Somānanda

Somānanda wrote the Śivadṛṣṭi, and at the end of it, when the argument was finished, he set down where it had come from. He did not begin with himself. He began with the age of the sages.

Once, he says, the secret teachings, the Śaiva teachings and the others, lived in the mouths of the great-souled ṛṣis, and through them alone grace was given. Then the Kali age began. The ṛṣis went away to places hard to reach, Kalāpigrāma first among them, and the teaching was cut off.

कैलासाद्रौ भ्रमन् देवो मूर्त्या श्रीकंठरूपया ।

अनुग्रहायावतीर्णश्चोदयामास भूतले ॥

मुनिं दुर्वाससं नाम भगवानूर्ध्वरेतसम् ।

नोच्छिद्येत यथा शास्त्रं रहस्यं कुरु तादृशम् ॥

kailāsādrau bhraman dēvō mūrtyā śrīkaṃṭharūpayā ।

anugrahāyāvatīrṇaścōdayāmāsa bhūtalē ॥

muniṃ durvāsasaṃ nāma bhagavānūrdhvarētasam ।

nōcchidyēta yathā śāstraṃ rahasyaṃ kuru tādr̥śam ॥

Wandering on Mount Kailāsa in the form of Śrīkaṇṭha,

the god came down to give grace, and on earth the Lord urged

the sage named Durvāsas, whose seed was drawn upward:

'So that the śāstra is never cut off, make the secret teaching so.'

So Durvāsas received the Lord's command, and he set about it with care. He brought forth a son from his own mind, named Tryambakāditya, and into him he passed the secret teachings, every one of them.

Tryambaka in turn went to a cave called Tryambaka. There he too brought forth a son from his mind, marked with that same name, and then, perfected, he rose up into the sky. His son did the same, and that son's son after him. In this way, each born from the mind of the one before, there were fourteen siddhas.

The fifteenth son was master of every śāstra. One day, Somānanda says, he sat with his face turned outward, to the ways of the world, and a brāhmaṇa girl came into his sight. She was beautiful and young and graced with good fortune, and he saw that she bore the right marks, a maiden fit to be his wife. He went himself to her father and asked for her as his companion in dharma, and brought her home with care.

They were married by the brāhma rite, and a son was born to them of the same kind as his father. In time that son came wandering to Kashmir. His name was Saṃgamāditya. His son was Varṣāditya, and Varṣāditya's son was the blessed Aruṇāditya. From Aruṇāditya was born Ānanda, a man of the same stamp.

And then Somānanda names himself.

तस्मादस्मि समुद्भूतः सोमानन्दाख्य ईदृशः ॥

करोमि स्म प्रकरणं शिवदृष्ट्यभिधानकम् ।

एवमेषां त्र्यम्बकाख्या तेरम्बा देशभाषया ॥

स्थिता शिष्यप्रशिष्याद्यैर्विस्तीर्णा मठिकोदिता ।

tasmādasmi samudbhūtaḥ sōmānandākhya īdr̥śaḥ ॥

karōmi sma prakaraṇaṃ śivadr̥ṣṭyabhidhānakam ।

ēvamēṣāṃ tryambakākhyā tērambā dēśabhāṣayā ॥

sthitā śiṣyapraśiṣyādyairvistīrṇā maṭhikōditā ।

From him I was born, such as I am, named Somānanda,

and I made the treatise called the Śivadṛṣṭi.

So their line is called Tryambaka, and in the speech of the country, Terambā;

it stands, spread wide by students, their students and those after them, and is called a maṭhikā.

So the line that had begun when the Lord came down from Kailāsa to a sage, and passed from mind to mind through fourteen siddhas in a cave, came down through a marriage and five generations, father to son, to a man in Kashmir, who wrote it a book. He called the line by the name of the cave, and by the name the people of the country gave it, and he called it a maṭhikā, spread wide by students, their students and those after them.

The book itself is a long argument, made in seven parts. It sets out how everything is Śiva, and then it meets, one after another, the schools that would say otherwise. Towards the end it turns from argument to the plain statement of one who lives it. When Somānanda speaks of worship there, there is no worship left that is not Śiva worshipping Śiva.

शिवं यामि शिवो यामि शिवेन शिवसाधनः ॥

भिन्नोऽप्यभिन्न एवास्मि शिव इत्थं विचेष्टनम् ।

शिवो भोक्ता शिवो भोज्यं शिवेषु शिवसाधनः ॥

śivaṃ yāmi śivō yāmi śivēna śivasādhanaḥ ॥

bhinnō'pyabhinna ēvāsmi śiva itthaṃ vicēṣṭanam ।

śivō bhōktā śivō bhōjyaṃ śivēṣu śivasādhanaḥ ॥

I go to Śiva; as Śiva I go; by Śiva, with Śiva as the means.

Though distinct, I am not distinct at all: this is how Śiva moves.

Śiva is the one who enjoys, Śiva what is enjoyed, Śiva the means among all that is Śiva.

And just before he tells his line, he says how the book itself was given.

इति कथितमशेषं शैवरूपेण विश्वं

जगदुदितमहेशांघ्र्याज्ञया स्वप्नभाजा ।

यदधिगमबलेन प्राप्य सम्यग्विकासं

भवति शिवमयात्मा सर्वभावेन सर्वः ॥

iti kathitamaśēṣaṃ śaivarūpēṇa viśvaṃ

jagaduditamahēśāṃghryājñayā svapnabhājā ।

yadadhigamabalēna prāpya samyagvikāsaṃ

bhavati śivamayātmā sarvabhāvēna sarvaḥ ॥

So the whole universe has been told as Śiva's own form,

the world, spoken by one who received in a dream the command of Maheśa's feet;

and by the strength of knowing it, coming to full blossoming,

everyone, in every way of being, becomes one whose self is Śiva.

So, as with Vasugupta on his mountain, a dream stands at the beginning. In Vasugupta's story Śiva shows him where the sūtras lie. In Somānanda's own words, the command came to him in a dream from the feet of Maheśa, and he told the whole of the world as Śiva.

His account of himself ends with his book. He does not say where in Kashmir he lived, or when, or how his life ended. What is known of him after that comes from the men he taught. His student Utpaladeva wrote a commentary on the Śivadṛṣṭi and called it the work his guru had made. Utpaladeva's student's student, Abhinavagupta, spoke of him as the teacher of his teacher's teacher, and placed him, in one line of verse, as resting in the ocean of the Tryambaka stream, with Utpala as his son.

It is through Utpaladeva that the line goes on.