परमार्थसार (महामाहेश्वर अभिनवगुप्त - त्रिक-दर्शन, अद्वैत शैव साधना एवं सान्वय सटीक)

4 Paramārthasāra of Abhinavagupta has been occupying such position simply because of its being available with Hindi and English commentaries and also because of the non-availability of any good and suitable textbook with translation and notes in any of these two languages. Patañjali, mentioning himself as Gonardīya, belonged to the Gonda district in U.P. Since he and his associates were a group of touring scholars, as is evident from Caraka-saṃhitā, they were called Carakas or ever travelling scholars. They travelled far and wide from place to place with their leader Punarvasu Ātreya from institute to institute and belonged thus to the whole of India. Atrigupta, the ancient ancestor of Abhinavagupta, was an inhabitant of the land between Gaṅgā and Yamunā. He was invited to Kashmir by king Lalitāditya who provided a land grant and a suitable residential house to him at Pravarasenapura, the modern city of Srinagar, near the Śitāṃśumauli temple on the bank of Vitastā (Jehlum). The location of that temple is yet to be ascertained. It may become possible to ascertain it if and when certain Persian works, dealing with the history of Kashmir during the period of its quick Muslimization under the rule of Sikandar Butshikan in the fifteenth century, comes to light. Some old Pandits of Srinagar, who were alive upto the past decade, believed that Abhinavagupta lived at his ancestral home at Gotapora (Guptapura) in the northern outskirts of the old city near the new colony named Lal Bazar. Places like Guptagaṅgā and Gopītīrtha (Guptatīrtha) on the eastern bank of the Dal lake can have had some close connection with Abhinavagupta. Amṛta- vāgbhava, a great modern scholar, a successful practitioner of the Śāmbhava-yoga of the Trika system and the originator of a kind of Neo Śaivism in this age, came across a Kashmiri Brah- min under the surname ‘Gopya’ at Srinagar in the late twenties of this century. Besides, he felt the existence of some yogins belonging to the line of Abhinavagupta, living at present in divine forms and moving about on the tracts of land near Bahrār on the north western side of Nagin lake towards the north of Hārī- parbat hill. Atriguptā settled at Srinagar in the eighth century AD and Abhinavagupta lived in his human form in the later part of the tenth and the earlier part of the eleventh century. He has recorded the time of composition in three of his works, namely—Kramas- totra, Bhairavastotra and Īśvarapratyabhijñā-vivṛti-vimarśinī and the