John Nemec examines the beginnings of the non-dual tantric philosophy of the famed Pratyabhijña or "Recognition [of God]" university of tenth-century Kashmir, the culture so much heavily linked to Kashmiri Shaivism. In doing so it deals, for the first actual time, a serious version and annotated translation of a big component to the 1st Pratyabhijña textual content ever composed, the Sivadrsti of Somananda. In a longer creation, Nemec argues that the writer provides a distinct type of non-dualism, a strict pantheism that publicizes all beings and entities present in the universe to be absolutely exact with the lively and willful god Siva. This view stands unlike the philosophically extra versatile panentheism of either his disciple and commentator, Utpaladeva, and the only a few different Saiva tantric works that have been extant within the author's day. Nemec additionally argues that the textual content was once written for the author's fellow tantric initiates, no longer for a much wider viewers. this is often adduced from the constitution of the paintings, the rivals the writer addresses, and numerous different editorial concepts. Even the author's well-known and vociferous arguments opposed to the non-tantric Hindu grammarians should be proven to were eventually directed at an opposing Hindu tantric tuition that subscribed to a number of the grammarians' philosophical perspectives. incorporated within the quantity is a serious variation and annotated translation of the 1st 3 (of seven) chapters of the textual content, in addition to the corresponding chapters of the statement. those are the chapters within which Somananda formulates his arguments opposed to opposing tantric authors and faculties of notion. not one of the fabrics made on hand within the current quantity has ever been translated into English, except a short rendering of the 1st bankruptcy that was once released with out the observation in 1957. not one of the remark has formerly been translated into any language at all.