Indo-Iran J (2007) 50: 267–268

DOI 10.1007/s10783-008-9066-1
BOOK REVIEW

Dupuche, John R., Abhinavagupta: The Kula Ritual as

Elaborated in Chapter 29 of the Tantrāloka
Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 2003, XV + 532 pp.
ISBN 81-208-1979-9. R. 795,-

Sanjukta Gupta

© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008

John R. Dupuche has revealed great scholarly zeal and philological hard work in
bringing out this work. He has written an excellent translation of an extremely terse
text, the Chapter 29 of the Tantrāloka of Abhinavagupta which explains the secret
ritual of initiation in the kula tradition and provides a clear analytical overview of the
text. He has divided his dissertation into two parts. The first part contains a detail ex-
position of his material from a historical point of view. The second part concentrates
on the text of Tantrāloka 29.
Dupuche states that the daily ritual described in ch. 29 of the Tantrāloka “consists
of two parts, the first of which, śl. 18-23, achieves the state of bhairavı̄-mudrā in-
tended by the Kula ritual, while the second, śl. 24-55, is the external expression of
that state.” (P 71).
Dupuche translates the term bhairavı̄-mudrā as the state of total identity of the
yogin with Bhairava, the supreme reality. Thus he takes the word mudrā to mean a
state of existence.
By translating Jayaratha’s commentary as well as his quotations—both clearly
differentiated—the author facilitates insights into this complicated ritual system and
its religious significance.
His introduction deals with the life and works of Abhinavagupta. Then he gives
a brief but quite illuminating history of the Tantric tradition, locating the Tantrāloka
within that tradition. He also presents the life and works of Abhinavagupta’s com-
mentator Jayaratha who greatly helped the author (and his readers) to understand the
purport of Abhinavagupta’s text. To my mind chapters 5 and 6 are of great value
for the students and scholars of Tantra religion in that these two chapters elaborate
on the special features and the structural pattern of the Tantrāloka and especially of

S. Gupta ()
11 Barton Lane, Oxford OX3 9JR, England
268 S. Gupta

chapter 29. His footnotes are very useful and sometimes one feels that they should
have been in the main body of the work (e.g. ch. 6, footnote 3). He has closely com-
pared the Mālinı̄vijayottara Tantra with his text to determine what Abhinavagupta
intended to convey in this chapter (p. 70). Besides the Mālinı̄vijayottara Tantra he
also supplied evidence from many other relevant primary texts to determine the exact
meaning of his text.
What impresses a reader of Dupuche’s work is his painstaking attention to every
detail of his material. Dupuche’s presentation of a comprehensive structure of the text
will be a great help to the scholar’s working on Abhinavagupta. He obviously thinks
it a major point of his book and presents it in several form including the appendix 15.
In fact his fifteen appendices deserve special attention. These make his meticulous
work easily accessible. I think appendices 2 through 14 are of special interest to the
students of Tantra in general and Abhinvagupta’s own position in the development
of the ritual and religious theories in that system in particular. As it is a very large
book these appendices serve as good guide to find material relevant to one’s own
research. Also useful is his concise clarification of this in the preface ‘How to Read
this Monograph’.
On the whole this is a very useful addition to the literature on the Śaiva system
of Abhinavagupta of Kashmir and his followers. There are a few problems in the
translation some of which the author mentions himself. I mention below a few of
these.
1. Mātaṅga is a tribe living mainly, like the Kirāta, in the Indian hilly tracks. They
are mentioned regularly in Sanskrit literature and are not to be confused with the
general category of outcastes.
2. Domba is another such distinct tribe with distinct life style. They used to weave
wicker baskets and joined the Brahmanical caste society as handlers of corpses
and carrion. They are often in charge of the cremation grounds (p. 222). Finally,
3. He guessed correctly the directions indicated by ‘kravyātka’ (p. 227, footnote
85). Kravyāda means a rāks.asa and refers to Nirr.ti and Ka may have been used
for Kuvera.