. 314–15, fn. 620) seems to confirm that the nature of the pañcāṣṭaka was different from that of the other groupings, because this is the only case in which it is specified that the sites correspond to real sacred places (tīrthas) on Earth. On this basis, Goodall argues in the same passage that the pañcāṣṭaka depicted in the Śivadharmaśāstra could still denote real fields (kṣetras) and may not be connected with any ultramundane worlds; they would thus reflect an early stage in the development of the theology of the aṣṭakas, a further hint of the earliness of our text within Śaiva literature.

152

Śivadharmottara 2.146–47: ‘There, according to rule, one should install Śiva, made of clay, wood or stone, who is the author of all treatises, omniscient, Lord who bears a club, (146) / Surrounded by pupils and pupils of pupils, with his hands raised in the act of teaching, seated in the lotus position, lord of the gods, a master whose speech is vivid (147)’; tatra mṛddāruśailam vā sthāpayed vidhivac chivam | sarvavidyāvidhātāraṃ sarvajñaṃ lakulīśvaram || 146 vṛtaṃ śiṣyapraśiṣyaiś ca vyākhyānodyatapāṇikam | padmāsanasthaṃ deveśaṃ prasannavadanaṃ gurum || 147.

153

Śivadharmottara 12.203–207 (A fol. 48v[LL5–6]—49r[L1], B fol. 88r[L6]–88v[LL1–2],P2 [P176]): bhojayec chraddhayā bhaktyā yaḥ śivabrahmacāriṇam | sa bho[B88vL1]gaiḥ krīḍate divyaiḥ śivaloke vyavasthitaḥ [vyavasthitāḥ A] || 203 yaḥ śivāśramadharmasthaṃ [yaḥ śivāya saddharmasthaṃ B; °dharma- om. P2] gṛhasthaṃ [grasthaṃ P2] bhojayed budhaḥ | vipulaiḥ sa mahābhogaiḥ krīḍan śivapure vaset|| 204 śivāśramavanasthāṃ yaḥ[AL6] kandamūlādibhir yajet | sa divyān prāpnuyāt [prāpnuyā B] bhogān īśvarasya pure sthitaḥ || 205 ekaṃ pāśupataṃ bha[BL2]ktyā bhojayitvā praṇamya ca | nānāvidhair mahābhogaiḥ śivaloke pramodate [mahīyate B P] || 206 mahāvratadharāyaikāṃ [mahāvratadharāṃ ekāṃ P2] bhikṣāṃ [bhikṣā P2] yaḥ [°ya P] pratipādayet | sa [om. P c.m.] divyaiḥ sumahābhogaiḥ śivaloke mahīyate || 207.

154

See Sanderson 2006, pp. 151–52. For a brief comparison of different classifications of Śaiva strands as found in Sanskrit literature, see also the synoptical table in Lorenzen 1991, pp. 7–10.

155

This is the Pāśupata tradition that is better known to contemporary scholars due to the preservation of a small number of its original texts: Kauṇḍinya’s commentary on the Pāśupatasūtra (Pāñcārthabhāṣya, ‘Commentary on the Five Topics’), usually dated to the fifth to sixth century (Bisschop 2005, p. 530, referring to Hazra 1966, pp. 129–30); the Gaṇakārikā (‘Stanzas on the Groups’); and its commentary, the Ratnaṭīkā (‘Commentary on the Jewel’), attributed to Bhāsarvajña. The recent Nepalese discovery of a codex unicus preserving four ritual manuals (vidhi) attributed to Gārgya and meant for those who underwent Pāñcārthika initiation—the Saṃskāravidhi (‘Procedures for Transformation Rites’), the Pātravidhi (‘Procedures for the Vessels’), the Prāyaścittavidhi (‘Procedures for Atonement’), and the Anteṣṭividhi (‘Procedures for the Last Rites’) is particularly relevant; see Acharya 2007, 2010a, 2010b, and forth.

156

Sanderson 2006, pp. 171–72, observes that, on the basis of information conveyed by later sources, we have come to know that these pramāṇas were 14 in number, eight on gnosis and six on rituals. Apart from their titles, only a short textual passage of seven verses from the *Pañcārthapramāṇa survives, quoted in the Svacchandatantroddyota (ad 1.41–43) by Kṣemarāja (see Sanderson 2006, p. 175). According to this view, the analysis of the little that is known of the belief systems of the Lākulas proves their doctrinal position to be intermediate between Pāñcārthika Śaivism on one side and the tantric traditions on the other.

157

Sanderson 2006, p. 158ff.

158

On the connection between the mahāvrata and the followers of Lakulīśvara, see also Bakker 2014, p. 143 and 153. He refers to the Junvānī copperplate inscription of Mahāśivagupta (pp. 143–45), dated approximately to 647 CE. Here Lakulīśanātha is said to initiated Somaśarman in the mahāvrata. Bakker furthermore cites a passage from Skandapurāṇa (Bhattarai edition) 180.9–11, in which those who underwent the Pāśupata initiation are said to have followed the mahāvrata.

159

However, in a recent study Bakker cautions against the complete identification of the mahāvrata with the kapālavrata (Bakker 2014, pp. 151–52).

160

Such an extreme form of asceticism could have been modelled on the mahāvrata known to Smṛti literature as a 12-year expiation for the involuntary killing of a Brahmin; see Lorenzen 1991, p. 74, quoting from Viṣṇusmṛti 50.1–15. The Purāṇic tradition developed a narrative of Śiva as Brahmin-slayer, whose behavior the Mahāvratas were thus believed to re-enact. The story tells that Śiva had to wander from one tīrtha to another in an attempt to be freed from the skull of the fifth head of Brahmā, which had attached itself to him after he had cut it off (see Lorenzen 1991, pp. 77–79, referring to the version of the story told in Matsyapurāṇa 183.83–108). Śiva was eventually freed of the skull once he arrived at Avimuktakṣetra, in Varanasi.

161

First of all, Sanderson (2006, p. 152) argues that the name Kālamukha (Kālāmukha in its southern variant) must be interpreted as a synonym of Kālavaktra. He then goes on to show their identity both with the Mahāvratas (p. 180) and with the Lākulas (p. 182) on the basis of later attestations of this word in texts and epigraphs. For instance, the list of Purāṇic occurrences given by Lorenzen 1991, pp. 7–10—although the scholar then fails to identify the Kālamukhas with the Lākulas, and the association of both with the mahāvrata, i.e. the kapālavrata—shows how the term Mahāvratadhara was used as a synonym of both Kāpālika (in one of the lists of Śaiva sects given by the Vāmanapurāṇa, or by the ninth-century author Rājaśekhara) and of Kālamukha, as in the list of the Vāyavīyasaṃhitā of the Śivapurāṇa.

162

This third ascetic current of ancient Śaivism, whose adherents are called Saumya, Soma or Somasiddhāntin, is described in Törzsök 2011; for more references, I also refer the reader to Bakker 2014, pp. 147-51. The Somasiddhāntins also adopted a ‘greater observance’ and were identified as Kāpālikas. Probably in an attempt to overcome the traditions connected with Lakulīśvara, they traced their origins back to the Brahmin Somaśarman, who in an inscription associated with the Somasiddhāntin is said to have initiated Lakulīśvara himself (Törzsök 2011, p. 3, referring to the copper-plate inscription from Malhar, Chhattisgarh, for which see also Bakker 2000). The association between these ‘Soma-Kāpālin’ (according to Törzsök’s definition) and the traditions of ancient Śaivism is also hinted at by some mentions found in tantric literature: among other instances, Törzsök quotes (p. 2) the early Sarvajñānottara (14.4), placing the promulgators of the Somasiddhāntin in its cosmic hierarchy just above the Pāśupatas and Lākulas (here called Mahāvrata); Somasiddhāntin are moreover mentioned next to Lākulas in the Jayadrathayāmala (1.45.83), and the same text at 1.33.17 places Kāpālikas and Lākulas next to each other (Törzsök 2011, p. 3).

163

Śivadharmaśāstra 9.19 (A fol. 27v[L5], B fol. 30v[L1], P1[P104]): etad vratottamaṃ guhyaṃ śivaliṅgaṃ mahāvratam | bhaktasya te mayākhyātaṃ [yathākhyātaṃ P] na deyaṃ yasya kasyacit || 19.

164

Śivadharmaśāstra 9.1: ‘And now, o best among the ascetics, I will tell this supreme secret, connected to excellent merits, practised by all gods’; (A fol. 27r[L4], B fol. 29v[L6], P1[P102]) ataḥ param i[AL5]daṃ guhyaṃ vakṣyāmimunisattama [munisattamaḥ B] | puṇyā[CL4]tiśayasaṃyuktaṃ sarvadevair anuṣṭhitam || 1.

165

The worship of the liṅga as described by chapter 9 is carried out by means of the usual materials (incense, unguents, flowers, offerings), although it seems to imply the presence of not only one, but two liṅgas of different dimensions, since after bathing and anointing the liṅga the text prescribes that one should place on a lotus a ‘smaller liṅga’, measuring only one thumb, and then put it ‘at the right side’ (scil. ‘of the main liṅga’), where it must be worshipped with offerings of flowers, incense, and food (Śivadharmaśāstra 9.8–14). As for the use of two liṅgas, chapter 3 of the Śivadharmaśāstra (see 3.56) had recommended the cult of a ‘pair of liṅgas’ (liṅgadvayaṃ), a movable (and arguably smaller) and a non-movable one (sacarācaram), and prescribes the worship of both as mandatory.
A non-negligible detail in identifying the connection of this literature with non-tantric and early tantric Śaivism regards the position in which the ‘smaller liṅga’ has to be installed, namely at the ‘right’ or ‘southern’ mūrti (literally ‘face’, dakṣiṇamūrtau, 9.10). This compound, in the locative case, as well as the analogous construction with the locative dakṣiṇāyāṃ mūrtau, is attested in non-tantric Śaiva literature, for example in Kauṇḍinya’s Pañcārthabhāṣya commentary (fourth or fifth century) on the Pāśupatasūtra, to denote the spot at the southern side of Mahādeva where the novice sits during initiation (on the history of non-tantric attestations of the expressions dakṣiṇamūrti/dakṣiṇā mūrti, see Bakker 2004). As highlighted by Bakker, the dakṣiṇā mūrti is traditionally the position where the novice should sit while receiving initiation from Mahādeva, and by analogy the position of the student and the teacher, which replicates the one prescribed for teacher and pupil in some branches of Vedic literature. It is in the sense of a specific spot that the term is used in Śivadharmaśāstra’s chapter 9, as well as in pre-twelfth-century tantric literature. Few tantric attestations of this expression are collected in TAK s.v., where it is argued that the expression dakṣiṇāyāṃ mūrtau is very frequently attested in the Niśvāsa, the earliest surviving tantric scripture, especially in the Niśvāsa Guha, the section of the Niśvāsa mainly dealing with liṅga cult. Here it denotes the relative position of the liṅga and the worshipper. Chapter 9 of the Śivadharmaśāstra also attests the same expression in the accusative, when at the conclusion of the liṅga worship the devotee who is said to offer the liṅga to Śiva is described as ‘one who has taken refuge in the southern mūrti’ (dakṣiṇāmūrtim āśritaḥ, 9.15). This use, again analogous to what happens both in the non-tantric Pañcārthabhāṣya and in the early tantric Niśvāsamukha, designates a ‘form’ of Mahādeva, as the god is envisioned in meditation by someone at the god’s right side (see again Bakker 2004 and TAK s.v.). This ultimately corresponds to an actual icon of the god, which Kauṇḍinya describes and further remarks that it functions as an object of worship for lay people. This second meaning of the dakṣiṇāmūrti as a form of the god rather than a direction may also be detected in chapter 9 of the Śivadharmaśāstra.

166

Śivadharmaśāstra 9.16–18. On this passage see also Bisschop forth., especially p. 3, where it is mentioned in the context of an inquiry into the ‘inclusivist’ model adopted by the Śivadharmaśāstra, which expands its own pantheon of deities in order to include even the Buddha and the Arhats (though only a few manuscripts attest those stanzas), but at the same time pays particular attention to placing all other gods in a relation of strict dependence on Śiva, as illustrated by the long ‘great appeasement’ mantra of chapter 6.

167

Śivadharmaśāstra 11.46–48 (A fol. 35v[LL1–2], B fol. 38v[L6]–fol. 39r[L1], P1[P134]): śivadhyānaparāḥ śāntāḥ [°paraḥ śāntaḥ P1] śivadharmaparā[B39rL1]yaṇāḥ [°parāyaṇaḥ P1] | sarva evāśramā jñeyāḥ śivabhaktāḥ [śivadharmāḥ P1] śivāsramāḥ [śivāśrimāṇḍaḥ p.c. B] || 46 mahāvratāṣṭakaṃ dhāryam [kāryaṃ P1] īśenoktaṃ [īśānoktaṃ P1] śivārthibhiḥ | sarvavratānāṃ pravaram [pravaraṃm A] asmin dharmaḥ samāpyate || 47 śive bhaktiḥ [śivabhaktiḥ B] sadā [śive P1] kṣāntir [śāntiḥ P1] ahiṃsā sarvadā [AL2]śamaḥ | santoṣaḥ satyam asteyaṃ brahmacaryaṃ tathāṣṭakam [tathāṣṭakaḥ a.c., tathāṣṭaka p.c. B] || 48.

168

Compare, for instance, the definition offered by the Śivadharmottara in which all the main elements of the Brahmanic gift are mentioned (Śivadharmottara 4.5–6): ‘What is given, offered as oblation, performed and offered in sacrifice when there is a [proper] recipient and place and time, according to the [right] procedure and with trustworthiness, this will bestow infinite fruit (5) / Whatever is trustfully given to a fit recipient, even if it only measures half of a sesame seed, this will grant all wishes (6)’; (A fol. 12v[LL4–5], B fol. 58v[LL3–4], P2[p325]): pātre deśe ca kāle ca vidhinā śra[BL4]ddhayā ca yat | dattaṃ hutaṃ kṛtaṃ ceṣṭaṃ tad anantaphalaṃ [anta° a.c., ananta° p.c. A] bhavet || 5 tilārddhamātrakeṇāpi yat pramāṇena dīyate | sa[AL5]tpātre śraddhayā kiṃcit tad bhavet sārvakāmikam || 6.

169

Śivadharmaśāstra 4.12–14 (A fol. 5v[LL4–5], B fol. 6v[LL1–2], P1[P19]): sarveṣām eva pātrāṇām [pātram a.c., pātrāṇāṃ p.c. A] atipātraṃ maheśvaraḥ [maheśvaraṃ B]| patanāt trāyate yasmād [tasmād B] atīva narakārṇave ||12 tasya pātra[BL2]sya māhātmyād dānambhavati [aṇvapi P1] cākṣayam | tasmāt tasmai sadā de[AL5]yam aprameyaphalārthibhiḥ ||13 śive dattaṃ hutaṃ japtaṃ [taptaṃ P1] pūjābalinivedanam [pūjāphala° P1] | ekāntātyantaphaladaṃ [ekāntābhyantaphaladaṃ B ekaṃ vānantaphaladaṃ P1] tad bhaven nātra saṃśayaḥ || 14.

170

Śivadharmaśāstra 12.55 (A fol. 39r[LL2–3], B fol. 42v[L6]–43r[L1], P1[P148–49]): śivayogī śi[AL3]va[B43r1]jñānī śivadharmarataś ca yaḥ | [P1P149] ity etat trividhaṃ jñeyaṃ śivapātrasya lakṣaṇam || 55.
Note that the same chapter had just defined a simple pātra as one endowed with a few generic good qualities (Śivadharmaśāstra 12.52): ‘Patience, absence of envy, pity, truthfulness, generosity, morality, ascesis, learning: this is taught as the supreme eightfold definition of the recipient’; (A fol. 39r[LL1–2], B fol. 42v[LL5–6], P1[P148]): kṣamāspṛhā da[AL2]yā satyaṃ dānaṃ śīlaṃ tapaḥ śrutam |[BL6]etad aṣṭāṅgam uddiṣṭaṃ [uddiṣṭa° A] paraṃ pātrasya lakṣaṇam || 52. Śivadharmaśāstra 12.41, on the other hand, gives a seemingly generic definition of the features of dāna (Śivadharmaśāstra 12.41): ‘Whatever is desired and excellent, and what can be obtained in a proper manner, only this is the fit object to be donated to one endowed with good qualities: this is the [main] definition of gifting’; (A fol. 38v[L4], B fol. 42v[L2], P1 [P146]) yad yad iṣṭaṃ [yad iṣṭañ ca A yad iṣṭaṃ B c.m.] visiṣṭaṃ ca nyāyaprāptaṃ ca yad bhavet | tat tad guṇavate deyam [yaṃ a.c., deyaṃ p.c. A] ity etad dānalakṣaṇam || 41.

171

Śivadharmottara 4.15 (A fol. 13r[LL1–2], B fol. 58V[L1], P2[P326]): dhyāyamāṇaḥ śivaṃ yogī bhuṅkte ’nnaṃ satataṃ yataḥ | tatas sākṣāc chivenaiva tad bhuktam aśanaṃ bhavet || 15.

172

Śivadharmottara 4.97ab (A fol. 15r[L6], B fol. 61r[L2], P2[P334]): śraddhāpradhānaṃ vijñeyaṃ satpātrādicatuṣṭayam |.

173

Surveys of the textual passages on the canonical Upapurāṇas are found in Hazra 1939–40, pp. 39–50, and in Renou-Filliozat 1953, Appendix 9. Among the lists collected by Hazra that also mention the Śivadharma (always in fourth position) are the Garuḍapurāṇa 1.223.17–20; Prabhāsakhaṇḍa of the Skandapurāṇa, 1.2.11–15; and a passage from Brahmavaivartapurāṇa quoted in Mita Miśra’s Vīramitrodaya, Paribhāṣāprakāśa (p. 14). Within the lists reported by Hazra, the one attributed to Devībhāgavata 1.3.13–16 gives the title Śiva for the fourth Upapurāṇa, while the list assigned to Padmapurāṇa, Pātālakhaṇḍa 111.94b–98, lacks any reference to a Śaiva work at that point.

174

Kūrmapurāṇa 1.1.18ab: caturthaṃ śivadharmākhyaṃ sākṣān nandīśabhāṣitam.

175

According to the first stanzas of the text, the teachings of the Śivadharmaśāstra underwent three phases of transmission: Śiva originally expounded the teachings to his consort in the presence of Nandikeśvara, Skanda, and the Gaṇas; Nandikeśvara then imparted them to Sanatkumāra in reply to his request. According to the last chapter, an abridged version of the original teachings was later taught by Sanatkumāra to Candrātreya, a Śaiva devotee who further abridged the teachings and eventually composed the Śivadharmaśāstra (Śivadharmaśāstra 12.102): ‘And after having extracted the best of the best, the wise Candrātreya taught the Dharmaśāstra of Śiva in twelve chapters (102)’; (A fol. 40v[LL1], B fols. 44v[L1], P1[P153]: sārāt sāraṃ samuddhṛtya candrātreyeṇa dhīmatā | uktaṃ [uktā B] ca dvādaśādhyāyaṃ [dvādaśakādhyāyaṃ P2] dharmaśāstraṃ śivātmakam || 102.

176

Bhaviṣyapurāṇa, Brahmaparvan 4.86–87: aṣṭādaśa purāṇāni rāmasya caritaṃ tathā | viṣṇudharmādiśāstrāṇi śivadharmāś ca bhārata || 86 kārṣṇaś ca pañcamo vedo yan mahābhārataṃ smṛtam | saurāś ca dharmarājendra mānavoktā mahīpate | jayeti nāma caiteṣāṃ pravadanti manīṣiṇaḥ || 87.

177

Yājñavalkyasmṛti 1.7: ‘Revelation, tradition, and the right behaviour, as well as what is dear to one’s own self, [and] desire originating from right intentions: this is traditionally held as rooted in Dharma’; śrutismṛtisadācārāḥ svasya ca priyam ātmanaḥ | samyaksaṃkalpajaḥ kāmo dharmamūlam idaṃ smṛtam. On the significance of this passage of Aparārka’s commentary within the broader history of the relationship between Brahmanism and Śaivism, see Sanderson forth. b, p. 230ff.

178

Aparārkaṭīkā vol. 1, p. 15: evaṃ pratiṣṭhāyām api purāṇādyuktaivetikartavyatā grāhyā nānyā | teṣām eva vyāmiśradharmapramāṇatvena bhaviṣyatpurāṇe parijñātatvāt |.

179

For details on these arguments, see Sanderson forth. b, pp. 240–44.

180

Sanderson 2009, p. 251 fn. 586.

181

For details on these multiple-text manuscripts, see De Simini 2016; some basic information is also given below.

182

The following arrangement is given as in manuscript NAK 1–1075 (NGMPP B 7/3), dated to NS 290 (1169–70 CE).

183

Shastri 1928, p. 721; the manuscript is described as G 4077.

184

This is the palm-leaf manuscript catalogued as NAK 5–892 (NGMPP A 12/3 = A 1084/1), whose 45 extant folios attest only the Śivadharmottara; as already observed (see, among others, Bakker and Isaacson 2005, p. 197 fn. 9), there are important similarities between the script used in this manuscript and that of Skandapurāṇa manuscript NAK 2–229 (NGMPP B 11/4), S1 in the critical edition of the text. The Skandapurāṇa manuscript is dated to NS 234 (810 CE); on the basis of this comparison, the manuscript of the Śivadharmottara might be some decades later.

185

I refer here to manuscript NAK 6–7 (NGMPP A 1028/4), again a Nepalese palm-leaf manuscript. Unfortunately, it is undated and incomplete, but its script should not be later than the tenth century. I thank Kengo Harimoto for his help in estimating the age of this manuscript.

186

Sanderson forth. b, p. 88 fn. 228, observes that the Śivadharmasaṃgraha shows a dependence on the Niśvāsa corpus, with which it shares numerous textual parallels (for more details on these, see Kafle 2015, pp. 61–72 and pp. 291–382); moreover, the Vṛṣasārasaṃgraha distinguishes the texts of the Pāśupatas from those of ‘Śaivas’, a term used in similar contexts to designate tantric Śaivas.

187

This rests on Goodall’s interpretation of the reference to the Śivadharma made by the Kashmiri author Rāmakaṇṭha in his commentary on the Kiraṇatantra (1998, p. 357). The main topic of the relevant section (Kiraṇatantra 6.5–12) is initiation. The mūla text states (6.5–8) that the grace bestowed by the Lord before the purificatory rites of initiation is proportionate with the capacities of the people to be initiated, since some of them are apt to perform rituals (kriyā), some to acquire knowledge (jñāna), and others to undertake religious observance (caryā). For this reason, after having received initiation, they will undertake different niyamakas, that is different post-initiatory activities, among those three listed above, according to their capacities (6.9). People who are totally incapable of post-initiatory activities can be cleansed of these obligations by the teacher. Consequently, women, the diseased, and the elderly can undergo initiation, but they need not fulfil any other obligations afterwards. Their ignorance of truth will account for their sinlessness (6.11abc). On the contrary, it would be a great sin if the teacher would exempt people who, being endowed with knowledge, are capable of carrying out post-initiatory obligations (6.11d–12). Commenting on this statement, Rāmakaṇṭha specifies that the duties required of people who are not capable of postinitiatory rites are those prescribed either in the Laukikadharma or in the Śivadharma teachings. These two categories are explained by Goodall (1998, p. 375 fn. 615 and 616) as referring to Śruti and Smṛti (laukikadharma) and to the works of the Śivadharma corpus, respectively. For the definition of Laukikadharma, Goodall quotes Mataṅgavṛtti ad vidyāpāda 4.49–50. Weak people have at least to fulfil the indications contained in these texts; if they cannot do so in person, they can also have substitutes such as servants and the like perform these obligations for them. This is, for them, the equivalent of the niyamakas to people endowed with knowledge.
The duality between Laukikadharma and Śivadharma in the context of Śaiva initiation occurs in Kashmiri commentarial literature dealing with the initiation of the sādhaka, one of the lowest level of initiates (see Kṣemarāja’s Netratantroddyota, opening of chapter 4, and Svacchandatantroddyota ad Svacchandatantra 4.83–85, a passage paraphrased by Abhinavagupta in Tantrāloka 15.20ff.).

188

See Bakker 2014.

189

See, for instance, the parallels between Skandapurāṇa 37–46 and Śivadharmasaṃgraha’s fourth and seventh chapters, noted in the critical edition of Skandapurāṇa 31–52 in Bakker, Bisschop, and Yokochi 2014.

190

Bakker 2014, pp. 137–39. Here Bakker proposes that an early version of the Skandapurāṇa was composed during the reigns of the Maukhari kings Śarvavarman or Avantivarman, who ruled over Kanauj in the second half of the sixth century. It was probably completed during the reign of Harṣavardhana (Bakker gives ca. 620 CE as a tentative date). The centre of composition, as already stated elsewhere (see the introduction to Bakker and Isaacson 2005), is believed to be Varanasi, firmly included in the Kanauj kingdom and the seat of a lineage of Pañcārthika Pāśupatas.

191

Yokochi 2013, pp. 48–58. According to this reconstruction, a manuscript transmitting an early version of the Skandapurāṇa, described by Yokochi as α, later became the archetype of manuscript S1 used in the critical edition of the original Skandapurāṇa; another early version of the Skandapurāṇa composed in India is the one identified by Yokochi as β, and which has been shown to have been produced at least one century later than the preceding version.

192

None of the dozens of manuscripts transmitting the Śivadharmaśāstra and the Śivadharmottara, independently or in association with other works, has ever been used for a critical edition. All that is available in printed format is an edition that appeared in Kathmandu, in partly handwritten form, most likely based on the transcription of one manuscript to which the editor added his conjectures without providing either a critical apparatus or critical notes; this edition (1998) is accompanied by the commentary of Yogī Naraharinatha, while the editor, author of a brief premise, is not even credited. Before that, a version of the Śivopaniṣad appeared in a miscellaneous volume of Unpublished Upanishads (Kunhan 1933), while only very recently has the text of the Śivadharmaśāstra appeared in print, accompanied by a Hindi commentary, an introduction, and some critical notes (see Jugnu 2014).

193

See Sanderson forth. a, pp. 3–10.

194

Śivadharmottara 1.18–22: ‘[The teachings] whose essence is nothing but Śruti, which are subtle, dealing with prakṛti, puruṣa, and Īśvara, are grasped only by means of faith, not with the hand nor with the eye. (18) / A difficult teaching is not understood by means of the many bodily afflictions (tapas), nor by only accumulating material goods, not even by the gods who are devoid of faith. (19) / The supreme, subtle Dharma is faith; knowledge, fire sacrifice, and ascesis are faith; both heaven and emancipation are faith; this entire universe is faith. (20) / Even if one would donate all of [his] livelihood, [but] without faith, he would not obtain any fruit; therefore, he has to become endowed with faith. (21) / Thus all the Śaiva teachings are known as consisting of faith, and Śiva can be reached through faith, worshipped and meditated upon through faith (22)’; (A fol. 2r[LL1-2], B fol. 47r[LL1-2], P2[P281]) śrutimātrarasāḥ sūkṣmāḥ pradhānapuruṣeśvarāḥ | śraddhāmātreṇa gṛhyante na kareṇa na cakṣuṣā || 18 kāyakleśair na bahubhir [makhaiś caiva P2] na caivārthasya rāśibhiḥ | dharmaḥ [dharma B] samprāpyate sūkṣmaḥ śraddhāhīnaiḥ surair api || 19 śraddhā dharmaḥ paraḥ sūkṣmaḥ śraddhā jñānaṃ hutaṃ tapaḥ | [BL2] śraddhā [śraddhātaḥ a.c., śraddhā p.c. A] svargaś ca [svargā° a.c., svargaśca p.c. A] mokṣaś ca śra[AL2]ddhā sarvam idaṃ jagat || 20 sarvasvaṃ jīvitaṃ vāpi [cāpi B] dadyād aśraddhayā yadi | nāpnuyāt sa phalaṃ kiṃcic chraddadhānas tato bhavet || 21 evaṃ śraddhāmayāḥ [°mayā B] sarve śivadharmāḥ prakīrtitāḥ | śivaś ca śraddhayā gamyaḥ pūjyo dhyeyaś ca śraddhayā || 22.

195

Śivadharmottara 1.44–45: ‘The one who is covered with attachment and aversion, since he is seized by negative feelings, he will speak untruth. These [negative feelings] do not exist in Īśvara: how could he speak otherwise? (44) / That immaculate statement that has been composed by Śiva, in whom no defects are arisen and who is omniscient, this is a means of right knowledge, no doubt [about it]. (45)’; (A fol.2v[LL3–4], B fol. 47v[L4], P2[PP295]) rāgadveṣāvṛtaḥ krodhair [rāgadveṣādibhir doṣair B rāgadveṣāvṛtakrodhaṃ P2] grastatvā[AL4]d anṛtaṃ vadet | te ceśvare na [ceśvareṇa A] vidyante brūyāt sa katham anyathā [44cd om. P2] || 44 ajātāśeṣadoṣeṇa [apāstāśeṣadoṣeṇa P2] sarvajñena śivena yat | praṇītam amalaṃ vākyaṃ [śāstraṃ P2] tat pramāṇaṃ na saṃśayaḥ || 45

196

Śivadharmottara 1.38–39: ‘One in whose heart this mantra ‘oṃ namaḥ śivāya’ constantly dwells, he has learned [all] the knowledge that has been taught, and performed all [rituals]. (38) / One who constantly practices the repetition of the mantra ‘oṃ namaḥ śivāya’, [no matter] how many [fields of] Śaiva knowledge [may exist], and which ones [may be] the seats of learning, one will expound them [all] in a condensed form by means of the mantra of six syllables. (39)’; Śivadharmottara 1.38–39 (A fol.2v[LL1–2], B fol. 47v[L2], P2[P293]): yasyaun namaḥ śivāyeti mantro ’yaṃ hṛdi saṃsthitaḥ | tenādhītaṃ śrutaṃ jñānaṃ [tena P2] tena sarvam anu[AL2]ṣṭhitam|| 38 yenaun namaḥ śivāyeti mantrābhyasaḥ sthirīkṛtaḥ | śivajñānāni yāvanti vidyāsthānāni [vidyādānāni A] yāni ca | ṣaḍakṣarasya mantrasya [sūtrasya P2] tāni bhāṣet [bhāṣyaṃ P2] samāsataḥ || 39.

197

Haracaritacintāmaṇi 30.2–3: ‘I have collected for you, from treatises like the Śivadharmottara, something that is suitable to our own doctrine. (2) / Since, out of sympathy, the Omniscient taught the treatises in order to favor all, one has to know that the truth is there (3).’ (fol. 113r[LL3-5]): svadarśanocitaṃ kiñcid idaṃ saṅgṛhyate ma[L4]yā | śivadharmottarādibhyaḥ [śivadharmāntarādibhyaḥ ed.] śāstrebhyo bhāvitān prati || 2 anugrahītuṃ niḥśeṣān sarvajño yad upādiśat [L5]| śāstrāṇi kṛpayā tatra vijñeyā satyarūpatā || 3.
This and further references to chapter 30 of the Haracaritacintāmaṇi are based on my reading of the śāradā ms. ORL 1510, whose pictures, along with a draft transcript, have been kindly shared with me by Alexis Sanderson. The readings of this manuscript have been checked against the edition of the Kāvyamālā series (1897), in which the variant readings attested in ms. ORL 1510 are not reported. The stanzas translated above, where the manuscript’s reading śivadharmottarādibhyaḥ (‘from treatises like the Śivadharmottara’) is attested instead of the śivadharmāntarādibhyaḥ (‘from within the Śivadharma and so on’) of the edition, are a good example of the improvements achieved through this collation.

198

The Haracaritacintāmaṇi combines the stanzas of Śivadharmottara’s first chapter in order to invert the sequence of the topics: the Kashmiri text first touches upon the infallibility of Śiva, which is the reason why his words can be considered a pramāṇa, a means of right knowledge (see Śivadharmottara 1.45–46 and Haracaritacintāmaṇi 30.9); only after that, it deals with śraddhā as a crucial tool for the understanding of Śaiva’s teachings and the attainment of Śiva himself, even by gods. See Haracaritacintāmaṇi 30.12cd-14ab: ‘Not by means of bodily mortification, nor by the accumulation of wealth the great god is attained, without faith, even by the gods. The one who would entirely donate life, but without faith, he would not obtain any fruit, for only faith is the best thing’; (fol. 113v[LL1-3]): na kleśena śarīrasya draviṇasya [L2]na rāśibhiḥ || 12 samprāpyate mahādevo vinā śraddhāṃ surair api | sarvasvam api yo dadyāt prāṇān vā śraddhayā [L3] vinā || 13 sa kiṃcid api nāpnoti phalaṃ śraddhaiva tad varā.
This rearrangement is not without consequences, since it establishes the trustworthiness of Śiva as the premise of the reliability of his teachings—and, thus, of their trustworthiness. The Śivadharmottara’s line of thought works the other way around, since it first requests faith as a key factor of Śaiva devotion, and then bases it on Śiva’s true nature, which determines the truth of his teachings. Both works exalt the six-syllable mantra as the quintessence of all knowledge.

199

Śivadharmottara 1.47–49, 55 (A fol. 2v[LL4–5] and fol. 3r[L1], B fol. 47v[LL5–6] and 48r[LL1–2], P2[P294]): śivavākyapravaktāraṃ śivaulervat pū[AL5]jayed gurum [guruḥ P2] | nṛpaḥ [guruḥ P2] paropakārāya svātmanaś ca [cātmanaś ca A B] samṛddhaye [vibhutaye P2] || 47 jagaddhitāya nṛpatiṃ śivadharme niyojayet | tanniyogād ayaṃ lokaḥ śuciḥ [śuddhi B] syād [syā B] dharmatatparaḥ || 48 yaṃ yaṃ dharmaṃ naraḥ [BL6]śreṣṭhaḥ samācarati [samācararati B c.m.] bhaktitaḥ | tat tam ācarate lokas tatprāmāṇyād bhayena ca [bhavenna vā P2] || 49 […] [A3rL1 B48rL1] dharmaśīle nṛpe ya[BL2]smāt [tasmāt A] prajāḥ syur [tad P2] dharmatatparāḥ [°paraḥ a.c., parāḥ p.c. A] | nṛpatiṃ [nṛpam eva P2 c.m.] bodhayet tasmāt sarvalokānukampayā || 55.

200

Śivadharmottara 1.56 (A fol. 3r[LL1–2], B fol. 48r[L2], P2[P294]): upā[AL2]yena bhayāl lobhān mūrkhān [bhupaṃ P2] chandena [dena P2 c.m.] bodhayet | mantrauṣadhikriyādyair vā lubdhān dharme niveśayet [niyojayet P2] || 56.

201

Haracaritacintāmaṇi 30.32cd-41 (fol. 114r[L9]-114v[L5]): naṣṭaṃ naṣṭaṃ śivajñānaṃ yo jānann[L9]avatārayet || 32 saṃskārayed vā dhīmān sa svayam eva maheśvaraḥ | saṃsārapaṅkanirmagnaṃ samuddharati yo [L10]janam || 33 śivajñānaprabhāveṇa kas tena sadṛśaḥ pitā | amuṣya puṇyamāhātmyaṃ vaktuṃ śakyaṃ na ke[L11]nacit || 34 anugrahāya lokasya śivas tadrūpam āśritaḥ | ajñānavahnisantaptaṃ nirvāpayati yaḥ śa[L12]naiḥ || 35 jñānāmṛtena nṛpatiṃ [em., nṛpatis Cod., ed.] taṃ ko na paripūjayet | tanniyogād ayaṃ lokaḥ śuciḥ syād dharmatatparaḥ || 36 [Fol.114vL1] yaṃ yaṃ dharmaṃ naraśreṣṭhaḥ samācarati bhaktitaḥ | lokas tam ācaraty eva tatpramāṇād bhayena ca || 37 śiva[L2]śāstraṃ likhitvā yaḥ pustakaṃ pratipādayet | vidyādānasya sa phalaṃ labhate nātra saṃśayaḥ || 38 yā[L3]vad akṣarasaṅkhyānaṃ śivajñanasya pustake | tāvad varṣasahasrāṇi dātā śivapure vaset || 39 bhaktais saṃ[L4]pūjyate yatra deśe vyākhyāyate tathā | śivaśāstraṃ na tatra syur durbhikṣādyā upadravāḥ || 40 nṛpates tatra sau[L5]bhāgyaṃ vijayaś ca dine dine | matir dharme sukhaṃ ca syāt sarveṣāṃ puravāsinām || 41.

202

Śivadharmottara 2.161: tataḥ kālena mahatā vidyādānaprabhāvataḥ | jñānayogaṃ samāsādya tatraiva parimucyate || 161.

203

Śivadharmottara 2.177: anena vidhinā jñānaṃ yaḥ śṛṇoti pravakti ca | sa saṃprāpya śriyaṃ saukhyaṃ dehānte muktim āpnuyāt || 177.

204

Śivadharmottara 3.41 (A fol. 11r[LL.3–4], B fol. 56v[LL1–2], P2[P320]): yajñena [yajñair P2] de[BL2]vān [devatvam P2] āpnoti tapobhir brahmaṇaḥ padam | dānena vividhān [AL4] bhogān jñānān mokṣam avāpnuyāt || 41.

205

Śivadharmottara 3.64–66 (A fol. 11v[LL5–6], B fol. 67r[LL4–5], P2[PP 322–23]): tīrthāni toyapūrṇāni devān [devāḥ B] pāṣāṇamṛnmayān [pāṣānimṛtmayāḥ B] | [P2P323] yogino na prapadyante svātmapratyayakāriṇaḥ || 64 [AL6] agnau kriyāvatāṃ devāḥ divi devā [devo P2] manīṣiṇāṃ | pratimāsv aprabuddhānāṃ yoginām ātmani sthitāḥ || 65 [BL5] śivam ātmani paśyanti pratimāsu na yoginaḥ | ajñānāṃ bhāvanārthāya pratimāḥ [pratimā A B] parikalpitāḥ [parikalpitā A B] || 66.

206

Chapter 13 to 21 are devoted to the story of demon Ghora’s delusion and his fight, in the disguise of the buffalo Mahiṣa, against the goddess, who will eventually slay him.

207

Yokochi 1999, pp. 88–91. This warrior goddess results from the amalgamation of the main preceding figures, in particular that of the ‘Goddess killing the demon Mahiṣa’ (Mahiṣāsuramardinī), that of the ‘Goddess dwelling on mount Vindhya’ (Vindhyavāsinī), and that of Durgā. Such an amalgamation would already have happened in the fifth and early sixth century, when the royal cult of the Warrior Goddess is attested in epigraphical records from Udayagiri Cave VI and from Bihar respectively.

208

For these rites, consisting of the empowerment of swords, chariots, fortresses, and urban spaces, see Sarkar 2011, pp. 128–41.

209

Devīpurāṇa 2.19: ‘Oh Bhagavan, by means of which activity would one who has been on this immovable [Earth] [then] become the Lord of the Vidyādhāras? Tell this to me, o Lord!’; bhagavan karmaṇā kena vidyādharapatir bhavet | bhūtavān acale tasminn etad ākhyāhi me prabho || 19.

210

Devīpurāṇa 2.20: śivena yā purā vidyā viṣṇor dattā ’tha viṣṇunā | pitāmahasya tenāpi śakrasya pratipāditā || 20.

211

Devīpurāṇa 127.10cd11ab: yaḥ śṛṇoti śivaṃ jñānaṃ nyāyatas tat pravakti ca || 10 tau gacchataḥ śivaṃ jñānaṃ narakaṃ tadviparyaye |. Note that the equivalent stanza of the Śivadharmottara reads the first śivajñānaṃ in compound and, more coherently, tau gacchataḥ śivaṃ sthānaṃ ‘these two go to the seat of Śiva’ at 1.75c. Stanza 1.75 in its entirety thus reads: yaḥ śṛṇoti śivajñānaṃ nyāyatas tat pravakti ca | tau gacchataḥ śivasthānaṃ narakaṃ tad viparyayāt || 75 (see Appendix 2).

212

Hazra, in his long account of the text (1963, pp. 35–193), classifies the Devīpurāṇa among the ‘Śākta Upapurāṇas’, ‘one of the most important’ (pp. 35–36). Hazra’s considerations are the starting point for Chakrabarti’s study of the ‘Bengal Purāṇas’ (2001).

213

As for the association of the Devīpurāṇa with tantric literature and practices, which were the reason why this text was excluded by Ballālasena in his Dānasāgara, see § 2.5 and 3.1.

214

For a general survey of the attestations of goddesses and their worship in Sanskrit sources, see Kinsley 1988.

215

These are chapters 108–110. The parallel with Carakasaṃhitā 1 (sūtrasthāna), 25 is pointed out by Hazra 1963, p. 64.

216

The goddess accounted for in the Devīpurāṇa is an amalgam of the main female deities documented in India from very early times. In the glorification of the goddess pronounced by Nārada in chapter 16, she is called, among other names, Durgā (16.20a), Vindhyavāsinī (the ‘Inhabitant of Mount Vindhya’, 16.20b), Kauśikī (16.20d) Yoganidrā (the ‘Yoga-Sleep’, 16.26b), Mahiṣāsuraghātinī (or Mahiṣāsuramardinī, the ‘Slayer of the Demon Mahiṣa’, 16.31b), and the warrior goddess who killed the demon Ghora who appeared in the form of the buffalo Mahiṣa. It is Śiva himself who, talking to Brahmā in chapter 7, proclaims the equivalence of these aspects, which correspond to his wife Umā, his supreme śakti. He sent her to Mount Vindhya in order to fight and defeat the demon Ghora (Devīpurāṇa 7.20): ‘The one who, among the Great Souls, is the primeval, the supreme divine power, the yoga-sleep, mounting a lion, she went to amuse herself on the Vindhya’; yā sā ādyā parāśaktir yoganidrā mahātmanām | sā tu siṃhaṃ samāruhya vindhye krīḍanatāṃ yayau || 20. The Vedas form her body and she is accompanied by female attendants who, at 7.91, are identified with the Divine Mothers (mātaraḥ).

217

Sarkar 2011, p. 140, notes that attestations in early medieval texts document that the devotees of the goddess primarily sought security and protection; for this reason, she had been associated with protective clan-goddesses. This is further testified, after all, by the association of the goddess with the protection of towns and fortresses, which also finds linguistic expression in the equivalence between her name (Durgā) and the Sanskrit term for fort (durga). On this, see Sarkar 2011, p. 138, referring to traditional interpretations of the name of the goddess as a ‘savior from dangers’.

218

Among the most convincing of Hazra’s arguments (1963, p. 79ff.) for assuming a Bengali origin of the Devīpurāṇa is the kind of topography reflected in this Purāṇa, almost exclusively referring to localities in northern India, as well as the geographical distribution of its manuscripts, mostly found in Bengal and written in Bengali characters. The same scholar also lists a few linguistic features that he interprets as evidence of Bengali influence on the language of the Devīpurāṇa.

219

On this pan-Indian festival and its identification as a rite of kingship, see Sarkar 2011, pp. 142–204, and Sarkar 2012, which also provides an outline of foregoing scholarship on the topic.

220

See Sanderson 2009, pp. 225–32.

221

The earliest piece of evidence comes from Kuṣāna sculpture, first to thrid century CE (Hatley 2012, p. 3). Hatley (2012, pp. 4–7) also notes that the first royal support for the cult of the divine Mothers is attested in inscriptions from the fifth century CE; by that time their worship had been systematized with the establishment of a fixed set of seven goddesses—although the number may vary according to traditions—six of which were the counterparts of as many male deities, with the seventh one, Camuṇḍā, being their leader.

222

Devīpurāṇa 91.8–12: devyāvatāraśāstrāṇi rudraviṣṇubhavāni ca | vācayan cintayan vatsa īpsitaṃ labhate phalam || 8 yas tu devyā gṛhe nityaṃ vidyādānaṃ pravartayet | sa bhavet sarvalokānāṃ pūjyaḥ pūjāpadaṃ vrajet || 9 mātarā purato yas tu vasor dhārāṃ prapātayet | pṛthivyāṃ ekarāṅ vatsa iha caiva bhaven naraḥ || 10 chatraṃ vātha prapāṃ vahniṃ prāvṛṅgrīṣmahimāgame | kārayen mātṛpurataḥ sarvakāmān avāpnuyāt || 11 vidyādānaṃ pravakṣyāmi yena tuṣyanti mātaraḥ | likhyate yena vidhinā dīyate tat śṛṇusva naḥ || 12.

223

A list of the different avatāras of the goddess is given in chapters 16, 37, and 38 of the Devīpurāṇa (see Hazra 1963, pp. 44 and 48). According to chapter 50, the sixty forms of the goddess are divided into the three categories of sāttvika (‘bright’), rājasa (‘vigorous’), and tāmasika (‘obscure’); on this see Hazra 1963, pp. 51–52).

224

Devīpurāṇa 91.22–25: vidyādānena dānāni na hi tulyāni buddhimān | vidyā eva paraṃ manye yat tat padam anuttamam || 22 śṛṇvann utpadyate bhaktir bhaktyā gurum upāsate | sa ca vidyāgamān vakti vidyā granthāśritā nṛpa || 23 vidyāvivekabodhena śubhāśubhavicāriṇaḥ | vindate sarvakāmāptiṃ tasmād vidyā parāgatā || 24 vidyādānāt paraṃ dānaṃ na bhūtaṃ na bhaviṣyati | yena dattena cāpnoti śivaṃ paramakāraṇam || 25.

225

As for the conventions used when referring to the Nandipurāṇa, I have relied on the text of Lakṣmīdhara’s Dānakāṇḍa; the numeration of the stanzas thus corresponds to the one reproduced in the latest edition of this work (Brick 2014). As a general rule for stanzas quoted from the Dharmanibandhas but not found in the original text, I append to the number a siglum identifying the name of the author from whose work the quotation was taken (for a complete list of these abbreviations, see References). Lakṣmīdhara’s quotation on the gift of knowledge from the Nandipurāṇa is long and, unlike other cases, uninterrupted, so that one might imagine that the stanzas were arranged in this order also in the original text. However, the passage is not quoted in its entirety, as Lakṣmīdhara inserts the adverb tathā between stanzas 12.84 and 12.85, a stylistic devise used to underline the omission of a portion of text. This arrangement for the Nandipurāṇa stanzas is also confirmed by the slightly later work of Ballālasena. Hemādri attributes to the Nandipurāṇa a few more stanzas that are lacking in Lakṣmīdhara’s text (see Table to chapter 3).

226

See Hazra 1963, pp. 480–81. One example is in Ballālasena’s Dānasāgara, in the chapter on the ‘gift of the daily amount of food for the cows’ (gavāhnikadāna), where the following stanza is attributed to the Nandipurāṇa (Dānasāgara 10.3): ‘Anyone who would donate the daily amount of food for the cows donated to Rudra, he would go to the world of Rudra along with two members of the family’; yo gavāṃ rudradattānāṃ ko’pi dadyād gavāhnikam | sa gacched rudrabhavanaṃ kuladvayasamanvitam || 3. The example referred to in the Caturvargacintāmaṇi (Dānakhaṇḍa, p. 507), again concerning a donation addressed to the god—in this case the gifting of clothes—is very similar. Here, the stanzas attributed to the Nandipurāṇa prescribe that one should donate clothes to Śiva (śive dadyāt) in order to be exalted in the world of Śiva (śivaloke mahīyate).

227

Several examples are found in the Dānakāṇḍa of the Kṛtyakalpataru. In chapter 6.3, stanza 2, the gift of a pregnant cow is said to be addressed ‘to a Brahmin who recites the Veda, as well as to the chosen god’ (Dānakāṇḍa 6.3.2NP: [...] vipre vedavādini | devāya cāpy abhīṣṭāya [...]); in the same chapter, a further stanza attributed to the Nandipurāṇa defines the recipients of a cow as ‘holy, eminent, and very pure practitioners of the Agnihotra’ (Dānakāṇḍa 6.3.24NP: [...] ādhyātmikā mukhyāḥ suśuddhāś cāgnihotriṇaḥ). In the brief list of donations contained in the Nandipurāṇa stanzas quoted in chapter 19, on the ‘mixed donations’ (prakīrṇadānāni), Brahmins and gods are the recipients of the gifts, while being a Brahmin is also envisaged as the reward for those who practice gifting (Dānakāṇḍa 19.97–98NP): ‘One who would donate an ornament to the Brahmin and to the god, he will go to the world of Varuṇa adorned with various ornaments; after a time he is born again on Earth as a twice-born king. (97) / And by means of the gift of the sacred cord to the gods and a Brahmin, one will become a Brahmin, knower of the four Vedas, with certainty. (98)’; alaṃkāraṃ tu yo dadyād viprāyātha surāya ca | sa gacched vāruṇaṃ lolaṃ nānābharaṇabhūṣitaḥ | jātaḥ pṛthivyāṃ kālena bhaved dvīpapatir nṛpaḥ || 97 yajñopavītadānena surebhyo brāhmaṇāya ca | bhaved vipraś caturvedaḥ śuddhadhīr nātra saṃśayaḥ || 98.

228

Dānakāṇḍa 16.29–30abNP: yo dadyāt brahmaṇe ’nnāni tasya dviguṇitaṃ phalam | tasmād viṣṇau tu dattvānnaṃ dviguṇaṃ phalam aśnute || 29 rudrāyānnapradānena phalam etac caturguṇam |.

229

Śivadharmottara 2.2–3: adhyāpya yac chanaiḥ śiṣyān śivabhaktān prabodhayet | śivavidyānusāreṇa vidyādānaṃ tad ucyate || 2 saṃskṛtaiḥ prākṛtair vākyair yaḥ śiṣyasyānurūpataḥ | deśabhāṣādyupāyaiś ca bodhayet sa guruḥ smṛtaḥ || 3.

230

Śivadharmottara 2.13: vidyādānaṃ pravakṣyāmi dhanināṃ pustakāśritam | likhyate dīyate yena vidhinā tatphalaṃ ca yat || 13.

231

The Nandipurāṇa remarks that the vidyādāna should be practiced by ‘observing the right procedure, with trustworthiness’ (vidhivac chraddhayā, Dānakāṇḍa 12.105NP), and addressed to ‘proper recipients’ (satpātrebhyaḥ, 12.106NP), particularly those ‘endowed with good qualities’ (guṇaśāliṣu 12.106NP).

232

The Bhaviṣyottarapurāṇa quoted by Aparārka (Aparārkaṭīkā, vol. 1 p. 390) prescribes that the ritual should start ‘on an auspicious day taught by a Brahmin’ (śubhe ’hni viprakathite, Bhaviṣyottara 2Apa). According to the Vahnipurāṇa quoted by Hemādri (Dānakhaṇḍa, p. 556), the beginning of the procedures will take place ‘on an auspicious day, in correspondance with an auspicious nakṣatra’ (śubhe ’hni śubhanakṣatre, Vahnipurāṇa 4Hem); in the Varāhapurāṇa passage that Hemādri quotes immediately after this (Dānakhaṇḍa, p. 557), the ritual is said to start ‘on the taught day’ (ukte […] kāle, Varāhapurāṇa 2Hem).

233

Dānakāṇḍa 12.117NP: gṛhe manorame gupte sudhālepitabhittike | nānārāgāṅganopete surabimbamanorame | dhūpāmodamanojñe tu vitānakapariṣkṛte || 117.

234

Note that the Varāhapurāṇa explictly mentions a ‘pavilion endowed with a beautiful altar’ (maṇḍapaṃ śubhavedikam, Varāhapurāṇa 4Hem) as the place where the copying of the manuscript has to take place.

235

Śivadharmottara 2.16–18: bhūmibhāge same ramye sarvadoṣavivarjite | vidyāmaṇḍalakaṃ kṛtvā gandhagomayavāriṇā || 16 aṣṭahastaṃ tadardhaṃ vā vṛttaṃ vā caturasrakam | tanmadhye sitacūrṇena likhet padmaṃ suśobhanam || 17 tadbahir varṇakaiś citrair nānāśobhaṃ prakalpayet | pañcavarṇaiś ca kusumair yathāśobham alaṅkṛtam || 18. This passage has a literal parallel in Atharvavedapariśiṣṭa 19b (see Appendix 2).

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The prescriptions given by the Devīpurāṇa and the Bhaviṣyottarapurāṇa are very similar in this regard. The Devīpurāṇa, for instance, establishes (Devīpurāṇa 91.40–41): ‘In a place that slopes down to the northeast and is deprived of all obstacles, beautiful, besmeared with cow dung, the competent person should draw a maṇḍala (40) / Measuring four hands, beautiful, quadrangular. In the middle of it he should draw a lotus flower, with colours like white, red, and black. (41)’; pūrvottaraplave deśe sarvabādhavivarjite | gomayena śubhe lipte kuryān maṇḍalakaṃ budhaḥ || 40 caturhastapramāṇena śubhaṃ tu caturasrakam | tasya madhye likhet padmaṃ sitaraktarajādibhiḥ || 41. The following description of the decoration of the place given by the Devīpurāṇa also closely resembles the text of the Śivadharmottara (see Appendices 1 and 2). The Bhaviṣyottarapurāṇa quoted by Aparārka, on the other hand, reads (Aparārkaṭīkā, vol. 1 p. 390): ‘On an auspicious day taught by a Brahmin, one should make with cow dung a very auspicious maṇḍala, [which would be] beautiful, quadrangular, furnished with heaps of flowers (st. 3) on all sides, (2) / Endowed with a svastika and so on; having placed the manuscript in that place, one should revere it with fragrances and flowers. (3)’; śubhe ’hni viprakathite gomayena suśobhanam | kārayen maṇḍalaṃ divyaṃ caturasraṃ samantataḥ || 2 puṣpaprakarasaṃyuktaṃ svastikādisamanvitam | pustakaṃ tatra saṃsthāpya gandhapuṣpaiḥ samarcayet || 3. The Agnipurāṇa only makes a very quick reference to an ‘auspicious maṇḍala’ into which one should worship the two manuscripts placed on a foldable seat (Agnipurāṇa 1.63.10: svastike maṇḍale ’bhyarcya […]).
A complex Buddhist description of a vidyāmaṇḍala—here however referred to as a mahāvidyāmaṇḍala—is found in chapter 2.4 of the Kāraṇḍavyūhasūtra, a Buddhist Sūtra almost entirely dedicated to the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara and the teaching of the mantra ‘oṃ maṇi padme hūm’ (‘Great knowledge consisting of six syllables’, ṣaḍakṣarimahāvidyā) as a means of salvation.

237

See Olivelle 2010, p. 45. Yājñavalkyasmṛti 2.84–94 is called the ‘section on documents’ (lekhyaprakaraṇa).

238

A notable attestation of the word ādarśa is in the early Buddhist Mahāyāna text Bodhisattvabhūmi (p. 88; see also above § 1.1); for other occurrences in poetic literature, see Apte 1965 s.v. Note that in commenting on the same stanza from the Nandipurāṇa, Ballālasena glosses pūrvapustaka simply with the word ādarśa (Dānasāgara, p. 479).

239

Dānasāgara, p. 489: tatra lekhyaṃ śāstraṃ yathoktaṃ patrasaṃcayaṃ ca sthāpayitvā.

240

Dānasāgara 43.61cd–62abNP = Dānakāṇḍa 12.119cd–120abNP: prārabhet tūryaghoṣeṇa pūjya devān pitṝṃs tathā || 61Bal=119Lak brāhmaṇān svasti vācyādau śāstraṃ saṃcārayed budhaḥ |.

241

Dānasāgara, p. 480: ayam arthaḥ—budho yajamāno devān pitṝṃś ca sampūjya patrasaṃcaye śāstraṃ lekhayed iti |.

242

Devīpurāṇa 91.37–39 (= Dānakāṇḍa 12.13–14, Cod. fol. 78v[LL11–12]): śrītāḍipatrake [śrītāḍa patraje ed.] saṃce [saṃghe ed.] same tatra [patra° ed.] susaṃcite | vicitrapaṭṭikāpārśve [°paṭṭikāsyāya a.c., °paṭṭikā p.c. Cod.; °kambikā- DK] carmaṇā saṃpuṭīkṛte || 37 raktena vātha kṛṣṇena mṛdunā raṅgitena [vardhitena ed.] vā | dṛḍhasūtranibaddhena [°subaddhena ed.] evaṃ vidhikṛtena ca || 38 yas tu dvādaśasāhasrīṃ saṃhitām upalekhayet | dadāti cābhiyuktāya sa yāti paramāṃ gatim || 39.

243

The nineteenth-century traditional dictionary Śabdakalpadruma explains this noun as ‘[it] collects letters’, saṃcinoti varṇāni (see s.v. saṃca), and analyzes it as a formation from saṃ + ci + the affix ḍaḥ.

244

On the identification of tāḍī with the Talipot (Corypha umbraculiphera), from whose half-leaves the sheets of most northern manuscripts are composed, see Janert 1995, Hikosaka-John 1996, and Jahn 2006. See also Hoernle 1900 for an influential, yet outdated contribution on the history of Indian palm-leaf as a writing support.

245

These attestations are in Śivadharmottara 2.84: ‘As big is the number of this [manuscript’s] extremely auspicious leaves, for so many thousand yugas he is honoured in the world of Śiva’ (yāvat tatpatrasaṃkhyānaṃsaṃcaye ’tīva śobhane | tāvad yugasahasrāṇi śivaloke mahīyate || 84); and Śivadharmottara 2.105: ‘One who will donate with devotion a box made of śrīparṇī wood, dug out, well fit [to contain a manuscript], or else made of leather’ (yaḥ śrīparṇīsamudbhūtaṃ nimnakhātaṃ susaṃcayam | dadyāt sampuṭakaṃ bhaktyā carmaṇā vāpi nirmitam || 105).

246

Dānakāṇḍa 12.112–16: tatra vidyāṃ vinihitāṃ kuryāt pustakasaṃsthitām | kuryāc ca pustakaṃ tasya likhed dhyaṅgulavistṛtam | sūkṣmākṣaraṃ ca ramyaṃ ca kṛṣṇaṃ mecakitaṃ tu vā || 112 atha vā raktapadmābhaṃ mecakālaṃkṛtaṃ śubham | karpāsasūtragrathitaṃ nānāgandhādhivāsitam || 113 masībhiś cāpy anekābhiś caturvarṇābhir eva ca | dṛḍhastambhanayuktābhir mecakaiś cāpy anekaśaḥ || 114 lekhanībhiś ca divyābhir hemacitrābhir eva ca | bahiś ca varṇaṃ kurvīta pustakasya manoramam || 115 pītaraktakaṣāyair vā sunibaddhaṃ sucitritam | ramyaṃ laghu suvistīrṇaṃ nirgranthi granthisaṃyutam || 116.
Compare to this the information given in Bhaviṣyottarapurāṇa 4Apa, also in that case preceding the performance of the ritual: ‘The pen has to be made of gold, and the inkpot of silver; the ink will be made of lampblack (kajjala) produced from a lamp’s flame’; sauvarṇī lekhanī kāryā raupyaṃ ca maṣibhājanam | dīpajvālāsamudbhūtakajjalena maṣī bhavet || 4.

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Śivadharmottara 2.23–26: vidyāsiṃhāsanaṃ śrīman nāgadantādinirmitam | suvarṇaratnanicitaṃ dukūlāstaraṇānvitam || 23 daṇḍāsanaṃ vā śrīmat tad dhemaratnopaśobhitam | nāgendradantanicitaṃ raktacandanadārujam || 24 sthāpya puṣpagṛhasyānte gandhapuṣpaiḥ prapūjya ca | lekhyaṃ ca likhitaṃ cātra vinyaset pustakadvayam || 25 rocanācandanādyaiś ca puṣpair dhūpaiś ca pūjayet | ghṛtapradīpamālābhir bhakṣair vastraiś ca śobhanaiḥ || 26. This passage has a literal parallel in Atharvavedapariśiṣṭa 19b (see Appendix 2). Furthermore, compare this description to the one given by the Hayaśīrṣapāñcarātra, 2.31.4–5, as in Dutta 1971, p. 27 fn. 75: […] daṇḍāsanaṃ vā śrīmantaṃ hemaratnādinirmitam || 4 śrīmat siṃhāsanaṃ vāpi nāgadantādinirmitam | tatra saṃsthāpayed dhīmān pustakadvitayaṃ guruḥ || 5. The references to this section of the Hayaśīrṣapāñcarātra, still unpublished, will be given as in Dutta 1971.

248

The earliest representations of lion-thrones in the history of Indian iconography come from the Mathurā region: this is the place of origin of a seated Buddha image of the Śaka period (ca. first century BCE). This throne is formed by an inverted Mount Meru platform resting on two lions (Huntington 1985, p. 123). Another very early representation from Mathurā is an inscribed image of the Buddha sitting on a pedestal decorated with lions (the ‘Anyor Buddha’, first century CE), and that of a Kuṣāṇa king possibly identified as Vima Kadphises (first to second century CE; for both, see Rosenfield 1967, pp. 183–86). The motif of the lion-throne, which will become central in Buddhist iconography, does not have a specific prototype, but its origins have been hypothetically located in the art of Near and Central Asia (Rosenfield 1967, p. 184).

249

These can be considered ‘if not a cultural constant, at least a very widespread characteristic of theistic worship in South Asia’ (Goodall 2011, p. 222) so that many texts dealing with ritual (including the Śivadharmottara; see Goodall 2011, pp. 222–27 for an edition and discussion of the relevant parts of chapter 10) and ritual manuals pay attention to depicting more or less detailed and coherent images of such thrones. Accounts of the siṃhāsana are given, among others, in the eleventh-century Saiddhāntika ritual manual of Somaśambhu, as well as in the twelfth century, in the Kriyākramadyotikā (pp. 87–95) and the Pañcāvaraṇastava (vv. 17–27) of Aghoraśiva, (for these last two references, see Goodall 2011, pp. 222–23). According to these accounts, the siṃhāsana is visualized after the anantāsana; its four lion-legs symbolize both the four ages of the Indian traditional time concept, as well as Dharma, Jñāna, Vairāgya, and Aiśvarya, the four buddhidharmas according to Sāṅkhya philosophy, interpreted in this context by Śaiva commentaries as the four śaktis of Ananta controlling the corresponding functions of the buddhi (Brunner-Lachaux 1963, p. 160, and Goodall 2011, p. 224, both referring to Nirmalamaṇi’s Prabhāvyākhyā on the Kriyākramadyotikā). Aghoraśiva also adds the detail that between the lion-legs are four human figures with lion-faces, each with three eyes, functioning as supportive bars between the legs of the throne; these theriomorphic creatures represent the four opposites of the buddhidharmas, namely Adharma, Ajñāna, Avairāgya, and Anaiśvarya, and are two-colored (Goodall 2011, p. 224).

250

A daṇḍāsana is prescribed as the seat for the goddess Diti (Rao 1914, vol. 1.2 p. 369). The word daṇḍāsana is attested in the Kauṭilīyārthaśāstra (2.18.10) to denote a kind of arrow: veṇuśaraśalākādaṇḍāsanaṇārācāś caiṣavaḥ. Olivelle (2013, p. 142) simply translates: ‘Arrows are made of bamboo, Śara, Śalākā, Daṇḍāsana, and Nārāca’. Kauṭilya does not specify which shape and material this particular one was made of, stating only that the arrows listed in the text can be made ‘of iron, bone or wood’ (2.18.11): teṣāṃ mukhāni chedanabhedanaṭāḍanāny āyasāsthiḍāravāṇi, in Olivelle’s translation, (2013, p. 142): ‘Their tips, intended to cut, pierce, or pound, are made of iron, bone, or wood.’ According to a traditional commentary on the Kauṭilīyārthaśāstra reported by Kangle ad loc. (see 1963, p. 152), the daṇḍāsana was an ardhanārāca, a nārāca being a type of arrow completely made of metal, mentioned by Kauṭilya.

251

Śivadharmottara 12.262–66 (A fol. 51v[LL2–3], B fol. 100r[LL5–6], om. P2): vidyāsiṃhāsane ramye vastrapuṣpādiśobhite | pūjayitvā śivajñānaṃ [śivaṃ jñānaṃ A] śṛṇuyād vācayīta vā || 262 śrīmaddaṇḍāsanaṃ vāpi kṛtvā haimaṃ suśobhanam | hemapaṭṭaparicchannaṃ [em., hemapaṭṭā A B] nānāratnopaśobhitaṃ [°vibhuṣitam B] || 263 rājataṃ tāmrakāṃsyaṃ vā brahmarītyā vinirmitam | tarusārasa[BL6]mudbhūtaṃ śṛṅgacarmādini[AL3]rmitam || 264 yathāsambhavasambhūtair adhaś corddhvam vibhūṣitam | nānābhaktisamuktīrṇaṃ citrasūtranibandhanaṃ || 265 dvyaṅguloccapramāṇeṣu pūrṇacandranibheṣu ca | vicitrotkīrṇavarṇeṣu pratipādeṣu saṃsthitam [saṃsthitā A] || 266.

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Devīpurāṇa 91.44cd–46 (=Dānakāṇḍa 12.20–22): tasya madhye nyased [likhed ed.] yantraṃ nāgadantamayaṃ śubham || 44 adhaḥ kiṃcin [kasmin ed.] nibaddhaṃ tu [vivardhan tu ed.] ūrdhvato ’pi susaṃyutam [pārśvato haridantibhiḥ ed.] | śobhitaṃ dṛḍhabandhena baddhaṃ sūtreṇa buddhimān || 45 tasyordhvaṃ vinyased vidvān [devyāḥ ed.] pustakaṃ likhitaṃ śubham | ālekhyam api tatraiva pūjayed vidhinā tataḥ || 46.

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Sanskrit sources make reference to scribes, lekhakas, and sketch their required skills on several occasions, although this word is usually intended to convey the royal accountants, not the copyists of manuscripts. These accountants were charged with administrative duties and identified by their main professional tool, namely the use of writing. Sarma (1992, p. 33) distinguished three main types of scribes: the ‘transcribers of manuscripts’ (pustakalekhaka), the ‘writers of accounts’ (kāyasthalekhaka), and the ‘royal scribes’ (śāsanalekhaka). An early description of the latter category of scribes is already included in the Arthaśāstra of Kauṭilya (2.10.28.3), where the scribe is said to be in charge of the composition of the royal edicts (śāsana), and is therefore ‘endowed with the exemplary qualities of a minister, knows all the conventions, writes quickly, has beautiful handwriting, and is able to read written documents’ (translation Olivelle 2013, p. 119); āmatyasaṃpadopetaḥ sarvasamayavid āśugranthaś cārvakṣaro lekhanavācanasamartho lekhakaḥ syāt. Some of the features attributed to the scribes working in administration, whose duties make them comparable to clerks, are thus similar to those requested for the pustakalekhaka, as the Devīpurāṇa calls the copyist, but the higher political responsibility of these figures entails a demand for more high-profile cultural and social skills. Another example, concerning the scribes who work in courts of justice, is given by Matsyapurāṇa 216.25cd–29ab. It strongly insists on the necessity that they master the art of writing: ‘A fine knower of the scripts of all regions, versed in all treatises, (25) / [This] is called a scribe in all the royal law-courts. The one who will write (st. 27) letters [that are] refined in the upper parts, well filled, aligned on a line, of equal measure, (26) / This is remembered as a valuable scribe. Able in the application of words, versed in the knowledge of all treatises, (27) / And one who expresses many notions with only a few words, [this] is a scribe, o best among kings! True knower of the purposes of words, aware of the apportioning of space and time (28) / A loyal scribe will be incorruptible, o best among kings!’; sarvadeśākṣarābhijñaḥ sarvaśāstraviśāradaḥ || 25 lekhakaḥ kathito rājñaḥ sarvādhikaraṇeṣu vai | śīrṣopetān susaṃpūrṇān samaśreṇigatān samān || 26 akṣarān vai likhed yas tu lekhakaḥ sa varaḥ saṃrtaḥ | upāyavākyakuśalaḥ sarvaśāstraviśāradaḥ || 27 bahvarthavaktā cālpena lekhakaḥ syān nṛpottama | vākyābhiprāyatattvajño deśakālavibhāgavit || 28 anāhāryo [em.; anāhārye MP] bhavet sakto lekhakaḥ syān nṛpottama |. Note that the description of the script given in 216.26 vaguely reiterates the analoguous descriptions in Śivadharmottara 2. 39–41 and Devīpurāṇa 91. 53–56 (see below).
The word lekhaka is not the only one attested for denoting scribes with administrative functions; some other (near) synonyms are terms such as karaṇa, kāyastha, divira, and niyogin, with their respective variants, as well as further variations on the verbal roots likh and lip (see lekhitṛ or lipikāra). For details on the attestations of these terms, see Sircar 1966, s.v.; for a detailed survey of the several denominations used in inscriptions to denote the different kinds of scribes, who in most cases were also charged with administrative and political responsibilities, see Einicke 2009, pp. 427–55. Here, she observes that in inscriptions it is mandatory to make a distinction between the scribe, responsible for the composition of the text (either copied from some other documents or redacted from scratch), and the engraver, who was charged with carving the script. One rare occurrence of the word kāyastha in a colophon to denote the copyist of a manuscript is pointed out by Kim 2013, p. 343 fn. 141. She refers to the fifteenth-century manuscript of the Laghukālacakratantra ULC Add. 1643, which, in its concluding colophon, gives the name of the scribe as Jayarāmadatta, who was a karaṇakāyastha from Magadha. This reference is on fol. 128r, line 5; colour pictures of Add. 1643 are available on the website of the Cambridge Digital Library (<http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-01364/1>; last accessed: 28/8/2016), while a complete transcript of this colophon is given by Bendall 1883, p. 70.
Among the different professionals who can be included into the category of ‘scribe’, the kāyastha has notoriously been the object of political satire and vehement attacks in Sanskrit medieval literature (see especially the work of the eleventh-century Kashmiri author Kṣemendra, or the twelfth-century Rājataraṅgiṇī by Kalhaṇa, again from Kashmir), to the extent that the poetic anthology Subhāṣitasudhānidhi, attributed to the fourteenth-century author Sāyaṇa (Sternbach 1974, pp. 19–20), designates to this ‘subgenre’ the dedicated label ‘revilement of the kāyastha’ (kāyasthanindā). This literary topos has been examined by Malamoud (1997), who observes how the critique of the kāyasthas, possibly originating in the exclusive power attributed to this figure due to their proximity to the king, ended up characterizing even his writing tools and the act of writing as pernicious and deadly; this was aided by the Purāṇic myth of the origins of the kāyasthas from Citragupta, the scribe-accountant accompanying Yama, the god of death. Another study on the negative characterization of scribes in Indian poetry, partly based on the same sources as Malamoud but also discussing the emergence of scribal groups in medieval India, is in Ali 2013. For a history of the formation of the subcaste of the kāyasthas, see Gupta 1996; a survey of the attestations with observations on their chronological and geographical distribution and their social status is found in Einicke 2009, pp. 462–73.

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Śivadharmottara 2.32–33: maṅgalais tūryaghoṣaiś ca kṛtasvastyayanaḥ śuciḥ | snātaḥ śuklāmbaradharaḥ sragvī gandhādyalaṅkṛtaḥ || 32 hemāṅgulīyapāṇiś ca kaṭakābhyām alaṅkṛtaḥ | likhet praṇamya deveśaṃ lekhakaḥ ślokapañcakam || 33.

255

Svastyayana, lit. ‘auspicious advancement’, denotes different rites that, starting from the Ṛgveda, were performed for propitiating the success of an activity, as well as to prevent dangers. Svastyayana procedures could be performed in conjunction both with perpetual and occasional rituals, like those performed for blessing a journey or in cases of danger (Gonda 1980, pp. 26263).

256

Devīpurāṇa 91.51–52 (=Dānakāṇḍa 12.27): […] lekhakaṃ śāstrapāragam || 51 chandolakṣaṇatattvajñaṃ [°tadvaṃga ed.] satkaviṃ madhurasvaram | praṇaṣṭaṃ smarate granthaṃ śreṣṭhaḥ pustakalekhakaḥ [°lekhane DK] || 52.

257

See Bhaviṣyottarapurāṇa 5cdApa: ‘The competent person, after worshipping the scribe, should get [the ritual] started. (5)’; lekhakaṃ pūjayitvā tu prārambhaṃ kārayet sudhī || 5. Bhaviṣyottarapurāṇa 11abApa: ‘Once [the copying] has been accomplished, the scribe has to be worshipped again, with clothes and ornaments’; niṣpādite punaḥ pūjyo lekhako vastrabhūṣaṇaiḥ |.

258

Śivadharmottara 2.30–31: tridhā pradakṣiṇīkṛtya daṇḍavat praṇamet kṣitau | vijñāpayet samutthāya jānubhyāṃ dharaṇīgataḥ || 30 kṛtāñjalipuṭo bhūtvā praṇipatya punar gurum | bhagavaṃs tvatprasādena śāstraṃsaṃcārayāmy aham | tatheti samanujñātaḥ śāstraṃ puṇyāham ācaret || 31.

259

See Skilling 2004, who examines examples from the Saṅghātadharmaparyāya, the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka, the Suvarṇabhāsottama, and the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā. In these examples, the verb pracar is not used in the causative form, but always with an active meaning, and taking the Sūtra as its subject. The aim of such expressions is to praise the circulation of the text and highlight the benefits that this will produce in the places where the Sūtra will be transmitted. Skilling argues that the modality of circulation implied by the use of the verb pracar may include both written transmission and oral recitation, underlining the function that the ‘reciters of the Dharma’ (dharmabhāṇakas) must have exercised in this process. An example of the textual evidence considered is a passage from chapter 6 of the Suvarṇabhāsottamasūtra, in which the four great kings tell the following to the Buddha (text and translation in Skilling 2004, pp. 76–77): ‘Sir, Blessed One: in future, wherever this Suvarṇabhāsottama Sūtrendrarāja circulates—in villages, cities, towns, regions, countries, and royal capitals—in the realm of whatever human king it is available, whatever, Sir, Blessed One, human king rules according to the Treatise on Royal Statecraft [entitled] Devendrasamaya, he will be one who listens to, venerates, and worships the Suvarṇabhāsottama Sūtrendrarāja. He will respect, honour, venerate, and worship the monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen who hold the Lord of Sūtras, and will constantly listen to the Suvarṇabhāsottama Sūtrendrarāja. […] Wherever, in the villages, cities, towns, regions, countries, and royal capitals that we visit, there the Suvarṇabhāsottama Sūtrendrarāja will circulate. And those human kings who listen to, honour, and worship the Suvarṇabhāsottama Sūtrendrarāja, we will extend protection to them […] and offer peace and security’; (Nobel 1937, p. 69) ayaṃ bhadanta bhagavan suvarṇabhāsottamaḥ sūtrendrarājo ’nāgate ’dhvani yatra grāmanagaranigamajanapadarāṣṭrarājadhānīṣu pracariṣyati | yasya yasya manuṣyarājñaś ca viṣaye ’nuprāpto bhaviṣyati | yaḥ kaścid bhadanta bhagavan manuṣyarājā bhaved yenānena devendrasamayena rājaśāstreṇa rājatvaṃ kārāyet | asya suvarṇabhāsottamasya sūtrendrarājasya śrotā bhaven mānayitā vā bhavet pūjayitā vā bhavet tāś ca sūtrendradhārakā bhikṣubhikṣuṇyupāsakopāsikāḥ satkuryād gurukuryān mānayet pūjayet satatasamitaṃ suvarṇabhāsottamaṃ sūtrendrarājānaṃ śṛṇuyāt | [… p. 70.11] yatra grāmanagaranigamajanapadarāṣṭrarājadhānīṣu upasaṃkramayiṣyāmaḥ | tatrāyaṃ suvarṇabhāsottamaḥ sūtrendrarājaḥ pracariṣyati | teṣāṃ ca manuṣyarājñām asya suvarṇabhāsottamasya sūtrendrarājasya śrotṛṇāṃ mānayitṛṇāṃ pūjayitṛṇām ārakṣāṃ kariṣyāmaḥ paritrāṇaṃ parigrahaṃ paripālanaṃ daṇḍaparihāraṃ śastraparihāraṃ śāntiṃ svastyayanaṃ kariṣyāmaḥ |.

260

The puṇyāhavacana, or ‘proclamation of a meritorious day’, is a propitiatory practice rooted in Vedic tradition: accounts of various kinds of puṇyāha ceremonies are already in the Gṛhyasūtras, the Vedic manuals for domestic sacrifices whose prescriptions were often modelled on, or at least influenced by, the Śrauta rites described in the Śrautasūtras. The core of the procedures for ensuring a meritorious day was the veneration of Brahmins, who were invited to bless the day, declaring it to be propitious (Kane 1941, pp. 216–17; Gonda 1980, pp. 261–62). The Śivadharmottara also refers to the puṇyāha at other points in the vidyādāna rite: the arrival of the manuscript at the temple in Śivadharmottara 2.59 has to be greeted by puṇyāhajayaśabda, ‘proclamations of a meritorious day and formulas of victory’, and puṇyāhaśabdas also have to be uttered during the construction and worship of the manuscript’s box (2.114). In Śivadharmottara 2.155, the teacher is described as teaching in the presence of Śiva, turning his face eastward and northward, ‘for the purpose of making the day propitious’ (prāṅmukhodaṅmukho vāpi puṇyāhārthaṃ śivāgrataḥ, 2.155cd).

261

Dānakāṇḍa 12.108–109NP/118–119NP: lekhayet pūjya deveśān rudrabrahmajanārdanān | pūrvadigvadano bhūtvā lipijño lekhakottamaḥ || 108 nirodho hastabāhvoś ca masīpātrāvadhāraṇaḥ | ekāntasyopakaraṇaṃ yasyāsau lekhakottamaḥ || 109 […] lekhako buddhimān snātaḥ śuklapuṣpāmbarojjvalaḥ | suvarṇamuktākeyūro mudrikāśobhitāṅguliḥ || 118 susamiddhe masībhāṇḍe lekhanīśāstrasaṃyute | prārabhet tūryaghoṣeṇa pūjya devān pitṝṃs tathā || 119.

262

Dānakhaṇḍa 43.6Vah: brāhmaṇān vedasampūrṇāṃś chandolakṣaṇapāragān || 6 likhāpayitvā […].

263

Dānakāṇḍa 12.120cdNP: ‘At the beginning he should copy five or ten stanzas’; ślokapañcakam ādau tu daśakaṃ vāpi lekhayet || 120.

264

Agnipurāṇa 1.63.11cd–12: ‘[…] Having copied five stanzas (11) / In nāgara script, with silver ink (?) and a golden pen’; […] likhitvā ślokapañcakaṃ|| 11 †raupyasthamasyā† haimyā ca lekhanyā nāgarākṣaraṃ.
The meaningless reading raupyastha°, attested in the printed edition, is likely to be corrupt. The variant reading reported in a footnote of the edition, and attributed to a ‘distinguished manuscript’ (cihnitapustaka), reads: raupyamayyā ’tha haimyā vā lakhanyātha varākṣaraṃ, namely, ‘[Having copied…] in the best alphabet, with a pen made of silver or gold’, thus solving the problem of the unclear raupyastha°. Not having any direct knowledge of the manuscript transmission of this text, I have decided to leave it unchanged at this point.

265

Aparārkaṭīkā, Bhaviṣyottarapurāṇa 8cd–9ab: granthānāṃ pañcakaṃ vā ’thā daśakaṃ viṃśam eva vā || 8Apa triṃśaṃ vā catvāriṃśaṃ vā paraṃ pañcāśakaṃ sudhī |.

266

Śivadharmottara 2.39–41: śarayantrāsanāsīnaṃ tanmadhye pūjya pustakam | evaṃ likhed vācayed vā kṛtvā pūjāṃ dine dine || 39 caturasraiḥ samaśīrṣair nātisthūlair na vā kṛṣaiḥ | sampūrṇāvayavaiḥ snigdhair nātivicchinnasaṃhataiḥ || 40 mātrānusvārasaṃyogahrasvadīrghādilakṣitaiḥ | nandināgarakair varṇair lekhayec chivapustakam || 41.

267

Note that Dutta 1971, p. 28, links the śarayantra mentioned in Sanskrit sources to the tool observed in Thai temples by Schuyler 1908. According to this report, copyists busy with the transcription of the Pāli canon in nineteenth-century Buddhist temples used to crouch on the ground in front of a sort of easel that was 18 inches in height. The manuscript which was to be copied was on one side of the surface, and the leaves of the new manuscript were on the other.

268

According to the PW (s.v. śara), this is the reed of the species Saccharum sara. The Germplasm Resources Information Network (GRIN, <http://www.ars-grin.gov/>) gives this as synonym of Saccharum bengalense, a native reed of India and Pakistan, as well as of Afghanistan and Iran. The meaning of śara as arrow derives from the use of reeds as raw material, just like the word śarāsana with the meaning of ‘bow’.

269

Agnipurāṇa 3.382.69cd–70ab: śarayantraṃ pustakāya sūtraṃ vai patrasaṃcayam || 69 paṭṭikābandhavastrādi dadyād yaḥ svargam āpnuyāt |.

270

The reading śarapatra is a predictable simplification of the less familiar term śarayantra, aided by the resemblance, in northern scripts, between the letters used for writing the consonants ya and pa, as well as the clusters -ntra- and -tra-.

271

Agnipurāṇa 1.63.10: svastike maṇḍale abhyarcya śarapatrāsane sthitam | lekhyaṃ ca likhitaṃ pustaṃ guruṃ vidyāṃ hariṃ yajet || 10.

272

I understand the ca placed after lekhyaṃ as a connector between the latter and the past participle likhitaṃ, rather than marking a fracture with the preceding hemistich. In my interpretation, both lekhyaṃ and likhitaṃ are connected with sthitam and ultimately refer to pustam, which is the object of the absolutive abhyarcya. Therefore, I do not read pustam as the object of yajet, unlike the following accusatives, not only because I believe it is more logical in the sequence of actions, but also in order to avoid redundancies. According to this reading, the final pāda of stanza 10 would in fact prescribe, in the manner of the Śivadharmottara, the veneration of the teacher, of ‘knowledge’, and a deity (in this case Hari). The use of ‘knowledge’ was most likely intended to denote the manuscript that had just been placed on the seat. The next reference to worshipping these three entities in the Agnipurāṇa is at 1.63.13a (guruṃ vidyāṃ hariṃ prārcya).

273

See Dānasāgara, p. 489, for the text and chapter 3 for a study of these sections in Ballālasena’s work.

274

Dānakāṇḍa 12.110–111NP: vidyādhāraṃ prakurvīta hemarūpyamayaṃ śubham | nāgadantamayaṃ vāpi śubhadhārumayaṃ tathā || 110 manojñam aguruṃ ramyaṃ ślakṣṇaṃ cūrṇaprayogajam | saṃkocayantrasaṃyuktaṃ vikāśena samanvitam || 111.
According to the critical apparatus given in Brick 2014, stanza 111 is omitted by manuscript IO; with the exception of the broken manuscript C^1, none of the others reported in the apparatus reads °yantra, rather opting for palaeographically similar readings such as °patra (U^1), °yatna (IO^2), °yatra (U^2). The previous editor of the text proposed the reading satkācavastrasaṃyuktam (Aiyangar 1941, p. 213), while the editor of the Caturvargacintāmaṇi’s Dānakhaṇḍa opted for saṅkocapatrasaṃyukta (Dānakhaṇḍa, p. 448). Instead of the following vikāśena, one might be tempted to read, together with Śiromani 1873 and Aiyangar 1941, vikāsena, ‘opening’, ‘blossoming’, thus a perfect antonym of saṅkoca°.

275

Some instances are illustrated in Kim 2013. See a detail from the Mahāmāyūrī panel of Ellora caves 6 and 10 (seventh century), depicting a monk holding a manuscript over a rectangular object, which Kim interprets as a bookcase sitting on a cross-legged book stand (2013, p. 28); or a similar, small book stand represented on a ca. fourteenth-century manuscript of the Kalpasūtra, depicting a Jain monk instructing a prince who holds a manuscript (Kim 2013, pp. 4–5).

276

See, for instance, the depiction of the worship of a manuscript on the basis of an eleventh-century Prajñāpāramitā stele from Mangalpur, Orissa (Kim 2013, p. 33 and fig. 1–4), where the stand is supported by a single, central staff. Alternatively, a pedestal with two legs on both sides is represented in a panel on fol. 298v of the Nepalese Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā palm-leaf manuscript ASC G 4203, dated to NS 268, namely 1148–49 CE (Kim 2013 p. 125 and xxiii).

277

Harṣacarita, ucchvāsa 3, p. 39 (text); translation by Cowell and Thomas 1897, pp. 72–73: ‘He seated himself on a chair not far away, and, after waiting a moment, set down in front of him a desk made of reed stalks, and laid upon it a manuscript from which he had removed the tie, but which still seemed encircled by the rays of his nails like soft lotus fibres. Next he assigned a place to a bee and a dove, which he set down close behind him. Finally, having turned over the intervening leaves marked by the end of the morning chapter he took a small light block of a few leaves, and read with a chant the Purāṇa uttered by Vayu, the rays of his teeth seeming to cleanse the ink-stained syllables, and to worship the volume with showers of white flowers, and his honeyed intonations like the anklets of a Sarasvatī brought near his mouth, charming the hearts of his hearers’; nātidūravartinyā cāsandyā niṣasāda | sthitvā ca muhūrtam iva tatkālāpanītasūtraveṣṭanam api nakhakiraṇair mṛdumṛṇālasūtrair iva veṣṭitaṃ pustakaṃ puronihitaśaraśalākāyantrake nidhāya pṛṣṭhataḥ sanīḍasanniviṣṭābhyāṃ madhukarapārāvatābhyāṃ datte sthānake prābhātikaprapāṭhakacchedacihnīkṛtam antarapatram utkṣipya gṛhītvā ca katipayapatralaghvīṃ kapāṭikām kṣālayann iva maṣīmalināny akṣasarāṇi dantakāntibhir arcayann iva sitakusumamuktibhir granthaṃ mukhasannihitasarasvatīnūpuraravair iva gamakair madhurair ākṣipan manāṃsi śrotṝṇāṃ gītyā pavamānaproktaṃ purāṇaṃ papāṭha |.

278

The translation in the text is my own, and renders the following lines: raktāṃśukapaṭe viṣamaprarūḍhabisalatāśarayantrānugataśatapatrapustakasanāthe […] vikacakamalākarabhikṣau (Hall 1859, p. 250; Srinivasachar 1906, p. 137; Gray 1913, p. 183; Bhattacharya 1933, p. 119; Shukla 1966, p. 41, § 43, ll. 1–2. I would like to thank Harunaga Isaacson for providing me with copies of the main editions of this text). The Sanskrit text given by Gray (1913) is just a reprint of the ‘Madras edition’ of 1862; at p. 183 of Grey’s edition, the word yantra is enclosed in parentheses, signalling that the word was missing in the ‘southern recension’ (reflected, according to Gray’s introduction, pp. 38–39, in the aforementioned Madras edition that he picks up from the many available southern versions), while present in the northern and reproduced in Hall’s edition. However, the Srinivasachar 1906 edition, which Gray duly mentions in his introduction and uses in his apparatus, reproduces the passage exactly as in Hall’s text.

279

A few pieces of information on this commentator are given by Hall 1859, pp. 44–45.

280

Gray 1913, p. 120, § 250.2: ‘When the mendicant expanded lotus grove, wearing vestments of red robes (and) bearing a manuscript of a hundred leaves with reed threads of unevenly growing delicate lotus-fibers’.

281

See PW s.v. Note that also Sircar (1965, p. 62), referring to the same passage from the Vāsavadattā, states that ‘the string holding the leaves of a manuscript together was called sūtra or śarayantraka’.

282

See Srinivasachar 1906, p. 137.

283

Ludvik 2007, p. 231ff.

284

Kane 1973, p. 1005, for instance, referring to Mishra 1975 (pp. 134–35) and cited by Sircar 1966 (p. 301), states that in the old Maithili education system the śarayantra was an examination in which candidates could be examined, both by ācāryas and by common people, on every topic expounded in the śāstras; the candidate who was able to pass this exam received the title śarayantrin.
Talking about reed as a raw material in connection with writing and manuscript production, it is impossible not to recall that reed was also the material of which the pens used for writing with ink were made. This was already maintained by Bühler, who speaks of the Sanskrit word kalama, connected with the Greek κάλαμος and the latin calamus, ‘reed-pen’, a concept that, as he observes, is also expressed by the rarer Indian noun iṣīkā or īṣikā, ‘reed’ (Bühler 1904, p. 118; on the same topic see also Sircar 1965, pp. 81–82). Bühler had also based his deductions on the direct observation of Indian scribal practice of his time, noting that ‘pieces of reed, bamboo or wood, cut in the manner of our pens, are used in all parts of India where the use of ink prevails’ (Bühler 1904, p. 118). The use of reed-pens as writing implements has also been assumed by scholars working on early materials, even on the earliest extant manuscripts of the Indian cultural area, such as the Gandhāran Kharoṣṭhī scrolls (first century BCE): as pointed out by Glass in Salomon’s study of the scroll containing a long fragment of the Rhinoceros Sūtra (*Khargaviṣaṇasūtra), the ink traces left on the manuscript and the ductus of the script allow one to deduce that that manuscript was surely written with a ‘reed pen, or calamus, similar to the writing implements known for Aramaic papyri and ostraca’ (Salomon 2000, p. 53; the palaeographical sections from 5.1 to 5.8, corresponding to pp. 53–74, are attributed to Andrew Glass). He further observes (Salomon 2000, p. 53) that not only this scroll, but also the others in the Kharoṣṭhī collection of the British Library have been written with this type of pen, of which some specimens have also been found in the excavation at Sirkap, Taxila (Marshall 1951, vol. 2, p. 598). Allon (2007, p. 85) makes similar observations concerning the manuscripts of the Senior Collection at the British Library, compiled about a century later, that were written using a reed-pen. Reed is therefore attested as raw material for writing tools at a substantially earlier date than when the Śivadharmottara was composed, and the practice of writing with reed has continued until recent times, as shown by Bühler; moreover, the latter observed that the use of reed-pens was suitable for the ink-based writing technique attested in the North, the same to which the brief description of the ‘script from the town of Nandi’ made by the Śivadharmottara (see below) seems to refer. In spite of these indications, the hypothesis that śarayantra could be intended as an ‘instrument [made of] reed’, namely a pen, and the śarayantrāsana as the specific support on which this instrument was put to use, hence the desk on which the manuscripts were copied, would still be too weak in the absence of further evidence.

285

Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 p. 993: śivajñānāsanaṃ dīptatantre pradarśitam | tatrāsanāya daṇḍasya dairghyam aṣṭādaśāṅgulam | dvyaṅgulaṃ ca parīṇāhaṃ sarvavṛttaṃ tu vāśrakam | suvarṇair ajatair vāpi tāmrair vārakuṭair api ||.

286

Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 p. 993: daṇḍāgre mukulaṃ kuryāt padmapatrair vicitritam |.

287

Note that Hayaśīrṣapāñcarātra 2.31.10, as reported by Dutta 1971, p. 23 fn. 48, makes reference to the ‘Kashmiri Nāgari letters’, kāśmīrair nāgarair varṇaiḥ.

288

This was also observed by Dominic Goodall regarding the description of this script given in Śivadharmottara 2.40–41 (see the post to Indology mailing list on 23/01/2010: <http://list.indology.info/pipermail/indology_list.indology.info/2010-January/033994.html>. Last accessed: 18/03/2016).

289

Devīpurāṇa 91.53–56 (=Dānakāṇḍa 12.28–31): nāptisantatavicchannair [nāti° DK] na śuklaiḥ [śakṣṇair DK] na va karkaśaiḥ | nandināgarakair varṇair lekhayec chivapustakam || 53 prāraṃbhe pañca vai ślokān [pañcaślokāni DK] punaḥ śāntiṃ tu kārayet | rātrau jāgaraṇaṃ kuryāt sarvaprekṣāṃ prakalpayet || 54 naṭacāraṇalagnaiś ca devyāḥ kathanasambhavaiḥ | pratyūṣe pūjayel lokāṃs tataḥ sarvān visarjayet || 55 ekānte sumanakṣeṇa viśrabdhena [viśuddhena DK] dine dine | niṣpādya vidhinānena śubharkṣe [svarkṣe ca DK] śubhavāsare || 56.

290

Agnipurāṇa 1.63.12ab: †raupyasthamasyā† haimyā ca lekhanyā nāgarākṣaraṃ. For a discussion of the reading raupyastha°, see fn. 263.

291

Bhaviṣyottarapurāṇa 6–7Apa: ‘And afterwards, a well-behaved and not careless scribe [should] begin. The scribe who knows (st. 8) that the pada is endowed with metrical quantities and anusvāras [and] is provided with caesuras, (6Apa) / That the letters [have to be] equal, aligned in the upper part, rounded and thick, provided with the [correct] metrical quantities, this scribe (7Apa) / Will write here [these] letters having his mind concentrated on it.’; vinitaś cāpramattaś ca tataḥ prabhṛtiṃ lekhakaḥ | mātrānusvārasaṃyuktaṃ padac chedaiḥ samanvitam || 6Apa samāni samaśīrṣāṇi vartulāṇi ghanāni ca | mātrāsu pratibaddhāni yo jānāti sa lekhakaḥ || 7Apa lekhayed akṣarāṇīha tadgatenāntarātmanā |.

292

Note that the expression attested in the printed edition is nadīnāgarakair varṇair (Pauṣkarasaṃhitā 41.80), where the form nadī° could be a wrong spelling for nandi°. It is, however, exactly the variant reading nadīnāgarakair that occurs in stanza 2.40 of the first documented attestation of the Śivadharmottara, in the (presumably) ninth-century manuscript NAK 5–892, NGMPP A 12/3, exposure 33 in the set of pictures in my possession, page 2, line 6. The margins of this early manuscript are severely damaged, which resulted in the complete loss of the original foliation.

293

Dānakāṇḍa 12.128cd: vyaktadeśalipinyāsaṃ mukhyaṃ nāgaram ucyate || 128. Lakṣmīdhara’s explanation of the compound vyaktadeśalipinyāsaṃ is that ‘this (scil. the nāgara style) is [called] like that because it is a writing system, [namely] a composition of letters, in which the script is specific, i.e. it follows [the fashion] of its region’; vyaktā taddeśānusāriṇī lipir yatra nyāse ’kṣaranirmāṇe sa tathā |.

294

Bühler 1904, p. 70.

295

Hazra 1983, p. 206, fn. 98, Magnone 2005, p. 591 fn. 58; both refer to Bühler 1896 (see reference: Bühler 1904), p. 51.

296

Magnone 2005, p. 591.

297

Lévi 1915, p. 117. See Harṣacarita 5.27, where the Mahāmāyūrī is among the texts recited in the palace of Harṣa’s father, lying on his deathbed.

298

Lévi 1915, p. 58, and Takubo 1972, p. 23. This list of yakṣas is part of a long enumeration of deities, which are arranged in groups and are invoked to ensure the efficacy of the protective formula at the core of the text. The Mahāmāyūrī thus provides here an insight into popular devotion (Lévi 1915, p. 21).

299

Lévi 1915, p. 116. The author, however, believes it impossible to match the toponym Nandinagara with a known place in ancient India.

300

Adjectives such as nādinagara, nadinagaraka, nandinagara, nandinagāraka and the like—all of which are phonetic variants of nandināgaraka used in the Śivadharmottara—are abundantly attested in the earliest Buddhist donative inscriptions of the stūpas at Sañcī and Bhārut, dating back to the third century BCE (Bühler 1892 and 1892a and Lüders 1963). These adjectives denote the geographical provenance of the donors, both monks and laymen ‘from Nandinagara’. Lüders (1963, p. 9) observed that a town called Nandinagara ‘is more often quoted in early Brāhmī inscriptions than any other, besides Ujenī (Ujjayinī)’.

301

Śivadharmottara 2.51–55: mahatā janasaṅghena purataś ca mahīpatiḥ | dharmavṛddhaiḥ svayaṃ gacchet sarvaśobhāsamanvitaḥ || 51 athavā hastiyānasthaṃ kṛtvā pustakam ānayet | rājamārgeṇa mahatā nagarāntaḥ pradakṣiṇam || 52 sarvāyatanapūjāṃ ca svadhanaiḥ kārayen nṛpaḥ | daśadikṣu baliṃ dadyān nagarasya samantataḥ || 53 mārge ’pi purato gacched baliṃ dadyān nirantaram | gandhapuṣpākṣatonmiśram udakaṃ ca tadānugam || 54 gaccheyur purataḥ paścāt sarvāyatanavāsinaḥ | purataḥ śivavidyāyāḥ śivamantram anusmaret || 55.

302

A detailed account of the procession described by the Devīpurāṇa is in Sarkar 2011, pp. 132–33.

303

Śivadharmottara 2.58: ‘It will be declared improper to cut the trees. [The king] should banish all kind of violence and the prisoners have to be freed, the [internal] enemies like anger and so on have to be abandoned. For two days he should celebrate a kaumudī at an improper time, for the Lord’; acchedyās taravaḥ kāryāḥ sarvahiṃsāṃ nivārayet | bandhanasthāś ca moktavyā varjyāḥ krodhādiśatravaḥ | akālakaumudīṃ kuryād divasadvayam īśvare || 58. The parallel stanzas from the Devīpurāṇa are without substantial changes and read as follows: ‘At this point, it will be declared improper to cut the trees. [The king] should condemn any violence against living creatures. The prisoners have to be freed, the [internal] enemies like anger and so on have to be slain. At the conclusion of the chariot procession he should perform a kaumudī out of season, o mighty [king]’; acchedyās taravas tasmin prāṇihiṃsā vivarjayet | bandhanasthā vimoktavyā vadhyā krodhādiśatravaḥ || 31 akālakaumudīṃ śakra rathayātrānte kārayet. Śivadharmottara 2.58 also has a literal parallel in Atharvavedapariśiṣṭa 19 b (see Appendix 2).

304

On this topic, see Jacobsen 2008.

305

Devīpurāṇa 91.61–69 (=Dānakāṇḍa 12.36cd–39): tathā taṃ pustakaṃ [pustake ed.] vastre vinyased vidhipūjitam | evaṃ kṛtvā tathā cintyāḥ mātaraḥ priyatāṃ mama || 61 yasyaiva śaktaṃ [con.; śaṃke ed.] tacchāstraṃ pustakaṃ parikalpayet [em.; pravikalpayet ed.] | tathā tapasvinaḥ pūjyāḥ sarvaśāstrārthapāragāḥ || 62 śivavratadharā mukhyā viṣṇudharmaparāyaṇāḥ | mahatā janasaṅghena rathasthaṃ dṛḍhavāhanaiḥ || 63 yuvānair [yuvānair ms.ख in apparatus; pradhānair ed.] vāpi taṃ neyaṃ yasya devasya cāśramam [conj.; aṃśajam ed.] | sāmānyaṃ śivatīrtheṣu mātarābhavaneṣu ca || 64.

306

In translating this passage, I follow the interpretation of Lakṣmīdhara in his commentary ad loc. (Brick 2014, p. 305): ‘‘exactly to whom it belongs’ [means] the god to whom it belongs, viz. with whom it is connected. ‘He should imagine the manuscript’ [means] he should imagine, viz. he should meditate upon the manuscript as that god. This is the meaning’; yasyaiva saktaṃ yasya devasya saktaṃ saṃbandhitam | pustakaṃ parikalpayet pustakaṃ taṃ devaṃ parikalpayed bhāvayed ity arthaḥ. On the basis of Lakṣmīdhara’s understanding, I have emended the reading pravikalpayet of the Devīpurāṇa edition into parikalpayet.

307

Here, I conjecture cāśramam instead of the meaningless aṃśajam in the edition and the reading cāgamam of the Dānakāṇḍa quotation. My conjecture was mainly inspired by the parallel with Śivadharmottara 2.48 (‘Having lifted the vehicle of this [manuscript], he should bring [it] with devotion to the āśrama of Śiva, well firm by means of the best chariots or strong men’; samutkṣipyānayed bhaktyā tadvimānaṃ śivāśramam | susthitaṃ rathamukhyena puruṣair vā balānvitaiḥ). Manuscripts of the Dānakāṇḍa alternate the readings cāgamaḥ (IO) and rāgamat (J, L).

308

Śivadharmottara 2.59–66: śivāyatanam āsādya vimānasthaṃ tam arpayet | puṇyāhajayaśabdaiś ca mahatā tumulena ca || 59 sthāne susaṃskṛte ramye śivasya purataḥ śanaiḥ | sthāpayitvā guror bhaktyā taṃ praṇamya nivedayet || 60 śāntyartham ekam adhyāyaṃ gobrāhmaṇamahībhṛtām | rāṣṭrīyanagarāṇāṃ ca vācayed vācakottamaḥ || 61 chandolakṣaṇatattvajñaḥ satkavir madhurasvaraḥ | gāndharvavid vidagdhaś ca śreṣṭhaḥ pustakavācakaḥ || 62 śāntitoyena rājānaṃ samutthāya gurus tataḥ | śirasy abhyukṣayed īṣat tatrasthaṃ ca janaṃ tataḥ || 63 avadhārya jagacchāntiṃ punar ante nṛpasya ca | ācāryabhojanaṃ cātra nṛpaḥ kuryāt sadakṣiṇaṃ || 64 svayam atraiva bhuñjīta sāntaḥpuraparicchadaḥ | kāryā ca vividhā prekṣā bhuktavatsu janeṣu ca || 65 evaṃ kṛte mahāśāntir nṛpasya nagarasya ca | deśasya ca samastasya jāyate nātra saṃśayaḥ || 66.

309

For an introductory study of this chapter, see Bisschop 2014.

310

Examples of single-text manuscripts of the Śivadharmaśāstra’s Śāntyadhyāya in the NGMCP collection are: NAK 6–2301 (NGMPP A 1120/12); NAK 1–1376 (NGMPP A 1158/8); NAK 5–7344 (NGMPP A 1174/14); NAK 1–1108 (NGMPP A 1299/9); E 6489 (NGMPP E 321/26); 366 (NGMPP G 19/16); and I 963 (NGMPP I 54/4). One manuscript from the collection of the Cambridge University Library (Add. 2836) contains the Śāntyadhyāya in an anthology of Purāṇic chapters, while one Bengali manuscript of the Śivadharmaśāstra’s Śāntyadhyāya is held at the Asiatic Society of Calcutta (Shastri 1928, p. 714). For more details, see De Simini 2016.

311

Regmi 1966, p. 332. I am grateful to Alexis Sanderson for drawing my attention to this document.

312

Devīpurāṇa 91.65–69 (= Dānakāṇḍa 12.40–43): tasmin pūjya [pūjyaṃ ed.] tathā kṛtvā devadevasya śūlinaḥ | samarpayet praṇamyeśaṃ mātaraḥ prīyatām iti || 65 sadādhyayanayuktāya vidyādānaratāya ca | vidyāsaṃgrahayuktāya kṛtaśāstraśramāya ca [sarvaśāstrakṛtaśrame ed.] || 66 tenaiva vartate yas tu tasya taṃ vinivartayet | jagaddhitāya vai śāntiṃ sandhyāyāṃ vācayet tathā || 67 tena toyena dātāraṃ mūrdhni samyanniṣecayet [samabhiṣiṃcayet ed.] | śivaṃ vadet tataḥ śabdaṃ [sarvaṃ ed.] uccāryaṃ jagatas tathā || 68 evaṃ kṛte mahāśāntir deśasya nagarasya ca [tu ed.] | jāyate nātrā sandehaḥ sarvabādhāḥ śamanti ca || 69.

313

Devīpurāṇa 91.26: vidyāvicāratattvajño rājñaḥ sanmārgagāminaḥ | bhuñjate ’pi hi bhogāni gacchanti paramāṃ gatim || 26.

314

Devīpurāṇa 91.96ab: tasmāt sarvaprayatnena vidyā deyā sadā narair.

315

Śivadharmottara 2.193, the last stanza of the chapter: ‘Thus it has been explained this multiform gift of knowledge; according to [this] rule people of all varṇas ought to perform it (193)’; evam etad bahuvidhaṃ vidyādānaṃ prakīrtitam | sarveṣām eva varṇānāṃ vidhinānena tad bhavet || 193.

316

Devīpurāṇa 28.4cd: devyāyatane devasya śaṅkarasya harer api || 4.

317

Devīpurāṇa 28.6ab: tadbhaktibhāvitān viprān sadvṛttāñ chāstratatparān.

318

Devīpurāṇa 28.7–9ab: tatas tān svasti vācayitvā pūjayitvā tu pustakam | sugandhagandhadhūpena puṣpamālyaiḥ sucandanaiḥ || 7 ghaṇṭācāmaraśobhāḍhyai darpaṇair upaśobhite | dukūle vastrābharaṇe daṇḍayantre niveśayet || 8 vācakaṃ pūjaitvā tu yathāvibhavavistaraiḥ.

319

Devīpurāṇa 28.9cd–12ab: vācayeta tato rājā devīmāhātmyam uttamam || 9 tadante śāntiśabdas tu janasya sanṛpasya ca | gobrāhmaṇapūjānān tu vanaspatimukheṣu ca || 10 kṣatraviṭśūdrabālānāṃ sarvam eva śubhaṃ tu vaḥ | anena vidhinā rājā yaḥ paṭhet śṛṇuyād api || 11 cintayed vācayed vāpi tasya puṇyaphalaṃ śṛṇu.

320

On the Devīmāhātmya, see Coburn 1984 and 1991 and Yokochi 1999.

321

As regards the Devīmāhātmya of the Mārkaṇḍeyapurāṇa, the issue of dating has been reconsidered by Yokochi (1999, pp. 89–90) who, on the basis of the iconography of the goddess and the relative chronology of parallel texts, proposes the early eighth century as a plausible date of composition. In the same study, Yokochi agrees with the former attempts at placing the formation of the Devīmāhātmya in northern India, and stresses its connections with the political powers of the region.

322

As observed by Yokochi (1999, pp. 90–91), if considered in the context of the Mārkaṇḍeyapurāṇa, the Devīmāhātmya conveys an important message to the kings to whom it ultimately seems to be addressed. Before the section on the Devīmāhātmya, the Mārkaṇḍeyapurāṇa tells the story of king Suratha losing his kingdom; this monarch is evoked again at the end of the Devīmāhātmya, where the goddess says that, thanks to his devotion to her, Suratha will regain his kingdom in this life and become the eighth manu in the next life. The devotion to the goddess is therefore directly connected to the practice of power.

323

The whole chapter 12 of the Devīmāhātmya is devoted to praising the merits derived from listening and reciting this text. Among the ‘practical’ uses of the text, stanzas 15 to 17 list: ‘My glorification has to be listened to every time during an appeasement rite (śāntikarman), as well as when one sees nightmares and when there are very negative calamities [deriving from] planets. (15) / Evil portents and frightful calamities [deriving from] planets are appeased, and an evil dream experienced by somebody turns into a good dream. (16) / [My glorification] is an instrument for the appeasement (śāntikāraka) of children possessed by the Bālagrahas, and the foremost supporter of friendship between people who have infringed their union. (17)’; śāntikarmaṇi sarvatra tathā duḥsvapnadarśane | grahapīḍāsu cogrāsu māhātmyaṃ śrụyān mama || 15 upasargāḥ śamaṃ yānti grahapīḍāś ca dāruṇāḥ | duḥsvapnaṃ ca nṛbhir dṛṣṭaṃ susvapnam upajāyate || 16 bālagrahābhibhūtānāṃ bālānāṃ śāntikārakam | saṃghatabhede ca nṛṇāṃ maitrīkaraṇam uttamam || 17.

324

Śivadharmottara 2.73: ‘And [also] a poor person who applies this procedure in accordance [with his personal wealth], without deceitfulness in money matters, with devotion, will obtain the fruit of a gift of knowledge.’; daridraś cānusāreṇa vittaśāṭhyavivarjitaḥ | kṛtvā vidhim imaṃ bhaktyā vidyādānaphalaṃ labhet || 73.

325

Śivadharmottara 2.85–89: yat patrayantrasūtrādyaṃ maṣībhājanalekhanī | śarayantrāsanābhyaṅgaśayyāsadbhaktavetanam || 85 ityevamādi yac cānyat tadartham upayujyate | yadvā tadvā mahat sūkṣmaṃ vidhānena tu yad bhavet || 86 tad ekam api vidyāṅgaṃ śraddhāvittānusārataḥ | nivedya sa mahābhogaiḥ śivaloke mahīyate || 87 pustakāstaraṇaṃ dattvā sadvastraṃ ca pramāṇataḥ | tadvāsanavitānaṃ vā śivaloke mahīyate || 88 yāvat tadvastratantūnāṃ parisaṃkhyā samantataḥ | tāvad yugasahasrāṇi mahābhogān avāpnuyāt || 89.

326

Śivadharmottara 2.105–106: ‘One who will donate with devotion a box made of śrīparṇī wood, dug out, well assembled, as well as made of leather, (105) / To one who is versed in the knowledge of Śiva, with the purpose of teaching this [Śaiva knowledge], as well as [if he donates] a very smooth tablet for writing on, will obtain the fruit of a gift of knowledge. (106)’; yaḥ śrīparṇīsamudbhūtaṃ nimnakhātaṃ susaṃcayam | dadyāt sampuṭakaṃ bhaktyā carmaṇā vāpi nirmitam || 105 śivajñānābhiyuktāya tadadhyāpanahetunā | suślakṣṇaṃ phalakam vāpi vidyādānaphalaṃ labhet || 106.

327

Devīpurāṇa 91.80–81 (= Dānakāṇḍa 12.54–55): yantrakam āsanaṃ [yantrakakṣāsanaṃ DK] caiva daṇḍāsanam athāpi vā | vidyāvācanaśīlāya dattaṃ bhavati rājyadam || 80 añjanaṃ netrapādānāṃ dattaṃ vidyāparāyaṇe | bhūmigṛhaṃ tu kṣetraṃ tu sarvarājyaphalapradam || 81.

328

As one of the many possible examples, we refer to Devīpurāṇa 91.50cd, where the genitive viprāṇāṃ, ‘Brahmins’, accounts for the recipients of different kinds of offers, among which is also a manuscript. See also Matsyapurāṇa 53.19 (§ 3.1), which addresses the gift of the Skandapurāṇa ‘to a Brahmin’ (brāhmaṇāya).

329

Devīpurāṇa 91.66-67ab (= Dānakāṇḍa 12.41-42ab): sadādhyayanayuktāya vidyādānaratāya ca | vidyāsaṃgrahayuktāya kṛtaśāstraśramāya ca [sarvaśāstrakṛtaśrame ed.] || 66 tenaiva vartate yas tu tasya taṃ vinivedayet |.

330

Dānakāṇḍa 12.168–69: […] brāhmaṇe śīlaśālini || 168 prabodhayati dhīyukte yuktijñe vedavādini |. For further considerations on this verse, see § 2.4.

331

Dānakāṇḍa 12.130: […] mahāśobhasamanvitam | purato nṛtyagītena nānāvādyaraveṇa ca | maṅgalair vedaghoṣaiś ca devāya vinivedayet || 130.

332

Śivadharmottara 2.6–12: yo ’śuddham ātmanādhītya jñānam adhyāpayet param | sa yāti narakaṃ ghoraṃ pāpīyāṃ jñānanāśakaḥ || 6 śivajñānasya kālena vinaṣṭasya pramādataḥ | ūnātiriktavarṇasya mūḍhair durlikhitasya ca || 7 pramādādhītapāṭhasya nāśitasyālpabuddhibhiḥ | jñānāvalepamānāndhair ācāryaiḥ śodhitasya ca || 8 vyarthaiḥ padair upetasya punaruktasya cārthataḥ | pūrvottaraviruddhasya svasiddhāntavirodhinaḥ || 9 chandasātīvanaṣṭasya śabdārtharahitasya ca | ityevamādibhir doṣair upetasya kva cit kva cit || 10 yaḥ karoti punaḥ samyak saṃskāraṃ pūrvavad guruḥ | śivatantrārthavid dhīmān sa vidyāparameśvaraḥ || 11 na cāsya puṇyamāhātmyaṃ vaktuṃ śakyaṃ hi kena cit | yathā śivas tathaivāyam asmin nityaṃ śivaḥ sthitaḥ || 12.

333

This can be compared to another, looser parallel found in an earlier work dealing with topics other than the production and worship of manuscripts, namely the Arthaśāstra of Kauṭilya, who lists some qualities and defects of a written text in a chapter dealing with royal edicts. It is worth reading this passage (actually two passages from two different points in the same chapter) in full as some of the features listed in it are also included in the corresponding stanzas from the Śivadharmottara and the Nandipurāṇa. The first of these two passages (2.10.28.6–12), following the description of a scribe, reads (Olivelle 2013, p. 119): ‘6 The sequence of points, consistency, completeness, charm, grandeur, and clarity—these are exemplary qualities of a document. 7 Of these, the sequence of points consists of constructing a proper sequence and placing the main point at the beginning. 8 Consistency consists of stating a subsequent point without contradicting a previous point right up to the conclusion. 9 Completeness consists of the absence of deficiency or excess in points, words, and letters; explicating the points through the use of reasons, citations, and illustrations; and not using tiresome words. 10 Charms consists of using words with lovely meanings that are easily communicated. 11 Grandeur consists of using words that are not vulgar. 12 Clarity consists of using well-known words’; Arthaśāstra 2.10.28.6–12: arthakramaḥ sambandhaḥ paripūrṇatā mādhuryam audāryaṃ spaṣṭatvam iti lekhasampat || 6 tatra yathāvad anupūrvakriyā pradhānasyārthasya pūrvam abhiniveśa ity arthakramaḥ || 7 prastutasyārthasyānuparodhād uttarasya vidhānam ā samāpter iti sambandhaḥ || 8 arthapadākṣarāṇām anyūnātiriktatā hetūdāharaṇadṛṣṭāntair arthopavarṇanāśrāntapadateti paripūrṇatā || 9 sukhopanītacārvarthaśabdābhidhānaṃ mādhuryam || 10 agrāmyaśabdābhidhānam audāryam || 11 pratītaśabdaprayogaḥ spaṣṭatvam iti || 12. Having given further instructions on grammar and how to correctly formulate different types of documents according to their aims, the author lists the defects of a written text in some subsequent lines as follows (2.10.28.57–62; Olivelle 2013, p. 122): ‘57 Inelegance, inconsistency, tautology, ungrammatical usage, and disorganization are the defects of a document. 58 Among these, inelegance consists of dark paper and letters that are unattractive, uneven, and faded. 59 Inconsistency is when what is stated later does not agree with what was stated earlier. 60 Tautology is when what has already been said is stated again without any differentation. 61 Ungrammatical usage consists of the use of wrong gender, number, tense, and case. 62 Disorganization is overturning of linguistic excellence by using a cluster where there should be no cluster and using a cluster where there should be a cluster’; Arthaśāstra 2.10.28.57–62: akāntir vyāghātaḥ punaruktam apaśabdaḥ samplava iti lekhadoṣaḥ || 57 tatra kālapatrakam acāruviṣam avirāgākṣaratvam akāntiḥ || 58 pūrveṇa paścimasyānupapattir vyāghātaḥ || 59 uktasyāviśeṣeṇa dvitīyam uccāraṇaṃ punaruktam || 60 liṅgavacanakālakārakāṇām anyathāprayogo ’paśabdaḥ || 61 avarge vargakaraṇaṃ varge cāvargakriyā guṇaviparyāsaḥ samplavaḥ || iti || 62. An analysis of the structure of this chapter of the Arthaśāstra and the grammatical tradition that it presupposes is in Scharfe 1993, pp. 60–66.
Note that the same work sets out precise pecuniary penalties and general punishments for the scribes who make mistakes in writing down a document. See Arthaśāstra 2.7.25.34–36 (translation by Olivelle 2013, pp. 113–14): ‘34 When, in a matter relating to the king, the accounts officer does not present the relevant account or offers a disclaimer, or else arranges income and expenditure in ways different from the written orders, he is assessed the lowest seizure fine. 35 If he writes down an item without any order, in the wrong order, illegibly, or iteratively, he should be fined 12 Paṇas. 36 If one writes down the balance in such manner, the fine is doubled’; rājārthe kāraṇikasyāpratibadhnataḥ pratiṣedhayato vājnāṃ nibandhād āyavyayam anyathā vā vikalpayataḥ pūrvaḥ sāhasadaṇḍaḥ || 34 kramāvahīnam utkramam avijnātaṃ punaruktaṃ vā vastukam avalikhato dvādaśapaṇo daṇḍaḥ || 35 nīvīm avalikhato dviguṇaḥ || 36. Another such example is in 4.9.84.17 (translation by Olivelle 2013, p. 243): ‘17 If the court clerk does not write down what was said, writes down what was not said, writes correctly what was badly said, writes incorrectly what was correctly said, or alters a clear meaning, he should impose on him lowest seizure fine, or else a punishment corresponding to the crime’; lekhakaś ced uktaṃ na likhati, anuktaṃ likhati, duruktam upalikhati, sūktam ullikhati, arthotpattiṃ vā vikalpayati, iti pūrvam asmai sāhasadaṇḍaṃ kuryād, yathāparādhaṃ vā || 17.

334

West 1973, p. 12.

335

Dānakāṇḍa 12.122cd–28cdNP: ubhayaṃ cāpi [DS; vāpi DK] tallekhyaṃ samīkuryāc ca vācayet || 122 ūnādhikaiś ca saṃyuktaṃ varṇair mātrādibhis tathā | anusvāravisargaiś ca yuktāyuktair vicārayet | śāstrasya prakriyāyuktyā punaruktyā ca śodhayet || 123 ūnārthoktyā prasaṅgasya śabdayogyatayā tathā | sūtrāntarārthabodhena praśnottaravivekataḥ || 124 asūtratvāc ca śāstrasya samudāyārthabodhataḥ | prakrāntasūcanoddeśair gaditair coditair api || 125 bahvarthānāṃ ca śabdānāṃ yogyāsannaṃ parīkṣya tu | sarvaśāstrāvabodhena kārakādyair aviplutaiḥ || 126 kvacic ca śabdavac caiva prakṛtārthaṃ nirūpayet | chandasā vāpi budhyeta vṛttasaṃyogam īpsitam || 127 evaṃ vidyāt [DS; vidyāṃ DK] tu medhāvī śāstraṃ satkṛtya kṛtsnaśaḥ | pradadyād vibhavair devyaiḥ surāyatanaveśmasu.

336

Note that the term śāstra, literally ‘[technical] treatise’, can hint at a more specific work: the grammarians Kātyāyana and Patañjali, for instance, use it to refer to the Aṣṭādhyāyī of Pāṇini, whereas the same term is used in the Vedāṅgajyotiṣa with reference to astronomical treatises; for both uses, see Olivelle 2010, p. 29. As Olivelle further notes, the word śāstra seems to have been used as a generic term covering treatises that deal with the Vedāṅgas. In a stanza from the same long passage of the Nandipurāṇa on the gift of knowledge, the word śabdaśāstra, a ‘treatise on grammar’ is used in the compound śabdaśāstraviśāradaḥ, ‘well versed in grammatical treatises’, referring to the teacher (see Dānakāṇḍa 12.139NP).

337

Moreover, the position of the conjunction ca, coordinating the two verbs, is irregular since it should by rule be read (and translated) as preceding the verb samīkuryāt. This would, however, separate the verbs from their objects. Here, we are thus forced to read the ca in its natural position, namely between the two verbs.

338

These stanzas resort to a terminology that is reminiscent of the one used in Dānakāṇḍa 12.122–128NP: the teacher is for instance said to be ‘the explainer of the meaning of the topic under discussion’ (prakṛtārthapravartakaḥ, 12.139, glossed by Lakṣmīdhara with prastutārthābhidhāyī).

339

Śivadharmottara 2.14–15: śivaṃ sampūjya vidhivat tadvidyāṃ pūjayet tataḥ | guruṃ ca śivavad bhaktyā tulyam etat trayaṃ yataḥ || 14 yathā śivas tathā vidyā yathā vidyā tathā guruḥ | śivavidyāgurūṇāṃ hi pūjayā sadṛśaṃ phalam || 15.

340

Examples of recurrent uses of Śivadharmottara 2.15 can be found in Liṅgapurāṇa 1.85.164cd–165ab: ‘The one who is a teacher, this is said to be Śiva, the one who is Śiva, this is taught to be a teacher. Like Śiva is knowledge, like knowledge is the teacher; and therefore [one can gain] the same fruit through devotion [paid] to the teacher of the Śaiva knowledge’; yo guruḥ sa śivaḥ prokto yaḥ śivaḥ sa guruḥ smṛtaḥ | yathā śivas tathā vidyā yathā vidyā tathā guruḥ || 164 śivavidyāguros tasmād bhaktyā ca sadṛśaṃ phalam. The translation of the penultimate pāda is slightly different because the text of the Liṅgapurāṇa, for which I rely on the printed edition, gives a genitive singular (°guros) where the Śivadharmottara gives a plural (°gurūṇāṃ); as a consequence, the latter can be interpreted as a dvandva compound, while the former, if we accept the reading of the printed edition—which the parallel with the Śivadharmottara would however easily prove secondary—can only account for a tatpuruṣa compound. Moreover, Śivadharmottara 2.15 is reused in the Vāyavīyasaṃhitā of the Śivapurāṇa, Uttarakhaṇḍa, 15.21, with the sole difference of replacing hi (‘for’) with ca (‘and’): yathā śivas tathā vidyā yathā vidyā tathā guruḥ | śivavidyāgurūṇāṃ ca pūjayā sadṛśaṃ phalam || 21. The passage of the Vāyavīyasaṃhitā containing this stanza is further quoted with attribution in the Kriyāsāra by Nīlakaṇṭhaśivācārya (vol. 1, p. 195), in a section that is not attested in the Śivārcanācandrikā by Appayya Dīkṣita (for some thoughts on the correspondences and parallels between the two works, see § 4.3), and silently reused by the Candrajñānāgama, Kriyāpāda, second chapter, whose stanza 8 corresponds to Śivadharmottara 2.15.
The Kubjikāmata, the main Kaula Tantric scripture of the so-called ‘Western Transmission’ (paścimāmnāya; see Sanderson 1988, p. 686), also has a similar verse (19.126: ‘Like the teacher is knowledge, like knowledge is the teacher’; yathā gurus tathā vidyā yathā vidyā tathā guruḥ), in a context that closely recalls that of Śivadharmottara’s Vidyādānādhyāya, as it contains parallels concerning ritual matters, including the use of a manuscript; for a discussion of the cult of the manuscript in Tantric sources, including the Kubjikāmata, see chapter 4.
A noteworthy parallel to these lines is also found in a yet unpublished Buddhist work that was kindly brought to my attention by Harunaga Isaacson. This is the Samvarodayā nāma Maṇḍalopāyikā by Bhūvācārya, whose manuscript (Tokyo University Library 450, as yet a codex unicus, as Isaacson informed me in a letter dated to 14/11/2011) is dated to August 31, 1056 according to Petech (1984, p. 44; the latter wrongly refers to the manuscript as ‘Svarodayāmaṇḍalopāyikā, Tokyo University Library, No. 454’). A stanza from this text very closely resembles both Śivadharmottara 2.15 and Śivadharmaśāstra 12.94ab (see infra) but, due to a process of adaptation to a different sectarian context, Śiva and vidyā are replaced by Heruka and the goddess: yathā herukas tathā devī guruś caiva tathaiva ca (c.m.) | herudevīgurūṇāṃ ca pūjayā sadṛśaṃ phalam || 751.

341

Śivadharmaśāstra 12.94: ‘Like Śiva is the yogin, like the yogin is Śiva: therefore, a gift, even a small one, [given] to the receptacles who are the best among yogins, is undecaying’; yathā śivas tathā yogī yathā yogī tathā śivaḥ | tena yogīndrapātreṣu dānam apy alpam akṣayam || 94. For more parallels between Śivadharmaśāstra 12 and Śivadharmottara 2, see § 4.4.

342

Śivadharmottara 2.4: ‘As there is no end to Śiva, who is completely accomplished [and] has a great soul, in the same way there is no end to the gifting of knowledge, which is endowed with all good properties’; yathā śivasya naivāntaḥ sampūrṇasya mahātmanaḥ | tathā vidyāpradānasya nāntaḥ sarvaguṇātmanaḥ || 4.

343

Śivadharmottara 6.8–12 (A fol. 17r[LL4–6], B fol. 63r[LL3–5], P2[P340]): ye dviṣanti mahādevaṃ saṃsārārṇavatārakam [°tāraṇam A P2] | sumahatpātakopetās te yānti narakāgniṣu [nirayāgniṣu P2] || 8 dūṣayanti śivajñānaṃ ye sarvārthaprasādhakam [savārtha° B °prakāśakam P2] | sumahatpāta[AL5]kaṃ teṣāṃ nirayārṇavagāminām || 9 ye [ye om. P2] śivajñānavaktāraṃ [śivajñānasya vaktaraṃ P2] vidviṣanti [ye dviṣanti P2] guru[BL4]ṃ narāḥ [naraḥ B] | sumahatpātakopetās te yānti narakārṇavam || 10 śivanindā guro<r> [guru° A] nindā śivajñānasya dūṣaṇam | devadravyāpraharaṇaṃ [devadravyāpaharaṇam A] gurudravyavināśanam || 11 haranti ye ca sammūḍhāḥ śivajñānasya pustakam | sumahatpātakāny [AL6] āhur anantāni [ityananta° P2] phalāni [BL5] ṣaḍ || 12.

344

Śivadharmottara 6.17–22 (A fol. 17v[L1–3], B fol. 63r[L6]–63v[L2], P2[P341–42]): asampūjya śivajñānaṃ ye <’>dhīyante likhanti vā [ye…vā om. P2] | anyāyataḥ prayacchanti śṛṇvanty uccāra[B63vL1]yanti ca [vā A] [17cd om. P2] || 17 vikrīṇante [vikriṇanti P2] ca lobhena kujñānaniyamena [ājñāna° P2] ca | asaṃskṛtapra[AL2]deśeṣu yatheṣṭaṃ sthāpayanti ca || 18 [P2P341] śivajñānakathākṣepaṃ yaḥ [yat P2] kṛtvā <’>nyat prabhāṣate | nādhīyīta [nādhīyītaḥ B nādhīyate P2] samarthaś ca [san P2] yaḥ pramādaṃ [pramādaṃ yaḥ P2] karoti ca || 19 aśuciś cāśucau sthāne yaḥ pravakti śṛṇoti ca [śṛṇoti ca vakti ca P2] | i[BL2]ti sarvaṃ samāsena jñānanindāsamaṃ smṛtam || 20 gurupūjām akṛtvaiva yaḥ śāstraṃ śrotum icchati [gurupūjānamaskṛtvaiva yaḥ śāstraṃ śrotum icchati B, c.m.] | na karoti ca śu[AL3]śrūṣām ājñāṃ [ājñā P2] bhaktiṃ [em. bhaktiś A bhakti B bhaktī P2] ca bhāvataḥ || 21 nābhinandanti tadvākyam uttaraṃ [uttaraṃś B] ca prayacchati | gurukarmaṇi śāṭhyaṃ ca tadupekṣāṃ [tadupektāṃ B] karoti ca || 22.

345

Notably, a similar prohibition is expressed in the Dharmaśāstras against the sale of manuscripts of the Vedas: a verse quoted by Kane from Vṛddhagautama lists several categories of sinners against the Vedic text, who are ‘Those who sell the Vedas and those who corrupt the Vedas, as well as those who write them down: these head to hell’; vedavikrayiṇaś caiva vedānāṃ caiva dūṣakāḥ | vedānāṃ lekhinaś caiva te vai nirayagāminaḥ || (Kane 1941, p. 349 fn. 843; for further observations on the prohibitions concerning the use of Vedic manuscripts during recitation and study, see Ciotti forth.).

346

Śivadharmottara 2.109–116: yaḥ sauvarṇaṃ susaṃpūrṇaṃ sarvaratnopaśobhitam | sapidhānaṃ sumañjūṣaṃ vidyākośasamāśrayam | kārayed vāpi raupyeṇa tāmreṇa caturasrakam || 109 kāṃsyārakūṭalohair vā dāruvaṃśādinirmitam | tat kaṣāyānuraktena carmaṇābhinavena ca || 110 antar bahiś ca maṭhayed vidyāvāsagṛhaṃ navam | sarvāśmakaṭakopetaṃ dṛḍhasūtranibandhanam || 111 kuryāt tālakasaṃyuktaṃ vidyāratnakaraṇḍakam | evaṃ vittānusāreṇa kārayitvānurūpataḥ || 112 prakṣālya gandhatoyena vidyākośagṛhaṃ param | kṛtvā vastragṛhaṃ divyam antaḥpuṣpagṛhānvitam || 113 vidyāsiṃhāsanaṃ tatra sampūjya vidhivad budhaḥ | tasmin puṇyāhaśabdena vidyākośagṛhaṃ nyaset || 114 tataś candanakarpūraiḥ kuṅkumādyaiḥ pralepayet | antarvastrayutaṃ dhūpyaṃ satpuṣpair abhipūjayet || 115 tato vāditranirghoṣair vidyākośeṇa pūrayet | tataḥ saṃpūjayed vidyāṃ mahāvibhavavistaraiḥ | kṛtvā pradakṣiṇaṃ cānte namet sarvāṅgikaṃ budhaḥ || 116.

347

Note that modern reports on Indian traditional libraries witness the use of metal boxes for the manuscripts in Nepal and in Jain libraries, whereas wood and cardboard were the materials predominantly used for the production of boxes for the manuscripts (Bühler 1904, p. 118).

348

The term °ratnakaraṇḍaka, ‘jewel box’, is also attested in later Tantric Śaiva and Buddhist literature with reference to the foundational scriptures of a tradition: see e.g. the use of the compound siddharatnakaraṇḍaka, the ‘jewel box of the perfect beings’, in the following passage from Svacchandatantra 8.39: ‘Thus the best teaching, divine, a jewel box for the perfect beings, has to be kept by you like the biggest secret, not to be revealed by anyone to anybody’; evaṃ tantravaraṃ divyaṃ siddharatnakaraṇḍakam | tvayā guptataraṃ kāryaṃ na deyaṃ yasya kasyacit || 39. Another occurrence of the term is in the Hevajratantra, where it is attested in the compound buddharatnakaraṇḍaka (2.2.38, Snellgrove 1959, p. 48): vihare ’haṃ sukhāvatyāṃ sadvajrayoṣito bhage | ekārākṛtirūpe tu buddharatnakaraṇḍake || 38.

349

Śivadharmottara 2.117–22: vidyākośagṛhasyāpi vidyāyatanam uttamam | bhavet suśobhanaṃ ramyam aṣṭahastapramāṇataḥ || 117 […] tatra taṃ tūryaghoseṇa maṅgalair vividhair api | ānīya sthāpayed bhaktyā vidyāratnakaraṇḍakam || 121 tataḥ sugandhapuṣpādyaiḥ śivavat pratipūjayet | śivavidyāṃ sadākālaṃ trisandhyam upacārataḥ || 122.

350

From the modern accounts on traditional libraries we learn, for instance, that Jain libraries were limited to small, dark—and sometimes even subterranean—rooms; see Delhey forth. for this and for an overall treatment of the topic of Indian libraries. The archaeological remains identified as temple libraries in Cambodia have limited dimensions, which suggest that these places did not allow the use of manuscripts in situ for personal study (see Goodall forth. and below).

351

Goodall forth., referring to Coedès 1964, pp. 141–47. Both these inscriptions record the generosity of Hiraṇyagarbha.

352

Goodall forth., referring to Coedès 1932, p. 92 and 103–104. The writing implements mentioned in the charter are blank palm leaves (riktapattra), ink (maṣī), and chalk or clay (mṛtsnā); the inscription prescribes that two librarians and six ‘preparers of leaves’ can be hired for each āśrama.

353

Renowned examples are those of the Buddhist monastic universities of Valabhī, Nālandā, and Vikramaśīla, for which see Delhey forth. In the first case, an inscription on two plates dated to 559 CE, recording a grant to the Buddhist community of Valabhī under the king Guhasena (Bühler 1878, IA 7, pp. 66–68), also mentions among the purposes of this grant ‘the purchase of manuscripts of the true Dharma’ (saddharmasya pustakopakra[…], Pl. 2 l. 5). Other testimonies on the existence of imposing manuscript collections in the abovementioned institutions include the accounts of Chinese travelers such as the pilgrims Yijing (635–713 CE) and Xuanzang (602–664 CE), who came to India looking for manuscripts and actually brought a vast amount of them back to China, many presumably from Nālandā. Some considerations regarding the Gilgit collection, with special reference to the possible cultic use of the manuscripts contained in it, will be presented below.
A document from Tamil Nadu which recorded manuscripts and other writing implements as items owned by a monastery (maṭha) is among the evidence found in non-Buddhist environments. This is a Vaiṣṇava document in Tamil from Kāñcīpura (Ramanatha Ayyar 1939–40, EI 25.34, pp. 318–26), dated to śaka 1282 (1359 CE). The inscription is engraved on the northern wall of the second prākāra of the Varadarāja temple, also known as Viṣṇu-Kāñcī. The grant is purportedly bestowed by the god Hastigīrīśa himself: having conferred on Vaiṣṇavadāsa the title of brahmatantrasvatantrajīyar, he assigns to him a monastery and its property, including manuscripts, with the aim of propagating the rāmānujadarśana, i.e. the Viśiṣṭādvaita teachings. This last piece of information gives the impression that the library referred to in this document is specialized in one subject, rather than collecting manuscripts from different fields. The English translation accompanying the text reads (p. 326): ‘…the books which he had accumulated and the accessories required for them (i.e., their maintenance), so that he may propagate Our Rāmānuja-darśanam, and after him, the disciples selected by him may, in succession, take possession of these and continue (the work)’ (ll. 4–5: postakaṅgaḷum idukku vēṇḍum upakaraṇaṅgaḷum nam rāmānujandarśanam neḍakkaikkāga ivaṉukku [L5] piṉbum ivaṉ niyamitta ivaṉuḍaiya śiṣyargaḻ paramparaiyāga ivaiyiṟṟaikkaikkoṇḍu naḍattippōdakkaḍavargaḻāgavum).
More evidence on this topic is discussed in the next footnote, among the attestations of the word °bhāṇḍāra (repository) and its derivatives denoting a monastic library.

354

According to Bühler 1904, p. 118, sarasvatībhāṇḍāgāra is a modern synonym for bhāratībhāṇḍāgāra, which he translates as ‘treasury of the goddess of speech’, and is frequently found attested in Jain works. However, the word sarasvatībhāṇḍāgāra is not that modern as, to the best of my knowledge, it is attested at least as early as the eleventh century in a Kannada document from the village of Nagavi (Gulbarga district, Karnataka), from 1058 CE (see Inscriptions from Nagai, pp. 7–24), making reference to the existence of a library attached to an educational institution called gaṭikāsthāna. This document is dated to śaka 980 (1058 CE) at l. 183 and refers to the reign of the western Cāḷukya king Trailokyamalla Āhavamalla (his lineage is eulogised at verses 3–22 of ll. 8–57); it records a gift of land received by the daṇḍanāthatrinetra (ll. 132–33, literally ‘The Three-Eyed [Śiva] among generals’) Madhusūdana for the maintenance of the gaṭikāsthāna (line 177). This donation is made for the benefit of the hundreds of students hosted by the institution, namely 200 students of the Veda (ll. 191–92, vēdādhyāyigaḷinnūrvvarggam) and 52 students of the śāstras (ll. 192–93: śāstrādhyāyigaḷayvadiṃbarggaṃ). Among the beneficiaries of the donation, ‘three teachers of the aforementioned [students]’ (line 193: tadupādhyāyigaḷu 3) are also mentioned, an expression that I interpret as referring to the three categories listed thereafter, namely (ll. 193–196): ‘to the three expounders of the Pūrvamīmāṃsā, of the Nyāya and the Prabhākaramīmāṃsā, to the three teachers instructing in the Vedas, to the six curators of the repository of Sarasvatī (literally sarasvatībhaṇḍārigas) of the school’; bhaṭṭadarśananyā<ya>[L194]prabhākaravyākhyātṛgaḷ mūvarggaṃ vēdaman ō[L195]disuv upādhyāyarmmūvarggaṃ śāleya sarasva[L196]bhaṇḍārigar ārvvarggam. The epigraph further specifies (l. 196ff.) the purposes for which the income has to be used, which is essentially the maintenance of the categories of people mentioned above and the financing of ritual activities, as well as the dimensions of the land allotted to each of the groups of teachers. This new list of beneficiaries includes the ‘librarians’, while apparently excluding the teachers of the Veda, of whom there is no further mention (ll. 204–206).
Sankaranarayanan 1993 is also very informative in this regard. At p. 28ff., the author mentions two damaged records (ARE 168 and 169 of 1961–62 = EI 40, pp. 223–24) that are ascribable to the reign of the king Jaṭāvarman Sundara Pāṇḍya I (started in 1250–51 CE), and give rather detailed instructions concerning the duties of the people appointed to a library, once again referred to as sarasvatībhaṇḍāra. According to Sankaranarayanan, the record states that this sarasvatībhaṇḍāra was founded by a certain Svāmideva and was located in the western maṇḍapa situated to the north of the Subrahmaṇya shrine. The room where the manuscripts were stored was called vikramaśolaṉtirukkaiyoṭṭi, an expression that Sankaranarayanan translates as ‘storeroom of sacred manuscripts’, entitled to king Vikrama Coḷa (1118–1135 CE). The library had a ‘staff’ of twenty people. According to the account given by Sankaranarayanan, six of these were in charge of reading and maintaining the ‘manuscripts on the Divyāgama’. Two others were in charge of reading the Purāṇas and the Jyotiḥśāstras; eight people were appointed to the task of re-copying the worn-out manuscripts, and another four were charged with the ordinary maintenance of the manuscripts. Their duties were to regularly untie the manuscripts, dust them, insert new cover-boards and threads, and tie them again. There were additionally two other employees appointed to compare the apographs with the respective exemplars as a service for visiting scholars. Sankaranarayanan states that the only work mentioned by title in this epigraph is called Siddhāntaratnākara. It is alluded to as a work preserved in the sarasvatībhaṇḍāra and also as a work that was transcribed in the same place. On the basis of another epigraph dated to 1218 CE, Sankaranarayanan (1993, p. 30) further identifies this Siddhāntaratnākara with a now lost work written by a scholar named Someśvara. However, the term Siddhāntaratnākara could also be interpreted as a generic designation for manuscripts on Śaivasiddhānta. Another record referred to by Sankaranarayanan (1993, p. 32) mentions the installation of statues of Sarasvatī, Vedavyāsa, and Hayagrīva in a maṇḍapa added to a sarasvatībhaṇḍāra. This record (ARE no. 4 of 1937–38) is ascribed to the reign of the Hoysaḷa king Vīra Rāmanātha (1254–95 CE).
Two later pieces of evidence from the Karnataka village of Vantayala (Udupi district), dating back to the early Vijayanagara period (ARE Nos. 283 and 284 of 1937), used the term pustakabhaṇḍāra in order to refer to a library attached to a monastery. This inscription is dated to śaka year 1328 (= 1406 CE) and referred to Bukka Mahārāya (Bukka II), son of Harihara II. It records the endowment of the village Bramhāra and income from other villages made by the king for the benefit of Kṛṣṇa Bhaṭṭa, here designated as Purāṇika Kavi. This gift was aimed at the maintenance of the pustakabhaṇḍāra of the Śṛṅgērimaṭha. The following record (no. 284), issued in śaka 1354 (1431 CE) under the king Dēvarāya Mahārāya, according to the résumé mentions Kavi Śaṅkara Bhaṭṭa and Kavi Kṛṣṇa Bhaṭṭa as librarians of this maṭha (see ARE of 1937, part II, pp. 81–82).

355

See Delhey forth. The words thus obtained are jñānakośa (‘treasure-house of knowledge’) and citkośa (‘treasure-house of thought’).

356

Von Hinüber 2014, p. 83. The collection of manuscripts found at Naupur, close to Gilgit in modern Pakistan, during archaeological excavations in 1931 and 1938 (though the most recent finding occurred in 1998; for an accurate overview on the discoveries of the manuscripts of Gilgit, see Fussman 2004) has been and is still the object of intensive research. It would go beyond the scope of this study and the competence of its author to exhaustively introduce the topic or survey the relevant secondary literature. For these endeavours I refer the reader to von Hinüber 1979, Fussman 2004 and von Hinüber 2014, which give a comprehensive overview of the Gilgit collection, past and ongoing research projects, as well as the most recent developments.

357

Dutt 1942, pp. 139–44.

358

These references are in Dutt 1942, p. 143 ll. 4 and 14, and further at p. 146, ll. 4–5.

359

See Fussman 2004.

360

On the notion of gter ma, see Bentor 1995. Fussman (2004, p. 105) reports the theory of Jettmar (1993), according to which the manuscripts were brought to Gilgit and buried there as gter mas, after having been copied at a monastery near Skardu (Jettmar 1993, p. 94). However, Fussman argues that this notion is later than the case under investigation, and that it is only typical of Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhist texts (Fussman 2004, p. 105).

361

The whole site would thus consist of three stūpas (buildings A, B, and D according to the reports) and then a quadrangular tower (building C) containing the manuscripts (Fussman 2004, p. 121). Only derelict ruins remain from these buildings, hence the difficulties in identifying them. Understanding the ‘bâtiment C’ as a tower, according to Fussman, has the advantage of resolving the nonsense of having to postulate a stūpa filled with manuscripts in its inner, inaccessible part (Fussman 2004, p. 122).

362

Fussman 2004, p. 121.

363

According to Fussman’s evaluations, the place was simply too small and filled with manuscripts to host more people, and could have been abandoned at the death of the last monk of this lineage, who might not have been replaced for reasons connected to the decline of the Buddhist community in that area (Fussman 2004, p. 123). Von Hinüber counters that the place could have hosted at least a very small community of monks acting as priests for the local Buddhist devotees (von Hinüber 2014, p. 80). Fussman, however, admits that the fact that no traces of a monastic building have so far been identified in the surroundings is a weak point in his reconstruction (Fussman 2004, p. 121).

364

As he puts it, ‘Connaître la nature du bâtiment dans lequel furent découverts en 1931 les manuscrits de Gilgit ne relève pas sulement de l’anecdote ou de l’histoire locale. C’est un moyen de comprendre pourquoi ces manuscrits étaient réunis là et ce qu’ils représentaient dans la vie d’un monastère situé aux frontières du monde indianisé’ (Fussman 2004, p. 144).

365

His views on the topic are mainly expressed in Fussman 2004, pp. 131–34.

366

See Fussman 2004, p. 132. In his view, the use of these manuscripts for performing rituals of healing would also be confirmed by the presence of certain texts that were used for that specific purpose, such as the 21 exemplars of the Uṣṇīṣavimaladhāraṇī and the many Bhaiṣajagurusūtras.

367

According to the formulas of these colophons, a donor (who might have also been a monarch) associated him or herself with another person (sometimes even a dead person) by giving the manuscript as a gift, and the merits deriving from this donation would be shared by all living beings (Fussman 2004, p. 133).

368

The collection of Gilgit grew in the course of perhaps one century, starting from the sixth century CE, as deducible from a study of both the colophons and the scripts (von Hinüber 2014, p. 84).

369

See, for example, von Hinüber 2014, p. 83ff., remarking on the presence of non-ritualistic and non-religious literature in the Gilgit collection, such as medical and grammatical texts, whose manuscripts attest annotations and interlinear corrections. This means that they were not used for ritual purpose, but for studying and teaching.

370

Schopen 2009, pp. 196–98. The textual authorities that Schopen quotes in support of his argument (Schopen 2009, p. 197) are the Aparamitāyuḥsūtra, where the ritual actions prescribed for the manuscript—its reading and worship—do not include its donation, but instead preserving the manuscript at home (Konow 1916, p. 299, p. 301); the Bhaiṣajyagurusūtra (referred to as Schopen forth., § 13), again prescribing the worship of the manuscript and the uncountable merits deriving from it, but not its donation; and the Aṣṭasāhasrikā, in a passage (Wogihara 1932–1935: 254.8–258.21) in which three places are listed among those to be protected by the powers of the manuscript, namely a house (gṛha), a cell (layana), and a palace (prāsāda). As Schopen notes (Schopen 2009, p. 198), Haribhadra’s commentary on this passage glosses layana with bhikṣūṇāṃ sthānavāsam, the ‘dwelling place of monks’ (Wogihara 1932–35, 258.23).
As for the performance of rites, he (Schopen 2009, p. 198) refers, among others, to the Bhaiṣajyagurusūtra, where an elaborate pūjā for the ill, dying, or dead person is not said to be performed by monks, but by friends, relatives, and kinsmen (Schopen forth. a § 18); and to the Ratnakeṭu (Kurumiya 1978, 137.7), whose list of possible performers of rites includes both monks (bhiḳsu, bhikṣuṇī) and lay devotees (upāsaka, upāsikā).

371

Fussman 2004, p. 121.

372

Schopen 2009, p. 203.

373

Schopen 2009, p. 203.

374

For a detailed introduction on the Vinayavastu of the Mūlasarvāstivādin, its manuscript transmission, ancient translations, secondary literature, and editions, see Wille 1990.

375

Here we refer to, among others, Schopen 1994, 1995, 1997, 2000, von Hinüber 2014, Strauch 2014.

376

I have transcribed the text of the following lines directly from the manuscript, as reproduced in Clarke 2014, p. 169, right column. It is well known that the editor of the text (Dutt 1942) did not include a proper critical apparatus in his edition, and silently corrected the Sanskrit text of the Gilgit manuscript on various occasions. I have decided to resort to the manuscript because I would like to present the text in a more accurate shape, and also because one of the key words of this passage (the compound *dhāraṇakoṣṭikā in Dutt’s edition) will be discussed later in more detail on the basis of the two different readings traceable in the manuscript. With reference to this compound, I have changed the text in accordance with the emendation proposed by Schopen 1994, p. 531. The quoted text corresponds to Dutt 1942, p. 143 = GM III.2.143.3–14 = NAI 1.7 (Gilgit), fol. 274v[LL3–6]: eko dharmasya <|> dvitīyaḥ [em. Dutt; dvitīyo Codd.] saṃghasya <|> yo dharmasya tena buddha[L4]vacanaṃ lekhayitavyam [em. Dutt; lekhayitavyaṃ Codd.] | siṃhāsane [sihāsane MS] copayoktavyam [em. Dutt; copayoktavyā Codd.] | yaḥ saṃghasya sa bhikṣubhir bhājayitavyaḥ [em. Dutt; bhājayitavyaṃ Codd.] <|> pustakānāṃ buddhavacanapustakā avibhajya [em. Dutt; avibhājya Codd.] cāturdiśāya bhikṣusaṃghāya dhāraṇakoṣṭhikāyāṃ [em. Dutt; dhāraṇākoṣṭhikāyāṃ MS] prakṣeptavyāḥ <|> bahiḥśāstrapustakā bhikṣubhir vikrīya bhājayitavyāḥ <|> patralekhyaṃ yac chīghraṃ [L5] śakyate sādhayituṃ [em. Dutt; tadadhayituṃ Codd.] tasya dravyavibhāge [em. Dutt; dravyavibhāga Codd.] tad bhikṣubhir bhājayitavyam [em. Dutt; bhājayitavyaṃ Codd.] <|> na śakyate tac cāturdiśāya bhikṣusaṃghāya sādhāraṇakoṣṭikāyāṃ [em.; dhāraṇa <|> koṣṭhikāyāṃ em. Dutt; sādhāraṇaṃ koṣṭhikāyāṃ Codd.] prekṣeptavyam [em. Dutt; prekṣeptavyaḥ Codd.] <|> suvarṇaṃ ca hiraṇyaṃ cānyac ca kṛtākṛtaṃ trayo bhāgāḥ kartavyāḥ <|> eko buddhasya <|> dvitīyo dharmasya <|> tṛtīyaḥ saṃghasya | [L6] yo buddhasya tena gandhakuṭyāṃ [em. Dutt; gandhakuṭyā Codd.] keśanakhastūpeṣu ca khaṇḍachuṭṭaṃ [em. Dutt; khaṇḍachuṭṭa Codd.] pratisaṃskartavyam [em. Dutt; pratisaṃskartavya Codd.] <|> yo dharmasya tena buddhavacanaṃ lekhayitavyaṃ siṃhāsane vā upayoktavyam [em. Dutt; upayoktavyaṃ Codd.] <|> yaḥ saṃghasya sa bhikṣubhir bhājayitavyaḥ.

377

For the interpretation of patralekhya as a written document to which the deceased commits his last will concerning the distribution of his wealth, I rely on Schopen 1995, pp. 499–500 and Schopen 2000, pp. 93–94. Strauch notes that the Bajaur collection contains a manuscript that may be considered the equivalent of the patralekhya to which the Cīvaravastu refers (Strauch 2014, pag. 478): this is fragment 15, belonging to a documentary manuscript attesting a transaction between a certain Budhamitra and Mitrasthāna. This text uses the closely related term hastalekha.

378

The text is the Nanhai jigui neifa-zhuan, ‘An Account of the Dharma Sent Back from the Southern Seas’. The passages referred to in the next lines, as well as the dating of Yijing’s life and work, are based on Takakusu 1896.

379

Note that passages from this chapter, including the portion on the manuscripts and the lion-throne, are also quoted by Dutt 1942, pp. IX–XI, to show the (almost) literal closeness between the Sanskrit text and Yijing’s rendering.

380

Takakusu 1896, p. 192.

381

Both mentions of the lion-throne in the Sanskrit text of the Gilgit manuscript are in the locative case, while the gerundive upayoktavyam (‘has to be used’) is used in the direct case, neuter; this allows the reader to connect the latter with buddhavacanam (the ‘teaching of the Buddha’, also neuter), functioning as a subject of both upayoktavyam and the preceding lekhayitavyam (‘has to be committed to writing’). Yijing’s interpretation, by contrast, appears to connect the teaching of the Buddha with the sole action of transcribing (lekhayitavyam), whereas the following activity (which actually seem to be two according to Takakusu’s translation, ‘building or decorating’) is only addressed to the lion-throne. The possibility of separating the verbs lekhayitavyam and upayoktavyam cannot be entirely ruled out in our reading of the Sanskrit text, either. In order to do so, we would have to consider buddhavacanam as the subject of the sole lekhayitavyam, and the locative siṃhāsane as an oblique case expressing the purpose of upayoktavyam (‘it has to be used/enjoyed’). This reconstruction however is less tenable for at least two reasons: the gerundives in this case would preferably be connected with an expressed subject, as its qualifiers, especially if juxtaposed with a word with which they agree (here buddhavacanam; elsewhere in the same passage, bhāga, ‘portion’ of the legacy); moreover, the use of an impersonal construction for the transitive verb upayuj (‘to use’, ‘to apply’), connected with a locative, makes little sense either syntactically or semantically.

382

See von Hinüber 2014, p. 82.

383

Schopen 1994, p. 531.

384

Edgerton 1953, s.v. koṣṭhikā. Wille 1990 does not insert this word among Dutt’s ‘falsche Lesungen’ that entered the dictionary.

385

Note that in the second occurrence, Dutt divides the compound into two words, and separates them by means of a daṇḍa: dhāraṇa | koṣṭhikāyāṃ (GM III.2.143.9).

386

See Gnoli 1978, p. 68: ato yo buddhasya bhāgas tena gandhakuṭyāṃ pralepaṃ dadata | yo dharmasya sa dharmadharāṇāṃ pudgalānām | yaḥ saṃghasya taṃ samagraḥ saṃgho bhajayatu. Noting this parallel, which is in the context of the story of Muktikā, daughter of the king of Siṅhala, Schopen (1997, p. 581 and fn. 31) maintains that this text also provides evidence for the funding of the transcription of scriptures. However, although it is undeniable that the two passages from the Cīvaravastu and the Adhikaraṇavastu are close, it is likewise evident that the Adhikaraṇavastu makes only a generic reference to people who are charged with the preservation of the Dharma, without explicitly referring to the production of manuscripts.

387

In this sense, the root dhṛ and the word °dhara are used in the Pāli canon, for instance in the compounds abhidhammadhara ‘one who remembers the Abhidhamma’, vinayadhara, ‘one who remembers the Vinaya’, or suttadhara ‘one who remembers the Suttas’ (Norman 1997, p. 116).

388

Barth 1885, pp. 30–31, ISC no. 28; see also Majumdar 1953, pp. 18–19. A new edition of this epigraph is currently being prepared by Gerdi Gerschheimer and Dominic Goodall.

389

St. 4: rāmāyaṇapurāṇābhyām aśeṣaṃ bhāratan dadat | akṛtānvaham acchedyāṃ sa ca tadvācanāsthitim || 4.

390

St. 7ab: itas tu hartā durbuddhir ya ekam api pusta(kam).

391

Mitākṣarā ad Yājñavalkyasmṛti 2.212: ‘And in this regard, concerning the gift of the brahman, the gift is solely intended as the accomplishment of the ownership of another, as it is impossible to bring one’s own ownership to cessation; atra ca brahmadāne parasvatvāpādanamātraṃ dānaṃ svatvanivṛtteḥ kartum aśakyatvāt. This topic is dealt with in Brick 2014, p. 33, where the same passage from the Mitākṣarā is quoted and discussed.

392

Dānakāṇḍa 12.165cdNP: evaṃ dine dine vyākhyāṃ śṛṇuyān niyato naraḥ || 165.

393

Dānakāṇḍa 12.168abNP: eṣa vidyāpradānasya pradhāno vidhir ucyate.

394

Dānakāṇḍa 12.133–134NP: yathāśakti ca kartavyā utsavāḥ sveṣu veśmasu | rājñā tu nagare kāryo grāme grāmādhipais tathā | gṛhe gṛhasthaiḥ kartavya utsavo bandhubhiḥ saha || 133 snātaiḥ śuklaiḥ samālabdhaiḥ sukhibhiḥ susamāhitaiḥ | prītiyuktais tataḥ śrāvyaṃ śāstraṃ śraddhāsamanvitaiḥ || 134.

395

For the connections between this description and the methods of correcting a manuscript, see the remarks in § 2.2.

396

Dānakāṇḍa 12.143NP: saṃskāraiḥ saṃskṛtāṃ vidyāṃ prākṛtāṃ prākṛtair api | ālāpamātrair vyākhyānair yaś ca śiṣyān prabodhayet || 143 deśābhidhānavinyāsair bodhayec cāpi yo guruḥ | sa guruḥ sa pitā mātā sa tu cintāmaṇiḥ smṛtaḥ || 144.

397

See Dānakāṇḍa 12.150–51NP: ‘He should listen endowed with faith, bent towards the teacher, not relying on the good speech of others, not negligent, free from lassitude. (150) / And, if a doubt arises, he should softly ask [for clarification]. [The teacher] will start a speech, and [the student] should rely on it, [listening] with attention, endowed with faith, to what has been said by the teacher. [The student should] not [repeat] publicly the words of the teacher, [he] should defend what has been said by the teacher!’ (151); śṛṇuyāc chraddhayā yuktaḥ praṇato ’bhimukhe guroḥ | ananyasatkathākṣepī niṣpramādo hy atandritaḥ || 150 mṛduṃ ca saṃśaye jāte pṛcched vākyam udīrayet | guruṇā coktam ekānte śraddhāvān vākyam āśrayet | na puro guruvākyāni gurūktaṃ paripālayet || 151.

398

Dānakāṇḍa 12.156bcNP: kiṃcit kuryāc chubhāśubham | bhavec chataguṇaṃ tad vai.

399

The reciter will read topics related to the supreme self ‘having gently explained’ (śanair vibodhya, 12.158NP) stories of war, ‘like a storm’ (dhārāvartena, 12.158NP, glossed by Lakṣmīdhara with vegena, ‘with impetuousness’); in the case of love poetry, ‘with gentle expressions’ (lalitair vākyair, 12.159NP), modulating the grace of his voice with the various meters (nānāvṛttānurūpeṇa lālityena, 12.159NP). For parallels to these verses in the Hayaśīrṣapāñcarātra, see Dutta 1971, p. 34 fn. 101. The author also compares these norms to the analogous ones given in the Nāṭyaśāstra (Dutta 1971, p. 35).

400

Dānakāṇḍa 12.161–163abNP: samāpte vācane ’bhīṣṭaṃ stuyād devaṃ vicakṣaṇaḥ | avadhārya jagacchantim ante śāntyudakaṃ sṛjet || 161 suśrutaṃ suśrutaṃ brūyād astu vyākhyātra nityadā | lokaḥ pravartatāṃ dharme rājā cāstu sadā jayī || 162 dharmavān dhanasaṃpanno guruś cāstu nirāmayaḥ.

401

Śivadharmottara 12.272–97 (A fol.51v[L5]–fol.53v[L1], B fol.100v[L2]–101r[L5], om. P2): vidyādānopacāreṇa śobhāṃ kṛtvā prayatnataḥ | gatvā ’dhivāsitakaraḥ śrīmadāsanasaṃsthitaḥ || 272 sabhāyatanatīrtheṣu narendrabhavaneṣu vā | vāca[BL3]yet paramaṃ dharmaṃ gṛhagrāmapureṣu ca [vā B] || 273 śrotāraś ca śivajñānaṃ dhūpapuṣpair dine dine | pūjayitvā namitvā ca kṛtāñjali[AL6]puṭāḥ sthitāḥ || 274 sarve nīcāsanāḥ śāntā yathāvṛddhakramāgatāḥ | dharmataḥ śrotum arhanti kathāntaravivarjitāḥ || 275 jñānārambhe [jñānārambhā° B] samāptau ca [BL4] śrotṛbhir vācakena vā [vacikena ca B] | śivamantraṃ samuccārya [samuccāryam A] aśeṣārthaprasādhakam || 276 ānayed dhūpapuṣpādyam ekaikaṃ śrāvakaḥ kramāt [śravakakramāt B] | sarvasādhujanārthāya [A52rL1] jñānasattraprado’pi [jñānasata° B] vā || 277 ācāryebhyaḥ kare dadyād vācikaḥ [vācakaḥ B] kusumatrayam | te ’pi tair ādimadhyānte kuryuḥ pūjāṃ tu pustake || 278 [BL5] iti śaktyā ca bhaktyā ca [ca om. B] kṛtvā pūjāṃ sadakṣiṇām | pravartayati yaḥ kaścic chivapustakavācanam [°vācakam A] || 279 sarvalokopakārārtham ātmanaś ca vivṛddhaye [vimuktaye B] | tasya puṇyaphalaṃ vakṣye śrotṛ[AL2]ṇāṃ vācakasya ca || 280 dhanam āyuḥ prajāṃ kīrtiṃ prajñāṃ buddhiṃ śriyaṃ sukham | iha saṃprāpya vipulaṃ dehānte śānti[BL6]m āpnuyāt || 281 asaṃpūjya śiva[CL5]jñānaṃ pradeśe cāpy [cāpyi° A] asaṃskṛte | vācayan narakaṃ yāti tasmāt saṃskṛtya [satkṛtya B] vācayet || 282 vācanāt te jagacchāntim avadhārya dine dine | gaccheyuḥ kuśapuṣpārthaṃ śivārcā[AL3]dhyānatatparāḥ || 283 tataḥ śāstrasamāptyante [°samāpyante B] pūjāṃ kṛtvā viśeṣataḥ | śivavidyāgurūṇā[B101rL1]ṃ ca bhaktyā ca [ca bhaktyā ca: B unreadable] śivayoginām || 284 bhojanaṃ kalpayec caiṣāṃ dīnāndhānāṃ [dīnāndhāñ B] ca sarvataḥ | mitrasvajanabandhūnām [mitrasvaja° a.c., mitrasvajana p.c. B] ante bhṛtyajanasya ca || 285 gurave dakṣiṇāṃ dadyāc chvetaṃ gomiṣu taṃ śubham | vastrayugmāṅgulīyaṃ [vastrapuṣpā° B] ca [AL4] ghṛtapūrṇaṃ ca bhājanam || 286 vācakāya pradātavyā dakṣiṇā pūrvabhāṣitā | abhāṣite ’sya dā[BL2]tavyā guror ardhanadakṣiṇā || 287 śeṣāṇāṃ ca yathāśaktyā dakṣiṇāṃ śivayoginām [°yogine B] | dadyād vibodhayet paścāt pradīpāṣṭaśataṃ budhaḥ || 288 nivedayec cchivāyaiva tad [chivāyaitad B] aśeṣaṃ puṣpavāriṇā [°vāriṇe a.c., °vāriṇā p.c. B] c.m. | jñānapuṇyam [AL5] [jñānapuṇya A] mahāśāntaṃ tat tasmād akṣayaṃ phalam || 289 evam uddyotanaṃ [udyomantanaṃ B] kṛtvā śivajñānasya bhaktitaḥ | [BL3] aśeṣapāpanirmuktaḥ śṛṇu yat phalam āpnuyāt || 290 kulatriṃśakam uddhṛtya bhāryāputrādisaṃyutaḥ | bandhūbhiḥ svajanair snigdhair [mitrair B] bhṛtyair [bandhūbhiḥ … bhṛtyair: B unreadable] dāsaiḥ samāśritaiḥ || 291 ity etais sahitaiḥ [sahitaḥ B] sarvaiḥ śrīmacchivapure [AL6] vaset | mahāvimānair ārūḍhaiḥ [ārūḍaḥ B] sarvakāmasamanvitaiḥ || 292 tatra bhuṅkte mahābho[BL4]gān icchayā śivavad vaśī [cchivavacchasī A] | dātā hartā ca [ca om. B] kartā ca yāvat sampālanam mahat || 293 pralayānte tataḥ prāpya jñānayogam anuttamam | parameśapramodena mucyate nātra saṃśayaḥ || 294 yasmād evam ataḥ kuryāc chivapustaka[A53vL1]vācanam | bhogāpavargaphaladaṃ śivabhaktyā [śivabhakto B] dine dine || 295 na [BL5] mārī na ca durbhikṣan na rakṣāṃsi na cetayaḥ | nākāle mriyate rājā pīḍyate ca na śatrubhiḥ || 296 śṛṇoti yatra satataṃ śivadharmaṃ narādhipaḥ | tatra deśe bhaven nityaṃ sarveṣāṃ dehināṃ śivam || 297.

402

The translation of this passage is not literal. Here the text transmitted by the two manuscripts checked for this collation has gomiṣu, literally ‘among the cowherders’, which I believe to be a possible corruption for goṣu, ‘among the cows’. However, the latter would be one syllable too short, and the resulting reading would thus be unmetrical. This can be interpreted as a sign that this part of the text was already corrupt at an early stage of its transmission.

403

Śivadharmottara 2.5: iha kīrtiḥ śriyā brāhmī prajñā vṛddhir dhanaṃ sukham || 5.

404

Dānakāṇḍa 12.168 –171abNP: eṣa vidyāpradānasya pradhāno vidhir ucyate | anenaiva vidhānena brāhmaṇe śīlaśālini || 168 prabodhayati dhīyukte yuktijñe vedavādini | vinyaseta śubhaṃ śāstraṃ mahāpuṇyajigīṣayā || 169 dhanair vā vipulair dakṣed guruṃ kṛtvā sutarpitam | adhyāpayec chubhān śiṣyān abhijātān sumedhasaḥ || 170 evaṃ vidyāpradānaṃ tu sarvadānottamaṃ smṛtam.

405

Śivadharmottara 2.83: yaḥ śrīmatpustakavaram ālekhya vinivedayet | śivajñānābhiyuktāya […] || 83.

406

Mirashi 1977, CII 6.41, p. 189: (l. 56) śrīmadātreyavidvadgurubhyo vidyādānasvarūpeṇa samadāt |.

407

Mirashi 1977, CII 6.41, p. 192. This inscription is also discussed, and parts of it are translated into German, in Schmiedchen 2014, pp. 297–98.

408

Śivadharmottara 2.90–101: śivajñānābhiyuktāya bhaktācchādaṃ dadāti yaḥ | ā samāpter avicchinnaṃ vidyādānaphalaṃ labhet || 90 upānacchatrakaupīnaśayyāprāvaraṇāsanam | pādasnehāñjanābhyaṅgasnānabhojanabheṣajam || 91 yatimātropakaraṇaṃ maṭhasammārjanāñjanam | dīpāgnitoyapuṣpādyaṃ śivapustakavācanam || 92 yaḥ kuryād etad akhilaṃ śivajñānaratātmanām | pañcānāṃ pañcavarṣāṇi vidyādānaphalaṃ labhet || 93 […] vidyāmaṇḍalakaṃ vṛttaṃ yadi vā caturasrakam | dvihastam adhikaṃ vāpi kṛtvā sadgomayāmbhasā || 96 sitaraktādibhiś cūrṇaiḥ samantād upaśobhitam | sitapadmayutaṃ madhye sadvitānavibhūṣitam || 97 vicitrakusumākīrṇaṃ pradīpākṣatasaṃyutam | sampūjyaivaṃ śivajñānaṃ śraddhayā vācayīta yaḥ || 98 ādyantataḥ kramāt sarvam ekarūpaṃ śanaiḥ śanaiḥ | sarvalokopakārārtham ātmanaḥ puṇyavṛddhaye || 99 tatsamāptau śivaṃ vidyām ācāryaṃ ca prapūjayet | kalpayed bhojanaṃ paścāt sarveṣāṃ śivayoginām || 100 ya evaṃ bhaktitaḥ kuryāc chivajñānasya vācanam | mūlyena kārayed vāpi vidyādānaphalaṃ labhet || 101.

409

On this see Bronkhorst forth., p. 1. He also observes that the āśramas are not mentioned in the Vedic Saṃhitās, Brāhmaṇas, or early Upaniṣads, while appearing frequently in later Brahmanical literature.

410

Bronkhorst forth., p. 15. He adduces several examples of descriptions of this kind, like that of the āśrama of the Kaṇvas in the Abhijñānaśakuntala of Kālidāsa (Bronkhorst forth., p. 1), or the āśrama of Bharadvāja in Rāmāyaṇa 2.84ff.

411

Śivadharmottara 2.156–58: tatas saṃpūjayed bhaktyā yajamānaḥ svayaṃ gurum | dakṣiṇābhir vicitrābhir bhojanādyaiś ca pūrvavat || 156 nivedayet tataḥ sthānaṃ sarveṣāṃ śivayoginām | sarvopakaraṇopetaṃ praṇipatya punaḥ punaḥ || 157 evaṃ yaḥ kārayed ādyaḥ śrīmac chivapuraṃ mahat | sarvapāpavinirmuktaḥ śivaloke mahīyate || 158.

412

Śivadharmottara 2.144: […] vidyāvyākhyānamaṇḍapam | gavākṣanirgamopetaṃ vicitraṃ parikalpayet || 144.

413

Śivadharmottara 2.174–176: vidyāmaṇḍalakaṃ kṛtvā vidyāvyākhyānamaṇḍape | tatrābhyarcya śivajñānaṃ tadvyākhyāṃ śṛṇuyāt tataḥ || 174 śivamaṇḍalakādyena vidhinātīvaśobhanam | gurumaṇḍalakaṃ kṛtvā śivaloke mahīyate || 175 śivavidyāgurūṇāṃ ca kṛtvā maṇḍalakatrayam | yaḥ śṛṇoti śivajñānaṃ tasya vidyā prasīdati || 176.

414

Śivadharmottara 2.146–147: tatra mṛddāruśailaṃ vā sthāpayed vidhivac chivam | sarvavidyāvidhātāraṃ sarvajñaṃ lakulīśvaram || 146 vṛtaṃ śiṣyapraśiṣyaiś ca vyākhyānodyatapāṇikam | padmāsanasthaṃ deveśaṃ prasannavadanaṃ gurum || 147.

415

On monasteries, see Sears 2014, where she stresses that ‘halls for learning’ (vidyābhyāsagṛha and vidyāvyākhyāmaṇḍapa) are occasionally mentioned in architectural treatises (see p. 121 and fn. 57) and are part of the iconography of the teacher in the so called scenes of śikṣādāna (‘gift to the students’). On this point, see also Sears 2014a, p. 178ff.

416

This inscription was first edited and translated by Hall 1860, pp. 499–537, then re-edited and translated again by Kielhorn 1892, EI 2.2.

417

This record was issued on a date that, according to Kielhorn’s calculations (1892, p. 9), should correspond to either November 6, 1155 CE or November 25, 1156 CE. The last line of the record dates the inscription to ‘year 907, on [lunar day] eleven of the bright [fortnight] in the [month] Mārga, on Sunday’; saṃvat 907 mārggasudi 11 ravau. The date refers to the Kalacuri-Cedi era, whose commencement has been set in or around 248 CE (Mirashi 1955); the lineage of Alhaṇadevī’s husband Gayakarṇadeva is given in ll. 6–14, while Alhaṇadevī’s closest lineage is accounted for in ll. 14–20.

418

See Kielhorn 1892, EI 2.2, pp. 7–17, line 25: lāṭānvayaḥ pāśupatas tapasvī śrīrudrarāśir. At ll. 23–24 we read: ‘That noble Alhaṇadevī, mother of the glorious Narasiṃhadeva, ordered the building of this temple of [Śiva], the Lord [crowned with] the Moon, together with that maṭha [endowed with] floors [full of] wonders; [she] herself ordered our people to build this teaching hall [and] this entire row of garden, both attached to Śambhu’s temple’; [L23] akārayan mandiram indumauler idam maṭhenādbhutabhūmikena | sahā <’>munā śrīnarasiṃhadevaprasūr asāv alhaṇadevy udārā || vyākhyānaśā[L24]lām udyānamālām avikalām amūm | akārayat svayaṃ śambhuprāsādālīd vayan nijaiḥ.

419

I rely here on the account given by Talbot 1987, p. 137. She refers to an inscription (Andhra Pradesh Report on Epigraphy 197, 1965) recording the donation of two villages in the Kadapa (Cuddapah) district by Jannigadēva (1258–68 CE), a Kāyastha subordinate of the Kākatīya, to the master Śāntaśiva, in order to favor those who came to learn the teachings given in the vidyāmaṇḍapa attached to a śivaliṅga (text quoted in fn. 40: śivaliṅgamaṭhavidyāmaṇḍapādhyayanasuśrūṣakabrāhmaṇātithyabhyāgatapūjārrtamugānu). More land grants are made for the same purpose to the same teacher in other heavily damaged inscriptions: one record is from Medikurti, Chittoor District (ARE 4, 1955–56), in which Śāntaśiva is called a nijaguru (‘personal teacher’) of the donor, and the other one is from Alugurājupalle in Guntur district (ARE 289, 1930–31). Here the donor is again identifiable with Jannigadēva, but the name of the donee is not extant (see Talbot 1987, p. 137 fn. 42).

420

ARE 94, 1917. The first edition of this inscription was published by Pantulu 1930. The record has been reissued in Pantulu and Rao 1948, SII 10.395. Detailed information about this inscription and the Golakīmaṭha to which it refers is given by Talbot 1987 and Sanderson 2009, pp. 263–65. Talbot refers to the Malkāpuram record as ‘perhaps the most widely known inscription from thirteenth-century Andhra’ (1987, p. 133).

421

This teacher is also attested in two traditional Telugu literary works celebrating the Kākatīya dynasty, the Siddhēśvaracaritramu and the Pratāparudracaritramu, where he is depicted as Śivadēvayya, guru of the rulers Gaṇapati, Rudramadēvi, and Pratāparudra (Talbot 1987, p. 135).

422

Gaṇapati is the third Kākatīya sovereign, who ruled after this lineage gained independence from the western Cāḷukyas under the reign of Kākatīya Rudradeva (1158 CE). Gaṇapati reigned between 1199 and 1262, a period during which the Kākatīyas started being attested in a substantial number of documents also outside of Telangana, where they had so far been predominantly documented since their first attestation in the eleventh century. For this and more information about the Kākatīyas, see Talbot 2001, p. 128ff.

423

The Malkāpuram inscription traces back the history of this lineage, starting with Sadbhāvaśambhu, who benefited from a consistent donation by the Kalacuri king Yuvarājadeva (ll. 58–61s1). The record charges Sadbhāvaśambhu with the foundation of the Golakīmaṭha, since it recounts (ll. 61–63s1) that the Śaiva teacher had the monastery built and decided to use the income assigned to him by the king for the maintenance of the maṭha and the ‘pearls of king’s chaplains’ that would have emerged from that mine. The circumstances of the foundation of this monastery and the related primary sources are discussed in Talbot 1987 and Sanderson 2009, pp. 264–65. Note that according to other records, quoted by Sanderson 2009, p. 264 fn. 621, the monastery was founded by the king for Sadbhāvaśambhu and not by the teacher himself.

424

Sanderson 2009, p. 264 fn. 620, proposes to identify Golagī with modern Gurgi (Madhya Pradesh), a site where ancient Śaiva ruins were documented, rejecting the view that this monastery was located at Bheṛaghāṭ, on the Narmadā river. He also argues that the name of the Golakīmaṭha should be spelled as Golagī° instead of Golakī°, as attested in eleventh-century palmleaf manuscripts of the Kriyākāṇḍakramāvalī. The spelling Golakī° would have originated in a Dravidian-speaking region, where voiced and unvoiced consonants are not distinguished, whereas the earliest attestations in the said Nepalese manuscripts, coming thus from a region where the distinction between [k] and [g] is marked, all report the reading Golagī°.

425

After reconstructing the genealogy of the kākativaṃśa up to l. 54s1, the Kākatīya kings of Andhra, and the succession of their chaplains’ lineage (ll. 56s1–19s2), the inscription records the donation of two villages to the teacher Viśveśvaraśambhu in śaka 1183 (1261 CE). It is recorded that Gaṇapati had committed himself to granting a village to Viśveśvaraśambhu, whereas his daughter Rudradevī actually made the donation: ‘The village called Mandara, along with all [its] revenue, had been promised out of reverence to the glorious Viśveśvaraśambhu by Gaṇapati, lord of the Earth. By order of him his daughter Śrī Rudradevī, in the presence of of Pāśupati, donated the village, together with [the village of] Velaṅgapuḍi, surrounded by eight districts, in addition to the lordship of the eight [districts], including the arable land to the east of the river, along with an island which lies in the middle of the river Kṛṣṇaveṇī’; Pantulu 1930, ll. 22–26: śrīviveśvaraśaṃbhave gaṇapatikṣoṇīśvareṇā[L23]darād grāmam maṃdaranāmadheyam akhilair vvāgdattam āyais samam | tatpu[L24]trī tadanujñayā paśupateḥ śrīrudradevī puraḥ prādād grāma<ṃ> velaṃgapuḍisa[L25]hitaṃ sīmāṣṭakenāvṛtam | aṣṭasvāmyena sahitaṃ dhārāpūrvvasakarṣakam | kṛ[L26]ṣṇaveṇīnadīmadhyagatayā laṃkayā saha.

426

Pantulu 1930, ll. 46–49s2: velaṃgapūṇḍisahitaṃ dattaṃ maṃdaranāmani | tridhā vibhajya tatsi[L47s2]ṣṭham ekaṃ bhāgaṃ pinākine || vidyārtthibhyo <’>paraṃ bhāgaṃ śuddhaśaivamaṭhāya[L48s2] ca prasūtyārogyaśālābhyāṃ viprasatrāya cetaraṃ || prādād viśveśvaraśi[L49s2]vaś śaivasiddhāṃtapāragaḥ.

427

Pantulu 1930, ll. 49–51s2: ṛgyajassāmavedānāṃ samyagadhyāpakās tra[L50s2]yaḥ || padavākyapramāṇānāṃ sāhityasyāgamasya ca | pañcavyākhyākṛ[L51s2]to vaidyakāyasthau dvau vicakṣaṇau. Other professional categories mentioned are dancers and musicians, artisans, and soldiers; moreover, ‘the king’s chaplain, great soul, gave dispositions towards the bestowing of food, clothes and other [facilities] to the Śaiva ascetics who requested [it], to the Kālānanas, to the followers of the Śaiva teachings, to the students as well as to the followers of the Pāśupata observance; and towards the donation of food to people belonging to [various] conditions, starting with the Brahmins, devoid of hindrances, [and] ending with the outcasts’; Pantulu 1930, ll. 70–73s2: upeyuṣāṃ śaivatapodhanānāṃ kālānanānāṃ śivaśāsanānā[L71s2]m || vidyārtthināṃ pāśupatavratānām apy annavastrādisamarpaṇāya | ā[L72s2]rabhya viprān anivāritānāṃ caṇḍālaparyaṃtam upāgatānāṃ || anna[L73s2]pradānāya ca sarvvakālam akalpayad rājagurur mmahātmā. At the request of the same Viśveśvaraśambhu, it was decided that the person responsible for the temple and this whole village could have only been a teacher in his same initiatory line (ll. 74–77s2).

428

Śivadharmottara 2.180–81: ‘Having carefully healed even only one sick Brahmin, he earns a very great merit, endless [and] indestructible. (180) / The man who heals a śivayogin, devoted to the jñānayoga, pacified, [but] afflicted by sickness, will take the fruit [of the practice] of all yogas (181)’; apy ekam ārtam vidvāṃśaṃ svasthīkṛtya prayatnataḥ | prāpnoti sumahat puṇyam anantaṃ kṣayavarjitam || 180 jñānayogarataṃ śāntaṃ rogārtaṃ śivayoginam | yaḥ karoti naraḥ svasthaṃ sarvayogaphalaṃ labhet || 181.

429

Śivadharmottara 2.183: ‘The great merit that one obtains by attentively protecting the Brahmins, the Kṣatriyas, Vaiśyas, [and] Śūdras afflicted by sickness is not [obtainable even] by means of all main sacrifices. (183)’; brahmakṣatraviśaḥ śūdrāṃ rogārttān pālya yatnataḥ | yat puṇyaṃ mahad āpnoti na tat sarvair mahāmakhaiḥ || 183.

430

In addition to the already mentioned Mālkapuram pillar inscription, another example is provided by the very detailed account of the administration of the Jananāthamaṇḍapa, recorded in an inscription from the Veṅkaṭēśa Perumāḷ temple in the village of Tirumukkūḍal (Madhurantakam taluk, Chingleput district, Tamil Nadu) and attributed to the kingdom of Vīrarājendra Cōḻa (Subrahmanya Ayyar 1931–32, EI 21.38, pp. 220–50). This renowned Tamil inscription contains, among other information of historical interest, a long report of the expenses to be borne in the Mahāviṣṇu temple at Tirumukkūḍal, using the income deriving from the village of Vayalaikkāvūr, which had earlier been qualified as a devadāna of that temple. This list refers to various religious festivities and offerings requiring financial support—there is a mention, for instance, of the expenses for the festival on the occasion of the birthday asterism of king Vīrarājendra (ll. 25–26)—but also, starting at l. 28, the provisions to be made in favor of the Jananāthamaṇḍapa. These provisions were used for supporting the Śrīvaiṣṇava devotees who came there on the occasion of various festivities, for the maintenance of teachers and students of different disciplines and all the servants and employees of that institution, to which a hospital (ll. 42–43) was also annexed. They are described in great detail, even with references to the number of patients that could be hosted, as well as the medicines and the supplies stocked there for that year (ll. 43–48). In addition to the experts on the frequently quoted disciplines and fields of learning—the Ṛgveda and the Yajurveda, vyākaraṇa, and the Rūpāvatāra (ll. 36–37)—the text also refers to ten scholars of the Pāñcarātra, three Śivabrāhmaṇas, and five Vaikhānasa (l. 37: mahāpāñcarāttiraroru padinmarum śivabrāhmaṇar mūvarum vaikhānasar aivarum).

431

Śivadharmottara 2.193: ‘Thus this multiform gift of knowledge has been explained; it should take place according to this procedure for people of each and every varṇa (193)’; evam etad bahuvidhaṃ vidyādānam prakīrtitam | sarveṣām eva varṇānāṃ vidhinānena tad bhavet (193).’

432

Dikshit 1935–36, EI 23. The document is also discussed in Schmiedchen 2014, p. 209.

433

For a discussion of the sattra and its earliest attestations in epigraphs, see Willis 2009, pp. 70–73. Willis points out that this word originally denoted a long sacrificial session, performed by priests for their own benefit (as attested in Vedic literature and, epigraphically, in a mid-second century inscription from Mathura; see Willis 2009, p. 70). In order to clarify the shift in the meaning of the notion of sattra, Willis refers i.a. to the so called Poḍāgarh inscription, attesting that a sattra was meant to provide charity in a building attached to a temple, and that the intended recipients were mendicants and Brahmins (Willis 2009, p. 70). The dating of this record to the mid-fifth century, though strictly due to palaeographic reasons, makes it the earliest reference to sattra as a charitable place (Willis 2009, p. 81 fn. 41).

434

Shama Shastri 1939, SII 9.67, pp. 38–39.

435

He is described, according to a usual scheme in Kannada epigraphy, as ‘belonging to those [Brahmins] who [practice] self-control, restraint, recitation of the Vedas, meditation, the vow of silence, and readings of texts’; ll. 15–17: yamaniyamasvādhyā<ya*>dhyāna[L16]mōnānuṣṭhānapārāyaṇarappa śrīma[L17]tśat yarāsibhaṭārarargge.

436

See Willis 2008, p. 7 and fn. 52.

437

The reason adduced by Zysk for the development of medicine whithin the ascetic movements is this: ‘From the perspective of the brāhmaṇic social structure, it is similarly evident that physicians were considered to be impure and polluting, that they were excluded from the sacrificial rites, and that Brāhmaṇs were prohibited from practicing the art of healing’ (Zysk 1991, p. 23). Zysk considers medicine as an integral part of Buddhist monasticism since its inception, in spite of the scanty archaeological evidence provided in support of this claim, and cites later non-Buddhist inscriptions—among which also the already mentioned Malkāpuram pillar inscription and the Tamil inscription from the temple of Veṅkaṭeśa—to argue that, by the tenth century, ‘Hindu’ religious centres had established places devoted to the practice of medicine and healing (Zysk 1991, pp. 38–49).

438

Dānakāṇḍa 17; see Brick 2014, pp. 510–11 (text) and p. 209 (translation).

439

Sanderson 2009, p. 267, uses this expression with reference to the spread of the Śaiva Siddhānta.

440

A survey of epigraphical and literary sources concerning these institutions is given by Scharfe 2002, p. 166ff.

441

Hultzsch 1925–26, EI 18.2. I thank Emmanuel Francis for bringing this source to my attention. The dates of Nṛpatuṅgavarman’s rulership are taken from Francis 2013, p. 256. This inscription is on five copper plates and records the grant of three villages made in the eighth year of Nṛpatuṅgavarman’s reign (l. 22ff.). The recipients of this grant were the residents of a vidyāsthāna at Vāgur, and the donor was Mārtāṇḍa (l. 27) Nilaitāṅgi (l. 30), called ‘the great chief of Vēśāli’ (vēśaliperaraiyan, l. 46). As the text of the Sanskrit portion states (in the translation of Hultzsch 1925–26, p. 14), ‘this promoter of the family of Kuru (viz. Mārtāṇḍa Nilaitāṅgi) gave to a seat of learning (vidyāsthāna) three villages in his own province which, at (his) request, (he had) received, provided with an executor, from that lord Nṛpatuṅga’; (ll. 31–32, 35) grāmatrayaṃ svarāṣṭre saḥ kuruvaṃśavivarddha[L32]naḥ vijñā<pya> nṛpatuṅgeśāl labdham ajñaptipūrvvaka<ṃ> […] [L35] vidyāsthanāya dattavān.

442

Hultzsch 1925–26, EI 18.2, ll. 38–39: tat sthānam evaṃ viduṣāṃ vidyā[L39]sthānam pracakṣate.

443

Hultzsch 1925–26, EI 18.2, ll. 71–72: vidyāsthāṉattārkku vidyā[bhō][L72]bhōgaṃ āyi vāgūrōḍē. This endowment was a brahmadeya (l. 73). Translation is at p. 15.

444

Sircar 1966, p. 370.

445

The vidyādhana is already mentioned in Manusmṛti, 9.206. For this notion in the Dharmaśāstras and Anglo-Hindu law, and the problems concerning the partition of the properties so acquired, see Kane 1973, pp. 581–89.

446

I refer here to Rice 1902, EC 7, Skt 102. The passage on the description of the maṭha is also cited and translated by Fleet 1898–99, EI 5.25 A–B, p. 222. Some considerations on the Kōḍiyamaṭha can be found in Lorenzen 1991, pp. 103–107.

447

Rice 1902, EC 7, Skt 92, 100, 103, 108.

448

Fleet 1898–99, EI 5.25E.

449

See Fleet 1898–99, EI 5.25 A–B, p. 220. Fleet also draws attention to another document from the same area, in which Somēśvara, a priest of the
mūvarakōṇeya saṃtati
lineage, is described as one who brought new light to the Lākulasiddhāntas. This record is dated to the 29th year of Vikramāditya VI (1104 CE).

450

Rice 1902, EC 7, Skt 185.

451

Rice 1902, EC 7, Skt 102.

452

Rice 1902, EC 7, Skt 102 (this portion is also quoted by Fleet 1898–99, EI 5.25 A–B, p. 222), ll. 27–33:
dakṣiṇakē[L28]
dārasthānamuṃ śivaliṅgapūjāpulakasasyasarasakēdārasthānamuṃ naiṣṭhikabrahmacaryyaśivamunijanānuṣṭhānaniṣṭhitasthānamuṃ sāṅgaṛgyajussāmātha[L29]
rvvacaturvvēdasvādhyāyasthānamuṃ kaumārapāṇinīyaśākaṭāyanaśabdānuśāsanādibyākaraṇabyākhyānasthānamuṃ nyāyavaiśeṣikamīmāṃsāsāṃkhyabau[L30]ddhādiṣaḍudarśanabyākhyānasthānamuṃ lākuḷasiddhāṃtapātaṃjaḷādiyōgaśāstrabyākhānasthānamuṃ
aṣṭādaśapurāṇadharmmaśāstrasakaḻakābyanāṭakanāṭikā[L31]
divividhavidyāsthānamuṃ dīnānāthapaṃgvaṃdhabadhirakathaka-gāyakavādakavāṃśikanarttakavaitāḻikanagnabhagnakṣapaṇakaikadaṃḍitridaṃḍihaṃsaparamahaṃsādinā[L32]
nādeśabhikṣukajanānivāryyannadānasthānamuṃ nānānātharōgijanarōdhabhaiṣajyasthānamuṃ sakalabhūtābhayapradānasthānamum āgi kōḍiyama[L33]ṭhav irppudu.

453

Fleet 1882, p. 53.

454

Fleet 1882, p. 59. The document praises Bijjala for having gained power by defeating the kings who were his enemies, and celebrates him mostly as a fierce warrior (see ll. 8–9), while the description of the Kōḍiyamaṭha is expounded within a conversation between five ministers (karuṇas) and ‘the great minister Ravideva’ (ravidevamahāpradhāna, l. 25).

455

Rice 1902, EC 7, Skt 102, ll. 45–46: dakṣiṇakēdārēśvaradēvaraṅgabhōgaraṅgabhō[L46]gakkaṃ tapōdhanarāhāradānakkaṃ vidyādānakkaṃ khaṇḍasphuṭitajīrṇṇōddhārakkaṃ śiṣṭēṣṭasantarpaṇakkam.

456

Rice 1902, EC 7, Skt 108.

457

Rice 1902, EC 7, Skt 108, ll. 105–06: dēvaraṅgabhōgaraṅgabhōgakkaṃ tapōdhanarā[L106]hāradānakkaṃ vidyādānakkaṃ māṭakūṭaprāsādakkaṃ khaṇḍasphuṭitajīrṇṇōddhārakkav.

458

Rice 1902, EC 7, Skt 100. The dating is to the third Cāḷukya-Bhūloka year, the year Kīlaka (l. 70). According to Pillai 1922, pp. 195–96, the Kīlaka year is listed as no. 42 in the southern cycle, 15 in the northern, and corresponds to 1128–29 CE in the southern calendar. The historical setting of this epigraph is given by ll. 31–32: ‘When the emperor of the Cāḷukyas, the lord Sōmēśvara, sovereign of the Earth, having headed southward in order to perform a conquest of all directions, [and] having arrived, after fixing [his] camp in the Hulluṇiyatīrtha, amusing himself in relaxed conversations, was having a discourse on Dharma’; cālukyacakravarttisōmēśvarōrvīśvaraṃ bhūlōkamallaṃ digvi[L32]jayaṃ geyyal endu dakṣiṇābhimukhan āgi bandu hulluṇiyatīrththadoḷ bīḍaṃ biṭṭu sukhasaṅkathāvinōdadiṃ dharmmaprasaṅgamaṃ māḍuttam irppudum.

459

Fleet 1882, p. 52.

460

Baḷḷigāve is compared to Amaravāti, Bhōgavatī, and Aḷakāpura (ll. 37–38), and described as the place where the adherents of various religious traditions perform their rites: ‘There, by means of the temples of Hari, Hara, [Brahmā] the lotus-seated [god], [Jina] who is free from desires, [and] of Buddha, in this way the five maṭhas will shine in this town like the five-arrowed [god] who shines for the earth’; (ll. 44–45) a[L45]lli hariharakamaḷāsanavītarāgabauddhālayaṅgaḷind intu vasundhareg eseva pañcasaradant ire pañcamaṭhaṅgaḷ esevuv āpaṭṭaṇadoḷ.

461

The lineage (gurukula) of the mūvarakōṇeyasantati is listed at ll. 59–66. This ends with the praise of Vidyābharaṇa who, wishing to spend his life solely in the cultivation of wisdom, had passed over his office to Vāmaśakti (ll. 63–66).

462

Rice 1902, EC 7, Skt 100, ll. 69–70: alliya khaṇḍasphuṭitajīrṇṇōhddhārakkaṃ tapōdhanarāhāradānakkaṃ vidyādānakkaṃ dēvatāpū[L70]jegav.

463

Rice 1902, EC 7, Skt 103. The events narrated in the inscription are dated to the thirteenth year of the ‘glorious Cāḷukya emperor’ (cāḷukyapratāpacakravarti) Jagadēkamalla (l. 40), the year Śukla (the third according to the southern cycle; see Pillai 1922, p. 195).

464

Of these kings, the document mentions two contemporary kings: Jagadeva (l. 18), ruling over the seven Koṅkanas (l. 21) from Sētu (l. 29, southwest of the Sāgar taluk), and his brother Jayakeśi, praised as ‘the spotless autumnal moon in the milk and water ocean of the religion of the Victorious’ (jinadharmmakṣīranīrākaraviśadaśaraccandran, l. 13).

465

Rice 1902, EC 7, Skt 103, ll. 42–43: dēvaranaivēdyakkaṃ khaṇ[L43]ḍasphuṭitajīrṇṇōddhārakkaṃ tapōdhanarāhāradānakkaṃ vidyādānakkav.

466

Rice 1902, EC 7, Skt 92.

467

This grant is dated to the sixteenth year of the Kalacuri era (l. 37).

468

Rice 1902, EC 7, Skt 92, ll. 28–30: rāja[L29]dhānibaḷḷigāveya śrīmaddakṣiṇakēdārēśvaradēvara […] [L30]vidyādānānnadānādyanēkaśrīkāryyaṃ nōḍi.

469

Rice 1902, EC 7, Skt 92, ll. 39–40: śrīmaddakṣiṇakēdāradēvaraṃgabho[L40]garaṃgabhōga khaṃḍhasphuṭitajīrṇṇōddhārakkaṃ brāhmaṇatapōdhanarannadānavidyādānakka.

470

Fleet 1873. The text of this epigraph is on pp. 299–301. This is also mentioned in Schmiedchen 2014, p. 427.

471

Translation by Fleet 1873, p. 303. Text: śrīsvayambhūtrikūṭeśvaradēvasyāṃgaraṃgabhōgakhaṃdasphuṭitajīrṇṇoddhārādyarttaṃ vidyādānārtthaṃ tapōdhanabrāhmaṇādibhōjanārtthaṃ.

472

Fleet 1898–99, EI 5.25E.

473

Fleet 1898–99, EI 5.25E, p. 238.

474

An analysis of the literary motives and historical implications of the story of Ēkānta Rāmayya is given in Ben-Herut 2012. It is based on the account of this inscription, along with those of the Ēkāntarāmitandeya Ragaḷe and the Basavapurāṇamu. According to the story as recounted in the Abbalūru inscription, Rāma was the son of two pious Brahmins, Puruṣottama and Padmāmbike, who could not have children (ll. 17–19); after the couple makes a pūjā to Śambhu, the latter requests his attendant Vīrabhadra that a part of himself be born as a man –Rāma– whose mission will be to put an end to the decadence of Śaivism by defeating the observances of its main competitors, the Jains and the Buddhists (ll. 20–26). When he is an adult, Rāma bets with the Jains in Abbalūru that, upon cutting off his head, it will be given back to him by Śiva (ll. 38–39). If this happens, they are bound to destroy their icons of Jina. Rāma then proceeds to cut his head off, which, after having been exhibited for seven days, is returned to him. Brought back to life, Rāma himself destroys the head of a Jina statue, since the Jains did not keep their promise (ll. 43–45). When the Jains complain to Bijjala, Rāma is summoned. In the presence of the king, Rāma makes a new bet with the Jains, saying that he will be able to cut off his head again, and it will be given back to him by Śiva even after being burnt (ll. 46–47). Now the eight hundred temples of the Jains are at stake (ll. 48–50). They refuse to accept the challenge, and their refusal determines Rāma’s victory, which will then be approved by Bijjala with a proper certificate.

475

Note that the accounts of the foundation of the Vīraśaiva tradition often depict Bijjala as an enemy of Śaivism and a supporter of Jainism (Fleet 1898–99, EI 5.25E, p. 240). The Śaiva narratives contained in the Basavapurāṇa and in the Channabāsavapurāṇa tell of a huge uprising brought about by Basava and his followers, which then ends with Bijjala’s assassination (Fleet 1898–99, EI 5.25E, p. 242).

476

According to documents, this king, who can be considered the last descendant of the western Cāḷukya lineage, had at least partially restored the power of the western Cāḷukyas by taking advantage of the controversies which Jains and Vīraśaivas were involved in, and which caused a sudden weaning of the Kalacuri’s power (Fleet 1882, pp. 54–56).

477

Fleet 1898–99, EI 5.25E, ll. 76–77: śrīmadvirasōmanāthadēdēvara dēgulada māṭakūṭaprākārakhaṃḍaspuṭi-tajinnōdhārakkaṃ dēvara aṅgabhōgaraṅgabhōganaivēdyakkaṃ caitra [L77]pavitravasaṁtōtsavādipa<*r>vva-gaḷigavannadānavidyādānakka<*m>.

478

Desai 1964, SII 15.2.

479

Desai 1964, SII 15.2: ll. 29–30: devatāpū[L30]jegavaṅabhōgakkaṃ purāṇakhaṇḍikacaitrapavitravintinitakkaṃ.

480

Krishnamacharlu, Panchamukhi and Rao 1939, SII 11.174.

481

The year is given according to the Cāḷukyavikrama era (l. 26); in this case, the year number 49 was reintegrated by the modern editor of the epigraph, resting on a calculation made on the basis of the other astronomical information available in the preserved parts of the document.

482

Barnett 1917–18, EI 14.19A. This document is also discussed in Sanderson forth., p. 12 fn. 18.

483

Barnett 1917–18, EI 14.19A, l. 46: °naivēdyajīrṇṇōddhāracaitrapavitrasvādhyāyavaiśēshikabyakhyānakhaṇḍikaśivadharmmapurāṇapaṭhanavannadānav.

484

Barnett 1917–18, EI 14.19A, p. 267.

485

The earliest epigraphical attestations of public readings of the Śivadharma are dated to the reign of Rājendra Coḷa I (reigned 1012–1044 CE; see Shastri 1955, p. 194ff. References to this and the following document are also mentioned in Shastri 1955, p. 629 and 640—text; p. 633 and 659—footnotes). To the second year of his reign is ascribed an epigraphical record found on the western wall of the central shrine in the Nāganāthasvāmin temple at Tirunagesvaram, Tamil Nadu (ARE 214, 1911; appeared as ARE 919, p. 16). As reported by the summary of the record’s contents, this documents a local assembly of Tirukkuḍamukkil which accepted an amount of money donated by a benefactor (whose name is given as Vikkiramaśiṅga-Pallavaraiyaṇ). The money was employed, among other things, to repair damages to the irrigation system, to provide offerings in the temple of Tirunagīśvaram-Uḍayir, and to finance the recitation of the Śivadharma. This was supposed to take place in a hall whose building had been financed by the same benefactor. Another reference to the reading of the Śivadharma is ascribed to the eighth year of reign of Rājendra Coḷa I (ARE 321, 1917; appeared as no. 1172, p. 28). This is inscription from Panaiyavaram (South Arcot, modern Villupuram district, Tamil Nadu), on the southern wall of a maṇḍapa located in front of the shrine in the Netroddhārakasvāmin temple. It is reported to register several ritual activities that took place at the temple, among which offerings, the reading of the Śivadharma, and the singing of Tiruppadiyam hymns.
Almost contemporary with these records and originating from the same geographical area are the two related temple inscriptions from Tiruvālīśvaram, both ascribed to the reign of Jaṭāvarman Sundaracōḷa Pāṇḍya (Ramanatha Ayyar 1962, SII 14.160 and 161, pp. 85–90, corresponding to ARE 327 and 332, 1916. On this king, see Shastri 1955, pp. 202–203). These documents come from the Tirunelveli district, modern Tamil Nadu, and are both placed on the northern wall of the Vālīśvara temple. According to the introduction, only the second one is dated, referring to the sixty-fifth day in the seventeenth year of the reign of the aforementioned king. Jaṭavarman was a son of Rājendra, appointed by him as viceroy in Madura and Kerala with the title of Coḷa-Pāṇḍya. His reign lasted for about twenty years, approximately up to 1040 CE. Both inscriptions record the purchase and endowment of a suburb of Rājarājacaturvēdimaṅgalam to the Tiruvālīśvaram-uḍaiyār temple, as well as the financial support for feeding the Brahmans and reading the Śivadharma.

486

Manuscript sources from Nepal that attest the public reading of the texts belonging to the Śivadharma corpus under the Malla kings are discussed in De Simini 2016. As observed in § 2.1, one of the best proofs of the liturgical use of the manuscripts of the Śivadharma, especially in the performance of public recitations, are the many attestations of the Śāntyadhyāya of the Śivadharmaśāstra in single-text manuscripts from early times on.

487

Shama Shastri 1939, SII 9.121, pp. 102–103.

488

A reference to Kalyāṇa can be read in one of the epithets attributed to the king, who is here described as ‘partaking of the enjoyment of thousands of fruits [deriving from] the rise of the unsurpassed, supreme good (kalyāṇa)’; Shama Shastri 1939, SII 9.121, ll. 8–11: anava[L9]rataparamakalyāṇābhyuda[L10]yaśahaśra-phaḷabhōgabhāgi[L11]ṇi.

489

Shama Shastri 1939, SII 9.121, ll. 17–20: śrimatniriyarasimaiḻa[L18]dēviyaru śrīballavara [L19]saruṃ śrīmanmallikārjunadēvara[L20]ge bijayaṃgeydalli.

490

Rice 1902a, EC 5.1, Ag 24.

491

This sovereign is attested between the end of the ninth and the beginning of the tenth century (see Rice 1880, p. 69 and 1902, EC 5, p. XLIII).

492

As for the identification of the names of donors and beneficiaries, Rice (1902) identifies the donor with the king himself, and reads the name of the recipient as ‘to his ayya Mākhaṇḍabhaṭāra’ (ll. 6–7: śrīmat[L7]taddayyamākhaṇḍabhaṭārargge), the Kannada word ayya meaning a teacher or a guide. The editors of the new series of the Epigraphia Carnatica republished this epigraph in ECN 8.28, p. 132 (text in Kannada) and pp. 534–35 (translation). Their new rendition completes Rice’s translation, which did not include the technicalities of the grant, but also reads Taddayya as a proper name rather than as an apposition of Mākhaṇḍabhaṭāra; more specifically, according to this interpretation Taddaya would be the name of the donor.

493

Rice 1902, EC 7, Skt 185. Inscriptions of the area give an account of the establishment of this place as an agrahāra ascribed to the obscure figure of Mukkaṇṇa Kadamba, lord of Banavase. An inscription from the Praṇaveśvara temple (Rice 1902, EC 7, Skt 186), dated by the editor to approximately the thirteenth century, narrates that this king was looking for Brahmins in the southern region (dakṣiṇāpathadoḷu, l. 11) but, unable to find any, had to move Brahmin families from Ahicchatra (l. 12) in the North to Sthāṇugūḍha. He then founded this agrahāra in a place where the god Praṇaveśvara was (l. 14). The same epigraph celebrates Sthāṇugūḍha/Tāṇagudur as a place of learning, where all the systems of philosophy were studied, along with the eighteen Mahāpurāṇas and the Smṛtis (see l. 15 onward).

494

The famous pillar inscription (Rice 1902, EC 7, Skt 176; a more detailed analysis is in Kielhorn 1905–06, EI 8.5. See also the announcement made in Bühler 1896, IA 25) is in front of the temple of Praṇaveśvara. It was written under Śāntivarman and celebrated the grant of a tank under his father Kākusthavarman (l. 14); the inscription tells the story of Mayūraśarman, the founder of the Kadamba dynasty (ll. 2–7), giving the Kadamba lineage up to Kākusthavarman in ll. 8–14, with ample praise for the latter. This is the first document that attests the use of Sanskrit and the knowledge of kāvya in the area (its importance in this respect has been amply stressed in Pollock 2006, p. 116). According to this account, the Kadamba lineage had gained authority over a territory bounded by the western ocean (amārṇṇava) and extending to the unknown location of Prehāra, after struggling with the Pallavas of Kāñcīpura. Note that Rice (1902, EC 7, p. 8) reads Premāra instead of Prehāra and identifies it with ancient Mālwa. Kielhorn suggests that it can only be read as Prehāra, and cautiously leaves the identification of the place dubious (Kielhorn 1905–06, EI 8.5, p. 28 and p. 32 fn. 10). As for the chronological time frame, Rice (1902, EC 7, p. 9) tentatively assigns it to the fifth century, whereas Kielhorn (1905–06, EI 8.5, p. 21) would rather opt for the first half of the sixth.
Some fragmentary inscriptions from the Praṇaveśvara temple specifically connect the establishment of this temple with the Kadamba dynasty. An inscription found on the doorway of the vestibule of the Praṇaveśvara temple (Seshadri 1970, ECN 18, Skt 325) ascribes the construction of the mahādvāras to the king Kākustavarman, whose kingdom was celebrated in the Tāḷagunda pillar inscription as the culmination of the Kadamba expansion. Another incomplete inscription from the same temple (Seshadri 1970, ECN 18, Skt 326), from the left side of the doorway of the vestibule, mentions the queen Prabhāvati, wife of Mṛgeśavarman, Śāntivarman’s successor.

495

The opening Sanskrit ślokas are in ll. 1–4. From that point on, Kannada verses and prose alternate until ll. 34–44, where the text returns to Sanskrit ślokas. Kannada prose is then the sole medium of the document until the concluding statements (l. 86), for which the author turns once again to the use of the Sanskrit śloka.

496

Rice 1902, EC 7, Skt 185, l. 57: sakavarṣaṃ 1079ney īśvarasaṃvatcharada puṣyada puṇnami sōmavārav uttarāyaṇasaṃkramaṇa vyatīpātadaṃdu.
All the passages quoted from this epigraph are taken from my own diplomatic transcript of the text in Kannada characters published by Rice at pp. 273–77 of the said volume. I was also able to examine the text prepared in Mysore for the forthcoming second edition of this inscription in the new series of the Epigraphia Carnatica, which, however, does not introduce any change to the text as printed by Rice. Access to unpublished materials has been made possible thanks to the efforts of professor B.A. Viveka Rai (University of Mangalore/University of Würzburg), my first Kannada teacher and a very generous person. I chose to refer to the version in Kannada characters and not to Rice’s romanized transcript because the latter does not report any reference to the lines of the inscription, and also because this text seems to have been ‘normalized’ by the editor. Some orthographical mistakes and morphological inaccuracies that are detectable in the text in Kannada characters seem to have been silently corrected in the romanized version (see e.g. l. 36, where bhūmipa in Kannada script becomes bhūmidaṃ in Roman characters, or bhūmi samō dānaṃ changed in bhūmi samaṃ dānaṃ). Furthermore, in at least one case, Rice seems to have opted for a hyper-archaism, namely when the word hoṇṇu in the Kannada-character text (l. 64), a form which is also used in the modern language in the meaning of ‘money’ (originally ‘gold’), appears in its more archaic guise of poṇṇu in the romanized version.

497

See Pillai 1922a, p. 317. I thank Marco Franceschini for his kind help in verifying this date and for providing me with the appropriate bibliographical materials. Two dating systems have been employed here: the absolute śaka year (expired), which would correspond to 1157 CE, and the year of the cyclic Jovian calendar. In the northern cycle of this sixty-year-based calendar, the Īśvara year is the forty-fourth, corresponding to 1154 CE; in the southern cycle, the Īśvara year is the eleventh, and corresponds to 1157 CE, thus perfectly matching the data of the śaka year (for the Jovian cycles, see Pillai 1922, pp. 50–52; the lists are at pp. 195–97). The uttarāyaṇasaṃkramana (or -saṅkrānti) is the day on which the sun starts its northern route, namely the winter solstice (Pillai 1994, p. XIV). As for the yogas, Pillai (1922, p. 20) defines them as a ‘fictitious’ notion, being ‘the joint distance which would be travelled by the sun and the moon [from new moon to new moon] in a given period of time, supposing that these bodies travelled in opposite directions’. References to yogas are very rare and usually late, requiring the use of almanacs (pañcāṅga), since it would be impossible to establish a yoga just by observing the position of the moon and sun with the bare eye. The complete list includes 27 yogas, and the vyatipātayoga is number 17 (Pillai 1922, p. 199).

498

The following kings are mentioned in ll. 13–14 (the information in the following lines relies on the account given by Fleet 1882, pp. 39–54): Taila (II), also known from the sources as Tailapa and Āhavamalla I, who had restored the western Cāḷukyas and reigned for 24 years starting from śaka 895 (973–74 CE); his eldest son Sattiga (also called Satyāśraya II), who ascended to power in śaka 919 (997–98 CE); and his grandson Vikramāditya (V), also known as Tribhuvanamalla I, whose reign started approximately in śaka 932 (1010–11 CE). Also mentioned is Jayasiṃha (III), also known as Jagadekamalla I, who came to power in śaka 940 (1018–19 CE). His son Someśvara (I), called Āhavamalla in the inscription (and also known as Trailokyamalla I), succeeded his father in śaka 964 (1042–43 CE), and was the first king under which Kalyāna is mentioned as the capital of this branch of the Cāḷukyas. Our inscription does not mention Āhavamalla’s son Someśvara (II), whose attestations range from śaka 990 to 997 (1068–75 CE), but skips to Someśvara’s successor Vikramāditya (VI), commonly known as Tribhuvanamalla (II) and whom this document calls Permādi, who reigned between śaka 997 and 1048 (1073–1126 CE). The lineage proceeds further without interruption, mentioning the latter’s son Someśvara (III), who reigned from śaka 1048 until 1060 (1126–39 CE), and was succeeded in śaka 1060 (1138–39 CE) by his eldest son Jagadekamalla II, in turn succeeded by Taila III (Trailokyamalla III) in śaka 1072 (1150–51 CE). Taila III was the ruling king when the document under examination was issued.

499

The Sanskrit incipit of the inscription reads as follows (Rice 1902, EC 7, Skt 185, ll. 1–3): ‘Oṃ, praise to Śambhu, with the splendour of the moon on the top of his matted hair, whose wealth is ashes; tightly embraced by the creeper-arms of Bhavānī / Every time, in the beginning, may the three gods, Lords of the three worlds, Brahmā, Īśāna, and Janārddhana, show us fulfilment. / May there be fortune for the world including all the forms of existence at every time, may there be fortune for the cows, Brahmins [and the kings] at every time. / Fortune at the beginning, fortune in the middle, and fortune in the end at every time. May there be fortune for all human beings who are Śaiva devotees’; [L1] oṃ namas tuṅgajaṭācandracandrikābhōgabhūtayē [|] bhavānīdōrllatāgāḍaparīrambhāya śambhavē [||] sarvvēṣv ārambhakālēṣu [traya] [L2] tribhuvanēśvarāḥ [|] dēvā diśaṃ tu naḥ siddhiṃ brahmēśānajanārddhanāḥ [||] sarvvākāram aśēṣasya jagataḥ sarvvadā śivaṃ [|] gōbrāhmaṇa[nṛpāṇāṃ] [L3] ca śivaṃ bhavatu sarvvadā [||] śivam ādau śivaṃ madhyē śivam antyē ca sarvvadā [|] sarvvēśāṃ śivabhaktānāṃ manujānāṃ ca tacchivaṃ [||].
Comparing this incipit with that of a Nepalese manuscript of the Śivadharmaśāstra, one can observe that stanzas 2 and 3 of the Śivadharmaśāstra are identical with stanzas 3 and 4 of the inscription; the first stanza of the inscription was probably just modelled on the first of the Śivadharmaśāstra, whereas stanza 2 of the inscription is not extant in the Śivadharmaśāstra. Let us consider for instance MS A, fol. 1v[LL1–2]: namas tuṅgaśiraścumbicandracāmaracārave | trailokyanagarāraṃbhamūlastaṃbhāya śaṃbhave || sarvākāram aśeṣasya jagatas sarvvadā śivaḥ | gobrāhmaṇanṛpāṇāñ ca śivaṃ bhavatu sarvadā || śivam ādau śivam madhye śivam ante ca sarvadā | sarvveṣāṃ śivabhaktā[L2]nāṃ manujānāñ ca naḥ śivam. The first stanza of the Nepalese tradition, with which the inscription differs, is actually borrowed from Bāṇa’s Harṣacarita, where it is again placed at the beginning of the work, and is very frequently used precisely in epigraphs from the Kannada-speaking area as an auspicious incipit: ‘Praise to Śambhu, beautiful for the moon [placed on his forehead] like a chowrie, kissing the top of his head, who is the central pillar at the beginning of the town of the three worlds’. Griffiths & Southworth (2007, pp. 371–72) detect the possible influence of Bāṇa’s stanza also in an inscription from Campā, hypothesising that this may reveal an acquaintance with the epigraphic culture of southwestern India. This opening verse is lacking in the Kashmiri tradition of the Śivadharmaśāstra, which replaces it with another auspicious verse (see ORL 1467, fol.1v[L1]: ‘Having always bowed with the head to the god Śiva, the one who is freed from diseases, I will relate the teachings of the Śivadharma, the illustrations of the Dharma of Śiva’; praṇamya śirasā devaṃ sadā śivam anāmayam | śivadharmān pravakṣyāmi śivadharmapradīpikān ||. The same incipit is attested in BHU 7/3986), as well as in the southern manuscripts, which start directly from what is stanza 2 in the Nepalese tradition (LU 2.40, fol. 77r[L1]: sarvākāram aśeṣasya jaga{ta}s sarvadā śivaṃ). The only Bengali manuscript I was able to collect so far (Add. 1599, fol. 1v[L1]) starts the text with the opening verse attested in the Kashmiri tradition (praṇamya...), followed by the incipit of the Nepalese manuscripts (namas tuṅga°). The second stanza of the epigraph (sarvvēṣv ārambhakālēṣu) is not attested in any of the manuscripts that are available to me.

500

Rice 1902, EC 7, Skt 185, ll. 34–36: ‘The gift of land is traditionally held as the best among all gifts, for it is a remover of all sins and the knowledgeable men say [it] belongs to Heaven. / Thus the ascetics, the performers of rituals, the knowers of the truth, the well-learned people, the upmost among teachers and gods do not surpass the protector of land. / There is no gift equal to land, there is no treasure equal to land; there is no teaching equal to truth, no sin is higher than untruth’; sarvēṣām ēva dānānāṃ bhūmidānaṃ paraṃ smritaṃ | sarvvapāpaharaṃ tad dhi svarggyaṃ cāhu[L35]r mmanīṣiṇaḥ || tapasvinō [’]tha yajvānaḥ satyamaṃtō bahuśrutāḥ | gurudēvaparāś caiva nātikrāmaṃti bhūmipa<ṃ> || nāsti bhū[L36]mi samaṃ [em., samō ed.] dānaṃ nāsti bhūmi samō nidhiḥ | nāsti satyasamō dharmmō na pāpam anṛtāt paraṃ.

501

The author of the epigraph only skips one stanza, but the text he quotes (Rice 1902, EC 7, Skt 185, ll. 36–39) is otherwise identical with two and half stanzas of Śivadharmaśāstra chapter 8 (śivadānaphalādhyāya, ‘Chapter on the Fruits of the Śaiva Gift’). I have collated the text of the epigraph (Rice 1902, EC 7, Skt 185, ll. 36–39) and that of MS. A fol. 25v[L5]–fol. 26r[L1] (the parts of the text omitted by the inscription are in braces): ‘Listen to the meritorious fruit of the one who donates to Śiva a village provided with all the [varieties] of grains, devoid of all imperfections: {that merit [residing] in all tīrthas, that fruit [obtainable] from all rites, that merit [derived] from all gifts, this is the fruit of the gift of a village.} / Boundlessly provided with uncountable palaces whose appearance is that of innumerable suns, furnished with innumerable divine women, supplied with everything one desires, / Together with twenty-one generations of [his] family, thanks to the gift of a village he is pleased according to [his] desire for an undecaying time in the world of the Lord’; sa[AL6]rvasasyajalopetaṃ [°jalopetāṃ A] sarvvabādhā[ECL37]vivarjitaṃ [°vivarjitān A] | grāmaṃ śivāya yo dadyāt tasya puṇyaphalaṃ śṛṇu || {sarvatīrtheṣu yat puṇyaṃ sarvayajñeṣu tat phalaṃ | sarvadāneṣu yat puṇyaṃ grāmadānena tat phalam ||} sūryakoṭipratīkāśair divyastrīkoṭisaṃyutaiḥ | [ECL38] saṃyuktaḥ koṭiśo <’>nekaiḥ sarvakāmasamanvi[A26r1]taiḥ || vimānair grāmadānena trisaptakulasaṃyutaḥ | yatheṣṭa[ECl39]m aiśvare loke krīḍate kālam akṣayaṃ.
Note that the stanza skipped in the inscription is by contrast extant in the southern tradition of the text: see e.g. P1, p. 101 v. 112. This stanza is formulaic and occurs almost identically at ll. 43–44 of the epigraph, in the section on the gift of knowledge.

502

Rice 1902, EC 7, Skt 185, ll. 39–40: ‘In [this] world there has not been nor will there be anything superior to the gift of food. Everything is rooted in food, everything has its base in food. / The giver of food is said to be a giver of life, and a giver of all [gifts]. Therefore, from the gift of food [one] will get the fruit of all gifts’; aṃnāt parataraṃ lōkē na bhūtaṃ na bhaviśyati [|] aṃnamūlaṃ bhavēt sarvvaṃ sarvva[L40]m aṃnē pratiṣṭhitaṃ || aṃnadaḥ prāṇadaḥ prōkta<ḥ> prāṇadaś cāpi sarvvadaḥ [|] tasmād annapradānēna sarvvadānaphalaṃ labhēt.
Compare the second stanza with A fol. 19v[LL3–4]: annadaḥ prāṇadaḥ pro[L4]ktaḥ prāṇadaś cāpi sarvadaḥ | tasmād annapradānena sarvadānaphalaṃ labhet.

503

Rice 1902, EC 7, Skt 185, ll. 40–44: trai[L41]ḷōkyaṃ caturō varṇṇāś catvāraś cāśramāḥ prithak [|] brahmādyā dēvatāḥ sarvvā vidyādānē pratiṣṭhitā || upādhyāyasya yō vrittiṃ [L42] datvādhyāpayatē janāḥ | kiṃ na dattaṃ bhavēt tēna dharmmakāmārthadarśśināṃ || cchātrāṇāṃ bhōjanābhyaṅgavastraṃ bhikṣam athāpi vā [|] datvā prā[L43]pnōti puruṣaḥ sarvvān kāmāṃ na saṃśayaḥ || yat puṃṇyaṃ tīrtthayātrāyāṃ yat puṇyaṃ yajvanāṃ tathā | tat puṃṇyaṃ kōṭiguṇitaṃ vi[L44]dyādānāl labhēn naraḥ. The first stanza corresponds perfectly with Agnipurāṇa 2.211.58.

504

Rice 1902, EC 7, Skt 185, l. 47: sogayisuva sthāṇugūḍhanāmagrāmav.

505

The schools (khaṇḍika) mentioned are: those following the Ṛgveda, the Yajurveda (l. 60), and the Sāmaveda; the texts on linguistics—Śabdaśāstra, Rūpāvatāra, and Nyāsa; and the Prabhākaravedānta (l. 61).

506

Rice 1902, EC 7, Skt 185, ll. 69–74: tiṃgaḷ diṃgaḷoḷ 2 ḍaṣṭami 2 caturddaśiya [L70] māvāsye pārnnamāsye vyatīpātasaṃkramaṇav emba parbbaṃgaḷalu nityanaimittikapūjeyaṃ māḍi śāstradupādhyāyaru śivavarmmadā[L71]ṟeneya śāṃtyādhyāyamṃ japaṃgeydalli hēḷda kramadiṃ dēvareṇṭudikkinoḷ maṇḍalavaṃ māḍiy alliya mantradiṃ baliyan ikki dēśava aḷva kṣatriyanumaṃ gōbrāhmaṇa[L72]rumaṃ yajamānanumaṃ harasuvaru mattaṃ varṣadoḷage baha mahāparvvaṃgaḷ 2 ḍayana 2 viśu sōmasūryyagrahaṇav āśāḍakārttikamāghavaiśā[L73]khada puṃṇnamigaḷal oṃdoṃdudivasada pūjey āṟāṟutiṃgaḷa phaḷaman īguv āparbbaṃgaḷoḷ dēvargge sahasragaḍḍugeyaṃ prāraṃbhasi puṃṇyāhavācaneyaṃ māḍi śā[L74]strakhaṃḍikadavaru raṃgadoḷ vidyāmaṃḍaḷagurumaṃḍaḷaśivamaṃḍaḷav eṃba maṃdaḷatrayaman uddharisiy arccisi śāṃtyādhyāyamaṃ japisuvaru vēdakhaṃḍikada nālvaruṃ 4 praśasta kaḷaśaṃga.

507

For both accounts, see chapter 3, in particular §. 3.1.

508

Viṣṇudharmottara 3.303.1–13, which has literal parallels in Agnipurāṇa 2.211.59–62 (see Appendix 2 for details). The following text has been established by collating the printed edition of the Viṣṇudharmottara and the relative stanzas quoted in the Dānakhaṇḍa by Hemādri (= Dkh in the text) at p. 512 (Viṣṇudharmottara 3.303.1–4), p. 513 (Viṣṇudharmottara 6cd–7), p. 518 (Viṣṇudharmottara 3.303.5–6ab), and p. 559 (Viṣṇudharmottara 3.303.8; 9cd–11; 13): vidyā kāmadughā dhenur vidyā cakṣur anuttamam | vidyādānāt paraṃ dānaṃ na bhūtaṃ na bhaviṣyati || 1 vidyāvān sarvakāmānāṃ bhājanaṃ puruṣo bhavet | tasmād vidyāṃ hi dadatā sarvaṃ dattaṃ bhaved iha || 2 parādhyāpanataḥ [°śākto DKh] kleśaṃ puruṣas tu yad aśnute | tapas tat paramaṃ tasya brahmalokaṃ paraṃ smṛtam || 3 dānānām uttamaṃ loke tapasā ca tathottamam | vidyādānaṃ mahābhāgāḥ sarvakāmaphalapradam || 4 vedadānād avāpnoti sarvayajñaphalaṃ naraḥ | upavedapradānena gandharvaiḥ saha modate || 5 vedāṅgānāṃ ca dānena śakralokam avāpnuyāt | dharmaśāstrapradānena dharmeṇa saha modate || 6 siddhāntānāṃ pradānena mokṣam āpnoty asaṃśayam [vaidikam Dkh] | śāstrāṇi dattvā cānyāni naro nāke [svarge Dkh] mahīyate || 7 vidyādānaṃ avāpnoti pradānāt pustakasya ca | śilpāni śikṣayed yas tu pauṇḍarīkaphalaṃ labhet || 8 śikṣayitvā dhanurvedam aśvamedhaphalaṃ labhet [3.303.9ab om. Dkh] | śilpabhāṇḍapradānena [śilpabhāṇḍapradhāne’pi Dkh] śilpadānaphalaṃ labhet [tadvidyādānajaṃ phalam Dkh] || 9 ahiteṣu pravṛttasya tathā kṛtvā nivāraṇam | vidyādānaphalaṃ proktaṃ nātra kāryā vicāraṇā || 10 pāpapravṛttasya [pāpavṛttasya ca Dkh] tathā naraḥ kṛtvā nivāraṇam [dattvā caiva parāṃ matim Dkh] | vidyādānaphalaṃ prāpya svargaloke mahīyate || 11 śikṣayet puruṣaḥ karma karmaṇā yena jīvati | śikṣayitvā mahābhāgāḥ svargaloke mahīyate || 12 [3.303.12 om. Dkh] yena jīvati bhāṇḍena tasya [tasmaitad Dkh] bhāṇḍasya dāyakaḥ [bhāṇḍadāyakaḥ Dkh] | sarvakāmasamṛddhasya yajñasya phalam aśnute || 13.

509

Note that I have excluded from this list all the occurrences of the word vidyādāna, as the term vidyā is used here in the general designation of the ritual.

510

Śivadharmottara 1.39: ‘[No matter] how many [fields of] Śaiva knowledge [may exist], and which ones [may be] the seats of learning, one will expound them [all] in a condensed form by means of the mantra of six syllables’; (A fol. 2v[L2], B fol. 47v[L2], P2[P293]): śivajñānāni yāvanti vidyāsthānāni [vidyādānāni A] yāni ca | ṣaḍakṣarasya mantrasya [sūtrasya P2] tāni bhāṣet [bhāṣyaṃ P2] samāsataḥ || 39.

511

See De Simini 2016.

512

Petech 1984, p. 68.

513

The dating of this manuscript is discussed in Petech 1984, p. 68. For more information on the manuscript, its final and running colophons and other noteworthy features, see De Simini 2016 and 2016a.

514

Petech (1984, p. 80) has verified the date of this manuscript as January 4, 1201. This manuscript, like the others mentioned following, is also amply discussed in De Simini 2016.

515

NAK 5–737 (NGMPP A 3/3), fol. 276r[L4]: somadevasya […] mātāpitāgurusaputrapautrādisvarggakāmārthamokṣārthinaḥ.

516

NAK 5–737 (NGMPP A 3/3), fol. 276r[L3]: ‘During the victorious reign of the paramount king, highest sovereign, entirely devoted to Śiva, [favoured by] the supreme Lord Paśupati, the glorious Arimalladeva’; rājādhirājaparameśva<ra>paramamāheśvarapaśupatibhaṭārakasya<ḥ> • || || śrīmat (sic!) arimalladevasya vijayarāj<y>e |

517

Note, however, that only the front cover seems to have survived to date: both covers are featured in the early black and white microfilm, while the digital images that I acquired in 2015, besides lacking a few folios that were still extant when the microfilm was produced, also lack the back cover.

518

This date was verified by Petech 1984, p. 36. A full transcript of the colophon of G 4077 is in Shastri 1928, p. 721.

519

Note, however, that now the covers have been removed from the main bulk of the manuscript and are used only to protect one portion of it, corresponding to the Lalitavistara. G 4077 is the only manuscript of the Śivadharma corpus counting nine rather than eight works: the Dharmaputrikā is dropped, and in its place the manuscript has two works titled Lalitavistara, the first being also called Umāmāheśvarottarottarasaṃvāda. The second Lalitavistara used to close the manuscript, but the library of the Asiatic Society now preserves it independently from the main manuscript, along with the original covers. Both the folios with the Lalitavistara and the covers clearly belong together with the main bulk, as I could verify through a direct inspection in February 2016.

520

Pal 1978, p. 123 fig. 52.

521

Śivadharmaśāstra 12.81–82 (A fol. 39v[LL5–6], B fol. 43v[L5], P1[P151]): śivajñā[AL6]nābhiyuktāya yo dadyāc chivapustakaṃ [pustakaṃ mahat P1] | yugakoṭiśataṃ divyaṃ rudraloke [śivaloke P1] mahīyate || 81 bhaved ihāgataḥ śrīmān [sukhā P1] āḍhyo vedasya pāragaḥ [vedapāragaḥ P1] | sarvajñānārthavaktā [samyagjñāna° P1] ca bṛhaspatisamo dhiyā [bhavet P1] || 82.

522

Śivadharmaśāstra 12.55: ‘The one who is a śivayogin, a master of Śaiva knowledge (śivajñānin), and a devotee of the Dharma of Śiva (śivadharmarata): thus has to be known this triple definition of the Śaiva recipient’; (A fol. 39r[LL2–3], B fol. 42v[L6]–43r[L1], P1[P148–49]) śivayogī śi[AL3]va[B43r1]jñānī śivadharmarataś ca yaḥ | [P1P149] ity etat trividhaṃ jñeyaṃ śivapatrasya lakṣaṇam || 55.

523

Śivadharmaśāstra 12.83: ‘The śivayogin, the master of Śaiva knowledge, and the devotee of the Dharma of Śiva are traditionally held as endowed with all similar qualities, because [their] level of attainment of Śiva is the same’; (A fol. 39v[L6], B fol. 43v[LL5-6], P1[P152]) śivayogī śivajñānī śiva[BL6]dharmarataś ca yaḥ | śivasaṃprāptitulyatvāt [śivaṃ prāpnoti tulyatvāt P1] sarvatulyaguṇāḥ smṛtāḥ || 83.

524

Śivadharmaśāstra 12.92–94 (A fol. 40r[LL3–4], B fol. 44r[LL3–4], P1[P152]): yatimātropakaraṇaṃ datvālpam api bhaktitaḥ | varṣalakṣaṃ mahābhogaiḥ [AL4] śivaloke mahīyate || 92 kuryād āvasathaṃ saumyaṃ suguptaṃ śivayoginām | śivālaye [śivālaya P] kṛte yāvat tāvat puṇyaṃ samaṃ bhavet || 93 [BL4] yathā śivas tathā yogī yathā yogī tathā śivaḥ | tena yogīndrapātreṣu dānam apy alpam [aṇvapi P1] akṣayam [cākṣayam P1] || 94.

525

For more details on this verse and its reuses in Śaiva and Buddhist literature, see § 2.1.

526

Śivadharmaśāstra 12.96–99 (A fol. 40r[LL5–6], B fol 44r[LL4–5], P1[P153]): vyākhyāne śivadharmasya kṛtvā maṇḍalakaṃ mahat | śobhitaṃ puṣpapa[BL5]trādyaiḥ [mṛdugandhādyaiḥ P1] śivadharmāsanaṃ mahat [nyāset tantrāsanaṃ śubham P1] | puras tasya [pustakaṃ tad P1] guroḥ [guro B guhe a.c., guroḥ p.c. P1] sthāpya pūjayed ubhayaṃ tataḥ || 96 śivadharmapravaktāram [śivadharmasya a.c., śivadharma° p.c. P1] ācāryaṃ śivavat sadā [vācakaṃ tathā A pūjayet tataḥ P1] | pūjayec [śivañ ca P1] chivadharmaṃ ca tulyam etad dvayaṃ yataḥ || 97 [AL6] ya evaṃ nyāyato bhaktaḥ [viktaḥ B bhaktyā P1] śivadharmaṃ śṛṇoti ca | āyur vidyāṃ yaśaḥ saukhyaṃ labdhvā ’nte [BL6] sa [tu P1] śivaṃ vrajet || 98 ity eṣa vaḥ samākhyātaḥ śivadharmaḥ sanātanaḥ | sarveṣāṃ śivabhaktānām ayaṃ vācyo vijānatā || 99.

527

On the traditional accounts of the transmission of the teachings and final composition of the Śivadharmaśāstra and the Śivadharmottara, see De Simini 2016.

528

Note that stanza 12.102 also calls the work the ‘Dharmaśāstra Belonging to Śiva in Twelve Chapters’, dvādaśādhyāyaṃ dharmaśāstraṃ śivātmakam.

529

See, for instance, Śivadharmottara 2.96–98: ‘Having made a vidyāmaṇḍala, be it round or squared, measuring two hands as well as more [than this], with cow dung of good quality and water, (96) / Embellished on all sides with white, red and other coloured powders, with a white lotus-flower in the middle, adorned with a covering of good quality, (97) / Full of various flowers, furnished with lamps and unhusked barley-corns; the one who, having worshipped [it] with the above-mentioned offers (evaṃ), would recite the knowledge of Śiva with faith (98)’; vidyāmaṇḍalakaṃ vṛttaṃ yadi vā caturasrakam | dvihastam adhikaṃ vāpi kṛtvā sadgomayāmbhasā || 96 sitaraktādibhiś cūrṇaiḥ samantād upaśobhitam | sitapadmayutaṃ madhye sadvitānavibhūṣitam || 97 vicitrakusumākīrṇaṃ pradīpākṣatasaṃyutam | sampūjyaivaṃ śivajñānaṃ śraddhayā vācayīta yaḥ || 98. In 2.100 the text prescribes, ‘Once this is accomplished, [the one who] would worship Śiva, [his] knowledge, and the master [and,] after that, would prepare food for all the śivayogins (100) / [...]’; tatsamāptau śivaṃ vidyām ācāryaṃ ca prapūjayet | kalpayed bhojanaṃ paścāt sarveṣāṃ śivayoginām || 100.

530

Śivadharmottara 12.262–63, 271–73 (A fol. 51v[L2], B fol. 100r[L4], om. P2): śivadharmottaraṃ śāstraṃ vācayed yaḥ [saḥ a.c., yaḥ p.c. A] śṛṇoti vā | sa saṃsārād vinirmuktaḥ prāpnoti paramaṃ [AL2] padam || 261 vidyāsiṃhāsane ramye vastrapuṣpādiśobhite | pūjayitvā śivajñānaṃ [śivaṃ jñānaṃ A] śṛṇuyād vācayīta vā || 262 śrīmaddaṇḍāsanaṃ vāpi kṛtvā haimaṃ suśobhanam | hemapaṭṭaparicchannaṃ [hemapaṭṭā A] nānāratnopaśobhitaṃ [°vibhuṣitam B] || 263 [...] [AL4 B100vL2] ittham āstaraṇaṃ [itthaṃ sāstaraṇaṃ A] kṛtvā vinyased daṇḍakāsane | tasyopari śivajñānaṃ saṃsthāpya [sasthāpya A] pra[AL5]tipūjayet || 271 vidyādānopacāreṇa śobhāṃ kṛtvā prayatnataḥ | gatvā ’dhivāsitakaraḥ śrīmadāsanasaṃsthitaḥ || 272 sabhāyatanatīrtheṣu narendrabhavaneṣu vā | vāca[BL3]yet paramaṃ dharmaṃ gṛhe grāmapureṣu ca [vā B] || 273.

531

Śivadharmottara 12.261ab (A fol. 51v[L1], B fol. 100r[L4], om. P2): śivadharmottaraṃ śāstraṃ vācayed yaḥ śṛnoti vā.

532

Devīpurāṇa 128.4: ‘And the one who would read or listen to the first descent of the goddess, once freed from transmigration he reaches the supreme condition’; ādyaṃ devyavatāraṃ ca vācayed yaḥ śṛṇoti vā | sa saṃsārād vinirmuktaḥ prāpnoti paramaṃ padam || 4.

533

Śivadharmottara 12.279cd (A fol. 52r[L1]: B fol. 100v[L5], om. P2): pravartayati yaḥ kaścic chivapustakavācanaṃ [°vācakaṃ a.c., vācanaṃ p.c. A] || 279.

534

Devīpurāṇa 128.23: ‘Whoever finances the public reading of the manuscript of the goddess for the sake of helping all beings and aiming at one’s own emancipation’; pravartayati yaḥ kaścit devyāḥ pustakavācanam | sarvasattvopakārāya ātmanaś ca vimuktaye || 23.

535

Śivadharmottara 12.284cd (A fol. 52r[L3], B fols. 100v[L6]–101r[L1], om. P2): śivavidyāgurūṇā[B101rL1]ṃ ca bhaktyā ca [ca bhaktyā ca unreadable in B] śivayoginām || 284.

536

Devīpurāṇa 128.30: devyā vidyāgurūṇāṃ ca bhaktyā ca śivayoginām. Note that the plural ‘teachers’ in the translation, instead of the singular used in translating the Śivadharmottara, depends on the division of the three-member compound śivavidyāgurūṇāṃ into a genitive (devyā) plus the two-member compound vidyāgurūṇām.

537

Devīpurāṇa 128.34: ‘And a competent person should give the fee to the remaining śivayogins, according to one’s own ability; afterwards he should light a hundred of lamps and so on’; śeṣāṇāṃ ca yathāśaktyā dakṣiṇāṃ śivayoginām | dadyāt prabodhayet paścāt pradīpādeḥ śataṃ budhaḥ || 34.

538

Devīpurāṇa 128.45–46ab: nākāle mriyate rājā hanyate na ca śaktibhiḥ | śrṇọti yaś ca satataṃ śivadharmaṃ narādhipaḥ || 45 tatra deśe mahāpuṇye devyāḥ sannihitā nṛpa.

539

Devīpurāṇa 91.13–15(=Dānakāṇḍa 12.6-8): siddhāntā mokṣaśāstrāṇi [em., siddhanta ed. siddhānta° DK] vedāḥ svargādisādhakāḥ [°sādhakān ed.] | vedāṅgānītihāsāś ca [tadaṃgānītihāsāni ed.] deyā dharmavivṛddhaye || 13 gāruḍaṃ bālatantraṃ ca bhūtatantrāṇi bhairavam | śāstrānāṃ [śāstrāṇi ed.] paṭhanād dānān mātaraḥ phaladā nṛṇām || 14 jyotiṣaṃ vaidyaśāstrāṇi kalāḥ [kalā ed.] kāvyaṃ śubhāgamāḥ [śubhāgamān ed.] | dānād ārogyaṃ āpnoti gāndharvaṃ labhate padam || 15.

540

The syntax of this stanza has been rendered freely in an attempt to match each gift with the pertinent reward, although they are listed as separate categories in the two hemistichs. The gift of astronomy and medical treatises results in the attainment of good health, while the impartation of the other, more artistic disciplines enables one to reach the world of the Gandharvas.

541

As for the ‘beautiful authoritative treatises’ (śubhāgamas), here I do not think that we should understand the noun āgama in the meaning of religious scripture, often associated with the term. My translation is dictated by its association with a lower rank of rewards, and the previous mention of texts of scriptural authorities at the beginning of this brief list. I believe we can thus reasonably attribute to the word the attested meaning of authoritative treatises, and deduce from its position in the list that it is used as a generic way to denote other technical treatises related to the disciplines mentioned in the last pādas.

542

Hatley 2012, p. 15.

543

As in Slouber 2012, p. 2 fn. 4. The Garuḍatantras are a class of scriptures known as early as the sixth century, and of which 28 works were known by the tenth century as forming a canon (Törzsök 2004, p. 187; Slouber 2012, p. 2). The topic of snake bites and their cure is central to the Garuḍatantras, so that they are referred to as viṣatantras, the ‘Tantras on Venom’ (see an example from the Īśānaśivagurudevapaddhati in Slouber 2012, p. 64). Several goddesses in the Śākta tradition are associated with the prevention and cure of snake bites (Slouber 2012, p. 144ff.), an element which explains the popularity of this class of tantras in the Devīpurāṇa. The Bhūtatantras deal with evil spirits and exorcisms (Goodall and Isaacson 2011, p. 135), while the Bālatantras are treatises on various topics related to child care, from midwifery to the cases of children’s seizures by demons.

544

It is possible to reconstruct the principles of traditional medicine on the basis of those sources which relied on the earlier tantras: on this, see the detailed survey made by Slouber 2012, pp. 20–85, and his attached critical edition of chapters 1–7, 30, and 34 of the Kriyākālaguṇottara, drawing on these classes of tantras. Materials on the Bāla medicine are also available in the Aṣṭāṅgahṛdayasaṃhitā of Vāgbhaṭa, Uttarasthāna, chapters 1–2, while the following chapters 3 and 4 deal more specifically with Bhūtas (for a survey, see Meulenbeld 1999–2002, vol. Ia, p. 442ff.).

545

Devīpurāṇa 32.41–42: vastrahemāmbusampātaiḥ kalaśair devīn tu snāpayet [c.m.] | tatas tacchāstravettāraiḥ pratiṣṭhāṃ tu prakārayet || 41 devīśāstrārthatattvajñair matṛmaṇḍalavedikaiḥ | bhūtatantragrahabālagāruḍeṣu kṛtaśramaiḥ || 42.

546

Devīpurāṇa 39.24: evaṃ sarvagatā devī mantravidyāgameṣu ca | saṃsthitā mātṛtantre ca jyeṣṭhe tantre ca bhairave || 24.

547

A list of Mātṛtantras is given in the Skandapurāṇa 171.127–132b, revealing that they are in fact Yāmalatantras (on this point see Sanderson 2009, p. 229 and fn. 525). The list appears within a narrative telling the story of the goddess and her accompanying Mothers, who were conjured by Śiva in Śrīpīṭha (Devīkoṭa) in order to free the site of demons. Once they had accomplished this task, the site was given to them as their sacred abode, and Brahmā promises that he will reveal the tantras containing the rules for their veneration.

548

For instance, the worship of Kṣemaṅkarī is said to happen (Devīpurāṇa 39.133): ‘[…] in a palace, in a recitation hall, in a manuscript, abiding in water or fire’; prāsāde pāṭhakuḍye vā pustake jalavahnigā || 133.

549

Devīpurāṇa 88.1: devaiḥ śivāgamais tv etāḥ pūjitāś ca mumukṣubhiḥ | gāruḍe bhūtatantre ca bālatantre [em., kālatantre ed., bālatantre ms. ग in apparatus] ca pūjitāḥ || 1.

550

See chapter 107; Hazra 1963, p. 62.

551

Dānakāṇḍa 12.64NP: vidyāś caturdaśa proktāḥ krameṇa tu yathāsthiti [em., yathāsthiteḥ ed.] | ṣaḍaṅgāś caturo vedā dharmaśāstraṃ purātanam | mīmāṃsā tarkam api ca etā vidyāḥ prakīrtitāḥ || 64.

552

Yājñavalkyasmṛti 1.3: ‘The seats of knowledge and Dharma are 14: the Vedas together with Purāṇic literature, Nyāya, Mīmāṃsā, Dharmaśāstra literature, and the Vedāṅgas. (3)’; purāṇanyāyamīmāṃsādharmaśāstrāṅgamiśritāḥ | vedāḥ sthānāni vidyānāṃ dharmasya ca caturdaśa || 3. See also the commentary Mitākṣarā ad loc. (pp. 2–3): ‘Purāṇic literature [means] the Brahma[purāṇa] and so on. Nyāya [is] the science of reasoning. Mīmāṃsā [is] the speculation on Vedic sentences. The Dharmaśāstric literature [is] the Mānava[dharmaśāstra] and so on. The [Ved]āṅgas [are] the six [treatises] beginning with grammatical analysis and so on. The four Vedas are accompanied by them. The [fields of] knowledge are instruments for the accomplishment of the [four] human goals. And their seats are 14, and the 14 seats are causes for [the arising of] Dharma, and these have to be studied by the members of the first three varṇas. The Dharmaśāstra also has to be studied, because it is included in this [list]’; purāṇaṃ brāhmādi | nyāyas tarkavidyā | mīmāṃsā vedavākyavicāraḥ | dharmaśāstraṃ mānavādi | aṅgāni vyākaraṇādīni ṣaṭ | etair upetāś catvāro vedāḥ | vidyāḥ puruṣārthasādhanāni | tāsāṃ sthānāni ca caturdaśa | dha-rmasya ca caturdaśa sthānāni hetavaḥ | etāni ca traivarṇikair adhyetavyāni | tadantarbhūtatvād dharmaśāstram apy adhyetavyam.

553

Galewicz 2006, pp. 153–54. Moreover, Sāyaṇa proves to be conversant with the tenets of some of these disciplines, at the same time demonstrating their usefulness in the ritual application and correct transmission of the Veda, and legitimizing himself as a valid knower of ‘the secret which is the content of the Veda’ (vedārtharahasya; see Galewicz 2006, p. 152ff.).

554

Dānakāṇḍa, 12.65–66NP: ‘From the core of precisely these [14 established disciplines], thousands of other [fields of] learning have arisen, like medicine and the discipline of agriculture, [which are] taught to have many subdivisions. Moreover, the knowledge of the Self, the greatest of all, the destroyer of the fear of transmigration, the cause of the extinction of all anguish, the remover of all sins’; āsām evāntarotpannāḥ parā vidyāḥ sahasraśaḥ | āyurvedaḥ sasyavedo bahubhedaḥ prakīrtitaḥ || 65 sarvottarā cātmavidyā saṃsārabhayanāśinī | sarvaduḥkhāntakaraṇī sarvapāpavināśinī || 66.

555

Dānakāṇḍa 12.83NP: ‘And the knowledge of the Self, the Purāṇic lore, and the science of the Dharmaśāstras: these three [fields of] learning are primary because of [the bestowal] of the fruits of all gifts and sacrifices’; ātmavidyā ca pauraṇī dharmaśāstrātmikā ca yā | etā vidyās trayo mukhyāḥ sarvadānakriyāphalaiḥ || 83.

556

Dānakāṇḍa 12.87NP. In Dānakāṇḍa 12.70–87NP, the different vidyās are listed alongside with rewards conferred by their donation, which are as follows: the donation of the śilpavidyā confers Brahmā’s proximity (12.70NP); the donation of kalāvidyā confers rebirth in the world of Viṣṇu for a period of 4,320,000,000 years (= one kalpa, 12.70NP); the donation of the sasyavidyā allows one to reach the town of Prajāpati and rescue the ancestors (12.71NP); the donation of the Āyurveda enables one to reach the pure worlds of the Aśvins for 306,720,000 years (= one manvantara, an ‘age of Manu’; 12.72NP); the donation of the tarkavidyā provides one with rebirth in the world of Varuṇa (12.73NP); the donation of Mīmāṃsā confers rebirth in the seat of Indra (12.73NP); the donation of Dharmaśāstra bestows rebirth in the world of Brahmā for ten manvantaras and rescue of the ancestors (12.74NP), as well as resulting in an increase of justice (12.81NP); the donation of the vedavidyā causes rebirth in Heaven for three kalpas (12.75NP); and the donation of the ātmavidyā is said to bestow countless merits, among which the rebirth in the world of Truth, which is the dwelling place of Brahmā, for ten million kalpas (12.75–76NP). It moreover confers emancipation from rebirth and the rescue of sons, livestock, and relatives. Alongside the Purāṇas and Dharmaśāstra, the donation of the ātmavidyā bestows the fruits of all gifts and sacrifices (12.80NP). Purāṇas are, by contrast, only associated with rebirth in worlds filled with all desires, and endless fruits (12.82NP).

557

Aparārkaṭīkā, p. 6: ‘Purāṇic literature [means] the Brahmapurāṇa and so on. Nyāya means ‘endowed with reasoning’. Mīmāṃsā [is] the examination of Vedic sentences. Dharmaśāstra [means] the traditional works starting from the treatises of Manu and the other sages. The four Vedas, beginning with the Ṛgveda, are accompanied by the six Vedāṅgas, beginning with the grammatical analysis. These are causes of 14 kinds of knowledge and, indirectly, are causes of Dharma, since only the knowledge that comes from these [sources] gives rise to Dharma. And therefore it is proven that the knowledge deriving from [technical works], like the texts on procedures (prayoga), the manuals (paddhati), and so on, does not cause the arising of Dharma. ‘Thus there are these 14 seats of knowledge; then Vedānta is the fifteenth, and wisdom (vidyā) the sixteenth’. The mention [of Vedānta and wisdom] thus [stated] in the Brahmapurāṇa refers here to these seats of knowledge as ways to liberation. This is not explicitly stated in this [passage] because it is unnecessary. Vedānta [means] the Śārīraka[mīmāṃsā]. Wisdom [indicates] the secret doctrines of the Bṛhadāraṇyak[opaniṣad] and so on. “The [six] Vedāṅgas, the four Vedas, the extensive Nyāya [literature], the Purāṇic and Dharmaśāstric literature [are] the 14 [established] disciplines. [Then there are] these three, which are the disciplines of medicine, archery, and music, and fourth is politics: these are the 18 [established] disciplines”. This means they are solely seats of knowledge and not seats of Dharma, since medicine and other sciences are not seats of Dharma’; purāṇaṃ brāhmādi | nyāyaḥ satarkaḥ | mīmāṃsā vedavākyavicāraḥ | dharmaśāstraṃ manvādismṛtiḥ | aṅgaiḥ ṣaḍbhir vyākaraṇādibhiḥ sahitāś catvāro vedā ṛgvedādayaḥ | etāni caturdaśajñānānāṃ nimittāni dharmasya ca jñānadvāreṇa | etadutpannasyaiva jñānasya dharmahetutvāt | tataś ca prayogapaddhatyādisamutthitaṃ jñānaṃ na dharmahetur iti siddham | evaṃ caturdaśaitāni vidyāsthānāni santy | atha vedāntaḥ pañcadaśakaṃ vidyā ṣoḍaśikā bhavet iti brahmapurāṇe yad grahaṇaṃ tan mokṣasādhanavidyāsthānābhiprāyam iti ihānupayogitvān noktam | vedāntaḥ śārīrakam | vidyā bṛhadāraṇyakādirahasyam | aṅgāni vedāś catvāro mīmāṃsā nyāyavistaraḥ | purāṇaṃ dharmaśāstraṃ ca vidyā etāś caturdaśa || āyurvedo dhanurvedo gāndharvaś ceti te trayaḥ | arthaśāstraṃ caturthaṃ ca vidyā aṣṭādaśaiva tāḥ || tat kevalaṃ vidyāsthānatvābhiprāyaṃ na dharmasthānatvābhiprāyam | āyurvedādīnāṃ ca dharmasthānatvābhāvāt.

558

Note that this stanza is not traceable in the current edition of the Brahmapurāṇa.

559

Aparārka does not name the source of this stanza, but see Garuḍapurāṇa 1.87.63cd–64: ‘The [six Ved]āṅgas, the four Vedas, Mīmāṃsā, the extensive Nyāya [literature], (63) / Purāṇic and Dharmaśāstric literature, the treatises of medicine and politics, archery and music: [these fields of] knowledge are exactly 18’; (64) aṅgāni caturo vedā mīmāṃsā nyāyavistaraḥ || 63 purāṇaṃ dharmaśāstraṃ ca āyurvedārthaśāstrakam | dhanurvedaś ca gāndharvo vidyā hy aṣṭādaśaiva tāḥ || 64; as well as Brahmāṇḍapurāṇa 1.35.87cd–89ab: ‘The [six Ved]āṅgas, the four Vedas, Mīmāṃsā, the extensive Nyāya [literature], (87) / Dharmaśāstric and Purāṇic literature: these are the 14 fields of knowledge. Medicine, archery, and music: these are the three, (88) / fourth is politics. The [fields of] knowledge [are] thus exactly 18’; aṅgāni vedāś catvāro mīmāṃsā nyāyavistaraḥ || 87 dharmaśāstraṃ purāṇaṃ ca vidyāś cemāś caturdaśa | āyurvedo dhanurvedo gāndharvaś ceti te trayaḥ || 88 arthaśāstraṃ caturthaṃ tu vidyā hy aṣṭādaśaiva hi.

560

On the Upavedas, see Gonda 1975, p. 49 fn. 48.

561

For more details on the Niśvāsa corpus, see chapter 4. One part of it, the Niśvāsamukha, which despite presenting itself as an introduction to the whole work is currently believed to have been composed last (Goodall 2015, p. 22), shows textual parallels with the Śivadharmaśāstra (Kafle 2015, pp. 54–57); moreover, almost half of the Śivadharmasaṃgraha has been demonstrably based on the Niśvāsamukha (Kafle 2015, pp. 61–72 and pp. 291–382).

562

Niśvāsatattvasaṃhitā, Mūlasūtra 1.1ab: ‘How has the Śaiva knowledge, supreme secret, been revealed by Svayambhu [...]’ śivajñānaṃ paraṃ guhyaṃ katham uktaṃ svayambhuvā.

563

This development in the literary production in the field of Dharmaśāstra is described in Olivelle 2010, especially p. 37 onward. He would place the composition of the Manusmṛti, which marked an important change with respect to the preceding literature on Dharma that had been composed since earlier times (the Dharmasūtras), to the first or second century CE (p. 42); other Smṛtis, such as those of Yājñavalkya, Bṛhaspati, and Viṣṇu, represent a later stage in the history of this literary genre, dating most likely from the fifth century onward. The beginning of the ‘age of commentaries and digests’ can, on the other hand, be traced in the eighth to the tenth century (see Olivelle 2010, p. 52), when the first commentaries are composed; the earliest extant digests are later (twelfth century), although this does not necessarily mean that the genre postdates the commentaries, as will be amply illustrated below.

564

A sign of the popularity of this genre is also its continuity throughout history, as the production of Dharmanibandhas extends to the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Some of the latest digests of law, like the ‘Remover of the Ocean of Litigations’ (Vivādārṇavabhañjana) or the ‘Ocean of the Settlement of Litigations’ (Vivādabhaṅgārṇava), both authored by Jagannātha Tarkapañcānana at the end of the eighteenth century, were compiled at the behest of the British rulers (see Derrett 1961, pp. 85–95).

565

The commentaries of Asahāya on the Nāradasmṛti, as well as those of Bhāruci and Medhātithi on the Manusṃrti, and Viśvarūpa’s commentary on the Yājñavalkyasmṛti, belong to the earliest surviving ones, and, according to Olivelle (2010, p. 52), can all be dated to the eighth to the tenth century.

566

For references, see Kane 1968, pp. 545–46; Lingat 1993, pp. 107–11.

567

Olivelle 2010, p. 52.

568

Yājñavalkyasmṛti 1.208 (Aparārkaṭīkā, vol. 1 p. 302): ‘Having in whatever manner donated a cow, be it a milk cow (dhenu) or a cow yielding no milk (adhenu), devoid of diseases and plagues, the donor will be magnified in Heaven’; yathākathaṃcid datvā gāṃ dhenuṃ vā ’dhenum eva vā | arogām aparikliṣṭāṃ dātā svarge mahīyate || 208.

569

Aparārkaṭīkā, vol. 1, pp. 302–65.

570

Aparārkaṭīkā, vol. 1, pp. 389–403.

571

Aparārkaṭīkā, vol. 1, pp. 403–406.

572

This work is divided into 14 sections, which are called ‘Section on Students’ (Brahmacārikāṇḍa); ‘Section on the Householders’ (Gṛhasthakāṇḍa); ‘Section on Constant Rituals’ (Niyatakālakāṇḍa); ‘Section on Funerary Rites’ (Śrāddhakāṇḍa); ‘Section on Gifts’ (Dānakāṇḍa); ‘Section on Vows’ (Vratakāṇḍa); ‘Section on Worship’ (Pūjākāṇḍa); ‘Section on Sacred Places’ (Tīrthakāṇḍa); ‘Section on Installation Rituals’ (Pratiṣṭhākāṇḍa); ‘Section on Purification’ (Śuddhikāṇḍa); ‘Section on the Dharma of the King’ (Rājadharmakāṇḍa); ‘Section on Juridical Procedures’ (Vyavahārakāṇḍa); ‘Section on Appeasement Rituals’ (Śāntikāṇḍa) and the ‘Section on Liberation’ (Mokṣakāṇḍa). The Dānakāṇḍa, previously only edited by Aiyangar 1941, has recently been republished with an English translation by Brick 2014.

573

Evaluations of the historical data on the figure of Lakṣmīdhara and his patrons, which will also be partly discussed below, are given in Kane 1975, p. 685ff., Bakker & Isaacson 2004, pp. 66–75, and Brick 2014, pp. 6–8.

574

Unlike the Dānakāṇḍa and the Dānakhaṇḍa, the Dānasāgara is not part of a larger work; other ‘sāgaras’, however, are attributed to the same author, namely the ‘Ocean of Wonders’ (Adbhutasāgara), the ‘Ocean of Custom’ (Ācārasāgara), and the ‘Ocean of Installations’ (Pratiṣṭhāsāgara).

575

On Ballālasena, see Kane 1975, p. 730ff., and Majumdar 1971, pp. 228–30.

576

The Caturvargacintāmaṇi is divided into the ‘Section on Religious Observance’ (Vratakhaṇḍa); ‘Section on Gifts’ (Dānakhaṇḍa); ‘Section on the Remainings’ (Pariśeṣakhaṇḍa); ‘Section on Sacred Places’ (Tīrthakhaṇḍa); and ‘Section on Liberation’ (Mokṣakhaṇḍa).

577

On the historical background against which Hemādri’s work has to be understood, see Kane 1975, p. 749ff., Schmiedchen 2014, p. 325ff. (on the Yādavas of Devagiri), and below.

578

Shastri 1905, p. XVIII, Kane 1948, pp. XI–XII, and Kane 1975, p. 806.

579

Chakravarti 1915, pp. 355–56 and Kane 1975, pp. 882–89

580

Shastri 1913, p. 23, and Kane 1975, pp. 938–41.

581

Notable is the case of the Nandipurāṇa, on which the chapters on vidyādāna heavily rely (see chapter 2), and of which no manuscripts have survived. Some of the frequently quoted Dharmaśāstra works, like the Bṛhaspatismṛti and the Yamasmṛti, also share the same fate as the Nandipurāṇa, namely not being extant in manuscripts. In numerous other cases, like many of the quotations from the Garuḍapurāṇa that will be mentioned in the coming pages, we know of a work with that name, but these verses are no longer traceable in the text of the Purāṇas as we know it today. When it was not possible to trace the text back to the original sources, I have identified the stanzas by numbering them according to their position in the chapter on the gift of knowledge, and added to the number a siglum corresponding to the first three letters of the name of the digest-writer from whose work those verses are cited.

582

Note that I have excluded from this survey the ‘Jewel Mine of Gifts’ (Dānaratnākara) of the ‘Jewel Mine of Smṛti’ (Smṛtiratnākara) by the fourteenth-century author Caṇḍeśvara, as this portion of his work is still unpublished. On this author, see Kane 1975, pp. 763–75.

583

Lakṣmīdhara, in his introduction to the Dānakāṇḍa (stanzas 12–13), mentions the titles of a few preceding digests, which are the Mahārṇava, the Kāmadhenu, and the Mālā, while the Parijāta is referred to in the Vyavahārakāṇḍa (Aiyangar 1941, pp. 121–22). In a preceding article (see De Simini 2015, p. 602 fn. 2), I had stated that these digests are ‘now lost’; I now have to correct this view since, as Harunaga Isaacson has kindly pointed out to me, at least the Kāmadhenu has survived in a Nepalese manuscript published by Kouda 2015 and 2016.

584

For information on the commentary Mitākṣarā and its author, see Kane 1975, pp. 599–616.

585

The activity of Mādhavācārya, author of two prominent works on Dharmaśāstra, the Parāśara and the Kālanirṇaya, probably took place between 1340 and 1390 (see Kane 1975, pp. 778–92).

586

Pollock 1993, p. 98. To describe the florescence of this genre, he also refers to the now lost codes of Bhoja, king of Dhārā in the first half of the eleventh century.

587

For his arguments, see Brick 2014, pp. 14–15.

588

Pollock 1993, p. 105.

589

Pollock 1993, p. 106, thus maintains that the ‘totalizing conceptualizations of society’ brought about by the digest-writers ‘[…] became possible only by juxtaposition with alternative lifeworlds, and on the other hand, that they became necessary only at the moment when the total form of the society was for the first time believed, by the privileged theorists of society, to be threatened.’

590

Rocher (2002, pp. 6–24) also suggests an early dating to the beginning of the twelfth century for the Dāyabhāga of Jīmūtavāhana, on the law of inheritance, while Kane (1968, pp. 510, 535, 537) points to earlier works like the Ṣaṭṭriṃśanmata, the Caturviṃśanmata, or the Smṛtisaṃgraha, as antecedents of the Dharmanibandhas. Bhoja, king of Dhārā (ca. 1030 CE), also wrote a digest on Dharmaśāstra, namely the Rājamārtaṇḍa, only preserved in fragments (Kane 1975, p. 586). As for the Dharmanibandhas composed in areas that were untouched by the advance of the Muslim rulers, Brick (2014, p. 14) refers to the Smṛticandrikā, composed in South India between 1150 and 1225 CE (Kane 1962, pp. 721–23), as well as to the Aparārkaṭīkā, on which more below.

591

On this, see Brick 2014, pp. 11–12.

592

Brick 2014, p. 19. This topic will be further discussed below.

593

Brick 2014, p. 16.

594

Pollock 1993, p. 105.

595

See, among others, Kane 1975, pp. 751–53, according to whom Hemādri was ‘towering personality’ of his times (p. 755).

596

The historical Yādavas, dated to the period from 850 to 1320 CE, can be divided into two main branches: an earlier family ruling from Sindīnagara (850–1100 CE), and a later one from Devagiri (1100–1320 CE). As observed by Schmiedchen 2014, pp. 325–26, the activities of the early Yādavas are however attested in epigraphs only after the fall of the Rāṣṭrakūṭa in the beginning of the 11th century; there is also an interruption of some years between the attestations of these two family branches, whose mutual relationships are not clear.

597

Barnett 1915–16, EI 13.17. Hemādri is praised in ll. 39–41 (see p. 202 for the text and 205 for the translation). This grant, which is described in stanza 18 as the donation of the village Vaula to 32 Brahmins through the minister Acyutanāyaka, who administers the Konkan region, is discussed in Schmiedchen 2014, pp. 414–15.

598

This is discussed in Schmiedchen 2014, pp. 405–20. One example (Schmiedchen 2014, p. 410; see Koparkar 1957–58, EI 32.3) is that of a copperplate from the time of Mahādeva, from Kalegaon (Ahmadnagar district), documenting the concession of a village to 52 Brahmins divided into 22 gotras made by the king himself. The date of this document, according to the editor, corresponds to August 29, 1261 CE.
As observed by Schmiedchen (2014, p. 380), there are actually only a few documents left from the last phase of the epigraphic production of the Yādavas, up to the mid-thirteenth century; those on stone, mostly produced by vassals of the Yādavas, are attested in south Maharastra and north Karnataka. From the second half of the thirteenth century onward, copperplates reappear yet, once again, are mostly issued by vassal families in north Karnataka (Schmiedchen 2014, pp. 390–91).

599

For this information on Rāmacandra and that of the next lines, I rely on Yazdani 1960, pp. 551–55.

600

Schmiedchen 2014, p. 326 fn. 5.

601

Schmiedchen 2014, p. 326; for the inscription, see Desai 1949–50, EI 28.49.

602

A list of examples is in Kane 1975, p. 755, and Talbot 2001, p. 270 fn. 4.

603

See Sukthankar 1917–18, EI 14.4. This document is also discussed in Kane 1975, p. 755.

604

For information on the emergence and development of the Vijayanagara kingdom, see Stein 2008.

605

Sukthankar 1917–18, EI 14.4, p. 102: hemādrikṛtimā[rge]ṇa kurvan dānāny anekaśaḥ [|*] jaladānaprasaṅgena śrutavān phalam uttamaṃ || 22.

606

See Shama Shastri 1939, SII 9.426 (ARE no. 386, 1920).

607

Hultzsch 1894–95, EI 3.10, p. 60. This document, also mentioned in Kane 1975, p. 755, records an agrahāra made by king Anna Vema to Immaḍi, of the Lohita gotra, minister and spiritual preceptor of the king.

608

Hultzsch 1894–95, EI 3.10, p. 61 (text) and p. 64 (translation).

609

Ramayya 1911–12, EI 11.33B, p. 325. The inscription records the grant of the Alapadu village to a Brahmin by Pedda Komati Vema as well as the distribution of incomes from this same village by the donee to other Brahmins.

610

Talbot 2001, pp. 88–93.

611

There are three dynastic lines of Śilāhāras: those attested in north Konkan, those in south Konkan, and a line in Kolhapur, southwestern Maharasthra. For a period, the Śilāhāras were also vassals of the Rāṣṭrakūṭa, and always bore the vassal titles of mahāsāmanta, mahāmaṇḍalika, and mahāmaṇḍaleśvara, contrary to the Yādavas, which at a certain point in their history replaced them with imperial titles. All the territories of the Śilāhāras were eventually conquered by the Yādavas. For this and more information on the Śilāhāras, see Schmiedchen 2014, p. 211ff.

612

Schmiedchen 2014, p. 216.

613

Schmiedchen 2014, p. 223: besides Aparājita, the epithet is also used for Arikesarin, Cittarāja, Nāgārjuna, Mummuṇi, Anantadeva I, Aparāditya I, and Mallikārjuna, as well as for Aparāditya II.

614

Mirashi 1977, CII 6, p. LXXV.

615

Schmiedchen 2014, p. 288. Schmiedchen further observes that stone inscriptions have a stronger influence from the old Marathi language, as contents and form are less regulated than in the copperplates.

616

Schmiedchen 2014, p. 216, also observes that the stone inscriptions do not reproduce any genealogy, which means that this can only be reconstructed on the basis of the copperplates up to the eleventh century.

617

Schmiedchen 2014, pp. 289–92; for the inscriptions see Mirashi 1977, CII 6.32 and 6.33.

618

For an account of the expeditions of Maḥmūd of Ghazni in India, see Asher and Talbot 2006, chapter 2.

619

See Bakker and Isaacson 2004, p. 19. At first, the area of Varanasi was important as a Buddhist centre; Bakker and Isaacson observe (2004, p. 20) that the town had been of no religious significance for Brahmins until the third century CE, when we have the first evidence of the presence of forms of Hindu religions in the area. The Mahābhārata still assigns only a minor role to Varanasi (Bakker and Isaacson 2004, p. 21).

620

Bakker and Isaacson 2004, p. 31. The political situation of northern India after the Maukharis assumed rulership created the right conditions for Hinduism to prosper: the increased production of religious literature, such as the Skandapurāṇa, is an example thereof (Bakker and Isaacson 2004, p. 33).

621

This is also testified by al-Bīrūnī, who speaks of an antagonism between Indians and Muslims that was also nourished by political and religious sources (Bakker and Isaacson 2004, p. 60 fn. 185).

622

Niyogi 1959, p. 45. The earliest inscription of Candradeva attests that, in the vikrama year 1148–49 (1089–90 CE), he had assumed the royal titles and was the protector of Kāśī (=Varanasi), Kuśika (=Kanauj), Uttarakośala (Ayodhyā), and Indrasthānīyaka (not identified); see Konow 1907–08, EI 9.47, discussed in Niyogi 1959, pp. 45–46 and Bakker and Isaacson 2004, p. 67 and fn. 211.

623

Govindacandra reconquered Kanauj and successfully protected his kingdom against the Yamīnī Sultans (Niyogi 1959, pp. 77–78). The introductory stanzas of the Dānakāṇḍa, along with those of the other sections of the Kṛtyakalpataru, are reproduced and translated in Aiyangar 1941, pp. 46–56. For parallels between the epithets that Lakṣmīdhara attributes to Govindacandra and references made to him in contemporary inscriptions, see Aiyangar 1941, p. 13, Bakker and Isaacson 2004, p. 70, and Brick 2014, pp. 6–7.

624

See the introductory stanza of the Rājadharmakāṇḍa (text and translation as in Aiyangar 1941, p. 56): ‘Lakṣmīdhara speaks of the Rājadharma in the eleventh kāṇḍa, he whose mind is in meritorious acts, and thanks to whose miraculous great counsel, king Govindacandra was able to do all that, viz., the placing of the world on the righteous path, the placing of elephants in the house of men of qualities, and the placing of his won feet on the head of kings’; nyāyyavartmani yajjagadguṇavatā geheṣu yaddantino | rājñā mūrdhani yatpadavyaracayadgovindacandro nṛpa | tatsarvaṃ khalu yasya mantramahimā ’ścarya sa lakṣmīdharaḥ kāṇḍe śasati rājadharmanicayānekādaśe puṇyadhī || 8.

625

Bakker and Isaacson (2004, p. 71) observe that the picture that Lakṣmīdhara gives of Varanasi, as a town in which there is a large proliferation of temples and shrines, seems to reflect the conditions of the town in his time, rather than at the time of the supposedly earlier sources on which his work is based. His major source on the contemporary Varanasi is the ‘second’ Liṅgapurāṇa, which counts up to 285 liṅgas in Varanasi; however, Bakker and Isaacson observe that this Purāṇa was unknown until Lakṣmīdhara’s time, and seems to reflect the contemporary situation so closely that they surmise this could have been composed around the twelfth century, maybe even at Lakṣmīdhara’s behest, in order to reflect a fresh view of the town under the rulership of Govindacandra.

626

Majumdar 1971, p. 219.

627

A great help in reconstructing a chronology of the Senas comes from one of the Dharmanibandhas that is attributed to Ballālasena, namely the Adbhutasāgara. The initial stanzas of this work state that it was begun in śaka year 1089 (1169 CE), but remained unfinished and was then completed by Ballālasena’s son Lakṣmaṇasena (Majumdar 1971, p. 370). Other dates found in the text of the Adbhutasāgara are śaka year 1082 and 1090.

628

See the Naihāṭī copperplate (Banerji 1917–18, EI 14.10, and Majumdar 1929, p. 68ff.), in which Ballālasena is defined (l. 30), ‘Highest sovereign, supremely devoted to Māheśvara, supreme lord, paramount king’: -parameśvaraparamamāheśvaraparamabhaṭṭārakamahārājādhirāja°.

629

The list of the accepted sources is in stanzas 11–20 (pp. 2–3), while the rejected Purāṇas and the reasons for their rejection are expounded in stanzas 57–68 (pp. 6–7). I refer the reader to De Simini 2015, pp. 616–19, for a discussion and complete translation of the last passage.

630

Dānasāgara, p. 7, st. 67: ‘The Devīpurāṇa, excluded from the group of the various Purāṇas and Upapurāṇas, has not been included (nibaddha) due to involvement in impure rituals, as I have noticed that it accepts the teachings of the heretics. (67)’; tattatpurāṇopapurāṇasaṃkhyābahiṣkṛtaṃ kaśmalakarmayogāt | pāṣaṇḍaśāstrānumataṃ nirūpya devīpurāṇaṃ na nibaddham atra || 67. This translation, as well as the following one referring to the same passage, is taken, with minor adjustments, from De Simini 2015, p. 618.
Ballālasena had already referred to heretical teachings in the two preceding stanzas, where he explains why he has rejected three sections attributed to the Skandapurāṇa (st. 62)—the Garuḍapurāṇa, the ‘other’ Brahmapurāṇa and Agnipurāṇa, the Viṣṇupurāṇa (st. 63), and the ‘other’ Liṅgapurāṇa (st. 64)—motivating his choice by stating (Dānasāgara 64cd–66), ‘[…] all these have been completely repudiated, since [they] have been regarded as a universal deceit [perpetrated by] impostors, heretics, and hypocrites [inspired by] Kāma and so on. [This consideration was made] due to [their] connection with initiations (dīkṣā), installations (pratiṣṭhā), heretical reasonings, gemmology, false genealogies, [as well as] with [wrong] lexica, grammatical analyses, and so on, [and also] because they contain incongruous stories, wrong connections, and reciprocal contradictions. (64–66); dīkṣāpratiṣṭhāpāṣaṇḍayuktiratnaparīkṣaṇaiḥ || 64 mṛṣāvaṃśānucaritaiḥ koṣavyākaraṇādibhiḥ | asaṅgatakathābandhaparasparavirodhataḥ || 65 tan mīnaketanādīnāṃ bhaṇḍapāṣaṇḍaliṅginām | lokavañcanam ālokya sarvam evāvadhīritam || 66. The topics of initiation and installation unmistakably reveal the tantric nature of the rituals discussed in the sources that Ballālasena does not accept.

631

The author states (st. 68) that his selection of the sources was made ‘out of fear that [this] manuscript would have been too long’ (granthavistarabhayād). The Purāṇas that were explicitly rejected in the interest of conciseness are the ‘long Liṅgapurāṇa’—which may correspond to what is now known as the ‘first portion’ (pūrvabhāga) of the same Purāṇa—because the author thinks that the core of its teachings on the great gifts had been derived from the Matsyapurāṇa (st. 58); the Viṣṇurahasya (a Pāñcarātra text), and the Śivarahasya, possibly referring to the homonymous section attached to the Skandapurāṇa, which the author considers to be just ‘compendia’ (saṃgraha, st. 60).

632

Brick (2014, p. 18) quotes a passage from Vedānta Deśika’s Śatadūṣaṇī, Alepakamatabhaṅgavāda 369, that reveals full awareness of the practice of forging new scriptures or corrupting those that already exist, and referring to them as sources of authority.

633

Majumdar 1971, pp. 234–36.

634

It is undeniable, as will become increasingly clear in the following pages, that the digest-writers often relied on the texts of their predecessors instead of going back to the original sources themselves. However, they presumably also did so in the case of the quotations from very well-known works that are abundantly represented in the manuscript transmission, such as the Mahābhārata. Therefore, it does not seem compelling to deduce that the list of works made by Brick on p. 17, collecting some of the texts that are frequently quoted by the digest-writers but of which no manuscripts have survived, could also have been scarcely represented in the manuscript tradition in the past, and that this paucity would have driven the digest-writers to compose their works in order to make them available (see Brick 2014, pp. 17–18). One alternative explanation could rather be that the transmission of these works was interrupted precisely because of the popularity of the Dharmanibandhas, which ultimately replaced the original texts of the Dharmaśāstra; or that, as Bakker and Isaacson 2004 have argued in the case of the Liṅgapurāṇa quoted by Lakṣmīdhara, some sources quoted heavily by the authors of Dharmanibandhas, but non-existent prior to them, might actually have been composed following the nibandhakāras’ instructions.

635

As for the selection of sources, Brick (2014, p. 16) states that the nature of Lakṣmīdhara’s work is more exhaustive than selective. The size of his work is surely respectable, but by comparing Lakṣmīdhara and Hemādri’s treatments of the same topics, one easily realizes that it is the latter who tends towards exhaustiveness by accumulating quotations from all possible sources on a topic; Lakṣmīdhara, on the other hand, emerges from the comparison as being more attentive in selecting his sources, rather ironically given the thousands of pages comprising his digest.

636

See Dānakāṇḍa, 12.2 (=Manusmṛti 4.233): ‘The gift of the brahman is the best among all gifts, [such as the gifts of] water, food, cattle, land, clothes, sesame seeds, gold, and clarified butter’; sarveṣām eva dānānāṃ brahmadānaṃ viśiṣyate | vāryannagaumahīvāsastilakāñcanasarpiṣām || 233; and Dānakāṇḍa 12.3 (=Yājñavalkyasmṛti 1.212): ‘Since the brahman, made of all dharmas, is superior to [other] gifts, by donating this [one] reaches the world of Brahmā without falling’; sarvadharmamayaṃ brahma pradānebhyo ’dhikaṃ yataḥ | tad dadat samavāpnoti brahmalokam avicyutaḥ || 212. Both these stanzas are also quoted by Hemādri in his paragraph on the vedadāna (see Dānakhaṇḍa, p. 517), the Manusmṛti being misattributed to the Ādityapurāṇa. As for the stanza from the Yājñavalkyasmṛti, it is in the commentary upon it that Aparārka introduces his quotations on the gift of knowledge (see § 3.2).

637

Dānakāṇḍa 12.4 (=Yamasmṛti): ‘[The one] who would donate the earth, filled with all jewels, and [the one] who would donate a treatise to the Brahmins: both this [gift of the earth] and those [previously explained] are equivalent to this [gift of knowledge]’; ya imāṃ pṛthvīṃ dadyāt sarvaratnopaśobhitām | dadyāc chāstraṃ ca viprāṇāṃ tac ca tāni ca tatsamam ||. My translation is based on Lakṣmīdhara’s gloss ad loc. explaining the functions of the different demonstrative pronouns of the last pāda: tac ca sarvaratnopaśobhitapṛthvīdānam | tāni pūrvoktāni dānāni | tadubhayaṃ vidyādānasamam.

638

Dānakāṇḍa 12.59 (=Mahābhārata 13.68.5): yo brūyāc cāpi śiṣyāya dharmyāṃ brāhmīṃ sarasvatīm | pṛthivīgopradānābhyāṃ sa tulyaṃ phalam aśnute || 59 brāhmī vedārthānugamā. Note that the preceding verse 13.68.4 establishes the equivalence between the gifts of cattle, earth, and sarasvatī: ‘Three gifts can be referred to by the same name and bestow a similar fruit: in this world, [the gift of] cattle, land, and knowledge bestow as fruit [the fulfillment] of all desires’; tulyanāmāni deyāni trīṇi tulyaphalāni ca | sarvakāmaphalānīha gāvaḥ pṛthvī sarasvatī || 64. The text refers here to the tradition according to which the word go, lit. ‘cow’, can have three meanings in Sanskrit: cow, land, and speech.

639

Dānakāṇḍa 12.60 (=Mahābhārata 13.74.19): ‘For even the one who, having learned the Vedas, teaches [them] to those who know proper [behaviours], he, who glorifies the work of [his] teacher, and is honoured in heaven’; adhītyāpi hi yo vedān nyāyavidbhyaḥ prayacchati | gurukarmapraśaṃstā ca so ’pi svarge mahīyate || 12.

640

Hazra 1940, pp. 39–40, makes a list of all the digest-authors drawing on this section of the Matsyapurāṇa. The following are among those that are not dealt with here: Narasiṃha Vājapeyin, author of the Nityācārapradīpa, who only quotes one verse from chapter 53; Caṇḍeśvara, in the Kṛtyaratnākara, and Jīmūtavāhana in the Kālaviveka, whose quotation from Matsyapurāṇa 53, however, is also limited to only one verse. A complete table of quotations from the Matsyapurāṇa in later works on Dharma can be found in Hazra 1940, pp. 279–89 (Appendix 1), while on p. 337 there is a list of verses attributed to the Matsyapurāṇa but which are no longer traceable in the text, within an Appendix on the ‘more important of the untraceable Purāṇic verses contained in the commentaries and Nibandhas’ (see Appendix 2, p. 336).

641

Hazra 1940, p. 38. The interlocutors of these chapters are Mahādeva and Nārada. According to Hazra, the remaining chapters interrupting the sequence 53–92, though concerning the same topics, prove to be later for the simple fact that they break the dialogue between Mahādeva and Nārada. However, this circumstance, which can certainly reveal a non-unitary process of composition, is not sufficient to account for a later date for the ‘inserted’ chapters. The only external terminus ante quem for these chapters, as admitted by the same Hazra (1940, p. 40), are the quotations from the twelfth-century Dharmanibandhas; he sets this terminus to the mid-tenth century, however, in order to justify the wide recognition that the text had reached by the beginning of the twelfth.

642

Hazra’s hypothesis on the formation of the Matsyapurāṇa is that this was originally a Vaiṣṇava work, and he would connect those chapters that he identifies as the earliest in the text with a Vaiṣṇava milieu (Hazra 1940, p. 51). On the other hand, in Hazra’s view, the ‘later chapters’ would rather have a ‘strictly Śaiva character’ (Hazra 1940, p. 46). A complete, and in many cases questionable, table summing up the ‘stratigraphy’ of all the Matsyapurāṇa chapters according to the reconstruction made by the Indian scholar (Hazra 1940, pp. 50–51) highlights that chapters 51–269 are collectively given a later dating, oscillating between the seventh and the twelfth century, while the first 50 and last three (corresponding to 271–73), along with a few exceptions from the first group, are believed to date back to the third to the fourth century. The Matsyapurāṇa is certainly a stratified text, but the criteria used by Hazra to identify the different layers are often rather untrustworthy. This is the case, for instance, of all the mentions of icons or mantras of Brahmā that he identifies and interprets as references to a cult of Brahmā that, ‘as scholars hold’, died out or ‘was thrown into the background’ in the seventh century (Hazra 1940, p. 40). This argument is also the basis for his dating of the chapters on the mahādānas (274–89), as they mention the worship of Brahmā images (Hazra 1940, pp. 44–45), or those on installations, namely 264–70 (Hazra 1940, p. 47). However, this reconstruction does not take into consideration the fact that the production of images of Brahmā is also attested in India at a later date (see the ninth- to tenth-century Cōḷa representation of Brahmā with his attendants, or the Western Cāḷukya trimūrti from Hampi, twelfth century; a collection of medieval representations of Brahmā from the Huntington archive can be found at this database: <https://web.archive.org/web/20100630143439/
http://huntington.wmc.ohio-state.edu/
public/index.cfm?fuseaction=browseResults&IconographyID=1059>. Last accessed: 12/1/2016).
The Matsyapurāṇa has also been analyzed and used by Bakker and Isaacson 2004 with reference to its detailed description of Varanasi. The two scholars came to the conclusion that the Vārāṇasīmāhātmya of the Skandapurāṇa, whose composition Bakker would date to the second half of the sixth century (Bakker 2014, pp. 137–39), is older than that of the Matsyapurāṇa and the Liṅgapurāṇa, as shown by the analysis of the passages shared by these texts.

643

Matsyapurāṇa 53.1: purāṇasaṃkhyām ācakṣva sūta vistaraśaḥ kramāt | dānadharmam aśeṣaṃ tu yathāvad anupūrvaśaḥ || 1.

644

Dānakāṇḍa 12.185–86 (=Matsyapurāṇa 53.12cd–13): ‘[The Purāṇa] once told by Brahmā to Marīci, this is known as the Brahmapurāṇa, in 10,000 [stanzas]; (185) / And the one who, having written it down, would donate [it] along with a water-cow on the full-moon day of the [month] vaiśākha, he is honoured in the world of Brahmā. (186)’; brahmaṇābhihitaṃ pūrvaṃ yāvanmātraṃ marīcaye | brāhmaṃ tad daśasāhasraṃ purāṇaṃ parikīrtyate || 185 likhitvā tac ca yo dadyāj jaladhenusamanvitam | vaiśākhapaurṇamāsyāṃ sa brahmaloke mahīyate || 186. Note that the text of the Matsyapurāṇa edition has tridaśasāhasraṃ (13,000) instead of daśasāhasraṃ, which is however given as a variant reading in the apparatus.

645

Dānakāṇḍa 12.201–203 (=Matsyapurāṇa 53.31–33): ‘[That Purāṇa] having as its main subject the extolling of Āditya, in which the four-faced [Brahmā] explained to Manu, on the occasion of the events occurring during the aghorakalpa, the maintenance of the world and the features of a multitude of beings (201) / [In] 14,500 [stanzas] chiefly dealing with [events of] the future, this is here called the Bhaviṣya[purāṇa]. (202) / The one who will give in the [month of] pauṣa, especially on the full-moon day, this big [work] on the deeds of Āditya, chiefly dealing with [events of] the future, along with a pot of guḍa, [this person] will get the fruit of an agniṣṭoma (203); yatrādhikṛtya māhātmyam ādityasya caturmukhaḥ | aghorakalpavṛttāntaprasaṅgena jagatsthitim | manave kathayām āsa bhūtagrāmasya lakṣaṇam || 201 caturdaśasahasrāṇi tathā pañcaśatāni ca | bhaviṣyacaritaprāyaṃ bhaviṣyaṃ tad ihocyate || 202 tat pauṣe māsi yo dadyāt paurṇamāsyāṃ viśeṣataḥ | bhaviṣyacaritaprāyam ādityacaritaṃ bahu | guḍakumbhasamāyuktam agniṣṭomaphalaṃ labhet || 203.

646

See Dānasāgara, pp. 463–69 for the former, and pp. 474–88 for the latter.

647

For examples of literal borrowings in the commentarial sections of Lakṣmīdhara and Hemādri’s digests, see De Simini 2015, pp. 612–13.

648

Dānasāgara, p. 439: atrāṣṭādaśapurāṇāni lekhayitvā yajamāno vaiśakhapaurṇamāsyāṃ śuciṃ purāṇapāṭhaśaktaṃ śraddhāluṃ kutumbinaṃ brāhmaṇam abhyarcya tasmai purāṇoktajaladhenusahitaṃ brahmapurāṇam arcitaṃ dadyāt | oṃ adyāmukasagotrāyāmukavedāmukaśākhādhyāyine ’mukadevaśarmaṇe tubhyaṃ sotkarṣabrahmalokaprāptikāmo ’ham etajjaladhenusahitaṃ brahmapurāṇaṃ dadāni | pratigṛhītā svastīty uktvā sāvitrīṃ paṭhitvā purāṇam idaṃ sarasvatīdaivatam ity uktvā yathāśākhaṃ kāmastutiṃ paṭhet | tata oṃ adya kṛtaitaddānapratiṣṭhārthaṃ tubhyam ahaṃ dakṣiṇām idaṃ kāñcanaṃ dadāni | pratigrahītā svastīty uktvā purāṇaṃ spṛśet | evam aparapurāṇasaptadaśakadāneṣv api dakṣiṇādānaṃ sarasvatīdaivatapurāṇasparśanaṃ svīkaraṇaṃ conneyaṃ.

649

Dānasāgara, p. 489: tatra ca taṃ devaṃ sampūjya tadagrataḥ pustakaṃ sthāpayitvā devāya nivedayet | tad yathā — oṃ adya puṇye ’hani śrīmadamukabhaṭṭārakāya matpitṛgatanandipurāṇoktāmukavidyādānaphalaprāptikāmo ’ham etadvidyādhyayanasiddhyarthamatāṃ vidyāṃ dadāni | tataḥ śivabhaktebhyo devāntarabhaktebhyaś ca yathecchasaṃkhyabrāhmaṇebhyo ’bhīṣṭakhyaṃ suvarṇaṃ dadyāt |.

650

Dānasāgara, p. 490: yathāśakti bahubhir vastrakāñcanādibhir upādhyāyam abhyarcya yathecchakālam abhīṣṭavidyādhyāpanaṃ saṅkalpayet | tad yathā — oṃ nandipurāṇoktāmukavidyādānaphalaprāptikāmo ’ham etad amukavidyādhyāpanaṃ kārayiṣye | tato vṛttyupakalpanam utsvādikaraṇaṃ ca pūrvavat | vidyādānaśaktas tu tattadvidyālikhanocitamasīpātralekhanīnakharañjanīpustakavāhanāya saṃpuṭādikaṃ nandipurāṇoktaphalasiddhakāmanayā tattadvidyābhiyuktebhyo yathāśākti dadyāt.

651

Most notable are the long sections, even divided into subparagraphs, concluding the chapter on the important royal rite of the tulāpuruṣadāna (Dānasāgara, pp. 80–94), or the one appended to the description of the dhānyācaladāna (Dānasāgara, pp. 191–201).

652

Examples are the alaṅkṛtavṛṣadāna or the analaṅkṛtavṛṣadāna (pp. 294–311), as well as other minor donations such as the viṣṇudaivatabhakṣyadāna (p. 376), the somadaivatalavaṇadāna (pp. 377–78) and others.

653

These and the following stanzas from Viṣṇudharmottara 3.303 are dealt with in § 2.5.

654

Dānakhaṇḍa, p. 513 (=Devīpurāṇa 91.24–25): ‘By knowing the distinctions of [the different kinds of] knowledge, because of the discernment between good and evil, [people] find the realization of all desires; for knowledge is taught to be supreme. (24) / A gift [that is] better than the gift of knowledge does not exist even in the [whole] triple world; by donating which one reaches Śiva, who is the supreme cause. (25)’; vidyāvivekabodhena śubhāśubhavicāraṇāt [°vicāriṇaḥ DP] | vindate sarvakāmāptiṃ yasmād [tasmād DP] vidyā parā matā [gatā DP] || 24 vidyādānāt paraṃ dānaṃ trailokye ’pi na vidyate [na bhūtaṃ na bhaviṣyati DP] | yena dattena cāpnoti śivaṃ paramakāraṇam || 25.

655

Viṣṇudharmottara 3.303.6cd–7 (note that the same text has been quoted at § 2.5): ‘Thanks to the gifting of the Dharmaśāstras, one rejoices together with Dharma; (6) / Due to the gifting of the Siddhāntas, one attains liberation, without doubt; and having donated the other treatises, he is magnified in Heaven. (7)’; dharmaśāstrapradānena dharmeṇa saha modate || 6 siddhāntānāṃ pradānena mokṣam āpnoty asaṃśayam [vaidikam † DKh] | śāstrāṇi dattvā cānyāni naro svarge [nāke VDhU] mahīyate || 7.

656

The verses of the Viṣṇudharmottara are quoted in Dānakhaṇḍa, p. 518.

657

Dānakhaṇḍa, p. 527: ‘The king who donates Dharmaśāstras takes entirely that fruit that is completely [obtainable] from the gift of one thousand kapila cows [addressed] to the wise Brāhmins’; kapilānāṃ sahasreṇa samyak dattena yat phalam | tad rājan sakalaṃ labhed dharmaśāstrapradāyakaḥ ||.

658

Dānakhaṇḍa, pp. 516–17: Varāhapurāṇe: rāmāyaṇaṃ bhārataṃ ca datvā svarge mahīyate | purāṇaṃ tarkaśāstraṃ ca chandolakṣaṇam eva ca || 1Hem vedaṃ mīmāṃsākāṃ datvā śivadharmaṃ ca vai nṛpa | saptadvīpapṛthivyāṃ ca rājarājo bhaved dhi sa || 2Hem.

659

Dānakhaṇḍa, pp. 526–27: śrutiḥ smṛtiś ca viprāṇāṃ cakṣuṣī dve prakīrtite | kāṇas tatraikayā hīno dvābhyām andhaḥ prakīrtitaḥ || 29Hem tathā | dharmaśāstraṃ naro dattvā nākapṛṣṭhe mahīyate | daśa manvantarān martyas tārayen narakāt pitṝn || 30Hem = 12.74Lak ātmavidyā ca paurāṇī dharmaśāstrātmikā ca yā | tisro vidyā imā mukhyāḥ sarvadānakriyāphale [em. sarvadānakriyāphale ed.] || 31Hem=12.80Lak dharmaśāstraṃ naro buddhvā yat kiṃcid dharmam āśrayet | tasya dharmaḥ śataguṇo dharmaśāstrapradasya ca || 32Hem = 12.81Lak ataḥ sadā budhair jñeyaṃ dharmaśāstraṃ vicakṣaṇaiḥ | na tasya puṇyasaṃkhyānaṃ brahmāpi gadituṃ kṣamaḥ || 33Hem.

660

Here, the indefinite adjective ‘some’ translates the Sanskrit yat kiṃcit. This adjective is literally an accusative neuter, although the word to which it should be logically connected to, i.e. dharmam, is commonly used as masculine. Unless we want to restore the correct form yaṃ kamcit, we can assume that either yatkiṃcit is used as a sort of fossilised form, or the Purāṇic author was simply wrong in the use of the gender. This stanza had already been quoted in Nandipurāṇa 23Hem (=12.81Lak, Dānakhaṇḍa p. 516), where the yatkiṃcit construction is left unaltered, while the masculine nominative dharmaḥ śataguṇo is given as dharmaṃ śataguṇaṃ, in an attempt to correct the contradiction between the two contiguous expressions.

661

The paragraph opens with one śloka from the Nandipurāṇa on the auspiciousness of the śāstradāna, followed by the Yamasmṛti declaring the similarity between the śāstradāna and the gift of land endowed with all precious stones (pṛthvī…sarvaratnopaśobhitā). While this last stanza is also quoted by Lakṣmīdhara, from whom Hemādri additionally borrows the short remark on the pṛthvīdāna inserted at this point, the following four stanzas are absent from the text of the earlier nibandhakāra. Hemādri apparently attributes these to Yama, since there is no other heading after the short remark copied from Lakṣmīdhara, and they are again concerned with the eulogy of the śāstra, defined as ‘the revealer of the path to Heaven’ (svargamārgaprakāśaka) and, consequently, with the praise of its donation. It is at this point that Hemādri inserts the remark in which he identifies the śāstradāna with the donation of Dharmaśāstras, as mentioned above in the body of the text.
The quotation that closes the paragraph is attributed to the Skandapurāṇa. Again, it is a praise of the gift of the Smṛtis (this is the word used by the text), which will eventually bestow a permanent stay in the world of Brahmā. The fact that this passage is connected with the preceding stanzas—which all treat the topic of the authority of Smṛtis, with reference to the notion of dharmamūlam, literally the ‘root of Dharma’ in the first verse—is significant: ‘For Smṛtis are the root of Dharma [and] Dharma is the instrument of accomplishing all goals, therefore when the Smṛtis are donated, one gets the fruit of all gifts’; smṛtayo dharmamūlaṃ hi dharmaḥ sarvārthasādhanaṃ | ataḥ smṛtiṣu dattāsu sarvadānaphalaṃ labhet || (1Hem).

662

The text of this work has been reconstructed by Kane 1926.

663

Dānakhaṇḍa, pp. 527–28.

664

Dānakhaṇḍa, p. 528: bhaviṣyatpurāṇe ṣaṭtriṃśadatiriktāḥ smṛtayaḥ santīti darśitam | aṣṭādaśapurāṇeṣu yāni vākyāni putraka | tāny ālocya mahābāho tathā smṛtyantareṣu ca (2Hem) || manvādismṛtayo yāś ca ṣaṭtriṃśat parikīrtitāḥ | tāsāṃ vākyāni kramaśaḥ samālocya bravīmi te (3Hem) ||.

665

See, for instance, the case of st. 3.16, in which Manu reports different opinions by other sages on the topic of marriage with a śūdra woman: ‘The one who marries a śūdra woman will decay, according to Atri and the son of Utathya; according to Śaunaka, [this happens] if there is the birth of offspring; according to Bhṛgu, if the offspring [comes] from her’; śūdrāvedī pataty atrer utathyatanayasya ca | śaunakasya sutotpattyā tadapatyatayā bhṛgoḥ || 16.

666

The Yājñavalkyasmṛti, ascribable to a post-Manu period (Olivelle 2010, pp. 44–46), is the earliest text to present a compact enumeration of 20 Smṛti authors (dharmaśāstraprayojaka) beginning with Manu (see Yājñavalkyasmṛti 1.4–5). This will start the variegated tradition of fixing the names of the authors of the Smṛtis (smṛtikāras), as attested in later works (see Kane 1930, pp. 131–35). All the authors mentioned by Yājñavalkya are also included in the sources selected by Hemādri.

667

The Devalasmṛti, for instance, is considered a late Smṛti, composed in northwestern India (see Lariviere 2004, p. 622). The text alludes to mleccha incursions, which might be a reference to the Turkish invasions, enumerating the punishments for the kidnapping of women. To an earlier time, though still later than the Manusmṛti, it is possible to date several other works alluded to in the quotation made by Hemādri, like the Bṛhaspatismṛti or the Viṣṇusmṛti, both of which are ascribed by Olivelle to the ‘post-Manu composition of Dharmaśāstras’ (Olivelle 2010, pp. 43–44). They are tentatively dated to the ‘5th to 6th century’ (Olivelle 2010, p. 57) and to seventh century, respectively (Olivelle 2009).

668

Dānakhaṇḍa, p. 528: āha manuḥ | viṣṇuḥ parāśaro dakṣaḥ saṃvartavyāsahāritā | śātātapo vasiṣṭhaś ca yamāpastambagautamāḥ || devalaḥ śaṅkhalikhitau bharadvājośanotrayaḥ | śaunako yājñavalkyaś ca daśāṣṭau smṛtikāriṇaḥ || tathā | bhārgavī nāradīyā ca bārhaspatyāṅgirasy api | svāyambhuvasya śāstrasya catasraḥ saṃhitā matāḥ ||.

669

Dānakhaṇḍa, pp. 528–29. The names are: Jāvāli, Nāciketa, Skanda, Laugākṣi, Kaśyapa, Vyāsa, Sanatkumāra, Śatarju, Janaka, Vyāghra, Kātyāyana, Jātūkarṇya, Kapiñjala, Baudhāyana, Kaṇāda, and Viśvāmitra.

670

For a general account of the Purāṇic lists of acknowledged ‘canonical’ Purāṇas, see Hazra 1940, pp. 1–7 and Rocher 1986, pp. 30–34.

671

Dānakhaṇḍa, p. 529 (=Nāradīyapurāṇa 2.24.18, 20–21ab): vedāḥ pratiṣṭhitā devi purāṇair nātra saṃśayaḥ | bibhety alpaśrutād vedo mām ayaṃ pratariṣyati || 18 itihāsapurāṇaiś ca kṛto ’yaṃ niścalaḥ purā | yan na dṛṣṭaṃ hi vedeṣu tad dṛṣṭaṃ smṛtibhiḥ khila || 20 ubhābhyāṃ yan na dṛṣtaṃ hi tat purāṇeṣu gīyate | 21ab.
The text of the Nāradīyapurāṇa printed edition reads as follows: vedāḥ pratiṣṭhitāḥ sarve purāṇeṣv eva sarvadā | bibhety alpaśrutād vedo mām ayaṃ prahariṣyati || 18 na vede grahasaṃcāro na śuddhiḥ kālabodhinī | tithivṛddhikṣayo vāpi parvagrahavinirṇayaḥ || 19 itihāsapurāṇais tu niścayo ’yaṃ kṛtaḥ purā | yan na dṛṣṭaṃ hi vedeṣu tat sarvaṃ lakṣyate smṛtau || 20 ubhayor yan na dṛṣṭaṃ hi tat purāṇaiḥ pragīyate. Besides a few small grammatical variants, the main difference from the verses quoted by Hemādri is the latter’s omission of Nāradīyapurāṇa 2.24.19, listing some topics which are not in the Vedas (but are treated in the Itihāsas and Purāṇas): the transit of planets (grahasaṃcāra), the purificatory rite related to [specific] times, the day of the full moon (tithivṛddhi) and the new moon (tithikṣaya), and the set of rules regarding planets during the parvans (parvagrahavinirṇaya).
Note that the line bibhety alpaśrutād vedo mām ayaṃ pratariṣyati, ‘The Veda is afraid of an ignorant person, [thinking]: ‘This man will destroy me’’ is very popular and has several attestations in Sanskrit literature, among which Mahābhārata 1.1.204. In this case, however, as pointed out by Mehendale 2001, p. 194, the meaning of the word Veda can be interpreted as denoting the Mahābhārata itself, which is immediately called the ‘Veda of Kṛṣṇa’ in the following line (kārṣṇaṃ vedam, Mahābhārata 1.1.205). According to Mehendale, the first part of the stanza, which is similar but not identical with Nāradīyapurāṇa 2.24.18 as quoted by Hemādri (see Mahābhārata 1.1.204ab: itihāsapurāṇābhyāṃ vedaṃ samupabṛṃhayet), must therefore be taken to mean that the Mahābhārata has been expanded by adding the narratives of the Purāṇas and the Itihāsa, rather than that the Veda has to be interpreted with the help of Itihāsas and Purāṇas, as is the traditional explanation. Also, following this interpretation, the second part of the stanza would mean that the Veda (scil. the Mahābhārata) is afraid of a man who could easily cross over it, namely who would read it quickly, without making the required additions. This interpretation rests on the choice of the reading pratariṣyati, ‘[this] will cross’ (Mahābhārata 1.1.204d) over prahariṣyati ‘[this] will destroy’ (as in Nāradīyapurāṇa 2.24.18d), both attested in the case of the Mahābhārata line.

672

See Tantravārttika, 1.3.1, sūtra 2. The passage is available in English translation in Jha 1983, vol. 1, pp. 113–16.

673

Dānakhaṇḍa, p. 530 (=Matsyapurāṇa, 53.3–4): ‘The Purāṇa has been remembered by Brahmā as the first of all śāstras, and subsequently the Vedās have been spread out of his [four] mouths. (3) / There was only one Purāṇa in this other kalpa, o sinless one, efficacious instrument for the trivarga, auspicious, extended for a thousand million [of verses]. (4)’; purāṇaṃ sarvaśāstrāṇāṃ prathamaṃ brahmaṇā smṛtam | anantarañ ca vaktrebhyo vedās tasya vinirgatāḥ || 3 purāṇam ekam evāsīd asmin kalpāntare ’nagha | trivargasādhanaṃ puṇyaṃ śatakoṭipravistaram || 4. This story has a parallel at the beginning of the Avantyakhanda of the Skandapurāṇa.

674

See Matsyapurāṇa 53.5–6ab: nirdagdheṣu ca lokeṣu yājirūpeṇa vai mayā | aṅgāni caturo vedān purāṇaṃ nyāyavistaram || 5 mīmāṃsādharmaśāstraṃ [°śāstrāṇi DKh] ca parigṛhya mayā kṛtam [parigṛhyātmasātkṛtam Dkh].

675

Dānakhaṇḍa, p. 530 (=Matsyapurāṇa 53.6cd–7): ‘And again at the beginning of the kalpa all this has been told [by me], having the form of a fish in the ocean and having gone within the water; and after hearing them [from me], the four-faced god revealed [these teachings] to the munis’; matsyarūpeṇa ca punar kalpādāv udakārṇave || 6 aśeṣam etat kathitam udakāntargatena ca | śrutvā jagāda ca munīn prati devaś [devaś em., devāṃś MP, vedas DKh] caturmukhaḥ || 7.

676

See Matsyapurāṇa 53.8ab: ‘There was the appearance of all śāstras and the Purāṇas’; pravṛttiḥ sarvaśāstrāṇāṃ purāṇasyābhavat tataḥ.

677

Dānakhaṇḍa, p. 534 (=Matsyapurāṇa 53.1): ‘The seers said: ‘Proclaim the names of the Purāṇas, o Sūta, in detail [and] according to the right sequence; and [proclaim] the law of [their] donation entirely, in due order, according to the [different] components. (1)’’; ṛṣaya ūcuḥ | purāṇasaṃkhyām ācakṣva sūta vistarataḥ kramāt | dānaṃ dharmam aśeṣañ ca yathāvad anupūrvaśaḥ || 1.

678

Varāhapurāṇa 112.69cd–72: ‘The Brahmapurāṇa, the Padmapurāṇa, and the Viṣṇupurāṇa, the Śivapurāṇa and the Bhāgavatapurāṇa; (69) / And then another one is the Nāradapurāṇa, and seventh is the Mārkaṇḍeyapurāṇa. The eighth to be proclaimed is the Agnipurāṇa, and the ninth is the Bhaviṣyapurāṇa. (70) / Tenth [is] the Brahmavaivartapurāṇa, and eleventh [is] the Liṅgapurāṇa. The Varāhapurāṇa has been proclaimed as twelfth, and the Skandapurāṇa as thirteenth. (71) / The fourteenth is the Vāmanapurāṇa and the Kūrmapurāṇa the fifteenth. And [then] the Matsyapurāṇa, and the Garuḍapurāṇa, and the last one is the Brahmāṇḍapurāṇa. (72)’; brāhmaṃ pādmaṃ vaiṣṇavaṃ ca śaivaṃ bhāgavataṃ tathā || 69 tathānyan nāradīyaṃ ca mārkaṇḍeyaṃ ca saptamam | āgneyam aṣṭamaṃ proktaṃ bhaviṣyaṃ navamaṃ tathā || 70 daśamaṃ brahmavaivartaṃ laiṅgam ekādaśaṃ tathā | vārāhaṃ dvādaśaṃ proktaṃ skāndaṃ caiva trayodaśam || 71 caturdaśaṃ vāmanaṃ ca kaurmaṃ pañcadaśaṃ tathā | mātsyaṃ ca gāruḍaṃ caiva brahmāṇḍam antimaṃ tathā || 72.

679

The Mahāpurāṇa lists reported by Hemādri are: Varāhapurāṇa 112.69cd–72; Kālikāpurāṇa, untraceable in the extant text; Saurapurāṇa 1.9.3–14ab; and Matsyapurāṇa 53.11–57.

680

The Upapurāṇas accepted in Kūrmapurāṇa 1.1.17–20 are: Ādyapurāṇa, Nārasiṃhapurāṇa, Skandapurāṇa, Śivadharmapurāṇa, Durvāsasoktapurāṇa, Nāradīyapurāṇa, Kāpilapurāṇa, Vāmanapurāṇa, Uśanaseritapurāṇa, Brahmāṇḍapurāṇa, Varuṇapurāṇa, Kālikāpurāṇa, Māheśvarapurāṇa, Sāmbapurāṇa, Saurapurāṇa, Parāśaroktapurāṇa, Marīcipurāṇa, and Bhārgavapurāṇa. Hazra (1939–40, pp. 41–43) points out that this list has also been quoted as the authority on the titles of the Upapurāṇas in other digests, such as the Nityācārapradīpa (p. 19), the Vīramitrodaya (Paribhāṣāprakāśa, pp. 13–14), and Raghunanandana's Smṛtitattva (vol. 1 pp. 792–93). These lists, although ascribed to the same text, are slightly different respectively. One of the main differences is the name of the third Upapurāṇa: Skānda in the Kūrmapurāṇa; Nandī in the Nityācārapradīpa (which quotes only verse 1.16, and then reports the titles of the works in a prose section); Vāyavīya in the Kūrmapurāṇa, quoted by the Smṛtitattva; and Nānda in the quotations of the Vīramitrodaya and in the Caturvargacintāmaṇi.

681

Rocher 1986, pp. 33–34.

682

An attempt to reconcile the two branches of the tradition was made by the Avantyakhanda of the Skandapurāṇa, 3.1.33–34, referred to in Rocher 1986, p. 33, where the text states that there is in fact only one work circulating under two different titles. The Kūrmapurāṇa, which Hemādri quotes only as an authority on the Upapurāṇas, also contains an enumeration of 19 Mahāpurāṇas (Kūrmapurāṇa 1.1.13–15), where the Vāyupurāṇa is placed in eighteenth position; the Brahmāṇḍapurāṇa, although concluding the list as the nineteenth Purāṇa, is nonetheless said to be the eighteenth; this fact possibly shows that the mention of the Vāyupurāṇa is a secondary addition. See Kūrmapurāṇa 1.1.15: ‘The Kūrmapurāṇa, the Matsyapurāṇa, the Garuḍapurāṇa, and, following, the Vāyupurāṇa. The eighteenth that is enumerated is called Brahmāṇḍapurāṇa’; kaurmaṃ mātsyaṃ gāruḍaṃ ca vāyavīyam anantaram | aṣṭādaśaṃsamuddiṣṭaṃ brahmāṇḍaṃ iti saṃjñitam || 15. For the Brahmāṇḍapurāṇa being considered vāyuprokta, ‘proclaimed by Vāyu’, see Vielle 2009.

683

The list of the Kālikāpurāṇa is certainly incomplete, because it enumerates only 14 Purāṇas, and mentions the Garuḍapurāṇa and the Brahmāṇḍapurāṇa as the ‘seventeenth’ and ‘eighteenth’. Besides the absence of some of the major Purāṇas, there are two remarkable differences from the Varāhapurāṇa list, namely that the Kālikāpurāṇa itself is inserted in fourth position, and the Saura[purāṇa] mentioned in sixth. These Kālikāpurāṇa verses containing the list of Mahāpurāṇas are also referred to by Hazra 1963, p. 240, who could not identify them in the extant Kālikāpurāṇa text. As for the Saurapurāṇa list quoted by Hemādri, corresponding to Saurapurāṇa 1.9.3–14ab, this contains the same titles as the Varāhapurāṇa and the Matsyapurāṇa (though opting for the Vāyupurāṇa rather than the Śivapurāṇa). Unlike the Kālikāpurāṇa, the Saurapurāṇa does not insert its text into the list of 18, but declares (Saurapurāṇa 1.13ab): ‘This unsurpassed Saurapurāṇa is a supplementary section of the Brahmapurāṇa’ (idaṃ brahmapurāṇasya khilaṃ sauram anuttamam).

684

However, note that Hemādri also attributes to the Saurapurāṇa some stanzas that are not treaceable in the current edition of the text (see Table A). In one of these stanzas, he praises the donation of the ‘treatises of the Śivadharma’: (Saurapurāṇa 2cd-3abHem) ‘The one who, with the intention of accruing religious merits, donates the treatises of the Śivadharma and so on, he receives an endless fruit from the exposition of the Śivadharma’; śivadharmādiśāstrāṇi yaḥ prayacchati puṇyadhīḥ || 2Hem so ’nantaphalam āpnoti śivadharmaprakāśanāt |. Therefore, in the same way as in the sources examined in chapter 2, the teaching of the text seems to be the aim of its donation.

685

Hemādri (Dānakhaṇḍa, pp. 533–34) first quotes Matsyapurāṇa 53.62–72 on the classification of the Purāṇas into bright (sāttvika), vigorous (rājasa), and obscure (tāmasika), and on the ‘five distinctive characters’ of Purāṇas (pañcalakṣaṇa). Immediately afterwards (Dānakhaṇḍa, pp. 534–39), the text continues by quoting Matsyapurāṇa 53.1–2 and 11–57 on the appropriate times and procedures for the gifting of each of the 18 Mahāpurāṇas.

686

Saurapurāṇa 1.16–40: yo dadyāc chivabhaktāya brāhmaṇāya tapasvine | yāni dānāni lokeṣu prasiddhāni dvijottamāḥ || 16 sarveṣāṃ phalam āpnoti caturdaśyāṃ na saṃśayaḥ | brāhmaṃ purāṇaṃ prathamaṃ dadāti śraddhayā ’nvitaḥ || 17 sarvapāpavinirmukto brahmaloke mahīyate | pādmaṃ brahmāṇam uddiśya yo dadāti guror dine || 18 dvijāya vedaviduṣe jyotiṣṭomaphalaṃ labhet | vaiṣṇavaṃ viṣṇum uddiśya dvādaśyāṃ prayataḥ śuciḥ || 19 anūcānāya yo dadyād vaiṣṇavaṃ padam āpnuyāt | dadāti sūryabhaktāya yas tu bhāgavataṃ dvijāḥ || 20 sarvapāpavinirmuktaḥ sarvarogavivarjitaḥ | jīved varṣaśataṃ sāgram ante vaivarataṃ padam || 21 vaiśākhe śuklapakṣasya tṛtīyā ’kṣayasaṃjñitā | tasyāṃ tithau saṃyatātmā brāhmaṇāyā ’hitāgnaye || 22 bhaviṣyākhyaṃ purāṇaṃ tu dadāti śraddhayānvitaḥ | aśvamedhasya yajñasya phalam āpnoty anuttamam || 23 mārkaṇḍeyaṃ tu yo dadyāt saptabhyāṃ prayatātmavān | sūryalokam avāpnoti sarvapāpavivarjitaḥ || 24 āgneyaṃ pratipadyaiva pradadyād āhitāgnaye | rājasūyasya yajñasya phalaṃ bhavati śāśvatam || 25 dadāti nāradīyaṃ yaś caturdaśyāṃ samāhitaḥ | dvijāya śivabhaktāya śivaloke mahīyate || 26 yo dadyād brahmavaivartaṃ vaiṣṇavāya samāhitaḥ | brahmalokam avāpnoti punar āvṛttidurlabham || 27 kārtikasya caturdaśyāṃ śuklapakṣasya suvratāḥ | laiṅgaṃ dadyād dvijendrāya śivārcanaratāya vai || 28 sarvapāpavinirmuktaḥ sarvaiśvaryasamanvitaḥ | yāti māheśvaraṃ dhāma sarvalokopari sthitam || 29 dvadaśyāṃ saṃyato bhūtvā brāhmaṇāya tapasvine | yo vai dadāti vārāhaṃ viṣṇuloke sa gacchati || 30 skāndaṃ śivacaturdaśyāṃ pradadyāc chivayogine | jñānī bhavati veprendrā mahādevaprasādataḥ || 31 dvādaśyāṃ vā caturdaśyāṃ dadyād vāmanam uttamam | tasya devasya taṃ lokaṃ prāpnoty akṣayam uttamam || 32 dadyāt kaurmaṃ caturdaśyāṃ yogine prayatātmane | sarvadānasya yat puṇyaṃ sarvayajñasya yat phalam || 33 prāpnoti tat phalaṃ vidvān ante śaivaṃ paraṃ padam | mātsyaṃ dadyād dvijendrāya prayataś cottarāyaṇe || 34 vimuktaḥ sarvapāpebhyaḥ śivaloke mahīyate | gāruḍaṃ śivam uddiśya dadyāc chivatithau dvijāḥ || 35 vājapeyasahasrasya phalam āpnoty anuttamam | pradadyāc chivabhaktāya brahmāṇḍam iti yat smṛtam || 36 śivasya purato bhaktyā saṃprāpte dakṣiṇāyane | candrasya grahaṇe vā ’tha bhānor api ca suvratāḥ || 37 gaṇādhipatyam āpnoti devadevasya śūlinaḥ | evamuktaḥ purāṇānāṃ kramo dānena yat phalam || 38 proktaṃ samāsato viprāḥ sūryo yat svayam abravīt | yaḥ paṭhed imam adhyāyaṃ mahādevasya saṃnidhau || 39 sarvapāpavinirmukto vājapeyaphalaṃ labhet || 40.

687

The Harivaṃśa calls itself a khila, but also a Purāṇa and a mahākāvya, ‘long poem’; see for this Brokington 1998, p. 314. For a rather exhaustive introduction to the Harivaṃśa, the reader is referred to Brockington 1998, pp. 313–44. At p. 313, Brockington sums up some of the main views concerning the interpretation of the Harivaṃśa as a khila: among these, that of Couture (1996), who highlights that this definition has sometimes led scholars of the Mahābhārata to disregard the Harivaṃśa in the name of the supposed ‘ancillary’ nature of the latter; and that of Matchett (1996), arguing that the idea of a khila rather hints at the Harivaṃśa being conceived as a sort of completion of the Mahābhārata, an independent work instead of a secondary offshoot of the main epics.

688

Vaidya 1969, p. XVff.

689

See Brockington 1998, pp. 328–30, dealing with the issue of dating mainly on pp. 326–31. It is very often the case with the Sanskrit epic and Purāṇic literature that the process of composition extended over years and centuries, with the addition of several textual layers at different points in history, making the attempt at dating a work a particularly complex task.

690

The two-volume edition of the Harivaṃśa was achieved by Vaidya 1969 and 1971. The volumes of the Mahābhārata’s first critical edition were published by Sukthankar, Bevalkar, and Vaidya between 1933 and 1959.

691

Vaidya remarks (1969, p. XXXV) that he has followed the same principles expounded by Sukthankar in his famous Prolegomena to the Ādiparvan of the Mahābhārata (Sukthankar 1933, pp. I–CX). As briefly restated by Vaidya (1969, p. XXXV–VI), these aim at reconstructing the oldest available text by classifying manuscripts of different recensions and versions according to age and script. A general division of scripts between northern, central, and southern provides a broad scheme for the subdivision into recensions. Vaidya thus establishes the text of the Harivaṃśa on the basis of the agreement between the two oldest manuscripts from the north (Ś1, an undated Śāradā manuscript that, according to Vaidya, could go back to a very early exemplar—see 1969, p. XVI, and Ñ1, dated on the basis of palaeography ‘to the close of the 11th century, or to the first half of the 12th century A.D.’; Vaidya 1969, p. XVIII); and the ‘extreme southern version’. The editor identifies the latter with manuscript M1–3, in Malayālam script (Vaidya 1969, pp. XXIII–IV). The rest is relegated to the appendices; as noted by Brockington (1998, p. 320), this means that the appendices now contain approximately two-thirds of the text of the vulgate edition of the Harivaṃśa from the nineteenth century.

692

Vaidya 1969, p. XV.

693

Vaidya 1969, p. XV. There he also states that ‘[...] Kṣemendra makes no reference to episodes which I have excluded from the constituted text except the three Prādurbhāvas of Varāha, Narasiṃha and Vāmana’.

694

See Bhāratamañjarī, pp. 836–37.

695

Harivaṃśa, App. 1.40, vv. 1–2: bhagavan kena vidhinā śrotavyaṃ bhārataṃ budhaiḥ | 1 phalaṃ kiṃ ke ca devāś ca pūjyā vai pāraṇeṣv iha || 2 deyaṃ samāpte bhagavan kiṃ ca parvaṇi parvaṇi | 3 vācakaḥ kīdṛśaś cātra eṣṭavyas tad bravīhi me || 4. Note that, for practical reasons, I maintain the same system of numeration adopted in the critical edition of the Harivaṃśa, where the editor has numbered the hemistichs, and not the verses.

696

Harivaṃśa, App. 1.40, vv. 41–48: avilambamanāyas tam adrutaṃ dhīram ūrjitam | 41 asaṃsaktākṣarapadaṃ rasabhāvasamanvitam || 42 triṣaṣṭivarṇasaṃyuktam aṣṭasthānasamanvitam | 43 vācayed vācakaḥ svasthaḥ svāsīnaḥ susamāhitaḥ || 44 nārāyaṇaṃ namaskṛtya naraṃ caiva narottamam | 45 devīṃ sarasvatīṃ caiva tato jayam udīrayet || 46 īdṛśād vācakād rājaṃ śrutvā bhārata bhāratam | 47 niyamasthaḥ śuciḥ śrotā śṛṇvan sa phalam aśnute || 48.

697

I owe this information to Peter Bisschop.

698

Dānakhaṇḍa, pp. 540–51 (=Harivaṃśa, App. 1.40, vv. 103–104; 107–13): ataḥ paraṃ pravakṣyāmi yāni deyāni bhārata | vācyamāne tu viprebhyo rājan parvaṇi parvaṇi || 1Hem svasti vācya dvijān [vidhān Dkh] ādau tataḥ kāryaṃ pravarttate | samāpte parvaṇi tataḥ svaśaktyā tarpayed dvijān || 2Hem ādau tu vācakaṃ pūjya [bharataśreṣṭha HV] rasagandhasamanvitam [gandhamālyārvitān dvijān HV] | vidhivad bhojayed rājan madhupāyasamuttamam || 3Hem tato mūlaphalaprāyaṃ pāyasaṃ madhusarpiṣī | āstike bhojayed rājan dadyāc caiva guḍodanaṃ || 4Hem atha dhūpaiś ca [apūpaiś caiva HV] pūpaiś ca modakaiś ca samanvitam |.

699

Harivaṃśa, App. 1.40, vv. 104–105: jātiṃ deśaṃ ca sattvaṃ ca māhātmyaṃ bharatarṣabha || 104 dharmaṃ vṛttiṃ ca vijñāya kṣatriyāṇāṃ narādhipa || 105.

700

Harivaṃśa, App. 1.40, vv. 109–10: ādau tu bharataśreṣṭha gandhamālyānvitān dvijān | 109 vidhivad bhojayed rājan madhupāyasamuttamam || 110.

701

Dānakhaṇḍa, pp. 542–43 (=Harivaṃśa, App. 1.40, vv. 141–155): samāpya sarvāṃ [sarvāḥ HV] prayataḥ saṃhitāṃ [saṃhitāḥ HV] śāstrakovidaḥ | śubhe deśe niveśyātha kṣaumavastrādisaṃvṛtam [°saṃvṛtāḥ HV] || 18Hem śuklāmbaradharas tatra [sragvī HV] śucir bhūtvā svalaṅkṛtaḥ | arcayet tu yathānyāyaṃ gandhamālyaiḥ pṛthak pṛthak || 19Hem saṃhitāpustakān rāgāt prayataḥ susamāhitaḥ | bhakṣair bhojaiś [māsaiś HV] ca peyaiś ca kautukair [kāmaiśca HV] vividhaiḥ śubhaiḥ || 20Hem hiraṇyaṃ ca suvarṇaṃ ca dakṣiṇāṃ tatra [atha HV] dāpayet | devatāḥ kīrttayet sarvāṃ naranārāyaṇau tathā || 21Hem tato gandhaiś ca mālyaiś ca svalaṅkṛtya dvijottamān | tarpayed vividhaiḥ kāmair dānair ratnādikais [dānaiś coccāvacais HV] tathā || 22Hem bhuktavatsu ca vipreṣu [dvijendreṣu HV] yathāvat sampracārayet [saṃpradāpayet HV] | vācakaṃ bharataśreṣṭha bhojayitvā svalaṅkṛtam || 23Hem brāhmaṇeṣu prassanneṣu [tu tuṣṭeṣu HV] prasannās tasya devatāḥ [prasannā sarvadevatā HV] | vācake parituṣṭe tu [vācakaḥ parituṣṭaś ca HV] śubhā prītir anuttamā [śubhāṃ prītiṃ anuttamāṃ HV] || 24Hem tato vivaraṇaṃ kāryaṃ saṃhitānāṃ [dvijānāṃ HV] bharatavarṣabha [c.m.] | 25abHem.

702

Harivaṃśa, App. 1.40, v. 100: lekhakasya tu dātavyaṃ manasā yad yad icchati || 100.

703

Passage 43**, consisting of three hemistichs, is transmitted in slightly different positions by manuscripts K1, K3, K4, Ñ2, V1, V3, B, D, T1, T2, G1, G3, G4, G5, M2, and M4; passage 44**, of only one hemistich, by Ś1, D6, G3, G4, K1, K3, K4, Ñ2, V1, V3, B, Dn, Ds, D1, D2, D3, D4, D5, T1, T2, G1, G3, G4, G5, M2, and M4; passage 47**, again consisting of one hemistich, replaces the very similar v. 154 (vācakaḥ parituṣṭaś ca śubhāṃ prītim anuttamām) in manuscripts K1, K3, K4, Ñ2, V1, V3, B, D, T1, T2, G1, G3, G4, G5, M2, and M4 (for all these, see Vaidya 1971, p. 510). In order to get some orientation among all these sigla, we shall note that, according to the outline provided by the editor (Vaidya 1969, pp. X–XII), the siglum Ś is used to describe Śāradā manuscripts; K for denoting Devanāgarī manuscripts ‘allied’ with those in Śāradā; Ñ is the siglum used to denote manuscripts in so-called Newari script; V, those in Maithilī; and B, the Bengalī ones. D is the siglum of the Devanāgarī manuscripts differing from K, while T, G, and M indicate the three main groups of what Vaidya calls the ‘Southern recension’, namely manuscripts in Telugu, Grantha, and Malayālam script. When the letter is accompanied by a number, it denotes a specific manuscript; when isolated, it describes all the manuscripts falling into that category. Dn and Ds stand for ‘Devanāgarī version of Nīlakaṇṭha’ and ‘Devanāgarī version of Sūradāsa’ (Vaidya 1969, p. XI).

704

Harivaṃśa, App. 1.40.17**, vv. 1–3: pustakaṃ harivaṃśasya dātavyaṃ dakṣiṇānvitam | 1 veṣṭanaṃ rajjusaṃyuktaṃ dadyād vaibhavasārataḥ || 2 puṭike ca śubhe caiva phalasyānantyahetave | 3. These lines are part of a five-verse passage transmitted in the Devanāgarī manuscript K2.

705

Harivaṃśa, App. 1.40.139: harivaṃśasamāptau tu sahasraṃ bhojayed dvijān | 139.

706

Harivaṃśa, App. 1.40.38**, vv. 1–2: ‘One has to donate a manuscript along with gold in the form of money, (1) / And by listening [to the reading] and through the donation [of manuscripts] there will be the obtainment of sons, no doubt [about it]!’ (2); niṣkamātrasuvarṇena pustakaṃ ca pradāpayet | 1 śravaṇena ca dānena putraprāptir na saṃśayam || 2. This stanza is only contained in the Devanāgarī manuscript D4.

707

Harivaṃśa, App. 1.40, 39**, vv. 1–6: gām ekāṃ niṣkasaṃyuktāṃ brāhmaṇāya nivedayet | 1 tadardhenāpi dātavyā daridreṇāpi pārthiva || 2 pratiparvasamāptau tu pustakaṃ vai vicakṣaṇaḥ | 3 suvarṇena ca saṃyuktaṃ vācakāya nivedayet || 4 ślokaṃ vā ślokapādaṃ vā akṣaraṃ vā nṛpātmaja | 5 śṛṇuyād ekacittas tu viṣṇudayito bhavet || 6. These and the further verses belonging to passage 39** are inserted after Harivaṃśa App. 1.40, v. 139, by Dn, Ds, the vulgate editions and G (ed).

708

Harivaṃśa, App. 1.40, 39A**, v. 5: pustakaṃ harivaṃśasya vācakāya pradāpayet | 5. The 9 verses of 39A** are inserted by Ds2 after line 2 of 39**.

709

Harivaṃśa, App. 1.40, 40**, v. 1: pustakaṃ prayataḥ pūjya svarṇaratnair dukūlakaiḥ | 1. Passage 40**, of 15 total verses, is only transmitted in manuscript K2.

710

Harivaṃśa, App. 1.40, 40**, v. 8: pradakṣiṇāṃ namaskāro harau pustakam eva | 8 [c.m.].

711

Harivaṃśa, App. 1.40, 41**, vv. 1–10: kuryāt ṣoḍaśabhiḥ karṣair mūrtiṃ nārāyaṇasya tu | 1 narasya daśabhiḥ karṣaiḥ suvarṇasya narādhipa | 2 bhūṣaṇaiḥ samalaṃkṛtya pratiṣṭḥāṃ kārayet tayoḥ | 3 mahāpuruṣasūktena hy abhiṣekaṃ tu kārayet | 4 pūjayitvā gandhamālyaiḥ svastivācanapūrvakam | 5 juhuyād vaiṣṇavair mantrair aṣṭottaraśataṃ tilaiḥ | 6 homānte mūrtisahitaṃ harivaṃśasya pustakam | 7 pūjayet prayato bhūtvā śraddadhānena cetasā | 8 sarvālaṃkārasaṃyuktaṃ mūrtiyuktaṃ savedanam | 9 citrapuṣṭadvayayutam ācāryāya nivedayet | 10. This text is only preserved in manuscript Ds.

712

Harivaṃśa, App. 1.40.46**, vv. 1–2: ‘Having listened to this book, donations have to be made, as with the icon, during the Parvan, (1) / To the teacher with efforts. Then one has to [make efforts to] please a Brahmin. (2)’; śrutvā tat pustakaṃ deyaṃ pratimā parvaṇi tathā | 1 ācāryāya prayatnena toṣayed brāhmaṇaṃ tathā || 2.

713

Harivaṃśa, App. 1.40.49**, vv. 3–8: ‘I will now explain everything to you: listen with a concentrated mind, o king! (3) / Having revered the Lord of the world, god, Nārāyaṇa, Hari, (4) / Vyāsa, son of Parāśara, as well as me and you, o protector of the world, (5) / One should first of all worship the manuscript with perfumed flowers and so on. (6) / A pure person, having bathed, whose soul is favourable having taken the manuscript with the right hand, (7) / After homaging with the right hand according to rule (8)’; tathā vakṣyāmi te sarvaṃ śṛṇuṣvaikamanā nṛpa | 3 namaskṛtya jagannāthaṃ devaṃ nārāyaṇaṃ harim || 4 pārāśaryaṃ tathā vyāsaṃ māṃ ca tvāṃ ca jagatpate | 5 arcayet pustakaṃ pūrvaṃ gandhapuṣpādinā saha || 6 snātvā śuciḥ prasannātmā savyenādāya pustakam | 7 dakṣiṇena namaskṛtya kareṇa vidhinā naraḥ || 8.

714

These are T1, T2, G1, G3, G4, G5, M2, M3, and M4; D6 adds it after the colophon (Vaidya 1971, p. 511).

715

Dānakhaṇḍa p. 517. Madanasiṃhadeva does not mention the Varāhapurāṇa as the source of these verses, apparently embedding them into the Nandipurāṇa quotation.

716

For instance, the chapter on the procedures for the smṛtidāna is followed by another one, titled ‘Now the Procedures for the Donation of These [Fields of Knowledge]’ (athaitāsāṃ dānavidhiḥ, Dānavivekoddyota vol. 3, pp. 166–68), where the author cites from the Nandipurāṇa and the Varāhapurāṇa; it is however only at the end of this second paragraph that the author considers the treatment of the smṛtidāna as being completed, as its ending caption reads ‘thus the gift of the Smṛti [is concluded]’ (iti smṛtidānaṃ).

717

The discussion of the purāṇadāna, for instance, is mainly based on Saurapurāṇa 1.9.3–14ab and Matsyapurāṇa 53.11–53, quoted in this sequence, with the Saurapurāṇa text split into three quotations, one of which (corresponding to Saurapurāṇa 1.12cd–14ab) is misattributed to the Vāmanapurāṇa (see Dānavivekoddyota vol. 3, p. 178).

718

The chapter opens with a eulogistic portion from the Nandipurāṇa, corresponding to the final section of the text quoted by Lakṣmīdhara (see Table A). The following quotations are from the Harivaṃśa—but from a different part than the one quoted by Hemādri—and the Matsyapurāṇa, of which Govindānanda quotes the usual chapter 53.

719

See Dānakriyākaumudī, pp. 68–69. Only the first part of this Pāñcarātra has been published (see Dasgupta & Dutta, 1976), however these verses are not available there. According to Dutta 1971, p. 18ff., this passage corresponds to Saṅkarṣaṇakāṇḍa, chapter 31. Long portions of the Hayaśīrṣapāñcarātra have been subsumed into the Agnipurāṇa, including the section on the installation of the manuscripts (see § 4.2). However, these do not correspond to the the verses quoted by Govindānanda.

720

Dānakriyākaumudī, p. 69: yo dadyāl lekhayitvā tu pañcarātraṃ dvijottame | sa vidyādānapuṇyena vāsudeve layaṃ vrajet || 1Gov purāṇaṃ lekhayitvā tu yo dadyād brāhmaṇe naraḥ | sa vidyādānapuṇyena vāsudeve layaṃ vrajet || 2Gov rāmāyaṇaṃ bhārataṃ ca yo dadyād dvijapuṅgave | sa vidyādānajaṃ puṇyaṃ prāpya viṣṇau pralīyate || 3Gov yo dharmasaṃhitāṃ dadyāl lekhayitvā dvijottame | sa vidyādānajaṃ puṇyaṃ samagraṃ prāpnuyān naraḥ || 4Gov vedāṅgān lekhayitvā tu yo dadyād brāhmaṇarṣabhe | sa svargalokam āpnoti yāvad āhūtasaṃplavam || 5Gov dharmārthakāmamokṣāṇāṃ yā vidyā siddhaye matā | tāṃ lekhya brāhmaṇe datvā svargam āpnoty asaṃśayam || 6Gov ākāśasya yathā nāntaḥ [nāntaḥ em; nāntaṃ ed.] siddhair apy upalakṣyate | evaṃ vidyāpradānasya nāntaḥ sarvaguṇātmakam || 7Gov.

721

Dānakriyākaumudī, p. 69 (=Harivaṃśa 1.6–7): ‘The merit that, in this world, [derives] from one hundred Aśvamedhas and four hundred thousand sacrifices, will be infinite from the gift of the Harivaṃśa; and [this] is sung by the great Ṛṣi Vyāsa. (6) / The fruit that is experienced through the Vājapeya and [obtained] from the Rājasūya, and the different [fruit obtained] through the [gift] of chariots and elephants, this is taken [giving the manuscript of the Harivaṃśa], [according to] the evidence of Vyāsa’s word and the work sung by the great Ṛṣi Vālmīki. (7)’; śatāśvamedhasya yad atra puṇyaṃ catuḥsahasrasya śatakratoś ca | bhaved anantaṃ harivaṃśadānāt prakīrtitaṃ vyāsamaharṣiṇā ca || 6 yad vājapeyena tu rājasūyād dṛṣṭaṃ phalaṃ hastirathena cānyat tal labhyate vyāsavacaḥ pramāṇaṃ gītaṃ ca vālmīkimaharṣiṇā ca || 7.
This passage is less explicit in associating the gift of the Harivaṃśa with the gift of a manuscript. However, after a few stanzas the text states: ‘The one who gives the manuscript of the Harivaṃśa to a learned Brahmin, together with a fee, will enjoy the fruit of the Aśvamedha. The great Ṛṣi has spoken only the truth (13)’; yo dadāti harivaṃśapustakaṃ brāhmaṇāya viduṣe sadakṣiṇam | so ’śvamedhaphalabhāg bhaven naraḥ satyam eva kathitaṃ maharṣiṇā || 13.

722

On the Kāśikhaṇḍa see Smith 2007, dating the text to the eleventh century (p. 106).

723

Dānakriyākaumudī, p. 71: skandapurāṇe, kāśīkhaṇḍadāne | ya etat pustakaṃ ramyaṃ lekhayitvā samarpayet | akhilāṇi purāṇāni tena dattāni nānyathā || 1Gov atrākhyānāni yāvanti ślokā yāvanta eva hi | tathā padāni yāvanti varṇā yāvanta eva hi || 2Gov yāvanty api ca patrāṇi yāvatyaḥ patrapaṅktayaḥ | guṇasūtrāṇi yāvanti yāvantaḥ paṭatantavaḥ || citrarūpāṇi yāvanti ramyapustakasaṃpuṭe | tāvadyugasahasrāṇi dātā svarge mahīyate || 3Gov.

724

We could take as an example the remarks closing the quotation from the Harivaṃśa (Dānakriyākaumudī, p. 69). Note that the language of these lines is very essential as they, like the other short paragraphs appended to the quoted texts, are composed of long compounds, and omit the use of the verb: ‘One who wants to obtain the fruit of one hundred Aśvamedha sacrifices, the infinite fruits produced by 400,000 rituals, the worldly fruits of the Vājapeya and Rājasūya sacrifices, and the same fruits produced by the gift of an elephant chariot, should donate this manuscript of the Harivaṃśa, endowed with a garment, having been worshipped, belonging to the goddess Sarasvatī, and so on. [Then] the fee. [This is] the end of what concerns this manuscript; śatāśvamedhayajñaphalacatuḥsahasraśatakratujanyānantaphalavā
japeyarājasūyayajñadṛṣṭ
aphalahastirathadānajanyaphalasanaphalaprāptikāma idaṃ harivaṃśapustakaṃ
savastram arcitaṃ sarasvatīdaivatam ityādi
dakṣiṇā tatpustakasparśāntam. One of the variations inserted by Govindānanda which is not in the text of his source is the reference to the ‘fruits of 400,000 rituals’.

725

Dānakriyākaumudī, p. 70: matysapurāṇe viṣṇupurāṇadānam upakramya; matsyapurāṇe śrībhāgavatadāne; matsyapurāṇe tatpustakadāne.

726

Dānamayūkha, p. 242: etanmūlaṃ mātsye.

727

Nīlakaṇṭha’s rendition of Matsyapurāṇa 53.18–19 is: ‘[One has to donate the Śivapurāṇa], together with a sugar-cow, during the full moon of the month of śravaṇa. The fruit is the world of Śiva’; śaivaṃ guḍadhenusahitaṃ śrāvaṇyāṃ phalaṃ śivalokaḥ.

728

Nīlakaṇṭha is aware that the mention of the Śivapurāṇa is not completely unproblematic, and he in fact notes, immediately following the statement in which he acknowledges the Matsyapurāṇa as the source of his information, that (Dānamayūkha, p. 242): ‘Somewhere instead of [the Purāṇa] of Śiva, [the Purāṇa] of Vāyu is mentioned’; kvacic chaivasthāne vāyavīyagrahaṇam.

729

Nīlakaṇṭha simply states, ‘The Upapurāṇas are other than these. The fruit for the gifting of them is knowledge [and] the world of Viṣṇu, or the favour of Viṣṇu in every situation;’ etadanyāny upapurāṇāni | taddāne phalaṃ vidyā viṣṇulokaḥ | sarvatra viṣṇuprītir vā (Dānamayūkha, p. 242).

730

Dānakāṇḍa 12.74abNP: ‘A person, having donated the Dharmaśāstra, is magnified in paradise’; dharmaśāstraṃ naro datvā svargaloke mahīyate.

731

These are taken from the Bhaviṣyapurāṇa. The text quoted on this point reads: ‘In the Bhaviṣya[purāṇa]: ‘And [one] should bestow a manuscript, covered with a double cloth, to the reciter who knows the true nature of the śāstras, whose speech is pleasant’. Moreover: ‘The fruit that is [gained] directly through the donation of one thousand gifts of a brown cow, the one who donates [even] only one manuscript will get this fruit. / O descendent of Pṛthi, who is able to describe that fruit that [one] obtains having given the Purāṇas, the [Māha]bhārata, as well as the Rāmāyaṇa?’ And according to another Purāṇa, having placed this [manuscript] on a lectern made of gold, silver, ivory, wood and so on, tied on both sides, having worshipped [it], it has to be donated. Thus ends the gift of manuscripts’; bhaviṣye, śāstrasadbhāvaviduṣe vācake ca priyaṃvade | vastrayugme saṃvītaṃ pustakaṃ pratipādayed iti || 1Nīl tathā, kapilādānasahasreṇa samyag dattena yat phalam | tat phalaṃ samavāpnotu pustakaikapradānataḥ || 2Nīl purāṇaṃ bhārataṃ vāpi rāmāyaṇam athā’pi vā | datvā yat phalam āpnoti pārtha tat kena varṇyata iti || 3Nīl tac ca hemarūpyagajadantakāṣṭhādikṛte ’nyonnyasaṃśliṣṭe yantre nyasya sampūjya deyam iti purāṇāntare || iti pustakadānam ||.
The last statement must probably refer to Devīpurāṇa 91.45–46.

732

Dānamayūkha, p. 244: evaṃ trividhaṃ vidyādānaṃ — pustakadānaṃ, pratimādānam adhyāpanaṃ ceti ||.

733

A Sancto Bartholomaeo 1792, p. 50. I thank Carmela Mastrangelo for helping me trace the correct source of this quotation, which I knew only from Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen 1921, p. 160.

734

Pollock 1990, p. 332.

735

Arguments leading to the emergence of the concept of anumītasmṛti in the hermeneutical speculation of the early Mīmāṃsā are analyzed in Kataoka 2013, who examines them in the broader context of the philosophical debate between Mīmāṃsaka and Buddhist thinkers. The key notion in order to understand the core of the question lies in the belief that Vedic injunctions are the only source of Dharma, and that the authors of the Smṛti derive their knowledge of Dharma from their direct experience (pratyakṣa) of the text of the Śruti (see Mīmāṃsāsūtra 1.1.4 and the Śabara commentary ad loc.). It would therefore be impossible to surmise that there are cases in which the Smṛti is independent from the Śruti; when there seems to be no parallels or correspondences, both Śabara and Kumārila argue that these are cases of pralīnaśruti, namely cases in which the relevant Śruti passage has been forgotten, though its existence is still inferrable on the basis of the Smṛti (Kataoka 2013, pp. 251–52). An alternative argument, brought up by Kumārila to justify the inferred loss of parts of the Śruti, is that of the anupalabdhi (‘non-perception’) of still extant passages: since the Vedic branches are scattered and people entitled to (and charged with) the transmission of the Veda are careless, we do not know the Veda in its entirety (see Tantravārttika ad 1.3.2). As observed by Kataoka (2013, especially pp. 239–40 and 262), the exegetical strategy of the lost scripture is not a prerogative of the Mīmāṃsaka, since it is also attested in Buddhist texts, which, however, considered Buddhist Sūtras and not the Veda to be the source of scriptural authority; at the same time, and with regard to this point, Mīmāṃsaka authors need to defend themselves against the possible attacks of their Buddhist opponents, as one may argue that, by analogy, Buddhists or anybody else may claim that their teachings are also based on lost Vedic passages (see Tantravārttika ad 1.3.1). In replying to this, Kumārila has to resort to the notion of the established practice of the Brahminical tradition: one is allowed to postulate the existence of a lost Vedic passage, provided only that otherwise there would be no possible explanation (anyathānupapatti) for the practice of the orthodox Brahmins (Kataoka 2013, p. 251).

736

Yājñavalkyasmṛti 1.7: śrutismṛtisadācārāḥ svasya ca priyam ātmanaḥ | samyaksaṅkalpajaḥ kāmo dharmamūlam idaṃ smṛtam || 7.

737

On the transmission of the Vedic text, see Houben 2009, which provides further bibliography on the topic. Case studies on how traditional Vedic learning is still carried out in modern times are examined in Subrahmaniam 1974, Fuller 2001 and Knipe 2015. As Bronkhorst notes (2002, p. 800 fn. 8), Renou points out some passages that seem to suggest that the Veda existed in written form since early times (Renou 1960, p. 4).

738

It suffices here to mention the famous remarks made by Friedrich Max Müller in his 1878 lecture, ‘The Ancient Literature of India’ (see Müller 1901), where he recounts what he himself predicts that his audience could perceive as a ‘fairy-tale’, namely, ‘These men, and I know it as a fact, know the whole Rig-Veda by heart, just as their ancestors did, three or four thousand years ago; and though they have MSS., and though they now have a printed text, they do not learn their sacred lore from them’ (Müller 1901, p. 160).

739

Manusmṛti 4.233, Yājñavalkyasmṛti 1.212, and Mahābhārata 13.68.5 and 13.74.19, all quoted by Hemādri, p. 517. Note that the caption in this text attributes the Manusmṛti stanza to the Ādityapurāṇa.

740

Dānakhaṇḍa, p. 517 (=Manusmṛti 4.233): ‘The gift of the brahman is the best among all gifts, such as [the gifts of] water, food, cattle, land, clothes, sesame seeds, gold, and clarified butter’; sarveṣām eva dānānāṃ brahmadānaṃ viśiṣyate | vāryannagaumahīvāsastilakāñcanasarpiṣām || 233.

741

Olivelle 2010, pp. 52–53. Medhātithi’s commentary is the most extensive among the extant commentaries on the Manusmṛti; from references internal to his work, we deduce that he was certainly later than Bhāruci, another relatively early commentator on the Manusmṛti, whose surviving commentary is however limited only to chapters 6–12.

742

Manusmṛti 4.232: yānaśayyāprado bhāryām aiśvaryam abhayapradaḥ | dhānyadaḥ śāśvataṃ saukhyaṃ brahmado brahmasārṣṭitām || 232.

743

Manusmṛtibhāṣya ad 4.232: brahma vedaḥ tad dadāti yo ’dhyāpayati vyākhyāti ca. Kullūka similarly comments: ‘brahman means the Veda; [its] donor is the one who teaches and the one who explains [it]’; brahma vedas tatprado vedasyādhyāpako vyākhyātā ca.

744

Note that the stanza is 3.60 in the Manubhāṣya edition. From this point on, I will give a double reference for the numeration of the stanzas of the Manusmṛti: the first corresponding to the position in the printed edition of Medhātithi’s commentary and, in brackets, their actual numbering in the current Manusmṛti edition.

745

Manusmṛti 3.70: ‘The teaching [of the Vedas] is the sacrifice of the brahman, while the sacrifice of the ancestors is [their] satiation. The oblation [into fire] is meant for the gods, the food-offering for the living beings, the sacrifice of the men is the worship of uninvited guests’; adhyāpanaṃ brahmayajñaḥ pitṛyajñas tu tarpaṇam | homo daivo balir bhauto nṛyajño ’tithipūjanam || 70.
Note that ‘five great sacrifices’ are also frequently mentioned in epigraphs, though they may not correspond to those that are so called in the Dharmaśāstra. On this, see Willis 2009.

746

Manusmṛtibhāṣya ad 3.70 (=3.60): adhyāpanaśabdenādhyayanam api gṛhyate tena japo huta ity atra vakṣyati | na ca japo ’pi śiṣyānapekṣate | sāmānyena ca śrutaṃ svādhyāyena ṛṣibhya ity ṛṇāvedanaśrutau | ata ubhe adhyāpanādhyayane yathāsaṃbhavaṃ brahmayajñaḥ.

747

This sentence is quoted from Manusmṛti 3.74 (=3.64). In the commentary on this verse, Medhātithi explains that the word japa, ‘muttering [of prayers]’, here intended in the sense of ‘recitation’, has to be intended as a synonym of Vedic study, both when the latter coincides with listening to the teachings and when the Vedic study corresponds to the mental recitation of the Vedic text (see Manusmṛtibhāṣya, p. 239).

748

There are several passages from Vedic literature in which three (or four) debts are listed, such as Taittirīyasaṃhitā 6.3.10.5, or Śatapathabrāhmaṇa 1.7.2.1–7. I was, however, unable to identify a literal parallel to this quotation reported by Medhātithi. The Manusmṛti deals with this topic at 6.35 onwards.

749

Manusmṛtibhāṣya ad 3.70 (=3.60): nanu ca svādhyāyaḥ kathaṃ yajñaḥ | na hi tatra devatā ijyante nāpi śrūyante | kevalaṃ vedākṣarāṇy avivakṣitārthāny uccāryante | uktaṃ cāmnāyaśabdābhyāse kecid āhur anarthakānīti.

750

This is a quotation with only one minor difference, from Bartṛhari’s Vākyapadīya 2.407ab: āmnāyaśabdān abhyāse kecid āhur anarthakān.

751

Manusmṛtibhāṣya ad 3.70 (=3.60): satyam | stutyāṃ yajñaśabdo bhāktaḥ mahacchabdaś ca.

752

These are Śatapathabrāhmaṇa 9.5.6 and Taittirīyāraṇyaka 2.10. As observed by Malamoud (1977, p. 12), the eulogy of the brahmayajña in the Śatapathabrāhmaṇa shows that all the proper ritual observances connected to it are ultimately considered vain, as the truly important action of the brahmayājña consists of the self-recitation of the Veda.

753

Malamoud 1977, p. 16, not only underlines the uniqueness of this aspect in comparison with the mahāyajñas, but also with the other sacrifices in general.

754

Manusmṛti 3.71 (=Manusmṛtibhāṣya 3.81) is a similar case, where the text literally prescribes that ‘One should honour the seers through the self-recitation [of the Veda]’; svādhyāyenārcayeta rṣīn. Again, in commenting on it, Medhātithi explains this statement as a eulogistic expression (stutivacana). The centrality of the svādhyāya remains unaltered for the authors of Dharmaśāstras, as shown by the injunctions of Manusmṛti 11.59, classifying the neglect of the svādhyāya (which the commentator Kullūka glosses here with brahmayajña) as a terrible sin for the gṛhastha, such as the killing of a cow, or the abandonment of parents and teachers; for it corresponds to the brahmojjhatā (Manusmṛti 11.56), the forgetting of the Veda, which is in turn a form of vedanindā, the denigration of the Śruti by means of false doctrines (see Malamoud 1977, p. 23).

755

Malamoud 1977, p. 40; he further observes that both self-recitation and didactic recitation are constant features of the different styles of Brahmanical observance according to Taittirīyopaniṣad 1.9.

756

Malamoud 1977, pp. 45–46, notes that in the Pūrvamīmāṃsā tradition the word svādhyāya, and consequently the injunction tasmāt svādhyāyo ’dhyetavyaḥ, acquires a new different meaning: svādhyāya is used to refer to the Vedic text of one’s own (sva°) Vedic school (śākhā), while the verb adhī in the middle form is used with the nuance of ‘learning’ rather than just ‘reciting’; the corresponding injunction thus means ‘it is necessary to learn the texts of your own śākhā’.

757

Dānakhaṇḍa, p. 517 (=Yājñavalkyasmṛti 1.212): ‘Since the brahman, made of all dharmas, is superior to [other] gifts, donating this [one] reaches the world of Brahmā without falling’; sarvadharmamayaṃ brahma pradānebhyo ’dhikaṃ yataḥ | tad dadat samavāpnoti brahmalokam avicyutaḥ || 212.

758

Aparārka comments upon this stanza as follows (Aparārkaṭīkā vol. 1, p. 389): ‘Brahman [means] the Veda; teaching this, [one] reaches without falling, [which means] without being deviated, the world of Brahmā. Here [is] the reason: [this is] superior to the other gifts inasmuch as the brahman is made of all religious duties (dharmas). The affix -maya- [is used] to denote abundance (prācurya), like in the statements: ‘the towns of Magadha are made of [i.e. abound with] rice’, ‘the sacrifice is made of [i.e. abounds with] food offerings’; or to denote non-differentiation (abheda), like in the statement: ‘the Brahman is made of [i.e. is non-differentiated from] bliss’. And here ‘non-difference’ is because of a metaphorical designation of the non-differentiation between means of knowledge (scil. the Veda) and object of knowledge (scil. the religious duties)’; brahma vedas tad adhyāpayan brahmalokam avicyuto ’napabhraṣṭaḥ prāpnoti | atra hetuḥ brahmaṇaḥ sarvadharmamayatvenānyebhyaḥ pradeyebhyo ’dhikam | prācurye mayaṭpratyayaḥ | yathā śālimayā magadhāḥ | annamayo yajña iti | abhede vā yathā — ānandamayaṃ brahmeti | abhedaś cātra pramāṇaprameyayor abhedopacāreṇa. Note that the two sentences that Aparārka quotes as examples have their source in Pāṇini’s Aṣṭādhyāyī 5.4.21–22.

759

Aparārkaṭīkā, vol. 1 p. 389: brahmadānaprasaṅgena vidyāntaradānavidhir ucyate.

760

For the equivalnce of these terms with reference to the Yājñavalkyasmṛti see Malamoud 1977, pp. 19–20; the stanza of the Yājñavalkyasmṛti defining the Five Great Sacrifices reads (1.102): balikarmasvadhāhomasvādhyāyātithisatkriyāḥ | bhūtapitramarabrahmamanuṣyāṇāṃ mahāmakhāḥ || 102.

761

Yājñavalkyasmṛti 1.101: vedātharvapurāṇāni setihāsāni śaktitaḥ | japayajñārthasiddhyarthaṃ vidyāṃ cā ’dhyātmikī japet || 101.

762

Garuḍapurāṇa 1.98.14–17ab: brahmadātā brahmalokaṃ prāpnoti suradurlabham | vedārthayajñaśāstrāni dharmaśāstrāṇi caiva hi || 14 mūlyenāpi likhitvāpi brahmalokam avāpnuyāt | etanmūlaṃ jagad yasmād asṛjat pūrvam īśvaraḥ || 15 tasmāt sarvaprayatnena kāryo vedārthasaṃgrahaḥ | itihāsapurāṇaṃ vā likhitvā yaḥ prayacchati || 16 brahmadānasamaṃ puṇyaṃ prāpnoti dviguṇonnatim.

763

Note that in the text this is a bahuvrīhi compound referring to the yatayaḥ. Bhagavadgītā 4.28: ‘[Some] perform their religious practice [by donating] objects, [some] through askesis, and some through yoga; and those who perform the religious practice of studying and teaching are ascetics who have taken firm vows’; dravyayajñās tapoyajñā yogayajñās tathāpare | svādhyāyajñānayajñāś ca yatayaḥ saṃśitavratāḥ || 28.

764

Bhagavadāśayānusaraṇabhāṣya, p. 127: svādhyāyayajño vedābhyāsaḥ | jñānayajño vedārthajñānaṃ yajño yeṣāṃ te jñānayajñāḥ | mīmāṃsāśārīrakādivyākhyātāro yatayo yatnavantaḥ saṃśitavratā akhaṇḍitavratāḥ || 28.

765

Agnipurāṇa 2.211.51cd–62: trīṇi tulyaphalānīha gāvaḥ pṛthvī sarasvatī || 51 brāhmīṃ sarasvatīṃ dattvā nirmalo brahmalokabhāk | saptadvīpamahīdaḥ sa brahmajñānaṃ dadāti yaḥ || 52 abhayaṃ sarvabhūtebhyo yo dadyāt sarvabhāṅ naraḥ | purāṇaṃ bhārataṃ vāpi rāmāyaṇam athāpi vā || 53 likhitvā pustakaṃ dattvā bhuktimuktim avāpnuyāt | vedaśāstraṃ nṛtyagītaṃ yo ’dhyāpayati nākabhāk || 54 vittaṃ dadyād upādhyāye chātrāṇāṃ bhojanādikaṃ | kim adattaṃ bhavet tena dharmakāmādidarśinā || 55 vājapeyasahasrasya samyag dattasya yat phalaṃ | tat phalaṃ sarvam āpnoti vidyādānān na saṃśayaḥ || 56 śivālaye viṣṇugṛhe sūryasya bhavane tathā | sarvadānapradaḥ sa syāt pustakaṃ vācayet tu yaḥ || 57 trailokye caturo varṇāś catvāraś cāśramāḥ pṛthak | brahmādyā devatāḥ sarvā vidyādāne pratiṣṭhitāḥ || 58 vidyā kāmadughā dhenur vidyā cakṣur anuttamaṃ | upavedapradānena gandharvaiḥ saha modate || 59 vedāṅgānāṃ ca dānena svargalokam avāpnuyāt | dharmaśāstrapradānena dharmeṇa saha modate || 60 siddhāntānāṃ pradānena mokṣam āpnoty asaṃśayaṃ | vidyādānam avāpnoti pradānāt pustakasya tu || 61 śāstrāṇi ca purāṇāni dattvā sarvam avāpnuyāt | śiṣyāṃś ca śikṣayed yas tu puṇḍarīkaphalaṃ labhet || 62.

766

Viṣṇudharmottara 3.303.5–6ab: ‘From the gift of the Veda a man attains the fruit of all sacrifices; through the donation of the Upavedas he rejoices together with the Gandharvas, (5) / And thanks to the gift of the Vedāṅgas he will reach Indra’s heaven’; vedadānād avāpnoti sarvayajñaphalaṃ naraḥ | upavedapradānena gandharvaiḥ saha modate || 59 vedāṅgānāṃ ca dānena śakralokam avāpnuyāt.

767

Dānakhaṇḍa, pp. 518–23. However, the first hemistich is surely detectable in chapter 96 (Dānakhaṇḍa, p. 518 = Devīpurāṇa 96.3ab): ‘For the twice-borns only the Veda is the supreme instrument for reaching Heaven’; veda eva dvijātīnāṃ sādhanaṃ śreyasaḥ param. The stanzas extracted from chapter 107 are arranged by Hemādri as follows: 11–9–10; 12–24; 28–31ab; 32; 34–40ab; 41–55a; 56; 58.

768

The title appended to this chapter by the Devanāgarī printed edition of the Devīpurāṇa is exactly ‘The Detailed Explanation of the Vedic Schools Referring to the Orthodox Tradition of the Origin of the Vedas’ (vedotpattismaraṇīyacaraṇavyūha°, Devīpurāṇa, p. 392). The text starts by describing the Veda as originated by the gayatrīmantra (Devīpurāṇa 107.9–11), then lists the internal divisions of the Ṛgveda and the Yajurveda (Devīpurāṇa 107.12–24). The next topics are the six ancillary works (aṅga) of, the Veda, the six minor subdivisions (upāṅga), and the 18 appendices (pariśiṣṭa), according to Devīpurāṇa 107.23–28. The text then at Devīpurāṇa 107.29–31 lists the names of the Brahmin families connected with the Vedic schools (kaṭha) and the five divisions of Vedic seers (ṛṣis, Devīpurāṇa 107.35–36). The divisions of the Sāmaveda and the Atharvaveda are then dealt with (Devīpurāṇa 107.39–45), followed by the names of the Upavedas (Devīpurāṇa 107.46–47ab), and a list matching each of the four saṃhitā with a gotra and a tutelary deity (adhidevatā) in Devīpurāṇa 107.47cd–49.

769

The following passage presents the interpreter with some dubious points; for this reason, I have chosen to reconstruct the text not only relying on a comparison between the two available printed editions (Dānakhaṇḍa, pp. 522–23 = Devīpurāṇa 107.50–56), but also on the basis of a collation with the manuscript of the Devīpurāṇa (Asiatic Society, G4566D), whose pictures have been kindly made available to me by Bihani Sarkar and Yuko Yokochi. The metre of the lines—if they are composed in a metre at all—is moreover unclear. For this reason, I have not divided the text, neither the original Sanskrit nor the English translation, with slashes or double daṇḍas demarcating the stanzas: [L9] ṛgvedaḥ padmapatrākṣaḥ pralambajaṭharaḥ śuciḥ | bhaktagrīvaḥ [suvibhaktagrīvaḥ Cod. ] kuñcitakeśaśmaśruḥ pramāṇenāpi vitastipañca [vitastī || pañca DKh] rājatamauktikajo ’tha [sa rājate mauktikavaro ’tha DP sa rājato mauktijotha Cod.] pūjyo varaprado bhaktiyute [bhaktiyuto Dkh] dvijā[L10]ya | yajurvedaḥ piṅgalākṣaḥ kṛśamadhyasthūlagalakapolas [kṛśamadhyaḥ sthūlagalaḥ kapolas DP kṛśamadhyaḥ sthūlagalakapolaḥ Cod.] tāmrāyatavarṇaḥ [tāmrāyattavarṇaḥ DP] kṛṣṇacaraṇaḥ pradeśāt [prasāden DKh] ṣaḍdīrghatvena [padadīrghatvena DKh] citre liṅge ’thavā pūjyaḥ [pūjya Cod.] sarvakāmān avāpnuyāt | sāmavedo [sāmavedī Dkh] nityaṃ sragvī suvrataḥ śuciḥ śucivāsā [śucivāsāḥ DP Cod.] kṣa[L11]mī dāntaś ca mahādaṇḍī [dāntaścarma ca daṇḍī DP] kāñcananayanaḥ [kācaraṇanayana DKh] | ādityavarṇo varṇena ṣaḍaratnimātras [ṣaḍratnamātras tathā DP ṣaḍatnimātraḥ Cod.] tāmre vātha [tāmre ’thā DP Cod.] maṇīndre va [coniec.; maṇī devaḥ DKh maṇi indrākhye DP maṇa indrākhye Cod.] pūjitaḥ [pūjayan DP Cod.] śubhado bhavet | atharvavedas tīkṣṇadaṇḍaḥ [em.; tīkṣmadaṇḍaḥ Dkh tīkṣṇaścaṇḍaḥ DP Cod.] kāmarūpī [kṣāmarūpo DP kṣāmarūporūpī ? Cod.] viśvātmā viśvakṛd [virakta Dkh] ūrdhvajvālaḥ [krūra ūrdhva jvālāvān DP, Cod.] | kṣudra[L12]karmā śāstrakṛtī sthāyī [ca śāstra kṛtonnāmī DP, ms] nīlotpalavarṇo varṇena svadāratuṣṭaḥ | parastrīṣv avaśaḥ [parastriyārthaś ca DP Cod.] padmarāge vātha [sauvarṇa padmarāge vā rūdrākhye DP Cod.] prapūjayet | sarvakāmān avāpnoti atharvavihitāni ca.

770

The same character is attributed to the representation of the Ṛgveda by the Śrīvidyārṇavatantra in a section on pūjā (see the expression ṛgvedaḥ padmapatrākṣo, p. 270 st. 1).

771

Dānakhaṇḍa, p. 523 (= Garuḍapurāṇa 9Hem): ‘Now I will explain the procedure of gifting, considered the supreme secret, having performed which a man does not creep into the dreadful hells (9Hem)’; atha dānavidhiṃ vakṣye rahasyaṃ paramam matam | yaṃ vidhāya naro ghorān nirayān nopasarpati || 9Hem.

772

Dānakhaṇḍa, p. 523 (Garuḍapurāṇa 10Hem-11abcHem): āmnāyarūpāṇi vidhāya samyak haimāni pūrvoditalakṣaṇāni | viśuddhanānāmaṇibhūṣitāni [em.; viśuddhamānā° ed.] ṛgādivedakramato niveśya || 10 ṛgvedādilakṣaṇaṃ mahābhūtaghaṭadāne darśitaṃ | vāsāṃsi deyāni […] |

773

Dānakhaṇḍa, pp. 343–45.

774

Dānakhaṇḍa, pp. 343–44 (=Matsyapurāṇa 289.7cd–9): vinyased ghaṭamadhye tān vedapañcakasaṃyutān || 7 ṛgvedasyākṣasūtraṃ syād [tu DKh] yajurvedasya paṅkajam | sāmavedasya vīṇā syād veṇuṃ [vīṇāṃ DKh] dakṣiṇato nyaset || 8 atharvavedasya punaḥ sruksruvau kamalaṃ kare | purāṇavedo varadaḥ sākṣasūtrakamaṇḍalūḥ || 9.

775

Hemādri’s short commentary at Matsyapurāṇa 276.9 reads (Dānakhaṇḍa, p. 236): ‘The icons of the Vedas will be dealt with regarding the Jar of the Elements’; vedamūrtayo bhūtaghaṭe vakṣyante.

776

Matsyapurāṇa 285.9, quoted in Dānakhaṇḍa, p. 329.

777

Dānakhaṇḍa, p. 524 (= Garuḍapurāṇa 14–17Hem): ‘O Ṛgveda, whose eyes have the form of a lotus-leaf, protect, protect, throw away the inauspicious! I have taken refuge in you, give me an unprecedented good! (14Hem)/ O Yajurveda, adoration be to you! [You are] fully devoted to the protection of the world. By your grace, may all [sorts of] protection be with me always! (15Hem) / O Sāmaveda, long-armed one, for you [are] directly the god born below the axe: having your bright face been favourable to me, please be propitious to me! (16Hem) /O Atharvan, since the fortune and misfortune of all beings depend on you, procure appeasement, o lord of the gods, give the desired prosperity (17Hem)’; ṛgveda padmapatrākṣa rakṣa rakṣa kṣipāśubham | śaraṇam tvāṃ prayanno ’smi dehi me hitam adbhutaṃ || 14Hem yajurveda namas te ’stu lokatrāṇaparāyaṇaḥ | tvatprasādena me kṣemāḥ nikhilāḥ santu santatam || 15Hem sāmaveda mahābāho tvaṃ hi sākṣād adhokṣajaḥ | prasādasumukho bhūtvā kṛpayānugṛhāṇa mām || 16Hem atharvān sarvabhūtānāṃ tvadāyatte hitāhite | śāntiṃ kuruṣva deveśa puṣṭim iṣṭāṃ prayacchata || 17Hem.

778

Dānakhaṇḍa, p. 524 (= Garuḍapurāṇa 18Hem): iti samprārcya deveśān viprebhyaḥ pratipādayet | pradadyād ekam ekasmin suvarṇatripalānvitam || 18Hem.

779

Dānakhaṇḍa, p. 524 (= Garuḍapurāṇa 20cd-21abHem): anadhītavato vedān vedadānavidhis tv ayam || 20Hem sadādhyāpanayuktasya [em.; sadādhyayana° ed.] śiṣyādhyāpakam eva hi |.
In order to make sense of the compound śiṣyādhyāpakaṃ, literally ‘teaching a student’, we have to understand the term vedadāna also in the second half stanza, referring to it śiṣyādhyāpakaṃ as a bahuvrīhi compound. The text of the Dānamayūkha, also quoting this stanza, presents here the variant vedādhyāyanam, which must be most likely rejected as secondary (see Dānamayūkha, p. 243).

780

Dānakhaṇḍa pp. 524–25 (= Garuḍapurāṇa 14cd–18 Hem): svayaṃ śuciḥ śucīn viprān prātaḥ snāto jitendriyaḥ || 14Hem darbhān ādāya pāṇau tu pāṭhayet tāṃs tathāvidhān | anadhyāyān pariharan nīcān aśrāvayann api || 15Hem evaṃ vidhānato yas tu ṛcam ekāṃ prayacchati | trivittapūrṇapṛthivī tena dattā na saṃśayaḥ || 16Hem tathā | yāvanti vedagītāni puṇyavedavratāni ca | tāvanti vedadānena prāpnuyād bhaktibhāvitaḥ || 17Hem upādhyāyasya yo vṛttiṃ datvā ’dhyāpayate janam | kiṃ na dattaṃ bhavet tena dharmakāmārthadarśitam || 18Hem.

781

The author of the Dānavivekoddyota only quotes stanzas of the Garuḍapurāṇa that are found in Hemādri’s text, but completely rearranges the order of the stanzas (see Table A). The three groups of stanzas are divided by tathā, which marks an omission between part 1 and 2, and by a short prose commentary inserted between group 2 and part 3. These stylistic expedients, which highlight the interventions of the digest-writer, also reveal the faithfulness with which the author was supposed to approach his sources. Even small omissions had to be marked: the omitted stanza is Garuḍapurāṇa 17Hem, and only contains a praise of the vidyādāna, but its omission is nevertheless noted. The stanzas on the description of the four images of the Vedas and their worship are then quoted immediately after a brief remark by the author, who calls these procedures a pratimādāna, ‘gift of icons’ (athaitāsāṃ pratimādānāni tatraiva). As observed in the text, this might be exactly the reason why the digest-writer opts for a different arrangement of the stanzas: since this form of vedadāna is secondary to the oral teaching of the Veda, the nibandhakāra takes the liberty of rearranging the succession of the topics accordingly.

782

Piano 1997, pp. 329–31. The female figure is on the left and is interpreted by Piano as representing a pupil. These icons, unlike those described by the Devīpurāṇa, have theriomorphic faces: the Ṛgveda has the head of a donkey, the Sāmaveda that of a horse, the Yajurveda has a goat face, and the Atharvaveda has the face of a monkey. Piano, who also identifies other contemporary representations of the Vedas with these same features, identifies a sole textual reference to this theriomorphic iconography in a description of the Vedas that Hemādri attributes to a Viśvakarmaśāstra in Vratakhaṇḍa vol. 1, p. 104.

783

Larios 2011, p. 235. Besides the marble book, enshrined in the central vault, statues of Rāma are also installed in the temple, accompanied by Sīta, Hanumān, and Lakṣmaṇa, and the jyotirliṅga Tryambakeśvara, along with Gaṇeśa and Nandi.

784

Larios 2011, pp. 234–35. A picture of the marble book enshrined in this temple can be seen on the webpage: <http://nashiktourism.in/tourist-places/guru-gangeshwar-vedmandir/> (last accessed: 24/11/2015).

785

An outline of these occurrences is in Piano 1997, pp. 331–37. I have relied here on Piano’s survey both for the references to the Viṣṇudharmottara and for the identification of the next passages from the Skandapurāṇa; note however that Piano has not included into his inquiry of the Purāṇic tradition the two passages from the Devīpurāṇa and the Garuḍapurāṇa examined above. The relevant stanzas in the Viṣṇudharmottara for the occurrences noted in the text are: Viṣṇudharmottara 3.80.4–5 (description of Hayagrīva’s iconography; on this, see also Rao 1914, vol. 1.1, p. 261); Viṣṇudharmottara 3.56.9, in which the Vedas are depicted as four parrots pulling the cart of Agni; Matsyapurāṇa 133.31, where the Vedas are four horses pulling the cart of Śiva who is heading to the destruction of Tripura; and Viṣṇudharmottara 3.73.42–43, in which the four Vedas take on the aspect of as many gods: the Ṛgveda is Brahmā, the Yajurveda Indra, the Sāmaveda is Viṣṇu, and the Atharvaveda Śambhu.

786

Viṣṇudharmottara 3.126.7: ṛgvedaṃ pūrvapatre tu yajurvedaṃ tu dakṣiṇe | paścime sāmavedaṃ tu uttare ’tharvaṇaṃ tathā || 7.

787

For evidence of the Kashmirian provenance of the Viṣṇudharmottara, see Sanderson 2004, p. 275.

788

Sanderson 2004, pp. 289–90, remarks that the presence of the four Vedas as an element of Brahmā’s iconography is a detail found in no other Śaiva authority known to him. He furthermore lists four Kahsmirian images of Brahmā accompanied by four small figures that can be identified with the Vedas (see Sanderson 2004, p. 290 fn. 147, as well as Pal 1975, pl. 3 for image one, and Siudmak 1993, p. 638 and 640–42, for images three and four. See also Siudmak 2013, pp. 398–99, pl. 183, and pp. 403–404).

789

Vaiṣṇavakhaṇḍa 27.9.51–57: dalāgreṣv aṣṭasu tato vedāñ chāstrāṇi ca nyaset | tatra vedān nyased dikṣu śāstrāṇi tu vidikṣu saḥ || 52 pūrve nyaset tu ṛgvedam akṣamālādharaṃ sitam | kharvaṃ lambodaraṃ saumyaṃ padmanetraṃ sitāmbaram || 53 yāmye nyased yajurvedaṃ madhyamāṅgaṃ kṛśodharam | piṅgākṣaṃ sthūlakaṇṭhaṃ ca pītaṃ cāruṇavāsasam || 54 akṣasrajaṃ kare vāme dakṣe vajraṃ ca bibhratam | paścime sāmavedaṃ ca prāṃśum ādityavarcasam || 55 dakṣe ’kṣamālāṃ vāme ca dhṛtavantaṃ kare daram | svarṇavastraṃ viśālākṣaṃ vinyased gāyanodyatam || 56 atharvāṇaṃ nyaset saumye sitāṅgaṃ nīlavāsasam | vāme ’kṣasūtraṃ dakṣe ca khaṭvāṅgaṃ bibhrataṃ kare | vahnyojasaṃ ca tāmrākṣaṃ vayasā sthaviraṃ tathā || 57.

790

Vaiṣṇavakhaṇḍa 27.9.58–63: agnikoṇe dharmaśāstraṃ nyasec ca kamalāsanam | śvetaṃ ca bibhrataṃ dorbhyāṃ muktāmālāṃ tathātulām || 58 dīrghakeśanakhaṃ sāṃkhyaṃ nairṛte tulindalaṃ nyaset | japamālāṃ ca daṇḍaṃ ca karābhyāṃ bibhrataṃ sitam || 59 nyased vāyau tato yogaṃ svarṇavarṇaṃ kṛśodaram | ūrunyastakaradvandvaṃ svanāsāgrakṛtekṣaṇam || 60 pañcarātraṃ tatheśāne dhavalaṃ vanamālinam | nyaset karābhyāṃ dadhatam akṣamālāṃ ca lāṅgalam || 61 eṣāṃ caturṇāṃ vāsāṃsi śvetasūkṣmaghanāni ca | kartavyāni tathākṣīṇi padmapatrāyatāni ca || 62 agrāṇām antarāleṣu maharṣīś ca sayoṣitaḥ | vinyaset paṭhato vedān pūrvāgneyādyanukramāt || 63.

791

This has already been noted in Goudriaan 1996, p. 272, referring among others to Abhinavagupta’s Tantrāloka (see below) and to the Kubjikāmatatantra (Kulālikāmnāya version 25.221, which states that ‘When the scripture is worshipped, all is worshipped’; āgame pūjite sarvaṃ pūjitam). Pāñcarātra works also refer to the worship of their scriptures in the written form, as noted by Leach 2012, p. 16 and fn. 13, where he quotes as an example the Sātvatasaṃhitā’s prescriptions that ‘The teaching spoken by the highest lord is not to be unpacked without being worshipped’ (Sātvatasaṃhitā 21.16ab: nāpūjitaṃ samudghāṭyaṃ śāsanaṃ pārameśvaram). In the introduction ad loc. reported by the printed edition of the text (Dwivedi 1982, p. 420), the nineteenth-century commentator Alaśiṅgabhaṭṭa connects the worship of scriptures to the preservation of their sectarian spirit by explaining, ‘The teaching of the Bhagavan should not be revealed to an unsuitable person or in the presence of the devotees of another deity, nor out of greed, fear, or unlawful behavior; thus, the following has been said’; ayogyaṃ prati vā ’nyadevatābhaktānāṃ samakṣaṃ vā lobhād bhayād anyāyād vā bhagavacchāstraṃ na prakāśyam ity āha— neti.
Other textual references to manuscripts as substrata of worship in tantric sources will be given throughout this chapter.

792

One example is the bibliomantic practice described in chapter 37 of the Pāñcarātra text Viṣvaksenasaṃhitā. This chapter is dedicated to omens (śakuna): first the worship of Vighneśa is prescribed, followed by the worship of all other gods, at the end of which, ‘After having so worshipped, having worshipped the manuscript again with incense, flowers and so on, in a proper way, a person whose senses are restrained (14) / Should inscribe the omens in the whole manuscript, in due sequence’; evaṃ pūjya tataḥ paścāt gandhapuṣpādibhiḥ punaḥ | pustakaṃ pūjayitvā tu yathāvad vijitendriyaḥ || 14 ālikhet pustakaṃ sarvaṃ śakunāni yathākramam. There is then a list of stanzas to write down in the manuscript, which ends at 37.91: ‘These stanzas have been taught by me specifically for the omens; having written them in a manuscript, accurately and in a very pleasant way, (91) / Having written each stanza on a single leaf, a person who is restrained in speech, having bound [the manuscript] with a thread, should worship [it] with flowers and so on (92)’; ete ślokā mayoddiṣṭāḥ śakunānāṃ viśeṣataḥ | etāṃs tu pustake likhya vivekaṃ sumanoramam || 91 ekapatre tathaikaikaṃ ślokaṃ saṃlikhya vāgyataḥ | sūtreṇa sūtrayitvā tu puṣpādibhir athārcayet || 92. After these procedures, a blindfolded pupil is led to the manuscript and thus exhorted (37.98ab): ‘Having untied the thread, take a leaf off the manuscript!’ (visraṃsayitvā sūtraṃ tu patraṃ gṛhṇīṣva pustake). The pupil then has to hand to the teacher the leaf he has hand-picked by chance (37.100); the latter will read it and then pass the omen on to the pupil, regardless of whether it is auspicious or not (37.102). The god and the manuscript should then be worshipped again, following which the teacher will instruct the students on good and bad behaviours (37.105ab).

793

As observed by Goodall (2011, p. 222), ‘The throne of worship appears to be […] a very widespread characteristic of theistic worship in South Asia’. Descriptions of such thrones from some of the main Siddhāntika and non-Siddhāntika works and their symbolism are analyzed throughout the article.

794

See TAK, s.v. pustaka; among the many references listed, we mention here at least the occurrences in Svacchandatantra 4.471, Tantrasadbhāva 9.506, Brahmayāmala 34.350 and Mṛgendra, Kriyāpāda 8.206. The Mṛgendra is also one of the scriptural sources on which the authors of ritual manuals rely concerning the worship of the throne of knowledge (see below). The manuscript is donated along with other objects that the newly made ācārya will use in his activities, such as (see Brahmayāmala 34.349–50) a white umbrella, a pair of sandals, a yogapaṭṭa, and a rosary, preceded by the impartation of a mantra: samarpayitvā mantraṃ tu sitaṃ chatraṃ tato dadet | pādukau yogapaṭṭaṃ ca akṣasūtraṃ tathaiva ca || 349 pustakaṃ ca tato ’rpīta añjalyāṃ deśikottamaḥ. References to the donation of a manuscript during initiations are also found in Pāñcarātra literature. See for instance chapter 10 of the Nāradīyasaṃhitā (‘Procedures on Consecrations’, abhiṣekavidhāna), listing a pustaka among the items to be donated to one who receives the ‘status of ācārya’ (see 10.30–31); or the Lakṣmītantra, which in the context of initiation defines the good teacher as ‘One to whom the manuscript has been donated’ (pradattapustaka, see 41.29).

795

The hypothesis that non-tantric initiation may also involve the donation of a manuscript has been brought forth by Diwakar Acharya, linking together two pieces of evidence which he kindly shared with me in a letter dated to 13/3/2012: one is the evidence of the Saṃskāravidhi, a Pāśupata manual on the ‘Procedure for the Transformatory Rite’ attributed to a certain Gārgya (published in Acharya 2007), which in st. 54 seems to make a brief reference to the veneration of the manuscript of the Pañcārthavidyā, a term possibly denoting the Pāśupatasūtra (see Acharya 2007, pp. 42–43). Moreover, the Anteṣṭividhi, a further Pāśupata manual attributed to Gārgya concerning the ‘Procedures for the Last Rite’ (published in Acharya 2010), mentions a manuscript among the possessions of a sādhaka initiate that, at his death, must be donated to the ācārya who performed the funerary rite: ‘Pavitra, manuscript, disciple, and whatever [possessions] may be there, such as a staff, should be handed over successively to the teacher who has helped [the deceased] to be [united] with the Lord’; pavitraṃ pustakaṃ śiṣyaṃ kiñcid daṇḍādikaṃ kramāt | tad ācāryāya dātavyaṃ sanāthaṃ yena kalpitam || 44 (text and translation: Acharya 2010, p. 152). The extant body of literature of the Pāśupatas is unfortunately very meagre, and thus does not allow for many comparisons; in this context, Acharya’s discovery of a single undated palm-leaf manuscript (National Archives of Kathmandu 1–736, NGMPP B 32/12), containing four manuals on Pāśupata rites attributed to Gārgya (which are, besides the two already mentioned, the Pātravidhi, ‘Procedures on the Vessels’, published in Acharya 2012, and the Prāyaścittavidhi, ‘Procedures on Atonement’), has certainly cast more light on the understanding of Atimārga practices and their relationships with the Mantramārga.

796

The expression ‘Path of Mantras’ (Mantramārga) denotes a newer trend of esoteric Śaivism that did not exclude lay householders from the path of salvation, promising them not only the possibility of emancipation, but also the attainment of superhuman powers and the experience of ultramundane pleasures (see Sanderson 1988, p. 664). This trend gave rise to a number of diverse traditions that went on to form the complex religious and socio-historical phenomenon labelled as Śaiva Tantrism, with Śaivasiddhānta as its earliest and one of its most significant currents.

797

Examples taken from the Niśvāsakārikā, the Kulārṇavatantra, the Tridaśaḍāmarāpratyaṅgirādiviṣayakanānātantra, the Kālīkulakramasadbhāva, and the Mahārtamañjarīparimala are collected in Gerstmayr forth., pp. 18–20, which observes that the strong representation, in this survey, of texts belonging to the more extreme tantric traditions, such as the Kaula, may be explained exactly on account of their higher level of esotericism, which explains the repeated insistence on the topic of the secrecy of their teachings as a communicative strategy.

798

Netratantroddyota ad 8.59: kīlitā vyatyastavarṇapadāḥ, gurvāmnāyavivarjitāḥ śiṣyaiḥ svayam eva pustakād gṛhītāḥ.

799

See Tantrāloka 26.22–24: in the context of initiations, Abhinavagupta warns the guru not to reveal the nature of the mantras (māntraṃ rūpaṃ, 26.20) by writing them down (likhitvā). Since these cannot be transmitted ‘independently from the teacher’s consciousness’ (gurusaṃvidabhinna, 26.21), then (Tantrāloka 26.22): ‘The mantra that is written down, this is here postulated as deprived of energy; nor does its power shine forth from a manuscript on account of a linguistic convention’; lipisthitas tu yo mantro nirvīryaḥ so ’tra kalpitaḥ | saṃketabalato nāsya pustakāt prathate mahaḥ || 22. To support this statement Abhinavagupta mentions the incipit of a stanza from the Siddhayogīśvarīmata referring to the ‘vidyās learned from manuscripts’ (pustakādhītavidyās, 26.23).
Similar considerations regarding the inadequacy of mantras learned from books can also be tracked in the texts of different tantric traditions. For instance, some verses quoted in the Vimalaprabhā ad Laghukālacakratantra 5.168 and attributed to the mūlatantra state: ‘Those men who practice through mantras taken from books and not learned through the master’s tradition suffer a lot [even] in this life. / What is the master’s tradition if this is taken from a book? And by reciting from the books it is revealed as a provisional meaning. / And those who practice [the mantra] of the deities and so forth through mantras read in books, lacking the real essence of mantras [they] are trying to eat space’; pustakāt paṭhitair mantrais sampradāyavivarjitais | sādhanam ye prakurvanti te kliśyanti narās bhuvi || kiṃ nāma sampradāyaṃ tat pustakād yadi labhyate | tathā likhitapāṭhena neyārthena prakāśitam || ākāśaṃ bhoktum icchanti mantrasadbhāvavarjitāḥ | pustakāt paṭhitais mantrair devādīnāṃ ca sādhakās ||. These verses also occur in Vajragarbha’s Hevajraṭikā 6.160–62 (note that in Sferra forth. these correspond to 159cd-162ab).

800

These people, whose saṃskāras are related to Bhairava (bhairavīyasaṃskārāḥ), are the ‘innate [masters]’ (sāṃsiddhika, see Tantrāloka 26.23–24ab).

801

The verses from chapter 26 concerning the mantras written in books, along with the lines from the Siddhayogīśvarīmata, are also quoted by Jayaratha in his commentary on Tantrāloka 4.66, part of a passage in which Abhinavagupta deals with this same topic (see 4.65–68). On this point, Abhinavagupta specifies (see 4.66) that, according to the Siddhayogīśvarīmata, mantras learned from books have a doṣa, defect; as the commentary also explains ad loc., in cases where this defect—which consists of the absence of the ‘property of manifesting’ (sphuratva) their inner power—is missing, then nothing prevents one from learning mantras from books.

802

Commenting on stanzas 4.67–68, Jayaratha quotes a verse stating, ‘What has been told is hidden from them; therefore, it should not be written in a book, but it should be obtained from the mouth of the guru, and never in any other way’; kathitaṃ gopitaṃ tebhyas tasmāl lekhyaṃ na pustake | guruvaktrāt tu labhyeta anyathā na kadācana.

803

Sanderson 2009, p. 65 fn. 73, calls the manual of Somaśambhu ‘probably the most influential’ among the extant manuals on the Saiddhāntika rituals. The reasons given by Sanderson for the primacy of this work are that it impacted the works of later authors like Aghoraśiva, Jñānaśiva and Trilocanaśiva (for which see below); it is attested in a variety of manuscripts throughout the Indian subcontinent; and it was taken over in its entirety, just like a scripture, by the Agnipurāṇa, and in part by the Acintyaviśvasādākhya and Uttarakāmika (for the latter attestations, see Brunner-Lachaux 1998, pp. LVIII–LIX).

804

Particularly in the context of tantric scriptures, one cannot avoid noticing that the term vidyāpīṭha also denotes one of the two main divisions of the non-Śaivasiddhānta scriptures of the Mantramārga, the other one being the mantrapīṭha; more specifically, vidyāpīṭha is the denomination used for the category that collects the tantras dealing with the most extreme aspects of tantric rite (Sanderson 1988, pp. 668–90). Although it is clear, especially in later occurrences, that in the ritual context vidyāpīṭha is rather intended as the ‘power-seat’ or ‘throne’ on which knowledge is venerated in the form of a manuscript, it is also true that in the earliest, pre-twelfth century attestations the word vidyāpīṭha is merely used as a synonym for scriptures, namely of the manuscripts of scriptures. That this terminological use might also have emerged with reference to the vidyāpīṭha intended as a division of Śaiva tantric scriptures, later used synecdochically in order to denote a manuscript of scriptures, cannot conclusively be proven on the basis of the known evidence.

805

The Mṛgendra, along with the Mataṅga, both often referred to by Śaivasiddhānta authors, is ascribable to a relatively early date, certainly preceding the twelfth century, as can be argued on the basis of the existing commentarial literature on both works. Both the Mṛgendra and the Mataṅga are commented on by tenth-century authors in Kashmir: Nārāyaṇakaṇṭha, who composed the Mṛgendravṛtti, and his son Rāmakaṇṭha writing the Mataṅgavṛtti. The relative chronology of the works of early Kashmiri scholars proves that the latter predates (though not by much) Abhinavagupta, who demonstrably completed some of his works between the end of the tenth and the beginning of the eleventh century (Sanderson 2001, pp. 2–3 fn. 1). It has been argued (Goodall 1998, p. LVIII) that the greater sophistication of the Mṛgendra and the Mataṅga and their division into four ‘quarters’ (the ‘section on doctrine’, jñānapāda; ‘section on ritual’, kriyāpāda; ‘section on yoga’, yogapāda; and ‘section on observance’, caryāpāda) places them at a later stage in the composition of the earlier scriptures of the Śaivasiddhānta.

806

These texts are designated in Sanskrit sources as siddhāntas, siddhāntaśāstras, or siddhāntatantras (Sanderson 1992, p. 281), as well as by the nouns saṃhitā, ‘collection’, āgama, ‘scripture’, and jñāna, ‘knowledge’ (Goodall 1998, p. XXXVI). Several lists of 28 Siddhāntatantras are transmitted by the tantras themselves; eight of these lists are reported and analysed in Goodall 1998, pp. 402–403 and ff. In seven out of these eight cases, the Kāmikāgama is listed in first position. However, this fact does not imply that it should be regarded as earlier. As a consequence of its position in the lists, the expression ‘those beginning with the Kāmika’ (kāmikādi°), frequently attested in literature, has been used to designate the entire category of scriptures, as well as the first of their two subdivisions (these are the śivabheda, including ten scriptures, and the rudrabheda, covering the remaining eighteen; both notions will be evoked later on by the sources analysed in §§ 4.2 and 4.3).
An old approach that used to clearly distinguish the Śaiva tantric scriptures between ‘northern tantras’ and ‘southern Āgamas’ had originally understood the Śaivasiddhānta as a phenomenon exclusively connected with the southernmost areas of India. By contrast, recent developments have shown that the earliest Siddhānta scriptures exhibit nothing that necessarily characterises them as southern, and even that the Siddhānta ‘must once have been more nearly pan-Indian’ (Goodall 1998, p. XL fn. 91). A well documented survey of the different research approaches to Śaiva tantric literature in general can be found in Goodall and Isaacson 2011; see especially pp. 127–28 for this development in the study of the Siddhānta tradition.

807

This is the Niśvāsatattvasaṃhitā, whose earlier layers could be dated, as proposed in a preliminary report by Goodall and Isaacson (2007, p. 6), between the fifth and the sixth century, which makes it the oldest surviving tantric scripture. The text consists of five books, of which the earliest is the Mūlasūtra, to which the Uttarasūtra was subsequently added as a form of commentary; the text was then further expanded by the addition of the Nayasūtra and, later, the Guhyasūtra, while the book professing to be an introduction to the Niśvāsa, the Niśvāsamukha, is likely to have been composed last (Goodall 2015, pp. 20–22). The arguments for placing the composition of the Mūlasūtra in ca. 450–550 CE are the archaisms spotted in the fields of palaeography, iconography, terminology, theology, social religion, and intertextuality (Goodall 2015, p. 35). Goodall and Isaacson have further suggested, in light of the many connections between the Niśvāsa and Śaiva pre-tantric and tantric literature, to understand the Niśvāsa as a link between the Atimārga and the Mantramārga, to which it ultimately belongs (2011, pp. 125–27). The Niśvāsa, which at a later point entered the corpus of 28 Siddhāntatantras, gives what is probably the earliest list of canonical Siddhānta scriptures, where the Niśvāsa itself is mentioned; this passage, along with all other similar self-referential lists of scriptures traceable in the early tantras, may arguably be read as a later interpolation (Goodall 1998, pp. LXXI–LXXII).

808

Goodall 2004, p. XXVII.

809

Goodall 2004, p. XXIIff., Sanderson 2009, pp. 278–79. The question is complicated by the circumstance that the quotations from the Siddhāntatantras that are attested earlier, in works from the north, are often no longer traceable in the extant homonymous texts transmitted in the south, leaving the door open to the possibility that many of the texts that have been passed on to us are southern remakes of earlier authoritative texts now lost. For these intricate questions of textual transmission and relative chronology in the Śaiva Siddhāntatantras, I refer the reader to Goodall 2004, pp. XXIIff.
Goodall 1998, pp. XL–XLVII, selects and discusses three main criteria for establishing that a Siddhāntatantra is early, namely: a) if it is also transmitted in Nepalese and Kashmirian manuscripts; b) if early authors up to and including Aghoraśiva quote portions of texts that are still traceable in works with the same title; c) if there are early commentaries (again up to and including Aghoraśiva). The Kāmika seems to meet only one of these three criteria, unlike the Rauravasūtrasaṃgraha (edited by Bhatt 1961–72–88), the Svāyambhuvasūtrasaṃgraha (its vidyāpāda edited by Filliozat 1991), the Kiraṇa (the first six chapters edited by Goodall 1998), the Parākhya (Goodall 2004), the Niśvāsatattvasaṃhitā (Goodall 2015) and the Pārameśvara, which are therefore the only Siddhānta scriptures to be demonstrably early.

810

Sanderson 2009, p. 280 foll; this was initially supported by the composition of a subclass of texts called Pratiṣṭhātantras, giving the rules for the installation (mainly of Śiva in the form of a liṅga) and the construction of temples. Texts from this class of tantras still remain almost completely unpublished. Portions from Pratiṣṭhātantras like the Devyāmata, the Mohacūḍottara and the Mayasaṃgraha (with the commentary Bhāvacūḍāmaṇi), along with passages from Bṛhatkālottara, Kiraṇāgama and Piṅgalāmata, have been critically edited by Mills 2010.

811

For this interpretation, see Sanderson 2009, pp. 274–76. Here (p. 276 and fn. 656) Sanderson also points to a seventh-century grant by the Pallava king Parameśvaravarman I (ruled ca. 655–690 CE) as the earliest evidence of Mantramārga Śaiva officiants working as priests in Śaiva temples. Based on inscriptions as well as on the textual evidence provided by the Buddhist philosopher Dharmakīrti (ca. 600–660 CE), who attacks tantric Śaiva practices, Sanderson proposes that a corpus of Saiddhāntika scriptures must already have been extant by the beginning of the seventh century (Sanderson 2001, pp. 8–11).
Takashima 2005, p. 115, observes how the growth of Śaivism as a temple religion in the south also corresponds to important developments in temple architecture.

812

Goodall 1998, p. XL fn. 91.

813

Goodall 2004, p. XXX.

814

For the attestations of installations in Vedic and post-Vedic literature, see Einoo 2005.

815

One of the earliest medieval accounts of the installation of images is most likely the one available in chapter 60 of the Bṛhatsaṃhitā, by the early sixth-century author Varāhamihira (Hikita 2005, p. 146); main Purāṇic sources on the topic of the installation of divine images, according to the survey made by Hikita 2005, pp. 152–53, are: Garuḍapurāṇa 1.48.1–101; Agnipurāṇa 56–60, 61.2–7, 62.1–13, 66, 95–99; Viṣṇudharmottara 3.97–116; Matsyapurāṇa 264–267; Nṛsiṃhapurāṇa 56.19–45; Devīpurāṇa 32.39–46; Varāhapurāṇa 179–184; Bhaviṣyapurāṇa 2.2.19; 2.3.19; and Sāmbapurāṇa 32.

816

For the topic of installation in tantric Buddhism, see Bentor 1996 and Mori 2005; for more references specifically on the installation of manuscripts in tantric Buddhism, see below.

817

Takashima 2005, pp. 115–16; from p. 116 onwards, the author gives a detailed synopsis of the liṅgapratiṣṭhā as described in the Raurava, which he places in the tenth century.

818

These positions, with reference to the cult of images, are outlined by Colas 2004 in a study dealing mainly with the views of the Śaṅkara school of Vedānta and eleventh-century Nyāya tradition. In the case of Śaṅkara and the Advaita System, Colas observes (2004, p. 155) that, despite acknowledging the notion of the embodiment of the gods, they clearly deny the importance of images as such in worship. In his commentary on the Brahmasūtra, Śaṅkara resorts to the idea of superimposition (adhyāsa, āropaṇa) to explain the relationship between the gods and their icons (pratimās), meaning that the notion of god is imposed upon them on the conventional level of reality, although this does not correspond to a true connection on the absolute level, just like the idea of Brahman can be superimposed on a noun (see commentary on Brahmasūtra 3.3.9 in Colas 2004, p. 157). Images of the gods are therefore symbols of the gods and not their embodiments, although they are recognized as real. Colas compares this position to that of Udayana, eleventh-century author of the Nyāyakusumāñjali, who discusses the function of installations of the icons of the gods by stating that the deities (and not Īśvara, the supreme Lord) are themselves present in these images; the ritual installation merely brings about a self-reflection by the gods of their presence in the image, which makes them acquire ‘worshipfulness’ (Colas 2004, pp. 159–64).
Colas (2004, pp. 165–66) further expands the discussion by including into the discourse the position of the Vaikhanāsas, who are centred on temple cult and see images as an abode where the gods reside as long as the artifacts are worshipped, leaving them in case they do not receive regular worship or when the images are otherwise neglected. According to this perspective, the installation brings divine power into the image, which is seen as a living being even before the installation. Installations are thus a progressive vivification of the icons, showing that life was inherent in the image from the very beginning.

819

For instance, Brunner-Lachaux 1998, p. VI, observes that, following Somaśambhu’s opening verse on the liṅgapratiṣṭhā (4.1.1), the liṅga is Śiva and the pīṭha his power (śakti), so that the installation is their union through the mantras: this means, according to Brunner-Lachaux, that this notion stresses that the installation brings about the union of Śiva and his śakti, rather then the descent of Śiva into the liṅga.

820

The different steps in the installation of an image of the gods are described in Hikita 2005 according to Purāṇic accounts; for the ‘opening of the eyes’, see in particular pp. 191–94, where this is defined as a ‘crucial phase’, whose most important procedure consists of drawing the eyes of the deity with a stick and invoking him or her to transfer his presence into the image (see Matsyapurāṇa 264.33). On the day of the installation of the image, a ceremony for the god’s awakening is also performed, meant to wake up the deity after the preparatory phase (adhivāsana), and beg for his or her mercy (Hikita 2005, p. 194).

821

Takashima 2005, p. 121: this consists of the incision of lines on the surface of the liṅga.

822

Mori 2005, p. 217 and fn. 58. This essay deals with the ceremonies of installation as described in the Vajrāvalī, a treatise composed by Abhayākaragupta in the beginning of the twelfth century (Mori 2005, p. 236; possible dates for the life of Abhayākaragupta, who was connected with the monasteries of Nālandā and Vikramaśīla, are given as ca. 1065–1125 CE in Sferra 2015, p. 341, thus ascribing him to the earlier phase in the development of the Kālacakra school). This text, which according to Mori (2005, p. 199) is ‘The most significant and authentic source for the study of tantric Buddhist rituals in India’, addresses three main types of rites: the construction of maṇḍalas, the installations, and the consecration ceremonies. As for the installations, the work discusses, among others, the installation of the ‘icons and so on’ (pratimādi), where the expression ‘and so on’ (°ādi) includes buildings and artifacts that receive the same ritual treatment as the icons (Mori 2005, p. 201), namely monasteries (vihāra), caityas, manuscripts (pustaka), and rosaries (akṣasūtra). Following the preparatory phase, in which manuscripts or paintings are anointed by means of sprinkling their image reflected in a mirror, the proper installation of these objects is developed in eight phases, during which the identification between a divine being and the object to be installed is often stated (for the complete description, see Mori 2005, pp. 211–23). In the first phase of the ritual, for instance, Amitābha or Vairocana are visualized as emerging from the object to install; this is followed by the opening of the eyes which, as stated, is performed for the manuscript by anointing its image reflected in the mirror, and instead of the subsequent feeding of milk gruel (step no. 6), which is performed for the installation of a pratimā, in the case of the manuscript a ceremony is held in order to let the deities enter the object.
Mori observes (2005, p. 228) that the contents of the Vajrāvalī are almost identical with those of the Śrīkālacakrasupratiṣṭhopāyikavidhi ascribed to Kālacakrapāda the younger (eleventh century). The Sanskrit text and Tibetan versions of the Vajrāvalī have been published in Mori 2009.

823

In the works of the late Indian Buddhist school of the Kālacakra, manuscripts are mentioned as foci of installation rituals in Laghukālacakratantra 3.108, while at 3.111 they are referred to as supports for meditative practices; a consecration of manuscripts, in which mantras have been inscribed, is also mentioned in Vimalaprabhā ad 4.233. I thank Francesco Sferra for sharing with me his notes and materials on Kālacakra rituals.
A detailed study of Buddhist installations in the Indo-Tibetan milieu, mostly based on Tibetan sources, is offered by Bentor 1996. Manuscripts are also mentioned among the objects that undergo installation (rab gnas in Tibetan), along with images, stūpas and temples.

824

The Jayākhyasaṃhitā was certainly transmitted in the north before being attested in the south. This is proven by the earliest quotations from this text, found in the Spandapradīpikā of Bhāgavatotpala, a Kashmiri author of the tenth century who quotes from chapters 1, 10, 14, and 20 of the Jayākhyasaṃhitā (Rastelli 1999, pp. 26–27). The text is also transmitted in Nepalese palm-leaf manuscripts, a further sign of its relative antiquity (Goodall 2011, p. 229).

825

This reference is in Sātvatasaṃhitā 25.377, as in Leach 2012, p. 16 fn. 13.

826

As pointed out by Leach (2012, p. 29), however, the notion of the ‘triple gem’, often repeated in the early scholarship on the Pāñcarātra, finds scarce support in the texts of this tradition. He further observes that the texts explicitly attributing a higher status to the ratnatraya were composed in the south (Leach 2012, p. 41).

827

The Pāñcarātra belonging to this earlier phase are the Svāyambhuvapañcarātra, Devāmṛtrapañcarātra, Vāsudevakalpa of the Mahālakṣmīsaṃhitā, Jayottara, Jayākhya, Sātvata, and Pauṣkara; the Jayottara, Jayākhya, and the Sātvata are not likely to have been composed earlier than the ninth century (Sanderson 2009, p. 62). The Svāyambhuvapañcarātra and the Devāmṛtapāñcarātra have been published for the first time in Acharya 2015, after the discovery of old Nepalese manuscripts of early Pāñcarātra works.

828

Sanderson 2009, pp. 63–70.

829

Leach 2012 shows that all the texts of the ratnatraya contain interpolations from the south, which can, however, at times be spotted on account of their different doctrinal orientation or cultural presuppositions. See for instance Leach 2012, p. 115, observing that the earlier Saṃhitās use a different legitimizing strategy, inasmuch as they do not posit the Veda as the source of the authoritativeness of their teachings, as later Saṃhitās composed in the South would do. The earliest texts rather present the Pāñcarātra tradition as superior to the Vedas because it is more effective. Another feature distinguishing more recent, southern texts from earlier, northern ones is also the stricter attitude of the former towards the varṇa system, whereas the works of the ratnatraya have a relatively more open and socially inclusive policy (Leach 2012, pp. 117–19).

830

As remarked in TAK s.v. pavitrāropaṇa, early Śaiva sources have no account of this ceremony: the earliest extant description of a pavitra offering is possibly that of chapter 36 of the Kiraṇa, followed by the testimony of the Somaśambhupaddhati.

831

As in Sanderson 1988, p. 690. I refer the reader to Sanderson 2007 for an exhaustive study of the Kashmiri exegetical tradition.

832

Tantrāloka, 27.49: athavā pustakaṃ tādṛgrahaḥśāstrakramombhitam | suśuddhaṃ dīkṣitakṛtaṃ tatrāpy eṣa vidhiḥ smṛtaḥ || 49.

833

On this, see Sanderson 1986, p. 170 fn. 3.

834

Tantrāloka 6.2–3: sthānabhedas tridhā proktaḥ prāṇe dehe bahis tathā | prāṇaś ca pañcadhā dehe dvidhā bāhyāntaratvataḥ || 2 maṇḍalaṃ sthaṇḍilaṃ pātram akṣasūtraṃ sapustakam | liṅgaṃ tūraṃ paṭaḥ pustaṃ pratimā mūrtir eva ca || 3.

835

This was also the function of the prāyaścitta (literally ‘atonement’), with the difference that while this is performed when a transgression or a mistake takes place, the offering of pavitras is carried out at a fixed time every year: the former thus qualifies as an occasional rite (naimittika), while the second as an obligatory one (nitya). On these considerations, I refer the reader to Brunner-Lachaux 1968, pp. VI–XII, where it is also stated that, in spite of this classification, some works (like the Somaśambhupaddhati) still regard the pavitra offering as an occasional rite (see also TAK, s.v. pavitrāropaṇa).

836

Tantrāloka 28.133: aṣṭādhikaṃ śivasyoktaṃ citraratnaprapūritam | vidyāpīṭhākṣasūtrādau guruvac chivavat punaḥ || 133.

837

Tantrāloka 28.158cd: vidyāpīṭhe tu khaśarāḥ pratimāliṅgapīṭhagam || 158.

838

On the claims that Somaśambhu might have descended from a Kashmiri lineage, see Sanderson 2007, pp. 245–47.

839

Pantulu-Rao 1948, SII 10.395. In this epigraph, the explicit mention of Somaśambhu as the first successor of Sadbhāvaśambhu is noteworthy, who according to the same record was the founder of the monastery. With reference to Somaśambhu, the text reads (ll. 64–661s), ‘who, out of compassion, composed an unparalleled ritual manual, as a bridge over the ocean of all Scriptures’ (ll. 65–66s1, sakalāgamasindhusetuṃ yaḥ paddhatiṃ karuṇa[L66s1]yā apratimāṃ babandha).

840

Sanderson 2011, p. 5. This dating is based on the information provided by the Somaśambhupaddhati manuscript of the University Library of Cambridge, Add. 1406, fol. 74r[LL4–5], according to which the work was completed ‘for the use of the excellent Karṇaprakāśa’ in the first decade of his rulership; Sanderson has proposed to identify this sovereign with the Kalacuri king Yaśaḥkarṇa (Sanderson 2007, p. 421 fn. 640); the year of his reign is indicated in the colophon by the expression sasamasaṃvatsare, which Sanderson had first interpreted as a corruption of daśama° (Sanderson 2007, p. 421 fn. 640), meaning thus ‘in the tenth year’, while having more recently opted for reading it as saptama°, ‘in the seventh year’ (Sanderson 2011, p. 5).

841

As for the subdivision of the Śaiva tantric traditions, according to a medieval taxonomy, into ‘right’ (dakṣiṇa) and ‘left’ (vāma) currents—corresponding to the more orthodox Śaivasiddhānta, on the one hand, and the more extreme Trika, Kaula, and other non-Saiddhāntika sects on the other—see Sanderson 1995, p. 18.

842

Brunner-Lachaux 1968, p. II fn. 1, corrects her first impression, according to which this manual could have been used both for public and for private rituals, remarking that it was primarily conceived for the private ritual, and the portions that seem to be addressed to a more public domain are rather those in which the author has relied too strongly on the scriptures dealing with public ritual.
However, the ritual pavitraropaṇas, along with the prayaścittas, are not performed in the secret space of a private house, nor in that of a temple, but rather in provisionary pavilions (maṇḍapa) erected in the open space annexed to a house or a temple, depending on the private or public nature of the performance (Brunner-Lachaux 1968, p. V).

843

Somaśambhupaddhati 1.7.1: atha vidyāṃ samabhyarcya puṣpadhūpasragādibhiḥ | samyak saṃpūjayed bhaktyā guroś caraṇapaṅkaje || 1.

844

Somaśambhupaddhati 1.3.102: samādhinā tapodhyānadhāraṇābhāvanājapaiḥ | nijamūrtau guror mūrtau pustake salile nale || 102.

845

Brunner-Lachaux 1963, p. 226.

846

As shown by Goodall 1998, pp. XIII–XVII, fn. 24, the colophon to the Gotrasantati of Aghoraśiva’s Kriyākramadyotikā states that the work was completed in śaka year 1080, corresponding to 1157–58 CE.

847

Kriyākramadyotikā, 1.54: tadanu devasya paścimadigbhāge oṃ hāṃ yogapīṭhāya namaḥ | oṃ hāṃ hauṃ vidyāpīṭhāya namaḥ iti vidyāpīṭhaṃ sampūjya | sakalājñānahaṃ viśvavijñānapradam īśvaram | vidyāpīṭhastham ādṛtya […] || 54.

848

This is dealt with in section 1 of Brunner-Lachaux 1968, pp. 2–193.

849

Somaśambhupaddhati 2.1.26: nijamūrtau gaṇādhīśe gurāv aṅgeṣu pustake | syād ekaikaṃ tathā dvāradikpālakalaśādiṣu || 26.

850

Somaśambhupaddhati 2.1.83cd–84ab: pūjite puṣpadhūpādyair dattvā siddhāntapustake || 83 guroḥ pādāntikaṃ gatvā bhaktyā dadyāt pavitrakam |.

851

Somaśambhupaddhati 2.1.117ab: siddhāntapustake dadyāt sapraṇāmaṃ pavitrakam.

852

This is the opinion of Brunner-Lachaux 1968, p. XII, who surmises the existence of an early vasantapūjā from which the damana offering could have derived. On the damanotsava see also Goodall 2015.

853

See section 2 of Brunner-Lachaux 1968, pp. 196–220.

854

The only chronology that one can reconstruct for this author is a relative one, since he cites dated works, of which the Siddhāntasāra by Bhoja (first half of the eleventh century) and the Kriyākāṇḍakramāvalī (1048–49 CE) are the earliest; see Sanderson 2014, pp. 23–24 fn.84.

855

See the commentary on stanza 65 of the text printed by Brunner-Lachaux 1968, in Appendix II, p. 363.

856

Trilocanaśiva was a pupil both of Aghoraśiva and Jñānaśiva; the connection between these authors and the works authored by Trilocanaśiva are discussed in Goodall 2000, in particular pp. 208–14.
Brunner-Lachaux 1998, p. XLIX, observes that Trilocanaśiva presents himself as attached to the Āmardakāśrama (āmardāśramadeśikānvayabhava[tri]netraśambhuḥ, see fn. 58), the first among the Śaiva maṭhas, as he does in the Siddhāntasārāvali and the Prāyaścittasamuccaya. The very corrupt state of the transmission of the Somaśambhupaddhativyākhyā causes Brunner-Lachaux to admit that (1998, p. LI) ‘si des manuscrits plus corrects venaient à être découverts, il faudrait l'éditer pour contribuer à la connaissance du śivaisme des environs du XIIIème siècle, antérieur à l'intervention des auteurs tamouls’. Brunner-Lachaux also devotes the second appendix of the fourth volume (1998) of the Somaśambhupaddhati edition to Trilocanaśiva.
The Prāyaścittasamuccaya attributed to Trilocanaśiva has recently been critically edited and translated by Sathyanarayanan (2015), with an introduction by Goodall.

857

Somaśambhupaddhativyākhyā, p. 76: atha vidyāgurupūjā | athety ekena vidyāṃ vidyābhiyuktam [em.; abhiyutaṃ Cod.] | tad uktaṃ śrīmanmṛgendre | vidyāpīṭhe ’pi matvaivam [Mṛg; mātraivam Cod.] ekoccāreṇa pūjayet | sraggandhadūpanaivedyaiḥ samāsarucir īśvaram | iti.

858

The whole passage reads (Somaśambhupaddhativyākhyā p. 63): pustake vidyāpīṭhe | tad uktam | vidyāpīṭhe’pi matvaivam ekoccāreṇa pūjayet | iti | vidyāpīṭhaṃ koṭimātraṃ pūjayed vā svasaṃhitām [vāsya saṃhitāṃ Cod.] | iti.

859

See Goodall 2000, p. 212 fn. 22.

860

Jñānaratnāvalī, p. 152.

861

Jñānaratnāvalī, p. 26: ‘The worship of the sun, the offering to the self, the liṅga, the fire, the teacher, and the manuscript: thus is the worship of Śiva always called “six-based”’; sūryopasthānam ātmejyāṃ liṅgāgnigurupustakam | iti nityam samākhyātaṃ ṣaḍādhāraṃ śivārcanam || iti. The text of this quotation, which Jñānaśiva mentions without attribution, is closely followed by a reference to the worship of the vidyāpīṭha (see following footnote).

862

See Jñānaratnāvalī, p. 26: ‘The knowledge [obtained] from the worship of the vidyāpīṭha, this is all [obtained] from the worship of the teacher’; vidyāpīṭhārcanāj jñānaṃ tat sarvaṃ gurupūjanāt. See also Jñānaratnāvalī, p. 272: ‘The leftovers of the offerings of the teacher, of the fire and the vidyāpīṭha, of the Gaṇas, the elephants, and the yogins, of the Mothers, the Yakṣas, and the Ambikas, [are] equally [addressed] to Śiva’; gurvagnividyāpīṭhānāṃ gaṇanāgendrayoginām | mātryakṣākāmbikādīnāṃ nirmālyaṃ ca śive yathā ||.

863

The first occurrence is at p. 154, while for the second one see Jñānaratnāvalī, p. 472: ‘Alternatively one should worship a vidyāpīṭha having the dimensions of a storehouse’; vidyāpīṭhaṃ kośamātraṃ pūjayed vā svasaṃhitām. The variant reading kośamātraṃ instead of koṭimātram does not make sense, and it is likely to have developed just from a corruption of the latter; the preceding stanza, dealing with the vidyāpūjā, is unfortunately broken in the manuscript to which I had access.

864

Nāradīyasaṃhitā, 23.46cd–47: śālibhiḥ pīṭhikāṃ kṛtvā pūrvaval lakṣaṇānvitām || 46 pustakaṃ vāsasā ācchādya tatra sattvaṃ yajet tataḥ | mūlamantreṇa gandhādyair ācāryaḥ prāṅmukho dvija || 47.

865

The version that has come down to us is divided into a pūrvabhāga (‘first portion’) and an uttarabhāga (‘second portion’); these denominations can be merged with the general title of the work, the two sections being hence called Pūrvakāmikāgama/Pūrvakāmika and Uttarakāmikāgama/Uttarakāmika. Brunner-Lachaux 1980–81, p. 54 fn. 12, observes that the connection between the two parts is clear when one looks at the final verses of the Pūrvakāmika and the beginning of the Uttarakāmika although, as she further notes, the latter seems to be a rather heterogeneous collection, containing various elements that are sometimes even in contradiction with the Pūrvakāmika. The contents of the Pūrvakāmika have been summed up in Bhatt and Dagens 1977.

866

Sanderson 2009, p. 279 fn. 663, where he attributes this information to a lecture given by Goodall in the Early Tantra Workshop held in 2008 in Kathmandu.

867

See Uttarakāmika 18.73cd: ‘Having offered a pavitra to the manuscript of the Siddhānta scriptures and to one’s own teacher’; siddhāntapustake datvā svagurau ca pavitrakam || 73. Later on in the same chapter the text instructs a student again to offer a pavitra to the teacher and the manuscript, after having worshipped Śiva (see Uttarakāmika 18.105cd–106a: devaṃ sampūjya gurave saiddhānte pustake ’pi ca || 105 datvā pavitraṃ […]).

868

Uttarakāmika 67.2: ‘One should arrange a place for knowledge (vidyāsthāna) in a palace and so on, in the four cardinal directions [or] in correspondence with the respective intermediate points, as well as in a place that is [well] divided and taught by [other] devotees (2)’; prāsādādau caturdikṣu tadvidikṣv antarālake | bhaktoktasthānake vāpi vidyāsthānaṃ prakalpayet || 2.

869

Uttarakāmika 67.5–6: ‘Only the teacher or the pupil (st. 7) should write with beautiful letters [on a support] which is a construction of birchbark sheets, or śrītāḍī leaves, or palm leaves, [on a support] of gold or other [metals] (5) / As well as of stones or wood’; bhūrjatvakkulasaṃbhūtaṃ śrītāḍīdalam eva vā | tālasaṃbhūtapatraṃ vā suvarṇādibhir vinirmitam || 5 śailadārukṛtaṃ vāpi lekhayed akṣaraiḥ śubhaiḥ |[…] deśikaḥ śiṣya eva vā […] || 7.

870

Uttarakāmika 67.8: paśunā lekhayen naitac chivajñānaṃ prayatnataḥ | na samīpe paśūnāṃ tu kuryād adhyayanaṃ budhaḥ || 8.
Although this statement seems to contrast the open, non-sectarian approach observed in the Śivadharmottara and the Devīpurāṇa, we must remember here that Saiddhāntika initiation was available for candidates regardless of castes, although social differences were also kept in the community of initiates, as shown by Sanderson 2009, p. 284ff. Sanderson notes that the appointed ācāryas could only teach his peers or inferiors. Therefore, a Brahmin could teach initiates from all four castes, while a Kṣatriya was supposed to teach only other Kṣatriyas, Vaiśyas and Śūdras, and so on (Sanderson 2009, p. 285). As regards the Kāmikāgma, Sanderson observes that the text was among those which even allowed to initiate untouchables, although by means of a lower-level initiation (2009, p. 288 and fn. 688). The opening of the initiation to the four castes started by the Siddhānta is, in Sanderson’s view, a significant contribution to social integration, a sphere in which Śaivism played an important role in the early Middle Ages.

871

Uttarakāmika 67.13–17: nāśuddhaṃ lekhayed vidvān yathālikhitapāṭhakaiḥ | śivajñānasya kālena praṇaṣṭasya pramādataḥ || 13 ūnātiriktavarṇasya likhitasya pramādataḥ | pramādīkṛtapāṭhasya nāśitasyālpabuddhibhiḥ || 14 alpajñānasamopetair ācāryaiḥ śodhitasya ca | vyarthaiḥ padair upetasya punaruktasya cārthataḥ || 15 pūrvottaraviruddhasya svasiddhāntavirodhataḥ | chandasātīva naṣṭasya śabdārtharahitasya ca || 16 ityevamādibhir doṣair upetasya kvacit kvacit | yaḥ karoti pumān samyak saṃskāraṃ deśikaḥ sudhīḥ || 17.

872

Uttarakāmika 67.18–21: śivatatvārthavidvān yaḥ sa vidyāpārameśvaraḥ [Cod.; vidyāḥ pārameśvarāḥ ed.] | adhyāpayec chanaiś śiṣyān śivabhaktān prabodhayet || 18 śivavidyānusāreṇa vidyādānaṃ tad ucyate | saṃskṛtair drāmiḍair vākyair deśabhāṣāprakārakaiḥ || 19 prākṛtaprabhavaiḥ śabdaiḥ viśuddhaiḥ saṃskṛtair api | atra laukikaśabdaiś ca yaś śiṣyam anurūpataḥ || 20 deśabhāṣādyupāyaiś ca tathābhūtāgamair api | pradeśavartibhis sarvadeśasthaṃ bodhayed yathā || 21.

873

Uttarakāmika 67.1: ‘I will concisely explain the installation of the throne of knowledge. And this knowledge is said [to be] twofold: the one in Sanskrit [and] that on different topics. (1)’; vidyāpīṭhapratiṣṭhāṃ tu pravakṣyāmi samāsataḥ | sā ca vidyā dvidhā proktā saṃskṛtānyārthaketi ca || 1.

874

Uttarakāmika 76.9: ‘He should have [somebody] write this [śivajñāna] using beautiful letters originating from different regions; by [marking] an upright line he should not allow to write in the margins of the leaf. (9)’; nānādeśasamudbhūtair akṣaraiḥ kāntisaṃyutaiḥ | lekhayed ṛjupaṅktyā taṃ patraprānte na lekhayet || 9.

875

Uttarakāmika 67.26–30ab: ‘How many letters may be in the manuscript of the Śaiva knowledge, so many thousands of yugas the donor [will dwell] in the town of Śiva. (26) / A wise man, having rescued ten ancestors and ten members of the family, the mothers, fathers and legitimate wives, and having reached Heaven together with them, (27) / Having placed all of them in Heaven, he will himself reach the town of Śiva. The one who will recite one stanza of the Śaiva knowledge, or even half of that (28) / [Who] will read it, as well as meditate upon it, will write it or make [somebody] write it, and will listen very concentrated and reflect upon its meaning, (29) / Who will make the others listen to it, great is the fruit of his merits!’; yāvadakṣarasaṃkhyāḥ syuḥ śivajñānasya pustake | tāvadyugasahasrāṇi dātā śivapure naraḥ || 26 daśa pūrvān samuddhṛtya daśa vaṃśyāṃś ca buddhimān | mātṝḥ pitṝn dharmapatnīṃ ca tair svargaṃ samavāpya ca || 27 svarge saṃsthāpya tān sarvān svayaṃ śivapuraṃ vrajet | api ślokaṃ tadardhaṃ vā śivajñānasya yaḥ paṭhet || 28 vācayec cintayed vāpi likhed vā lekhayet tu vā | śṛṇuyād ekacittas tu tadarthaṃ ca vicārayet || 29 anyebhyaḥ śrāvayed yas tu tasya puṇyaphalaṃ mahat |.

876

Uttarakāmika 67.30cd–32: śivajñānābhiyuktaṃ ca [em.; śivajñānābhiyuktasya ed.] bhojanācchādanādibhiḥ || 30 ā samāptes tu saṃrakṣed vidyādānaphalaṃ labhet | mūlyena kārayed vātha tad eva phalam aśnute || 31 yasya rāṣṭre śivajñānavyākhyānaṃ vartate dvijāḥ | sa rājā vardhate rāṣṭraṃ sa rājādhipa ūrjitaḥ || 32.

877

Uttarakāmika 67.39cd: evaṃ vidyāprabhāva<ḥ> syāt sthāpanaṃ vakṣyate ’dhunā || 39.

878

Starting with Vedic literature on ritual, the word sthaṇḍila denotes the sacrificial ground in the domestic (gṛhya) rites; alternative words are agnyāyatanadeśa, agnyāyatana, and agnyālaya (see Einoo 2005, p. 33 and fn. 72); according to some of the Gṛhyasūtras, ritual works on domestic Vedic rites, a specific mark of the sthaṇḍila is the presence of lines (called lakṣaṇa or lekhas) drawn on the ground (Einoo 2005, pp. 33–34).

879

Uttarakāmika 67.45cd: śivabhede śivaḥ pūjyo rudrabhede sa eva hi || 45.

880

The vidyeśa or vidyeśvara are the eight powers of Śiva acting directly in the impure world, namely Ananta, Sūkṣma, Śivottama, Ekanetra, Ekarudra, Trimūrti, Śrīkaṇṭha, and Śikhaṇḍin (Takashima 2005, p. 118 fn. 15).

881

Acintyaviśvasādākhya 65.2: prāsāde vā maṭhe vāpi śuddhadeśe gṛhe ’pi vā | bhaktoktasthānake vāpi sarvatīrthāntarālake || 2.

882

Acintyaviśvasādākhya 65.38: ‘And the teacher will worship the Śaiva knowledge on another seat that has been taught to be in accordance with the rule. [He] will sprinkle with the five products of the cow the wisdom designated as Śaiva knowledge’; vidhyuktāsanake cānye śivajñānaṃ yajed guruḥ | prokṣayet pañcagavyena śivajñānākhyāvidyātām || 38.

883

Pauṣkarasaṃhitā 41.79–80cd: pariśuddhān samuccitya pañcarātrīyasaṃcayān | sadāgamādikān kṛtsnān vedavedāṅgasaṃyutān || 79 smṛtismṛtyantaropetān itihāsasamanvitān | ānvīkṣakībhir vidyābhis saśabdākhyābhiḥ saṃvṛtān |.

884

Pauṣkarasaṃhitā 41.80ef–81ab: nadīnāgarakair (sic!) varṇair vividhān varṇasaṃcayān | pūrayitvā vinikṣipya sapuṭeṣv (sic!) akṣayeṣu ca || 80 grathayitvā sitādyena sūtreṇa sudṛḍhena tu.

885

Pauṣkarasaṃhitā 41.81cd–82: susthire suprasiddhe ca nṛpanāgarasevite || 81 dvijoṣitebhyaḥ saṃkīrṇe satsamūhena pālite | samīpe ’śmamayaveśma lohayantrasamanvitam || 82.

886

Pauṣkarasaṃhitā 41.90: uktvaivam arcayed bhūyo vedavedāntavigraham | sadāgamādyair bhagavatpurāṇādyair alaṅkṛtam || 90.

887

Pauṣkarasaṃhitā 41.94: kṛtvā tacchāsanaṃ dadyāj jñānakośānupālane | tasmin devagṛhe paścād brahmacārī [em.; brahmacārīs ed.] tu pāṭhayet || 94.

888

Hazra 1940, p. 136.

889

Hazra 1940, p. 137.

890

See Sanderson in Brunner-Lachaux 1998, p. LIX fn. 81, and Rastelli 2007.

891

Goodall 2011, p. 247. In footnote 112 on the same page the author further stresses the similarities existing between Śivadharmottara 10 and Jayākhyasaṃhitā 12, acknowledging Marion Rastelli for this information.

892

See Rastelli 2007, p. 194 and pp. 227–29. Note that Rastelli detects several sources for Agnipurāṇa 21–70, concluding (see pp. 225–29) that the first section (22–30) is based on the Nāradīyasaṃhitā, the second one (31–38) is influenced by the Viṣṇudharma, while the last one (39–70), ascribed to Hayagrīva, derives from the Hayaśīrṣapāñcarātra, ‘although the source of the AP [scil. Agnipurāṇa] may not necessarily have been identical with the present version of the text’ (Rastelli 2007, p. 229).

893

See Smith 1975.

894

See Hazra 1940, p. 134 and 137. Ballālasena confirms that more than one Agnipurāṇa must have existed since relatively early times. In his introduction to the Dānasāgara, he mentions the Āgneyapurāṇa twice, once among the sources he accepts as authoritative (st. 11), and a second time among those he does not accept as such (st. 63) on account of their connections with unorthodox doctrines. In the latter case, the Āgneyapurāṇa is mentioned alongside other Purāṇas, among which the Brahmapurāṇa and the Viṣṇupurāṇa are collectively described in stanza 63 as ‘other’ (aparam) in order to be distinguished from homonymous Mahāpurāṇas whose authority was accepted. For the text and translation of the relevant stanzas from the Dānasāgara, see chapter 3.

895

Agnipurāṇa 1.63.9cd: pustakānāṃ pratiṣṭhāṃ ca vakṣye likhanatadvidhiṃ || 9.

896

Agnipurāṇa 1.63.10: svastike maṇḍale abhyarcya śarayantrāsane sthitam | lekhyaṃ ca likhitaṃ pustaṃ guruṃ vidyāṃ hariṃ yajet || 10.

897

Agnipurāṇa 1.63.11cd–12: ‘[…] Having copied five stanzas (11) / In nāgarī script, with silver ink (?) and a golden pen’; […] likhitvā ślokapañcakaṃ || 11 †raupyasthamasyā† haimyā ca lekhanyā nāgarākṣaraṃ. For a discussion of the variant reading raupyasthamasyā, see above fn. 262.

898

Agnipurāṇa 1.63.13: guruṃ vidyāṃ hariṃ prārcya purāṇādi likhen naraḥ. Note that at 1.63.21 the text prescribes the donation of ‘The Pāñcarātra, the Purāṇas, and the epics’: pañcarātraṃ purāṇāni bhāratāni dadan naraḥ.

899

This was the throne whose use Somaśambhu prescribed for the purification and installation of the liṅga (see Brunner-Lachaux 1998, pp. 198–99 for the procedures).

900

Agnipurāṇa 1.63.13–21: guruṃ vidyāṃ hariṃ prārcya purāṇādi likhen naraḥ | pūrvavan maṇḍalādye ca aiśānyāṃ bhadrapīṭhake || 13 darpaṇe pustakaṃ dṛṣṭvā secayet pūrvvavad ghaṭaiḥ | netronmīlanakaṃ kṛtvā śayyāyāṃ tu nyasen naraḥ || 14 nyaset tu pauruṣaṃ sūktaṃ devādyaṃ tatra pustake | kṛtvā sajīvīkaraṇaṃ prārcya hutvā caruṃ tataḥ || 15 samprāśya dakṣiṇābhis tu gurvādīn bhojayed dvijān | rathena hastinā vāpi bhrāmayet pustakaṃ naraiḥ || 16 gṛhe devālayādau tu pustakaṃ sthāpya pūjayet | vastrādiveṣṭitaṃ pāṭhād ādāv ante samarcayet || 17 jagacchāntiṃ cāvadhārya pustakaṃ vācayen naraḥ | adhyāyam ekaṃ kumbhādbhir yajamānādi secayet || 18 dvijāya pustakaṃ datvā phalasyānto na vidyate | trīṇy āhur atidānāni gāvaḥ pṛthvīṃ sarasvatī || 19 vidyādānaphalaṃ datvā masyantaṃ patrasaṃcayam | yāvat tu patrasaṅkhyānam akṣarāṇāṃ tathā ’nagha || 20 tāvadvarṣasahasrāṇi viṣṇuloke mahīyate | pañcarātraṃ purāṇāni bhāratāni dadan naraḥ | kulaikaviṃśam uddhṛtya pare tattve tu līyate || 21.

901

Goodall 2004, p. XXVI.

902

For the Pāñcarātra, see Leach 2012, p. 114ff., borrowing the notion of ‘Vedicization’ from Wezler 2004 in order to describe a radical shift towards the sphere of Vedic ritual and belief systems happening in the later works of the South. The situation of Śaivism in early modern South India has been neatly reconstructed in Fisher 2013, with special reference to the life and work of the seventeenth-century author Nīlakaṇṭha Dīkṣita.

903

On his date, see Mahalinga Shastri 1928 and 1929, giving the patrons of Appayya Dīkṣita as Cinna Timba, a Vijayanagara’s general in the South; Cinna Bomma of Vellore (ca. 1549–1582 CE), supporting much of his composition of Śaiva works; and Veṅkapati, reigning from Penukonda since 1585. Appayya is also mentioned in epigraphs of the time, ranging from 1580 to 1595 CE (see Bronner 2015), dealing with Appayya’s autobiographical statements and his biographical accounts from the sixteenth century onwards.

904

This claim is made both in the lines he himself inscribed on the walls of the Kālakaṇṭheśvara temple and in the colophons of some of his texts: on this see Bronner 2016, who also remarks on the importance of his choice to only write in Sanskrit and not in the vernaculars.

905

See McCrea 2016 concerning Appayya Dīkṣita’s systematic appropriation, rewriting, and updating of Śrīkaṇṭha’s work.

906

Duquette 2015 analyzes the discrepancies between Appayya’s view and that of the Śaiva Saiddhāntikas on topics such as Śiva’s causality and the theory of transformation (pariṇāmavāda).

907

Appayya Dīkṣita’s sphere of activity is described in Bronner 2015, pp. 11–12.

908

McCrea also notes that Appayya Dīkṣita only engaged with disciplines and philosophical traditions that enjoyed popularity in sixteenth-century Tamil Nadu, like Mīmāṃsā, poetics, and Vedānta, but remarkably neglected Nyāya and Dharmaśāstra (McCrea 2016, fn. 2).

909

As Brunner-Lachaux reports (1969, p. 251 fn. 1), Bhatt has pointed out that parts of the Kriyāsāra are identical with the Śivārcanācandrikā, specifically with pp. 81–129 of the printed edition. The editor of the Kriyāsāra assigns Nīlakaṇṭha to a date earlier than 1530 CE, although Brunner-Lachaux maintains that the only external confirmation for a date of the Kriyāsāra is attested in 1611 CE, when the work is quoted in the Nirṇayasindhu. The French scholar thus leaves the question unanswered as to whether Appayya Dīkṣita had copied from Nīlakaṇṭha or the other way around, admitting that only a thorough comparative study of the two works could have illuminated the question.
A convincing point in favour of dating the composition of the Kriyāsāra earlier than the Śivārcanācandrikā, and thus confirming the hypothesis of the editor of the Kriyāsāra, has recently been made by Jonathan Duquette, who has kindly shared his findings with me in a letter dated to 23/12/2015. According to Duquette, a key argument for the relative and absolute dating of the Kriyāsāra is a quotation from the text that he traced in Mallaṇārya’s Vīraśaivāmṛtamahāpurāṇa 7.2.27: krīyāsāre || anekajanmaśuddhānāṃ śrautasmārtānuvartinām | narāṇāṃ kṣīṇapāpānāṃ śivabhaktiḥ prajāyate || 102. Mallaṇārya lived under the reign of Kṛṣṇadevarāya, for whose rulership Stein 2008, p. 27, gives the timespan 1509–29 CE; since Appayya was born in 1520 CE, this would suggest that it was in fact him who borrowed from the Kriyāsāra.

910

Brunner-Lachaux 1969, p. 251 fn. 1.

911

See Stein 2008, p. 18ff.

912

Fleet 1898–99, EI 5.25E.

913

Kriyāsāra, vol. 2 p. 305 (=Śivārcanācandrikā, p. 203): śivajñānāni kāmikādayo mahādivyāgamāḥ [divyāgamāḥ Śivārcanācandrikā]. In the following lines I will make reference to the texts of both works. Note that due to the defective status of the current edition of the Śivārcanācandrikā, some lines are missing that can easily be integrated on account of the parallel with the Kriyāsāra.

914

Kriyāsāra, vol. 2 pp. 305–306 (=Śivārcanācandrikā, pp. 203–204): ‘Among these the Kāmika is divided into three parts, [and] is endowed with the highest number (parārdha = 100,000 billions) of stanzas. The Yogaja, divided into five parts, in 100,000 stanzas. [The Ajita, divided into four parts, in one hundred thousand stanzas. The Dīpta, divided into 9 parts, in one hundred thousand stanzas.] The Sūkṣma, an undivided scripture, in 1000 million of stanzas. The Sahasra, divided into ten parts, in a hundred billions of stanzas. The Aṃśumat, divided into 12 parts, in 500,000 stanzas. The Suprabheda, an undivided scripture, in thirty million of stanzas. [The Vijaya, divided into 8 parts, in thirty million of stanzas]. The Anala, an undivided scripture, in 36,000 stanzas. The Vīratantra, divided into 12 parts, in 100,000 stanzas. [The Cintyaja, divided into six parts, in 100,000 stanzas. The Kāraṇa, divided into 7 parts, in 10 million stanzas. The Niśvāsa, divided into 8 parts, in ten millions of stanzas. The Svāyambhuva, divided into three parts, possessing 4 millions of stanzas]. The Rauravāgama, divided into six parts, in 1000 million of stanzas. The Makuṭa, divided into two parts, in 100,000 stanzas. The Vimala, divided into 16 parts, in 100,000 stanzas. The Candrajña, divided into 14 parts, in 30 million of stanzas. [The Bimba, divided into 15 parts, in one hundred thousand stanzas.] The Prodgīta, divided into 16 parts, in 300,000 stanzas. The Lalita, divided into ten parts, in 8000 stanzas. The Siddha, divided into four parts, in 5 million of stanzas. The Santāna, divided in seven parts, in 6 thousand stanzas. The Śarvokta, divided into five parts, in 200,000 stanzas. The Pārameśvara, divided into seven parts, in 1,200,000 stanzas. The Kiraṇa, divided into nine parts, in 50 million of stanzas. The Vātula, divided into 12 parts, in 100,000 stanzas. Such are the divine scriptures, divided into 28 parts’; tatra kāmikaṃ tribhedaṃ parārdhagrantham | yogajaṃ pañcabhedaṃ lakṣagrantham | ajitaṃ caturbhedaṃ lakṣagrantham | dīptaṃ navabhedaṃ lakṣagrantham [ajitaṃ… lakṣagrantham om. Śivārcanācandrikā] | sūkṣmam ekatantraṃ padmagrantham | sahasraṃ daśabhedaṃ śaṅkhagrantham | aṃśumad dvādaśabhedaṃ pañcalakṣagrantham | suprabhedam ekatantraṃ trikoṭigrantham | vijayam aṣṭabhedaṃ trikoṭigrantham [vijayam … trikoṭigrantham om. Śivārcanācandrikā] | analam ekatantraṃ triṃśatsahasragrantham | vīratantraṃ dvādaśabhedaṃ lakṣagrantham | cintyajaṃ ṣaḍbhedhaṃ [em.; ṣaḍvidhaṃ em.] lakṣagrantham | kāraṇaṃ saptabhedaṃ koṭigrantham | niśvāsam aṣṭabhedaṃ koṭigrantham | svāyambhuvaṃ tribhedaṃ sārdhakoṭigrantham [cintyajaṃ … sārdhakoṭigrantham om. Śivārcanācandrikā] | rauravaṃ ṣaḍbhedam aṣṭārbudagrantham | makuṭaṃ dvibhedaṃ lakṣagrantham | vimalaṃ ṣoḍaśabhedaṃ trilakṣagrantham | candrajñānaṃ caturdaśabhedaṃ trikoṭigrantham | bimbaṃ pañcadaśabhedaṃ lakṣagrantham [bimbaṃ … lakṣagrantham om. Śivārcanācandrikā] | prodgītaṃ ṣoḍaśabhedaṃ trilakṣagrantham | lalitaṃ daśabhedaviśiṣṭam aṣṭasahasragrantham | siddhaṃ caturbhedaṃ sārdhakoṭigrantham | santānaṃ saptabhedaṃ ṣaṭsahasragrantham | śarvoktaṃ pañcabhedaṃ dvilakṣagrantham | pārameśvaraṃ saptabhedaṃ dvādaśalakṣagrantham | kiraṇaṃ navabhedaṃ pañcakoṭigrantham | vātulaṃ dvādaśabhedaṃ lakṣagrantham | evam aṣṭāviṃśatibhedā divyāgamāḥ.
Note that the text of the Śivārcanācandrikā to which I had access is defective, since it reports a list of only 22 tantras, which contrasts with the final clause of the section where those are still declared to be 28. The scriptures mentioned in the Śivārcanācandrikā are: 1. Kāmika; 2. Yogaja; 3. Sūkṣma; 4. Sahasra; 5. Aṃśumat; 6. Suprabheda; 7. Vijaya; 8. Niśvāsa; 9. Svāyambhuva; 10. Anala; 11. Vīratantra; 12. Raurava; 13. Makuṭa; 14. Vimala; 15. Prodgīta; 16. Lalita; 17. Siddha; 18. Santāna; 19. Śarvokta; 20. Pārameśvara; 21. Kiraṇa; 22 Vātuḷa. The corresponding translation has been reported in brackets just in order to highlight the discrepancy with the text of the Śivārcanācandrikā edition.

915

However, note that only the Śivārcanācandrikā expressly instructs worshippers to write, for the text of the Kriyāsāra attests ālokayet (‘one should look at’) instead of lekhayet (‘one should write’), which I believe to be the correct reading. Kriyāsāra, vol. 2 p. 306 (=Śivārcanācandrikā, p. 204): itthambhūtān sarvān api divyāgamān yathālābhaṃ katicid vā ekaṃ vā tatrāpi svapūjopayogisaṃhitāmātraṃ vā lakṣaṇaśāliṣu pustakeṣv lekhayet [ālokayet Kriyāsāra].

916

These are called: lakṣmībhadra (22x4 aṅgulas), śrīrakṣa (21x3 aṅgulas) and candrakānta (20x3 aṅgulas –1 yava), forming the ‘Major Triplet’ (uttamatraya); nalina (18x2.5 aṅgulas), śrīnivāsa (17x3 aṅgulas + 3 yavas) and śrībhadra (16x2 aṅgulas + 2 yavas), forming the ‘Middle Triplet’ (madhyamatraya); lakṣmīnivāsa (15x2 aṅgulas +1 yava), umābhadra (14x2 aṅgulas) and vīrabhadra (13x2 aṅgulas -1 yava), forming the ‘Minor triplet’ (adhamatraya). Note that this last triplet is not defined as such in the Kriyāsāra, nor in the Śivārcanācandrikā, but this definition is available in a parallel passage of Aṃśumat, Āgamapratiṣṭhā, 11–18.

917

Kriyāsāra, vol. 2 p. 306 (=Śivārcanācandrikā, p. 104): eteṣāṃ śivajñānapustakānāṃ pūjanāya śivasya dakṣiṇapaścime vāyavyabhāge […] vidyākośagṛhaṃ kṛtvā.

918

Kriyāsāra, vol. 2 p. 306 (=Śivārcanācandrikā, p. 104): sugandhicandanādyanuliptabhittikasya tasya madhye nāgadantādiracitaṃ suvarṇarekhādicitritaṃ vidyāsiṃhāsanaṃ nidhāya.

919

Kriyāsāra, vol. 2 p. 306 (=Śivārcanācandrikā, p. 104): tatra dukūlādikam āstīrya tanmadhye suvarṇaraupyatāmrakāṃsyārakūṭalohadāruveṇuvidalanādikṛtāṃ vidyāratnakaraṇḍarūpāṃ mañjūṣāṃ nidhāya tasyāṃ pustakāni nidadhyāt.

920

Kriyāsāra, vol. 2 pp. 306–307 (=Śivārcanācandrikā, p. 104): teṣu sarvebhyaḥ śivajñānebhyo nama iti gandhapuṣpadhūpadīpanaivedyaiḥ saṃpūjya —sarvajñānapradaṃ śambhuṃ sarvājñānavighātakam | kāyena manasā vācā vidyāpīṭhāśrayaṃ bhaje || iti stutvā namaskuryāt.

921

Kriyāsāra, vol. 2 p. 307 (Śivārcanācandrikā, pp. 104–105): ‘In absence of a manuscript, having drawn within a quadrangular maṇḍala a lotus with eight leaves, and a lotus with 18 leaves covering this, in the pericarp of the lotus having worshipped at the same time Śiva together with the goddess of speech by saying ‘Hauṃ, obeisance to Śiva!’, ‘Hāṃ, obeisance to the goddess of speech!’; having worshipped in the 10 leaves starting from east the divine scriptures named after Śiva, starting with the Kāmika and ending with the Suprabheda, for their having been produced directly by Śiva, regardless of [the presence of] another chief deity (adhikaraṇa?), he should worship in the 18 leaves [the scriptures] named after Rudra for having been produced by Śiva, who is the chief of the endless Rūdras.’; pustakālabhe caturaśramaṇḍale aṣṭādaśapadmaṃ tadāvārakam daśadalapadmaṃ ca likhitvā karṇikāyāṃ hauṃ śivāya namaḥ | hāṃ vāgīśāya namaḥ | iti vāgīśvarasaṃhitaṃ śivaṃ saṃpūjya pūrvādiṣu daśasu daleṣu kāmikādīn suprabhedāntān śivenādhikaraṇāntaranirapekṣeṇa sākṣān nirmitatayā śaivasaṃjñān divyāgamān saṃpūjya aṣṭādaśasu daleṣu vijayādivātulān tān anādirūdrādyadhikaraṇena śivena nirmitatayā raudrasaṃjñān pūjayet.

922

Kriyāsāra, vol. 2 p. 308 (=Śivārcanācandrikā, p. 206): gurugṛhavidyāpīṭhasaptagurumahālakṣmīgaṇapatidvārapālebhyo ’pi parāṅmukhārghyaṃ datvā.

923

For an introduction on this author and a summary of the works attributed to him, see Ganesan 2009.

924

Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 pp. 987–1009.

925

Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 321 pp. 273–76.

926

Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 pp. 1162–67.

927

Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 pp. 972–86.

928

Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 pp. 1152–62.

929

Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 pp. 1168–71.

930

Atmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 321 p. 273: kāmike tu: vāyavye dakṣiṇe vāpi jñānakoṣaṃ prakalpayet. This line is quoted in opposition to a preceding one establishing that the throne of knowledge has to be worshipped in the western sector of a temple: devasya paścime bhāge vidyāpīṭhan tato yajet. A space left blank in the manuscript immediately before this stanza makes it difficult to understand to which work Vedajñāna attributes it; in the Sakalāgamasārasaṃgraha, p. 146, the same line is referred to the Kāmika, but then followed by different stanzas than those quoted in this section of the Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati.

931

Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 321 p. 273: kāmikādiśivajñānaṃ sthānaṃ yāmyadiśi sthitaṃ.

932

See Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 321 p. 273.

933

Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 321 pp. 273–74: oṃ hāṃ kāmikādiśivajñānāvatārakebhyo āsanaṃ namaḥ [p274] iti saṃpūjya paścāt tadupari vidyākośamañjūṣaṃ sthāpayet.

934

Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 321 p. 274: atra vidyāpīṭhapūjā dvividhā | aparokṣā parokṣā ceti | tatra pratyakṣalikhitakāmikāditantraviṣayā pūjāparokṣā | maṇḍalapadmapīṭhādiviṣayā parokṣā.

935

Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 321 p. 274: prathamāyām api sarvasaṃhitā vā svasaṃhitā vā pūjanīyā.

936

Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 321 pp. 274–75.

937

Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 321 pp. 275–76.

938

Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 321 p. 276. The author compounds into a single stanza two originally separated hemistiches, corresponding to Śivadharmottara 2.28cd and 2.29cd: ‘Having worshipped in this way the knowledge of Śiva, he should then worship the teacher’ (sampūjyaivaṃ śivajñānaṃ guruṃ sampūjayet tataḥ || 28); ‘One will worship with devotion [him] who reveals the knowledge of Śiva as if he were Śiva’ (śivavat pūjayed bhaktyā śivajñānaprakāśakam || 29).

939

Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 p. 987: tad uktaṃ kriyākāṇḍe | atha [em.: adhi° Cod.] vidyāṃ samabhyarcya puṣpagandhasṛgādibhiḥ | samyak saṃpūjayed bhaktyā guroś caraṇapaṃkaje || madhyāhnasamayaṃ yāvat kuryāt svādhyāyam īpsitam iti.

940

Svacchandatantra 5.50–51ab (quoted in Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 p. 987): saṃhitāṃ cintayen nityaṃ bhaktānāṃ śrāvayet sadā | āhnikaṃ na vilumpet tu saṃdhyākarma varānane || 50 adīkṣitānāṃ purato noccarec chāstrapaddhatim. Kṣemarāja, in his commentary ad loc., glosses saṃhitāṃ (lit. ‘collection’) with śaivaṃ śāstram, the ‘Śaiva scripture’, and śāstrapaddhatim with pārameśaśāstraprakriyām, the ‘procedures [taught] in the scriptures of the Supreme Lord’.

941

Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 pp. 987–90.

942

Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 p. 990: atha śivajñānāni tāmrādinirmitapatrair vā bhūrjapattrair vā śrītālapatrair vā yathāyādisaṃbhavaṃ salakṣaṇaṃ pustakāni saṃpādya teṣu salakṣadhā lekhinyā vā maṣyādinā vā nāgarādilipinā vilikhya paṭhitavyāni.

943

Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 pp. 990–91.

944

See, for instance, Acintyaviśvasādākhya 6.121–22, quoted in Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 p. 992: ‘It has to be made out of palm leaf and so on according to its own measures (scil. of the measures of that kind of palm leaf), or alternatively out of copper, endowed with two holes. (121) / Having divided into four parts the length of the leaf, this will again be [made] into three parts [by its height], and there will be a median hole in the middle of both sectors [resulting from the division] into four and three parts. (122)’; svapramāṇena kartavyaṃ tālapatrādinā bhavet | tāṃreṇa vātha kartavyaṃ suṣiradvayasaṃyutam || 121 patramānaṃ catuṣkṛtvā tat punas trividhaṃ bhavet | catustribhāgayor madhye madhyaṃ ca suṣiraṃ bhavet || 122.

945

In the same way as manuscripts, cords can also be classified into a ‘major’ (uttamā), a ‘middle’ (madhyamā), and a ‘minor’ (adhamā) type: the first is made out of 27 cotton threads, the second of 18, while the last consists of 9 threads; see Santāna, quoted in Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 p. 992: kārpāsasūtraṃ gṛhṇīyād rajjuṃ kṛtvā viśeṣataḥ | saptaviṃśatisūtrais tu uttamā rajjur ucyate || aṣṭādaśe ca sūtreṇa madhyamā rajjur ucyate | navasūtreṇa saṃyuktā adhamā rajjur ucyate ||. Also the following passage from the Acintyaviśvasādākhya concerns the topic of the rajjupramāṇa, the measure of the cord (see Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 pp. 992–93).

946

See Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 pp. 993–95.

947

Śivadharmottara 3.15, 16cd and 21, as quoted in Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 p. 395: ‘Teaching, reciting, explaining, listening, meditating: thus is this sacrifice to knowledge (jñānayajña), renown as fivefold. (15) / […] Out of really all rituals, the sacrifice to knowledge is the one conferring liberation (16)’; adhyāpanam adhyayanaṃ vyākhyāṃ śravaṇacintanam | iti pañcaprakāro’yaṃ jñānayajñaḥ prakīrtitaḥ || 15 […] sarveṣāṃ api yajñānāṃ jñānayajño vimuktidaḥ || 16; Śivadharmottara 3.21: ‘At the beginning, [he has to practice] the listening; still during the performance, the meditation; [then] for him (scil. the student), in the end there is the raising of the awareness, [namely] the purification’; ārambhakāle śravaṇaṃ kriyākāle ’pi cintanam | niścayodbhāvanaṃ tasya niṣṭhākāle prasannatā || 21.

948

Mṛgendra, Caryāpāda 1.32cd–33: pustakaṃ guptasatsūtraṃ vidhāyopari kasyacit || 32 brūyād aṅga paṭhasveti kṛtārthaḥ [em., kṛtārthaṃ ed.] prāgudaṅmukhaḥ | prārabheta gurur vyākhyāṃ saṃbandhārthoktipūrvikām || 33.

949

Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 p. 395: ‘On a spot of earth that is devoid of defects such as worn-out [structures] and so on, purified from deformed things by means of unguents and so on, which has been kept away from the hearing of the non-initiated, having worshipped the supreme Lord who stays within the enclosure consisting in the boundaries set † by these purification [rules]†, [as well as] the teacher and the lord of the Gaṇas, having placed a manuscript of the scriptures etc. that are used during the performance of the teaching, [namely] a secret, good scripture, on top of something, he should say to an accomplished person, ‘Young man, [read]!’, facing eastwards’; jīrṇādidoṣarahite [em.; °rahito Cod.] kurūpalepanādipavitrite [pavitrate Cod.] adīkṣitaśravaṇavarjite [em., °śravaṇe varjite Cod.] bhūtale tacchodhanakṛtamaryādātmakaparidhyantarasthaṃ [em.; tacchodana° Cod.] parameśvaraṃ guruṃ gaṇeśvarañ cābhyarcya vyākhyākriyopayogisūtrādipustakaṃ guptasatsūtraṃ vidhāyopari kasyacit brūyād aṅga <paṭha> vastveti kṛtārthaḥ [em., kṛtārthaṃ Cod.] prāṅmukhaḥ |.
Instead of tacchodanakṛtamaryādātmakaparidhyantarasthaṃ, Nārāyaṇakaṇṭha has sūtroccāṭanakṛtamaryādātmakaparidhyantarasthaṃ, an expression that Brunner-Lachaux interprets as ‘au centre de barriers constituées par des raies-frontières obtenues en lânchant un cordonnet [imprégnè de poudre de riz]’ (Brunner-Lachaux 1985, pp. 361–62).

950

On this, Vedajñāna quotes Mṛgendra, Caryāpāda 1.34–37 (Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 pp. 995–96), according to which (see stanzas 34–35) the scriptures starting with the Kāmika are part of the upward current, those starting with the Asitaṅga are part of the southern current, while those starting with the Saṃmoha constitute the northern current; the scriptures starting with the Trotala are further classified into the eastern current, while those starting with the Caṇḍāsidhāra belong to the western current. A further classification of scriptures into eight currents, referred to Śiva, the Mantreśvaras, the Gaṇas, the gods, the seers, the Guhyas, the Yoginīs, and the Siddhas, is given in stanzas 36cd–37.

951

Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 pp. 996–98.

952

Mataṅga, Caryāpāda 3.7cd–8, see Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 p. 996: ‘[The student] should read, commanded by him (scil. the teacher), in a pure place with pure soil, (7) / Concealed, free from people, beautiful; [he should read] with a well-disposed mind. A wise man should not teach in the presence of non-initiates (8)’; paṭhet tu tadanujñāta<ḥ> śucau deśe śucisthale [śuciḥ sadā Mat] || 7 pracchanne [pracchade Cod.] vijane ramye bhāvitenāntarātmanā || samīpe na [na samīpe Mat] paśūnāṃ tu kuryād adhyāpanaṃ [Mat; na kuryād dhyāpanam Cod.] budhaḥ || 8. A varia lectio in the last stanza highlights a difference in the interpretation between the text of the critical edition of the Mataṅga and the text transmitted in the manuscript of the Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, although the latter originates most likely from a corruption of the former: according to the Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, a wise teacher should not allow meditation to be performed in the presence of non-initiates, while the text of the Mataṅga reads, more coherently, that he should not teach (adhyāpanam). Given the bad state of preservation of the Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, accessible to me only through recent paper transcripts, and the easy confusion between these two very similar readings, I have reintroduced here the reading of the critical edition of the Mataṅga. I have not done so, however, in the case of the first variant in stanza 7, as it is less obvious there that the reading of the Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati originates from a corruption of the Mataṅga’s text.

953

Here the text prescribes that, on the first day, the teacher explaining a tantra should not be too quick in his exposition, nor students should ask too many questions; rather, he should pause after explaining one, two, or three ‘root-sūtras’ (mūlasūtra).

954

Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 p. 978: saṃskṛtaprākṛtāditattaddeśocitabhāṣārūpaiś śiṣyānurūpair vākyaiḥ.

955

Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 pp. 999–1000.

956

Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 pp. 1000–1003.

957

Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 pp. 1003–1005. Mṛgendra, Caryāpāda 1.53–59, quoted in this section, lists some specific days of the month when the teaching should not take place (namely: the 8th, the 4th, and the 14th of each fortnight, as well as on the full and new moon day, or when the sun enters one of the zodiac signs; see Caryāpāda 1.53), but also a series of casual events that make the reading inauspicious (and, thus, to be avoided), such as thunders, a rainbow formed in the east or in the west, a meteor sighting, or an earthquake. Teaching activities must then be interrupted for a fixed amount of days on other occasions, such as the spotting of a circle on the surface of the sun or the moon, a few religious festivals (1.56), or if a cat, a serpent, or a frog should ever move between a teacher and a student (1.57); moreover, if the fire or a smell from a funeral are smelled (1.58), or if the teacher, or one of his close relatives, dies (1.59).
As regards analogous rules found in tantric literature, Brunner-Lachaux (1985, p. 372 fn. 1), in her French translation of the Mṛgendra, refers the reader to chapter 5 of the Kiraṇa, as well as to Manusmṛti 4.101ff. and Kane HD 2, pp. 394–402 for similar rules concerning Vedic schools.
Vedajñāna also refers to four stanzas from Mataṅga, Caryāpāda 3.9–12, prescribing that: ‘The initiates (sādhakātmabhiḥ, st. 10) do not have to study during the parvans, [which means] on the 15th, then on the 8th and on the 14th [days of each fortnight], during all the great festivals and at the junctions, o great ascetic; (9) / At all the junctions between the first and the 15th days [of each fortnight]; after seeing somewhere that the teacher or [his] brother is displeased, (10) / The utmost knowledge of the causes does not have to be taught by the devotee. And there should be no teaching, [even] in auspicious times, in case of calamities, o virtuous man, (11) / Or in case of misfortunes [happening] to the very powerful kings who are devotees of Śiva. This rule of conduct concerning the [periods in which] there should be no teaching has been taught by me for the initiate. (12)’; pañcadaśyām athāṣṭamyāṃ caturdaśyāṃ ca parvasu | mahotsaveṣu sarveṣu sandhyāsu ca mahāmune || 9 parvasandhiṣu sarveṣu nādhyeyaṃ sādhakātmabhiḥ | guruṃ vimānasaṃ dṛṣṭvā bhrātaraṃ vātha kutracit || 10 nādhyeyaṃ bhaktiyuktena kāraṇajñānam uttamam | puṇyakāleṣu nādhyeyaṃ na cotpāteṣu [nāśotpanneṣu ĀAPP] suvrata || 11 āpatsu śivabhaktānāṃ rājñāṃ vā sumahātmanām | eṣo ’nadhyayane kāryas [nyāyaḥ Mat] sādhakasya mayoditaḥ || 12.

958

These are quoted in Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 p. 1005.

959

Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 p. 1006: uttamaṃ sarvaśāstrāṇāṃ śivaśāstrārthaṃ guha | [c.m.] guhyataraṃ guhyātavyaṃ prayatnataḥ || [c.m.] nāśiṣyāya pradātavyaṃ nābhaktāvya na nāstike | na gurudveṣiṇe caiva nānyaśāstraratāya ca ||. The source of this quotation is Sarvajnānottara 15.30cd–31. A comparison with the latter can thus help in reconstructing the correct text, which should be: uttamaṃ sarvaśāstrāṇāṃ śivaśāstrāmṛtaṃ guha || 30 guhyaguhyataraṃ guhyaṃ gūhitavyaṃ prayatnataḥ | sa śiṣyāya pradātavyo nābhaktāya na nāstike || 31.

960

Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 pp. 1162–68.

961

For this Vedajñāna refers to Acintyaviśvasādākhya 65.2–5, parallel to Uttarakāmika 67.2–4 (see this chapter, fn. 0 and Appendix 2 for the parallels); see Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 p. 1162–63.

962

Vīratantra, quoted in Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 p. 1163: yajamānasya ṛkṣeṇa nakṣatraṃ cānukūlakam | evaṃ parīkṣya bahudhā kartavyaṃ pustakaṃ param ||.

963

On this topic, Vedajñāna quotes from the same Santāna passage on the cords that he had used in the chapter on the siddhāntaśravaṇa, followed by the Yogaja and Uttarakāmika 67.5–6 concerning writing materials (see Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 pp. 1163–64). The Yogaja differs from the already discussed stanzas of the Uttarakāmika inasmuch as it classifies the materials for writing according to the usual tripartite scheme: ‘And the best is the golden leaf, the middle the silver leaf, whereas the copper leaf and the palm leaf are the lesser: thus has been taught’; uttamaṃ hemapātrañ ca madhyamaṃ raupyapātrakam | tāmrapātraṃ tālapātraṃ kanyasan tv iti kīrtitam || (see Yogaja quoted in Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 p. 1163).

964

See Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 pp. 1164–65.

965

Vīratantra quoted in Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 p. 1165: ‘Then one should write a manuscript with six lines, or five. […]’; ṣaṭpaṅktiṃ vātha pañcaiṣā (?) lekhayet pustakaṃ tataḥ | [...].

966

As a continuation of the former hemistich on the number of lines to inscribe on the page of a manuscript, the Vīratantra declares: ‘[…] [the manuscript] thus endowed with [good] features [causes] the growth of the king’s kingdom’; […] evaṃ lakṣaṇasaṃyuktaṃ rājarāṣṭravivardhanam || (see Vīratantra quoted in Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 p. 1165). The verse is not a literal parallel of Uttarakāmika 67.32, but it conveys a very close idea.

967

See Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 p. 1165 (corresponding to Acintyaviśvasādākhya 65.13cd–14ab): ‘One who is part of the śuddhaśaivas should write the manuscript of the Śaiva knowledge or [practice its] recitation, because of [its] old age after a long time’; śuddhaśaivasamāyukto likhed vā pāṭhadhāraṇam | dīrghakālena jīrṇatvāc chivajñānasya pustakam ||. Here, the text seems to exhort the copying and recitation of a manuscript in order to counter the damages caused by time.

968

Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 pp. 1165–66.

969

Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 pp. 1166–68.

970

See Vīratantra, quoted in Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 p. 1166: śivāgre maṇṭapaṃ kuryād īśāne dakṣiṇe ’pi vā | maṇṭapaṃ nu tridhā kṛtvā madhye vedīṃ prakalpayet || vedibāhye tu paritaḥ pañca kuṇḍāni kārayet | maṇṭapān naiṛraiṃte bhāge śālinā sthaṇḍilaṃ kuru ||.

971

Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 p. 1167.

972

Vīratantra quoted in Ātmārthapūjāpaddhati, T 371 p. 1165: ‘In order to perform the worship of the various scriptures, one should sprinkle [them] with the vardhanī-waters in a mirror [placed] nearby; one will [thus] perform its consecration’; tattadāgamapūjane [em.; pūjena Cod.] prokṣayed vardhanījalaiḥ || saṃnidhau darpaṇe tasya abhiṣekaṃ tu kārayet.

The texts presented in the following tables are limited to the main parallel passages traceable in the three chapters of the Śivadharmottara that are the backbone of this work, i.e. chapters 1, 2 and 12. I have selected only the longest and most influential parallels, which have already been discussed in detail throughout the book. Therefore, the tables of this appendix do not cover the entire, abundant indirect tradition of the Śivadharmottara, not even with reference to the three chapters that are taken into account here. Moreover, the works selected for inclusion in these tables certainly contain more parallels with further chapters of the Śivadharmottara, which have been left out for reasons of brevity and consistency. Stanzas from chapter 30 of the Haracaritacintāmaṇi, for instance, can be traced in each of the first ten chapters of the Śivadharmottara. As in the case of the text given in 973, these are preparatory materials for a critical edition of the Śivadharmottara, which I have decided to make available to the learned readers who might want to verify some of the statements made in this book, or to use these materials for further reference in their academic work. Passages quoted from the Devīpurāṇa reproduce the text published in Sharma 1976.