The Journal of Hindu Studies 2019;12:1–11 doi:10.

1093/jhs/hiz006

Liberation and Hindu Studies

James Madaio
The Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences

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*Corresponding author: madaio@orient.cas.cz

In one of his many provocative arguments, the maverick philosopher Daya Krishna
proposed that numerous problems engaged by Indian philosophical traditions do
not ‘have any direct or indirect relation, even in the remotest way, to mokXa
[liberation]’ (Krishna 1965, p.48). Krishna, of course, was right to push back against
the tendency to see mokXa as the ‘focal concern’ and distinctive feature of Indian
intellectual pursuits, which has inhibited the broader reception of Indian ideas,
including those not necessarily related to liberation, within contemporary phil-
osophy. When mokXa (from ˇmuc, ‘to free’, ‘to release’, ‘to unyoke’) is taken as the
predominant interest of Indian traditions, one does so by backgrounding the vir-
tuosity and reach of other fields of art and knowledge, such as logic, jurisprudence,
aesthetics, language analysis, theatre, architecture, life science, eroticism, politics
and statecraft, to name but a few. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that for well
over two millennia liberation has been valorised as the highest good within many
Hindu traditions making it central to Hindu self-understanding, both medieval and
modern.
The aim of liberation, along with other facets of the ‘classical’ Indic worldview,
developed dialogically within a constellation and contestation of systematic views
(darśana) and paths (m@rga), including Buddhist, Jaina, and groups now called
‘Hindu’. Most of the articles in this issue of the Journal of Hindu Studies concentrate
on philosophies of liberation articulated from roughly the middle of the first
millennium CE to the mid-eleventh century. In doing so, they invite a ‘choral
hermeneutics’ (Frazier 2017, p.13) of mokXa, providing a simultaneous sense of
the range of positions on liberation, their mutual relationality, developmental
trajectories, and instructive differences. Rather than approaching tradition-
specific ideas of liberation as static or fixed, the articles here trace the dynamic
ways in which liberation has been understood within Ny@ya, Jainism, VaiśeXika,
the Mah@bh@rata, and the t@ntrika cult of the goddess Tripurasundara, popularly
known as Śravidy@. Some of the papers analyse how theories of liberation operate
within circumscribed parameters, such as karma theory, exploring the varied ways
liberation is articulated within a tradition and also, in some cases, how it is a key
point of contention in sectarian debate. The articles also demonstrate how

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2 Liberation and Hindu Studies

inherited ideas are received, re-thought, and creatively developed through com-
mentary, disputation, narrative techniques, ‘blending’ dialogues, and the intern-
alisation of ritual. Read together, the papers provoke a prolonged analysis on the
different issues pertinent to the development of varied philosophies of freedom,
not as isolated accounts, but rather as articulations ‘continuous with alternative
formulations that stand in relation of contrast, analogy or even creative comple-

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mentarity’ (Frazier 2017, p.13).

The liberation paradigm

In the early Vedic tradition, post-mortem rites were performed to stave off the
possibility of repeated death (punarmPtyu). The avoidance of a second death, and
an interest in notions of immortality, are evidenced in the early, ritual-oriented
strata of Vedic literature. The ascendency of mokXa to the premier aim of human
life is, however, often regarded as having arisen through interaction between
Vedic-Brahmanism and extra-Vedic, ‘śrama>ic’ movements, such as Jainism,
Buddhism, the ?javikas, and currents of Yoga later systematised by Patañjali.
This context of philosophical negotiation is not, however, to deny a certain in-
ternal development within the Vedic tradition that extended the inner disciplines
associated with ritual performance to those linked to renunciation and liberation.
Putting aside the disputed nature of these changes, and related socioeconomic
factors of the latter half of the first millennium BCE, there was a current of
Brahmanical thought that moved toward understanding through introspection
and the cultivation of ascetic qualities, such as concentration and recollecting
the source of being (Flood 2004, p.98). While aspects of this shift can be detected
in the ideas of pre-Buddhist and pre-Jaina UpaniXadic thinkers, such as
Y@jñavalkya, Udd@laka ?ru>i, and Ś@>nilya (c. seventh to sixth centuries BCE), a
broad consensus solidified, after Mah@vara Jina and the Buddha (sixth to fifth
centuries BCE), that conditioned reality or sa:s@ra entails a process of repeated
births (punar@vPtti, punarbhava, pr@durbh@va, etc.) marked by suffering. In addition
to the śrama>ic traditions, most of the other ‘classical’ traditions, which were
systemised through aphoristic treatises, or s+tras, from roughly 100 BCE to 450
CE,1 share a common orientation toward liberation. These traditions locate the
affliction of sa:s@ra against the alterity of an ‘unborn’ ultimacy, diagnose causes of
affliction, and delineate a path for its elimination. In 1927, the scholar Fyodor
Stcherbatsky drew attention to this shared framework as follows:

[The classical Indian systems] . . . start from the conceptualization of a whole

(sarvam) which is then split into halves: Phenomenal life and the Absolute
(sa:s@ra and nirv@>a). The phenomenal part is further divided into an analysis
of its actual condition ([that is of suffering, or] du$kha), its [causal] driving
forces (du$kha-samudaya) and their gradual extinction ([i.e., through a trans-
formative path or] m@rga). When this extinction (nirodha) is reached, life merges
 James Madaio 3

into the Absolute about whose essence a variety of constructions exist. These
four topics. . .contain, in reality, no doctrine at all. It is only a scheme for
philosophical constructions. . ..2

While nuance could certainly be added to the above account, it is helpful in

shedding light on a certain structure of thought evident in S@:khya, Ny@ya,

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VaiśeXika, some Ved@ntic traditions, as well as Buddhism and Jainism. The
causal and diagnostic orientation identified by Stcherbatsky, which is perhaps
most readily associated with the four noble truths of the Buddha, was later
called the ‘therapeutic paradigm’ by Wilhelm Halbfass (1991), who highlighted
how certain Indic traditions seek the elimination of suffering, i.e. ‘disease’, and
the restoration of true identity, i.e. ‘health’. As the bh@Xya on the
P@tañjalayogaś@stra (c. 325–425 CE) puts it: ‘as medical science (cikits@ś@stra) has
four divisions: illness, cause of illness, recovery, and therapeutics – so this teaching
(i.e. Yoga) has four parts (caturvy+ha), i.e. cycle of births, sa:s@ra, its cause (hetu),
liberation (mokXa), and the means of liberation. Of these, the cycle of births,
sa:s@ra, is heya, to be discarded, the association of [the pure self or] puruXa and
[the creative, ‘material’ source] pradh@na/prakPti is heyahetu, or the cause of what is
to be discarded, perpetual stoppage of this association is h@na or liberation, and
right knowledge is the means of liberation (h@nop@ya)’ (cited in Halbfass 1991,
p.247). Within the context of the therapeutic paradigm, liberation, then, whether
called mokXa, nirv@>a, apavarga, etc., was quintessentially liberation from suffering
and transmigration.3 While the ‘classical’ systems, i.e. the śrama>ic and later s+tra-
based traditions, argue on behalf of different conceptions of liberation, and on
varied methods of realising it, two postulates are recurring: the centrality of karma
(‘action’) and the aetiology of the sa:s@ric condition in ignorance or unwisdom.

Freedom and the karmic cosmos

The ‘unattested proposition’ (Dasgupta 1941, p.226) of karma theory provided, in no
short measure, profound explanatory power, which accounted for not only apor-
etic problems of the human condition but also an ethical-causal theory, which
posited that intentional action (whether mental, verbal, or physical) has a con-
comitant result. In VaiśeXika, an unseen force (adPXba, see Ionut Moise’s article in
this issue for an extensive discussion) was understood as the medium that relates
act and result, a position that had certain resonances with the subtle potency or
potential, ap+rva, postulated by Mam@:sakas in the context of Vedic ritualism. In
addition to causality, karma theory was also implicated in accounts of embodied
conditioning; that is, when a person acts within the context of desire (r@ga) and
aversion (dveXa) it produces a habitual momentum toward merit (dharma) and
demerit (adharma), a process ultimately rooted in ignorance. In the Jaina tradition,
this process of conditioning is understood in relation to an inflow of subtle karmic
particles that ensnares the living being (java) within aimless rebirths (see Ana
4 Liberation and Hindu Studies

Bajželj’s article in this issue). Not only formative of one’s present condition, karma
is also determinative in the formation of future lives, as well as the happiness
(sukha) and suffering (du$kha) undergone during each life. Indeed, it was under-
stood that if an individual is still subject to karma, i.e. if karmic results have not yet
been expunged through experience, then the sa:s@ric condition persists or ‘rolls
on’, as it were. A crucial question, then, was in what way could individuals tran-

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scend karmic causality (on karma theory, see the articles by Bajželj, Kataoka, and
Moise in this issue).
At least two fundamental types of karma were broadly theorised: karma that is
currently fructifying, or bearing results, and karma that is stored or not yet acti-
vated. Kei Kataoka’s article in this issue demonstrates how Naiy@yika theories of
liberation had to account for karma theory, i.e. that there is a causal relationship
between every act and its result, and, in particular, how stored karma could be
extinguished given the injunctive demands of Vedic orthopraxy. These issues were
critical in Bhabba Jayanta’s (c. 840–900 CE) articulation of the ‘complete release
from suffering’ in his Ny@yamañjara and they played a pertinent role in Jayanta’s
polemical assessment of the ‘ritualist’ (y@jñika) Kum@rila (fl. 660). While it has been
argued that early Mam@:s@ ‘denied the goal of liberation’ (Ingalls 1957, p.45),
carrying with it the ‘“prekarmic” past of Indian tradition’ (Halbfass 1991, p.301),
later Mam@:sakas, such as Kum@rila, absorbed key facets of the therapeutic para-
digm, including karma and mokXa. Jayanta differentiates his own position on the
exhaustion of accumulated karma from other ‘internal’ Naiy@yika strategies, and he
maintains that Kum@rila’s arguments in favour of liberation are disingenuous.
Among other issues, Jayanta’s argumentation underscores how commitment to
liberation was an important sectarian identity marker that was integral to the
systematicity and defence of a given tradition. His critique also evidences the way
in which debates between Brahmanical interlocutors were carried out in relation
to certain shared presuppositions, such as adherence to ‘the law of karma’, rules of
Vedic exegesis, the existence of the three debts (P>atraya), and other rituals in-
cumbent on brahmins.
It was not, of course, simply whether or not one accepted liberation that was
critical in cross-sectarian debate but also the details pertaining to the nature of
that liberation and the means of securing it. A critical issue, debated on numerous
fronts, was whether it was through action or knowledge, or both, that one could
realise the highest good. Does liberation entail bliss? Are there varying degrees of
bliss? Other points of contention focused on the nature of the self (@tman, puruXa)
that is apparently liberated: is there a self in liberation and is that self aware or not
(and, if aware, what is the nature of that awareness)?4 While both the Ny@ya and
VaiśeXika traditions discussed in this issue hold that mokXa is shorn of cognisance,
i.e. liberation entails the extirpation of all qualities of the self, the Jaina tradition
argues on behalf of a liberation that entails infinite bliss (sukha), energy (varya),
perception (darśana), and knowledge (jñ@na), which are essential or inherent to the
java. In her article on the nature of liberation and the ‘final journey’ of the java in
 James Madaio 5

Um@sv@ti’s Tattv@rthas+tra (c. 350 CE) and later commentaries, Ana Bajželj notes
that the kevalin, or the one who has realised perfect knowledge, operates with the
aforementioned infinite qualities. However, it is only after all karma naturally runs
its course, that the enlightened being or self (java) ascends, bodiless, to the ‘wished
for place’ at the height of the cosmos.5 Within the context of the Jaina view that
motion is inherent to javas and matter, Bajželj explains how karma is understood to

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have a ‘heavy’ downward pull on the java, which has an innate or inherent vertical
motion or upward gravitation (+rdhvagaurava). Further, she analyses the different
ways in which Jaina philosophers explain the perplexing propulsion of disembo-
died javas to the ‘eternal stability’ at the height of the cosmos. While the vertical
ascent of the java is understood literally here, verticality, as a theme, can be
profitably extended to the soteriological impulse ‘upward’, albeit by going
‘inward’ through askesis (i.e., toward one’s immaterial self by shedding karmic
layers), to an ultimate good that is inherent to one’s own nature.
As a root metaphor of soteriology, verticality is also suggestive of the notion of
‘crossing over’, a ubiquitous way in which classical Indic traditions refer to the
path from the turbulent waters of sa:s@ra to the fearlessness of the ‘other shore’.
In both Vedic and Buddhist literature, ‘crossing’, mainly connoted through terms
derived from ˇt r (‘to cross over’, ‘to escape’, ‘to accomplish’), is often employed in
relation to passing_ from one state of being to another, whether in terms of a
heavenly realm or liberation. In the Jaina tradition the notion is evident in the
title bestowed on the twenty-four enlightened teachers of this cosmic cycle, the
tarthaṅk@ras, who build ‘fords’ for safely crossing the treacherous ocean of sa:s@ra.6
The ‘crosser’ traditions in India, many of which depict themselves as paths, ways,
or vehicles toward an ultimate transformation, can be broadly distinguished from
the so-called materialist tradition, the C@rv@ka or ‘Lok@yata’, associated with
BPhaspati, C@rv@ka, Purandara, among others. The views of the C@rv@kas come
down to us in distorted, straw-man representations. It is nonetheless generally
accepted that C@rv@kas denied crucial presuppositions of the liberation paradigm,
such as karma theory, transmigration, and a higher good beyond the sensual-phys-
ical domain. In a fourteenth century Advaita Ved@ntin work on liberation-while-
living, or javanmukti (see below), Vidy@ra>ya uses the term tairthika, which might
be rendered as ‘crosser’, to distinguish the ‘materialists’ from adherents of trad-
itions he considers as postulating a soteriological agenda:

Excluding the materialists, all crossers (tairthika), given that they accept liber-
ation (mokXa), cannot raise objections concerning the conduct of the yogin
[¼javanmukta] either, because even if in the treatises on liberation (mokXa-
ś@stra) of Jainas (?rhatas), Buddhists, VaiśeXikas, Naiy@yikas, Śaivas,
VaiX>avas, Ś@ktas, S@:khyans, Yogins, etc., there are many things to be ex-
plained, the means of liberation [in all of these treatises] is of one kind: the
eightfold yoga of disciplines, observances, etc.7
6 Liberation and Hindu Studies

The above account is atypical in the sense that Vedic and extra-Vedic traditions,
such as Jainism and Buddhism, are grouped together albeit in contradistinction to
the Lok@yatas, who deny the possibility of mokXa.8 Vidy@ra>ya also sees a unity
across this broad list of ‘crosser’ traditions by way of yoga, the means (s@dhana) to
liberation, no doubt subsuming tradition-specific forms of yoga under what had, by
the fourteenth century, become the normative, pan-Brahmanical tradition of

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Patañjali, but perhaps also, in doing so, intimating a shared, śrama>ic ‘eight-
fold’ heritage.

Liberation and synthesis

The C@rv@kas certainly pose an interesting case for a compelling tradition of
Indian philosophy unconcerned with mokXa. The aim of liberation, however, has
not been taken for granted across Hindu traditions. For example, scholars gener-
ally hold that early Mam@:s@ was uninterested in liberation since it did not posit a
highest good beyond this realm or heaven (although certainly a heavenly attain-
ment entails some sense of ‘crossing over’).9 More speculatively, certain scholarly
reconstructions of a naturalistic proto-VaiśeXika have argued that the tradition
originally lacked a soteriological agenda.10 What is clear, however, is that the
system attested to in the s+tras of Ka>@da (c. 0–250 CE), and in subsequent com-
mentaries, position liberation as critical to the analysis typified in the VaiśeXika
enterprise, which is not dissimilar to the kind of ontological categorisation evident
in the soteric traditions of the Jainas and Sarv@stiv@da Buddhists.11 The
VaiśeXikas+tra, notably, commences by indicating the tradition’s concern with
dharma, i.e. the means of flourishing (abhyudaya), in this world or in heaven, as
well as achieving a ‘meta-gnostic’ liberation, i.e. ni$śreyasa, the unexcelled or
highest good. Ionut Moise’s article in this issue situates the genealogy of abhyudaya
in the desire and action, or pravPtti, orientation of Vedic ritualism, which he con-
trasts with the disinterested detachment of the nivPtti, or ‘inaction’, path closely
associated with renunciation and, ultimately, ni$śreyasa.12 Principally examining
the work of Candr@nanda (c. 900 CE), Moise tracks the way in which both of these
approaches, and their respective aims of abhyudaya and ni$śreyasa, are synthesised
over time in the VaiśeXika tradition so that they come to imply one another in a
sequence.
Moise’s attention to philosophical synthesis is paralleled by Paloma Muñoz
Gomez’s examination of the Mah@bh@rata’s ‘blending’ of the ideal of mokXa into
the pravPtti-oriented aims of human life (puruX@rtha). Historically, the early iter-
ations of the puruX@rthas were limited to the trivarga or three-fold group of virtue
(dharma), wealth (artha), and pleasure (k@ma), which have been understood as
functioning both diachronically and synchronically. Some scholars argue that
the eventual expansion of the trivarga to include mokXa is a result of the interplay
between Vedic traditions, rooted in ‘householder’ norms and ritual performance,
and non-Vedic traditions, which aim at the ‘cessation’ (nirodha, nivPtti, nirv@>a, etc.)
 James Madaio 7

of sa:s@ra through techniques and attitudes associated with renunciation

(sa:ny@sa). Muñoz Gomez analyses the way in which this broader dialogic inter-
action plays out literally through the dialogue of the Sangat@, a verbal exchange
between Vidura and the five P@>nava brothers, in_ the Ś@ntiparvan of the
Mah@bh@rata. In particular, she examines the mechanics of this ‘blending’ process
by paying close attention to the views voiced by the different interlocutors in the

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Sangat@ and how these positions are creatively harmonised through the character
_ YudhiXbhira. This integration is not only reflective of a compromise, between
of
renunciatory and householder norms, but also expands the meaning and accessi-
bility of mokXa by positioning it within the framework of the puruX@rthas.
The accounts of liberation articulated in Ny@ya, VaiśeXika, and the Mah@bh@rata
all partake in a shared multivocalic discourse of what is often considered as
polycentric Hinduism, which developed in conversation with the Buddhist and
Jaina traditions, forming a broader context within which ideas about the structure
of the cosmos and mokXa emerged. The views on liberation discussed in this issue
are not, of course, exhaustive of the Hindu or, more broadly, Indic fold. Numerous
Hindu devotional movements, for example, do not seek the extirpation of qualities
or self-abidance whether in terms of a formal but attributeless self or pure con-
sciousness but rather what we might term the aim of remaining so as to adore –
that is, remaining as a transformed individual so as to worship God.13 Many such
approaches hinge on theological principles such as surrender (prapatti) and grace
(anugraha), and involve the cultivation of a ‘vertical’ disposition through advancing
stages of devotion (bhakti) toward greater proximity or intimacy with God. In this
sense, one is ‘crossing’ a sa:s@ra that is constituted by ignorance and delusive
traits, a view that does not position individuality, association, contact, or involve-
ment as constituting bondage. Other programmes of self-fashioning, such as those
linked with certain habha-yogic, N@tha, and Ras@yana traditions, evidence a striv-
ing toward divine abilities, bodily immortality, or agelessness.
One of the terms used in relation to both an immortal body and a perfected
awareness is javanmukti or liberation-while-living. As a technical term, but not as a
new conceptual notion, ‘javanmukti’ appears to have emerged within the early
medieval Śaiva context, and is later employed within Advaita Ved@nta, as well
as in other advaitic, ved@ntic, and yogic traditions.14 The YoginahPdaya, a mid-
eleventh century Ś@kta Śaiva work of the Tripurasundara cult (more popularly
known as Śravidy@), explicitly aims at the realisation of javanmukti, or the estab-
lishment of a permanent non-dual awareness here and now. Anya Golovkova’s
article in this issue situates the javanmukti posited in the YoginahPdaya within the
textual development of the Tripurasundara cult. Although liberation (mukti, mokXa)
is briefly mentioned in works of the antecedent Nity@ cult, as well as in the
V@makeśvaramata, the earliest extant tantra of the Tripurasundara cult, Golovkova
argues that these works exhibit a palpable ‘this-worldly’ orientation, which is
predominantly concerned with the attainment of worldly skills, powers, and en-
joyments rather than transcendence. Golovkova demonstrates that the redactors
8 Liberation and Hindu Studies

of the YoginahPdaya maintained and built upon the complex ritual structure of the
earlier V@makeśvaramata while developing meditative techniques that harness the
subtle physiology of the yogic body. Integrated within a Trika-informed metaphys-
ics, which holds that the supreme consciousness qua Goddess manifests the uni-
verse ‘on herself as the screen’, these interiorising disciplines result in the
recognition of the non-duality of the cogniser and the supreme consciousness.

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Javanmukti, in this context, entails a ‘synthesising awareness’ that maintains the
non-difference of the deity, guru, mantra, ritual diagram (or Śracakra), and self.
The orientation identified by Golovkova in the Nity@ cult and early phase of
Tripurasundara cult might be characterised as a ‘freedom to’ approach; that is, an
aim toward securing the freedom to act with skill, mastery, and power, rather than
seeking ‘freedom from’ limitation or hindrances as such.15 While the innovative-
ness of the YoginahPdaya is in its articulation of javanmukti and liberating practices,
it seeks, not unlike earlier t@ntrika texts, not only ‘freedom from’ obstacles that
impede non-dual awareness but attainment of supernatural enjoyments (bhukti),
which are concomitant with liberation (mukti). In other words, one could say that
the goal is not only freedom from worldly obstacles but sovereignty over a ‘world’
no longer considered as separate from oneself.
Collectively, such distinctions are instructive for drawing attention to the many
nuanced ways in which it is possible to map the ‘movement of self-surpassing’,
which, as J.L. Mehta put it, ‘is as much constitutive of the human state as defining
and setting up boundaries’ (Mehta 1985, p.203). The varieties of crossing, or self-
surpassing, are, of course, reflective of the different comprehensive ontologies
within which they serve as life-orienting goals. Articulations of liberation, while
setting forth the furthest horizons of self and reality, occur within situated trad-
itions (samprad@yas) that do indeed define and demarcate boundaries. In this sense,
liberation is one among a host of issues that are part of the practices of boundary-
making, as much as they also articulate soteric methods for crossing boundaries.
The five papers of this issue offer a chorus of voices that open up a broader space
for understanding the interconnected and dynamic ways pre-modern Indic textual
practices argued, developed, and synthesised seminal accounts of freedom.

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the USSR.
Uskokov, A. 2018. Deciphering the hidden meaning: scripture and the hermeneutics of
liberation in early Advaita Ved@nta. PhD dissertation, University of Chicago.
Watson, A., Goodall, D., and Anjaneya Sarma, S. L. P. 2013. An enquiry into the nature of
liberation: Bhatta R@maka>tha’s ParamokXanir@sak@rik@vrtti, a commentary on Sadyojyotih$’s
__
refutation of twenty _ of the liberated state (mokXa).
conceptions _ Pondicherry: Institut français
de Pondichéry, Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient.

Notes
1 On the ‘The Age of S+tra’, see Ganeri (2017).
2 Fyodor Stcherbatsky, The conception of Buddhist Nirv@>a (Leningrad: Academy of
Sciences of the USSR, 1927), 55 (italics not in original). Stcherbatsky continues:
‘[The Naiy@yika philosopher] Uddyotakara [c. 540–600 CE] says “these are the
four topics which are investigated by every philosopher in every system of meta-
physics”’. Accordingly every philosophical system must contain an analysis of the
elements of life, a doctrine about its driving forces, a doctrine of the Absolute and a
doctrine about the method to be followed in order to escape out of phenomenal
life. . .’.
10 Liberation and Hindu Studies

3 With that being said, a ‘positive’ terminology also emerged in relation to ultimate
reality (and this is certainly the case within Hindu theistic traditions). Within the
Ved@ntic context, which entails numerous theological perspectives, many such
terms were exegetically derived from the UpaniXads, such as being (sat), self-exist-
ent (svayambhu), plenum (bh+m@), bliss (@nanda), sovereignty (aiśvarya), conscious-
ness (cit), imperishable (akXara), light (joytis), essence (rasa), unborn (aja), eternal
(nitya), fullness (p+r>a), etc.

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4 In this regard, Bhabba R@maka>bha’s tenth century commentary (vPtti) on
Sadyojyoti$’s ParamokXanir@sak@rik@ provides an invaluable interrogation and sys-
tematisation of twenty different views on liberation (Watson et al. 2013).
Polemically situated within the Śaiva Siddh@nta tradition, R@maka>bha pays par-
ticular attention to issues such as cognition, agency, enjoyment, omnipotence, etc.,
drawing attention to the finer points of philosophical discussion that distinguish
scholastic deliberations on liberation in the Indic context.
5 The Jaina distinction between the enlightened, but still embodied, kevalin and lib-
eration after separation from the body (dehaviyoga) parallels similar distinctions
posited in other traditions. In this issue, Kataoka, for example, explicates Jayanta’s
argument for the ‘deactivation’ of karma upon realising the essential nature of
reality (tattvajñ@na). Certain medieval Advaita Ved@ntins, on the other hand, distin-
guish between (i) a ‘knower of brahman’ who is susceptible to currently manifesting
or activated (pr@rabdha)karma, (ii) a javanmukta° who retains a body, but is impervi-
ous to fructifying karma, and (iii) videhamukti or liberation after the exhaustion of all
karma and thus the ‘fall of the body’ (Madaio 2018). As evidenced in Bajželj’s dis-
cussion, the Jainas employ the illustrative example of the potter’s wheel, among a
host of other rich metaphors and illustrations, while explaining the continued
upward motion of the java after the exhaustion of all karma. Although used in a
different way, the potter’s wheel is also employed in the S@:khyak@rik@ (c. 400 CE),
verse 67, to explain the continued presence of the body after awakening due to the
power (vaśa) of the momentum (vega) of past impressions (sa:sk@ra). Advaita
Ved@ntins similarly use the example of the potter’s wheel, along with the shot
arrow that continues in motion until its momentum dissipates, in order to
defend their position that even after awakening the body continues for some
time due to operative karma.
6 Rivers across the landscape of India are dotted with pilgrimage sites known as
tarthas, or sacred points of crossing, that are associated with lives of various
avat@ras, gods and goddesses. On tarthas, and related notions of crossing, see Eck
(1981).
7 n@pi lok@yatikavyatirikta$ sarvo ‘pi tairthiko mokXam aṅgakurvan yogicarite ’pi visa:-
vaditum arhati. @rhatabauddhavaiśeXikanaiy@yikaśaivavaiX>avaś@ktas@:khyayog@dimo-
kXaś@streXu pratip@dyaprameyasya n@n@vidhatve ’pi, mokXas@dhanasya
yamaniyam@dyaXb@ṅgayogasyaikavidhatv@t. For the Sanskrit, see Pa>aśakara (1978
[1890], p.98).
8 In his prose commentary on Ś@ntarakXita’s (725–788 CE) Tattvasa:graha, the Indian
Buddhist philosopher Kamalaśala (c. 740–795 CE) asserts that liberation is regarded
by all educated people as the highest aim, and that it is ‘well known among all
@stikas that knowledge of truth brings about prosperity [abhyudaya] and the highest
 James Madaio 11

good [ni$śreyasa]. . . . When prosperity and the highest good have been attained, all
that is desired by man is accomplished, and all his longings cease; and beyond this
there is no other purpose [prayojana] to be sought after’. Tattvasa:grahapañjik@
adapted from Jha (1986 [1937]: pp.13–14).
9 Uskokov (2018) argues that the Mam@:s@ notion of heaven (svarga) shared largely
the same semantic and axiological space as mokXa. In that way, philosophers such as
the sixth century Bhavya (Bh@viveka) and the eighth century Śa:kara understood

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the complex of svarga and ritual as a competing doctrine of liberation. The defin-
ition of svarga, as a state of unexcelled happiness (niratiśaya-sukha/prati/@nanda),
became one of the standard definitions of liberation in Advaita Ved@nta.
10 Houben (1994), drawing, in part, on the work of M. Biardeau, has critiqued the
somewhat pervasive developmental interpretation of VaiśeXika, stemming largely
from the work of E. Frauwallner, that envisions an early or proto-VaiśeXika as a
pure philosophy of nature that later, uneasily, appropriated the notion of
liberation.
11 Sradhara (fl. 990 CE), for example, felt compelled to defend the VaiśeXika tradition
against the charge that it was soteriologically ineffective, arguing that the ‘com-
prehensive classification of the constituents of the world are. . .motivated by and
committed to a puruX@rtha, i.e. final liberation’ (Halbfass 1991, p.116).
12 Manus:Pti (c. 100–300 CE) articulates the variance between pravPtti (‘advancing’) and
nivPtti (‘arresting’) as follows: ‘Acts prescribed by the Veda are of two kinds: advan-
cing, which procures the enhancement of happiness; and arresting, which procures
the supreme good. An action performed to obtain a desire here or in the hereafter is
called an “advancing act”, whereas an action performed without desire and
prompted by knowledge is said to be an “arresting act”. By engaging in advancing
acts, a man attains equality with the gods; by engaging in arresting acts, on
the other hand, he transcends the five elements’. Manus:Pti 12.88-90 in Olivelle
(2005, p.234).
13 As Y@davendra Pura has put it: ‘We drown in an ambrosial sea of Nandanandana’s
[i.e., KPX>a’s] youthful play. What are the salty waters of liberation to us?’ Pady@vala
42 in Lutjeharms (2018, p.395).
14 On javanmukti, see Fort and Mumme (1996) and Slaje (2000a, 2000b). For further
references related to the Śaiva context, see Golovkova’s article in this issue.
15 On the distinction between ‘freedom to’ and ‘freedom from’ in the Indic context, see
Gelblum (1965).