Nityananda Institute has just obtained the rights to publish in North America and Europe a work by the pre-eminent Kashmir Shaiva philosopher, Abhinavagupta. The text is entitled Abhinavagupta’s Commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, and is known in Sanskrit as the Gitartha Samgraha. As the title indicates, the book is a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, one of the world’s most well-known spiritual texts. The Gita is part of the great Hindu epic, the Mahabarata.
Abhinavagupta lived in Kashmir in northern India at the end of the 10th century and beginning of the 11th century. He was a great scholar and prolific writer, as well as a highly accomplished yogi. In addition to his work on philosophy and spirituality, he wrote on dramaturgy, poetics, rhetoric and aesthetics. To date, however, few of his works have been made available in English.
The Gitartha-Samgraha grew out of Abhinavagupta’s desire to elucidate the secret or esoteric meaning of the Gita. The commentary relates to the Kashmiri recension of the Gita, which in places differs from the popular versions. Abhinavagupta’s work presents the Gita in an entirely different light from prior commentators.
The translation from Sanskrit was done by Boris Marjanovic and was published in India by Indica Books in 2002. The 368 page text includes a preface by Pandit Hemendrenath Chakravarti, a foreword by Professor Bettina Baumer, and an introduction by Marjanovic that explains the main principles of Shaiva philosophy.
The book will be published under the auspices of
Rudra Press, the publishing division of Nityananda Institute. Rudra Press publishes
books by teachers in the spiritual lineage of Nityananda Institute: Bhagavan
Nityananda, Swami Rudrananda (Rudi), and Swami Chetanananda, the current spiritual
director, as well as texts relating to Kashmir Shaivism and hatha yoga.
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Nityananda Institute contact info: phone: 503.231.0383 PO Box 13310, Portland, OR 97213-0310, USA e-mail: mailto:ni@rudrananda.org