An Enquiry into the Nature of Liberation : Bhatta Ramakantha’s Paramoksanirasakarikavrtti, a commentary on Sadyojyotih’s refutation of twenty conceptions of the liberated state (moksa).

Edited, translated into English and annotated by Alex Watson, Dominic Goodall, S.L.P. Anjaneya Sarma

This book presents a short philosophical treatise in which twenty rival theories of the liberated state (moksa) are introduced and countered, and a long, discursive commentary that explores and develops the arguments that the treatise advances or implies. The original treatise comprises fifty-nine Sanskrit verses composed by Sadyojyotih (c. 675–725 AD), the earliest named Saiva philosopher of the Mantramarga of whom works survive. The commentator, Bhatta Ramakantha (c. 950–1000 AD), was a Kashmirian whose writings systematised the doctrines of the classical Saiva Siddhanta, for some centuries the dominant school of tantric Saivism.

Presented here is a first critical edition of these interlinked works and a richly annotated English translation. A lightly annotated introduction lays out clearly the ideas that the edited texts expound. Their study casts light not only on the history of Saiva thought, but also on a number of religio-philosophical doctrines for which little other testimony survives.

Keywords: Liberation (moksa), Saiva siddhanta, Indian philosophy, Hindu theology, Saivism, Sanskrit philology, Sadyojyotih, Ramakantha