Raja Raja The Great

Author(s): Anantacharya Indological Research Institute
Publisher: Anantacharya Indological Research Institute

Page 11

121
creation. In a realistic view where the matter principle is an eternal entity, creation is not the making of new entities, it is only a process of transformation Now Aghora has to comment a text which places pure spiritual entities in the scale of tattvas of creation He interprets that the name Šiva denotes bindu or mahama ya, a duplicate of måyå in the pure sphere at the top of the scale, that the name Sakti denotes nada, the primordial sound conceived as matter and first evolute of mahamäyä, etc.
Bhoja defines sivatartva as : ..“ vyāpakam ekam nityam akhilasya tattvajātasya /
jñānakriyāsvabhāvam śivatattvam jagadur ācaryāḥ || “Teachers have told that Sivatativa is all-pervasive, unique, eternal, cause of all the class of tattvas and having the nature of knowledge and action." :
Aghoraśiva reads the words of this definition as referring to the pure material entity bindu. The words vyapaka, etc. can be applied to this material entity. But "jñánakriyasvabhāvam" in its obvious sense of bahuvrihi compound "whose nature is knowledge and action” cannot be applied to matter. Therefore Aghoraśiva takes it as an upapadasamasa of a kydanta,-bhava with two upapadas, one signifying the object (karman) jñanakriya-, the other signifying the location (adhikaraña) sva-: "jñānakriye svasmin sthite ātmanām bhāvayatiti (it makes the knowledge and action of souls to be placed in itself)". It means that matter allows the powers of knowledge and action of souls to stand in itself. The separation of cit and acit is thus preserved. * Aghoraśiva is a sāstrin. He uses etymology for the purpose of asserting his dualistic conception. He uses logic to establish on rational grounds all his concepts. He has not devoted much of his talent to polemics with rival schools. His main contribution is the sytematizing and establishment of an extreme form dualism with the instrument of Sanskrit sastras. The main trend of ancient Saivasiddhānta is dualistic. But I have not seen in any other author such an extreme and systematic form exposition. This conception of tattvas as pure material entities, even at the top of the scale, does not appear in other authors. Saiyasiddhānta is an original and independent system with