Vasugupta

Kṣemarāja, who stands at the far end of this line, opened his commentary on the Śiva Sūtras by telling how they came into the world.

There was a man, he says, into whom the grace of Śiva had descended. Out of the great devotion to Maheśvara that this grace had opened in him, he would not follow the teachings of the siddhas, Nāgabodhi and the rest, who stood in lower doctrines. He gave himself to the worship of Śiva, and his heart had been made pure by the true tradition of the siddhas, which the Supreme Lord's many yoginīs had spoken.

श्रीमहादेवगिरौ महामाहेश्वरः श्रीमान् वसुगुप्तनामा गुरुरभवत् ।

śrīmahādēvagirau mahāmāhēśvaraḥ śrīmān vasuguptanāmā gururabhavat ।

On glorious Mahādeva mountain there lived a great devotee of Maheśvara, the revered guru named Vasugupta.

At one time, Kṣemarāja goes on, the world of living beings had come to be filled almost wholly with the teachings of duality. Paramaśiva wished to give grace, and he did not want the secret tradition to be cut off. So he came to Vasugupta in a dream, graced him there, and woke a light of insight in him.

'Here on this mountain,' he told him, 'on a great rock, there is a secret. Find it, and make it known to those who are fit for grace.'

Vasugupta woke, and went looking.

प्रबुद्धश्च असौ अन्विष्यन् तां महतीं शिलां करस्पर्शनमात्रपरिवर्तनतः संवादीकृतस्वप्नां प्रत्यक्षीकृत्य इमानि शिवोपनिषत्संग्रहरूपाणि शिवसूत्राणि ततः समाससाद ।

prabuddhaśca asau anviṣyan tāṃ mahatīṃ śilāṃ karasparśanamātraparivartanataḥ saṃvādīkr̥tasvapnāṃ pratyakṣīkr̥tya imāni śivōpaniṣatsaṃgraharūpāṇi śivasūtrāṇi tataḥ samāsasāda ।

And he awoke, and searching, he saw with his own eyes that great rock, which turned over at no more than the touch of his hand, so that the dream proved true; and from there he obtained these Śiva Sūtras, a gathering of the secret teaching of Śiva.

When he had understood them fully, Kṣemarāja says, he made them known to his good disciples, with Bhaṭṭa Śrī Kallaṭa first among them, and he gathered their meaning together in the Spanda verses as well.

Kṣemarāja tells the same story once more at the beginning of his work on the Spanda verses, in a few words. There Vasugupta's greatness had been opened by his absorption into Paramaśiva, who wished to give grace to the whole world. The teaching had come to him in a dream. By the Lord's will alone he found on Mahādeva mountain the most secret Śiva Sūtras, written on the face of a great rock; and then, in verses clear and deep, he gathered them up, showing that scripture, experience and reasoning are one.

That is how Kṣemarāja tells it.

The story is also told another way. Bhāskara, the son of Divākara, who set the Śiva Sūtras in verse of his own, begins by saying how they reached him.

श्रीमन्महादेवगिरौ वसुगुप्तगुरोः पुरा ।

सिद्धादेशात्प्रादुरासन् शिवसूत्राणि तस्य हि ॥

सरहस्यान्यतः सोऽपि प्रादाद्भट्टाय सूरये ।

श्रीकल्लटाय सोऽप्येवं चतुःखण्डानि तान्यथ ॥

व्याकरोत्त्रिकमेतेभ्यः स्पन्दसूत्रैः स्वकैस्ततः ।

śrīmanmahādēvagirau vasuguptagurōḥ purā ।

siddhādēśātprādurāsan śivasūtrāṇi tasya hi ॥

sarahasyānyataḥ sō'pi prādādbhaṭṭāya sūrayē ।

śrīkallaṭāya sō'pyēvaṃ catuḥkhaṇḍāni tānyatha ॥

vyākarōttrikamētēbhyaḥ spandasūtraiḥ svakaistataḥ ।

Long ago, on glorious Mahādeva mountain, to the guru Vasugupta

the Śiva Sūtras appeared, at a siddha's command.

He in turn gave them, with their secret, to a learned man, Bhaṭṭa

Śrī Kallaṭa; and Kallaṭa too, of their four sections,

then explained three in Spanda sūtras of his own.

In Bhāskara's telling there is no dream and no rock. The sūtras appear to Vasugupta on Mahādeva mountain at the command of a siddha. And it is Kallaṭa, not Vasugupta, who explains them in Spanda sūtras of his own: three of the four sections in those sūtras, and the last section in a commentary called the Tattvārthacintāmaṇi.

Then Bhāskara traces the teaching on, hand to hand, down to himself. Kallaṭa told the secret to his cousin, Pradyumnabhaṭṭa. Pradyumnabhaṭṭa gave it to his own son, Prajñārjuna. Prajñārjuna told it to his disciple Mahādevabhaṭṭa, and Mahādevabhaṭṭa gave it to his son, Śrīkaṇṭhabhaṭṭa. From him Bhāskara received it, and his own students urged him to write it down, because the scripture had fallen into confusion and the minds of the gentle had been led astray.

So the two accounts agree on the mountain, on Vasugupta, and on Kallaṭa as the disciple who received the sūtras from him. They differ on how the sūtras came, a dream and a rock in one, a siddha's command in the other; and they differ on who first set their meaning in the Spanda verses.

The first of the sūtras is two words long, and both accounts read it alike.

चैतन्यमात्मा

caitanyamātmā

The self is consciousness.

The Spanda verses close with a verse that names him.

लब्ध्वाप्यलभ्यमेतज्ज्ञानधनं हृद्गुहान्तकृतनिहितेः ।

वसुगुप्तवच्छिवाय हि भवति सदा सर्वलोकस्य ॥

labdhvāpyalabhyamētajjñānadhanaṃ hr̥dguhāntakr̥tanihitēḥ ।

vasuguptavacchivāya hi bhavati sadā sarvalōkasya ॥

This treasure of knowledge is not to be gained; yet once it is gained, for whoever lays it away deep in the cave of the heart,

it becomes always the way to Śiva, as it did for Vasugupta: for anyone in all the world.

Kṣemarāja read that verse as the master setting his own name at the close of his work. The treasure, he says, is this knowledge, hard to come by, which Vasugupta drew out of the rock as the heart of what Śaṅkara had taught him in the dream, and laid away in the cave of his heart. As it became Śiva for him, so it becomes Śiva for anyone in the world who keeps it there in the same way, guarding it with care and making it his own.

Nothing more is told of Vasugupta's life. The accounts do not say where he was born, or whom he taught besides Kallaṭa, or when and where he died. They remember him for one waking on a mountain, and for what he did with what he found there.

The sūtras went on through Kallaṭa and his line. The chain this book follows next begins somewhere else, with a command the Lord came down from Kailāsa to give, and the two would meet, at last, in Kṣemarāja's hands.