In S. Parampurushdas and S. Shrutiprakashdas’ Catalogue of Pañcarātra Saṃhitā
(2002), 460 Pāñcarātra titles are named, of which 313 are of texts which are listed or mentioned in the Saṃhitās, but of which there is otherwise no record. According to this catalogue, there are 147 extant Pāñcarātra works, of which 112 remain unpublished. Many of these are incomplete, and some exist only in fragmentary form.
Of the 35 published Saṃhitās listed, the Agastyasaṃhitā is certainly not a Pāñcarātra text, as Smith (1975: 3-4) has already correctly pointed out, though it has been wrongly identified as one in the colophons of some of its South Indian manuscripts.
Subsequent to the publication of this catalogue, the Prakāśasaṃhitā has been made available online by members of the now defunct Sansknet project, meaning that there 24
are at present 35 Pāñcarātra scriptural works published or otherwise readily accessible. For the following study I have consulted 21 of these, three of which, namely the late and thoroughly unrepresentative Jñānāmṛtasārasaṃhita (also known as the Nārada Pāṇcarātra), the Kāśyapasaṃhitā, and the aforementioned Prakāśasaṃhitā, I do not refer to again. In addition, I have made use of the two published commentaries on Pāñcarātra works, both written by the same author, the 19th century Śrīvaiṣṇava scholar Alaśiṅgabhaṭṭa. These are the commentary on the Sātvatasaṃhitā * called the Sātvatatantrabhāṣya, and the commentary on the Īśvarasaṃhitā called the * Sātvatārthaprakāśikā.
The study of the Pāñcarātra literature is still in its infancy, and several of the works which I have used for this thesis have received almost no prior scholarly attention. Those working on this large textual corpus are still mapping its territory, and this process will continue for some time. As I have mentioned above, most scholarship on the Pāñcarātra to date has paid little or no attention to its internal divisions, and thus to the particular religious identities of the authors of the available works. The study of Pāñcarātrika identities must, of course, be a comparative project.
We cannot hope to learn much about the authors or the audience of a particular text by treating that text in isolation. Its methods of classification and its engagement with other texts, the ways in which it locates itself within a tradition, must be compared with the ways in which other texts address these same issues. This way we can form an overall picture, and notice recurrent themes and interesting irregularities. For this reason, it has seemed to me a necessity from the outset that this study must involve as many Pāñcarātra texts as I could reasonably hope to read within the allotted time.
Forming an overview of the distinct Pāñcarātra traditions within which the scriptural works were composed and classified seems a more important task at this still relatively early stage in Pāñcarātra studies than undertaking to produce a critical edition of a single Pāñcarātra text. As Colas (2005) has argued, albeit with reference to Vaikhānasa works, unless a body of literature has been thoroughly mapped already, a critical edition is reliant upon there being other critical editions of other works in the same corpus. The unsatisfactory state of the current editions of two of the most important Pāñcarātra works, namely the Jayākhyasaṃhitā and the Pauṣkarasaṃhitā, suggests that there is much work to be done before a critical edition of a 25
representative Pāñcarātra scripture can be fruitfully undertaken.26 Although I would be hesitant to classify the Pāñcarātra scriptures simply as “ritual manuals”, in the manner that Colas (ibid.) describes the Vaikhānasa texts, I nonetheless share his doubts on the pressing need for an “optimal reading”, based on the study of several manuscripts, of one particular text of this sort. Like the Vaikhānasa works addressed by Colas, the Pāñcarātra scriptures are not literary works whose original form has been for the most part preserved. Rather, they are texts with multiple authors, one of the main purposes of which, as stated above, was to serve as a handbook for the preceptor officiating rituals. For these reasons, and for those related to time, I have not consulted manuscripts for this study.
PART ONE****