Insight Editions · No. 353
The Krama Tantricism of Kashmir
Historical and General Sources, Volume I
Navjivan Rastogi
Navjivan Rastogi's classic reconstruction of the Krama system of Kashmir Saivism: its independence, its names, its Tantric character, its sub-schools and controversies, and a history of forty-five authors from Vatulanatha to Sivopadhyaya, with the anonymous Agamas, a chronology, critical notes, glossary and a practice path.
A study guide to The Krama Tantricism of Kashmir, Volume I, by Navjivan Rastogi (Motilal Banarsidass, 1979; reprint 1996). Shared free for personal reading; not for sale and not endorsed by the author or publishers. Please read and buy the original.
CORE CLAIM
Krama is a distinct system of Kashmir Saivism built on succession: every act of consciousness unfolds through phases (the Kalis) and returns to the sequenceless in Kalasamkarsini, she who draws in time.
SCOPE
All seven chapters, with the full author-by-author history (45 figures), the Krama Agamas and lost treatises, a chronology table, glossary, FAQ and a master synthesis with a practice path: about 32,000 words.
KEY FIGURES
Sivananda and Keyuravati; the hymn-maker Siddhanatha; Abhinavagupta, Ksemaraja and Jayaratha; Cakrabhanu and Srivatsa; the southern masters Sivananda II and Mahesvarananda; Sitikantha and Sivopadhyaya.
BEST FOR
Readers who want the history and sources of Krama: who taught whom, what survives, the twelve-or-thirteen Kalis debate and Krama as the Saktopaya, with critical notes on dating and identifications.
How to Use This Guide
Krama ("sequence", "succession") is one of the monistic Saiva traditions of medieval Kashmir, alongside the better known Pratyabhijna ("Recognition"), Spanda ("Vibration"), Kula and Trika lines. Rastogi's claim is that Krama deserves to be studied as a system in its own right, with its own first teacher, its own place of origin, its own literature, its own technical vocabulary, and its own way of combining philosophy, yoga and ritual. He also argues that it was neglected for a simple reason: most of its literature survives only in manuscript, often in the Sarada script of Kashmir, and the traditional surveys of Indian philosophy never mentioned it.
Volume I does not set out the doctrine in full. It is the groundwork. It asks what kind of system Krama is, what it was called and why, how it relates to other Tantric and philosophical schools, what internal divisions it had, who its authors were and when they lived, what texts it produced, and how it fits into the larger plan of Kashmir Saivism as Abhinavagupta and Jayaratha organised it. The doctrinal half, structured around the "Nine Prameyas" (objects of discussion) and the cakras (cycles of consciousness), was promised for a second volume. Later scholarship notes that the second volume, in which Rastogi planned to set out the school's philosophical concepts, never appeared. Volume I therefore stands alone as the standard historical account of the school.
The book has seven chapters:
- Krama as a Distinct System (pp. 1 to 9): the case for independence.
- On the Nomenclature of the System (pp. 10 to 30): the many names of the school and what each name reveals.
- Krama as a Tantric System (pp. 31 to 50): what makes Krama "Tantric", and how its Tantric character changed over time.
- Mutual Exchange with Other Systems (pp. 51 to 66): Spanda, Kula, Tripura, Buddhist Tantra, Bhartrhari and the Pancaratra.
- Different Traditions and Sub-schools (pp. 67 to 81): the Sahasa and Chumma schools, the Siva-centred and Kali-centred traditions, and the "quartic" and "pentadic" tendencies.
- Sources and Literature (pp. 82 to 248): the longest chapter by far, a reconstructed history of the school from its mythic origins through forty-five named authors and a group of anonymous scriptures and manuals.
- Krama's Place in the Wider Framework of Kashmir Saivism (pp. 249 to 254): how the "six meanings" (Arthas) of Tantric interpretation map onto the four means (Upayas), and why Krama is identified with the "means of power" (Saktopaya).
There are also appendices: a chronological tree of Krama authors, a classified bibliography, and name, work and subject indexes.
The Shape of the Whole Book in One Page
- Independence (Chapter 1). Krama has its own first teacher (Sivananda, sometimes called Jnananetra), its own homeland (Kashmir itself, unlike most systems that were brought in from outside), and a set of distinguishing features: it is Sakti-oriented; it accepts a monistic-dualistic approach at the stage before realisation; it believes in spiritual progression through the refinement of thought (vikalpa-samskara); it replaces the last two of the five divine acts with Anakhya and Bhasa; it has an epistemic emphasis on cognition; and it has an unusual preference for Prakrit and local vernaculars.
- Names (Chapter 2). The school is called Krama, Kramanaya, Mahartha, Mahanaya, Mahasara (doubtful), Atinaya, Devinaya or Devatanaya, and Kalinaya. Each name highlights one aspect: succession in consciousness, the "great meaning" or great reality, the supremacy of the goddess, or Kali as the force that "counts" and consumes time.
- Tantra (Chapter 3). Krama begins as a philosophy of the dynamic Absolute and turns, over time, into an esoteric Tantra full of mudras, mantras, ritual worship and sacred seats (pithas). Rastogi divides it into an early philosophical phase (to Ksemaraja and Varadaraja, eleventh century) and a later ritualistic phase (Mahesvarananda and Sitikantha). Underneath both he finds one principle: experience pure and simple (samvit) is reality.
- Exchange (Chapter 4). Krama probably influenced Spanda; Krama and Kula influenced each other; Krama and the goddess-centred Tripura tradition borrowed from each other; Krama took six-limbed yoga and perhaps the idea of Anakhya from Buddhist Tantra; it took much of its theory of language and time from Bhartrhari; and its links to the Vaisnava Pancaratra remain unclear.
- Inner diversity (Chapter 5). Krama had sub-schools (Sahasa and Chumma, which Rastogi argues are one) and running disputes: Is Siva or Kali ultimate? Are there four divine functions or five? Twelve Kalis or thirteen? Sixty-four aspects of the "Vrnda-cakra" or sixty-five? Rastogi traces these to a "quartic" and a "pentadic" tendency.
- History (Chapter 6). The school's origin is told through the symbolism of three Oghas (streams of transmission: divine, perfected and human). Its human history runs from the ninth century to the eighteenth, with a creative peak from Sivananda (c. 800) to Abhinavagupta and Ksemaraja (tenth and eleventh centuries), a second flowering in Jayaratha, Mahesvarananda and Sitikantha (twelfth to fifteenth centuries), and a long decline.
- Place (Chapter 7). Jayaratha's scheme of six Arthas (layers of meaning) is correlated with the four Upayas. Krama is identified with Saktopaya, the means that works on the mind's thought-constructs, and Rastogi shows how the higher "secret" meanings point beyond it.
Why This Book Matters
Before Rastogi, the Krama school was known to modern readers chiefly through one chapter in the second edition of K. C. Pandey's study of Abhinavagupta and a few paragraphs by Gopinath Kaviraj. Rastogi's preface puts the problem plainly: the concepts of krama, paduka, bhasa and kalana "exclusively belong to the Krama system", yet the system had been passed over by the traditional compendia and by modern scholarship alike.
The book matters for at least four reasons.
- It is the first full-length study of the school. Reviewers at the time called it a pioneering work, and a recent bibliographic guide still describes it as providing "a useful overview of Saiva tantra in Kashmir, especially the Krama branch", making "extensive use of manuscripts" (Oxford Bibliographies, "Tantra").
- It is built on manuscripts. Rastogi worked from unpublished Sarada manuscripts of texts such as the Chumma Sampradaya, the Mahanaya-Prakasa of Sivananda II, the Cidgaganacandrika commentary and others. Many of his long Sanskrit footnotes are the only published excerpts of these works.
- It reframes Kashmir Saivism. By putting Krama at the centre, Rastogi makes visible how much of Abhinavagupta's thought (the twelve Kalis, the Kalasamkarsini, the cycles of consciousness, the theory of "sattarka" or right reasoning) is Krama material.
- It identifies authors no one had noticed. The preface lists Gandhamadana, Siddhanatha, Cakrapani, Devabhatta, Ramyadeva, Losthadeva, Srivatsa, Somaputra, Ananta Saktipada and Bhattaraka as authors he effectively discovered for the school, and it adds Krama connections for well-known figures such as Vasugupta, Kallata, Pradyumna Bhatta, Ksemaraja, Varadaraja, Jayaratha and Sivopadhyaya.
How This Guide Is Laid Out
Each chapter of the book gets a section with:
- The core argument: what Rastogi is trying to establish.
- Teaching notes: the ideas unpacked one at a time, with each Sanskrit term explained the first time it appears.
- Insights: what is subtle or easy to miss, and how it links to the rest of Kashmir Saivism.
- Critical-lens notes: where a claim rests on slender evidence, where Rastogi is reasoning from silence, or where later scholarship has qualified his conclusions.
- Key terms and reflection questions.
The very long Chapter 6 is broken into several sections: origins and the three Oghas; the historical phases; and the authors in groups, with each author's date, works and contribution. At the end you will find a chronological table, a master glossary, a synthesis of the whole volume and a note on sources.
Two reading notes. First, transliteration is plain, without diacritics (Siva, Sakti, Ksemaraja, Jayaratha), in line with the other Kashmir Saivism editions on this site. Second, Rastogi often uses abbreviations for his sources. The ones that matter most are: TA (Tantraloka of Abhinavagupta), TAV (Viveka, Jayaratha's commentary on the Tantraloka), MMP (Parimala, Mahesvarananda's commentary on his own Mahartha-manjari), MP(S) (the Mahanaya-Prakasa of Sitikantha), MP(T) (the anonymous or Sivananda II Mahanaya-Prakasa from Trivandrum), CGC (Cidgaganacandrika), and Sp.N. (Ksemaraja's Spanda-nirnaya).
Reading Strategy
- Read Chapters 1 to 3 together. They establish what Krama is and why it is classed as Tantric.
- Read Chapters 4 and 5 as a pair. One looks outward to other schools, the other inward to Krama's own divisions.
- Treat Chapter 6 as a reference work. Read the sections on origins and on the major authors (Sivananda, Kallata, Somananda, the "Stotrakara" Siddhanatha, Abhinavagupta, Ksemaraja, Jayaratha, Mahesvarananda, Sitikantha) closely, and return to the others when needed.
- Finish with Chapter 7, which ties Krama back into Abhinavagupta's whole map of paths.
Groundwork for a Forgotten System
Rastogi's preface (dated Lucknow, 15 August 1978) explains why the book exists, what method it uses, and what it claims as new. It is short but worth reading closely, because it states the limits of the study as clearly as its ambitions.
Teaching Notes
1. Why a study of Krama needs an apology. Rastogi begins by apologising, half seriously, for writing about a system that no traditional survey (such as Madhava's Sarva-darsana-samgraha) had noticed. Modern studies of Indian philosophy and of Tantra had also ignored it, except for Pandey and Kaviraj. He quotes Kaviraj's remark, in his Hindi work on the Sakta outlook in Tantric literature, that the concepts of krama, paduka, bhasa and kalana belong exclusively to this school.
2. How the author came to the subject. As an MA student writing on Abhinavagupta's devotional hymns (stotras), Rastogi was drawn to the Kramastotra of Abhinava. The scarcity of material on it, and the difficulty of interpreting it, led him to take up the whole system for his doctorate.
3. The triple significance of Krama. The preface gives the most compact definition of the system in the book:
- It is a Tantric system.
- It is a monistic Saiva system.
- It marks the emergence of the Sakta tendency (the emphasis on the Goddess, Sakti) within Saiva philosophy.
These three strands make Krama "a synthetic and complex whole in which the Saiva philosophy, the Sakta esotericism and the Tantric synoptic view of life are inter-knitted together." Krama is therefore not only "pure philosophy revelling in epistemic and ontological issues" but "an esoteric discipline of spirituality".
4. The planned two-part structure. Part I (this volume) is the general and historical survey. Part II was to be the analytical exposition. Rastogi explains that Part II would not split doctrine into separate sections on ontology, epistemology, mysticism and esotericism, because such "water-tight" divisions do not fit the system. Instead it would follow the traditional scheme of the Nine Prameyas and the cakras (cyclic forms of consciousness). He also promised an appendix of unpublished short Krama texts in Volume II.
5. Four difficulties. He lists the obstacles honestly:
- the lack of a living tradition, so that the "precise tantric spirit has lain under the cloud of mystic jargon";
- the neglect of the system by modern students;
- the fact that all printed texts are incomplete or need critical editing;
- the fact that most Krama literature is still in manuscript, much of it inaccessible and in Sarada characters.
He singles out the loss of Abhinavagupta's Krama-keli (a commentary on the Kramastotra) as "a very serious loss to the system".
6. Method. Because there was no previous groundwork, Rastogi says he could not attempt a "thoroughly critical study". He confines himself to "analytical investigation" and uses a "critico-comparative method" where possible, inside the framework of Tantric discipline. The book is meant as "a groundwork for the future studies".
7. What is new. He lists his claims to originality:
- he has studied a neglected area;
- he has read all published texts of Kashmir Saivism and Krama, plus a large number of manuscripts, and has given "profuse excerpts" from them;
- he has used related literature from other Tantric cults, especially Tripura;
- he has tried to reconstruct the history of the school, tracing "the historical and logical growth of the Krama notions" as well as the dates of authors;
- he has "virtually discovered" several Krama authors and brought out the Krama connections of known Spanda and Trika authors;
- he has re-examined some dates (Sivananda, Varadaraja, Hrasvanatha, Bhojaraja, Cakrabhanu, Mahesvarananda);
- on the basis of a new reading of the words atmaja and santati, he rejects the idea that Somananda was Utpala's father, or Utpala Laksmanagupta's father, and treats those relationships as teacher-to-pupil.
Insight: the Preface as a Map of the Problems
The preface already contains the main tensions of the whole book. Krama is philosophical and esoteric at once. Its sources are many but damaged. Its history must be reconstructed from scattered references, often in commentaries on other works. And Rastogi is aware that he is writing a first map, not the final one. That modesty is worth keeping in mind when reading the confident historical judgements in Chapter 6.
A note for readers: on the promised second volume
Rastogi repeatedly cross-refers to "Pt. II" and its chapters (on Saktopaya, on Kali, on the Anakhya-cakra, on speech and so on). Those discussions were not published as planned. When the book says "see Pt. II, Ch. III", the material is not in Volume I. Some of it is in Rastogi's doctoral thesis and later works such as "Kalikrama and Abhinavagupta" (Motilal Banarsidass), but readers of Volume I will meet many forward references that lead nowhere.
Key Terms
- Krama: sequence, succession; the name of the school and of the process of consciousness it studies.
- Paduka: literally "sandal"; in Krama, the sacred lineage-symbol of the teacher and of the goddess, worshipped as the presence of the lineage.
- Bhasa: "shining", the fifth act of the Absolute in the Krama scheme, the radiant self-manifestation of consciousness.
- Kalana: the "counting", "impelling" or "devouring" activity of Kali; the dynamic force of consciousness.
- Nine Prameyas: the nine "objects of discussion" around which Krama doctrine is traditionally organised.
- Sarada: the script of medieval Kashmir in which most Krama manuscripts are written.
Reflection
- Why might a system whose texts survive mostly in manuscript be invisible to histories of philosophy, even if it shaped major authors like Abhinavagupta?
- Rastogi refuses to separate Krama's ontology from its mysticism. What would be lost, and what gained, by such a separation?
Krama as a Distinct System (pp. 1 to 9)
Krama shares a great deal with the Pratyabhijna and Kula systems, but it has enough of its own, in origin, history, literature and doctrine, to count as an independent system of Saiva philosophy. Rastogi gives the traditional evidence first, then external evidence, then six distinguishing features.
1. The Wider Meaning of "Kashmir Saivism"
Rastogi begins with a terminological point. The phrase "Kashmir Saivism" is often used as if it meant only the Pratyabhijna system of Somananda, Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta. In fact it covers "all the monistic trends of Saivite speculation having their home in Kashmir". These systems share common fundamentals because they come from the same source, but each keeps "its intrinsic individual genius and appeal".
Presenting Krama on its own terms, then, is not meant to deny its place in the larger whole. It is meant to show what it contributes.
2. Traditional Recognition of Its Independence
Rastogi lists authorities who treated Krama as a separate school:
- Mankha, the twelfth-century Kashmiri poet, in his Srikanthacarita, names Mahanaya (another name of Krama) as a distinct school in which "the act of creation follows that of withdrawal". Rastogi reads this as evidence that Krama was known for its cyclic notion of reality, and that it was popular enough to be mentioned in a literary work outside philosophical circles. (Rastogi dates the reference to the eleventh century; Mankha is usually placed in the first half of the twelfth.)
- Abhinavagupta recalls Krama's independence in the Malinivijayavartika and the Tantraloka.
- Jayaratha, in his commentary (Viveka) on the Tantraloka, calls Krama an independent system, introduces Abhinava's treatment of Krama in the fourth chapter (Ahnika) with a similar remark, and in his closing autobiographical verse names "Trika" and "Krama" as two different systems.
- The author of the Mahanaya-Prakasa stresses its individuality.
- Mahesvarananda treats Pratyabhijna and Krama as separate systems even while pointing to what they share.
3. External Evidence
Apart from what Krama authors say, the system differs from others in origin, history and literature.
- Founders. Pratyabhijna has Somananda as its first teacher; Trika (in Rastogi's usage here) has Vasugupta; Kula has Macchanda (Matsyendranatha); Krama has Sivananda.
- Place of origin. Krama was born in Kashmir. Except for Spanda, the other systems were brought into Kashmir by teachers or their followers.
4. Six Main Features
Rastogi distinguishes "what others say of it" from "what the system says of itself" and lists six features.
(a) A Sakti-oriented and Tantric system.
Krama reflects "a systematic emergence of the Sakta tendencies in the monistic Saivism of Kashmir". This led to a split within Krama between a school emphasising the Siva aspect of consciousness and a school emphasising the Sakti aspect. Kula, Pratyabhijna and Trika are Siva-oriented; Krama is Sakti-oriented.
Spanda is a transitional case. It leans towards Sakti, the dynamic aspect of reality, but it is not a Tantric system. That, Rastogi suggests, is why Abhinavagupta in the Tantraloka gives Krama its own treatment (under Saktopaya) but gives no separate treatment to Spanda, even though the Tantraloka is full of Spanda quotations. Pratyabhijna, too, gets its own place (under Anupaya). Spanda is closer to Pratyabhijna in metaphysics than in mysticism, while Kula and Krama, Tantric in origin and form, "are more mystic than metaphysical".
A footnote adds two observations:
- Kula and Tripura are also sometimes treated as complementary, with Tripura stressing Sakti (the feminine) and Kula stressing Siva (the masculine).
- The heavy emphasis on Sakti in Krama may be connected with the role of female teachers. The system is said to have originated "from the mouth of the Yoginis" (female adepts). Rastogi is careful: he does not claim cause and effect, but he treats it as a factor.
He also notes, citing Ksemaraja, that Abhinavagupta, who wrote on almost everything, wrote no independent work on Spanda.
(b) A monistic-dualistic approach before realisation.
As a spiritual discipline, Krama is called Bhedabhedopaya, "the means of difference-in-non-difference". It does not confuse unity and duality. It finds unity inside phenomenal duality as its inner character ("unity in duality", bhede abhedah). Krama is concerned with immanent reality and treats immanence as an expression of transcendence. Pratyabhijna and Kula, by contrast, focus on reality as unity, the transcendent aspect.
The difference is one of approach. The Bhedabhedavadin "in practice" is a real monist "in theory", and he shows his individuality through tolerance of other systems. In fact Krama regards the very concepts of duality and non-duality as relative, and so it is critical of the opposition between bandha (bondage) and moksa (freedom).
Rastogi illustrates this with rituals. Siddhanta Saivism (the dualist ritual school) enjoins rituals; Kula prohibits them; Krama and Trika treat both prohibition and injunction as external to the nature of reality.
(c) Spiritual progression, and liberation as the union of enjoyment and freedom.
Krama and Kula are defined as Saktopaya and Sambhavopaya respectively. Pratyabhijna and Kula do not accept spiritual progression: they hold that self-revelation is instantaneous. For Krama, progression is "the very life-blood" of the system, carried by its theory of the refinement of thought-constructs (vikalpa-samskara). The very word Krama denotes this progression, while the word Kula ("organic whole") is justified by its non-adherence to vikalpa and succession.
The Tantric ideal of liberation as the union of bhoga (enjoyment) and moksa (freedom), called bhoga-moksa-samarasya, is "realizable in the Krama system alone", Rastogi says, because only Krama gives value to each step of the way. The picture becomes clear in Krama's idea of the samarasya of dhama-varna (name and form) and cit (consciousness): the world of names and forms is harmonised with consciousness.
(d) Absolutic functionalism.
All monistic Kashmir Saivism teaches that the Absolute performs five acts: srsti (emanation), sthiti (maintenance), samhara (withdrawal), tirodhana (concealment) and anugraha (grace). Krama adapts this: the last two are replaced by Anakhya ("the nameless") and Bhasa ("radiance"). This is a small but telling change, explored in Chapter 2 and in Chapter 5.
(e) Emphasis on the epistemic side of experience.
Krama has "a positive epistemic bias". Pratyabhijna and Spanda are more metaphysical; Kula and Krama are both esoteric and mystical; but Krama lays more stress on the cognitive side. This, Rastogi says, is "perhaps the basic philosophical value of the Krama as a system of philosophy". The famous twelve Kalis, for example, are an analysis of the phases of any act of knowing.
(f) Preference for Prakrit and other minor features.
Krama favours Prakrit (and local vernaculars) over Sanskrit for some of its key works: the Krama-sutra, both Mahanaya-Prakasas, the Mahartha-manjari, the Chumma-sampradaya, the Prakrta-trimsika-vivarana and others. Mahesvarananda is the first to note this. The only other Tantric system with a similar preference is Tripura, a Sakta system. Rastogi does not overstate this. Most surviving Krama literature is in Sanskrit, and he warns against concluding that Krama was more "popular" than other systems.
He also notes the old division of monistic Saiva thought into Traiyambaka and Ardhatraiyambaka lines. Kula belongs to the Ardhatraiyambaka; Krama, Trika and Pratyabhijna belong to the Traiyambaka. (A slip in the printed text says "Krama, Kula and Pratyabhijna", but Chapter 3 makes clear that Kula is the Ardhatraiyambaka line.)
Insight: Krama's Distinctive Place
The six features fit together. A Sakti-oriented system will be interested in the dynamism of consciousness. A system interested in dynamism will describe consciousness as process, as sequence (krama). A system that describes consciousness as process will analyse knowing step by step, and will see spiritual practice as progressive refinement of the mind rather than a sudden leap. That is why Krama becomes the doctrinal content of Abhinavagupta's Saktopaya, the path that works through the purification of thought.
A note for readers: how independent is "independent"?
Rastogi's case rests partly on Jayaratha and later authors, who were writing two or three centuries after the system's founding, and partly on lists of distinctive features. Some features are matters of degree (Pratyabhijna also has an epistemic emphasis; Kula also has female teachers). The claim that Spanda, unlike Krama, is "not Tantric" is also debatable, since the Spanda-karika is rooted in Saiva scriptural culture. Later scholars (for example Alexis Sanderson) have shown that Krama grew out of a wider scriptural tradition of Kali worship (the Jayadrathayamala and related texts), which makes it less a separate "philosophy" than a Tantric cult that acquired a philosophical interpretation. Rastogi does not deny this, but his framing as a "system of philosophy" is a modern lens.
Key Terms
- Saktopaya: the "means of power", the path that works on thought-constructs; Krama's place in Abhinavagupta's scheme.
- Sambhavopaya: the "divine means", direct intuitive entry; associated with Kula.
- Anupaya: the "no-means", sudden recognition without practice; associated with Pratyabhijna.
- Bhedabhedopaya: the means of unity-in-difference.
- Vikalpa-samskara: the refinement or purification of thought-constructs, gradually turning ordinary discursive thinking into pure knowledge.
- Bhoga-moksa-samarasya: the unity of enjoyment and liberation.
- Anakhya: "the nameless", Krama's fourth act of the Absolute, the stage beyond all names.
- Bhasa: "radiance", Krama's fifth act.
- Traiyambaka and Ardhatraiyambaka: two monistic "seats" (mathikas) of teaching; the first includes Krama, Trika and Pratyabhijna, the second Kula.
Reflection
- Rastogi says Krama treats the very terms "duality" and "non-duality" as relative. How does that differ from a monism that simply asserts "all is one"?
- Why might a system that believes in gradual progress be better placed to value ordinary experience, including enjoyment, as part of liberation?
On the Nomenclature of the System (pp. 10 to 30)
The school has many names. Rastogi takes each in turn and asks what it reveals. The main lesson is that the names are not arbitrary: each picks out an aspect of one central idea, that consciousness (samvit) is a dynamic succession that emerges from and returns to a trans-successive source.
1. Krama-naya: "The System of Succession"
The earliest definitions. Abhinavagupta is the first to refer to Krama as a system, but he never defines the word. Jayaratha identifies it with the theory of the fourfold functioning of the Absolute. This is not his own view but traditional. Before Abhinava, Utpala Vaisnava (the Spanda commentator, a contemporary of Abhinava's teachers) used the phrase Kramacatuska ("the fourfold succession"). Ksemaraja takes Krama to stand for the cyclic succession of emanation (srsti), maintenance (sthiti) and withdrawal (samhrti). Explaining "krama-mudra" and "mudra-krama" from the Krama-sutras, he says it is called Krama because it (i) causes emanation and so on to appear in succession and (ii) is itself the very nature of that successive appearance.
The five acts and the Krama focus. Rastogi reviews the general theory of the five acts. The Absolute is ceaselessly busy with emanation, maintenance, withdrawal, concealment and grace, both at the cosmic level and inside ordinary experience. Those who reflect on this fivefold activity, knowing the universe as the unfolding of awareness, attain perfection in this life. Those who do not see the divine in their objects remain bound. This theory, Rastogi says, distinguishes Kashmir Saiva monism from Vedantic monism, and Krama is the system that builds on it most fully.
So intense was Krama's interest that it split into two views of what "Krama" means: the four-function theory (catustayartha) and the five-function theory (pancartha). Chapter 5 returns to this.
Samvit itself is succession. Whether in ordinary cognition, meditation or cosmic emanation, it is samvit (awareness) that defines and undergoes succession. This process is also called Mahakrama, "the great sequence". By different traditions it has four or five phases. In the fourfold scheme, Bhasa is left out. In either case the phases presuppose a cyclic reality whose flow is uninterrupted. The appearance of distinct phases comes from the inner dynamism of reality itself; the unitary flow seems divided by the acts that follow one another, and this divided flow is Krama.
The twelve Kalis. The structure of the Samviccakra (the "wheel of awareness") rests on this definition. The twelve Kalis are the "epistemic-metaphysical-mystic transformation" of the fourfold (or fivefold) functioning applied to the object, the means of knowing, and the subject: four phases times three poles gives twelve. Here Krama joins the successive process of cosmic emanation to the trans-successive monistic source. The apparent gaps between creation, maintenance and so on are turned into "real links" that build a synthetic whole. One who has an intuitive grasp of the succession inside the cyclic movement of the Absolute's agency earns liberation in this life.
A footnote notes that the first three acts can be called Tryartha ("the threefold meaning"), parallel to Pancartha and Catustayartha.
Krama as time. Under the general Kashmir Saiva influence, Krama is also defined as time (kala), and called Kalakrama. Rastogi notes that Kalakrama is a tautology: it means "the succession called time", not "the succession of time". Time is responsible for the manifestation and non-manifestation of objectivity. Applied to the Absolute, "kala" means not ordinary sequential time but creative time, the potential for emergent reality. This is where Krama's central figure, Kali, becomes important: she is the metaphysical, ontological and mystical principle that both produces and devours time.
Relative and absolute senses. A third definition, from within the school, distinguishes:
- Krama as a relative term, paired with akrama ("non-sequence"). When the mind's operations are directed to external multiplicity, the situation is "krama". When the same mechanism turns towards the undifferentiated reality, everything is realised as trans-sequential, "akrama".
- Krama as an absolute term, which stands for the akrama reality itself: "always continuous, eternally potential, self-subsistent, immediate and indeterminate". This is the supreme ideal of Krama and the end of its spiritual process.
A footnote, from an Agama quoted in Jayaratha, says that Krama sees the sense-organs, external and internal, as forms of divinities (karanesvaris, "goddesses of the faculties"). This is a characteristic Krama idea, important in later chapters.
The upshot. All attempts to define Krama focus on the modus operandi of awareness (Cit-krama). In simple language, Krama = Cit-krama or Bodha-krama, "the sequence of consciousness".
2. Variants of "Krama"
Rastogi lists six compound names:
- (a) Anuttara-krama ("the unsurpassed sequence"): stresses the transcendent character of the supreme experience in which objective enjoyment and subjective freedom are harmonised.
- (b) Anupaya-krama ("the sequence without means"): the highest spiritual attainment, identical with Krama in its absolute sense.
- (c) Devata-krama ("the sequence of divinities"): each step of cosmic emanation and of spiritual advance, and each phase of the Samviccakra, is a deity.
- (d) Mahakrama ("the great sequence"): probably coined on the model of Mahartha. Mahesvarananda calls his Mahartha-manjari the "Mahakrama-manjari" in the closing verses of his commentary.
- (e) Mahartha-krama: the sequence belonging to the great reality; a typical idiom of the school.
- (f) Auttara-krama ("the northern sequence"): named from its place of origin. Krama arose in Kashmir, "the Northern Seat" (Uttara-pitha).
The Northern Transmission and the "Left-hand" Question
The northern name raises a larger question. Krama is linked with Uttaramnaya, "the northern transmission", traditionally the teaching that comes from the northern mouth of Siva. Since the northern face is on the left, some identify it with Vamamarga, the "left-hand path". K. C. Pandey connected this with Krama's use of a ritual consort (dutiyaga) and of liquor, women and meat as elements of worship.
Rastogi is cautious:
- In the later Krama of Mahesvarananda, such practices did gain a respected place.
- But "the main stress laid by the Krama has always been on the spiritual side".
- Krama is not called Uttaramnaya itself but "the cream and essence of the Uttaramnaya".
- The whole monistic current of Kashmir Saivism is identified with Uttaramnaya, while the Kashmir Saiva Agamas are classified as Daksina (right) among the three groups (Vama, Daksina, Siddhanta).
- Sitikantha places the Uttaramnaya highest of all the transmissions and Mahartha (Krama) supreme within it.
A further puzzle comes from Raghava Bhatta, the commentator on the Saradatilaka, who says that one half of a verse states the Pratyabhijna view (of the Siva-sutra and related works) and the other half the Uttaramnaya view. If so, Trika and Uttaramnaya would be different. Rastogi offers a compromise: Raghava may be contrasting the classical (philosophical) Pratyabhijna with the agamic (scriptural) Uttaramnaya. He leaves the question open, while noting that the geographical sense of "Auttara Krama" is not in doubt.
3. Mahartha or Mahartha-naya: "The Great Meaning"
Usage. Mahartha, sometimes with drsti (view) or naya (system) added, is the most popular later name. Its first use as a name of the system goes back to Ksemaraja. It gradually overshadowed "Krama" in later literature and was even called a siddhanta (established doctrine).
Two senses. Mahartha means both a philosophical system and the ultimate value the system seeks. The first sense derives from the second: Mahartha is the system that deals with the principle of Mahartha.
Tantric background. Rastogi suggests the word was formed under Tantric, especially Tripura, influence, where the ultimate is the substrate of the "sixfold meaning" envisaged in Sakta Tantras.
Word and meaning. Tantric philosophy holds that ultimate reality has two aspects, vacaka (word, signifier) and vacya (meaning, signified), linked by the relation of signifier to signified. Reality as Logos is the vacaka; reality in its being and becoming is the vacya, the artha. Since vacya and artha are synonyms, the ultimate is called Mahartha, "the great meaning". The term highlights the emergent nature of reality "as containing the total possibilities of self-becoming", which is exactly what Krama studies.
Sitikantha's analysis. Sitikantha, author of a Mahanaya-Prakasa, devotes his first and third chapters (Udayas) to the meaning of Mahartha, with further discussion in the fourth and eleventh. His answer:
- In monism, only reality itself, one with consciousness, can be the true referent.
- Analytically, five things can be called Mahartha: (i) the partless reality, (ii) aspects of that reality, (iii) the means to reality, (iv) the means to its aspects, and (v) ancillary means that help the primary ones bear fruit. Only the first is Mahartha in the full sense; the others are so called secondarily.
- From the side of experience, Mahartha is not merely meditation on the cycles and their deities. It is "the condition when one is completely possessed of the feeling of self-sameness with the Absolute". Sitikantha gives eight illustrations, each culminating in non-dual experience.
So Mahartha is the state of mind that never loses sight of non-duality in any experience, "that dispels even the slightest tinge of distinction between 'I' and 'you'". This state is identified with the Anakhya stage.
4. Mahanaya: "The Great System"
This name appears in later authors, not earlier than Sivananda II, author of one Mahanaya-Prakasa. It was popular enough to give its name to two key texts (Sivananda II's and Sitikantha's Mahanaya-Prakasa). Jayaratha, Sitikantha and Ananta Saktipada also use it. "Maha" here is said to stand for "artha" (reality), so Mahanaya is probably an abridgement of Maharthanaya.
5. Mahasara: "The Great Essence" (doubtful)
Ksemaraja uses the phrase in his commentary on a hymn (the Divya-krida-bahumana-stotra), right after saying it is full of statements on the Mahartha principle, and he gives it the honorific "Sriman" that he normally uses for Mahartha. Rastogi accepts it as a probable name but marks it as uncertain.
6. Atinaya: "The Supreme System"
A passage cited by Jayaratha, in a context about the line of Krama teachers, implies that Krama was also called Atinaya, and Sitikantha confirms this. But Abhinavagupta, listing the systems of Kashmir Saivism, also names an Atimarga beside Krama and Kula, and Jayaratha elsewhere cites a passage making Atimarga equal to Kula (via Sumatinatha, Abhinava's great-grand-teacher in Kula).
Rastogi poses the puzzle and offers two possible solutions:
- Atimarga as a shared trait. "Ati" ("beyond") might express the common claim of all the Kashmir monistic systems to be superior to other schools. Then equating it with Krama or Kula causes no difficulty, especially since Krama is said to culminate in Kula. He admits this is "purely hypothetical".
- Atinaya as Tripura (Samaya-vidya). Following a hint in Sitikantha, Atinaya may refer to the Samaya-vidya, the Tripura system, whose highest ideal coincides with Krama's. Krama would then be "a transitionary link between the Kula, a Saiva system, and the Tripura, a Sakta system". Rastogi finds this more plausible, but leaves the question for future research.
(Note that in modern scholarship, "Atimarga" usually refers to the non-Tantric ascetic Saivism of the Pasupatas and related groups, as distinct from the Tantric Mantramarga. Rastogi's discussion predates this usage becoming standard.)
7. Devatanaya or Devinaya: "The System of the Goddess"
Jayaratha uses Devinaya for Krama. The doctrine that holds the female aspect of reality (Sakti, Kali) to be ultimate is called Devatanaya. Its thesis: reality in its female aspect can "come out and chisel the entire multiplicity even without the support of a canvas", that is, she creates the world out of herself alone.
Those who prefer the name accept the basic identity of Siva and Sakti, but consider that the small difference between them matters. To them, Paramesvara (the Lord) marks the end of the movement of time, while the Devi (the Goddess) is the repository of that end itself. Sitikantha cites an Agama saying that in the Devatanaya the divine acts (srsti and the rest) are other names of the Absolute's powers (will and the rest).
8. Kalinaya: "The System of Kali"
The supreme Devi is called Kali or Kalasamkarsini ("she who draws in, or devours, time"). Krama also teaches the Anakhya-krama or Samviccakra, which explains cosmic emanation in terms of twelve (or thirteen) Kalis. Either reason explains the name.
Conclusion of the Chapter
There are a few other names, but they are not commonly accepted. Names connected with Krama's Tantric character (such as Cakra-krama-sampradaya, Navacakra-sampradaya, Adyaksara-sampradaya) are discussed in Chapter 3.
Insight: the Names as a Single Picture
Laid side by side, the names describe one picture from different angles:
| Name | Angle | What it emphasises |
|---|---|---|
| Krama, Kramanaya, Mahakrama | process | consciousness as succession, and the trans-sequential source |
| Kalakrama | time | consciousness as creative time |
| Anuttara-krama, Anupaya-krama | goal | the supreme, means-free state |
| Devata-krama | practice | each phase as a deity |
| Mahartha, Mahanaya | meaning | reality as the "great meaning" behind all words |
| Auttara-krama | origin | the northern seat, Kashmir |
| Atinaya | rank | superiority to other systems (meaning disputed) |
| Devinaya, Kalinaya | ultimate principle | the Goddess Kali as ultimate |
The name Mahartha shows how deep the word-and-meaning model goes. If the ultimate is the "great meaning", then the spiritual task is to read every experience back to the meaning it expresses. That is why Krama pays such attention to language, speech and cognition.
A note for readers: names do not settle doctrine
Rastogi's method here is philological: collect usages, arrange them, and infer what each name implies. This works well for names like Mahartha, which authors explain. It works less well for names like Mahasara or Atinaya, where a single passage carries the whole case. His own language ("we are not absolutely certain", "a purely hypothetical value", "we leave the question open") marks these as tentative, and readers should keep them so.
Key Terms
- Samvit: awareness, consciousness as living experience.
- Mahakrama: the great sequence of consciousness.
- Catustayartha / Pancartha / Tryartha: the four-, five- and three-function theories of the Absolute's acts.
- Samviccakra / Anakhya-cakra: the wheel of awareness, with its twelve or thirteen Kalis.
- Akrama: non-sequence, trans-sequential reality.
- Cit-krama / Bodha-krama: the sequence of consciousness.
- Karanesvaris: the goddesses of the faculties, the senses seen as deities.
- Mahartha: the great meaning, the ultimate reality as the signified of all words.
- Vacaka / vacya: signifier and signified.
- Uttaramnaya: the northern transmission.
- Kalasamkarsini: "she who devours time", the supreme Kali.
Reflection
- Why might a system that treats reality as "the great meaning" care so much about the way the mind forms concepts?
- Consider an ordinary perception, such as hearing a bell. Can you notice the phases of "emanation" (attention going out), "maintenance" (the sound held), "withdrawal" (the sound absorbed) and "the nameless" (the moment before naming)? This is the experiential basis of Krama's four-function scheme.
Krama as a Tantric System (pp. 31 to 50)
Krama was always rooted in the Agamas, but its Tantric character grew over time. It moved from "philosophic tantricism", focused on the dynamic Absolute and on intuitive realisation, to "esoteric tantricism", focused on ritual, mantra, mudra and sacred seats. Beneath both phases lies one idea: experience pure and simple (samvit) is identical with reality, and Tantric method exists only to bring that identity into experience.
1. A Later Development
Rastogi describes the overall movement in Krama history as "a radical process of transformation from philosophy to tantricism". In its earliest phase the school analyses the functional, active character of the Absolute. By the time of Mahesvarananda (c. 1300, South India), the author proudly calls his Mahartha-manjari a Tantra. Krama had Tantric associations from the beginning, but "the philosophical and mystical side enjoyed the upperhand". Later, philosophy became subservient to Tantric demands.
2. Tantra-prakriya and Kula-prakriya
That Abhinavagupta treats Krama in the Tantraloka ("Light on the Tantras") already makes a strong case for its Tantric character. Jayaratha goes further: he says the whole content of the Tantraloka falls under two heads, the Tantra-prakriya ("Tantric procedure") and the Kula-prakriya ("Kula procedure").
These two currents are traced to two teaching lines:
- The tradition speaks of four mathikas (teaching seats) founded in the line of the sage Durvasas: Amardaka (dualist), Srinatha (dualist-cum-monist), and Traiyambaka (monist). Traiyambaka is credited with two monist lines: the one he taught directly, the Traiyambaka mathika, and one founded by a descendant through his daughter, the Ardha-traiyambaka mathika ("half-Traiyambaka").
- The Traiyambaka line is the Tantra-prakriya; the Ardha-traiyambaka line is the Kula-prakriya.
So Kula has its own identity as the Ardha-traiyambaka line, while Trika, Krama and Pratyabhijna (Spanda excepted) are subsumed under the Tantra-prakriya. This is never openly stated, Rastogi admits, but it follows from the fact that the whole "Sadardha-krama-vijnana" (the "knowledge of the half-of-six", that is, the Trika triad, a standard way of presenting Kashmir Saiva monism) is identified with the Traiyambaka school.
Two further facts support the link between Trika and Krama:
- They are acknowledged to be closely related. Jayaratha, discussing Krama's parity between affirmation and negation, sometimes calls Krama "Trika".
- Abhinava learnt Krama from the same set of teachers, led by Somananda's line, from whom he learnt Trika and Pratyabhijna. For Kula he had a different line, culminating in Sambhunatha.
Yet the Tantra and Kula procedures fit together inside Abhinava's "monolithic monistic complex", Rastogi suggests, for two reasons: the monistic revelation descends from the same source (Traiyambaka, directly or indirectly), and Kula adheres to the same scripture, the Malinivijayottara Tantra, which is the root text of Abhinava's Trika.
The Ksemaraja Problem
A long footnote addresses an apparent contradiction. In the Pratyabhijnahrdayam (commentary on Sutra 8), Ksemaraja lists the views of various schools about the Self and says that for the Tantrikas reality is transcendent, for the Kaulas immanent, and for the Trika and similar schools both. That seems to set "Tantra", "Kula" and "Trika" against each other, unlike Abhinava's scheme in which Tantra-prakriya includes Trika.
Rastogi's solution: Ksemaraja is not using "Tantra" and "Kula" in Abhinava's technical sense. All the Kashmir monist schools, whether in the Tantra or the Kula procedure, regard reality as both transcendent and immanent. So the "Tantrikas" and "Kaulas" of Ksemaraja must be outside schools, not the internal currents of Kashmir monism. "Trikadi" ("Trika and the like") means Kashmir monism in general. Ksemaraja therefore does not contradict his teacher.
(Readers of the Pratyabhijnahrdayam edition on this site will recognise the passage: Ksemaraja there associates the transcendent view with the Tantric followers of the Veda-like scriptures and the immanent view with Kaula schools in a narrower sense.)
3. What Makes Krama "Tantric"
Rastogi does not try to define "Tantra" in general. He quotes traditional etymologies (Tantra "spreads" great knowledge of reality and mantra and "saves"), Sir John Woodroffe's list of shared Tantric ideas and practices, and T. A. Gopinatha Rao's distinction between agama, tantra and yamala. But he finds that these descriptions do not tell us the bases of Tantric thinking. He turns instead to three Kashmiri sources: Abhinava's Tantrasara, Mahesvarananda's Mahartha-manjari, and Ramyadeva's commentary on the Bhavopahara.
(a) Twelve features of Tantra in the Tantrasara. Abhinava's epitome suggests these common grounds of the monistic Tantras:
- Ignorance is imperfect knowledge, identified with impurity (mala). It has two forms: paurusa (spiritual, innate) and bauddha (intellectual, conceptual). The intellectual form is more important as the first target of practice.
- Reality is self-luminosity and consciousness.
- Objective multiplicity is a manifestation of awareness.
- The supreme consciousness is free will.
- Reality is both transcendent and immanent because of its dynamism and freedom.
- The individual self is the self-limitation of reality.
- The limited self re-emerges as the universal self either spontaneously, by the unrestricted agency of the self, or gradually, by means that refine thought-constructs.
- Sattarka (right reasoning), sadagama (true scripture) and sadguru (true teacher) are needed for this graduated re-emergence.
- Sattarka is the most effective limb of yoga and the immediate means of self-attainment.
- Practices such as yaga (worship), homa (fire offering), vrata (vows) and yoga serve to refine right reasoning into suddha-vidya (pure knowledge).
- Perfection is realised as the manifestation of the totality of powers.
- The Trika scriptures are supreme.
(b) Mahesvarananda's features. In two verses (gathas 22 and 69) of the Mahartha-manjari, Mahesvarananda gives a more specific list:
- Worldly objects such as touch and sound, ordinarily thought to bind, become the means of liberation.
- The means and the goal are identical.
- The harmony of Prakasa (light, being) and Vimarsa (reflective awareness, dynamism) is the nucleus of the physical person, which is identical with the six adhvans (cosmic "paths").
- The Vedic pair abhyudaya (worldly prosperity) and nihsreyasa (the highest good) becomes the Tantric pair bhoga (enjoyment) and moksa (liberation), and these are synthesised: an object of enjoyment is seen as an expression of one's own reality.
- Wine, woman and meat, condemned elsewhere, are basic to the ritual scheme because they are "a crucial and hard test of one's spiritual advancement".
- Mantra is fundamental, because it stands for the undifferentiated matrix of the world, Para Vak (supreme speech), identical with the I-consciousness that gives the mantra life.
- Worship, deity and mudra are all reflections on the identity of the individual with the universal self.
Ramyadeva adds two points: Krama holds the identity of the Full (purna) and the Lean (krsa) deity, meaning that reality keeps its perfection even when the world is withdrawn; and worship, as meditative realisation of one's own divinity, is a permanent dimension of spiritual life that "never comes to a close".
(c) Krama's Tantric character in summary. Krama rests on intuition and discourages dialectic. Its Tantric character seeks the reconciliation of intuition with practical realisation. Of the four traditional divisions of Tantric subject matter, jnana (knowledge), yoga, kriya (ritual action) and carya (conduct), knowledge is joined to ritual and conduct through yoga. This explains the special status of the Malini Tantra, which balances speculation and practice. The union of bhoga and moksa is the Tantric form of the harmony of knowledge and action. The Tantraloka expounds this through the four upayas. In the words of Pramatha Natha Mukhopadhyaya quoted by Woodroffe, Tantric philosophy "not merely 'argues' but 'experiments'".
4. Two Phases of Krama Tantricism
Early phase (to Ksemaraja or Varadaraja, eleventh century). Krama inclines towards philosophical and intuitive issues. Jnana and yoga are valued above carya and kriya. This is its "main plank against the Kula and Siddhanta doctrines".
Later phase. The emphasis reverses. Ritual comes forward. "Mysticism and metaphysics were made to serve the interests of esotericism and ritualism." The trend grows strong in Mahesvarananda and Sitikantha. Rastogi admits that some phrases of the Bhavopahara-vivarana "have surpassed the comprehension of the present author".
In the later phase:
- Mudra, mantra and pujana (worship) become central.
- The pitha (sacred seat), earlier mentioned only in passing, becomes "the most vital element in the system". A footnote collects the standard Tantric lists of pithas (Oddiyana, Jalandhara, Purnagiri, Kamarupa and others, citing P. V. Kane), notes that Mahesvarananda does not separate Sripitha from Oddiyana, that the Cidgaganacandrika extols Purnapitha, and that Krama's own seat is the Uttarapitha, Kashmir, which other Tantric works do not mention. One view, based on a statement in the Tripura text Rjuvimarsini quoted by Mahesvarananda, would identify Kashmir with Oddiyana, making it the birthplace of both Tripura and Krama.
- The belief that the doctrine was revealed through the Yoginis is kept. It suits Krama especially, since its first recipients were women ascetics, one origin account traces it to Makaradevi, and the twelve Kalikas are sometimes called Yoginis. Rastogi suggests that Mahesvarananda's dream of inspiration from a female ascetic may be a survival of this pattern.
- Krama was once meant for all strata of society, with a scheme of graded liberation. Over time it became more secretive, relying on a narrow line of teachers. Rastogi sees this as one cause (besides historical ones) of the system's later oblivion.
- The theory of cakras grew. In Abhinava their ritual significance is small. Even the Vrnda-cakra is not found in Abhinava. Later the system came to be called Cakra-krama-sampradaya ("school of the cyclic order") or Navacakra-sampradaya ("school of the nine cycles"). The nine are: the five functional cycles (srsti, sthiti and so on), the three cycles of the "three eyes" (trinetra), namely Prakasa, Ananda and Murti, and the Vrnda-cakra.
- Another esoteric name is Adyaksara-sampradaya ("school of the first letter"), because the letter a is said to have four crests and to represent the first stage of manifestation.
On the five Ms. Rastogi stresses that, though the later Krama advocates the use of wine, woman and the other elements of the pancatattva, it "does not preach licentiousness", and references to the subject are comparatively rare. Krama authors accepted these practices because they aimed at complete self-control, shown "not only through abstinence from but also through participation in the objects of enjoyments". Abhinava does not mention them in his account of the Samviccakra; he treats it as an analysis of cognitive experience. Sivananda II brings wine and the rest into the Samviccakra, a shift "from spiritual inquiry to mystic experimentalism". Even there, such worship is prescribed only at a very advanced stage, when objects no longer distract.
5. Experience Pure and Simple
The whole discussion, Rastogi concludes, rests on one premise: the identity of the individual soul with the universal soul. Reality is samvit, experience pure and simple. Experience and being (sat) are one. "Being spells the content of experience and experience defines the nature and method of being."
In Trika language, this is realising Prakasa through Vimarsa: knowing that the light of being contains its own power of becoming. The unity of self and Supreme Self comes through the unity of being (Prakasa, sat) and its inherent possibilities of becoming (Vimarsa, Sakti). That is why the favourite method is Pancakrtya-parisilana, the contemplation of the five acts, discovering that the agency of the empirical self and that of the Absolute are the same. Self-knowledge is therefore not simple knowing but re-knowing (Pratyabhijna).
Since logic cannot reach what is beyond logic, realisation is mystical, and esoteric practice is the method suited to it, "the former remaining always subservient to the latter". Only when the purpose is forgotten does esotericism become "the rule of the day, the method and means replacing and discarding their very ideal".
This is why the Tantras prefer antaryaga (inner worship) and bhavana (pure contemplation), which in Krama coincides with the highest level of sattarka. Even Krama ritual is "conducive to such a realization on the graduated scale". And Krama joins the Samaya school (the inner, non-ritual current of Sri Vidya) in discarding external worship for the attainment of the self.
Insight: Krama's Self-correction
Rastogi presents the later ritual growth both as a historical fact and as a danger the system itself names. The early Krama view, that ritual exists only to serve samvit, gives a standard by which the later Krama can be judged. This is a useful way to read Tantric texts generally: look for the place where the tradition itself says what its practices are for.
A note for readers: "philosophy first, ritual later"
Rastogi's two-phase picture is attractive but needs care. Later research on the Kali-centred scriptures that lie behind Krama (the Jayadrathayamala, the Devipancasataka and related texts) suggests that the earliest Krama was already intensely ritual and visionary, a cult of Kali with its own worship sequences, and that the "philosophical" reading owes much to the Pratyabhijna authors of the tenth and eleventh centuries. On that view, Abhinavagupta's cognitive interpretation is not the original form of Krama but a brilliant reinterpretation of it. Rastogi's sources were mostly the philosophical authors, which may explain why the early phase looks more philosophical to him. His own discussion of the Krama Agamas in Chapter 6 partly supports the alternative view.
Key Terms
- Tantra-prakriya / Kula-prakriya: the two currents of the Tantraloka.
- Mathika: a teaching seat or lineage.
- Paurusa-ajnana / bauddha-ajnana: innate and intellectual ignorance.
- Sattarka: right reasoning, purified insight; the highest limb of yoga in Abhinava.
- Suddha-vidya: pure knowledge.
- Pancatattva: the five Tantric elements (wine, meat, fish, mudra, union).
- Pitha: a sacred seat of the goddess.
- Yogini: a female adept or goddess.
- Navacakra: the nine cycles of later Krama.
- Antaryaga: inner worship.
- Pancakrtya-parisilana: contemplation of the five divine acts in one's own experience.
Reflection
- Mahesvarananda says the means and the goal are identical. What would it mean, in practice, for the means of liberation to be the same as liberation?
- Rastogi says esoteric practice should remain "subservient" to experience. How could a practitioner tell whether a ritual still serves that purpose?
Mutual Exchange with Other Systems (pp. 51 to 66)
Rastogi examines where specific Krama doctrines or esoteric tendencies came from, and where Krama in turn left its mark, excluding ideas shared by all Tantric systems (such as the thirty-six tattvas). The pattern is one of two-way exchange: Krama gives to and receives from Spanda, Kula, Tripura, Buddhist Tantra, Bhartrhari's philosophy of language and, more obscurely, the Pancaratra.
1. Scope
The chapter excludes three things: the general Tantric adaptation of the Samkhya categories into the thirty-six tattvas; the Tantric transformation of the theory of real transformation (sadrsa-parinama-vada) into the theory of manifestation (abhasa-vada); and Krama's attitude to the Veda, which was to be treated later. The aim is only to locate "the source of influences that directly or indirectly inspired particular doctrines".
2. Krama and Spanda
Spanda (from spadi, "to throb, to move slightly") is "an exact counterpart in Samskrta of the word 'dynamism' in English". Two commentators on the Spanda-karika see the link with Krama:
- Ksemaraja, in his Spanda-nirnaya, reads the first verse's phrase svasakti-cakra-vibhava-prabhavam ("source of the glory of the wheel of his own powers") as the Krama ideal of the fivefold functioning carried out by the deities headed by Srsti-Kali. He says the highest Mahartha ideal is contained in the first and last verses of the Spanda-karika. The same view appears in his Siva-sutra-vimarsini on Sutra 1.6.
- Utpala Vaisnava, a more thorough Spanda author, says in his commentary on verse 44 that it contains the essence of Krama: continuous realisation of Spanda through methods of self-reflection. On verse 42 he says the Spanda concepts of bindu, nada, rupa and rasa correspond exactly to the four functions of the Absolute in Krama.
Who borrowed from whom? Rastogi tentatively suggests Spanda borrowed from Krama, for five reasons:
- Krama is "the earliest monistic Saiva system of Kashmir", earlier than Spanda.
- In Krama the supremacy of Sakti (Kali) over the Absolute is a live controversy; in Spanda the ultimacy of the Absolute is never questioned, despite its emphasis on dynamism.
- Other Spanda commentators, notably Ramakantha, do not read the first verses in Krama terms, so there was no consensus about Krama influence.
- Ksemaraja does not give verses 42 and 44 a Krama reading, unlike Utpala Vaisnava.
- Yet both Spanda sub-schools (Ksemaraja's and Utpala's) see Krama ideas latent in Spanda.
3. Krama and Kula: Influence Both Ways
Krama's original neutrality. Krama keeps a parity between affirmation and negation, so it is indifferent to rituals such as linga worship, wearing matted hair and ashes, religious vows, worship of deities, and the spiritual efficacy of ksetras (sacred places) and pithas. Siddhanta enjoins these and Kula prohibits them. Rastogi notes one nuance: Kula does advocate pithas, which the Mata system negates; and Kula prescribes samayacara (rules of conduct) and the worship of ovallis (teaching lineages), mudras and chummas (code signs), which Mata prohibits. Krama "as usual, does not bother itself".
Kula's influence on Krama. The neutrality did not last. Under Kula influence, pithas, rituals, ovallis, ghara and palli (other lineage markers) entered Krama. Two Krama ovallis are known: Mahananda and Kularani. The Kula line of teachers, including the Yuganathas and Rajaputras, at first unwelcome in Krama, later came to be worshipped in the Sthiti-cakra. This followed from Kula's rising prestige: Abhinava himself ranks the Kula-prakriya above the Tantra-prakriya; later Kula was considered "the crowning point of the Krama ideology"; and Krama works were even called Kula texts.
Krama's influence on Kula. The most important export was the theory of the twelve Kalis or Samvid-devis forming the Sakti-cakra. This spread to Kula and to other systems, especially the Sara system. The Anakhya-krama "forced its way into the Kula fold".
4. Krama and Tripura: Reciprocal Impact
Tripura (the Sri Vidya tradition centred on the goddess Tripurasundari) is a Sakta, not a Saiva, system. But Krama, "owing to its temperamental attachment to the Sakti", is close to it. "But for its Saiva associations, Krama is certainly a Sakta system."
Tripura into Krama:
- Sitikantha defines the scope of Mahartha as ranging from the pitha to the Samaya-vidya (Tripura philosophy), and calls Samaya-vidya the summit of all Krama achievement. He names Anakhya and Bhasa "Anakhya-Samayesvari" and "Bhasa-Samayesvari".
- Sitikantha introduces the Vrnda-cakra, which Mahesvarananda considers the single most important aspect of Krama, as Sri-cakra, the central diagram of Tripura.
- Tripura's highest goddess is identified with Kalasamkarsini, the Krama ultimate.
- Krama's fondness for Prakrit may be a legacy from Tripura; Mahesvarananda quotes the Tripura text Rjuvimarsini in support.
Krama into Tripura:
- Rastogi's impression is that Sri-cakra may have inspired the Vrnda-cakra, but that the notion of Vrnda-cakra itself was exported from Krama to Tripura. Evidence: the anonymous commentary on Punyananda's Kamakalavilasa (Kashmir edition) mentions two types of Vrnda-cakra, Padaviksepa and Kramodaya. But Vrnda appears late in Krama, so the argument is delicate.
- Anakhya, the fourth act of the Absolute and reality itself in the four-function theory (Krama-catuska), was probably borrowed by Tripura from Krama.
- Krama treated Srsti-cakra and Samhara-cakra as independent; Tripura applied this to its own scheme, where the eighth and ninth cakras are independent.
- Sattarka may have been borrowed by Tripura from Krama, though both present it as agamic.
5. Buddhist Tantra: Six-limbed Yoga and Anakhya
Sadanga-yoga. Every monistic Saiva system of Kashmir follows Patanjali's eight-limbed yoga. Yet Jayaratha interprets Abhinava as accepting a six-limbed yoga (sadanga-yoga). Rastogi argues that Abhinava "does not, in fact, expressly commit himself"; he actually discusses the eightfold yoga, puts sattarka at the summit of the Krama process, and dismisses the first five limbs as external. It is Jayaratha who cites an unnamed verse describing a six-limbed scheme: it drops yama, niyama and asana and adds tarka (sattarka), giving six. Yet Jayaratha defines all the limbs with Patanjali's own definitions.
Rastogi suspects the six-limbed doctrine is an interpolation from Buddhist Tantra. The Guhyasamaja Tantra (chapter 18) presents a six-limbed yoga that likewise omits yama, niyama and asana, but adds anusmrti (recollection). Naropa's Sekoddesa-tika elaborates it. The parallel is so close that Rastogi is "tempted" to say Jayaratha's verse simply substitutes "tarkascaiva" for "anusmrtih". He thinks Krama borrowed, not the reverse, because:
- the Guhyasamaja was dated by its editor B. Bhattacharya to the fourth century;
- the first and only Krama reference is Jayaratha's (early thirteenth century);
- even if Abhinava accepted it, that is no earlier than the tenth century;
- the Buddhist works develop a complete system of six-limbed yoga, while the Krama works do not.
The difference lies in the content of the added limb. Anusmrti is recollection of earlier stages of realisation. Tarka is "pure knowledge that can discern the spiritually meaningful from what is spiritually spurious". In Abhinava and Jayaratha, tarka is the highest limb and the others are subordinate. And the other five limbs keep their Patanjala definitions in Krama but are independent in Buddhism.
A footnote records that J. Ensink disagreed, tracing six-limbed yoga to an older tradition also reflected in Javano-Balinese literature, and that Rastogi saw Ensink's paper only while the book was in press.
Philosophical Buddhism. Two further influences:
- Vikalpa-samskara (refinement of thought) shows the impact of the Buddhist logic of apoha (meaning by exclusion) and the theory of momentariness (ksanika-vada).
- Anakhya may be "a positive Krama interpretation" of the sunyata (emptiness) of the Madhyamikas. It came not directly from Madhyamaka but through esoteric Buddhists, who gave emptiness a positive accent. In Nagarjuna's Pancakrama (a Tantric work attributed to Nagarjuna), the final grade of emptiness, sarva-sunya, is identified with supreme omniscience, the unity beyond words, from which the Buddha proceeds. So Anakhya is close to Tantric Buddhist emptiness and "poles apart" from Madhyamaka. Sivopadhyaya noticed the difference.
6. Bhartrhari
Rastogi calls the grammarian-philosopher Bhartrhari (fifth century) the source of "the bulk of the sub-structural material" of Krama:
- The process of vikalpa-samskara was largely modelled on Bhartrhari's sabda-samskara (refinement of speech) and sabda-purva-yoga (yoga preceded by speech).
- Kali, Krama's ultimate principle, is largely a transformation of Bhartrhari's kala-sakti or krama-sakti (the power of time, the power of sequence).
- The fourfold or fivefold theory of speech in Krama was developed under the influence of Bhartrhari's sabda-brahman (the absolute as word) and its inherently emergent character.
7. Pancaratra: Unsettled Issues
What was the relation between Kashmir Saivism and the Vaisnava Pancaratra tradition? Rastogi gathers evidence on both sides:
- Saiva works criticise the Pancaratra alongside the Buddhists, and assign them to the level of avyakta (unmanifest matter, prakrti). They divide Pancaratra into Samkarsana and Samhita branches.
- But Utpala Vaisnava quotes the Jayakhya-samhita with approval; Mahesvarananda quotes the Laksmi Tantra; Yogaraja quotes the Laksmi-samhita.
- Yamunacarya, in his Agama-pramanya, mentions another work of his, the Kasmiragama-pramanya, apparently on the validity of the Kashmiri Agamas. According to Vedanta Desika, its theme was the impersonal origin of the Ekayana-veda.
- Mahesvarananda quotes a Rahasyamnaya, also cited by Natanananda in his Cidvalli on the Kamakalavilasa. In Pancaratra, the Rahasyamnaya is identified with the Ekayana-veda. V. Krishnamacharya thought Utpala Vaisnava's Pancaratra quotations came from it.
But the Rahasyamnaya is lost, and the Saiva extracts are esoteric and agamic in style, so it is hard to say the two are one. "The two were closely related and even influenced each other", but neither the nature nor the intensity of the influence can be gauged.
8. Krama's Impact on Tantra Generally
Krama's biggest contribution, Rastogi says, is that "various Krama-creeds" emerged in other Tantric traditions. Tripura and other Sakta systems, and Buddhist and Vaisnava Tantra, evolved their own codes of "krama". He lists works such as the Krama-stuti attributed to Samkara, the Krama-dipika of Kesava Bhatta, and others (Kramottama, Krama-ratna, Krama-ratnamala, Krama-samgraha, Krama-sandhana, Kramamalika, Sri-krama-samhita, Krama-vasana).
Insight: Krama as a Hub
Taken together, the chapter shows Krama sitting at a crossroads: between Saiva and Sakta, between philosophy and ritual, between Kashmir and the wider Tantric world. Many of its key ideas (the dynamic Absolute, the twelve Kalis, Anakhya, sattarka) travelled outward; many of its later ritual features came in from Kula and Tripura.
A note for readers: the logic of influence claims
Several arguments here rest on dating and silence. The claim that Krama is "the earliest monistic Saiva system" depends on dating Sivananda before Vasugupta and Kallata, which is itself argued in Chapter 6 from lineage counts. The claim that the Guhyasamaja dates to the fourth century reflects B. Bhattacharya's dating, which most scholars now reject; the Guhyasamaja is generally placed much later (around the eighth century). That later date does not overturn Rastogi's conclusion that Jayaratha's verse borrows from a Buddhist source, but it weakens one of his reasons. The derivation of Anakhya from Tantric Buddhist emptiness is suggestive but not demonstrated; the term could also be explained from within Saiva scripture. Rastogi's own wording ("possibly", "it is our impression") is appropriately tentative.
Key Terms
- Spanda: vibration, the throb of consciousness.
- Bindu, nada, rupa, rasa: Spanda terms mapped by Utpala Vaisnava onto the four Krama functions.
- Ovalli, ghara, palli: lineage and community markers of Kula.
- Yuganathas and Rajaputras: Kula teachers of the four ages and their sons, later worshipped in Krama.
- Samvid-devis / Sakti-cakra: the goddesses of awareness, the circle of powers.
- Sri-cakra / Vrnda-cakra: the Tripura diagram and its Krama counterpart, the "circle of the assembly".
- Sadanga-yoga: six-limbed yoga.
- Anusmrti: recollection, the Buddhist sixth limb.
- Apoha: Buddhist theory of meaning by exclusion.
- Kala-sakti / krama-sakti: Bhartrhari's power of time and sequence.
- Ekayana-veda / Rahasyamnaya: the "one-path" scripture of the Pancaratra.
Reflection
- Why might a tradition that treats the senses as goddesses be especially receptive to ideas about language and sequence from Bhartrhari?
- Rastogi thinks Krama's "nameless" stage reinterprets Buddhist emptiness positively. What would be the practical difference between resting in emptiness and resting in the nameless fullness of consciousness?
Different Traditions and Sub-schools (pp. 67 to 81)
A system's vitality shows in its capacity to generate different ways of handling its own questions without losing coherence. By that test Krama is "a potentially creative and substantially rich system". It contains sub-schools (Sahasa and Chumma, which Rastogi identifies), a possible third sub-school mentioned in the Tantraloka, and a cluster of internal controversies that Rastogi traces to two tendencies: the quartic (thinking in fours) and the pentadic (thinking in fives).
1. Two Texts, Two Sub-schools
Kashmir Saivism has two texts ascribed to two sub-schools: the Vatulanatha-sutrani (Sahasa school) and the Chumma-sampradaya (Chumma school). Rastogi argues both belong to Krama.
2. The Sahasa Sub-school
The text. The Vatulanatha-sutras state that one's real nature is acquired by firm abiding in the pre-eminent sahasa. Their commentator Ananta Saktipada calls the system the Maha-sahasa-carca-sampradaya ("the school devoted to the great Sahasa") and opens with a salutation to Sahasa.
What sahasa means. Literally "a sudden or forceful happening". In Saiva terms, it is the highest state of self-revelation that needs no preparation, often occurring under an intense descent of grace. It transcends the deterministic order and is "a purely indeterminate state of self-intuiting awareness".
Roots in Kashmir Saivism. The idea was not new:
- Hathapaka ("forceful cooking") and alamgrasa ("total swallowing") owe their being to sahasa. (These are the forceful digestion of experience into consciousness, discussed also in the Pratyabhijnahrdayam.)
- One of the eight approaches to the Vrnda-cakra is Mudra-krama, with five mudras. The highest is Khecari ("moving in the void"), belonging to the realm of the Sambhava-siddhas; all others derive from it.
- Ananta Saktipada presents the Khecari-drsti (the "view of the sky-goer") as the central tenet of the Sahasa school.
- Abhinava anticipates this in Tantraloka 32 (on mudras), quoting the Bhargasikha: Khecari has eight varieties, the highest called Virabhairava, which is the entry into the state called sahasa, and is therefore also called sahasa-mudra.
The principle of great sahasa submerges all our associations with objectivity. It is "the climax of the Kramic ascent" and "the highest stage of the Kula achievement as well".
Why Sahasa is Krama. Rastogi gives four reasons:
- Sahasa as sunyata-samavesa (immersion in the great void) is a Krama phenomenon; Ananta Saktipada calls it the gist of the Mahanaya school.
- The text's spiritual content is attributed to Niskriyanandanatha, a Krama teacher.
- The text uses Krama idiom for the five divine functions.
- Its oral tradition goes back to female deities of the seats (pitha-devis) who favoured an accomplished practitioner, a typically Krama motif.
3. The Chumma Sub-school
The word. "Chumma" is obscure. The text itself never explains it.
- The Tantraloka uses it twice: once to say that chummas and mudras, like palli and ghara, change with the teaching line; once listing six chummas without explanation. They seem to be bodily centres of spirituality.
- Ksemaraja, on the Svacchanda Tantra, calls chummaka a paribhasiki samjna ("a technical code-name") that represents the system one belongs to. Its purpose is to preserve the secret nature of the system. Sarma may be a synonym.
- Chummaka may have meant the key element of an occult rite.
Two levels. The Chumma-sampradaya implies two classes: secondary chummas (which would include those of Abhinava and Ksemaraja) and the Paryanta-chumma ("the final code"). The final chumma is explained in terms of sahasa, the continuous transcendent principle.
4. Sahasa and Chumma Are Identical
Rastogi's argument:
- The final chumma is defined as sahasa.
- Both stress oral transmission: the Sahasa school is called Vaktramnaya ("transmission by mouth"), and the Chumma school is handed down orally.
- Both texts are attributed to Niskriyanandanatha: the Vatulanatha-sutras contain the wisdom he received (an indirect work), while the Chumma-sampradaya is his direct work.
Conclusions: there is no basic difference between chumma and sahasa; both belong to Krama; and Niskriyananda may have raised ordinary Krama notions to the status of a sub-system. Since chummas were not favoured in early Krama, this must be a later development.
5. Another Possible Sub-school
Tantraloka 29 mentions a school spearheaded by certain teachers that mixes the doctrines of the Devyayamala and the Madhavakula (part of the Tantraraja-bhattaraka). In it, worship of one's teaching line, pithas and ksetras are kept; the pithas are assigned to parts of the body and visualised, with their deities, as identical with the self.
Is this a Krama sub-school? It depends on how one reads Jayaratha's word matantara. Since Tantraloka 29 is on Kula, "matantara" must mean something other than the main Kula thesis. If mata means "view", it is a variation within Kula. If it means "ideology", it is another system, and the obvious candidate is Krama, since the passage refers to Krama-catustaya (from the Madhavakula) and Kalasamkarsini (from the Devyayamala). Rastogi leaves it delicately open.
6. Divergent Traditions on Specific Problems
(a) Siva or Kali?
Two traditions about the Absolute go back to the Krama Agamas themselves, which are divided into Devi-oriented and Siva-oriented scriptures.
- Somananda and his line held Siva to be ultimate. Rastogi notes Somananda's "obsession with the grammarian's convention" that the feminine is a form of the masculine, and his view that references to the feminine form of God come from intense devotion. He suggests there was "a real confrontation" between the two parties.
- The others held Kali or Devi ultimate. The very name Kalinaya "smacks of reaction" against Siva's supremacy.
This is the Krama form of the general Saiva question of how Prakasa and Vimarsa relate. In Krama, Prakasa is called Paramesvara, Manthana or Manthana-bhairava; Vimarsa is Kali, Devi or Kalasamkarsini.
The consequences differ systematically:
| Question | Siva-oriented tradition | Kali-oriented tradition |
|---|---|---|
| Status of Sakti | Sakti is His manifestation, slightly subsidiary | Sakti (dynamism) is the Absolute itself |
| Bhasa and Anakhya | His functions | Identical with reality as such |
| Vyomavamesvari (highest of the five flows) | Derived from Him | Not distinguished from Kali |
| Number of Kalis in the Samviccakra | Twelve | Thirteen (the ultimate counted in) |
| Aspects of the Vrnda-cakra | Sixty-four (five vahas excepted) | Sixty-five |
| Where the ultimate stands | Separate from the series | Part of the series |
(b) Four functions or five?
There is a loose tendency for Kali-centred authors to hold the five-function theory and Siva-centred authors the four-function theory, but "no uniform rule can be laid down". The disagreement is nevertheless vital, because it bears on the meaning of "Krama" itself and is the source of the quartic and pentadic tendencies. All of monistic Kashmir Saivism accepts five functions, but only Krama really analysed their philosophical and esoteric implications.
(c) The quartic tendency.
Here the system's concepts are presented in fours:
- The fifth act (anugraha or Bhasa) is subsumed under the fourth (tirodhana or Anakhya).
- The fifth power (cit) is subsumed under the fourth (ananda).
- The fourth state is the synthesis, so the ultimate is called Anakhya, not Bhasa.
- From Jayaratha's arrangement of the twelve Kalis in three groups of four, Abhinava too seems to favour four functions: srsti, sthiti, samhara and anakhya applied to subject, object and means of knowledge give twelve deities.
- The functional cycles number four, ending with the Anakhya-cakra.
- Four cycles (Pancavaha, Prakasa, Ananda, Murti) are given special depth.
- The biggest impact is in the theory of speech: despite efforts to add Suksma as a fifth level, most Krama thinkers hold the fourfold theory.
(d) The pentadic tendency.
This was "a greater favourite". It shows in groups of five:
- Pancavaha, the five flows of self-emanating energy, from Vyomavamesvari down to Bhucari.
- Five functions: srsti, sthiti, pralaya (samhara), anakhya, bhasa.
- Five powers: cit, ananda, iccha, jnana, kriya.
- Five levels of speech in Mahesvarananda: Para, Suksma, Pasyanti, Madhyama, Vaikhari.
- Five symbolic groups for contemplation: Sripitha, Pancavaha, Netratraya (the three eyes), Vrnda-cakra, Gurupankti (the line of teachers).
- The Vrnda-cakra, the quintessence of Krama for Mahesvarananda, is full of pentads. It centres on five Siddhas: Jnana, Mantra, Melapa, Sakta and Sambhava. Its Dhama-krama assigns them five abodes in the body: kanda (root), nabhi (navel), hrt (heart), kantha (throat), bhrumadhya (between the brows). Its Mudra-krama lists five mudras: Karankini, Krodhani, Bhairavi, Lelihana, Khecari. Its Varna-krama has five pindas (seed-letter clusters).
- Five cycles, Prakasa, Ananda, Murti, Pancavaha and Vrnda, build the Divyaugha (the divine stream).
Even groups with more than five members are mapped onto the five. The Sripitha has nine kalas: (1) the primal subjective stir (adya spanda), (2) the outward subjective tendency, (3) the stir of the means of perception, (4) the tendency of the means of knowledge to grasp determinately, and (5 to 9) awareness of the objective, fivefold by the five elements. By collapsing the five elements into one, the nine become the five vahas.
(e) How many limbs of yoga?
Jayaratha mentions six but does not take it seriously; Abhinava prefers eight; a minor unpublished Krama text, the Jnana-kriya-dvaya-sataka, follows the eightfold path.
(f) Minor controversies.
Rastogi lists, without discussing: the number of deities in the Anakhya-cakra; the order of the five functional cycles in worship; the inclusion of Yuganathas and Rajaputras; the order of the five flows; the equation of the Prakasa, Ananda and Murti cycles with the flows; their order; the concept of puryastaka (the subtle body of eight); the number of aspects of the Vrnda-cakra; its mudras; and the nature and number of the stages of speech.
7. Sources of the Quartic and Pentadic Tendencies
Pandey's view. The pentadic tendency appears earlier in the Lakulisa Pasupata tradition, inspired by the five mantras of the Taittiriya Aranyaka (the five faces of Siva), and the Ganakarika summarises the system in eight pentads.
Rastogi's view. Krama's pentadic (or quartic) tendency is inspired by the fivefold functioning of the Absolute, which itself derives from the five modes of kalana, the dynamic activity that gives Kali her name: ksepa (projection), jnana (knowledge), prasankhyana (determination, reckoning), gati (self-identification, movement) and nada (pure awareness, resonance).
Insight: Disagreement as Structure
What looks like scholastic hair-splitting (twelve Kalis or thirteen?) is a structural question: is the ultimate one of the series, or outside it? Counting thirteen means the ultimate is the last member of the cycle and fully involved in it. Counting twelve means the cycle unfolds from a source that stands apart. The same question underlies sixty-four versus sixty-five, four versus five functions, and Anakhya versus Bhasa as the name of the highest. Each count is a compact theology.
A note for readers: identifying sub-schools from two texts
Rastogi's identification of the Sahasa and Chumma schools with each other and with Krama is reasonable, but it rests on a small base: two texts, both attributed to Niskriyananda, and a shared emphasis on orality and sudden realisation. Attribution of authorship in Tantric literature is often pious rather than historical. The identification of a third sub-school in Tantraloka 29 depends on a single word in Jayaratha. And the explanation of Somananda's view by his "obsession" with grammatical gender is a characterisation, not a demonstration; Somananda had philosophical reasons for refusing a separate status to Sakti. Read these sections as well-argued hypotheses.
Key Terms
- Sahasa: sudden, forceful realisation.
- Hathapaka / alamgrasa: forceful digestion and complete swallowing of experience into consciousness.
- Khecari: the mudra of "moving in the void", the highest mudra.
- Chumma / chummaka: a secret code-sign of a school; at the highest level, sahasa itself.
- Vaktramnaya: oral transmission.
- Manthana-bhairava: Siva as the "churner", the Prakasa aspect in Krama.
- Vyomavamesvari: "the goddess who emits the void", the highest of the five flows.
- Pancavaha: the five flows of energy (Vyomavamesvari, Khecari, Dikcari, Gocari, Bhucari).
- Vrnda-cakra: the "circle of the assembly", the later Krama's central mandala.
- Five kalanas: projection, knowledge, determination, movement and resonance.
Reflection
- Is the ultimate inside the cycle of experience or behind it? Try to notice how your answer shapes how you would meditate.
- Sahasa says realisation can come suddenly, without preparation; Krama elsewhere values gradual refinement. How might the same tradition hold both?
Sources and Literature, Origins and the Founding Masters (pp. 82 to 137)
Chapter 6 is the heart of the book and takes up about two thirds of its length. Rastogi calls it "a reconstructive study of Krama history and an analysis of the entire known as well as extant Krama literature with special reference to its authorship, historicity, availability, classification, subject-matter and chronology." Almost every Krama text is lost, so the chapter works like an archaeological dig. Rastogi gathers quotations, colophons, lineage verses, catalogue entries of manuscripts and stray remarks by commentators, and from these he rebuilds a line of about forty-five authors over roughly a thousand years, from the late seventh century to the eighteenth. This guide treats the chapter in three parts. Part I covers the setting: Kashmir as the homeland, the way the tradition remembered its own history, the phases of its growth, its political backdrop, and the first fourteen figures, from the legendary Vatulanatha to Utpaladeva. Part II follows the high classical period, from the anonymous author of the Krama hymn to Somaraja. Part III covers the late masters, the southern branch in the Cola country, the long decline, and the anonymous Agamas and treatises.
1. Kashmir: The Land of Origin
Rastogi opens with Bilhana's praise of Kashmir, "the land of Sarada", the only country that produces both saffron and poetic genius. He adds a third crop: philosophical originality. Jayaratha too notes these twin gifts of Kashmir, which he calls the seat of the goddess of learning.
Three local details set the tone:
- Srinagar and the Sri Cakra. A tradition current even today holds that the city of Srinagar was laid out on the pattern of the Sri Cakra. A manuscript attributed to Vidyaranya reads the name as "Sri-vidya-nagara".
- Krama is the one system born in Kashmir. Pratyabhijna, Spanda and Kula all have roots or analogues elsewhere, but Krama in Rastogi's account is native to the valley.
- Sivananda, the founder, was initiated in the Uttarapitha, the "northern seat", and is said to have visited Kamarupa (Assam), where he was blessed by the deities of the Jaya group. This points to an early link with the Kula world of eastern India.
From Kashmir the system later travelled south to the Cola country on the banks of the Kaveri. Rastogi glosses Cola as "modern Karnatak", a point taken up in the critical note below. The tradition also names sacred seats (pithas) such as Oddiyana and Purnapitha as centres of practice.
2. How the Tradition Remembered Itself: The Oghas
Krama did not keep chronicles. It kept lineages, and it kept them in worship. At the close of the Vrnda-cakra ritual the practitioner worships the line of teachers (gurupankti), naming them one by one. This liturgical habit preserved names that would otherwise be lost, and it is Rastogi's main historical source.
The lineage is arranged in oghas, "streams" or "currents". An ogha, says Rastogi, is a community of beings of similar character, or a creation of a particular kind. Most authors recognise three:
| Ogha | Meaning | Rough analogue in Brahmanical scripture |
|---|---|---|
| Divyaugha | The divine stream: deities and powers | Sruti |
| Siddhaugha | The stream of perfected beings | Smrti |
| Manavaugha | The human stream of historical teachers | Purana |
Sitikantha, writing much later, expands this to five: Paraugha, Divyaugha, Mahaugha, Siddhaugha and Manavaugha, and adds a sixth, the Sisyaugha, the stream of disciples, which he says begins with Cakrabhanu.
The Gita as a Krama text. Mahesvarananda, quoting Abhinava's lost Kramakeli, reports a striking claim: the Bhagavad Gita itself expounds Krama, and the opening of its fourth chapter (where Krsna describes how the teaching passed from the Sun to Manu and to Iksvaku) is a history of the lineage. On this reading Krsna had entered the state of Kalasamkarsini, the goddess who "draws in time", and Arjuna's renunciation is the fruit of that teaching. The divine stream then runs from Bhairava to Bhairavi (as Iccha, will) to Sivananda and onward. Mahesvarananda also names Mangala Devi, and gives his own immediate line as Sivananda (II), Mahaprakasa, himself.
The quarrel over the Siddhas. Abhinava's list of the "line of Siddhas" (Siddha-santati), from Khagendra to Mina, the four Yuganathas (lords of the four ages), was adopted into the Krama worship sequence by Mahesvarananda and by Sivananda II in the Trivandrum Mahanayaprakasa. But Abhinava himself had treated this list as a Kula matter, and Sitikantha attacks its inclusion in Krama as an exotic import (ayatikrama). For Sitikantha the Siddhaugha means something internal to Krama: the Jnana, Mantra, Melapa, Sakta and Sambhava Siddhas of the Vrnda-cakra. He traces the human line from Mangala or Makara Devi to Jnananetranatha; the Trivandrum Mahanayaprakasa names Antarnetranatha; others name Srinatha.
The Kramakeli's lineage. The most important early list survives in Jayaratha's commentary on Tantraloka 29, quoting the Kramakeli:
- Sivananda, initiated in the Uttarapitha,
- taught three women: Keyuravati, Madanika and Kalyanika,
- who taught Govindaraja, Bhanuka and Eraka.
- Govindaraja taught Somananda (the founder of Pratyabhijna).
- Bhanuka taught Ujjata and Udbhata, and from him a line runs down to Jayaratha himself.
- Eraka had no successors: he remained celibate and wrote hymns.
A second list, from the Devipancasatika, gives four teacher-couples: Niskriyananda with Jnanadipti, Vidyananda with Rakta, Saktyananda with Mahananda, and Sivananda with Samaya. The commentary on the Vatulanatha-sutras adds that the Siddha Gandhamadana showed a book to Niskriyananda.
The dating rule. To turn lineages into dates Rastogi allows twenty-five years per generation. On this rule Sivananda falls in the first quarter of the ninth century and Gandhamadana at the end of the seventh or start of the eighth. An external check comes from Ratnakara's Haravijaya (mid ninth century, under King Avantivarman), which already calls the goddess Samkarsini.
3. The Phases of Krama History
Rastogi divides the history into periods:
- Pre-history (late seventh to early ninth century): Vatulanatha, Gandhamadana, Niskriyananda and the teacher-couples, known only through later tradition.
- The creative period (ninth to twelfth century): Sivananda to Mahesvarananda, the age of Somananda, Abhinava, Ksemaraja, Jayaratha and the southern school.
- The lull (after the thirteenth century): Krama activity in Kashmir nearly stops. Two names "arrest our attention": Sitikantha and Sivopadhyaya.
The tradition itself recorded its decline. Jayaratha complains bitterly about ignorant practitioners. Sivananda II castigates them. Sitikantha laments the loss of the old teaching. A minor unpublished text, the Jnana-kriya-dvaya-sataka (verses 37 to 63), draws a caricature of degenerate followers who keep the outer forms but have lost the inner meaning.
4. The Historical Backdrop
Rastogi sets the authors against Kashmir's political history, mostly using Kalhana's Rajatarangini and its continuations:
| Ruler | Period | Relevance |
|---|---|---|
| Lalitaditya | eighth century | Height of Kashmiri power; patron of learning |
| Jayapida | 779 to 813 | Court of the poetician Udbhata and the minister Damodaragupta |
| Avantivarman | 855 to 883 | Kalhana says Kallata was "born for the world" in his reign; Ratnakara's Haravijaya |
| Yasaskara | 939 to 948 | His minister Vallabha was the grandfather of Abhinava's pupil Karna; Jayaratha's ancestor Purna Manoratha served at the same court |
| Ananta | 1028 to 1063 | Utpalaratha II, Jayaratha's ancestor, a minister |
| Ucchala | 1101 to 1111 | Sivaratha, another ancestor, a minister |
| Sussala | 1112 to 1127 | Lankaka (Alamkara), Mankha's brother, a minister; his literary circle included Ramyadeva and Lostadeva |
| Jayasimha | 1127 to 1151 (Rastogi once gives 1126 to 1159) | Jayaratha's father Srngararatha a minister; Mankha an officer of state |
| Zain-ul-Abidin | fifteenth century (Rastogi gives 1420 to 1459) | Patron of the historian Srivara |
| Hasan Shah | 1472 to 1484 | Sitikantha wrote under him |
| Sukhajivana | 1754 to 1762 | Sivopadhyaya completed his commentary under him |
Rastogi also notes the role of the Kashmiri vernacular. Lalla (Lal Ded) sang in it; Sitikantha's Mahanayaprakasa is written in it; the Chumma-sampradaya mixes Sanskrit with vernacular verses. He names the later Saiva scholars of the Mughal and Afghan periods (Ratnakantha, Bhaskarakantha, Sahib Kaul with his Devinamavilasa) to show that learning continued even when Krama itself fell silent.
5. The Founding Figures (Authors i to xiv)
Rastogi treats each author under three questions: who was he, when did he live, and what did he write or teach. The dates given below are his.
(i) Vatulanatha (675 to 725)
The first exponent of the Sahasa ("sudden") school. The Vatulanatha-sutras attributed to him teach the dissolution of the threefold duality of adorer, adored and act of adoration. Nothing else is known about him.
(ii) Gandhamadana (700 to 750)
A Siddha, a perfected being rather than an author. Tradition says he showed Niskriyananda a book of no human authorship. He belongs to the borderland between the Siddha stream and the human one.
(iii) Niskriyananda (725 to 775)
The first figure with a body of teaching attached to him:
- The Chumma-sampradaya, a manuscript of about seventy-four "kathas" on thirteen folios, mixing Sanskrit with vernacular verses. It records the chummas, the secret code-signs of the school.
- He is the recipient of the Vatulanatha-sutras.
- Sivopadhyaya cites him for a reading of the mudra Karankini.
- A commentary called Prakasa existed in manuscript, but its owner, Pt. Dinanatha Yaksa, would not show it to Rastogi.
- He held Vamesvari to be the primal power and taught the sixty-four aspects of the Vrnda-cakra with a sixty-fifth, Raudresvari.
Rastogi suspects that the works under his name were put together later and attributed to him.
(iv) Vidyananda (750 to 800) and (v) Saktyananda (775 to 825)
Two teachers of the Devipancasatika list, with their consorts Rakta and Mahananda. Rastogi is careful to separate this Vidyananda from the later Tripura authors of the same name. The Pancasatika, the earliest Krama Agama, was known to Somananda, which gives an anchor for these early names.
(vi) Sivananda (800 to 850)
The founder of the human line, called Avatarakanatha, "the lord who descended". His consort was Samaya. He is two generations above Somananda and five above Abhinava.
Points Rastogi makes:
- A verse giving him seventeen disciples is refuted by Jayaratha, who recognises the three women.
- No work can be ascribed to him with certainty.
- On the number of Kalis, two verses attributed to him support thirteen, but Jayaratha, through the line of Govindaraja, claims him for twelve.
- He taught the four functions of the Absolute applied across three phases (the basis of the twelve Kalis).
- He may be the Sivananda quoted in the Natha Siddha-siddhanta-paddhati.
- Rastogi tentatively identifies him with Srinatha, Jnananetra and Antarnetra, the founder names in other lists, and gives seven reasons. He presents this as a hypothesis.
(vii) Vasugupta (800 to 850)
The seer of the Siva-sutras. Rastogi's interest is in how the Sutras were read:
- Two schools of interpretation. Bhaskara (following Kallata) reads them in the light of Spanda and divides them into three "illuminations" (prakasas). Ksemaraja and Varadaraja read them through the three upayas, and the second section, on Saktopaya, is for Rastogi plainly Krama.
- Ksemaraja attributes the Spanda-karikas to Vasugupta and says their theme is the Mahartha, that is, Krama.
- Other works attributed to him: the Spandamrta (probably the Spanda-karikas under another name), a commentary called Vasavi on the Gita (absorbed into the commentary of a certain Lasaka), and a Siddhantacandrika listed by Buhler.
- Ksemaraja's Spanda-sandoha quotes sutras not found in the received text, which suggests a lost fourth division.
(viii) Keyuravati, Madanika and Kalyanika (825 to 875)
Sivananda's three women disciples. Keyuravati is also called Kakaradevi. They are remembered as guardian deities of the pithas, which shows how human teachers were gradually taken up into the divine stream. Three other unnamed disciples of the same lineage are mentioned. A tradition reports sixteen generations from Keyuravati to the pupil of Cakrabhanu, which Rastogi treats with caution. Eraka's surviving verses praise Keyuravati.
(ix) Kallata (825 to 875)
Kalhana calls Kallata a great Siddha of Avantivarman's reign. Rastogi gives him a long and important section.
- Two Spanda lines descend from him. One runs through Pradyumna Bhatta to Bhaskara, Abhinava's teacher. The other runs through Mahabala to Bhatta Utpala.
- He was also a poet (verses survive in the Subhasitavali) and contributed to Kula.
- Abhinava calls him a "student of all", having learned from a series of teachers from Tapana to Motaka.
Who wrote the Spanda-karikas? This is one of the great questions in Kashmir Saivism, and Rastogi takes a clear position.
- For Vasugupta: Ksemaraja, Abhinava and Mahesvarananda, relying on a verse found only in Ksemaraja's recension.
- For Kallata: Bhatta Utpala, Bhaskara and Ramakantha, relying on the fifty-third verse in their recension.
- The two recensions differ in the number and order of verses (Ksemaraja has fifty-one; Bhatta Utpala's text is longer).
- Rastogi's conclusion: the received text has been edited. The original author was Kallata. Somananda's party, keen to keep the work within the Saiva fold of Vasugupta's revelation, reassigned it. Lollata followed Kallata's own gloss. Abhinava wrote nothing on the Karikas.
His works, as Rastogi lists them:
- the Spanda-karikas (also called Spanda-sutras, perhaps the Madhuvahini),
- the Spanda-vrtti (printed in the Kashmir Series),
- the Spanda-sarvasva (the Vrtti together with the Karikas),
- the Tattvarthacintamani, a commentary on the fourth division of the Siva-sutras,
- the Tattvavicara, known through Bhatta Utpala.
(x) Govindaraja, Bhanuka and Eraka (850 to 900)
With these three the single stream splits into sub-currents.
- Govindaraja gave himself wholly to teaching and, at the very end of his life, passed the secret to Somananda. He held the twelve-Kali doctrine.
- Bhanuka is the head of the line that reaches Jayaratha.
- Eraka stayed celibate and wrote hymns so that ordinary people could take up Krama. Rastogi credits him with being the first to use the hymn as a vehicle for spreading the system. Two of his verses survive, one on Kalasamkarsini and one praising Keyuravati as Khecari. He is also called Naverakanatha or Navera, and must be kept apart from Eraka the father of Vamanatha, one of Abhinava's teachers.
(xi) Pradyumna Bhatta (850 to 900)
Kallata's maternal cousin and disciple, author of the Tattvagarbha-stotra addressed to Ambika, which B. V. Dwivedi considers a Krama work. Bhaskara's lineage runs: Vasugupta, Kallata, Pradyumna, Prajnarjuna, Mahadeva, Srikantha, Bhaskara.
The interesting point is that Somananda attacks him in the Sivadrsti under the phrase "tair uktam" ("so they say"). Pradyumna held that Sakti is the ultimate, that Siva is a name for the Mother, that supreme speech (Para) is primary, and that the thirty-six tattvas unfold from Sakti. Somananda replies that Sakti is only a slight swelling (kinciducchunata) of Siva. For Rastogi this shows Pradyumna belonged to a Krama line opposed to Somananda's. A manuscript of the Tattvagarbha was at Banaras Hindu University, but the scholar who held it, Agrawala, died before Rastogi could see it.
(xii) Somananda (875 to 925)
The founder of Pratyabhijna appears here as a Krama initiate: Govindaraja gave him the secret, and Abhinava learned the Devipancasatika through the line Somananda, Utpala, Laksmanagupta.
His date is a puzzle because different lineages give different numbers of generations between him and Abhinava:
- Somananda, Utpala, Laksmanagupta, Abhinava (four steps).
- Kallata, Mukula, Induraja, Abhinava.
- Longer lines through Mahabala and through Kallata to Bhaskara.
- Raghava Bhatta even calls Somananda a disciple of Vasugupta.
Rastogi resolves the conflict by allowing for long lives and a margin of twenty-five years either way. His works: the Sivadrsti (incomplete), the Saktavijnana, a commentary on the Sivadrsti (whose existence Stein rejected), and a commentary on the Paratrimsika.
(xiii) Ujjata (875 to 925)
A disciple of Bhanuka and so part of the line that leads to Jayaratha. Nothing more is known.
(xiv) Utpala (900 to 950)
Utpaladeva, author of the Isvara-pratyabhijna-karika, is linked to Krama only by Jayaratha's statement that he was in the line, but Rastogi lists eleven works and notes Krama elements in them:
- The Siva-stotravali: of its twenty hymns, numbers 2, 3, 8, 17 and 20 have Krama undertones, and 8 and 17 openly so.
- A lost large commentary (tika or vivrti) on his own Karikas, later commented on by Abhinava. A Mysore catalogue lists an Isvara-pratyabhijna-vyakhya by Utpala; its identity is unknown.
- A Poona manuscript called Mantrasara, attributed to Utpala, which looks like a commentary on the Paratrimsika, dealing with the mystic emergence of the alphabet. From page 8 it is mixed with Ksemaraja's Pratyabhijnahrdaya. Rastogi offers the attribution only as a hypothesis.
A correction of genealogy. Modern scholars had made Utpala the son of Somananda and the father of Laksmanagupta, relying on Tantraloka 37.61, which calls Utpala "Somanandatmaja" and Laksmanagupta "Utpalaja" (literally "born of"). Rastogi shows this cannot be literal:
- Utpala names his father as Udayakara in the last verse of his Karikas and calls Somananda his teacher. Abhinava, commenting, confirms this.
- Utpala names his son as Vibhramakara, at whose request he commented on the Sivadrsti, and says nothing of Laksmanagupta.
- The Saradatilaka says Laksmana was the son of Srikrsna.
- Jayaratha glosses "sons of Somananda" as "pupils of Somananda such as Utpala".
- The terms "atmaja" and "santati" here mean spiritual descent, the preceptorial lineage (santati-krama), which was treated in Kashmir as something as sacred as blood.
6. Rastogi's Toolkit: How a Lost Literature Is Rebuilt
Before following the authors further, it helps to see the kinds of evidence Rastogi uses, because the same tools recur on almost every page of the chapter.
(a) Lineage verses. The teachers named at the close of the Vrnda-cakra, and the lists quoted by Jayaratha from the Kramakeli, give the order of succession. They rarely give dates, and they are often disputed (Jayaratha corrects verses that give Sivananda seventeen pupils or Hrasvanatha five).
(b) The generation rule. Each step in a lineage is counted as about twenty-five years. This converts a list into a timeline, and it is the main source of the early dates.
(c) Anchors in royal history. Kalhana's Rajatarangini and its sequels by Jonaraja and Srivara supply kings' reigns. When an author was the minister, client or contemporary of a known king, his date can be fixed within a generation. The court of Yasaskara (939), the reign of Jayasimha (1127 to 1151) and the reign of Hasan Shah (1472 to 1484) are the strongest anchors in the book.
(d) Dated colophons. Abhinava is the rare author who dated his works, using the Saptarsi (Laukika) era, the local reckoning of Kashmir in which years are counted within centuries. His three dated works give the firmest point in the whole chronology.
(e) Cross-quotation. If author A quotes author B, B is earlier. Rastogi uses this constantly: Bhatta Utpala quotes Siddhanatha, Jayaratha quotes Sivananda II, Mahesvarananda quotes the Cidgaganacandrika. Quotations also preserve most of the lost texts.
(f) Manuscript catalogues. Rastogi searched the catalogues of Poona (BORI), Madras, Trivandrum, Mysore, Calcutta (Asiatic Society), Lucknow and Srinagar, and the reports of Buhler and Aufrecht. Many works are known only as catalogue entries. Some he saw; others he was refused, as with the Kramakeli in Srinagar.
(g) Family details. Authors often name their fathers, sons and teachers in closing verses. These allow Rastogi to separate namesakes (two Utpalas, two Hrasvanathas, four Bhutirajas) and to correct errors, as with the claim that Utpala was Somananda's son.
(h) Doctrinal fingerprints. When no date is available, a view can place an author: holding twelve or thirteen Kalis, four or five functions, or the inclusion of the Yuganathas shows which current a text belongs to.
Seeing these tools laid out explains the texture of the chapter. Most sections combine three or four of them, and Rastogi's conclusions are only as strong as the weakest link in each chain. He knows this and often marks a result as "tentative" or "a mere hypothesis". Readers should take him at his word.
Insight: History Kept as Liturgy
The most important lesson of this part is methodological. Krama preserved its past not in chronicles but in the act of worship. Every time a practitioner closed the Vrnda-cakra by naming the teachers, the lineage was rehearsed. This explains both the strength and the weakness of the sources. Names survive with remarkable persistence, while dates, works and biographies vanish. It also explains why human teachers like Keyuravati drift into the divine stream: in worship, a teacher and a deity occupy the same slot. When we read Rastogi's long lists, we are reading something that was first a prayer.
There is a second lesson. Krama sat at a crossroads. Somananda, the father of Pratyabhijna, received Krama secrets; Kallata, the voice of Spanda, belongs to its early generations; Pradyumna's Sakti-centred theology shows a Krama line in open debate with Somananda. The systems of Kashmir Saivism were not separate schools in separate buildings. They were overlapping currents, often carried by the same people.
A note for readers: the limits of reconstruction
Rastogi's method is careful, but readers should keep four cautions in mind.
- The twenty-five-year generation is a rule of thumb, not evidence. Lineages in Tantric traditions record initiations, not births. A teacher could initiate pupils over fifty years, and a "generation" can be very short or very long. Many of Rastogi's dates are precise to a half-century only because of this formula. Treat the early dates (Vatulanatha in 675, Gandhamadana in 700) as orders of magnitude.
- A typo to correct. In the section on Somananda the text says King Yasaskara "ruled in 839". Elsewhere Rastogi himself correctly says Yasaskara reigned in 939. Read 939.
- "Cola, modern Karnatak." The Cola country on the Kaveri is normally understood as the Tamil region (the Kaveri delta around Thanjavur and Tiruchirappalli), not Karnataka. Rastogi's gloss reflects older usage that put the upper Kaveri in "southern Mysore". The point matters because it shapes how we picture the southern Krama school.
- The Spanda-karika question remains open. Rastogi's case for Kallata is strong and is shared by several modern scholars, but the attribution to Vasugupta also has defenders, and Ksemaraja's recension is the one most readers know. His suggestion that Somananda's circle deliberately reassigned the text is an inference about motive.
The identification of Sivananda with Srinatha and Jnananetra, and of the early teacher-couples with historical persons, should likewise be read as possibilities. Later research, especially Alexis Sanderson's work on the Kalikula and the Jayadrathayamala, has placed Krama's scriptural roots in a wider north Indian Kali cult, and much of that material was not available in 1967 to 1978.
Key Terms
- Ogha: a stream or current of beings in the lineage (Divya, Siddha, Manava, and later Para, Maha and Sisya).
- Gurupankti: the line of teachers, worshipped at the end of the Vrnda-cakra.
- Santati-krama: preceptorial lineage, spiritual descent.
- Uttarapitha: the "northern seat" where Sivananda was initiated.
- Avatarakanatha: "the lord who descended", Sivananda's title.
- Yuganathas: the four lords of the ages in the Siddha line from Khagendra to Mina.
- Chumma: secret code-sign of a school.
- Sahasa: sudden realisation; the school of Vatulanatha.
- Kalasamkarsini: the goddess who draws in time; the ultimate in Krama.
- Kinciducchunata: "a slight swelling", Somananda's description of Sakti in relation to Siva.
Reflection
- Rastogi's sources are mostly lists of names spoken in worship. What does it mean for a tradition to remember its teachers as part of its prayer? Is there anyone you remember this way?
- Somananda received Krama secrets and also argued against a Krama teacher. How do you hold a teaching you have received while still disagreeing with parts of it?
- Eraka chose to write hymns for ordinary people instead of training a few disciples. Which do you think keeps a teaching alive longer?
The Classical Masters, from the Krama Hymn to Somaraja (pp. 137 to 189)
This part covers the century and a half from about 900 to 1125, the high classical age of Krama. It is the age of Abhinavagupta and Ksemaraja, but Rastogi's point is that they did not stand alone. Around them was a crowd of lesser-known figures: the anonymous author of the Krama-stotra, Bhaskara, Laksmanagupta, Bhatta Utpala, Bhutiraja, and after Abhinava a separate line of teachers headed by Hrasvanatha and Cakrabhanu that produced the Cidgaganacandrika and fed the later southern school. Rastogi's tools here are sharper than in Part I: dated colophons, royal reigns, and cross-references between authors. Two themes run through the whole stretch. The first is the Krama-stotra and the long argument about how many Kalis it named, twelve or thirteen. The second is the recurring problem of namesakes: four Bhutirajas, two Utpalas, two Hrasvanathas, several Udbhatas and Damodaras. Much of Rastogi's work consists in telling people apart.
1. Udbhatta (900 to 950)
A grand-pupil of Bhanuka and successor of Ujjata, Udbhatta is a carrier of the Bhanuka line that reached Jayaratha. Whether he wrote on Krama is unknown. Rastogi distinguishes two other Udbhatas:
- the great poetician Udbhata, president of the court (sabhapati) of King Jayapida (779 to 813), mentioned by Kalhana;
- an Udbhata whom Abhinava names as his teacher.
He tentatively identifies the Krama Udbhatta with Abhinava's teacher, noting that Jayaratha spells the name with a double "t", which may be a scribal slip. If so, he was old when Abhinava came to him.
2. The Stotrakara: Siddhanatha, Author of the Krama Hymn (900 to 950)
This is one of the key sections of the chapter. The Krama-stotra is the most important early Krama text, and tradition calls its author only "the Stotrakara", the hymn-maker.
Four Krama hymns. Rastogi first separates four works called Krama-stuti or Krama-stotra:
- a hymn by Samkara, son of Kamalakara, noted by Kaivalyasrama in his commentary on the Ananda-lahari; it belongs to the Tripura system and is set aside;
- Abhinava's own Krama-stotra, composed in 990 to 991;
- a Krama-stuti mentioned by Monier-Williams in his dictionary without a source;
- the hymn under discussion.
Dating the hymn. The lower limit is set by Abhinava, who wrote a commentary on it, the Kramakeli, and then wrote his own hymn in imitation in 990 to 991. Jayaratha records a teaching line: the Stotrakara, Bhaskara, Kuladhara. If this Bhaskara is Abhinava's teacher, the hymn belongs to the first half of the tenth century. The upper limit is Eraka (second half of the ninth century), the first known Krama hymn-writer. So the hymn falls between 850 and 950.
Who wrote it? The Cidgaganacandrika, itself a commentary on the hymn, names the author as Siddhanatha or Siddhinatha. Prthvidharacarya, author of the Bhuvanesi-stotra, says that Siddhinatha and Sambhunatha are one person. Arthur Avalon, the editor of the Cidgaganacandrika, took this Sambhunatha to be Abhinava's revered Kula teacher of that name, noting that the closing verse of Abhinava's Tantrasara echoes Prthvidhara's praise of Sambhunatha.
Rastogi rejects the identification for three reasons:
- Sambhunatha is famous as a Kula teacher. Abhinava, who records his teachers' specialities with care, never says he taught Krama.
- Prthvidharacarya belongs, according to the Sringeri lineage (Gaudapada, Govinda, Samkara, Prthvidhara), to the generation after Samkaracarya, so to the early ninth century. His Sambhunatha must be older than that, too old to be Abhinava's teacher.
- Padmanabha, commenting on the Bhuvanesi-stotra, places Sambhunatha's home at Varunalaya on the Narmada, whereas Abhinava's teacher came from Jalandhara.
Instead, Rastogi finds a different Siddhanatha in Bhatta Utpala's Spanda-pradipika: the author of an Abhedartha-karika, from which Bhatta Utpala quotes. Since Bhatta Utpala was a contemporary of Laksmanagupta, this Siddhanatha fits the required date, and Rastogi identifies him with the Stotrakara, placing him in 900 to 950.
What survives. About twelve verses of the hymn survive, scattered through Jayaratha's commentary on Tantraloka 4. Some Kalis had two verses each (Rudrakali and Yamakali), so the original was a little longer. Rastogi notes in a footnote that Swami Lakshman Joo collected these verses with a Hindi translation as the Krama-naya-pradipika. This is the "Shri Kramanaya Pradipika" that readers of this guide may know.
The content and the controversy.
- The hymn agrees in its root idea with the Pancasatika but differs on one point. The Pancasatika keeps Sukali in the list of Kalis worshipped in the Anakhya-cakra, so it has thirteen. The hymn drops Sukali and has twelve.
- Some of Jayaratha's contemporaries said the hymn followed the Krama-sadbhava. Jayaratha rejects this: the hymn followed an Agama he quotes but does not name.
- On the order of Kalis, the Sardhasatika puts Sthitikali after Srstikali, while the hymn puts Raktakali there. This is deliberate. The Agamas scramble the order to hide the true Samvit-krama (the sequence of consciousness), and from the scrambled order the teachers built the Pujana-krama (the sequence of worship). The hymn and the Tantraloka restore the true order, and Abhinava's Kramakeli follows them.
- By Jayaratha's time the hymn had two rival interpretations, one with thirteen Kalis and one with twelve, the first supported by a different text and arrangement of verses found in another commentary called Vivarana. Jayaratha, unable to win the argument, offers a compromise: follow the reading approved by your own teacher.
Its meaning. Abhinava presents the hymn as teaching the removal of doubt (sanka), the root of all mundane duality. Sivopadhyaya says its theme is the realisation of the ultimate divinity that uproots the limits of time and space, and compares it to the Prajnaparamita of Buddhism.
3. Bhaskara (925 to 975)
Bhaskara is best known as a Spanda author, through his Siva-sutra-varttika. He appears here because Jayaratha places him directly after the Stotrakara in the Krama line, as the one who passed the hymn's doctrine on.
- He learned Spanda from Srikantha and Krama from the Stotrakara.
- He was the son of Divakara, and Abhinava often calls him Bhatta Divakaravatsa ("Divakara's child"). The author of the Vivekanjana and the Kaksya-stotra (a verse of which Ksemaraja quotes in the Pratyabhijnahrdaya) is the same man.
- His Spanda lineage, given by himself: Vasugupta, Kallata, Pradyumna Bhatta, Prajnarjuna, Mahadeva Bhatta, Srikantha, Bhaskara. Four generations after Kallata suggests about a century.
- He is among Abhinava's teachers, so an older contemporary.
- Natarajan also credits him with a Mimamsa-samgraha-kaumudi and a Padyamrta-sopana; Rastogi neither accepts nor rejects this.
- His text of the Siva-sutras sometimes differs from Ksemaraja's, as M. S. Kaul pointed out.
4. Laksmanagupta (925 to 975)
Abhinava's teacher in both Trika and Krama, and a pupil of Utpala. Abhinava speaks of him with the deepest respect.
Krama teaching. Jayaratha, on Tantraloka 15.246, says Laksmanagupta taught a form of nyasa (ritual installation of mantras on the body) different from Sambhunatha's: a sixfold Sakta-nyasa designed to invoke and realise Kalasamkarsini. This is a typical Krama concept. He is also said to have written a work called Srisastra.
The Saradatilaka hypothesis. The author of the Saradatilaka Tantra, a standard Tripura and general Tantric digest, calls himself Laksmana Desikendra. His commentator Raghava Bhatta says this Laksmana was a disciple of Utpala and gives the line: Srikantha, Vasuman, Somananda, Utpala, Laksmana, Abhinavagupta, Ksemaraja, the first five being his teachers and the last two his pupils. Raghava adds that Laksmana wrote the digest out of compassion, to make Agamic teaching available to people of limited capacity.
The Saradatilaka also gives the author's family: father Srikrsna, grandfather Acarya Pandita, great-grandfather Mahabala. Mahabala, author of the Rahasyagarbha-stotra, is also the great-grandfather of Bhatta Utpala on the daughter's side. So Laksmanagupta and Bhatta Utpala would be cousins in the third degree and contemporaries.
From all this Rastogi proposes that Laksmanagupta is Laksmana Desikendra, and that his Srisastra is the Saradatilaka (the name "Sri" pointing to the Tripura cult). He notes that Woodroffe accepted Raghava's account.
5. Bhatta Utpala (925 to 975)
Also called Utpala Vaisnava, the author of the Spanda-pradipika, a commentary on the Spanda-karikas. This work is "a mine of information" for early Krama, and it interprets Spanda and yoga in Krama terms. Points:
- He also wrote a Bhogamoksa-pradipika, cited three times by himself, and other unnamed works quoted under his own name on the instrumentality of the world for liberation, the a priori unity of consciousness, and the supremacy of the guru.
- He came from a place called Narayana in Kashmir, son of Trivikrama, a Brahmana, and great-grandson of Mahabala through his father's mother.
- The epithet "Vaisnava" is unexplained. One modern scholar thought the Spanda-pradipika read Spanda on Vaisnava lines, but Rastogi finds it a pure Spanda commentary.
- He is distinct from Utpaladeva, Laksmanagupta's teacher.
6. Bhutiraja I (900 to 950)
Rastogi counts four Bhutirajas:
- Abhinava's teacher in Brahmavidya;
- the father of Bhatta Induraja;
- the father of Helaraja, commentator on Bhartrhari's Vakyapadiya;
- a pupil of Cakrabhanu, the centre of a heated dispute in Jayaratha's time.
The first Bhutiraja. Abhinava quotes him in a Krama context and calls him his teacher. Jayaratha insists he did not teach Abhinava Krama (for example the Devipancasatika), but taught him Brahmavidya and Sambhu-sastra, and initiated him in three mystic disciplines concerning pranava, maya and bindu. He also held views on the bhuvanadhvan (the path of worlds) and on pratistha-kala. Two Krama extracts survive under his name:
- he derived the word Kali from kalana in the senses of ksepa (projection) and jnana (knowledge);
- he asserted that mantra is one with the transcendental principle of awareness because of its all-encompassing capacity.
Abhinava respected him more than his own father and saw him as the Lord in human form. Since Abhinava also studied with Bhutiraja's son, Bhutiraja was old by then, so Rastogi places him in the first half of the tenth century.
Identities. Rastogi argues that Bhutiraja I is also number 2 and number 3:
- Abhinava's Bhagavadgitartha-samgraha gives the line Katyayana, Sausuka, Bhutiraja, Bhattenduraja, and Induraja taught Abhinava poetics (dhvani) and the Gita.
- Helaraja calls himself "Bhutirajatanaya" (son of Bhutiraja) in every colophon, and Abhinava lists among his teachers, without a name, a "Bhutirajatanaya" from the dualist line of Srinatha.
- If these are one, Induraja and Helaraja were brothers, one a literary critic, the other a philosopher of language. Abhinava's familiarity with Bhartrhari's Kala-sakti (the power of time), which Rastogi calls a harbinger of the Krama Kali, would then have a family source.
- Sitikantha criticises a "Dutirajatanaya" for importing foreign versions of the Yuganathas into Krama. Rastogi reads this as "Bhutirajatanaya", since "du" and "bhu" are easily confused in Sarada script.
The fourth Bhutiraja, Cakrabhanu's pupil (1075 to 1125), cannot have taught Abhinava, and his worship followed the Pancasatika with a number of deities other than twelve, while Abhinava held to twelve.
7. Kuladhara (950 to 1000) and Bhatta Damodara (950 to 1000)
Kuladhara is known only as the successor of Bhaskara in the Stotrakara's line, and so a contemporary of Abhinava.
Bhatta Damodara composed independent verses (muktakas), one of which Ksemaraja quotes, praising him for his realisation of supreme bliss. The verse deals with the Pancavaha, the five flows, and is quoted under Saktopaya, so Rastogi counts him a minor Krama author. He is distinct from Damodaragupta, author of the Kuttanimata and minister of Jayapida, and from a Damodara contemporary with Mankha.
8. Abhinavagupta (950 to 1020)
Rastogi limits himself to Abhinava's Krama contribution, adding only new information.
Name and date. "Abhinava" was a title given by his teachers for his extraordinary gifts. He was also called Bala-valabhi-bhujanga. He dated three works:
| Work | Date |
|---|---|
| Krama-stotra | 990 to 991 (Saptarsi era 4066) |
| Bhairava-stotra | 992 to 993 (Saptarsi era 4068) |
| Isvara-pratyabhijna-vivrti-vimarsini (the "Brhati") | 1014 to 1015 (Saptarsi era 4090) |
Adding five years either side gives a writing life from about 985 to 1020, and allowing thirty to thirty-five years of study, a life from about 950 to 1020. A cross-check: his pupil Karna was the grandson of Vallabha, minister of King Yasaskara (reigned 939). Vallabha's son Sauri and daughter-in-law Vatsalika were Abhinava's contemporaries, and Vatsalika looked after him while he wrote the Tantraloka. Karna's son Yogesvaridatta grew up before Abhinava's eyes.
Works. About forty-four works are ascribed to him, twenty-three printed by Rastogi's time. He adds minor items:
- three hymns not in the standard lists (Amaresvara-stotra, Devibhujanga and Siva-stotra), traced to private libraries. Rastogi tried and failed to see the last one;
- a Tantroccaya, a summary of the Tantraloka in a Lucknow manuscript, so badly written that its authenticity is doubtful;
- a Slokavarttika cited in the Tantrasara, perhaps another name for the Malinivijaya-varttika;
- an Anupratyabhijna cited by Jayaratha;
- a Tattvaviveka on the Trika-sutra, later absorbed into the Paratrimsika-vivarana;
- five unpublished stanzas published by Raniero Gnoli.
Four services to Krama. Abhinava served the system in four ways:
- as the indispensable repository of its tradition and thought;
- as a sourcebook for earlier authors and works;
- as a commentator on key Krama texts;
- as an original thinker who brought critical analysis to it.
Only Jayaratha and Mahesvarananda match him in historical information. "But for Abhinava's Kramakeli," Rastogi writes, "the early history of the system would have remained the pre-history for a modern student."
Krama was his first love. The Krama-stotra is his earliest dated work, and its first verse says he had no peace of mind until he turned to Krama. His Krama works are:
- Krama-stotra (990 to 991): after an account of devotional prayer, it moves through four stages: the background of Kramic emanation; the rise of the twelve Kalis; the repose of Krama in the Absolute; and an epilogue invoking grace on humanity. Its order of Kalis follows the Samvit-krama, not the Pujana-krama. A late verse shows that Abhinava belonged to the school that held Siva to be the ultimate.
- Kramakeli: his commentary on Siddhanatha's hymn, known only through quotations by himself, Ksemaraja, Jayaratha and Mahesvarananda.
- Prakarana-stotra and its Vivarana, known from the Tantrasara, dealing with Kali and the meanings of kalana. Rastogi argues the Vivarana may be the same as the Prakirnaka-vivarana, which Pandey and Natarajan took as separate.
- Tantraloka: Ahnikas 4, 13, 31 and 32 deal especially with Krama; Ahnikas 1, 3, 9, 15 and 30 contain brief but useful material.
- Tantrasara: Ahnikas 4 and 13, the fourth being "a masterly epitome of the Krama ideals".
- Krama passages also appear in the Malinivijaya-varttika, Paryanta-pancasika and Paratrimsika-vivarana.
The search for the Kramakeli. In the summer of 1963 Rastogi learned that a manuscript of the Kramakeli was held by a Mr. Somanatha Razdan of Srinagar, who had inherited a store of rare manuscripts from his grandfather. Razdan would not even let him look at it, and refused money. A second lead through Prof. B. N. Pandit also failed. The Kramakeli remains lost.
Twelve or thirteen again. Jayaratha insists that both the hymn and Abhinava held to twelve Kalis. Mahesvarananda presents the Kramakeli as supporting thirteen. Rastogi follows Jayaratha, who claimed to hold the original tradition from Sivananda through Abhinava.
A text excluded. The Dehartha-devata-cakra-stotra, which praises the body as a temple with a deity in each organ, is not a Krama work. The idea is common to all Kashmir Saivism and especially Kula.
9. Ksemaraja (975 to 1025)
The printed text gives "975-1125", which is a slip for 975 to 1025, the date Rastogi uses elsewhere. Ksemaraja was Abhinava's cousin and pupil; Pandey identifies his father as Vamadeva, Abhinava's uncle. He is the only pupil of Abhinava named by Madhuraja Yogin.
- His pupils: Sura (Suraditya, son of Gunaditya), for whom most of his works were written; Srirama; Raktika Bhatta; Gargesa; Kesava.
- His teachers: Abhinava, Prayaga, and perhaps Sankara and Ajnadhara (one name or two).
Krama everywhere. Apart from the commentary on the Stava-cintamani, almost every printed work of his refers to Krama or Mahartha: the commentaries on the Netra and Svacchanda Tantras, the Pratyabhijnahrdaya, the Siva-stotravali-vivrti, the Siva-sutra-vimarsini (whose second section, on Saktopaya, is Krama), and the Spanda-sandoha and Spanda-nirnaya. He consciously reinterpreted the whole of Spanda in Krama terms.
The Krama-sutras. In the Pratyabhijnahrdaya he quotes and explains two sutras of an older Krama-sutra, and Mahesvarananda copies the passage word for word. Some scholars credited him with a full commentary on the Krama-sutras, but Rastogi finds no evidence for it. Mahesvarananda does owe him his account of the Pancavaha.
The works. Pandey lists eighteen; Natarajan twenty, without sources. Rastogi adds notes:
- His commentary on the Vijnana-bhairava survives only to verse 23; Sivopadhyaya continued from verse 24.
- The Samba-pancasika is by Samba Misra, so Ksemaraja's commentary is the Samba-misra-pancasika-vivrti.
- The Bhairavanukarana-stotra, from which he quotes fourteen verses, was published by Gnoli: forty-eight Arya verses in praise of Cidbhairava.
- A Poona manuscript of a Paramarthasara commentary ascribed to him is really Yogaraja's.
- In Tripura circles the Pratyabhijnahrdaya was called the Sakti-sutra, and the Kamakala-vilasa calls it the Hrdaya-sutra.
Order of writing, on his own testimony: Spanda-sandoha, Spanda-nirnaya, Pratyabhijnahrdaya, Svacchanda-tantra-uddyota, Siva-sutra-vimarsini, then the Stava-cintamani and Netra Tantra commentaries. He never compromised his own reasoning out of reverence for Abhinava. He lived at Vijayesvara (modern Bijbehara), about thirty miles from Srinagar, where at Sura's request he finished the Stava-cintamani commentary in a couple of days. Its author, Narayana Bhatta, was his grand-teacher.
10. Varadaraja, alias Krsnadasa (1000 to 1050)
Author of the Siva-sutra-varttika, drawn wholly from Ksemaraja's Vimarsini but with his own touches in the Krama passages. He also wrote a Laghuvrtti-vimarsini on the Paratrimsika (Trivandrum manuscript), signing as Krsnadasa. He was the youngest son of Madhuraja, author of the Gurunatha-paramarsa.
Madhura and the south. P. N. Pushp suggested that "Madhura" is a place name, Madurai. If so, Madhuraja's travels form a prelude to the later Kashmir-south contact that culminated in Sivananda II, Mahaprakasa and Mahesvarananda.
A dating proposal. Madhuraja says he was seventy-four when he met Abhinava, stayed four years, and was seventy-eight when he wrote. Pandey read a chronogram as Saptarsi 4167 (1093), which would stretch Abhinava's life absurdly. Rastogi suggests reading Visakha (Karttikeya) as "one" rather than "six" (his six faces), giving Kali year 4117 (1016 to 1017), which puts Madhuraja's visit in Abhinava's lifetime and Varadaraja in 1000 to 1050.
11. Devabhatta, or Devapani? (1025 to 1075)
Mahesvarananda says he follows the school of Devapani, worshipping the functional cycles from the Srsti-cakra to the Bhasa-cakra and no other order. Nothing more is known. Rastogi notes a Madras manuscript, the Anuttara-sri-gurupankti-paramarsa, by a Deva Bhatta who calls himself a pupil of Sura and gives the line Somananda, Utpala, Laksmanagupta, Abhinava, Ksemaraja, Sura. He wonders whether Devapani and Devabhatta are one, and stresses it is "a mere hypothesis".
12. Hrasvanatha (1025 to 1075)
"With Hrasvanatha one enters into one of the most complicated arenas of the Krama history." He heads the tradition that produced the Cidgaganacandrika and Sitikantha's Mahanayaprakasa, and his date depends on that of his pupil Cakrabhanu.
Rastogi assembles nine pieces of evidence:
- Jayaratha (1150 to 1200) names Hrasvanatha, Bhojaraja and Somaraja in succession, so Hrasvanatha is before 1075 to 1125.
- A tradition counts sixteen generations from Keyuravati to Cakrabhanu's pupil. At twenty-five years each, Cakrabhanu would fall around 1150 to 1175. But another tradition treats Keyuravati's first six pupils as contemporaries, which cuts the count by five and puts Cakrabhanu around 1025 to 1075. A third count, twenty generations from Sivananda, read the same way, gives about 1050 to 1100.
- Hrasvanatha held a manuscript of a commentary on the Krama-stotra (or wrote one himself), and by then the hymn's text was disputed, which needs about a century after 925 to 975.
- Two verses of Somaraja quoted by Jayaratha give his lineage, with only Bhojaraja between him and Hrasvanatha.
- The Cidgaganacandrika traces its tradition from Sivananda to Soma, with Cakrabhanu as the "pilot" (ananagra) of the pupils.
- Sitikantha says the human stream (Manavaugha) begins with Hrasvanatha and ends with Cakrabhanu, where the stream of disciples (Sisyaugha) begins.
- So the gap between Hrasvanatha and Somaraja is filled by Cakrabhanu and Bhojaraja.
- The author of the Cidgaganacandrika learned from Somaputra, Soma's son, and was quoted by Mahesvarananda (1175 to 1225), giving the chain Cakrabhanu, Soma, Somaputra, the author of the Candrika (Srivatsa?), Mahesvarananda.
- If Srivatsa is Mankha's friend (1125 to 1175), the chain fixes Hrasvanatha at 1025 to 1075.
His work. He was also called Viranathapada. Depending on how one reads a phrase in Jayaratha, he either wrote a commentary on the Krama-stotra in his own hand or owned a manuscript of one. Jayaratha quotes from it an extra verse on Rudrakali found in no other commentary. Jayaratha also corrects a verse that gave him five pupils: he had six, the sixth being Bhojaraja.
He must be distinguished from another Hrasvanatha, son of Harsadatta, author of the Advayasampatti, on which Vamana wrote a varttika known to Abhinava, so this second Hrasvanatha is much older. A Poona manuscript called Bodhavilasa by "Harsadatta's son" matches the Advayasampatti passages quoted by Sivopadhyaya.
13. Cakrabhanu (1050 to 1100)
None of his works survives, not even in quotation, yet everyone who mentions him praises him. With him the human stream ends and the stream of disciples begins.
- He was probably a pupil of Hrasvanatha, alongside Bhojaraja.
- He belonged to the original tradition of Keyuravati, perhaps through one of her three unnamed disciples, but not to the line Jayaratha followed.
- He had eight pupils. One of them, a woman ascetic named Isana, founded a tradition that lasted unbroken to Sitikantha's day.
- Sitikantha admires him greatly. Jayaratha, by contrast, says he never taught, and denies that the Bhutiraja who claimed to be his pupil really was one. Rastogi reconciles them: Cakrabhanu taught, but not any Bhutiraja.
14. Cakrapani (1050 to 1125) and the Bhavopahara
The Kashmir Series published, as its fourteenth volume, the Bhavopahara of Cakrapani, with a commentary by Ramyadeva. It is a Krama hymn, and Ramyadeva's commentary is wholly Krama in outlook. Ramyadeva calls the author Cakrapani, Cakranatha and Cakresa.
Ramyadeva and his son were members of the literary circle of Mankha's brother Lankaka, so Ramyadeva belongs to 1100 to 1150, and the hymn to before 1075 to 1125. It cannot be much older, because no author before Devabhatta notes it, and its dense esoteric symbolism belongs to the later phase. In that period only one other Krama teacher has "Cakra" in his name: Cakrabhanu. Rastogi proposes that Cakrapani is Cakrabhanu, which would give us, at last, a surviving work by the most praised and least documented teacher of the age.
15. Bhojaraja (1050 to 1100)
The sixth pupil of Hrasvanatha, also called Vamanabhanu, a man of high spiritual attainment. Somaraja's lineage verses praise him as one who made the Kramakamala (the "lotus of Krama") bloom. Since there is a Kula work called Kulakamala, Rastogi suspects a lost Kramakamala by him.
B. V. Dwivedi raised a further question. Sivananda's Rjuvimarsini mentions Dipakanatha, a Tripura teacher influenced by a Bhojaraja. Dipakanatha came after Dharmacarya, author of the Pancastavi, which is quoted both by King Bhoja of Dhara in the Sarasvati-kanthabharana and by Mammata. Is Dipakanatha's Bhojaraja the king (1010 to 1060) or the Krama teacher (1050 to 1100)? Rastogi leaves it open, noting that cross-influences of this kind are normal in Tantric history.
16. Somaraja (1075 to 1125)
The pupil of Bhojaraja and grand-pupil of Hrasvanatha. He probably wrote a work containing his lineage, from which Jayaratha quotes two verses. The Cidgaganacandrika names him as the last teacher in the line from Sivananda. His son taught the author of the Cidgaganacandrika.
17. The Twelve-or-Thirteen Debate, Step by Step
Because this dispute runs through the whole classical period, it helps to set out the positions in order.
| Source | Number of Kalis | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Pancasatika (Agama) | Thirteen | Includes Sukali |
| Sardhasatika (Agama) | Thirteen | Sthitikali after Srstikali |
| Krama-sadbhava (Agama) | Sixteen or seventeen | Not twelve or thirteen |
| Sivananda (founder) | Disputed | Two verses for thirteen; Jayaratha claims twelve |
| Govindaraja | Twelve | Via Jayaratha |
| Siddhanatha's Krama-stotra | Twelve (per Jayaratha) | A rival reading gave thirteen |
| Abhinava's Kramakeli and Krama-stotra | Twelve (per Jayaratha) | Mahesvarananda reads thirteen |
| Bhutiraja, Cakrabhanu's pupil | Not twelve | Followed the Pancasatika |
| Sivananda II, Stotra-bhattaraka, Mahanayaprakasa (T) | Thirteen | The southern school |
| Mahesvarananda | Thirteen | Follows his grand-teacher |
| Jayaratha | Twelve | Offers the compromise "follow your teacher's reading" |
What is at stake. The twelve Kalis arise from four phases (emergence, persistence, withdrawal, the nameless) applied to three poles of experience (object, means of knowledge, knower). Twelve is a closed system: the ultimate (Kalasamkarsini, or the ultimate Siva) stands outside it as its source. Thirteen adds the ultimate as the last member of the series, so that the absolute is itself one of the phases. Rastogi's Chapter 5 links this to the question of whether the ultimate is Siva (with Sakti as his power) or Kali (with Siva absorbed in her). The twelve-Kali position tends to go with the Siva-centred view, the thirteen with the Kali-centred view. So the dispute over a number is a dispute over theology, and over whether the goddess of the system is supreme or an expression of something beyond her.
Why it never ended. No council or single authority settled the matter. The texts were secret, the commentaries disagreed, and the hymn itself survived in different recensions. Jayaratha's compromise ("follow the reading of your own teacher") is in one sense an admission of defeat, but in another it is very Krama: the true order of the Kalis has always been a matter of transmission, not of texts alone.
Insight: A System That Lived in Commentary
The pattern of this part is clear: Krama survived almost entirely as commentary. Siddhanatha's hymn survives in Jayaratha's commentary; Abhinava's Kramakeli, a commentary on that hymn, survives only in later commentaries; Cakrabhanu, perhaps the greatest teacher of his age, survives, if Rastogi is right, only through Ramyadeva's commentary on a hymn. Even the central dispute of the period, twelve Kalis or thirteen, is a dispute about how to read a hymn.
This is not a sign of weakness. The hymn form suited a tradition whose highest goal is not a doctrine but a state: the dissolution of time in Kalasamkarsini. A hymn is short and can be memorised and sung; a commentary unfolds what it means. The Krama-stotra's sequence of Kalis is itself a map of meditation, from the emergence of an object, through its persistence, to its withdrawal into the knower. Rastogi's distinction between Samvit-krama (the true sequence of consciousness) and Pujana-krama (the ritual sequence) is the key: the Agamas scrambled the order on purpose so that only a teacher could restore it. A text that needs a teacher to be read correctly is a text designed to keep a lineage alive.
A note for readers: identifications built on names
Many of Rastogi's identifications in this part rest on similar names, and readers should weigh each one:
- Laksmanagupta and the Saradatilaka. This is the boldest. The Saradatilaka is usually dated to around the eleventh century, and many scholars treat Laksmana Desika as a separate author, perhaps from a later generation. Raghava Bhatta's commentary is itself late (fifteenth century), and its lineage may reflect a pious wish to attach the work to the great names of Kashmir. Rastogi's genealogical argument through Mahabala is ingenious but depends on accepting the colophon's family list at face value.
- Cakrapani as Cakrabhanu. The shared word "cakra" and an overlapping date are thin grounds. It remains an attractive possibility, nothing more.
- Siddhanatha as the Stotrakara. This is better supported, since the Cidgaganacandrika names him directly.
- The three Bhutirajas as one. The "du/bhu" scribal argument and the link between Induraja and Helaraja are plausible. Pandey shared this view, but it remains an inference.
- The date of Hrasvanatha is built from generation counts, and Rastogi's own arithmetic shifts by a century depending on how the lineage verses are read. His final result is reasonable, but the steps show how flexible the method is.
Note also the slip in the printed date for Ksemaraja (975 to 1125); the intended span is 975 to 1025.
Key Terms
- Stotrakara: "the hymn-maker", author of the Krama-stotra, identified by Rastogi as Siddhanatha.
- Kramakeli: Abhinava's lost commentary on the Krama-stotra.
- Samvit-krama: the true sequence of consciousness through the Kalis.
- Pujana-krama: the sequence of ritual worship, derived from a deliberately scrambled Agamic order.
- Anakhya-cakra: the "nameless" cycle in which the twelve (or thirteen) Kalis are worshipped.
- Sukali: the extra Kali whose inclusion makes thirteen.
- Sakta-nyasa: ritual placing of powers on the body; Laksmanagupta's sixfold form invokes Kalasamkarsini.
- Kala-sakti: the power of time in Bhartrhari's philosophy of language, a forerunner of Kali.
- Manavaugha / Sisyaugha: the human stream (Hrasvanatha to Cakrabhanu) and the stream of disciples (from Cakrabhanu).
- Bhavopahara: "the offering of feeling", a Krama hymn by Cakrapani.
Reflection
- The Agamas are said to scramble the order of the Kalis so that only a teacher can restore it. Is there something in your own learning that you could only have understood with a teacher, not a book?
- Abhinava said he had no peace until he turned to Krama. What does it mean for a teaching to be a "first love"?
- Cakrabhanu left no writing, yet his name outlived those who wrote much. What makes a teacher remembered?
Late Masters, the Southern School, the Decline and the Anonymous Works (pp. 189 to 248)
The last part of the chapter covers three stories. The first is the twelfth century in Kashmir, an age of learned courtier-scholars: Ramyadeva, Lostadeva, the author of the Cidgaganacandrika, and above all Jayaratha, whose commentary on the Tantraloka is the single richest source for Krama history. The second is the rise of a southern school in the Cola country, carried by Sivananda II, Mahaprakasa and Mahesvarananda, which kept Krama "in full blaze" just as it faded in Kashmir. The third is the long decline: three centuries of near silence, broken by Sitikantha in the fifteenth century and closed by Sivopadhyaya in the eighteenth. Rastogi ends with a survey of the anonymous scriptures (Agamas) and treatises of the system, which he could not place in the chronological sequence because their authors are unknown.
1. Jayaratha's Great-grand-teacher, Visvadatta? (1075 to 1125)
Jayaratha mentions his paramesthi-guru (great-grand-teacher) only once, quoting a well-known benedictory verse from him. The context is revealing. Jayaratha gives three interpretations of the first verse of the Tantraloka: one in terms of Kula, one in terms of Krama, and one in terms of Abhinava's parentage. The verse of his great-grand-teacher supports the Krama reading, in which the ultimate awareness is called Anakhya, "the nameless".
Jayaratha gives full lists of both his family and his teachers. The only person in the teaching line who fits is Visvadatta, father of Tribhuvanadatta and grandfather of Subhatadatta, who initiated Jayaratha. Visvadatta's story, preserved by Jayaratha, is unusually human:
- His father Vibhutidatta lost his elder son and, broken by grief, withdrew from the world without educating the younger boy.
- Visvadatta was left in the care of Sricakra, Vibhutidatta's pupil, who passed on to him the ancestral learning.
- His maternal cousin Utpalaratha II, an ancestor of Jayaratha and himself a pupil of Vibhutidatta, took him home, raised him, and when he came of age built him a house opposite a temple founded by one Kanakadatta and gave him property so that he could live free of worldly cares.
Rastogi remarks on how, from the very beginning, the two lines of Jayaratha's ancestry, the family line and the teaching line, were bound together by the relation of teacher and pupil.
2. Somaputra (1100 to 1150)
The son of Somaraja, who passed on the Krama secrets to the author of the Cidgaganacandrika. The passage in the Candrika is damaged, but its meaning is clear. He may also have been called Gupta.
3. Ramyadeva (1100 to 1150)
"The most important author of his era." His Vivarana on Cakrapani's Bhavopahara is a Krama work, inclined towards esotericism but with original flashes, and it tries to define what is specific to Krama. He names six other works of his own:
- Akrama-kallola-karika, apparently an independent Krama treatise;
- Akula-kalika-trimsika, probably a hymn;
- Siva-rava-stotra, a hymn;
- Cakresvara-bhairavastaka, probably a hymn;
- Sivaratri-vicara-varttika, a commentary on a text on the night of Siva;
- Krtanta-tanti-santi-stava, a hymn.
He was the son of Bhatta Jyogdeva and the pupil of Yogananda. He quotes a verse by his son, which suggests he wrote the Vivarana late in life. Mankha, in the Srikantha-carita, describes him as an ascetic, a master of Vedanta whose conduct matched his thought, a generous teacher, and an expert on the Kathavalli (Katha Upanisad) and the Vedanta work Istasiddhi. Mankha does not mention his Krama learning, perhaps because it was not public. Ramyadeva and his son appear in the circle of Lankaka (Alamkara), Mankha's elder brother and a minister under King Sussala (1112 to 1127). Ramyadeva is also the first to describe Krama as infused with the idea of Amavasya, the new-moon night, a symbol of the dissolution of all phases.
4. Lostadeva (1125 to 1175)
Ramyadeva's son, also called Losthadeva or Lostaka. Mankha praises his command of six languages and the clarity of his poetry, and several of his verses in praise of Lankaka appear in the Srikantha-carita. Tormented by worldly troubles, he turned from poetry to the spiritual life. His Dina-krandana-stotra ("the hymn of the afflicted cry"), published in the Kavyamala series, voices the pain of a disillusioned heart and ends in peace. At the end of his life he went to Varanasi and became an ascetic. A verse of his appears in Jalhana's Suktimuktavali. His Krama work, from which his father quotes, is lost.
5. Srivatsa, Author of the Cidgaganacandrika (1125 to 1175)
The Cidgaganacandrika ("moonlight in the sky of consciousness") is a commentary, which its author calls a pancika, on Siddhanatha's Krama-stotra. It is one of the few Krama texts that survives in full, or nearly so.
The Kalidasa problem. The author calls himself Kalidasa several times, and the last line of his second opening verse is almost the same as the last line of the opening verse of the great Kalidasa's Malavikagnimitra. On this basis:
- Svami Trivikrama Tirtha, editor of the Calcutta edition, accepted a "Kalidasa" as author, though a later one, before Abhinava;
- Karra Agnihotra Sastri, author of the modern Divyacakorika commentary, went further and held it was the classical poet himself. He found, for example, the eight cities (puris) of the Sakuntala reflected in the eightfold Vrnda-cakra, and read the name "Srivatsa" in the last verse as a mystic symbol;
- Bhaskararaya, in his Saubhagya-bhaskara on the Lalita-sahasranama, quotes the Candrika as the words of Kalidasa, and a Tantric text called Hrdaya-candrika also names Kalidasa.
On the other hand, Mahesvarananda, Amrtananda and Kaivalyasrama quote the text freely and never name its author.
Rastogi's solution.
- The author names his lineage: Siva as the founder, Cakrabhanu as the eminent teacher, Soma as the last, and Soma's son as his own teacher. This puts him after 1050 to 1150 and rules out the classical Kalidasa.
- The earliest author to quote the text is Mahesvarananda (1175 to 1225).
- The last verse names the author clearly as Srivatsa, and he says Kalidasa was a title won by his poetic and spiritual gifts through the grace of the Mother.
- Mankha mentions a pair of celibate poets, Bhudda and Srivatsa, in his brother's circle, and praises their verses highly. This Srivatsa fits the date exactly.
So the author is Srivatsa, honoured as "Kalidasa", probably Mankha's friend. The Malavikagnimitra line is a later interpolation. He worked at Purnapitha. He says the work has 309 verses in tristubh metre; the printed edition has 312, of which the first two are in another metre and the last concerns the author, which leaves exactly 309. But verses quoted by Kaivalyasrama and Amrtananda are missing from the printed text, so it may not be complete.
6. Ojaraja (1125 to 1175)
An authority on the Devipancasatika who read a passage on the "final seed" (antya-bija) differently because of a variant reading. Jayaratha heard of his view from his own teacher, so Ojaraja is earlier than or contemporary with that teacher. Nothing more is known.
7. Sivananda II (1125 to 1175) and the Southern School
The grand-teacher of Mahesvarananda is, for Rastogi, the most important figure after Ksemaraja apart from Mahesvarananda and Jayaratha, and the founder in effect of a southern school of Krama in the Cola country on the Kaveri. Rastogi notes the irony: "when the Krama philosophy was moving towards its slow but gradual decay in Kashmir, Mahesvarananda and his teachers kindled the fire in full blaze in Cola."
Features of the southern school:
- the thirteen-deity (or not-twelve) doctrine;
- extra emphasis on the fivefold functioning of the Absolute;
- the sixty-five mystic aspects of the Vrnda-cakra;
- more esotericism in the body-metaphysics, shared with other Tantric systems, especially Tripura.
His works, as named by Mahesvarananda:
| Work | System | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Rjuvimarsini (on the Nityasodasikarnava, Lopamudra school) | Tripura | Extant; since published at Varanasi |
| Krama-vasana (Subhagodaya-vasana) | Tripura | Manuscripts at Madras and Kerala |
| Subhagodaya | Tripura | Manuscript at Trivandrum |
| Saubhagya-hrdaya-stotra | Tripura | Manuscript at Poona |
| Tripurasundari-mandira-stotra | Tripura | Known by quotation |
| Sambhavaikya-dipika (per Dwivedi) | Uncertain | Incomplete manuscript at Madras |
| Samvit-stotra | Krama | Known by quotation |
| Stotra-bhattaraka | Krama | Known by quotation |
| Mahanayaprakasa (Trivandrum) | Krama | Printed, incomplete |
The Mahanayaprakasa question. The Trivandrum Mahanayaprakasa (distinct from Sitikantha's work of the same name) gives no author. Rastogi argues it is by Sivananda II:
- Its author uses "by me" of the Stotra-bhattaraka, so they share an author.
- Its reference to the Samvit-stotra also comes from the same pen, on contextual evidence.
- Mahesvarananda ascribes the Samvit-stotra to his grand-teacher.
- Mahesvarananda's silence about the author is not negative evidence; he is equally silent about the Sambhavaikya-dipika.
- The Stotra-bhattaraka is quoted by Jayaratha as well, and agrees with the Mahanayaprakasa on thirteen Kalis, the unity of Prakasa and Ananda, and mantra as supreme awareness.
- Sivananda's Rjuvimarsini makes Prakrit the official language of the Tripura school, and the Mahanayaprakasa was originally composed "in the vernacular" (bhasaya).
- Even if the identity is doubted, the two authors stand at the same point in time.
Rastogi agrees with Pandey in rejecting Sambasiva Sastri's ascription of the Mahanayaprakasa to Abhinava: the work clearly shows the influence of Ksemaraja.
Dating. Sivananda quotes Ksemaraja (upper limit). Jayaratha (1150 to 1200) quotes both the Stotra-bhattaraka and the Mahanayaprakasa, the latter as an opponent's view on thirteen Kalis. Mahesvarananda, his grand-pupil, quotes the Cidgaganacandrika (1125 to 1175). So: Sivananda 1125 to 1175, Mahaprakasa 1150 to 1200, Mahesvarananda 1175 to 1225.
8. Mahaprakasa (1150 to 1200)
Sivananda's pupil and Mahesvarananda's teacher. Mahesvarananda praises his learning and spiritual attainment, and it was Mahaprakasa's interpretation of a dream that moved Mahesvarananda to write the Mahartha-manjari. He is called a writer of Tantras (tantrakrt), but nothing survives except quotations in the Parimala, among them three hymns:
- Matangi-stotra, probably on pure knowledge (suddha-vidya);
- Ananda-tandava-vilasa-stotra, on absolute freedom as the cause of the cosmos;
- Mano'nusasana-stotra, on the mind as a unique instrument.
"His greatest contribution, however, was Mahesvarananda himself."
9. Jayaratha (1150 to 1200)
"The name of Jayaratha is a milestone in the history of the Krama thought." His Viveka commentary on the Tantraloka, especially on Ahnikas 1, 4, 13 and 29, is a monument of Krama learning and the store of countless historical references without which the reconstruction in this chapter would be impossible. He belonged to the Krama line of Bhanuka, but knew the Govindaraja line and the southern scholars as well.
His date. Utpalaratha II (1028 to 1063) was four generations above him, Sivaratha (1101 to 1111) three. His father Srngararatha was a minister of Rajaraja, usually identified with King Jayasimha (1127 to 1151), and Jayaratha says that king inspired the Viveka. He quotes the Prthvirajavijaya of Jayanaka, written before Prthviraja's death in 1193, and commented on the Alamkara-sarvasva of Ruyyaka, a senior contemporary of Mankha. Rastogi rejects identifying Rajaraja with Rajadeva (1213 to 1236), whom Jonaraja describes as a feeble usurper.
His family and teachers.
- His father renovated five buildings on the Mahadeva hill.
- His younger brother Jayadratha wrote the epic Haracarita-cintamani and a hymn, the Paridevita-dvadasika. Jayaratha says he was the elder, so the two are not one person, as some had claimed.
- Subhatadatta initiated him, and Subhatadatta's own Vivarana on the Tantraloka was the model for the Viveka.
- Srngara, son of Dasirajanaka, taught him statecraft; Kalyana taught him Saivism and Agamic lore; Sankhadhara taught him grammar, Mimamsa and other sciences.
His works:
- Viveka on the Tantraloka, "but for which Abhinava would have been a mystery to us";
- Vivarana on the Vamakesvarimata, the best source on Tripura in Kashmir;
- Vimarsini on Ruyyaka's Alamkara-sarvasva, a model of constructive criticism;
- Alamkarodaharana, a primer in poetics written for his grandson Sangaka;
- a hymn, three verses of which Sivopadhyaya quotes, together with Jayaratha's view on natural japa;
- probably other works on Tripura, since he quotes himself without naming the source.
10. Mahesvarananda (1175 to 1225)
"One of the most prolific authors on the Krama system." His only surviving work is the Mahartha-manjari with his own commentary, the Parimala.
Life.
- His birth name was Goraksa; his teacher named him Mahesvarananda at initiation.
- He came from the Cola country on the Kaveri, son of Madhu (Madhava), pupil of Mahaprakasa.
- He first mastered poetics through Anandavardhana's Dhvanyaloka and Abhinava's Locana, then turned to Pratyabhijna.
- He was a successful yogin and a realised person, and travelled widely in every direction before writing.
- He claims command of the Pratyabhijna-karikas, the Sivadrsti and the secrets of Krama, and moved freely in Kula.
The Mahartha-manjari. The book came from a dream. A yogini, in whom he saw Kalasamkarsini, told him to write it. Because she spoke in Prakrit, he wrote the verses in Prakrit. A. N. Upadhye identified its form as a saptati (a seventy-verse composition in Prakrit), and noted that the author clearly thought in Sanskrit and then rendered into Prakrit, giving the verses a mechanical stiffness. Philosophically, though, it is mature and deserves its description as a prasthana-grantha, a foundational text. It was also called the Mahakrama-manjari. Its synthetic plan, which places Krama within the whole of Kashmir Saivism, reflects the influence of the Tantraloka.
His other works, known from the Parimala:
| Work | Nature |
|---|---|
| Padukodaya | Krama; on the paduka (the guru's sandal) as the absolute power of bliss that dissolves self and not-self; written just before the Manjari |
| Samvidullasa | Philosophical |
| Maharthodaya | Krama; on the rejuvenation of deities and mantras |
| Sukta | Philosophical |
| Parastotra | Krama hymn |
| Komalavalli-stava | Krama hymn |
| Mukundakeli, Kundalabharana, Nakhapratapa | Probably literary |
| "Krama" (possibly) | Mentioned in the penultimate verse of the Parimala |
His Maharthodaya has nothing to do with Jayarasi Bhatta's Tattvopaplava-simha, also styled Maharthodaya, an earlier Lokayata (materialist) work.
Influence. Sivopadhyaya leans on him; Ramesvara, commentator on the Parasurama-kalpa-sutra, cites him three times; Kaivalyasrama quotes the Parimala; the eighteenth-century commentator Laksmirama quotes the Manjari.
"With such an outstanding personality the later stage of the creative phase comes to an end and one finally enters into a period of darkness and complete decadence."
11. Sitikantha (1450 to 1500)
After Jayaratha, Krama studies in Kashmir "practically came to a dead stop". The only signs of life are references by Sitikantha to a Siddhapada who, like Lalla, spoke in the Kashmiri vernacular. Sitikantha claims to have received the tradition, through his teachers, from Isana, one of Cakrabhanu's eight pupils, though Isana does not appear in the teacher list he gives. After "three hundred and odd blank years" he produced his Mahanayaprakasa, distinct from Sivananda II's.
His works:
- Mahanayaprakasa (or Maharthaprakasa), printed as number 21 of the Kashmir Series and nearly complete. It is written in the Kashmiri vernacular of his time with his own Sanskrit commentary. It fills gaps in the history and gives a thorough account of the Mahartha. George Grierson wrote a paper on its language, showing its value for understanding the links between Kashmiri and Sanskrit and for explaining forms in modern Kashmiri.
- Stotramala, which he names himself; two manuscripts at Poona.
- Kaula-sutra (Kula-sutra), a Kula work in sutra style originally in sixteen chapters called svarakalas; the better Poona manuscript preserves chapters 10 to 16. It mentions Kula and Krama alike and agrees with the Mahanayaprakasa on several disputed points.
- Nyasa, a sub-commentary on Jagaddhara's Balabodhini on the Katantra grammar.
His date. The Nyasa gives the clues. He descends from Jagaddhara (he is the son of the daughter's daughter of Jagaddhara's great-grandson). Before writing he visited Gujarat and was received by Mohammad Shah (1458 to 1511). He wrote under Hasan Shah, son of Haider Shah, whom Srivara places in 1472 to 1484. His teachers included Srivara, probably the historian who served Zain-ul-Abidin, Haider Shah and Hasan Shah. So he belongs to 1450 to 1500.
12. Ananta Saktipada (1700 to 1750)
The colophon of the printed commentary on the Vatulanatha-sutras gives its author as Anantasaktipada. The tradition it records belongs to the Sahasa school and is traced to Niskriyananda, but the commentary is recent, perhaps of the same age as the Chumma-sampradaya, which Sivopadhyaya quotes. M. S. Kaul, the editor, thought the same glossator commented on the Bahurupagarbha-stotra.
13. Bhattaraka (1700 to 1750)
Known only from Sivopadhyaya as author of a Prakrta-trimsika-vivarana, which discussed the Vrnda-cakra at length. The title suggests a Prakrit text modelled on the Paratrimsika.
14. Sivopadhyaya (1725 to 1775)
"With him the Krama system finally comes to a full stop." He was not primarily a Krama author, but his Vivrti on the Vijnana-bhairava is full of subtle remarks on Krama that "sometimes remind us of the best masters".
- His Vivrti continues Ksemaraja's commentary, which was lost after verse 23. He follows Ksemaraja closely, even in attributing the Spanda-karikas to Vasugupta, but notes his omissions.
- His only other work is the Srividya-vivarana, also called Anubhava-bodha-vidya, a commentary on the Mantraraja, a Tripura text of the Saubhagya school.
- He called himself Sivaguni and Siva-svamin, of the Kausika gotra, from Kasthula on the Jhelum; his father was Prakasopadhyaya-svamin and his teacher Sundarakantha, perhaps known as Govinda-guru.
- He insisted on the title Upadhyaya. In his time this meant membership of a recognised teaching class (in the dialect, Padipi) entitled to teach the system of its clients, who were known by surnames: Tiki for those devoted to Trika, Kaula for those who performed Kaula rites and studied the Kula-sutra, and Rajana or Raina for the highest Brahmins expert in mantra.
- He completed the Vivrti under King Sukhajivana (1754 to 1762).
15. Anonymous Works: The Krama Agamas
Rastogi separates two kinds of revealed literature. The general Saiva Agamas of Kashmir (the Malinivijaya, Sarvajnanottara, Brahmayamala, Tantraraja, Kirana) are drawn on by every system and are too many to treat here. The exclusive Krama Agamas are few and are responsible for the rival traditions on key doctrines.
Agama and Nigama. In Tantric classification an Agama is spoken by Siva to Parvati, a Nigama by Parvati to Siva. Most Krama scriptures are Nigamas. In Krama the two classes reflect two tendencies: one that holds Siva supreme and one that holds Sakti supreme.
| Agama | Date | Main points |
|---|---|---|
| Pancasatika (Devipancasatika) | Mid ninth century | Earliest known; known to Somananda; names the first four teachers up to Sivananda. Calls Rudrakali Bhadrakali. Includes Sukali, so thirteen Kalis. Scrambles the Sthiti-krama to hide the Samvit-krama; the Pujana-krama follows it. Keeps cycles such as Srsti and Samhara distinct. Variant readings already by Jayaratha's time (Ojaraja). |
| Sardhasatika | Same period | Agrees with the Pancasatika on thirteen and puts Sthitikali after Srstikali. Equally authoritative. |
| Krama-rahasya | Before Abhinava | Minor; cited once by Abhinava in a Kula context: where Kula holds wine supreme, the Krama-rahasya holds the trio of offering vessel (arghapatra), place of sacrifice (yagadhama) and lamp (dipa) supreme. Probably ritual. |
| Krama-sadbhava | Before Abhinava | A Nigama; cited by Abhinava, Jayaratha, Mahesvarananda and Sitikantha, sometimes as "Krama" or "Kramabhattaraka". On the Kalis of the Anakhya-cakra it gives sixteen in one place and seventeen in another, but certainly not twelve or thirteen, so the Krama-stotra did not follow it. Calls Sthitikali Sthiti-nasa-kali and Bhadrakali Rudrakali. Treats the Vrnda-cakra in detail and orders the five functions from creation to Bhasa. |
| Kalika-krama (Devika-krama) | Around Abhinava | Genuinely philosophical; quoted often by Ksemaraja in the Siva-sutra-vimarsini, rarely later. Revealed by Bhairava. |
| Krama-siddhi | Twelfth century | Known only to Mahesvarananda. Dialogue running both ways. Its order of the Pancavaha is the one Mahesvarananda follows. |
The teaching of the Kalika-krama deserves a fuller summary, because it is the most philosophical of the Agamas:
- The whole manifold, inner or outer, is pure awareness taking the form of objects. No one has ever seen an object that was not first a fact of experience.
- Awareness and object are realised together, like affirmation and negation, so they are one in essence. This is why Krama treats variety as the expression of the Absolute's dynamism.
- The Absolute is supreme awareness, and its power, Vimarsa, is omniscience. Japa, for a yogin, is self-reflection on his own divinity.
- One who knows knowledge without a referent, as self-consciousness, is free while still embodied.
- Ignorance and knowledge are both manifestations of the ultimate, so to talk of destroying ignorance is "the sheer luxury of figurative language". The cure is to see the absolute character of both.
- Pleasure and pain, and even the pure categories beginning with Siva, arise from the loss of knowledge together with mental construction (vikalpa).
- The yogin must drop all empirical and imaginary associations, rest within, let go of the network of constructs, remain composed, and be ready "to kill the element of time".
- As dream objects vanish on waking, the world ceases to appear as separate when seen through bhavana, identification with the universal self.
The Krama-siddhi on the five powers. Each of the five powers (creation and the rest) contains all five, but each is named after the one that predominates. Its image: milk is present in the whole body of the cow but flows only through the udder. The Lord's power pervades all, but flows fully through one. It also teaches a form of Pata-krama, one of the eight approaches to the Vrnda-cakra, finding the identity between the Pancavaha and the Vrnda-cakra, or between the five Siddhas (Jnana-siddhas and the rest) and the five functions from Srsti to Bhasa.
Rastogi excludes the Brahmayamala and Tantraraja from the Krama Agamas, against some earlier scholars. They contain Krama material but as part of the general Tantric literature.
16. Anonymous Works: Non-Agamic Treatises
| Work | What is known |
|---|---|
| Krama-sutra | First noted by Ksemaraja; in sutra style; originally in the author's vernacular, so the Sanskrit is a rendering. At least as old as Abhinava. One sutra tells the aspirant to consume the sense-objects that bind him, as a blazing fire consumes fuel. The other gives two paths: Krama-mudra, turning from outer to inner, and Mudra-krama, seeing the outer world as the expansion of the inner self. Both arise spontaneously from samavesa (absorption). Mahesvarananda takes them from the Pratyabhijnahrdaya, not the original. |
| Siddha-sutra | Cited once in the Trivandrum Mahanayaprakasa. One tradition (Jayaratha's) went straight from the Vrnda-cakra to the Anakhya-cakra and skipped the cycles of Srsti and the rest; the Mahanayaprakasa insisted on worshipping them, citing the Siddha-sutra: such worship leads to the Khecara state, and powers such as anima come of themselves as by-products of self-knowledge. Perhaps related to the Prakrit sayings of Siddhapada quoted by Sitikantha. |
| Mahanaya-paddhati | Cited once by Mahesvarananda: external formalities are "plain mockery"; strong, abiding reflection on the ultimate, unobscured by anything, is true worship. |
| Kramodaya | Cited by Mahesvarananda, Amrtananda and Bhaskararaya. Mainly ritual: it names the five limiting conditions (raga, kala and the rest) that make the universal self appear personal; tells the aspirant to perform duti-yaga (worship with a female partner) before worshipping the nine powers in the body; and describes wine as a final oblation, defined by the harmony of "I" and "this", that dissolves duality and leaves a joy without object. External cycles should be worshipped only when the mind is steady. A verse it shares with the Trivandrum Mahanayaprakasa was probably borrowed from the latter. |
| Amavasya-trimsika | From the age of decline, between Mahesvarananda and Sitikantha, who quotes it. Also called the Samvada. It describes the Lord's single power appearing as will, knowledge and action, a merely functional duality that, at rest, returns into Siva. |
| Rajika | Late; cited once by Sitikantha on the great sacrifice (maha-yaga or madhya-yaga) in three grades: gross, in which mind, intellect and ego are withdrawn; subtle, in which the vital breaths are withdrawn; and ultimate, in which Prakrti offers herself to the Lord in a "land of unison". Jayaratha mentions Rahasya-rajika-yoginis who belong to a system "other than Kula" and are to be remembered, not worshipped, in Kula rites. |
Insight: The Southern Flame and the Long Silence
This part tells the story of a teaching that left home. As Krama withered in Kashmir, it flourished on the Kaveri, and the southern masters did more than preserve it: they changed it. They counted thirteen Kalis instead of twelve, stressed five functions instead of four, multiplied the aspects of the Vrnda-cakra, drew Krama closer to Tripura (Srividya), and wrote in Prakrit. Mahesvarananda's Mahartha-manjari, dictated in a dream by a yogini who was Kalasamkarsini herself, is the culmination of this phase.
Then comes the silence: three hundred years in Kashmir with almost nothing, until Sitikantha writes in Kashmiri and Sivopadhyaya slips Krama insights into a commentary on another text. A system can end not because it is refuted but because its teachers stop finding pupils. The anonymous works at the end of the chapter make the same point from another side. We know the Kramodaya, the Rajika and the Amavasya-trimsika only through a line or two quoted by someone else. Krama survived as a series of echoes.
The content of those echoes is consistent, though. Whether in the philosophical Kalika-krama ("kill the element of time"), the anti-ritual Mahanaya-paddhati ("external formalities are plain mockery"), or the ritual Kramodaya, the goal is the same: the dissolution of the gap between knower and known in a single, self-aware act of consciousness.
A note for readers: dates, regions and a contradiction
- Sitikantha's date. In this section Rastogi argues carefully for 1450 to 1500, based on Hasan Shah's reign (1472 to 1484). But in the earlier overview of Krama's phases (pp. 82 onward) the same book gives Sitikantha as "1575-1625 A.D.". The two cannot both be right. The fifteenth-century date is the one supported by the evidence and by most scholarship; treat the other as a slip.
- Cola and Karnataka. Rastogi calls the Cola country "modern Karnatak" and places Mahesvarananda "on the banks of Kaveri (southern Mysore)". Most historians identify Cola-desa with the Tamil country of the lower Kaveri. Mahesvarananda is generally thought to have worked in the Tamil region, perhaps near Chidambaram, and the southern Krama current shaped later Srividya in Tamil Nadu. The geography matters for understanding how Krama passed into the southern Srividya tradition.
- The authorship of the Trivandrum Mahanayaprakasa. Rastogi's seven reasons for Sivananda II are cumulative, and none is decisive on its own. Later scholarship has generally treated the author as unknown or kept the attribution as possible.
- Mankha's Srivatsa. Identifying the author of the Cidgaganacandrika with the Srivatsa praised by Mankha rests on a shared name and date. It is plausible, but there may have been more than one Srivatsa in twelfth-century Kashmir.
- The ritual of the Kramodaya (duti-yaga, wine as oblation) is described neutrally by Rastogi. Readers should note that such practices were esoteric, reserved for initiates, and understood within the tradition as symbolic or as tests of non-duality, not as indulgence. Rastogi's own view, stated in Chapter 3, is that Krama's ritual phase is a later development over a philosophical core.
Key Terms
- Paramesthi-guru: great-grand-teacher.
- Anakhya: "the nameless", the ultimate awareness in Krama.
- Pancika: a commentary; the Cidgaganacandrika's self-description.
- Purnapitha: the sacred seat where Srivatsa worked.
- Prasthana-grantha: a foundational text; the Mahartha-manjari.
- Paduka: the guru's sandal, symbol of absolute power and bliss.
- Saptati: a Prakrit composition of about seventy verses.
- Upadhyaya / Padipi: hereditary teaching class in late Kashmir.
- Nigama: scripture spoken by the Goddess to Siva.
- Krama-mudra / Mudra-krama: inward and outward forms of absorption.
- Pata-krama: one of the eight approaches to the Vrnda-cakra.
- Maha-yaga: the great inner sacrifice in three grades (gross, subtle, ultimate).
Reflection
- Mahesvarananda wrote his masterpiece in a language he did not fully command because the yogini of his dream spoke it. What would you be willing to do awkwardly because the call to do it came from deep within?
- The Kalika-krama says that to speak of destroying ignorance is only figurative language. If ignorance and knowledge are both expressions of the same reality, what changes when one "wakes up"?
- The Mahanaya-paddhati calls external formalities mockery, while the Kramodaya prescribes detailed rites. Where do you stand between form and formlessness in your own practice?
Krama's Place in the Wider Framework of Kashmir Saivism (pp. 249 to 254)
The short final chapter asks a structural question. Krama has two identities at once: it is part of the philosophical family called Kashmir Saivism, and it is also a Tantric system in the general Indian sense. How do the two fit together? Rastogi answers by setting side by side two classifications. General Tantra recognises six levels of meaning (arthas) in a scripture, as listed in the Yogini-hrdaya. Kashmir Saivism recognises four means (upayas) to liberation. Following Jayaratha, whom he calls "balanced, logical and to the point", Rastogi maps the six onto the four and finds that Krama, identified with the Saktopaya, sits exactly at the point where Tantra and Kashmir Saivism meet.
1. Two Approaches to the Question
Mahesvarananda simply declares Mahartha (Krama) to be the ultimate of all philosophical disciplines and the culmination of all six stages of Tantric culture. Rastogi is blunt: "this is hardly a scientific approach. In fact it is dismissing outright the very issue out of the doctrinal enthusiasm."
Jayaratha is more careful. He warns traditionalists at the outset not to expect a repetition of conventional views; he will approach the six meanings from the standpoint of their precise implications. He follows the Yogini-hrdaya in content but not in method.
2. The Six Levels of Meaning
The Yogini-hrdaya lists six ways to understand a Tantra. Rastogi keeps the Sanskrit names, since they are technical, and gives Jayaratha's explanation of each.
(i) Bhavartha: the literal meaning. The plain sense intended by the speaker at the time. It may even belong to sciences outside Tantra proper.
(ii) Sampradayartha: the traditional meaning. The same external meaning becomes "traditional" when it serves enlightenment by teaching self-knowledge, provided it agrees with Saiva teaching and is not censured by the teachers. Vedic passages about the self are examples. Jayaratha takes up an objection: such passages say the self "shone once" (sakrd-vibhata) and must "be known" (jnatavya), which makes the self an object, a "this" rather than an "I", whereas Siva is always the self-luminous subject. Jayaratha's reply: there is no real conflict. Siva never gives up his agency, even when he shows objectivity within himself, because objectivity is the expression of his freedom. Since Siva himself becomes the object, he can rightly be called "this".
(iii) Nigarbhartha: the inner meaning. Seeing the many as one with Siva is only possible when objectivity is present. So the third meaning stresses the realisation, by the pure self, that multiplicity is inwardly Siva. That pure self may be Siva, the teacher, or the aspirant.
(iv) Kaulikartha: the Kaula meaning. If this practice continues, a stage comes when the universal self is instinctively recognised as self-luminous awareness even in ordinary, empirical experience. Since the basis of such awareness is the self, technically called Kula, this is the Kaula meaning.
Across these two stages the emphasis shifts from "this" to "I". In the third the aspirant has to work to realise the identity; in the fourth the identity is simply a fact of experience.
(v) Sarva-rahasyartha: the secret meaning. If the process is pursued further, immediate self-revelation occurs: objectivity is not identified with but transformed into pure subjectivity. Because the uninitiated cannot grasp this, it is the "secret".
(vi) Maha-paramatattvartha: the meaning of the supreme reality. When even this is transcended and "pure, alogical, irrelational immediacy prevails", with nowhere further to go, this is the highest meaning.
3. Mapping the Six onto the Four
| Tantric level of meaning | Kashmir Saiva means | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Bhavartha and Sampradayartha | Anava-upaya (the individual means) | Uses external aids, sacred syllables and the like, to unfold one's real nature |
| Nigarbhartha and Kaulikartha | Saktopaya (the means of power) | Refines mental constructions (vikalpa-samskara); realises "this" as an expression of "I" ("sarvo mamayam vibhavah", "all this is my glory"). The relation of duality is raised into unity, but the relation itself remains |
| Sarva-rahasyartha | Sambhavopaya (the divine means) | Indeterminate (nirvikalpa) self-realisation |
| Maha-paramatattvartha | Anupaya (the non-means) | Reality itself: awareness pure and simple |
Rastogi adds that Sambhava and Anupaya are often not distinguished, since Anupaya is the highest form of Sambhava. In that case Sambhava covers both of the last two meanings.
4. Conclusion: Krama as the Meeting Ground
Krama is generally identified with the Saktopaya. So the Saktopaya on one side, and the Nigarbhartha and Kaulikartha on the other, form "the common ground where the Tantra and Kashmir Saivism meet". Rastogi says the detailed analysis of the Saktopaya belongs to the first chapter of the philosophical study, that is, to the promised second volume. The chapter ends with a tribute: "But for Jayaratha it would not have been possible to find out the traditional, yet logical, attitude towards the two independent literatures, Tantra and Kashmir Saivism, which have more points of contact than those of departure."
Insight: The Middle Is the Method
Placing Krama at the Saktopaya level says something important about what Krama is for. The Anava means work with the body, breath, mantra and ritual; the Sambhava means is a sudden, effortless recognition. Krama works in between, in the field of thought itself. Its practice is the purification of vikalpa: not stopping thought, and not merely using it, but transforming it until every thought is recognised as a movement of the one awareness. This is why Krama's central images are processes and sequences (the twelve Kalis, the five flows, the cycles of emanation and withdrawal). The Saktopaya is the only means that is itself a krama, a succession. And this is also why Krama could serve as the bridge between general Tantra, with its levels of meaning and ritual, and the philosophy of recognition: it is where ritual turns into contemplation and contemplation into recognition.
A note for readers: a map, not a proof
Rastogi's mapping is elegant, and Jayaratha deserves the credit he gets. But note three limits:
- The mapping is Jayaratha's, not a feature of the Yogini-hrdaya itself, which belongs to the Srividya tradition and has its own understanding of the six meanings. The correspondence is a Kashmiri reading of a non-Kashmiri scheme.
- Identifying Krama with the Saktopaya follows Ksemaraja and Abhinava's Tantraloka, which describes Saktopaya practice in Krama terms. But Krama texts themselves also claim Sambhava and Anupaya levels for their highest teaching (Anakhya, the nameless). Krama is the paradigm of the Saktopaya, but it is not limited to it.
- The chapter is a bridge to the doctrinal Part II that was to follow. That second volume never appeared. Readers wanting the philosophical treatment can consult Rastogi's thesis and his later book on Kali-krama and Abhinavagupta.
Key Terms
- Artha: a level of meaning in a scripture.
- Bhavartha / Sampradayartha / Nigarbhartha / Kaulikartha / Sarva-rahasyartha / Maha-paramatattvartha: the six levels, from literal to supreme.
- Upaya: means to liberation (Anava, Sakta, Sambhava, and the non-means Anupaya).
- Vikalpa-samskara: the purification of mental constructions; the core of Saktopaya.
- Sarvo mamayam vibhavah: "all this is my glory", the formula of Saktopaya realisation.
- Kula: here, the self as the ground of awareness.
Reflection
- Notice a thought arising now. Can you see it, even for a moment, as a movement of your own awareness rather than as something that happens to you? That small shift is the Saktopaya in miniature.
- The levels move from "this" to "I". Where in your life does the world feel most like "this", foreign and outside? What would it mean to see it as your own expression?
The Krama Lineage at a Glance
This table collects the dates Rastogi assigns to every figure in Chapter 6, in order. The dates are his, mostly derived from lineages at twenty-five years per generation and checked against royal reigns where possible. Treat the earliest dates as approximate.
| No. | Figure | Rastogi's date (CE) | Role in Krama |
|---|---|---|---|
| i | Vatulanatha | 675 to 725 | Founder of the Sahasa school; Vatulanatha-sutras |
| ii | Gandhamadana | 700 to 750 | Siddha; revealed a book to Niskriyananda |
| iii | Niskriyananda | 725 to 775 | Chumma-sampradaya; recipient of the Vatulanatha-sutras |
| iv | Vidyananda | 750 to 800 | Teacher-couple with Rakta |
| v | Saktyananda | 775 to 825 | Teacher-couple with Mahananda |
| vi | Sivananda (Avatarakanatha) | 800 to 850 | Founder of the human line; initiated in the Uttarapitha |
| vii | Vasugupta | 800 to 850 | Siva-sutras; second section read as Krama |
| viii | Keyuravati, Madanika, Kalyanika | 825 to 875 | Sivananda's three women disciples |
| ix | Kallata | 825 to 875 | Spanda-karikas (on Rastogi's view) and Spanda-vrtti |
| x | Govindaraja, Bhanuka, Eraka | 850 to 900 | Three sub-currents; Eraka the first hymn-writer |
| xi | Pradyumna Bhatta | 850 to 900 | Tattvagarbha-stotra; Sakti as ultimate |
| xii | Somananda | 875 to 925 | Received Krama from Govindaraja; Sivadrsti |
| xiii | Ujjata | 875 to 925 | Bhanuka's line |
| xiv | Utpaladeva | 900 to 950 | Siva-stotravali with Krama undertones |
| xv | Udbhatta | 900 to 950 | Bhanuka's line; perhaps Abhinava's teacher |
| xvi | Siddhanatha (the Stotrakara) | 900 to 950 | The Krama-stotra (twelve Kalis) |
| xvii | Bhaskara | 925 to 975 | Siva-sutra-varttika; transmitted the hymn |
| xviii | Laksmanagupta | 925 to 975 | Abhinava's Krama teacher; sixfold Sakta-nyasa |
| xix | Bhatta Utpala | 925 to 975 | Spanda-pradipika |
| xx | Bhutiraja I | 900 to 950 | Abhinava's teacher in Brahmavidya; etymology of Kali |
| xxi | Kuladhara | 950 to 1000 | Successor of Bhaskara |
| xxii | Bhatta Damodara | 950 to 1000 | Verse on the Pancavaha |
| xxiii | Abhinavagupta | 950 to 1020 | Kramakeli, Krama-stotra, Tantraloka, Tantrasara |
| xxiv | Ksemaraja | 975 to 1025 | Read Spanda and Siva-sutras as Krama; Krama-sutra passages |
| xxv | Varadaraja (Krsnadasa) | 1000 to 1050 | Siva-sutra-varttika |
| xxvi | Devabhatta (Devapani?) | 1025 to 1075 | Order of worship from Srsti to Bhasa |
| xxvii | Hrasvanatha (Viranathapada) | 1025 to 1075 | Head of the human stream; commentary on the hymn |
| xxviii | Cakrabhanu | 1050 to 1100 | End of the human stream; eight pupils including Isana |
| xxix | Cakrapani | 1050 to 1125 | Bhavopahara; perhaps identical with Cakrabhanu |
| xxx | Bhojaraja (Vamanabhanu) | 1050 to 1100 | Perhaps a Kramakamala |
| xxxi | Somaraja | 1075 to 1125 | Last of the line from Sivananda |
| xxxii | Visvadatta (?) | 1075 to 1125 | Jayaratha's great-grand-teacher |
| xxxiii | Somaputra | 1100 to 1150 | Taught the author of the Cidgaganacandrika |
| xxxiv | Ramyadeva | 1100 to 1150 | Vivarana on the Bhavopahara; six other works |
| xxxv | Lostadeva | 1125 to 1175 | Dina-krandana-stotra |
| xxxvi | Srivatsa ("Kalidasa") | 1125 to 1175 | Cidgaganacandrika |
| xxxvii | Ojaraja | 1125 to 1175 | Variant reading of the Pancasatika |
| xxxviii | Sivananda II | 1125 to 1175 | Southern school; Mahanayaprakasa (Trivandrum) |
| xxxix | Mahaprakasa | 1150 to 1200 | Teacher of Mahesvarananda |
| xl | Jayaratha | 1150 to 1200 | Viveka on the Tantraloka |
| xli | Mahesvarananda | 1175 to 1225 | Mahartha-manjari and Parimala |
| xlii | Sitikantha | 1450 to 1500 | Mahanayaprakasa in old Kashmiri |
| xliii | Ananta Saktipada | 1700 to 1750 | Commentary on the Vatulanatha-sutras |
| xliv | Bhattaraka | 1700 to 1750 | Prakrta-trimsika-vivarana |
| xlv | Sivopadhyaya | 1725 to 1775 | Vivrti on the Vijnana-bhairava |
Main Teaching Lines
The early line (Kramakeli, via Jayaratha): Sivananda, then Keyuravati, Madanika and Kalyanika, then Govindaraja (to Somananda), Bhanuka (to Ujjata and Udbhatta, and down to Jayaratha), and Eraka (celibate, no line).
The hymn line: Siddhanatha (the Stotrakara), Bhaskara, Kuladhara.
Abhinava's Krama teachers: Somananda, Utpala, Laksmanagupta, Abhinavagupta, Ksemaraja, Sura.
The Hrasvanatha line: Hrasvanatha, then Cakrabhanu and Bhojaraja, then Somaraja, Somaputra, Srivatsa (Cidgaganacandrika). Separately: Cakrabhanu, Isana, and on to Sitikantha.
The southern line: Sivananda II, Mahaprakasa, Mahesvarananda.
Insight: Reading the Table
Three clusters stand out. The ninth century is the age of founders, mostly known through later memory. The tenth to twelfth centuries are dense with named authors, most clustered around Abhinava's circle and the courts of the Lohara kings. Then the table jumps from 1225 to 1450 and again to 1700. The gaps are the story. Krama was a living system for about four hundred years, after which it survived as a learned memory.
Master Glossary
Abhedartha-karika: a lost work of Siddhanatha, cited by Bhatta Utpala.
Agama / Nigama: scripture spoken by Siva to the Goddess, or by the Goddess to Siva. Most Krama scriptures are Nigamas.
Akrama: "without succession"; the non-sequential ultimate behind the sequences of Krama.
Amavasya: the new-moon night; in Ramyadeva and later authors, the symbol of the dissolution of all phases of consciousness.
Anakhya: "the nameless"; the ultimate awareness, and the cycle (Anakhya-cakra) of twelve or thirteen Kalis.
Anava, Sakta, Sambhava, Anupaya: the four means to liberation in Kashmir Saivism, from the individual to the non-means.
Arthas, six: levels of meaning in a Tantra: Bhavartha, Sampradayartha, Nigarbhartha, Kaulikartha, Sarva-rahasyartha, Maha-paramatattvartha.
Atinaya: "the supreme system", a name for Krama.
Bhasa: "light, shining"; the fifth function of the Absolute in the five-function scheme.
Bhavopahara: "the offering of feeling", a Krama hymn by Cakrapani.
Chumma: a secret code-sign; the Chumma-sampradaya is the school that uses them.
Cidgaganacandrika: "moonlight in the sky of consciousness", Srivatsa's commentary on the Krama-stotra.
Devinaya / Devatanaya: "the system of the Goddess", a name for Krama.
Divyaugha, Siddhaugha, Manavaugha: the divine, perfected and human streams of the lineage.
Duti-yaga: worship with a female partner, an esoteric rite in the Kramodaya.
Gurupankti: the line of teachers worshipped at the close of the Vrnda-cakra.
Kalana: the dynamic activity of the Absolute, in five modes: projection, knowledge, determination, movement, resonance. The root of the name Kali.
Kalasamkarsini: "she who draws in time"; the supreme goddess of Krama, in whom time is dissolved.
Kali-naya: "the system of Kali", a name for Krama.
Kramakeli: Abhinava's lost commentary on Siddhanatha's Krama-stotra; the main early source for Krama history.
Krama-mudra / Mudra-krama: inward absorption (turning from outer to inner) and outward absorption (seeing the outer as the expansion of the inner).
Krama-stotra: the hymn of the Kalis. Two exist: Siddhanatha's (early tenth century) and Abhinava's (990 to 991).
Kula: a sister system; in Chapter 7, also the self as the ground of awareness.
Mahanaya: "the great system", a name for Krama.
Mahanayaprakasa: two different works: one from the Trivandrum manuscript (attributed by Rastogi to Sivananda II) and one by Sitikantha in old Kashmiri.
Mahartha: "the great meaning", the most common name for Krama in later texts.
Mahartha-manjari: Mahesvarananda's Prakrit masterpiece, with his own Sanskrit commentary, the Parimala.
Nyasa: ritual placing of mantras or powers on the body.
Ogha: a stream or current of the lineage.
Pancavaha: the five flows of energy: Vyomavamesvari, Khecari, Dikcari, Gocari, Bhucari.
Pancasatika (Devipancasatika): the earliest Krama Agama, holding thirteen Kalis.
Paduka: the guru's sandal; the absolute power of bliss in Mahesvarananda's Padukodaya.
Pata-krama: one of the eight approaches to the Vrnda-cakra.
Pujana-krama / Samvit-krama: the sequence of worship and the true sequence of consciousness.
Sahasa: sudden realisation; the school of Vatulanatha.
Santati-krama: preceptorial lineage, spiritual descent.
Sisyaugha: the stream of disciples, beginning with Cakrabhanu.
Srsti, Sthiti, Samhara, Anakhya, Bhasa: emanation, maintenance, withdrawal, the nameless, and shining: the functions of the Absolute.
Stotrakara: the "hymn-maker", Siddhanatha.
Sukali: the Kali whose inclusion makes thirteen.
Uttarapitha: the "northern seat" where Sivananda was initiated.
Vikalpa-samskara: purification of mental constructions, the core of the Saktopaya.
Vimarsa: the reflective self-awareness of consciousness, its power.
Vrnda-cakra: the "circle of the assembly", the central mandala of later Krama, with sixty-four or sixty-five aspects.
Yuganathas: the four lords of the ages in the Siddha line from Khagendra to Mina.
What the Book Teaches and How to Use It
Read as a whole, Rastogi's first volume does four things. It establishes that Krama is a distinct system within Kashmir Saivism (Chapter 1). It explains the names under which the system appears (Chapter 2). It describes Krama as a Tantric system, with a philosophical core and a later ritual phase (Chapters 3 to 5). And it reconstructs, author by author, a history of about a thousand years from the lost pieces of its literature (Chapters 6 and 7). The doctrinal treatment of Krama's nine principles was reserved for a second volume that never appeared. So this is a book about the outline of a system rather than its full content, and its greatest value is as a map.
1. The Teaching in Brief
Underneath the names and dates, the volume points to a consistent teaching:
- Reality is consciousness in motion. The Absolute is not static. It is kalana, a ceaseless activity of projecting, knowing, determining, moving and resounding. Its name as goddess is Kali, and its highest form is Kalasamkarsini, she who draws time back into herself.
- Every experience is a sequence. Each act of knowing has phases: an object emerges (srsti), persists (sthiti), is withdrawn (samhara), and dissolves into the nameless (anakhya), shining as pure light (bhasa). These phases apply to the object, the means of knowing and the knower, giving the twelve (or thirteen) Kalis.
- The sequence returns to the sequenceless. Krama ("succession") culminates in akrama ("non-succession"). Following the sequence carefully, without skipping, leads beyond sequence.
- The practice is transformation, not suppression. Krama is the paradigm of the Saktopaya: thoughts are not stopped but purified until each is known as a movement of awareness.
- The teacher matters. Because the Agamas hide the true order of the Kalis, the Samvit-krama has to be received from a lineage. History, for Krama, is part of practice.
2. A Practice Path Drawn from the Book
Rastogi does not give practice instructions, and readers should not take the following as initiation. But the texts he quotes point to a contemplative path that any reader can explore in a simple form:
Step 1: Notice the arising. Sit quietly. Let an object come into awareness: a sound, a sensation, a thought. Notice the moment it appears. This is srsti, emergence.
Step 2: Notice the staying. Stay with it. Notice that it is held in awareness for a while. This is sthiti, persistence. The Krama-stotra puts Raktakali, the "red" or "delighting" Kali, here: the pleasure of experiencing.
Step 3: Notice the withdrawal. Notice the moment the object fades. Where does it go? This is samhara, withdrawal.
Step 4: Rest in the gap. Before the next object arises there is a moment with no object. This is the anakhya, the nameless. The Kalika-krama tells the yogin to "rest on the inner plane" and be "ever prepared to kill the element of time".
Step 5: Turn to the knower. Apply the same four phases to the act of knowing itself, and then to the sense of being a knower. The Krama-sutra calls the inward turn Krama-mudra.
Step 6: Return to the world. Open the eyes and see the world as the expansion of the same awareness. This is the Mudra-krama, the outward turn: "all this is my glory".
Step 7: Let go of the method. The Mahanaya-paddhati says that strong, abiding reflection on the ultimate, unobscured by anything, is the true worship. At some point the steps fall away.
3. What to Take From Each Part of the Book
| Part | What it gives the reader |
|---|---|
| Preface and Chapter 1 | Why Krama counts as a system and what makes it distinctive |
| Chapter 2 | The names (Krama, Mahartha, Mahanaya, Atinaya, Devinaya, Kalinaya) as a picture of the system's self-understanding |
| Chapter 3 | Krama's two phases, philosophical and ritual, and their relation |
| Chapter 4 | Krama's exchanges with Spanda, Kula, Tripura, Buddhist Tantra, Bhartrhari and Pancaratra |
| Chapter 5 | The sub-schools (Sahasa, Chumma) and the great controversies (twelve or thirteen Kalis, four or five functions) |
| Chapter 6 | The full reconstructed history, author by author, and the anonymous Agamas |
| Chapter 7 | Krama as the Saktopaya, the meeting point of Tantra and Kashmir Saivism |
4. Critical-lens Summary
The book is a landmark. It was the first full-length historical study of Krama, and fifty years later it is still the starting point. But a reader should hold six cautions in view:
- Method. Much of the chronology rests on a twenty-five-years-per-generation rule applied to lineages that record initiations, not births. Royal reigns and dated colophons give firm anchors only from the tenth century.
- Internal inconsistencies. Sitikantha is dated 1575 to 1625 in the overview of phases and 1450 to 1500 in his own entry, and the second is right. Yasaskara "ruled in 839" in one place and 939 elsewhere; read 939. Ksemaraja appears once as "975-1125", a slip for 975 to 1025.
- Identifications. Several bold identifications rest on similar names: Laksmanagupta as the author of the Saradatilaka, Cakrapani as Cakrabhanu, Sivananda as Srinatha, the three Bhutirajas as one, the Cidgaganacandrika's Srivatsa as Mankha's friend. Each is possible; none is proven.
- Geography. "Cola, modern Karnatak" is doubtful. The Cola country is usually the Tamil Kaveri region.
- Scholarship since. Since 1979, much more of the scriptural background of Krama has come to light, especially through Alexis Sanderson's studies of the Kalikula and the Jayadrathayamala and through critical editions of Kashmiri texts. These place Krama's roots in a wider north Indian Kali cult and sometimes revise Rastogi's picture of the early Agamas. The book should be read alongside that work.
- The missing second volume. The doctrinal treatment of the nine cycles (cakras) was promised but never published, so this volume describes the outside of the house more fully than the inside. Rastogi's original Lucknow thesis, "The Philosophy of Krama Monism of Kashmir: An Analytical Study", contains the doctrinal material, and his later monograph on Kali-krama and Abhinavagupta covers part of it.
5. Key Lines to Remember
A few sentences from the book (quoted or closely paraphrased) carry the main ideas and are worth keeping in mind:
- On the chapter's aim: Chapter 6 is "a reconstructive study of Krama history and an analysis of the entire known as well as extant Krama literature".
- On Abhinava: "But for Abhinava's Kramakeli the early history of the system would have remained the pre-history for a modern student."
- On the southern school: "when the Krama philosophy was moving towards its slow but gradual decay in Kashmir, Mahesvarananda and his teachers kindled the fire in full blaze in Cola".
- On the end of the creative phase: after Mahesvarananda "one finally enters into a period of darkness and complete decadence".
- On Sivopadhyaya: "With him the Krama system finally comes to a full stop."
- From the Kalika-krama, in Rastogi's summary: the yogin should "rest on the inner plane" and be "ever prepared to kill the element of time".
- From the Mahanaya-paddhati, in Rastogi's summary: external formalities "amount to plain mockery"; abiding reflection on the ultimate is the true worship.
- On Mahesvarananda's claim that Krama crowns all six levels of Tantra: "this is hardly a scientific approach".
- On Jayaratha's achievement: Tantra and Kashmir Saivism "have more points of contact than those of departure".
Each line marks a turning point. The first two show Rastogi's method and his debt to Abhinava; the next three trace the arc of rise, migration and decline; the Agamic lines give the core of practice; and the last two show his own critical balance, which is perhaps the book's most lasting virtue.
6. Final Reflection
Krama's central intuition is that time is not the enemy of awareness but its expression, and that by following time's sequence with full attention one arrives where sequence ends. Rastogi's book applies the same principle to history. By following the succession of teachers one by one, with patience and care, he lets the reader glimpse the single tradition that runs through them all. The lineage is itself a krama. To read it attentively is, in a small way, to practise it.
Questions Readers Often Ask
These short answers gather points that come up when people first read Rastogi's book. Each answer draws on the chapters summarised above.
Is Krama the same as Kashmir Shaivism?
No. "Kashmir Saivism" is a family of related systems: Pratyabhijna (recognition), Spanda (vibration), Kula, Krama, and the Trika synthesis of Abhinavagupta. Rastogi's first chapter argues that Krama is a distinct member of the family, with its own founders, scriptures, lineages, terminology and practices. It shares the family's monism, but it emphasises succession, time and the goddess Kali in a way the others do not.
Why is it called Krama?
"Krama" means succession or sequence. The name points to the system's central idea: consciousness unfolds in phases (emergence, persistence, withdrawal and the nameless), and following those phases leads beyond them to the sequenceless (akrama). The system is also called Mahartha ("the great meaning"), Mahanaya ("the great system"), Atinaya, Devinaya and Kalinaya. Chapter 2 of the book is devoted to these names.
Who founded it?
Tradition names a series of figures before the historical founder: Vatulanatha, the Siddha Gandhamadana, Niskriyananda and the teacher-couples of the Pancasatika. The first historical teacher is Sivananda (about 800 to 850), called Avatarakanatha, who was initiated in the "northern seat" and taught three women: Keyuravati, Madanika and Kalyanika.
What did Abhinavagupta contribute?
Abhinava called Krama his first love. He wrote a commentary on the early Krama hymn (the lost Kramakeli), his own Krama-stotra (990 to 991), and devoted several chapters of the Tantraloka and Tantrasara to Krama. Rastogi lists four services: he kept the tradition, recorded its history, commented on its texts, and thought originally about it.
Why are so many Krama texts lost?
Krama was esoteric. Its key texts were held by initiates and passed on orally or in a few manuscripts. The system faded in Kashmir after the twelfth century, so there were few people to copy them. Rastogi himself was refused access to a surviving manuscript of the Kramakeli in Srinagar in 1963.
What is the twelve-or-thirteen Kalis controversy?
Krama worships the phases of consciousness as Kalis. Four phases across three poles of experience give twelve. Some texts and teachers add a thirteenth, the ultimate itself. Jayaratha defended twelve; the southern school of Sivananda II and Mahesvarananda held thirteen. The debate reflects a deeper question about whether the ultimate stands outside the cycle or is part of it.
How did Krama reach South India?
Through a line of teachers in the Cola country on the Kaveri: Sivananda II, Mahaprakasa and Mahesvarananda (twelfth to thirteenth centuries). Varadaraja's father Madhuraja, who may have come from Madurai, is an earlier sign of the link. The southern masters brought Krama close to the Tripura (Srividya) tradition, and Mahesvarananda's Mahartha-manjari became its most important late text.
Is Krama a ritual system or a contemplative one?
Both, in different phases. Rastogi argues in Chapter 3 that the philosophical and contemplative core came first and the elaborate ritual (the Vrnda-cakra, the worship sequences, the esoteric rites of texts like the Kramodaya) developed later. In Chapter 7, following Jayaratha, he places Krama at the level of the Saktopaya: the transformation of thought itself.
Where does the "Kramanaya Pradipika" fit in?
Swami Lakshman Joo's Shri Kramanaya Pradipika collects the surviving verses of the early Krama-stotra by Siddhanatha, as quoted in Jayaratha's commentary on the Tantraloka, with a Hindi translation. Rastogi refers to it in his section on the Stotrakara.
What happened to Volume II?
Rastogi planned a second volume on Krama doctrine, structured around its nine principles or cycles. It never appeared. His later book on Kali-krama and Abhinavagupta, and his doctoral thesis on Krama monism, cover parts of the doctrinal material.
How reliable are the dates?
From the tenth century on, quite reliable, because of royal reigns and Abhinava's dated works. Before that, they are estimates based on twenty-five years per generation. Some identifications are tentative, and there are a few internal slips (noted in the critical-lens notes of this guide).
Insight: Questions as a Way In
Krama itself teaches by sequence, and a good sequence of questions is a fair way into it: what the system is, where it came from, who carried it, what they argued about, and what is left. Rastogi's book answers the first four in great detail. The last one, what is left, is answered by the fact that the book exists at all: a modern scholar sitting in libraries and private houses, piecing together a lineage from stray verses, is himself part of the Krama story.
A note for readers: beyond this volume
This guide follows Rastogi's book closely. For a fuller picture, read it alongside later scholarship on the Kalikula and the Krama scriptures, critical editions of the Tantraloka and its commentary, and translations of the Mahartha-manjari and the Krama-stotra. The book remains the best single map of the history; the later studies fill in the territory.
Key Terms
- Kalikula: the wider family of Kali-centred Tantric traditions to which Krama belongs.
- Akrama: the sequenceless ultimate.
- Mahartha-manjari: Mahesvarananda's late synthesis.
- Kramanaya Pradipika: Lakshman Joo's edition of the surviving Krama-stotra verses.
Reflection
- Which question about Krama would you most like answered that the book leaves open?
- If you had to explain Krama to a friend in one sentence, what would you say?
Sources
This guide is based on a close reading of the source text:
- Navjivan Rastogi, The Krama Tantricism of Kashmir: Historical and General Sources, Volume I (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1979; reprint 1996). Publisher's page: Motilal Banarsidass, The Krama Tantricism of Kashmir, Volume 1.
Background and context:
- Open Library: The Krama Tantricism of Kashmir, which records that the book is a revision of the author's thesis, "The Philosophy of Krama Monism of Kashmir: An Analytical Study" (Lucknow University, 1967 to 1968).
- Oxford reference article on Tantra, for the place of Rastogi's study in the scholarship on Kashmiri Tantra.
- Historical study noting that the second volume never appeared.
- Motilal Banarsidass: Kalikrama and Abhinavagupta, Rastogi's later work on the doctrinal side of Krama.
Readers who want the surviving verses of Siddhanatha's Krama-stotra can consult Swami Lakshman Joo's Shri Kramanaya Pradipika, which Rastogi cites in Chapter 6.