Le Soi et l'Autre: Identite, difference et alterite dans la philosophie de la Pratyabhijna.

• Author: Nemec, John
• Position: Book review

Le Soi et l'Autre: Identite, difference et alterite dans la philosophie de la Pratyabhijna. By ISABELLE RATIE. Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture, vol. 13. Leiden: BRILL, 2011. Pp. 785 + xxiii. $288.

While the majority of the many new critical editions, studies, and translations published in the area of tantric studies over the last quarter-century have examined tantric scriptural works, scholars have also made significant new contributions to our understanding of the numerous exegetical, devotional, yogic, and philosophical works that expand upon, respond to, and in important ways depart from these scriptures. The texts of the Pratyabhijna or "Recognition" School are no exception, as key works of all three of the trio of authors whose writings constitute the core of the canon of Pratyabhijlid philosophy have recently received major scholarly attention. First, the Sivadrsti, the initial articulation of Pratyabhilt15 thought, written by one Sornananda c. 900-950), has recently been edited and translated in part, along with the corresponding sections of the commentary of Somananda's immediate disciple, Utpaladeva (fl. c. 925-975). The latter's major philosophical writings, in turn, were edited and published by Raffaele Torella in 1994 in a landmark edition and translation of the entirety of Utpala's Is'varapratyabhUiialarikas (IPK), along with the entirety of the shorter of a pair of auto-commentaries, the Isvarapratyabhijnakarikacrtti (IPVr). Torella also published fragments of the longer of Utpaladeva's two auto-commentaries, the Isvarapratyabhijnavivrti, which sadly is no longer extant apart from these fragments.

The volume here under review is a study of the philosophical writings of the third of the aforementioned trio of Pratyabhijna authors, the great Kashmiri polymath Abhinavagupta (fl. c. 975-1025), who was the student of Utpaladeva's immediate disciple, Laksmanagupta. Isabelle Ratie's book constitutes a detailed reading of the Isvarapratyabhijnavimarsini (IPV), Abhinava's sub-commentary on Utpala's IPVT. It also includes dozens of excerpts, often translated here for the first time, of the second of Abhinava's pair of sub-commentaries, the Isvarapratyabhijnavivrtivimarsini (TPVV), which glosses Utpala's Vivrti.

More specifically, this lightly revised version of the author's Ph.D. dissertation focuses primarily on Abhinavagupta's WV commentary on the first adhilcara (of four) of the IPK and IPV, the Jiianadhikara, where in the...