Kṣemarāja

Kṣemarāja learned from Abhinavagupta, and he said so at the end of his books. When he finished his work on the Spanda verses, he signed it like this.

कृतिः श्रीप्रत्यभिज्ञाकारप्रशिष्यस्य महामाहेश्वराचार्य श्रीमदभिनवगुप्तनाथदत्तोपदेशस्य श्रीक्षेमराजस्येति शिवम् ॥

kr̥tiḥ śrīpratyabhijñākārapraśiṣyasya mahāmāhēśvarācārya śrīmadabhinavaguptanāthadattōpadēśasya śrīkṣēmarājasyēti śivam ॥

The work of Śrī Kṣemarāja, a disciple in the line of the maker of the Recognition, to whom the great devotee of Maheśvara, the teacher Śrī Abhinavaguptanātha, gave his teaching. Śivam.

He took up the works that had come down the two streams of this book, Vasugupta's and Somānanda's, and he wrote on both.

One short book he made for those who had not laboured over the long ones. At its beginning he set his own name inside the verse.

शांकरोपनिषत्सारप्रत्यभिज्ञामहोदधेः ।

क्षेमेणोद्ध्रियते सारः संसारविषशान्तये ॥

śāṃkarōpaniṣatsārapratyabhijñāmahōdadhēḥ ।

kṣēmēṇōddhriyatē sāraḥ saṃsāraviṣaśāntayē ॥

From the great ocean of the Recognition, the essence of Śiva's upaniṣad,

Kṣema draws up its essence, to quiet the poison of saṃsāra.

There are some, he says in the opening lines, gentle of mind, who have never laboured over the sharp treatises of logic, and yet they have devotion, and the grace of Śiva has fallen on them. For them he will open, a little, the truth of the teaching of the Recognition of the Lord. He calls the book the Pratyabhijñāhṛdaya, the heart of the Recognition, and he says the same again in its last verse.

येषां वृत्तः शांकरः शक्तिपातो

येऽनभ्यासात्तीक्ष्णयुक्तिष्वयोग्याः ।

शक्ता ज्ञातुं नेश्वरप्रत्यभिज्ञा-

मुक्तस्तेषामेव तत्त्वोपदेशः ॥

yēṣāṃ vr̥ttaḥ śāṃkaraḥ śaktipātō

yē'nabhyāsāttīkṣṇayuktiṣvayōgyāḥ ।

śaktā jñātuṃ nēśvarapratyabhijñā-

muktastēṣāmēva tattvōpadēśaḥ ॥

Those on whom Śiva's śaktipāta has fallen,

who for want of practice are not fit for sharp reasoning,

and who cannot come to know the Īśvarapratyabhijñā:

for them alone this teaching of the truth is spoken.

The long argument of Utpaladeva's verses he set out again in twenty short sūtras with a commentary of his own, for people who had not followed the argument but on whom the grace it speaks of had already fallen.

He wrote on the Spanda verses too, and there he explained why it fell to him.

अनन्तापरटीकाकृन्मध्ये स्थितिममृष्यता ।

विवृतं स्पन्दशास्त्रं नो गुरुणा नो मयास्य तु ॥

विशेषलेशः सन्दोहे दर्शितः पूर्वमद्य तु ।

anantāparaṭīkākr̥nmadhyē sthitimamr̥ṣyatā ।

vivr̥taṃ spandaśāstraṃ nō guruṇā nō mayāsya tu ॥

viśēṣalēśaḥ sandōhē darśitaḥ pūrvamadya tu ।

Not willing to take a place among the endless other commentators,

our guru did not explain the Spanda treatise; but of it, by me,

a trace of its fine sense was shown before, in the Sandoha; but now

And now, he goes on, at the eager request of his own disciple, a man named Śūra, who was rich in absorption into Rudra's power and was Śiva in form, the matter was settled by Kṣemarāja.

So Kṣemarāja had disciples of his own, and one of them he names.

And he wrote on the Śiva Sūtras themselves, the sūtras Vasugupta had found on the mountain. It is at the beginning of that commentary that he tells the story of the dream and the rock, with which this book began. There he says that the Spanda sūtras, which had come down through the line that ran from Vasugupta, he had already settled in his work on them; now he would settle the Śiva Sūtras. At the end of it he played once more on his own name, Kṣema, which means well-being.

कृतिः श्रीक्षेमराजस्य क्षेमायास्तु विमर्शिनाम् ।

शिवस्वात्मैक्यबोधार्था शिवसूत्रविमर्शिनी ॥

kr̥tiḥ śrīkṣēmarājasya kṣēmāyāstu vimarśinām ।

śivasvātmaikyabōdhārthā śivasūtravimarśinī ॥

The work of Śrī Kṣemarāja: may it be for the well-being of those who reflect,

this Śivasūtravimarśinī, whose aim is the awakening to the oneness of Śiva and one's own self.

He wrote on Utpaladeva's hymns as well. He did it, he says, because many devotees asked him, over and over, to explain a little the hymns of the one who made the Recognition. He calls Utpaladeva by a name of honour that says exactly where he stood in the line: the teacher of his teacher's teacher. From Utpaladeva to Lakṣmaṇagupta, from Lakṣmaṇagupta to Abhinavagupta, from Abhinavagupta to Kṣemarāja.

So the two beginnings of this book came together in one pair of hands. Kṣemarāja wrote on the sūtras Vasugupta found on Mahādeva mountain and on the Spanda verses that gathered them up; and the teaching that came down from Durvāsas through Tryambaka's cave to Somānanda in Kashmir, which Utpaladeva bound in reasoning, he drew into a heart of twenty sūtras for those on whom grace had fallen. At the end of his work he called himself one to whom Abhinavagupta had given his teaching.

Of his own life he tells nothing else. He does not say where he was born, or how long he lived, or how he died. He set his name in his verses and his teacher's name at the end of his books, and left the rest to what he had written.