Lord Siva's Song

Andrew J. Nicholson

Description

While the Bhagavad Gītā is an acknowledged treasure of world spiritual literature, few people know a parallel text, the Īśvara Gītā. This lesser-known work is also dedicated to a god, but in this case it is Śiva, rather than Kṛṣṇa, who is depicted as the omniscient creator of the world. Andrew J. Nicholson's Lord Śiva's Song makes this text available in English in an accessible new translation. A work of both poetry and philosophy, the Īśvara Gītā builds on the insights of Patañjali's Yoga Sūtra and foreshadows later developments in tantric yoga. It deals with the pluralistic religious environment of early medieval India through an exploration of the relationship between the gods Śiva and Viṣṇu. The work condemns sectarianism and violence and provides a strategy for accommodating conflicting religious claims in its own day and in our own.
Acknowledgments
Introduction

Translation

1. The Arrival of the Gods

2. The Changeless Self

3. The Unmanifest Lord

4. The God of Gods

5. The Lord’s Dance

6. The Glory of Lord Śiva

7. The Master of Beasts

8. The Hidden Lord

9. Brahman’s Powers

10. Brahman and the Lord

11. The Highest Yoga

Commentarial Notes
Sanskrit Text
List of Concordances
Glossary of Sanskrit Names and Terms
Bibliography

Sujets

• East Asian religions
• Hinduism

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 27 mars 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438451022
• Langue: English

Extrait

LORD ŚIVA’S SONG
LORD ŚIVA’S SONG
The Īśvara Gītā
Translated with an Introduction and Notes by
Andrew J. Nicholson
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS
Cover art: Prince Subuddhi in the Forest of Illusion (folio 35 from the Suraj Prakash), accession number RJS1660, used with permission of Mehrangarh Museum Trust, Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India, and His Highness Maharaja Gaj Singh of Jodhpur.
Published by STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS Albany
© 2014 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press www.sunypress.edu
Production, Laurie Searl Marketing, Michael Campochiaro
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Puranas. Kurmapurana. Isvar-gita. English.
Lord Siva’s Song : the Isvara Gita / Translated with an introduction and notes by Andrew J. Nicholson. pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
Translated from Sanskrit.
ISBN 978-1-4384-5101-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)
I. Nicholson, Andrew J. II. Title.
BL1140.4.K8742I8813 2014
294.5’925—dc23
2013020385
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To the memory of Shri Narayan Mishra
yasya deve parā bhaktir yathā deve tathā gurau tasyaite kathitā hy arthā ḥ prakāśante mahātmana ḥ
“These matters described by the great one reveal themselves to the person who shows the highest love toward god, and as toward god, toward his own teacher.” —Śvetāśvatara Upani ṣ ad 6.23
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
TRANSLATION
1 The Arrival of the Gods
2 The Changeless Self
3 The Unmanifest Lord
4 The God of Gods
5 The Lord’s Dance
6 The Glory of Lord Śiva
7 The Master of Beasts
8 The Hidden Lord
9 Brahman’s Powers
10 Brahman and the Lord
11 The Highest Yoga
Commentarial Notes
Sanskrit Text
List of Concordances
Glossary of Sanskrit Names and Terms
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
The quest for liberation through yoga in medieval India, although sometimes depicted as a solitary endeavor, was more often a project involving an entire community of teachers and disciples. The same is true of the quest to complete a book such as this one. I have benefited enormously from the guidance and friendship of many scholars, only a few of whom I have the space to acknowledge here. First, I wish to offer thanks to my teachers in the United States and in India, especially to Shri Narayan Mishra, who helped me with this translation but passed away before publication.
I am very grateful to Stony Brook University, which granted me a semester research leave in 2009 to begin this project, and which also awarded me an FAHSS research grant to travel to Varanasi in 2011. Mario Piantelli was very kind to make his excellent Italian translation of the Īśvara Gītā available to me in digital form. The online text of the Kūrma Purā ṇ a and other Purā ṇ as provided by the Göttingen Register of Electronic Texts in Indian Languages (GRETIL) was also an important digital resource. My expert colleagues David Buchta, Whitney Cox, James Fitzgerald, Deven Patel, and Travis Smith read parts of my manuscript and offered invaluable advice. I presented parts of the introductory section of this book to audiences at the American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting in 2010, the Freie Universität Berlin Zukunftsphilologie Seminar in 2011, and the McGill University Faculty of Religious Studies Lecture Series in 2012. Their spirited, insightful questions have led me to refine my interpretations of the Īśvara Gītā and of Pāśupata philosophy. The students who read drafts of this work in undergraduate seminars with me at Stony Brook University offered suggestions to improve some of my unclear and ungainly translations. Finally, I thank my family, Claudia Misi, Silvia Nicholson, Marlene Nicholson, Norman Nicholson, and Elizabeth Nicholson, who have always sustained me with their love and encouragement.
Introduction
The Īśvara Gītā (“Lord Śiva’s Song”) is a philosophical poem that conveys the teachings of the Pāśupatas, a group of Śiva worshippers who would have a profound and lasting influence on the development of Hinduism. Since its composition in the eighth century CE, it has been an inspiration to generations of philosophers, devotees, and yogis in India. Like its famous predecessor, the Bhagavad Gītā (“Song of Lord K ṛ ṣ ṇ a”), it goes beyond mere philosophical theory to describe a regimen of spiritual exercises to achieve self-transcendence and absolute freedom. These spiritual exercises, the “Pāśupata Yoga,” are a regimen of ethical discipline, breath control, physical postures, and mental concentration through which the yogi attains divine knowledge, power, and liberation. Pāśupatas are not content just to know god. The ultimate goal of Pāśupata Yoga is to become god—to attain Lord Śiva’s majestic power and wisdom in this very lifetime through mental absorption and union with him, the Lord of Yoga.
The proliferation of many different practices in the globalized yoga of the 20th and 21st centuries has led modern yogis to great uncertainty about what the final goal of yoga practice is: Is it stress relief? Peace of mind? Self-actualization? Nirvā ṇ a? Many teachers today describe Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtras, an influential text compiled between the second and fifth centuries CE, as the authoritive set of guidelines for yoga practice. But examination of Patañjali’s work reveals that many of the central ideas and practices of yoga as understood in later times are absent. One notable difference is Patañjali’s relative lack of interest in physical postures ( āsanas ), the main focus of practice for many modern yogis. Another surprise for some Hindus might be the place of god ( īśvara ) in Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtras. Although often described as the “classical Hindu” yoga, worship of and meditation on god is according to Patañjali a mere preliminary practice to the highest form of yoga. 1 This contrasts with the understanding of most Hindus, for whom god-absorption is the highest yogic practice.
The Īśvara Gītā, “Lord Śiva’s Song,” shows some influence from Patañjali’s eight-limbed ( a ṣ ṭ ā ṅ ga ) yoga. According to this later text, however, Patañjali’s highest form of mental absorption ( samādhi ) is a lower yoga, below absorption in god. The Īśvara Gītā also shares many concepts and themes with the famous Bhagavad Gītā, composed some six centuries earlier. 2 The most obvious difference between these two texts is the god who presents their teachings. In the Bhagavad Gītā, it is K ṛ ṣ ṇ a, in disguise as a charioteer, who instructs the great warrior Arjuna on the subtleties of philosophy and sacred duty ( dharma ). In the Īśvara Gītā it is Śiva as Paśupati, Master of Beasts, who instructs a group of sages about the highest truth and the means to realize it through the practice of yoga. Śiva says that he himself is supreme, the source of creation for all other gods, and the ultimate focus of yogic concentration. In the popular imagination and especially among non-Hindus, Śiva is regarded as the god of destruction. However, according to the Pāśupatas who composed the Īśvara Gītā, he is something much more: the creator of the universe and the ultimate source of worldly bondage and liberation.
The Historical Background of the Īśvara Gītā
The earliest Hindu holy texts are the Vedas, composed in Sanskrit beginning in approximately 1500 BCE. For many Hindus, the Vedas are the absolute scriptural authority. According to traditional interpretation, the Vedas are eternal and beyond human authorship, received by ancient seers who spoke and memorized the words of the Vedas. Indeed, the word “scripture” is misleading insofar as the Vedas were oral texts not written down until hundreds of years after their composition. Scholars of the Vedas made a fundamental distinction between the eternal Vedas and other texts that were composed by human authors. In this second category are included the Bhagavad Gītā and Īśvara Gītā, both attributed to the sage Vyāsa. Although considered an omniscient seer, Vyāsa’s texts and those composed by other great sages were not considered to have the same level of authority as the eternal Vedas. They were labeled “traditional” ( sm ṛ ti ) texts rather than the “revealed” ( śruti ) texts that make up the Vedas. The gods Śiva and Vi ṣ ṇ u, prominently featured in Iśvara Gītā, are different than those emphasized in most of the Vedas. Yet an early form of Śiva is present in s