The year 2016 marked the thousandth year of two masters of philosophy from the two ends of Bharat. Abhinavagupta, the colossus of Kashmiri Saivism and Sri Ramanuja, propagator of Visishtadvaita, lived at the same time. As part of Acharya Abhinavagupta’s Millennium celebrations, on January 24 and 25, a National Seminar is being organised at Kalakshetra, by the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), New Delhi in collaboration with Kalakshetra Foundation and Bharata-Ilango Foundation for Asian Culture (BIFAC), Chennai. IGNCA is supported by the Ministry of Culture, New Delhi.
The Chennai event is the last of four seminars, the venue for the earlier ones being Jammu, Bhopal and New Delhi. The goal is to take the contribution of this great Kashmiri genius to the present generation and reveal the relevance.
Abhinavagupta was a symbol of symbiosis of the intellect and spirit. Forty four works pertaining to different fields such as Kashmiri Saivism, Tantra Sastra, Poetics and Aesthetics, are attributed to him. He was an unparalleled commentator illustrating the connectivity between aesthetics and spiritualism. The seminar in Chennai will have lectures on all these aspects delivered by renowned scholars from many parts of India.
Abhinavagupta’s Pratyabhigna philosophy is a blend of both rational and emotional sides of a person and delves into metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics and philosophy. It is Advaita philosophy but recognising only Siva as Ultimate Reality, the rest including the self as a manifestation of that Almighty.
The three Saktis - Iccha, Kriya and Gnana - are energies of Siva Himself. Modern physics explains matter as waves or vibrations. There is proof that light energy emanates from all living beings; in higher phases it creates the halo around saints. This is explained as “Spanda” in Kashmiri Trika philosophy. Tantric Saivism gives the complete matrix of energy. One of the most important contributions of Abhinavagupta is his commentary on a Tantra text named Paratrishika. It belongs to the school of Anuttara Trika with Goddess Parasakti as the Nodal Deity. He makes this complicated work understandable through his Vivarana commentary.
Abhinavagupta’s commentaries ranged from those on esoteric tantras and philosophy of Kashmiri Saivism to poetics in literature and dramatics in performing arts. His renowned commentary on Anandavardhana’s Dhvanyaloka named Lochana and that of Bharata’s Natyasastra named Abhinavabharati are of eternal value in the fields of literature and performing arts.
Abhinavagupta was a psycho analyst with a spiritual bent of mind, that he established the importance of the ninth rasa namely Shanta. There was a controversy during his times in this inclusion. But he has shown how it is the base for all the other eight rasas.
Abhinavagupta is revered as the incarnation of Sri Dakshinamurti. His ancestors from Central India were given patronage in Kashmir to develop scholarship and spiritualism. He had gurus from different parts of India for his multifarious interests. He shines to this day as an amalgam of various disciplines including music and theatre arts with Kashmiri Saivite philosophy and Tantric mysticism as the c sheet anchor.
