Kashmir Shaivism · Glossary of terms · Scriptures of Trika · Site search · Tantrāloka at the source
“The Light of the Tantras” by Abhinavagupta (c. 950–1020) is a compendium of the entire teaching of Trika and the most extensive work of the tradition: 37 chapters, 5,849 stanzas, more than half of the entire collection of scriptures by volume.
This is a local copy — so that a stanza can be found by any word and referenced by its number. The first 16 chapters (3,988 stanzas) are laid out here in full: Devanagari, transliteration, and Russian translation with each stanza. The rest are in transliteration only.
The translation and the entire Sanskrit apparatus belong to Gabriel Pradīpaka and have been transferred from his website without changes: not a single line of the translation here has been done by us. In Russian, he has chapters 1–16 ready, and the work continues — chapters 17–37 are so far readable only in English, and from each of them there is a link there.
Searches through all 5,849 stanzas and the translation of the first 16 chapters; a hit leads directly to the stanza or its translation, not to the beginning of the chapter. You can search in Russian, in transliteration, and in Devanagari. Neither diacritics nor script matter: "srngara" will find śṛṅgāra, "matrka" — mātṛkā, and "шактипата" — śaktipāta. Several words — paragraphs containing all of them will be found. The same is also done by site search, along with everything else.
| № | Chapter | Verses | What’s here | At the source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Vijñānabhit | 332 | Devanagari, IAST, Russian | Russian |
| 2 | Gatopāyaḥ | 50 | Devanagari, IAST, Russian | Russian |
| 3 | Paropāyaḥ | 294 | Devanagari, IAST, Russian | Russian |
| 4 | Śāktopāyaḥ | 279 | Devanagari, IAST, Russian | Russian |
| 5 | Naropāyaḥ | 159 | Devanagari, IAST, Russian | Russian |
| 6 | Kālopāyaḥ | 252 | Devanagari, IAST, Russian | Russian |
| 7 | Cakrodayaḥ | 71 | Devanagari, IAST, Russian | Russian |
| 8 | Deśādhvā | 452 | Devanagari, IAST, Russian | Russian |
| 9 | Tattvādhvā | 314 | Devanagari, IAST, Russian | Russian |
| 10 | Tattvabhedanam | 309 | Devanagari, IAST, Russian | Russian |
| 11 | Kalādyadhvā | 118 | Devanagari, IAST, Russian | Russian |
| 12 | Adhvopayogaḥ | 25 | Devanagari, IAST, Russian | Russian |
| 13 | Śaktipātatirohitī | 361 | Devanagari, IAST, Russian | Russian |
| 14 | Dīkṣopakramaṇam | 46 | Devanagari, IAST, Russian | Russian |
| 15 | Dīkṣā sāmayī | 615 | Devanagari, IAST, Russian | Russian |
| 16 | Pautrikavidhiḥ | 311 | Devanagari, IAST, Russian | Russian |
| 17 | Prameyaprakriyā | 122 | IAST | English |
| 18 | Sūkṣmā dīkṣā | 11 | IAST | English |
| 19 | Sadyaḥsamutkrama | 56 | IAST | English |
| 20 | Tulādīkṣā | 15 | IAST | English |
| 21 | Pārokṣī | 61 | IAST | English |
| 22 | Liṅgoddhāraḥ | 48 | IAST | English |
| 23 | Abhiṣecanam | 103 | IAST | English |
| 24 | Antyeṣṭiḥ | 24 | IAST | English |
| 25 | Śrāddhakḷptiḥ | 29 | IAST | English |
| 26 | Śeṣavṛttinirūpaṇam | 76 | IAST | English |
| 27 | Liṅgārcā | 59 | IAST | English |
| 28 | Bahubhitparvapavitrādi nimittajam | 434 | IAST | English |
| 29 | Rahasyacaryā | 291 | IAST | English |
| 30 | Mantraughaḥ | 123 | IAST | English |
| 31 | Maṇḍalam | 163 | IAST | English |
| 32 | Mudrikāvidhiḥ | 67 | IAST | English |
| 33 | Ekīkāraḥ | 32 | IAST | English |
| 34 | Svasvarūpe praveśaḥ | 3 | IAST | English |
| 35 | Śāstramelanam | 44 | IAST | English |
| 36 | Āyātikathanam | 15 | IAST | English |
| 37 | Śāstropādeyatvanirūpaṇam | 85 | IAST | English |
In chapters 1–16, each stanza is accompanied by Devanagari, beneath it the same stanza in IAST transliteration, and following that — a translation. In the translation, the Sanskrit word is placed as a subscript above its Russian equivalent, rather than in parentheses within the line: a parenthesis after every second word tore the sentence apart. The parentheses, however, have not disappeared — they remain visible when copying and in search.
The word that has an article in the glossary of terms — is a link there; from the glossary, links lead back, directly to the paragraphs where the term is discussed most thoroughly. The explanations in the glossary are written for this site: the translation here is someone else’s, but the explanations are our own, and they are not presented as translation.
The translation is not placed at every stanza, but at a group: however many stanzas the source has combined into one paragraph, to that many his translation applies. Most often a group contains a single stanza, and then the number of the translation coincides with the number of the stanza above it; for a group, the number is shown as a range — “1.116–121”.
The transliteration is taken from the collection Trika_Scriptures_IAST_transliteration — it
is based on the “IAST only” versions of the site
sanskrit-trikashaivism.com
and contains only Sanskrit. Devanagari and the Russian translation have been transferred from the pages
of the same site without changes; their author is Gabriel Pradīpaka. What is and is not in the collection in Russian — see the page “Writings of Trika”.
One correction has been made to the Sanskrit, and it is of the kind visible only upon collation: in the 15th chapter, the 444th stanza is labeled “441” in the source, although the 441st stands two groups above. The number is taken by position. Everything else matched the collection sign for sign—1403 groups out of 1405, and the remaining two differ in that in the collection, the introductory line of the 3rd and 16th chapters is attached to the first stanza; here it is separated.
The pages are collected tools/trika/build-ta.py and are edited not by hand, but by it.