Spandapradipika (Sanskrit Edition) (A Commentary on the Spandakarika by Bhagavadutpalacarya)

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

Although Bhagavadutpala's commentary on the Spandapradipika was edited and printed for the first time as far back as 1898 (see below_, many uncertain readings remained in the printed edition. I have translated this text in its present edited form along with a short commentary by Kallatabhatta, simply called vrtti or Spanddartha-sutravali. These commentaries along with Ksemaraja's Essence of Vibration (Spandasamdoha) have been prepared for a forthcoming book entitled The Stanzas on Vibration. This work is now complete and is due to be published by the State University of New York Press, Albany, U.S.A. in the near future. My translation contains extensive notes and expositions of each of the fifty odd verses of the Stanzas on Vibration (Spandakarika) and the commentaries I have translated along with it. There is no need to add anything more here but simply refer the reader to that work.

Materials Used for this Critical Edition:

In making this critical edition I have used as my base the printed edition of the text published in the Tantrasamgraha vol. I, Yogatantragranthamala no. 3, pp. 83-128 edited by Gopinatha Kaviraja, Banares, 1970. In fact, this is simply a reprint of the text edited by Vamana Sastri and published in Islamapurkara in 1898. In the critical apparatus this source is labelled 'P'. I compared this text with the following four manuscripts.

S'1-This is a Sarada manuscript. The text is written in black ink on paper and is bound together between thin-red leather covers along with a few other short Kashmiri Saiva works. The writing is small and the fourtythree folios over which the text extends measure approximately four by five inches. The text is complete. The manuscript is deposited in the Central Library of Banaras Hindu University and is numbered C 4739.

S'2-This is another Sarada manuscript. It is deposited in the Bhandarkar Oriental Institute, Poona and catalogued as number 173 of 1883-84 (section 1). The text is neatly written and laid out in two blocks on each sheet. They are about six inches in length and three inches broad. It is seventynine folios long and the text breaks off just before the end.

D1-This is a Devanagari manuscript deposited in the Bhandarkar Oriental Institute, Poona. It is twentysix folios long measuring approximately eight by eleven inches and there are twentythree lines to a page. It appears to be a relatively recent transcript. The text is complete. The manuscript is numbered 809 of 1891-95.

D2-This is another Devanagari manuscript wrongly described as being in Sarada script in the catalogue. It is deposited in the Central Library of Banaras Hindi University and is numbered C 64. It consists of seventythree sheets of paper measuring approximately five by four inches. The writing is clear and the text is surrounded by a gold border about a quarter of an inch thick held in by straight black lines on both sides. There are ten lines of text on each side of the paper and it breaks off just before the end.

The two Devanagari manuscripts generally contain more variants as compared to the printed edition but these are in many cases to be attributed to scribal error. This is as one would expect in so far they are certainly derived from original Sarada sources. Not infrequently, the Devanagari manuscripts agree more closely with each other than with the Sarada ones. D1 has more independent readings than D2 and the Sarada manuscripts. Of the two Sarada manuscripts S'1 has more variant readings than those of S'2 although, not infrequently, it agrees with one or other or both of the Devanagari manuscripts.