The Parakhyatantra A Scripture of the Saiva Siddhanta: A Critical Edition and Annotated Text

The rediscovery of a large part of the Parakhyatantra made possible by this edition furnishes one more document of the pre-tenth-century thought-world of the Saiva Siddhanta, a religion that was spread across and beyond the Indian subcontinent at the probable time of this work's composition. For our text dates from the period before the appearance of the most significant body of theological exegesis in the history of the Bhatta Ramakantha II. The addition of the Parakhya to the still small corpus of published early Saiddhantika writings should be a welcome event to the student of classical Indian religions.

What is presented here, however, is not the whole text but only those chapters of it that deal with doctrine and yoga. Those on ritual and other aspects of religious practice were left aside by the unknown compiler responsible for the selection of materials found in the unique codex – a beautiful palm-leaf manuscript in minute Nandinagari script – and are therefore lost. Many quotations from the text have been located in later literature, and a fully positive apparatus reports the readings of all sources. A diplomatic transcription records features of the manuscript that the apparatus cannot contain (its orthographies, page-and line-breaks, etc.).

A complete English translation – the first to appear of an early siddhantatantra - accompanies the Sanskrit text. Copious notes discuss textual difficulties and problems of interpretation. In doing so, they draw on parallels with other Saiddhantika writings, both published and unpublished. The introduction places the Parakhya in its context, gives a resume of the work, characterizes its language and concludes with a detailed discussion of the sources and of how they have been used.

Dominic Goodall studied Sanskrit at Oxford (BA 1990, DPhil. 1996) and in Hamburg (Habilitation 2002). He is currently head of the Pondicherry Centre of the Ecole francaise d'Extreme-Orient, where he is engaged in editing Saiva texts.