ï
SrI:
Dear Sriman Krishnaswamy :
Many thanks for your Help .
I am in the middle of comparing the two
VaishNavite
Aagamams and your help in this context is
very
much appreciated .
The scholarship and dedication of this
author
is remarkable indeed
.
NamO SrI NrusimhAya ,
V.Sadagopan
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, September 23, 2007 11:15
AM
Subject: Re: Introduction to
Pancaratra
A German National, Dr. Otto Schroder, was the Director of the Adyar
Library for 11 years (1905-16);
he was incarcerated at Ahmednagar during World-war I and while in prison,
he wrote this excellent
exposition on Pancharatra; it was published by the Library in 1916 thro
the efforts of another German
National and is available on the Web as a PDF document. I copied a
few pages, pasted in a Word
document and enlarged the Font to Ariel Font size 12. It opens our eyes
to the fact that if one has
great scholarly interest in the subject plus dedication and hard effort,
even the prison-walls cannot
prevent us from achieving our objective. It is significant that the
Publisher, without bitterness about
being imprisoned, acknowledged: "
The publication of this book also, âââââ has been greatly
facilitated
by the courtesy of the military censors at Ahmednagar, to whom our sincere
thanks are due."
Below is the extract which I would like to share with Members:
krishnaswamy m k
Extract
from:
copy and paste,
the Font size comes out small, but the size can be increased in MS
Word.)
PREFATORY NOTE
THE book, small in size but rich in contents, which is herewith placed before the public, has been written by a prisoner of war during his captivity at Ahmednagar, though some of the materials on which it is based had, fortunately, been collected by him before the War broke out. Only the Samhita MSS, of the Adyar Library, namely those of nos. 8, 70 and 195 of the synopsis on pp. 6 fil, which were acquired recently, have remained entirely
unknown to Dr. Schrader.
The burden of seeing the work through the press has fallen on the undersigned who, though having
done all in his power to acquit himself honourably of his task, is fully aware of its difficulties and of the inadequacy of his knowledge of Sanskrit to cope with those with complete success. It was impossible under such circumstances to produce an absolutely faultless work; still, a glance at the list of Additions and Corrections will show that the purely typographical
errors found by the Author in the printed sheets are of a
trifling
nature.
Two omissions in the MS., however, have caused a few words of importance to fall out which must be restored at once. These omissions are given in the Errata for p. 16, 1. 12 from bottom, p. 32 1. 6 from bottom, and p. 42 1, 10. The reader should also correct immediately the erratum for p. 24
The Author has undoubtedly doubled the value of his monograph, by adding
to it copious indexes and a detailed synopsis of the contents. Together they render the whole of the subject-matter of the book in all its categories instantaneously
available for reference. Thus the work may preliminarily serve as a concise but encyclopedic reference book on the Pancharatra, until it shall be superseded by subsequent more exhaustive publications. The Numeral Index contains some items not found elsewhere
in the book.
A personal word in conclusion. The publication of this little work coincides with the severance of the connection with the Adyar Library, though for wholly different reasons, of both Dr. Schracler and myself, I may be permitted to express here my great satisfaction at having had the privilege of watching over the booklet on its way through the press, a last service rendered to the Adyar Library in close and pleasant co-operation with Dr. Schrader, which puts a term to a period of over seven years' daily collaboration
with the
same aims, in the same spirit and in complete harmony, for the same object.
May Dr. Schrader's last official work performed for the Library enhance the renown of that Institution, and may it be judged to constitute a fit conclusion to his eleven years' tenure of office as Director of the Adyar Library.
The publication of this book also, as that of the two volumes of the text edition of Ahirbudhnya Samhita, has been greatly facilitated by the courtesy of the military censors
at Ahmednagar, to whom our sincere thanks are due.
ADYAB, JOHAN VAN MANEN,
August 1916. Assistant Librarian, Adyar Library.
Introduction to Paancharatra by F. OTTO SCHRADER, PH.D, DIRECTOR, ADYAR LIBRARY (1916)
It
may be supposed that the
name Paancharatra 1
points to five principal subjects treated in that
system. So it is, indeed, understood in the
apocryphal Naaradiya, which
says that the five kinds
of ratra= "knowledge
" are: tattva, mukti-prada, bhakti-prada, yaugika, and vaiseshika
that is to
say that they
are concerned respectively with (1)
ontology (cosmology), (2) liberation, (3) devotion, (4) Yog
a3
an d (5)
the objects of sense. Though the
five books of
the said Samhita accord, but
very imperfectly with this division, and the
five Ratras of
Mahasanatkumara Samhita
still less, and
though the Naaradiya as a whole
can certainly not be used as
a Paancharatra authority, the above
statement may none the
less rest on good
tradition. In this
case ratra, originally "night ",
would have come
to mean -- how
we do not
know -- both
a cardinal doctrine of a
system as well as the chapter or
work dealing with that
doctrine, that is: it
became synonymous with tantra
and samhita, so that Paancharatra would be
a designation of the
ancient Vaisnavite system in
exactly the same manner as,
according to the twelfth chapter of
Ahirbudhnya Samhita, Shashti Tantra was one of
the Samkhya Yoga. This
explanation, though perhaps at
variance with the chapter just mentioned stating (in
sl. 45-18) that
the Paancharatra consists of
ten cardinal teachings (samhitas) , is
at least not
so fanciful as
" the night=obscuration, of the
five other systems ", or
" the system, cooking=destroying the night=ignorance ", or
the attempts to connect
that name with
the five sacraments (branding, etc.) or
the five daily
observances (abhigamana, etc.) of
the Paancharatras. However, it
seems to us that
the original use of the
name is only
connected with the first
of the ten
topics referred to (Bhagavat), namely the
peculiar God-conception of the
Paancharatras, and
that it can
be discovered in the
Panchatra Sattra spoken of
in S'atapatha Brahmana XIII 6. 1,
which is, moreover, the earliest passage in
which the word
Paancharatra occurs. In
that passage "
Purusa Narayana is
mentioned as having
conceived the idea of a Paficaratra Sattra (continued sacrifice for five days)
as a means
of obtaining superiority over all
beings and becoming all beings
and the preceding chapter (XII 3.
4) narrates in
detail how He,
by sacrificing Himself, actually became the
whole world.
Narayana is thus
connected with, and even
made the author
of, the Purusa
Sukta which, together with the
Sahasrasirsa section of Mahanarayana Upanishad, plays such a prominent part in
the cosmolog ical accounts and Mantra
exegesis of the Pancaratrins. It
appears, then, that the sect
took its name
from its central
dogma which was the Paancharatra Sattra of
Narayana interpreted philosophically as the fivefold self -manifestation of God
by means of His
Para, Vyuha, Vibhava, Antaryamin, and Archa forms. This would well
agree with the statement of Ahirb.
Samh., at the
end of the
eleventh adhyaya, that the
Lord Himself framed out of
the original S'astra "
the system (tantra) called Paancharatra describing His [fivefold] nature
[known] as Para,
Vyuha, Vibhava, etc.", and
"that highest "Will of
Vishnu called Sudars'ana through which He split
into five, appearing five-mouthed."
[...................]
The principal
subjects treated in the Paancharatra:
- Philosophy;
- Linguistic
occultism (mantra-s'dstra) ;
- Theory
of magical figures (ya/ntra-stftst/ra) ;
- Practical
magic (maya-yoga) ;
- Toga;
- Temple-building (mandira-nirmana) ;
- Image-making (pratistha-vidhi) ;
- Domestic
observances (samskara, ahnika) ;
- Social
rules (varnashrama-dharma,) ;
- Public
festivals
(utsava).
______________________________________
1 For the
transition, the meaning
of
"Thousand and one lights
=as many stories",
may perhaps be compared.
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Oppiliappan Koil Varadachari Sadagopan
http://www.sadagopan.org
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