Utpaladeva’s Lost Vivṛti on the Īśvarapratyabhijñā-kārikā

The recent discovery of a fragmentary manuscript of Utpaladeva’s long commentary (Vivṛti or Ṭīkā) on his own Īśvarapratyabhijñā-kārikā (IPK) and Vṛtti enables us to assess the role of this work as the real centre of gravity of the Pratyabhijna philosophy as a whole, though the later Saiva tradition chose instead Abhinavagupta’s Vimarśinī as the standard text. This brilliant, and more compact and accessible, text was copied and copied again during the centuries and became popular in south India too, where a number of manuscripts in the principal southern scripts are still available. The success of a particular commentary is very often the indirect cause of the decline of the others, which are less and less read and, consequently,copied, until their complete or almost complete loss. Of the lengthy and difficult Vivṛti by Utpaladeva—corresponding to the extent of 8,000 ślokas (hence the traditional denomination of Aṣṭasāhasrī)—the fragmentary śāradā manuscript that has come to light covers only the section I¯PK I.3.6 through I.5.3. Although the portion of the recovered text is comparatively short (33 folios), it proves to be particularly important in the economy of Pratyabhijna philosophy due to the crucial points being dealt with there at great length, always in a hard-fought debate with the logical-epistemological school of Buddhism.