The Kubjikamatatantra, Kulalikamnaya Version: Critical Edition.

• Author: Rocher, Ludo

Work on the Kubjikamatatantra (hence KMT) was started at the Instituut voor Oosterse Talen of the University of Utrecht in 1972 (cf. K. van Kooy: "A Critical Edition of the Kubjikamatatantra," BSOAS 26 [1973]: 628). At that time the Institute was in possession of microfilms of two manuscripts, which George Chemperathy had obtained in Calcutta. A preliminary investigation - in which, besides the authors of this volume, Theo Damsteegt, Sanyukta Gupta, and Karel van Kooy participated - showed that the manuscripts represented two different versions of the text: one called Satsahasra, after the number (6000) of its verses (on which van Kooy reported at the 19th Deutschen Orientalistentag, 1975; cf. "Die sogenannte Guptahandschrift des Kubjikamatatantra," ZDMG, suppl. III.2 [1977], 881-90); the other called Kulalikamnaya, 3500 verses long. As more manuscripts became available - there is also a Laghvikamnaya, in a single manuscript which may well be the oldest handwritten source of the Kubjika school (pp. 14, 30-32), and there are manuscripts of Tikas and Tippanis on all fifty chapters of the Satsahasra - Schoterman, on the basis of three manuscripts, edited, translated, and annotated the first five chapters of the Satsahasrasamhita for his Utrecht Ph.D. dissertation (Orientalia Rheno-Traiectina, vol. 27 [Leiden: Brill, 1982]). The largest number of manuscripts, however - sixty-five from Nepal, in addition to the one acquired earlier from the Asiatic Society - represented the Kulalikamnaya. It was decided, therefore, to prepare a critical edition of that text in its entirety, jointly by Goudriaan and Schoterman.

Until recently very little information was available on the KMT - and on the Kubjikamata school of Hindu Sakta-Tantra generally. Several manuscripts of the KMT were listed and three of them - two of the KMT and one of the Satsahasra - were described by Haraprasad Sastri, in his Catalogue of the Palm-Leaf and Selected Paper MSS belonging to the Durbar Library, Nepal (vol. 1, 1905). Hence, the text was mentioned by J. N. Farquhar (An Outline of the Religious Literature of India, 1920), who dated it in the seventh century (p. 388), or in the seventh century at the latest (p. 199). Even though the colophons of some of the manuscripts were used by D. R. Regmi in his reconstruction of the history of Nepal (Medieval Nepal [Calcutta: K. L. Mukhopadhyay, 1965, 1966]), information on the Kubjikamata school was made available only recently by...