Untersuchungen zur Gottesvorstellung in der alteren Anonymliteratur des Pancaratra.

• Author: Golas, G.
• Position: Book review

Untersuchungen zur Gottesvorstellung in der alteren Anonymliteratur des Pancaratra. By ANDREAS BOCK-RAMING. Beitrage zur Indologie, vol. 34. Wiesbaden: HARRASSOWITZ, 2002. Pp. vi + 405, plates. [euro]99.

Pancaratra is an important Hindu tradition of liturgical devotion to various Vaisnava divine aspects, whose existence can be traced in literature from around the third-fourth century and which influenced the rites and theologies of main Vaisnava movements up to the sixteenth century. This influence extended beyond the Indian subcontinent: Cambodian inscriptions as early as the seventh century explicitly mention Pancaratra tradition. Thirty of the more than two hundred Pancaratra samhitas ("collections," mostly ritual manuals) have been published. Modern scholars like F. O. Schrader, V. Krishnamacharya, H. D. Smith, M. Matsubara, S. Gupta, H. Hikita, and M. Rastelli have produced critical editions, studies, and translations of Pancaratra texts. Yet much remains to be done to understand this tradition and its evolution. The book under review is a recent contribution to this field of research.

Andreas Bock-Raming's book, which contains eight chapters, concerns early Pancaratra theology, or, one should rather say, theogony. The author proposes to investigate the origin of the notion of vyuha, to study the chronology of the Pancaratra texts, and to compare their iconographic passages with archaeological data. A main motive for undertaking this research is, as explained in chapter 1, the need to re-examine the notion of vyuha. In the Pancaratra tradition, the term vyuha is applied to the four main divine aspects of its theogony: Vasudeva (Krsna), his elder brother Samkarsana (or Balarama, Baladeva), his son Pradyumna, and his grandson Aniruddha. According to Bock-Raming, tracing the origin of the vyuha notion to RV 10, 90 (as Schrader did) cannot be accepted anymore. Nor can the Pancaratra corpus be taken as a homogeneous whole: criteria like the fourfold or fivefold presentation of vyuhas or the integration of the vyuha doctrine in various Pancaratra theological contexts may help to establish a relative chronology of its texts. Bock-Raming's research is also motivated by the continuing neglect of the study of the mass of Pancaratra iconographical prescriptions. He uses, as his main textual sources, some passages from chapters 4-7 of the Ahirbudhnyasamhita (AS), from chapters 2-9 and 12 of the Satvatasamhita (SS), and from several non-Pancaratra texts.

In chapter two Bock-Raming investigates the cosmogony of Adhyayas 4-7 of the AS. He concludes that the author of these Adhyayas gathered, in Adhyaya 5, three different notions of the evolution of the vyuhas, the first of which is traceable to the SS. Chapter three, the longest of the book, mainly discusses the representation of god in the SS. This text shows a rather uniform account of the vyuhas: four vyuhas appear in each of the four cosmological phases, from the transcendental plane to the perceptible world. Bock-Raming finds in this account several inconsistencies that can be explained as interpolations. He then compares the mental images of vyuhas described in the SS with iconographical prescriptions in the Visnudharmottarapurana (VDh, pratimalaksana section) and the Agnipurana (AP, chapters 48-52). According to him these mental images, which are meant for meditation (and called "Ikonographie" by him), are closer to the iconography of the VDh than of the AP.

Bock-Raming then contrasts the point of view of the SS, which appears to him to be related to a personal and spiritual practice of religion, with the more cosmological and theoretical perspective of the AS. He also sees, in the preference of the SS for Vasudeva and of the AS for "Visnu-Narayana" (an entity subordinating the Vasudeva aspect), a clear sign of antagonism between two distinct religious groups. He emphasizes that, while the SS is permeated by "tantrism," the AS has a definitely "pro-Vedic" character, though it also contains some "tantric" passages.

Chapter four examines the notion of...