Ra ̄makan.t.ha (ca. 950–1000 ce), sections of the Kiran.a Tantrawere probably
“corrupt” and he had a number of readings to choose from (Goodall 1998: cxix).
That Ra ̄makan.t.ha could choose from a number of variant readings of the texts
upon which he commented, and Goodall quotes his commentary on the Mat.an.ga
Tantrasaying this (Goodall 1998: cxviii–cxix), shows that even at this early date
there are a number of textual transmissions. But for Ra ̄makan.t.ha variant read-
ings (pa ̄t.habhedah.) are not original (na mu ̄latah.) but due to the error of students.
For Ra ̄makan.t.ha there is an original or root text that is the divine revelation of
which the concrete texts transmitted through a line of scribes is an imperfect
reflection. Indeed, the Tantras themselves maintain that they are imperfect
reflections of an original, greater, text conveyed from the mouth of the deity (for
example, the Ma ̄linı ̄vijayottara Tantra1.1–4; 14). Ra ̄makan.t.ha’s is an almost
idealist understanding of text: an inaccessible, pure originary source, in contrast
to its imperfect manifestations or repetitions in human history and its gradual
degeneration (a theory perhaps not far removed from the nineteenth-century
idea of establishing the oldest, and therefore most authentic, text). On
Ra ̄makan.t.ha’s view, the purity of the authorial intention (that is, S ́iva’s inten-
tion) is lost through the generations of the text’s transmission; a degeneration
due not only to scribal error, but to human ignorance.
This distinction between the authorial (and by implication pure and original)
and the scribal (by implication corrupted) text that Ra ̄makan.t.ha refers to,
is echoed in traditional philological practice and theory. But in contrast to
Ra ̄makan.t.ha’s position, the general direction of modern philological thinking
privileges “the socialized, received, concrete text” (Greetham 1999: 47) over and
against some abstract ideal. This position tends towards the view that any edition
of a text simply reflects the time and place of its occurrence: as Greetham says,
texts “are real enough for our purposes” (p. 35). The concrete, received text is
what is presented to us, a repetition of a repetition, and it is this that must be
the focus of inquiry rather than a notional, abstract “work.”
All textual practice is empowered by theories of the text, even implicit ones,
and decisions about a text arrived at – say a critical edition – are not situated
beyond cultural consensus. But having said this, any textual interpretation
assumes philology and a dialogical reading of texts assumes the work of the
philologist in establishing or stabilizing a text within a particular time-frame.
If texts are more than systems of grammar then they are constantly in
transmission and change, being received through history in different contexts.
Ra ̄makan.t.ha’s Kiran.a Tantra, at one level, is the text we read today, but it is also
a wholly different text, hedged around with different assumptions by the differ-
ent communities who read it (a scholarly community or a S ́aiva community). It
is also questionable whether Ra ̄makan.t.ha’s root text existed as a concrete object
and it is quite possible that the text was “corrupted” from its inception; that there
was never an “uncorrupted” text in history. While certainly the versions or rep-
etitions of a text are of a text, there are theoretical problems in establishing the
sametext. The Tantras’ entextualization and contextualization, terms used by
Silverstein and Urban for the ways in which texts are recontextualized through-
12 gavin flood