The Ubiquitous Siva Volume II: Somananda''s Sivadrsti and His Philosophical Interlocutors

This is a sequel to a volume published in 2011 by OUP under the title The Ubiquitous iva: Somnanda's ivadi and his Tantric Interlocutors. The first volume offered an introduction, critical edition, and annotated translation of the first three chapters of the ivadi of Somnanda, along with its principal commentary, the ivadivtti, written by Utpaladeva. It dealt primarily with aiva theology and the religious views of competing esoteric traditions. The present volume presents the fourth chapter of the ivadi and ivadivtti and addresses a fresh set of issues that engage a distinct family of opposing schools and authors of mainstream Indian philosophical traditions. In this fourth chapter, Somnanda and Utpaladeva engage logical and philosophical works that exerted tremendous influence in the Indian subcontinent in its premodernity. Among the authors and schools addressed by Somnanda in this chapter are the Buddhist Epistemologists, and Dharmakrti in particular; the Hindu school of hermeneutics, i.e., the Mms; the Hindu realist schools of the logic- and debate-oriented Nyya and their ontologically-oriented partners, the Vaieika; and the Hindu, dualist Skhya and Yoga schools. Throughout this chapter, Somnanda endeavors to explain his brand of aivism philosophically. Somnanda challenges his philosophical interlocutors with a single over-arching argument: he suggests that their views cannot coherethey cannot be explained logicallyunless their authors accept the aiva non-duality for which he advocates. The argument he offers, despite its historical influence, remains virtually unstudied. The Ubiquitous iva Volume II offers the first English translation of Chapter Four of the ivadi and ivadivtti along with an introduction and critical edition. See more