– Balajinnātha Paṇḍita
Several great persons under the name Nāgārjuna have appeared in India. The most prominent one among them is the famous teacher and great author of the Mādhyamika school of Buddhism. He belonged to the South and lived somewhere near the present Nāgārjuna koṇḍa, though Kalhaṇa mentions him as a Bodhisattva residing at the modern Harvan, a place situated at the foot of the mountain named Tripureśādri (Zabarvan) rising on the eastern bank of Dal lake. The place is a few miles to the east of Srinagar. It is just possible that the famous Buddhist philosopher of the south, having come to Kashmir on the occasion of the fourth Buddhist conference held in the valley during the reign of Kanishka in the second century A.D., may have established a hermitage at Harvan as well, where he may have lived for a considerable time.
One more ancient Nāgārjuna is well-known in Kashmirian folklore. He is popularly called Nagiray or Nāgarāja and poets writing in Kashmirian language mention him as Nagi-arzun, which is Nāgārjuna as well. He was a youth of some Nāga tribe living in the hilly area of Kashmir near the modern town named Shopayan and is said to have possessed certain wonderful supernatural powers. Kashmirian poetry presents him both as a human being as well as a snake god. Nāgas may have been originally some mountain dwellers residing in the hills of Kashmir before its colonization under the leadership of Karyapa. They may have been snake worshippers and may therefore have been known as Nāgas. The Nāga prince fell in love with a beautiful āryan girl named Himal who was living in the same area. The long story of their mutual love, full of ups and downs and tragic and comic events, has all along remained popular with the writers, singers, and listeners of Kashmirian poetry.
Another ancient Nāgārjuna, known in both Indian and Tibetan traditions, is an alchemist possessing wonderful powers and knowing the use of amazing medicines that can keep a person alive and young for extraordinarily long ages. Many works on Indian medicine have been connected with his name. Some of them are Yogasāra, Rasaratnākara, Rasasarga, Yogaratnamālā, Yogaratnāvalī, and Nāgārjunīya. Chakrapāṇi, a tenth-century author of medicine mentions two preparations under the name of Nāgārjuna in his Cikitsā saṃgraha. No meaningful research has so far been done on this wonderful teacher of medicine. ācārya Govinda the traditional preceptor of śaṅkarācārya is said to be ever young and youthful and Mādhavācārya of the fourteenth century included such medical science among the schools of Indian philosophy and named it Raseśvara darśana.
The Nāgārjuna of Vajrayāna is generally identified by the Tibetan Buddhists with the Mādhyamika philosopher, but these two were definitely different teachers. Matsyendranātha, a Tantric teacher of Shaktism, enjoying a great reputation as a Kaula yogin appeared in Assam sometime in the early centuries of the Christian era. He is taken as the founder of the Kaula system in Kaliyuga. That system is said to have been started by four Yuganāṭhas in four yugas and they are respectively Khagendranātha, Kūrmanātha, Meṣanātha, and Matsyendranātha. Arāha alias Rāhulabhadra, a Buddhist monk of the Vijnānavāda school, learned Kaula Tantra from some efficient teacher belonging to the line of Matsyendranātha. He adapted it to the fundamental principles of Vijnānavāda and presented it efficiently as a secret sādhana taught by Buddhism. He eliminated cleverly two very important principles of śākta tantra for such purpose. One of these is the principle of the existence of a constant entity called ātman. The other principle is that of absolute theism. Besides, he changed the names of Tantric deities so as to make them look like Buddhist ones and gave all philosophical terms a Buddhist coloring. Thus he presented the śākta system of Matsyendranātha as mystic Buddhism and gave it the name, Vajrayāna. One of his very efficient disciples was a monk named Nāgārjuna who also is, many a time, wrongly identified with the ancient Mādhyamika philosopher of the South by the Lamas of Tibet and Mongolia. He popularized among Buddhist monks such Tantrism which passed on under the name of Vajrayāna Buddhism. Padmasambhava, a disciple in his line, carried such Tantric Buddhism to Tibet and from there it spread to many countries of the Buddhist world.
Three more authors under the name Nāgārjuna are known to us. One of them is the author of a Dharmaśāstra the manuscript of which lies in a library at Tanjore. Another one is a Tantric author who wrote Nāgārjuna Tantra. The third one is Siddha Nāgārjuna the author of āścaryaratnamālā. It is yet to be decided by means of meaningful research whether any of these can be identified with any of the above-mentioned authors of the same name.
The śaiva Nāgārjuna is another one to add to this list, who, unlike the Mādhyamika teacher, is not completely dependent on logical thinking, but his method is of direct intuitive experience. Mādhyamika Buddhism can lead an aspirant to such a higher stage in the state of dreamless sleep where all-knowing and doing, knower and doer, means of knowing and doing as well as their objects become fully absorbed in the static and tranquil psychic light of consciousness and nothing remains either of subject or object or of the psychic or physical means of knowing and doing. What remains there is only the simple and static flux of pure and momentary consciousness, freed from all types of misery. Such a state of perfect rest comes close to the position of vacuum. But śaiva Nāgārjuna teaches one to realize the self through the psychic light of its own consciousness, as the source and the base of all phenomena, and to realize it as the Supreme Divine playing divinely through all the creations, dissolutions, etc. He teaches to see everything as one’s infinitely blissful self and to transcend not only relative pair of pleasure and pain but even that of bondage and liberation. Thus he leads an aspirant beyond even the finest step in the state of dreamless sleep and provides such bounties of blissfulness as can be tasted charmingly at the higher steps of Turiya, the fourth state of animation, the state of intuitional self-revelation. If the Mādhyamika Nāgārjuna is highly advanced in logical thinking, the śaiva Nāgārjuna is much more definite about the exact nature of the absolute reality. If the Vajrayāna teacher is impatient to impress upon people the effects of his sorcery, this philosopher of high merit tastes an extreme type of self-satisfaction in the sweetest charms of the direct realization of his pure and divinely potent I-consciousness. The colophons of his two small works refer to him as Mahāmāheśvara.
Two small works of śaiva Nāgārjuna which are available at present appeared twice in print at Srinagar during the last three decades and yet he is very little known even in Kashmir. He is still less known in other parts of India and hardly anyone may know him outside India. But since his works are of high merit from both the viewpoints of poetry and philosophy, he deserves to be brought to light before the scholars of the world. Maheśvarānanda is the only ancient author who quotes from one of his works without mentioning his name.
The two poems of this Māheśvara Nāgārjuna, Paramārcanatriṃśikā and Chittasantoṣatriṃśikā (we have published this on our website) can be classed with the best specimens of religio-philosophic lyric poetry. The philosophic principles and the doctrines of the theology of this Nāgārjuna agree fully with those of Kashmir Shaivism. It is a wonder that quotations from them have not been given in any ancient work composed in Kashmir. The poet-philosopher must therefore belong to a later age. To which place did he belong, is also a riddle. He must have been dwelling at someplace near Kashmir because:
(1) His views on philosophy and theology agree with those of the authors of Kashmir śaivism.
(2) His works were discovered in Kashmir.
(3) He has been quoted by Maheśvarānanda who was very well acquainted with the works written by Kashmirian authors.
But these things cannot be any decisive proofs to prove his place of habitation. Though the philosophy of monistic śaivism developed in Kashmir, some of its authors and teachers lived in other parts of India as well. Maheśvarānanda lived in Chola deśa in the far south. Sumatinātha lived in Andhra Pradesh, śambhunātha in Kangara and nothing can be said definitely about the place where Puṇyānandanātha and Amṛtānandanātha lived. Therefore the problem regarding the exact place to which this śaiva Nāgārjuna belonged cannot be definitely solved on only such a feeble surmise as mentioned above. Recently I went through the diaries of the roaming of my preceptor ācārya Amṛtavāgbhava. At two places he writes that he went to see three sacred places round about the present Jvālāmukhī temple and those places are the shrines of Siddha Nāgārjuna, Ambikeśvara, and Kapisthala. On making an inquiry from a few people belonging to that area, I came to know that the sacred place of Siddha Nāgārjuna is situated about a mile above the temple of śrī Jvālāmukhī on the slope of the same hill. śambhunāṭha, one of the preceptors of Abhinavagupta lived at Kangara and Jvālāmukhī is not very far away from here. The lines of his disciples may have continued to flourish in the area and Nāgārjuna may have appeared in one of such lines. Since śambhunātha has been described by Abhinavagupta as trikārthāmbhodhi candramaḥ, this Nāgārjuna also became a successful master of Trika sādhana which fact becomes quite evident if one reads carefully his two stotras.
śaivism developed in several schools of philosophy. But the views of Nāgārjuna agree only with those of Kashmir śaivism. He does not aim at śiva-bhoga of the śaiva siddhānta, nor does he give importance to its caryā and kriyā. His philosophy, as revealed in his poems, does not advocate the Liṅgāyata path of Vīraśaivas, nor does it praise either the torturing or some of the ridiculous theological activities of Lakulīśa Pāśupata school. Unlike the śivādvaita school of śrīkaṇṭha, it does not aim finally at any type of sāyujya but at a self-experience of one’s own divine nature of absolute Godhead even in this mortal life. Even in his theological views regarding Parāpūjā, the poet shows himself as an ardent practitioner of the Trika system. This fact strengthens further to some extent the view that he may have been an adept aspirant in the line of śambhunātha. He is, no doubt, an Advaitin, but there is no trace of Vivartavāda in his poems which prove him to have been an ardent believer in theism which he has depicted as the essential nature of the monistic absolute reality. He does not advocate the Māyāvāda of Shaṅkara but preaches Līlāvāda of Kashmir śaivism.