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Essay name: Svacchandatantra (history and structure)

Author: William James Arraj

The essay represents a study and partial English translation of the Svacchandatantra and its commentary, “Uddyota�, by Kshemaraja. The text, attributed to the deity Svacchanda-bhairava, has various names and demonstrates a complex history of transmission through diverse manuscript traditions in North India, Nepal, and beyond.

Page 70 of: Svacchandatantra (history and structure)

Page:

70 (of 511)


External source: Shodhganga (Repository of Indian theses)


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Warning! Page nr. 70 has not been proofread.

64
easily and overtly signal compositional layers. 1 In contrast to these
surface indicators, signs of differences in content may lie more
recessed in the structure of the text. Their loss of transparency
increases with the patina of familarity which covers over once
glaring contrasts, now accepted as normative in later transmission.
And successive redactors promote this habituation by their
techniques of editorial integration.
The dialogue frame was used as the basic tool for this
integration. Even where the nature and scope of the added
material limits successful incorporation, and relegates it to an
appendix or separate book, the frame furnishes a nominal
transition. 2 Similarly, when redactors interpolated material, they
often added a dialogue verse as a transition. 3 When they embedded
a segment in a larger topic, a dialogue verse often signals the
return to the main subject through a Wiederaufnahme or
resumptive repetition. 4 Of course, since the first compilers used
not a logical construction but the dialogue frame as their principal
compositional structure, corroborating evidence, which indicates
that the content likely derives from different milieus or traditions,
must reinforce any supposition of interpolation.
p. 95ff.
1 V., for example, the metrically distinct section of bk 13,
2 V., for example, the opening dialogue of bk.14, p. 109, which
nominally links the gestures (mudrÄá¸�) not described elsewhere, to
the rest of the text: "mudrÄṇÄm laká¹£aṇam vaká¹£ye asmimstantre
yathästhitam. "
3 V., for example, bk.4, p.256, where dialogue introduces an
abbreviated initation procedure, which belongs, as Ká¹£emarÄjaá¸�
notes, with related procedures in the following book.
4 Thus, for example, in bk.6, after a digression on the nature
of the Praṇava� that begins (p. 123) with the words,
“pañcapraṇavasamyoga�, "the main discussion recontinues (p.144)
with the Wiederaufnahme, "pañcapraṇavasamyuktam.
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