परमार्थसार (महामाहेश्वर अभिनवगुप्त - त्रिक-दर्शन, अद्वैत शैव साधना एवं सान्वय सटीक)

4 Paramārthasāra of Abhinavagupta
has been occupying such position simply because of its being
available with Hindi and English commentaries and also because
of the non-availability of any good and suitable textbook with
translation and notes in any of these two languages.
Patañjali, mentioning himself as Gonardīya, belonged to the
Gonda district in U.P. Since he and his associates were a group
of touring scholars, as is evident from Caraka-saṃhitā, they were
called Carakas or ever travelling scholars. They travelled far
and wide from place to place with their leader Punarvasu Ātreya
from institute to institute and belonged thus to the whole of India.
Atrigupta, the ancient ancestor of Abhinavagupta, was an
inhabitant of the land between Gaṅgā and Yamunā. He was
invited to Kashmir by king Lalitāditya who provided a land grant
and a suitable residential house to him at Pravarasenapura, the
modern city of Srinagar, near the Śitāṃśumauli temple on the
bank of Vitastā (Jehlum). The location of that temple is yet to be
ascertained. It may become possible to ascertain it if and when
certain Persian works, dealing with the history of Kashmir during
the period of its quick Muslimization under the rule of Sikandar
Butshikan in the fifteenth century, comes to light.
Some old Pandits of Srinagar, who were alive upto the past
decade, believed that Abhinavagupta lived at his ancestral home
at Gotapora (Guptapura) in the northern outskirts of the old city
near the new colony named Lal Bazar. Places like Guptagaṅgā
and Gopītīrtha (Guptatīrtha) on the eastern bank of the Dal lake
can have had some close connection with Abhinavagupta. Amṛta-
vāgbhava, a great modern scholar, a successful practitioner of
the Śāmbhava-yoga of the Trika system and the originator of a
kind of Neo Śaivism in this age, came across a Kashmiri Brah-
min under the surname ‘Gopya’ at Srinagar in the late twenties
of this century. Besides, he felt the existence of some yogins
belonging to the line of Abhinavagupta, living at present in divine
forms and moving about on the tracts of land near Bahrār on the
north western side of Nagin lake towards the north of Hārī-
parbat hill.
Atriguptā settled at Srinagar in the eighth century AD and
Abhinavagupta lived in his human form in the later part of the
tenth and the earlier part of the eleventh century. He has recorded
the time of composition in three of his works, namely—Kramas-
totra, Bhairavastotra and Īśvarapratyabhijñā-vivṛti-vimarśinī and the