Bhattaramakanthaviracita Kiranavrttih: Bhatta Ramakantha's Commentary on the Kiranatantra, Volume 1. Chapters 1-6.

• Author: Rocher, Ludo
• Position: Brief Reviews of Books

Bhattaramakanthaviracita Kiranavrttih: Bhatta Ramakantha's Commentary on the Kiranatantra, Volume 1. Chapters 1-6. By DOMINIC GOODALL. Publications du Departement d'Indologie, vol. 86.1. Pondicherry: INSTITUT FRANCAIS D'INDOLOGIE; ECOLE FRANCAISE D'EXTREME-ORIENT, 1998. Pp. cxxv + 478.

The first three of the six chapters of the Kashmirian Bhattaramakantha's Kiranavrtti, edited (for the first time) and translated in this volume, were submitted as a doctoral thesis, under the supervision of Alexis Sanderson, at Oxford University in 1995. That means that, at present, one half of the commentary, which extends only over the first twelve of the forty-two chapters of the mula text, is available in a truly critical edition.

The long and detailed introduction is packed with new information, not only on the lineage and the works of Bhatta Ramakantha but also on his place in Saiva Siddhanta literature. To make full use of the edition and of the critical apparatus, the reader would be well advised to study the chapters on "sources" (pp. lxxix-cix) and on "editorial policies" (pp. cxi-cxxv). The variant readings of the commentary, drawn from four South Indian palm-leaf manuscripts, are reported in the critical apparatus; variants of the Kiranatantra itself, in twenty-seven manuscripts from all over the...