2010 Pondicherry publications 4

[Dominic Goodall]

Sūkṣmāgama
Volume I 
Chapters 1 to 13

Critical edition S. Sambandhaśivācārya and T. Ganesan, Collection Indologie n°114, IFP/EFEO, 2010, xlix, 203 p.
 Language: Sanskrit. 650 Rs (28 €). 
ISBN(IFP) : 978-81-8470-181-4. 
ISBN (EFEO): 978-285539-105-2.

The Sūkṣmāgama is a hitherto unpublished and important Śaivāgama dealing with many Saiva rituals as they are performed in temples. It is held to be one of the twenty-eight fundamental scriptures of the Śaivasiddhānta.
The present volume furnishes a critical edition of the first thirteen chapters, out of a total of about a hundred. The edition is based on the collation of eight paper manuscripts and is prefaced by an introduction (both in English and in Sanskrit) that gives a detailed summary of the edited text. The reader will find here treatment of many rites, such as the puṇyāhavacana (a rite rarely described at length in other scriptures), the preparation of the pañcagavya, rites for the worship of Siva in temples, the fire worship, and finally a very detailed description of the grand temple festival.

Keywords: Śaiva, Śaivasiddhānta, āgama, ritual

About the editors:

S. Sambandhaśivācārya has been working in the French Institute of Pondicherry since 1969 in the project of critically editing the Śaivāgama-s. Coming from a family of temple priests, well versed in the domain of temple rituals and with a long experience in reading various ancient scripts he has rendered great help in the first critical editions of āgama-s such as the Mataṅgapārameśvara, Sārdhatriśatikālottara, Rauravottara, Ajita and Dīptāgama.
T. Ganesan has been working as a Senior Researcher in the French Institute of Pondicherry since 1985. His current research project A Comprehensive History of Śaivasiddhānta in Tamilnadu involves the work of surveying the contents of the entire gamut of Śaivasiddhānta literature (Sanskrit and Tamil). The first critical edition of the ancient Śaiva text, Varuṇapaddhati along with the unpublished commentary of Nigamajñāna II is one of his main research publications concerning the Śaiva ritual system.