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Publication of Dhyānaratnāvali of Trilocanaśivācārya, Edited by R. Sathyanarayanan and S. A. S. Sarma (EFEO)
03 MARCH 14
Publication of Dhyānaratnāvali of Trilocanaśivācārya, Edited by R. Sathyanarayanan and S. A. S. Sarma, SSSRI Series No. 004, Srimath Srikanta Sivacharya Research Institute, Karaikkal, 2013, xxxvi; 101 p. The Dhyānaratnāvali of Trilocanaśivācārya is an unpublished Śaiva [liturgical] stotra, a hymn that provides the prescriptions for the visualisations required in worship. As in other Indian traditions, in the Śaiva system prayer involves the visualisation of the divinity often upon a throne along with a retinue. The Dhyānaratnāvali edited in this volume prescribes the visualisations used in the daily prayer of an initiate into the Śaiva Siddhānta school as formulated by the Śaiva theologian Trilocanaśivācārya.
Dhyānaratnāvalī, of about 202 verses, most of them in anuṣṭubh metre, contains a detailed prescription of the worship of Sadāśiva with his five retinues. This stotra does not treat the execution of external ritual at all; what it does is to present all that is done with the mind in the course of the daily obligatory worship of Sadāśiva and his retinue (yāga) by an initiate to the Śaiva siddhānta. It takes the form of instructions for mental worship (dhyāna or, in modern parlance, dhyānaśloka) formulated as expressions of praise. At high-points it is ornamented with doctrinal statements that are similarly formulated. What we have then are the visualisations of all the divinities of the worship given in the order required in obligatory daily worship (nityapūjā), beginning with the worship of Śiva as sun, the veneration of the deities on the doorway and of Brahmā as protector of the site (vāstupa), the visualisation of the throne worship, and finally of Sadāśiva enthroned and encircled by the five circuits (āvaraṇa).


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