Pratyabhijñā-hṛdayam · Sūtra 3
तन्नाना अनुरूपग्राह्यग्राहकभेदात्
tan bhedāt
That [universe] is diverse through the differentiation of mutually adapted subjects and objects (grāhaka–grāhya).
Context
Sūtra 3 answers the question implicit in sūtra 2: if the universe is citi's own unfolding on her own screen, why does it appear as so many different things — and so differently to different beings? The answer is the grāhya-grāhaka-bhedāt: the functional division into subject-types and their corresponding object-worlds. The sūtra is transitional, moving from cosmology (sūtras 1–2) toward the nature of the individual knower (sūtras 4–8).
Primary reading
'That' (tan) refers back to viśva, the universe of sūtra 2. The universe is diverse — that is the observed fact. But the cause of diversity is not ontological multiplicity in the real. The cause is the pairing of mutually adapted subjects and objects: each distinct perceiver-world pair is a lens through which the one consciousness appears as a particular kind of experience. What students miss on first reading is anurūpa — subjects and objects are not randomly paired but co-adapted. Your sensory apparatus and the world it perceives are matched; they arise together.
Commentarial layer
Kṣemarāja's commentary draws on the Pratyabhijñā analysis of knowledge: every act of knowing involves a knower (pramātā), an object known (prameya), and a means of knowing (pramāṇa). The diversity of the experienced world is a function of the diversity of knowing subjects — each operating at a different degree of contraction (saṃkoca) of consciousness. This prepares sūtra 4, where the individual knower is defined as citi in contracted form, and sūtra 9, where contraction is named as the root of bondage.
Common misreadings
Reading this as 'the universe is diverse because consciousness divided itself' — Trika is not a cosmology of division but of differentiation within unity. Missing the significance of anurūpa: objects and subjects are not separately real things that happen to meet; they are paired aspects of a single act of consciousness. Conflating this with Western phenomenology (Husserl's intentionality) — the resemblance is real, but Trika goes further: the pairing occurs within consciousness, not between consciousness and an external world.
This sūtra contains a hidden referent problem — what does 'that' (tat) point back to, the universe or consciousness itself? — and a vocabulary problem: how to render bhedāt without smuggling in an ontology of real division. The translators split on both, and the splits matter.
What the differences reveal
Two forks run through these renderings. First, the referent: if 'that' is the universe (Singh), unity stands untouched behind a manifold display; if it is consciousness (Shantananda, and implicitly Wallis), the sūtra makes the more radical claim that the One itself appears as many — which is in fact Kṣemarāja's position, since in Trika the display is never other than citi. Second, division versus differentiation: bhedāt read as ontological split contradicts the whole text; read as functional distinction, it states the doctrine of differentiation-within-unity. The comparison shows how a demonstrative pronoun and an ablative ending — two of the smallest units Sanskrit has — carry the entire non-dual stake of the teaching.