धर्मपुत्रिका- A Critical Edition and Study of Dharmaputrika Samhita: A Text on Six-fold Saiva Yoga

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This book presents a critical edition and study of the text DHARMAPUTRIKA SAMHITA, one of the eight Sivadharma group of texts, believed to be composed during the 11th century A.D. There are sixteen chapters in this text, and it preaches the ancient form of six-fold Saiva yoga. Through this book, the best possible effort has been made to present the critical edition of the Dharmaputrika Samhita with readings as authentic as possible. This book has mainly two parts, viz. study part and the critical edition part. In the study part, a brief summary of chapters, the date of the text, authorship of the text, nature of the text, list of manuscripts used for the critical edition, editorial principle, etc. have been dealt with. And in the critical edition part, sixteen chapters of the Dharmaputrika Samhita have been recorded with variant readings in the footnote. This book is an important contribution to the study of the Sivadharma corpus.

Dr. Anil Kumar Acharya (1978), M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D., Shiksha Shastri (B.Ed.), is an Assistant Professor (Selection Grade) working in the Department of Sanskrit, Ambedkar College (A Govt. Degree College), of Tripura, since 2011. Before, he also worked as a Research Assistant in the Department of Indology of the French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP), a research institute of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs situated in the Union Territory of Puducherry. His areas of research are Sanskrit Literature, Manuscriptology and the History of Saivism (Sivadharma Corpus and Odisha). He has attended a number of National and International Conferences/workshops, viz. international workshop on "Early Tantra" at Kathmandu, the 15th World Sanskrit Conference at New Delhi, etc. He is crowned with the 'Pandit Ganeshwar Dash Prize' for the best performance in the 'Epic & Puranas' section of the 45th session of the All-India Oriental Conference held at Tirupati. He has published several research papers in various national and international journals and books pertaining to his area of study. He is associated with different research organizations and academic bodies in various capacities.

This text has four main sections. They are- (I) Introduction. (II) Brief summary of chapters. (III) Study of the text, list of materials used for the critical edition, and edito prince. (IV) Critical edition of the text. The Introduction part records very brief information on Sivadharma group of texts with which manuscripts of Dharmaputriki are usually found, hints on the probable date of Dharmaputrika, availability of manuscripts of Dharmaputrika, the necessity of a critical edition, and a brief description of the content of the text. The following section, i. e. brief summary of chapters, summarizes sixteen chapters (patalas) of Dharmaputrika which describe sixteen main topics related to the practice of yoga. Those are 1. different means of accomplishing yoga (sadhana- prakaranas) 2. different postures (asanaprakaranas) 3. concentration on different parts of the body (dharaṇAvamsa- prakaranas) 4. ways of the deep meditation (dhyanamarga- prakaranas) 5. subtle hindrances (sukṣmantarayas) 6. most subtle hindrances (mahasuksmantarayas) 7. hindrances caused by the erroneous practice of yoga (pramadajantarayas) 8. hindrances because of pratibha (innate intelligence) etc. (pratibhadyantarayas) 9. victory (jaya) over subtle and most subtle hindrances 10. treatment (cikitsa) of the diseases caused by the erroneous practice of yoga 11. temporal signs (calalingas) of the accomplishment of yoga 12. eternal signs (dhruvalingas) of the accomplishment of yoga 13. ways to enhance the accomplishment of yoga (vrddhyupayas) 14. causes of the destruction of the accomplishment of yoga vinasopayas) 15. measures to revive the lost accomplishment of yoga (pratyanayanopayas) 16. ways to achieve perfection in the practice of yoga (siddhyupayas).