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Trika Scriptures: What Is and What Is Not

A collection of twenty scriptures of non-dual Kashmiri Shaivism in IAST transliteration is Sanskrit only: no translation, no commentary, no Devanagari. It is taken from the “IAST only” versions of the site sanskrit-trikashaivism.com by Gabriel Pradīpaka, and the first line of each file contains a link to the English page of the same scripture.

This page answers one question: what of this is already available in Russian, and what is not. The answer determines what makes sense to translate, and what is enough to refer to.

How this was verified

Not by the icon. On the English page of each scripture there is a Russian flag, and it stands by all twenty — it only means that the Russian node has been set up, not that there is a Russian text there. Parātrīśikāvivaraṇa proved this: the pages under /ru/ exist, but the body is entirely English.

Therefore, they looked at what stood under the stanzas: a translation or the note “Not yet translated.” For a translated page, the Cyrillic text under the stanzas runs to tens of thousands of characters; for an untranslated one, it runs to hundreds. All subpages were covered, including the fifty-six pages of the Tantrāloka.

One Cyrillic alphabet alone is not enough for this, and the “Tantrāloka” demonstrated it. The mark “Not yet translated” is itself typed in Russian and stands under every stanza, so that a long untranslated chapter accumulates more Cyrillic than a short translated one: three pages of the 28th chapter, with a hundred and fifty stanzas in each, first passed for translated, although there is not a single line of translation in them. The reverse case is the 29th chapter: there are no marks, but under the stanzas there is English.

The same question should have been asked of the English side, but it was not, and the Śivastotrāvalī demonstrated this. The English pages have their own mark — “Untranslated,” a single word instead of a translation — and it stands under 444 stanzas out of 450. The Sanskrit in the collected file does not diminish because of this, so by volume the scripture appeared ready for translation, yet there was nothing to translate in it. This was verified when transferring on 26 August 2026.

Collection

Volume — characters in the collection file, i.e. Sanskrit, without translation or commentary.

Scripture Signs In the collection In Russian at the source
Tantrāloka 594 094 complete — posted here, with translation of chapters 1–16 partially — chapters 1–16, that is 31 pages out of 56; 17–37 missing
Paramārthasāra 130 043 complete available
Mālinīvijayottaratantra 129 297 complete no
Parātrīśikāvivaraṇa 114 093 incomplete notranslated by ourselves
Tantrasāra 100 181 complete available — in full, all 22 chapters; moved here
Spandanirṇaya 82 448 complete available
Śivasūtravimarśinī 71 289 complete available
Śivastotrāvalī 49 857 complete no, and almost no English — translated by ourselves, directly from Sanskrit
Śivastotrāvalīvivṛti 45 193 incomplete no, and almost no English
Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā-s 19 125 complete available
Vijñānabhairava 16 221 complete available
Ṣaṭtriṁśattattvasandoha 9 025 complete available
Spandakārikā-s 5 461 complete available
Parāprāveśikā 5 008 complete available
Śivasūtra-s 2 868 complete available
Bodhapañcadaśikā 1 648 complete available
Pratyabhijñāhṛdayam 1 322 complete, 20 sūtras available
Pratyabhijñāhṛdayam — commentary empty no, and there was no English in Russian — translated by ourselves
Parātrīśikālaghuvṛtti empty no, and no English
Śivadṛṣṭi empty only the introduction

In total, about 1.4 million characters of Sanskrit. The last three lines are placeholders: the file contains not a single character of text, and the source of these scriptures has not been posted either.

Briefly about each

Foundation

Śivasūtra-s — seventy-seven aphorisms with which the entire tradition begins. According to tradition, they were revealed to Vasugupta (9th century) on a rock by Lake Harvan; upon them rest all later commentaries.

Śivasūtravimarśinī — Kṣemarāja’s commentary on the Śiva-sūtras, the most widely read of the three surviving ones. Kṣemarāja is a disciple of Abhinavagupta and his best popularizer: where the teacher writes for the initiated, the disciple explains.

Spandakārikā-s — “Strophes on Vibration.” The teaching on spanda: Reality does not rest, but pulsates, and this beating is present both in the world and in the consciousness of the reader. Authorship is disputed — Vasugupta and his disciple Kallata are named.

Spandanirṇaya — an analysis of the Spanda-kārikās, again by Kṣemarāja.

Pratyabhijñā — «recognition»

Śivadṛṣṭi by Somānanda (9th–10th centuries) — with it begins the school of Pratyabhijñā. In the collection it is absent, and at the source it is not found: only an introduction.

Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā-s — Utpaladeva, a disciple of Somānanda. The main philosophical text of the tradition: liberation is not the acquisition of something new, but recognition of oneself as Śiva, just as one recognizes a long-familiar face.

Pratyabhijñāhṛdayam — “The Heart of Recognition,” twenty sutras by Kṣemarāja. The shortest and most accessible exposition of the entire system; it is usually recommended as the starting point.

Parāprāveśikā — another brief introduction by Kṣemarāja, quite small.

Abhinavagupta

Tantrāloka — “The Light of the Tantras,” thirty-seven chapters. A compendium of the entire teaching of Trika and the most extensive work of Abhinavagupta (c. 950–1020): more than half of the entire collection by volume. The Sanskrit from the collection is posted here in full — 5849 verses with search across them. For chapters 1–16, the verses are accompanied by Devanagari and a Russian translation by Gabriel Pradīpaka, carried over from the same source; chapters 17–37 have not yet been posted in Russian by him, and each has a link to an English page.

Tantrasāra — “The Essence of the Tantras”: Abhinavagupta himself condensed the “Tantrāloka” into twenty-two chapters in prose. The same material, but more manageable. The Russian translation by Gabriel Pradīpaka is complete, and it has been transferred here in full — for the sake of search: the text left at the link does not enter the site index.

Parātrīśikāvivaraṇa — an explanation of the “Parātriśikā,” the final part of the “Rudrayāmala.” It is considered the most difficult text of the tradition. Translated into Russian for this site — the source has no Russian version of it.

Paramārthasāra — «The Essence of the Highest Truth», one hundred and five verses. Abhinavagupta reworked an earlier Vaiṣṇava text into an exposition of Trika.

Bodhapañcadaśikā — fifteen verses on awakening; attributed to him as well.

Parātrīśikālaghuvṛtti — a brief commentary on the same “Parātriśikā”. In the collection it is empty, not uploaded at the source.

Tantras and Hymns

Mālinīvijayottaratantra — that very tantra which Abhinavagupta in the Tantrāloka calls his chief foundation. In Russian it is nowhere to be found.

Vijñānabhairava — one hundred and twelve ways to enter into one’s own nature, set forth as the answers of Bhairava to the Goddess. The most practical text of the collection and the most famous beyond the tradition.

Śivastotrāvalī — hymns of Utpaladeva. Not a treatise, but verse: direct speech to Śiva, without scholasticism. After hundreds of pages of commentary, it reads like a breath of fresh air. The Sanskrit of all twenty hymns has been transferred here and translated in full — all 450 stanzas. The source’s English exposition covers only the introduction and the first six stanzas; the remaining 444 are translated directly from the Sanskrit, and the pages indicate whose work is where.

Śivastotrāvalīvivṛti — Kṣemarāja’s commentary on these hymns. The source has posted one introduction.

Ṣaṭtriṁśattattvasandoha — a brief exposition of the thirty-six tattvas, that is, the map of the levels of Reality from Śiva to the earth.

What we translate from this

Gabriel Pradīpaka already has twelve of the twenty scriptures in Russian, and there is no need to translate them anew — the links in the table lead directly there. One of them, Tantrasāra, has been moved here in full: not for the sake of translation, which was not required there, but for the sake of search. Added to it is a glossary of terms — shared with the glossary of the “Tantrāloka,” because the book is the same, condensed.

There are four places where there was something to grab hold of. Three of them are closed — and closed in different ways:

  1. Parātrīśikāvivaraṇadone, all fourteen parts;
  2. Śivastotrāvalīdone, all twenty hymns. It had to be translated differently from everything else: under 444 of the 450 stanzas the source has “Untranslated,” there is nothing to rely on, and the translation was made directly from Sanskrit;
  3. commentary to Pratyabhijñāhṛdayamdone, all twenty aphorisms. In Russian, twenty sūtras were posted without analysis, that is, a frame without a picture; Kṣemarāja’s analysis is available from the source only in English, and its 115 thousand characters are translated here. The sūtras themselves were taken ready-made from Gabriel Pradīpaka: the same sūtra should not sound on the site in two readings. To the analysis, a glossary of terms has been added — its own, not shared with the “Tantrāloka”: the book is different and its words are its own;
  4. Mālinīvijayottaratantra — the largest of the missing ones; it should be undertaken last.

One should not undertake “Tantrāloka”: Gabriel is translating it into Russian himself and continues — chapters 1–16 are done, that is, 31 pages out of 56. This work is better to wait for rather than duplicate. What we have from it — the Sanskrit from the collection and his own ready translation of the first sixteen chapters, transferred for the sake of search.

For “Śivastotrāvalī-vivṛtti”, “Parātriśikā-laghuvṛtti”, and “Śivadṛṣṭi” there is nothing to take up: there is no Russian, but also no English — the source has only the introductions posted. The collection, meanwhile, contains Sanskrit, and for the vivṛtti there is a fair amount of it; without an exposition to rely on, this is work of a different order.


Information about the availability of the Russian translation was verified by traversing the source pages in August 2026; the “Tantrāloka” was re-checked on August 25, 2026, using the script tools/trika/ta-ru-scan.py. The source itself is sanskrit-trikashaivism.com, where all translations and the Sanskrit apparatus belong to Gabriel Pradīpaka.