From Early Vedanta to Kashmir Shaivism: Gaudapada, Bahrtrhari, and Abhinavagupta.

• Author: Aklujkar, Ashok
• Position: Review

By NATALIA ISAYEVA. SUNY Series in Religious Studies. Albany: STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS. 1995. Pp. x + 10 + 197. $16.95 (paper).

I found this book truly rewarding in only one area: the comparison it attempts of early Vedantic thought with the thought found in the writings of certain Eastern Orthodox Christian writers, particularly with the teachings of the Hesychasts or the views of Gregory Palamas, Pavel Florensky, and Alexei Losev. As I knew nothing about the thinkers in the Hesychast line, the information Isayeva gave about them and about the similarities of their thinking with the thinking of Gaudapada, etc., made a significant addition to my knowledge. However, it follows from the same fact that I am not qualified to judge the accuracy of her representation of the Hesychasts or of the philosophers allied with them. I can only ascertain the philological and historical accuracy of her discussion of the philosophers from the Sanskrit tradition. The effort I made in that direction - I regret to have to state - failed to inspire confidence.

In lsayeva's writing, some transliterations of Sanskrit words are so wrong that they leave no doubt about a less-than-firm grasp of the language; e.g., prajna-ghana for ghana-prajna on p. 22, Satakayana for Sakatayana on p. 71, Parikirna- for Prakirna- on p. 79, sanda-bhasa (which would mean 'language of the eunuchs') for sandha/sandhya-bhasa 'twilight language, secret language' on p. 158.

It goes without saying that not all of Isayeva's translations are accurate (e.g., those on pp. 90, 99, 100, 109). This is especially the case in those rare instances in which she tries to interpret a text differently from her predecessors. The different translations she offers sometimes do not even fall in what we may call a gray area - that is, the area in which scholars can reasonably be expected to differ in their interpretations; they are contextually (e.g., p. 103) or grammatically impossible (e.g., p. 106, p. 115; at the latter place the indeclinable rte 'without' is taken as the locative singular of rta).

Although occasionally Isayeva offers comments on issues of authorship, chronology, etc., it is clear that she is able to offer them only on the basis of what she has read in secondary literature. As far as I can see, there is no philological issue which she has newly detected. Nor has she settled any old philological issue even in probabilistic or tentative terms by referring to the primary or original...