English Trans. of Paramarthasaram?

Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian ramakris at EROLS.COM
Mon Mar 20 22:11:31 CST 2000


Greg wrote:

<<<Has anyone seen an English translation of _Paramarthasaram_?  It is
referred to in my teacher's teacher's book called "ATMA NIRVRITI:
Freedom
and Felicity in the Self" as "an ancient authoritative work on Vedatna
Philosophy. >>>

Hello Greg,

paramArtha-sAra is a work attributed to one bhagavAn sheshha. There is
a translation by the great Prof S.S.Suryanarayana Sastri. But, I
haven't been able to trace it in any of the major libraries. I have a
paper of his on Paramarthasara. You can find it in the "Collected
Papers of S.S.Suryanarayana Sastri," edited by Prof T.M.P. Mahadevan.
This work is referred to by Srimad vidyAraNya in his jIvamuktiviveka.
It has some useful info. The great abhivanagupta reworked this work to
suit Kashmir Shaivism and gave it the same name. Generally he is held
to be Pre-Sa.nkara, possibly from a different school to which
Sha.nkara belonged. There are some editions with Sanskrit verses only.
I have this in my reading list, but haven't managed to get around to
it yet.

There's also another translation of paramArthasara available in the NY
Public library. That shouldn't be too hard for you :-). Try

http://catnyp.nypl.org/search/apatanjali/1,5,132,B/frameset&apatanjali
&24,,123

The blurb which the above link brings up also mentions Saivism, while
the book you are looking for is definitely not a Saivite text. I
suspect it might be abhinavaguptas work. Either that or the catologuer
(?) must have been careless.

Rama

--
bhava shankara deshikame sharaNam

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