Spanda-kārikā
Kashmir Valley · 850
B
Bhaṭṭa Kallaṭa
Bhaṭṭa Kallaṭa
869 CE · Kashmir Valley
c. mid-9th c. CE (flourished under King Avantivarman of Kashmir, r. 855–883 CE)
Bhaṭṭa Kallaṭa was Vasugupta's foremost pupil and, by tradition, the one who brought the Spanda teaching into the world. He is credited with the Spanda-kārikā and/or its vṛtti (the Spanda-sarvasva), formulating the doctrine that all reality is the pulsating self-expression (spanda) of Śiva-consciousness. The Rājataraṅginī, Kalhaṇa's chronicle of Kashmir, places him in the reign of King Avantivarman (855–883 CE), giving the tradition one of its few relatively firm chronological anchors. The slug 'vasugupta-kallata' reflects the close textual pairing of the two figures in the Spanda corpus.
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Kashmir Valley
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Traditional birthplace of Bhaṭṭa Kallaṭa.
About Kashmir Valley
The Kashmir Valley, in the present-day Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir, is a Himalayan basin drained by the Jhelum River and centred on Srinagar. From roughly the 9th to the 12th centuries it was the homeland of the non-dual Shaiva tradition known as Kashmir Shaivism, whose exegetes—among them Somanānda, Utpaladeva, Kṣemarāja, and the commentator Jayaratha—were active here.
In Kashmir Valley at the same time
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Sages whose lives overlapped with Bhaṭṭa Kallaṭa’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
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Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Bhaṭṭa Kallaṭa’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.