One-Volume Libraries: Composite and Multiple-Text Manuscripts by Michael Friedrich Cosima Schwarke

Author:Michael Friedrich, Cosima Schwarke
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Published: 2016-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

3Traditional accounts on the emergence of a corpus

The testimony of the manuscript tradition shows beyond doubt that this group of eight works was regarded as a fixed corpus in medieval Nepal. It would now be relevant to enquire whether traces of the process of corpus formation can also be spotted in the texts themselves, or if their association in a collection did not affect the composition of the works, but is solely discernible from codicological features. A rare example of intertextual references in the Śivadharma corpus is offered by the Śivopaniṣad, one of the works whose attachment to the corpus might, in a few cases, have been debatable. This text depicts the situation of a growing textual corpus, making explicit reference to other works of the collection with which it tries to establish a strong link. In its final stanzas, at the end of the seventh chapter, the Śivopaniṣad alludes to the composition of the Śivadharmaśāstra and the Śivadharmottara, placing them and their respective authors in a sequence that is ideally concluded by the Śivopaniṣad itself:

Thus, Kṛṣṇātreya obtained from Mahākāla this divine [and] well ascertained nectar of knowledge, in detail and due succession. / Having churned the big ocean of the knowledge of Śiva with the churning-stick of wisdom, Kṛṣṇātreya announced this very short teaching after extracting [it from there]. / If anything was left unsaid in the great Śivadharmaśāstra and in the Continuation of the Śivadharma (scil.: the Śivadharmottara), this was proclaimed in the present [work]. / This treatise, addressed to three deities, was spoken by the descendant of Atri (scil. Kṛṣṇātreya), a king amid ascetics, and confers liberation to the three [classes] of animals, men and gods. / Nandi, Skanda and Mahākāla are celebrated as the three deities, Candrātreya, as well as Agasti and Kṛṣṇātri as the triad of sages. / The teachings of the Śivadharma have been fully expounded by these great souls for the sake of all living beings. Obeisance to them, obeisance always! / And by their pupils, and pupils of pupils who were expounders of the Śivadharma, the lake of the knowledge of Śiva was entirely covered, like by means of blossoming lotuses. / Those who always allow the devotees of Śiva to listen to the Śivadharma, they are Rudras, and they are kings amid sages, they have to be bowed to with individual devotion. / Those who, rising up, listen to the Śivadharma day by day, they are Rudras, supreme lords of the Rudras, they are not ordinary human beings. / This Śivopaniṣad470 has been transmitted in seven chapters by the sage belonging to the lineage of Kṛṣṇātreya, out of desire for the benefit [of other people].471

The revelation of the Śivopaniṣad is thus attributed to the sage Kṛṣṇātreya, who accessed the ‘ocean of knowledge’ revealed by Śiva, here portrayed as Mahākāla, who is the ultimate author of the teachings. The text reconnects itself with the two works whose authority had most likely already been acknowledged, i.e. the Śivadharmaśāstra and the Śivadharmottara, adopting a strategy that is typical of Indian religious texts seeking authoritativeness.

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