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BOOK REVIEWS
215
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objects in their "intrinsic significance" as
opaque symbolsthat stand for everythingand
anything.
The lack of philosophicalsophisticationand
precision is evident in much of the authors'
explications. On page 48 we read: "The
sthdyibhdva[basicfeeling state] that Abhinava
speaksof is the same as vasand, an important
word in his philosophy.It means the same as
samskdra, latent impressions that we carry
with us from birth to birth. In a sense it corresponds to the Freudian unconscious. The
sthdyibhdvawould correspondto the conscious,
for the va7sandis aroused,awakened, and we
then call it a sthdyibhdva."One is convinced
that the effort required to unravel Abhinavaguptais philosophicallywell worth it. One is
also convincedthat the similar effort it often
takes to make sense out of a number of the
authors' explications of Abhinava is by no
meansworthit.
The most interestingphilosophicalproblem
raisedby Massonand Patwardhenconcernsthe
relationshipthat obtains between spiritualexperienceand aestheticexperience,as the latter
is set forth by Abhinava. The authors point
out, for example, that both experiencesare
that they both overalaukila,"extraordinary":
cometemporaland spatialdistinctions,and that
for both specialpreparationis required.In all,
thirteenpoints of similarityare noted. Differences between the two types of experienceare
also recognized,and in point three the authors
state: "The drama is not expected (at least
Abhinava never says anything about this) to
changeone'slife radically.To have a profound
aesthetic experience is simply satisfying and
does not imply that one will be in any sense
profoundlyaltered. One cannot say the same
for mystic experience"(p. I63). But the whole
import of Sdntarasa,it would seem, as conceived by Abhinava is preciselythe bringing
aboutof a profoundalterationof one'sordinary
time-bound,desire-riddenbeing. "The ego is
transcended,"Masson and Patwardhenwrite,
"and for the durationof the aestheticexperience, the normalwaking 'I' is suspended.Once
this actually happens, we suddenly find that
our responsesare not like anything we have
hithertoexperienced,for now that all normal
emotionsare gone . . . we find ourselvesin an
unprecedentedstate of mental and emotional
Universityof Hawaii
The Royal Song of Saraha: A Study in the
Historyof BuddhistThought. TRANSLATED
V. GUENSeattle: University of Washington
Press, 1969. Vii, pp. Index. $7.95.
It is fortunate that there are no anti-monopoly laws in Oriental studies; Guenther has
written over the past two decades about all
that could possibly be written for a learned,
sympathetic, initiate or non-initiate audience
of English readers about Tibetan Tantric Buddhism. There is no one to match the quality
and the quantity of his output in this field in
the western world. Guenther has produced a
beautiful book. Saraha, a low-caste Vajrayana
Buddhist mystic (the dust jacket places him,
not too helpfully for the historian, but significantly, we suppose, for the mystic, "between
A.D. ioo and iooo") of the early Bengali
middle ages is known to all students of Buddhist Tantrism, and some of his extant writings
have been translated into French by the late
M. Shahidullah, and into Hindi by the late
Rahula Samkrtyayana. Neither of their translations have what Guenther would think of as
the true insight into the sophisticated complexities of Vajrayafia thought.
This reviewer is particularly happy about
the fact that Professor Guenther has finally
heeded the critique of many a critic, including
this reviewer's gentle rebuke in previous reviews. The English terms, by which Guenther
translated Tibetan and Indian terms, culled
from ordinary language, philosophy, existentialism, and depth psychology, are still there.