The World on Show, or Sensibility in Disguise. Philosophical and Aesthetic Issues in a Stanza by Abhinavagupta (Tantrāloka I 332, Locana ad Dhvanyāloka I 13)
Résumé
A famous stanza, Tantrāloka I 332, composed by Abhinavagupta, is taken up again, quoted by himself in his Locana (ad Dhvanyāloka I 13), as an example of the variety of figure of style named aprastutapraśaṃsā.
In the Tantrāloka, the analogy poetically condenses the underlying argument of the passage : objects are sentient (ajaḍa), but the divine Energy which presides over their manifestation disguises that sentiency into make-believe insentiency (jaḍatva), so much so that it succeeds in deceiving the insensitive man (ahr̥daya) : the world displays its splendors to the finite being who is its deluded and impotent spectator.
We shall first show how the aesthetic experience and the notion of sahr̥dayatā that are at the core of the analogy serve as a speculative paradigm for the non-dualism of the doctrine. Everything is sentient, for everything is Śiva. In the process, we shall observe that the stanza under examination is a part in the argumentative strategy which presides, in this system of thought as much as in others, over a polemic construction of the doctrine. Its author has no other purpose than to ruin, here through derision, the posture of the adversary par excellence, who is the exponent of dualist theses. We shall examine such doctrinal interactions.
Yet this only constitutes a first level of meaning. The self-exegesis of the Locana, in which Abhinavagupta comments at length on his stanza belonging to the aprastutapraśaṃsā category, reveals, beyond the explicit meaning, a suggested meaning which, albeit unexpected, is not less philosophical than the first one.
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