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Tantra is a distinctive religious system documented in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain scriptures
that began to appear near the middle of the 1st
millennium CE. For their adherents, the Hindu
Tantras are works of divine revelation, flowing
from the mouth(s) of one or another of the
supreme tantric deities. As such, they are distinct
from the far more ancient revelations of the
Vedas (ruti) as well as from the epic and puranic
canons that make up Hindu tradition (Smrti).
Many of these works have the word tantra in their
title, a term derived from the verbal root tan-, to
extend, that denotes the weaving together of various strands of practice, like threads on a loom,
into a coherent system. The Tantras are Sanskrit
verse compositions whose aphoristic and elliptic
style is often difficult to comprehend without an
additional explanatory apparatus. In traditional
contexts, this was one of the primary roles of the
tantric guru or preceptor: to clarify and explicate
the tantric revelations through oral instruction.
Over time, these teachings became codified into
vast written commentaries and subcommentaries,
ritual handbooks, and other synthetic works,
redacted in excellent Sanskrit by (mainly) Brahman authors. The contents of the Tantras vary
widely, and it is not unusual for a single tantric
work to contain data on ritual and visionary
practice, metaphysics, iconography, demonic possession, supernatural powers, and theories of salvation. The diverse strands of theory and practice
found in these texts are the legacy of the historical
developments that led to Tantras emergence
because even if these works present themselves as
so many divine revelations, they are in fact the
productions of human agents from a variety of
socioreligious backgrounds, cultural regions, and
historical periods.
Out of this welter of data, a number of patterns
emerge, which align with what may be termed a
tantric worldview. Central to this worldview is the
notion that human practitioners can empower,
and even deify, themselves to manipulate and
dominate the entire spectrum of beings and energies that make up the tantric universe. This universe is a continuum, arising out of and returning
to the body or self of the divine, the one that proliferates into the many on multiple simultaneous
registers. These include
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all ontological impediments to identity with god
are physically removed, and gnosis ( jna), the
intellective cultivation (bhvan) of god consciousness and the recognition (pratyabhij), in
nondualist systems, of ones innate divine nature
through elaborate visualization practices and
spiritual exercises. An inner circle of tantric virtuosi supplemented these soteriological goals with
techniques for the magical domination of all
beings in the world. To this end, they observed a
special set of esoteric practices that afforded them
rapid access to supernatural powers (siddhis).
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to be found far from the range of the four original pthas in a belt running across central India
from the Vindhya Mountains to the Orissan coast.
It is in the same region, at Gangdhar in Madhya
Pradesh, that the earliest written evidence for
dkin cults has been uncovered, in an inscription
dating from 424 CE. The earliest reference to
Bhairava (The Horrific) originally a cremation-ground deity, but also the quintessential
South Asian Lord of Beings who eventually
became the supreme being and revealer of numerous major tantric scriptures dates from the same
region and the same century.
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cism, sorcery, and sacrifice afforded them healing
powers and mastery over powerful hordes of
supernatural beings: lineage goddesses ( kuladevs);
bhtanthas; deities of rivers, forests, and mountains; and so forth. With the advent of Tantra,
these hordes became transformed into the divine
entourage of the kings own lineage god and goddess, which were themselves identified with one
or another supreme tantric dyad (Sadiva and
Um, etc.) and the royal couple themselves. The
second group generally comprised mainly Brahman royal chaplains and preceptors from among
the emergent religious orders and temple priesthoods of the medieval period. These specialists
adapted and innovated nonvedic rituals for the
consecration, the enthronement, and ultimately
the deification of kings. This was a strategy of the
tantric Vaisna va sect known as the Pcartras,
whose man-lion initiation (nrasim hdks) made
low-caste South Asian kings eligible for royal
consecration. These, in turn, offered them patronage and protection, making the Pcartras their
royal chaplains and custodians of their royal temples. In the medieval Southeast Asian kingdoms of
Angkor and Majahapit, it was aiva specialists,
who, in exchange for land grants, royal wives, and
other privileges, transformed rulers like Jayavarman II of Angkor into god-kings (see Cambodia). In more recent centuries, Nth yogs have
played the role of power brokers, combining their
strong links to the rural populace with supernatural powers and political acumen to place their
chosen princes on the thrones of several kingdoms
in Rajasthan, Nepal, and the Himalayan foothills
of North India. Many tantric texts attest to this
symbiotic relationship, enjoining tantric specialists to vigilantly defend the royal family from
every sort of danger while also reminding kings of
their duty to protect and support their tantric
gurus.
The rise and fall of Hindu Tantra as the religious
mainstream is directly linked to the rise and fall
of its royal patrons. In North and central India,
Hindu Tantra thrived as the royal cultus under the
Kalacuri, Somavamshi, Chandella, Calukya, and
other dynastic lines, until their lands fell into the
hands of Muslim rulers in the 12th century. In
other parts of the north, Hindu royal houses that
survived as vassals of the Mughals and other Muslim rulers have remained tantric in much of their
public ceremonial down to the present day, especially during the great festival of daahar/
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Hindu practitioners across the subcontinent continued to observe tantric rites, as evidenced in
census data and the vast quantities of 18th- and
19th-century tantric manuscripts held in Indian
archives.
If it was royal patronage that put Tantra on the
medieval religious map of South and Southeast
Asia, then it is important to understand the place
of royal ideology and medieval Realpolitik in constructions of Tantra. Here, it must be noted that
the specifically tantric use of mantras, initiations,
and mandalas idealized circular diagrams of
both royal territory and divine universe first
emerged in India as a religious response to or
reflection of a situation of political anomie. With
the fall of the imperial Guptas in about 550 CE,
much of the Indian subcontinent was plunged
into a millennium-long period of feudalism, in
which multiple, shifting political centers were in
constant flux, passing under the control of a series
of often low-caste warlords whose claim to dominion over a territory was, from the standpoint of
orthodox religious polity, illegitimate. In order to
legitimate their power, these pretenders to royal
thrones called upon a new cadre of religious specialists to ritually consecrate them with tantric
mantras, transforming them into divine kings and
their conquered territories into equally consecrated mandalas of royal power.
While many of the kings who embraced Tantra
in the medieval period did not belong to the warrior (Ksatriya) class, they generally sought to publicly demonstrate their adherence to warrior and
royal ideologies. With respect to the former, they
would have embraced the soteriological doctrine
that a warriors battlefield death issued in his
immediate apotheosis that is, his elevation to a
divine station when a chariot, called a yoga,
was sent down from above to carry him to heaven.
The yoga of the dying warrior, which predates
all other forms of yoga by several centuries, was
but one of a number of elements of an old martial
ideology that became incorporated into tantric
theory, practice, and terminology. These included
the use of mantras as hand-held weapons
(astras), missiles (astras), and armor (kavaca);
ritual practices of binding the directions (digbandhana) as a means to creating a defensive
perimeter around a consecrated space; the construction of mandalas according to the floor plans
of fortified citadels; pervasive associations of
tantric goddesses with warfare; the wielding of
royal weapons or scepters (vajras) by tantric initi-
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Tantra
with (as opposed to absorption into) iva, or intimate proximity to iva in the world of iva.
Originally the province of ascetics in quest of
supernatural powers (as opposed to the Atimrga
ascetics, whose goal was liberation), the aiva
Siddhnta scriptures were gradually reconfigured
into guides for the private practice of the aiva
laity (mhevaras), married householders who
made up, then as now, the great majority of aiva
practitioners. Here, ritual injunctions, originally
concerning the personal worship practices of
aiva ascetics, were greatly expanded from the
11th century onward and so came to serve as
guides to the remarkably intricate public ritual
programs of the great iva temples of South India
and Southeast Asia. While certain of these scriptures (such as the Kmikgama and Mrgendrgama)
are significant, it is massive commentarial
works like the 1095 CE Somaambhupaddhati
that are our most important sources for understanding the private and public religion of the
Mantramrga.
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while the Rudraymalas verse count is incalculable, due to its innumerable layers of redaction and
allied scriptures that claim to be portions of it. The
earliest full account of the yogic cakras as we know
them is found in the circa 13th-century redaction
of this work.
Although each of the union Tantras is revealed
by a Bhairava, these works portray his divine consorts in increasingly autonomous roles, with the
divine pair in union (ymala) surrounded by an
entirely female horde of yogin-type goddesses. So,
for example, whereas the Picumatabrahmaymalas
mandala has Kaplea (Lord of the Skull),
Bhairava, and Candakplin (The Furious Goddess of the Skull) at its center, all of the other
deities in this system are female, and the most
powerful worship mantras revealed in this scripture are those of Candakplin, rather than of
her male consort. This aligns with the practices
described in these works: like Bhairava in his
mandala, the male practitioner stands alone in
(and as) a universe of feminine being(s), ritually
surrounding himself with yogins or their human
counterparts, and visualizing his own body and
consciousness as teeming, at every level, with feminine energies. Through the ritual and visionary
practices documented in these works, the tantric
practitioner realizes a powerful self-illuminating
expansion of consciousness that, transcending all
dualities, allows him to realize his own intrinsic
nondual Bhairava nature.
3. The Energy Tantras and the Four Transmissions.
The most esoteric revelations, in which Bhairava
becomes eclipsed by the goddess(es) to the point
of disappearing, are those of the aktitantras,
which carry forward the archaic skull-bearer traditions in their most complete and unexpurgated
forms. The cults associated with the energy Tantras are subdivided into four mnyas (transmissions). These transmissions, which are classified
according to the four cardinal directions, are
differentiated by the names and forms of the goddesses that rule them from the heart of their
respective mandalas. The richest and most widely
commentated among these, and the most authentic source of data for the Kaula traditions, are the
works of the eastern transmission, which center
on the cult of a triad (trika) of goddesses named
Par, Parpar, and Apar, each of which is
enthroned upon a prostrate Bhairava. The principal scriptures of the eastern transmission, also
Tantra
known as the Trika Kaula, are the Malinvijayottaratantra, Siddhayogevarmata, and Tantrasadbhva;
however the Trika Kaula was also strongly influenced by Krama traditions.
Unlike every other tantric revelation, those of
the Krama, the northern transmission, were
directly transmitted by clans of yogins, also known
as mistresses of the mounds (pthevars), to the
founding male gurus of the original Kaula lineages. As such, Abhinavagupta and other commentators on the aktitantras prized these as the
most authentic and powerful of the Kaula revelations. An essential scripture of the Krama Kaula is
the Jayadrathaymala, which, although technically a union Tantra, devotes its final three sections to the pure akti cults of the hideous goddess
Kl, now portrayed as totally independent of any
male consort whatsoever. Other important Krama
scriptures include the Cicinmatasrasamuccaya,
Devpacaataka, and Kramasadbhva, which are
remarkable inasmuch as in them, it is Kl who
reveals the tantric gnosis to Bhairava.
Another feature of the Krama is its pentadic
structure, in which a series of five circles (cakras)
of goddesses the Kls, mothers (mtrs/mtrks),
yogins, and so forth sequentially generate the
cosmic cycles of creation and resorption in an
unending series of luminous pulsations. A similar
pentadic structure, also linked to cakras of goddesses, is the hallmark of the western transmission, whose principal deity is the hunchbacked
goddess Kubjik. The principal scriptures of
the Kubjik Tantras the Kubjikmata, the
Satshasrasam hit, and the massive 24,000-verse
Manthnabhairavatantra also feature a system
of five cakras. Here, the cakras are circles of goddesses: devs, dts, mtrs, yogins, and khecar
deities (see below), aligned along the vertical axis
of the yogic body. One can see in the Kubjikmatas
plotting of clusters of feminine energies onto the
body an early adumbration of what would become
the subtle body mapping of Hatha Yoga traditions: other early sources that do the same include
the Jayadrathaymala and Netratantra. While the
scriptures of this transmission are younger than
those of the Trika and Krama, they were widely
disseminated, in medieval Nepal in particular,
where Kubjik was long identified with the royal
kuladev Taleju.
The youngest of the four transmissions, the
southern, is especially devoted to the cult of the
goddess Tripurasundar. Also known as rvidy,
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Other Sources
The content of Hindu Tantra is not limited to
scripture alone. The category of Tantrasstra
(tantric instruction) also includes important bodies of commentary. Indeed, much of the content of
the Tantras would be incomprehensible, were it
not for the works of such Kashmiri schoolmen as
the great Abhinavagupta, Utpaladeva, Ksemarja,
and Jayaratha. Elsewhere, comprehensive digests
and manuals such as the Somaambhupaddhati
came to eclipse the scriptures of the Mantramrga
as guides to personal and public worship for personal and public worship. These in turn were
gradually incorporated into the Purnas, such
that this canon of devotional Hinduism has come
to constitute a storehouse of tantric traditions
regarding worship, temple construction, iconography, and so forth. Other medieval sources
of Hindu tantric tradition include individually
authored hymns of praise to tantric gods and
goddesses, and digests of Mantrastra such as
the Mantramahodadhi and the radtilaka of
Laksmanadeika. Many of these works continue
to be widely used in India; on a humbler scale,
hundreds of cheaply printed chapbooks containing spells and other tantric techniques for seducing women and amassing power and wealth are
available in bazaars across the entire subcontinent.
Macchanda is also a tutelary deity of the Kathmandu Valley, where his mythology also links him
to Gorakhnth. It is also Macchanda who, according to the Kaulajnanirnaya, received the original Kaula revelations, together with the yogins, at
the ptha of Kmarpa.
According to Kaula tradition, Macchanda was
the father of 12 sons. Among these, the six who
were noncelibate became the founders of the six
initiatory lineages (ovallis), to which there were
attached, in the medieval period, specific networks of monasteries or lodges (mathas) scattered across the Indian subcontinent. This network
reproduced on a social level the net of yogins
(yoginpajara) that enlivened the entire universe
to be sure, but which also crisscrossed the Indian
landscape in particular, with its energy grid.
Therefore, when a novice was initiated into one of
these lineages by a teacher (guru) and a dt, his
was at once an induction into a cosmic clan, a network of energy, and a body of fluid teachings
issued as the grace (anugraha) of the yogins.
The most distinctive aspect of Hindu is
enshrined in the ancient yogin-related practices
of the skull-bearing ascetics of Uddiyna and
other ancient tantric pthas. Heiresses to the
ancient South Asian cults of the horrific and often
anthropophagic yakss and grahans (female seizers), the medieval yogins were a horde of ravening
female beings that preyed upon every sort of life
form, possessing their victims from within and
without to suck the life out of them. Often portrayed with the heads or bodies of animals and
birds, the superhuman yogins embodied themselves in carrion-feeding denizens of charnel or
cremation grounds (mana) jackals, hyenas,
vultures, kites, and so forth as well as jungle
predators (including, in the vegetable kingdom,
jungle vines that strangle and overcome host
trees), swarming creatures (birds, insects, serpents), and agents of epidemic and pestilence.
These are the forms in which the yogins are represented in the medieval sculpture of the distinctive
roofless yogin temples, as well as in tantric scripture and popular literature. It was these nightmare
creatures that skull-bearing (kplika) or heroic
(vra) male tantric practitioners themselves
decked out with the bones and skulls of the yogins
victims confronted in the dark of the moon at
their various haunts: charnel grounds, mountaintop pthas, caves, forests, and empty temples.
Armed with the magical weapons of their mantras, these solitary ascetics summoned the khecar
Tantra
(airborne) and bhcar (land-based) yogins down
from the sky and up out of their underground lairs
in order that they possess them.
Possession may take several forms, the most
fundamental of these being the yogins consumption of their victims, which, as works like the
Netratantra assert, is not killing since all that they
destroy is the accumulated burden of stain (mala)
that differentiates creatures from the supreme god
iva. In this context, eating their victims is the
yogins form of grace (anugraha). Such a gruesome means to grace was not acceptable, however,
to the aiva mainstream of medieval Kashmir,
which was principally composed of Brahman
householders. So it was that in the 10th and 11th
centuries, the leading Trika exegetes (Abhinavagupta and Ksemarja in particular) synthesized
the data found in the various Ymalatantras
and aktitantras into an integrated body of theory
and practice that rendered the Kaula accessible and
acceptable to high-caste householders. In this new
domesticated synthesis, the original skull-bearer
practices of induced possession, self-sacrifice to
the yogins, and the consumption of sexual fluids
were internalized into visionary practices by
means of which a member of conventional
Brahman society could realize a secret alternative
identity in fact, his true Bhairava identity
even as he remained, to all appearances, obedient
to the conformist rules of the high-caste married
householder.
Whereas these secret rituals removed much of
the macabre from the original skull-bearer practices, they retained and expanded upon their
erotic component. In the secret practice of the
reformed Kaula, the yogins embodied in the dt
consorts of male practitioners offered divine grace
in the form of the fluid gnosis, the sexual or menstrual emissions issuing from their lower mouths
or vulvas. Through the consumption of the yogins
fluid gnosis, the initiate entered into a possessed
state, in which his contracted consciousness
instantaneously exploded into the all-pervasive
Kaula consciousness, of the universe as the
embodied self of the divine, whose energies were
those of the yogins themselves.
The sexual rites of the Kaula took several forms,
including meditation upon and veneration of the
yoni, the vulva, of the dt consort, a practice
described in the Yonitantra, a late medieval Tantra
from Bengal. Worship of tantric gods and goddesses, and of the yogins in particular, included
offerings of the sexual fluids of both the male
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the gods before partaking of their conjoined emissions, passing them back and forth, from mouth
to mouth. After a second and third act of intercourse, complemented by a wealth of ritual observances, the yogs consciousness is said to fuse with
the absolute. Many tantric sources also describe collective sexual practices, called cakrapjs (veneration of the circle) or yoginmelapas (mingling with
the yogins), whose goal was to awaken the energy
of the divine among all participants.
Apart from such secret rites as the kulayga and
yoginmelapas, observed by a limited number of
special initiates, the sexual content of the Kaula
rites was increasingly abstracted or sublimated
into the visionary practice of experiencing the
universe as self through the medium of the body.
Whereas the sexual content of the Kaula rites
originally had the production of a sacramentally
transformative ritual substance (dravya) as its
principal goal, later tantric sexual practice came to
be grounded in a theory of transformative aesthetics, in which the experience of orgasm effected
a breakthrough from contracted self-consciousness to an expansive god consciousness, an experience of the entire universe as the transcendent
self.
The language of sexuality nonetheless persisted,
even as oral or genital congress with duts or
yogins was phased out of the ritual program. One
sees this especially in the internalization of the
yogins and various other saktis of the tantric universe in the emerging constructs of the yogic or
subtle body. Beginning in 8th- to 9th-century
works like the Jayadrathaymala and Netratantra,
a system of cakras (circles of goddesses) began to
map the pthas and circular temples of yogin practice onto the body. Over the following centuries,
in works such as the Kubjikmata and Rudraymala,
these became elaborated and regularized into the
standard system of six plus one cakras of Hatha
Yoga. Here, rather than offering ones bodily constituents as food, or ones semen in sexual intercourse to external yogins, the entire process was
incorporated within the body of the male practitioner. By effectively situating his akti entirely
within his own body, the cakra system permitted
the male practitioner to further sublimate sexual
ritual into visionary practice. Over time, the multiple goddesses and yogins were abstracted into
the one akti who, embodied in the female
kundalin (she who is coiled), is said to sleep with
her mouth over a subtle linga in the lower abdo-
Tantric Ritual
For most tantric householder practitioners, the
sexual content of Kaula ritual has been either sublimated to the point of being unrecognizable, or
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entirely elided from religious life. This sublimation of the sexual may take several forms. Most
commonly, male and female bodies, sexual organs,
and sexual fluids are semanticized into the male
and female phonemes of the Sanskrit alphabet, the
building blocks of tantric mantras and vidys. In
other cases, they are abstracted into the intersecting lines and triangles of geometric diagrams like
the ryantra. Even such graphically sexual images
as the linga-yoni, the phallus of iva engaged in the
vulva of his divine consort, become deconstructed,
in these systems, into an elaborate set of wholly
desexualized cosmic principles. In addition to constituting acoustic and visual meditation supports,
tantric mantras, yantras, and images also serve as
ritual templates, channels of communication
between the human and the divine, which permit
humans to approach and worship the divine.
Indeed, the rituals of Hindu devotion, in household practice as well as in the great temples of the
subcontinent, have always been essentially tantric.
For a small but significant cohort of tantric
practitioners heirs to the elite nondual syntheses
of Abhinavagupta and other great medieval commentators tantric ritual is a means to the end of
gnosis ( jna), the luminous realization of god
consciousness. For most, however, the purpose of
tantric ritual is to gradually purge the soul of its
ontological stain (mala) and afford liberation at
the end of ones life. Here, even if tantric ritual is
mechanistic in its form, it is nonetheless transformative, since through its rote repetition every day
of his life, the tantric practitioner is doing nothing
less than constructing a divine personhood.
Tantric ritual begins with the purification
(bhtauddhi) of the worshipper-practitioner
(because, as the adage goes, one must become a
god in order to worship god), as well as of the worship site itself. This is accomplished through purificatory baths and demonifuge fire offerings
(homa), as well as the use of mantras to incinerate
ones physical body from within. Mantras and
mudrs (seals effected through elaborate configurations of the fingers) are the tools the practitioner next employs for the installation (nysa), in
the place of his now nonexistent body parts, of the
body of god in all its details, including multiple
heads, hands, and attributes. All of these are
meticulously envisioned, as is the throne in the
practitioners own heart upon which the god is
installed and mentally worshipped with oblations
(arghya) and repeated worship formulas (japa).
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