Abhinavagupta's Philosophical Hermeneutics of Grammatical Persons

Abstract

In Kashmiri, monistic and tantric Śaiva traditions, the adept pursues the realisation of perfect I-hood (pūrṇāhaṃtā), consisting of identity with the God Śiva, who possesses the Goddess Śakti as his consort and world-constituting power. In earlier publications, the author examined how Abhinavagupta (c. 950–1020), in his philosophical hermeneutics of these traditions, interpreted the Self's/Śiva's universal agency with a theory (developing earlier Sanskrit grammar) of verb–noun syntax. This paper examines how Abhinavagupta reinforces and complements that theory with an interpretation of the semantic and dialogical aspects of the grammatical persons. In Abhinavagupta's scheme, the divinised and empowered tantric Self as the enunciator of discourse (English, ‘first person’) contemplatively absorbs within itself the discursive audience (‘second person’) and objects (‘third person’). The paper also compares features of Abhinavagupta's hermeneutics of the grammatical persons with contemporary linguistic and semiotic theories.