Papers by raffaele torella
Bulletin d’études indiennes 36: HOMMAGE A MARIE-CLAUDE PORCHER: 389-414, 2024
One often encounters, in Indian philosophic, religious and literary texts, similes and metaphors ... more One often encounters, in Indian philosophic, religious and literary texts, similes and metaphors centred on the figure of the actor/dancer, associated with the God or the self. This is especially frequent in non-dual Śaivism of medieval Kashmir (and Tamiḻnāṭu), probably due to the close association of Śiva to dance. Starting from the analysis of the well-known series of sūtras in the Śivasūtra along with the commentaries by Bhāskara and Kṣemarāja, the article investigates on the multiple meanings of this simile/metaphor.
V. Eltschinger, J. Kramer, P. Patil (eds.), Burlesque of the Philosophers: Indian and Buddhist Studies in memory of Helmut Krasser, 2023
In order to better understand Abhinavagupta’s position regarding “beauty” we had rather first del... more In order to better understand Abhinavagupta’s position regarding “beauty” we had rather first delve into western speculation on this topic (especially: Plato, Plotinus, Pseudo-Dionysius, Saint Thomas, Montesquieu, Diderot, Gadamer, etc.). Abhinavagupta’s position regarding beauty does not lend itself to be included in the objectivistic approach - this is quite evident - but not even in the subjectivistic approach. To him, saundarya is not a vastudharma, accessible to everyone’s experience indiscriminately, nor is it a hidden, undefinable, quality of the thing itself requiring from the perceiving subject a special kind of insight which only happy few can possess. Rather, he maintains that it is only a special way of approaching reality that alone ‘creates’ beauty in the object. Thus, only our spiritual refinement is responsible for the emergence of beauty, and in turn the beauty-based experience - i.e. aesthetic experience (rasa, etc.) - nourishes our spiritual refinement, helping us evade from saṃsāra.
Journal of Indological Studies (Kyoto), 2022
Camatkāra is one of the key words in the philosophical-aesthetic speculation of Utpaladeva and Ab... more Camatkāra is one of the key words in the philosophical-aesthetic speculation of Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta. But what is its real meaning? Certainly, not “wonder”…
H. Matsuoka, Sh. Moriyama, T. Neill (eds.), To the Heart of Truth: Felicitation Volume for Eli Franco on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde 104.Wien: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien Universität Wien, 2023. 311–331., 2023
On wonder, curiosity and doubt as possible sources of philosophical inquiry (Indian and western r... more On wonder, curiosity and doubt as possible sources of philosophical inquiry (Indian and western responses)
L'estetica indiana: la scuola di Abhinavagupta, 2023
La figura di Abhinavagupta (X-XI sec.) occupa un posto eminente nel panorama filosofico-religioso... more La figura di Abhinavagupta (X-XI sec.) occupa un posto eminente nel panorama filosofico-religioso dell’India premoderna ed è universalmente noto, in India e anche in Occidente, come il più grande maestro spirituale del Tantrismo hindu. Può destare sorpresa il ritrovare il nome di Abhinavagupta stagliarsi con grande rilievo anche in un campo del sapere (śāstra) così formalmente distante come quello della poetica e più in generale dell’estetica. Uno dei molti meriti del presente volume è di avere incrociato l’opera più propriamente estetica di Abhinavagupta – il commento al Nāṭya-śāstra (“Scienza del Teatro”) intitolato Abhinavabhāratī – con le sue opere espressamente filosofico-religiose, implicitamente rivelando la forte matrice estetica che si annida in queste ultime. Fulcro di questo libro è la traduzione, ampiamente commentata e basata su un testo sanscrito significativamente migliorato rispetto alle edizioni esistenti, del geniale commento al cosiddetto rasa-sūtra, una lunga e acutissima indagine sull’essenza dell’esperienza estetica (rasa, appunto) che condizionerà tutto il pensiero estetico dell’India fino ai nostri giorni, aprendosi a inaspettati quanto fecondi spunti comparativi con la tradizione occidentale classica e moderna.
Raniero Gnoli è uno dei grandi maestri dell’indologia internazionale. Allievo di Giuseppe Tucci, ha insegnato per decenni Indologia alla Sapienza di Roma. La sua attività di studioso ha toccato i campi più disparati degi studi indiani – dal Tantrismo śivaita e buddhista, alle scuole logico-epistemologiche del buddhismo, alla letteratura ornata, all’estetica, fino all’epigrafia – spesso aprendo nuove prospettive di ricerca e dovunque lasciando un’impronta profonda e duratura. Illustre quanto lo Gnoli indologo è poi lo Gnoli esperto di marmi colorati romani. Tra le sue opere fondamentali vanno almeno menzionate la traduzione del Tantrāloka di Abhinavagupta (l’unica disponibile di questa grandiosa summa del Tantrismo śivaita), l’edizione critica dello Svārthānumāna-pariccheda di Dharmakīrti, e lo splendido Marmora Romana.
East and West, 1988
This article of several years ago inaugurated the quest for fragments of Utpaladeva's Īśvarapraty... more This article of several years ago inaugurated the quest for fragments of Utpaladeva's Īśvarapratyabhijñā-vivṛti, one of the most significant works of Indian philosophy, which unfortunately has not come down to us. More fragments have been discovered and edited after 2007 by Yohei Kawajiri, Isabelle Ratié and Raffaele Torella.
The Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Religion, 2021
If we look at full-fledgedŚaiva nondualism of Kashmir (in contrast to Saiddhāntiká Saiva dualism ... more If we look at full-fledgedŚaiva nondualism of Kashmir (in contrast to Saiddhāntiká Saiva dualism of which it appears to be a later development) as expressed in the works of the four great masters somānanda (c. 900-950), Utpaladeva (c. 925-975), Abhinavagupta (c. 975-1025), and Ks. emarāja (c. 1000-1050), we find that the individual soul fully coincides withŚiva; the material world is the free manifestation ofŚiva himself; māyā is not an autonomous reality, but a power ofŚiva; the stains (mala), which are responsible for the arising of the limited subject, are by no means substantial realities, but erroneous attitudes of the subject themself based on their lack of knowledge (see below); the opposition knower-knowable is only provisional; and finally everything shines as dynamic I-ness. Somānanda laid the foundation for the philosophy of nondualŚaivism (later called Pratyabhijñā "Recognition") with hisŚivadr. s. t. i (ŚD), an unflinching criticism of opposing doctrines with an emotionally aggressive overtone, deeply rooted in theŚaiva scriptures. Although theŚD was a powerful source of inspiration for Utpaladeva (Torella and Bäumer 2016), it is only with hisĪśvarapratyabhijñā-kārikā (ĪPK) that the Pratyabhijñā becomes a very original and elaborate philosophical system. TheĪPK and the author's Vr. tti ("short commentary"), composed at the same time, were commented upon in a long and complex Vivr. ti ("elaborate commentary"), which has come down to us only in fragments: the Siddhitrayī, three terse treatises on specific subjects and a Vr. tti on theŚivadr. s. t. i. Besides authoring philosophical works, Utpaladeva was also a mystical poet, as expressed in his splendid hymn collection,Śivastotrāvalī. The Pratyabhijñā philosophy was continued by Utpaladeva's disciple Laks. man. agupta (of whom nothing has come down to us) and by the latter's disciple, the great Abhinavagupta, who composed two extensive commentaries on the Pratyabhijñā, and took it as the theoretical frame for his Trika system in the Tantrāloka (TĀ), meant as a synthesis of the entire tantricŚaiva tradition; this synthesis was built around a single text, the Mālinīvijayottara-tantra (MVU), but at the same time included the teachings of many lineages ofŚaiva tantras, organized according to a Trika-Krama model (Sanderson 2009). Abhinava's work covers an astonishingly vast array of subjects, ranging from the exegesis of tantric scriptures to epistemology, to aesthetic speculation, this latter probably forming the very basis on which the whole edifice of his worldview rests. His most illustrious disciple, Ks. emarāja, was essentially the author of commentaries-a literary genre that in India was the actual seat of knowledge, much more than the few "original" sutra and kārikā texts-among which theŚivasūtra-vimarśinī, Spanda-nirn. aya, Netra-uddyota, and Svacchanda-uddyota stand out. While the
Le parole e i marmi : studi in onore di Raniero Gnoli nel suo 70° compleanno
ABIM started as the bibliography of Jan Meulenbeld's A History of Indian Medical Literature,... more ABIM started as the bibliography of Jan Meulenbeld's A History of Indian Medical Literature, and was first published on the internet as a set of HTML files in 2002. In the course of 2007 a new website for ABIM and EJIM, the Electronic Journal of Indian Medicine, was created by Roelf ...
Alexandreia – Alessandria. Rivista di glottologia, 2019
A talk on the famous sentence "parokṣapriyā iva devāḥ". A few considerations on clarity and obscu... more A talk on the famous sentence "parokṣapriyā iva devāḥ". A few considerations on clarity and obscurity in Indian culture (in Italian).
[Rivista degli Studi Orientali. Nuova Serie, Dec 20, 2020
A recent article by Johannes Bronkhorst treats a delicate issue: in the case of Indian doxographi... more A recent article by Johannes Bronkhorst treats a delicate issue: in the case of Indian doxographies, such as the Sarvadarśanasaṃgraha, whose body is mainly constituted by an impressive number of quotations - either explicit or not - from several texts, is it allowed, or advisable, to correct the text of the doxography on the basis of its sources? JB says: “A closer investigation shows that this procedure is not without risks, and may occasionally give rise to unjustified “corrections”. The article shows that quotations in the Sarvadarśanasaṃgraha deviate from their source-texts in numerous cases.”
The present article goes through these observations and furthers them following partly different lines.
Archaeologies of the Written: Indian, Tibetan, and Buddhist Studies in Honour of Cristina Scherrer-Schaub, eds. V. Eltschinger, V. Tournier, and M. Sernesi. Series Minor, Università di Napoli “L'Orientale.” Naples: Università di Napoli “L'Orientale. (pp. 845-857), 2020
While in the past I took almost for granted that the grounds of Abhinavagupta’s aesthetic thought... more While in the past I took almost for granted that the grounds of Abhinavagupta’s aesthetic thought were to be found in his philosophical-religious speculation, in the course of time my feeling has been gradually changing and now I am more and more inclined to give prominence to a basic aesthetic flavour as the more or less hidden background of his activity as a whole. This aesthetic flavour goes hand by hand with an aristocratic attitude, the latter being allegedly the very source where the former stems from.
G. Oberhammer (ed.), Studies in Hinduism, II, Miscellanea to the Phenomenon of Tantras, Österreichisce Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse, Sitzungsberichte, 662. Band, Wien, pp. 55-86., 1998
Among the basic principles (tattva) that form the structure of the universe according to the Śaiv... more Among the basic principles (tattva) that form the structure of the universe according to the Śaiva Tantric tradition, the group named kañcukas certainly do not constitute a mere doctrinal detail among many others, but the theorization, also translated into ritual, of a central point of Tantric thought, which may tell us very much on its concept of man and his life.
JAOS, 139, 3, 2019
A major characteristic of the aristocratic attitude—and I would not know how to better define the... more A major characteristic of the aristocratic attitude—and I would not know how to better define the flavor that pervades the whole of Abhinavagupta’s work—is the downgrading of all painful effort, seen as a plebeian feature. The aristocrat intends to show that what inferior people can achieve only at the cost of long and painful exercises is accessible to him promptly and very easily. One of the recurring qualifications for Abhinavagupta’s attitude to the spiritual path is precisely absence of effort, absence of exertion or fatigue, easiness. This can be clearly detected in Abhinavagupta’s attitude to yoga, or, to be more precise, to Pātañjala yoga. In the summary of the topics of the Tantrāloka (TĀ), at the end of Āhnika I, he lists “uselessness of yogāṅgas.” When all yogāṅgas, abhyāsa, vairāgya, etc., are viewed from the peak of the highest aesthetically marked spiritual experiencer, they are condemned unreservedly (following the lead of the Vīrāvalī-tantra). On the other hand, after delivering such a pitiless death sentence, Abhinavagupta seems to gracefully suspend it, and allow common people to follow pāśavayoga ‘yoga for limited souls’ in the context of the “minimal means” with the motivation that after all everything is made of everything, and, as the Mālinīvijayottara teaches, “nothing is to be prescribed, nothing to be prohibited.”
A short assessment of Eliade's contribution to Tantric studies (a very old article...)
As a world view based on reason and revelation, Śaiva nondualism is expected to have its roots in... more As a world view based on reason and revelation, Śaiva nondualism is expected to have its roots in Śaiva scriptures. Indeed, one of the most popular divisions of the Śaiva scriptures presents three sets of texts, characterised by dualism, dualism-cum-nondualism and nondualism, promulgated by Śiva, Rudra and Bhairava, respectively, in the number of ten, eighteen and sixty-four. The scrutiny of what is extant from the sixty-four Bhairavatantras risk disappointing the seeker for unequivocal nondualist lines, various forms of dualism being no doubt the common ground of the earliest Śaiva tantras. The very occurrence there of terms like advaita, advaya, etc., essentially concerns ritual practice. Apart from isolated instances, straightforward affirmation of ontological and epistemological nondualism can be found only in post-scriptural tradition centred on the seminal work of Somānanda and Utpaladeva, then merely followed (and only partly developed) by Abhinavagupta. Such exegetical tradition is discernible in later markedly nondual scriptures, such as the Kālikākrama.
The role of emotions, passions and desire in Indian philosophies and religions, with particular r... more The role of emotions, passions and desire in Indian philosophies and religions, with particular regard to Śaiva Tantrism.
With Vāmanadatta we are in tenth century Kashmir, where an extraordinary work of doctrinal system... more With Vāmanadatta we are in tenth century Kashmir, where an extraordinary work of doctrinal systematization has just started within the diverse streams of tantric Śaivism, and also, at least in part, within tantric Viṣṇuism. For some complex reasons these schools choose to bring the tantra teachings into the open, by accepting to confront themselves with the leading social and philosophical-religious establishment. In this framework, we can insert the problematic figure of Vāmanadatta, the only case of a follower of the tantric Vaiṣṇava school of Pañcarātra to be regarded as a master also by the later non-dual Śaiva tradition, including the great Abhinavagupta. The paper is based on my forthcoming edition and English translation of Vāmanadatta's main works: Saṃvitprakāśa and Ātmasaptati, clearly influenced by the contemporary teachings of non-dualistic Śaivism.
Introductory chapter of R. Torella, B. Baeumer (eds.) Utpaladeva, Philosopher of Recognition, DKP... more Introductory chapter of R. Torella, B. Baeumer (eds.) Utpaladeva, Philosopher of Recognition, DKPrintworld, Delhi 2015.
Proceedings of the first international workshop entirely devoted to Utpaladeva
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Papers by raffaele torella
Raniero Gnoli è uno dei grandi maestri dell’indologia internazionale. Allievo di Giuseppe Tucci, ha insegnato per decenni Indologia alla Sapienza di Roma. La sua attività di studioso ha toccato i campi più disparati degi studi indiani – dal Tantrismo śivaita e buddhista, alle scuole logico-epistemologiche del buddhismo, alla letteratura ornata, all’estetica, fino all’epigrafia – spesso aprendo nuove prospettive di ricerca e dovunque lasciando un’impronta profonda e duratura. Illustre quanto lo Gnoli indologo è poi lo Gnoli esperto di marmi colorati romani. Tra le sue opere fondamentali vanno almeno menzionate la traduzione del Tantrāloka di Abhinavagupta (l’unica disponibile di questa grandiosa summa del Tantrismo śivaita), l’edizione critica dello Svārthānumāna-pariccheda di Dharmakīrti, e lo splendido Marmora Romana.
The present article goes through these observations and furthers them following partly different lines.