Some hitherto unknown fragments of Utpaladeva’s Vivṛti (I): on the Buddhist controversy over the existence of other conscious streams

International audienceThe fields of indology and Indian philosophy owe to Raffaele Torella one of the most exciting manuscript discoveries made in the last decades, namely, that of the only extensive fragment thus far known of Utpaladeva’s own Vivṛti on his Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā. Thanks to the edition of this very incomplete codex unicus (it only covers 13 verses out of 190), we are now able to compare this known part of Utpaladeva’s lost text with the numerous annotations written in the margins of the manuscripts of Abhinavagupta’s commentaries on the Pratyabhijñā treatise. This comparison shows that some of these marginalia are quotations – and in a number of cases, rather lengthy ones – of Utpaladeva’s Vivṛti. The article, which presents the first results of an ongoing study of the marginal annotations found in manuscripts of Abhinavagupta’s Pratyabhijñā commentaries, offers an edition and annotated translation of a hitherto unknown passage of the Vivṛti on kārikās 1.5.4 and 1.5.5. The fragment bears on the Buddhist controversy between Vijñānavādins and Sautrāntikas over the existence of other conscious streams (santānāntara) and on the possibility of intersubjectivity if, as the Vijñānavādins claim, nothing exists outside consciousness