In practice, mantras are nearly always used in the context of ritual, indispensable, as we have seen, to their extraction or selection, to their transmission, or to their efficacy in action. We intend here to inquire into one ritual practice, that of nyāsa.
The word nyāsa is formed from the prefix ni (‘below’, ‘under’) and the verbal root AS (‘to throw’, ‘to project’) – from which the verb NYAS, nyāsati, to throw, to project, is derived along with the masculine substantive nyāsa, translated in Monier-Williams Sanskrit–English Dictionary as ‘putting down or in, placing, fixing, inserting, applying … drawing, painting, writing down … depositing, intrusting, delivering … mental appropriation or assignment of various parts of the body to tutelary deities’ – a diversity of definitions one also finds in the St Petersburg Dictionary: ‘niedersetzen, hinsetzen, aufsetzen … das Auftragen mysticher Zeichen auf verschiedene Teile des Körpers’. P.V. Kane (History of Dharmaśāstra, vol. V.2, p. 1120) writes: ‘nyāsa … means mentally invoking a god or gods, mantras and holy texts to come to occupy certain parts of the body in order to render the body a pure and fit receptacle for worship and meditation’. He adds a little further on: ‘The Kulārṇava explains it as follows: “nyāsa is so called because therein riches that are acquired in a righteous way are deposited or placed with persons, whereby all-round protection is got”’ (nyayoparjitavittanām aṅgeṣu viniveśanāt/sarvarakṣakarād devi nyāsa ityabhidhīyate) (KT 18.56, p. 352).
We can also cite Bhāskararāya who, in his commentary on the Lalitasahasranāma (śl. 4) defines nyāsa as the placing of divinities on different parts of the body, this placing being made through mental concentration (bhāvanā): nyāso nāma tattaddevatānāṃ tattadavayaveṣvavasthāpanam, avasthitvena bhāvaneti yāvat.2
We can see emerging in these definitions – apart from the ordinary, banal sense of the word ‘to place’, ‘to deposit’ – different meanings or nuances which appear in the mantraśāstra and which we shall meet here later, meanings that are all around the notion of placing or depositing on the body or on an object a mantra or some other sign that brings the presence of a deity, the transmission of a subtle or ritual entity, of an energy or spiritual power. This transference is accomplished by placing – generally but not necessarily – the fingers, hand, or hands on the part of the body, or on the object or substance, where the entity must penetrate and by which placing it is transformed. The operation is thus both mental and corporeal.
Nyāsa is usually considered to be a rite typical of Tantric Hinduism and Buddhism, since it is used for the manipulations and assimilations into the body of the sacred that are characteristically tantric. We find indeed a considerable variety of such practices in all ritual texts, in the tantras, āgamas and so on, as in the treatises on yoga and spiritual practices (see the Tantrāloka (TĀ) by Abhinavagupta for example). The word itself in this technical sense, however, hardly ever occurs before the āgamic and purānic works (which are already ‘tantricised’), nor does it occur in ancient Buddhist texts. Some placings are prescribed in relatively ancient ritual works whose spirit is not Tantric. One thinks here of the Gṛhyasūtras and above all their pariśiṣṭa (thus, for example, the Baudhayānagṛhyasūtra II, 18 or IV, 7 which does not use the word nyāsa but sam-spṛś), or a number of stotras. Moreover, as is the case for other practices and words, we can hardly base an argument about their origins on the silence of the texts: these practices could well have existed before being textually attested. We are therefore permitted to think that these are elements from very ancient times that certainly existed in one form or another in a non-Tantric context well before the tantras and āgamas.3
The practice of transmitting a spiritual or magical force by touching not only exists in Hinduism and Buddhism (Tantric or not) but also in other Indian religions. It is almost universal.4 We find a number of examples in the Judeo-Christian tradition where we have the transference of the sins of Israel to a scapegoat (Lv., XVI, 21), the transmitting of the spirit of wisdom (Deut., XXXIV, 18), or the bestowing of the holy spirit on the apostles through the laying on of hands (Acts, VIII, 18–19), etc. We find analogous acts in other traditions along with speculation on magical power or the symbolism of the hands and the symbolic value of gesture.5 Nyāsa is one case among others, however with the particular association of belief in the power of gesture and in the efficacy of speech such as developed in India.6
The nyāsa, then, can appear as a gesture in support of speech, as a gestural and corporeal participation in speech. The act of placing carries and posits on a point of the body – or on an object, although this is less frequent and the object is usually an image of the corporeal aspect of a deity – a mantra which will impregnate this body or object with its energy thereby transforming or divinising it.
We have already noted in this regard, and we will return to this later, first that the hand which performs the nyāsa is itself often the object of a preliminary nyāsa (karanyāsa) which purifies it and charges it with a force that it can transmit.7 This hand must make a particular gesture – a mudrā – when it imposes a mantra, ‘sealing’ it thus as it were on the proper place. We could here raise the question of the origin of the mudrās which, like mantra and nyāsa, are both typical of Tantric ritual and probably as old as the religions of India. But there is also the problem of the deep connection between mantra and mudrā, between gesture and speech.8 Finally, if one is interested in the archaeology of signs, there is the problem of the first origins of the link and that of the precedence of one element over the other: in the beginning was there word or action …? Many questions we cannot tackle here; we simply note that they exist.
But the problem of nyāsa – we repeat – must not be limited to ritual touching, which is an important aspect, certainly, but not the only one. In so far as nyāsa consists in placing divine entities on (or in) the body, in divinising or cosmising it, and, by transforming it, in giving it a role in the cosmic and/or9 divine dimension of such acts as the pūjā, yoga or Tantric meditation, we find ourselves in the complex Indian problematic of the relationship or connections of body– universe–divinities–God. We know that this universal, total vision of the whole mass of cosmic manifestation, is very ancient. Tantrism insofar as it underlines and organises – or re-organises – these correspondences, refers back to a vedic conception: ‘All the gods reside in the human body as the cows in a cowshed’ says the Atharvaveda (AV XI, 8, 32). We can add that in this ancient and always persistent Indian conception, if the body reproduces the structure of the cosmos, the cosmos in turn is modelled on the human body,10 both being governed by a principle, at the human (ātman) or cosmic (puruṣa) level, which is, in essence, identified with the Brahman to which one is eventually to achieve identification through asceticism without leaping over the intermediate stages, notably that of the gods. Hence the usefulness of nyāsa11 as a means to achieve this identification.
The nyāsa, as all the practices of Tantric yoga focused on the body, underlines its importance in achieving liberation. In a system of thought in which there is no total distinction between the human condition and other states of existence (animal, notably, but also divine), it is often underlined that only in the human body can liberation be attained: this is one more justification of corporeal ritual practices – practices which must be understood in the context of another basic Indian conception of humankind: the absence, namely, of a division between the bodily and the mental, or between gross (sthūla) and subtle (sūkṣma); the difference between them being one of level rather than one of nature. Man is thus not separated from the cosmos, which itself emanates from a divinity that operates in the fashion of a yogin, the whole being founded on an absolute without form, at the same time transcendent and immanent. Such a man, too, from the highest level of his individual consciousness to his physical body, is constituted by more or less subtle ‘bodies’, namely causal, gross, subtle bodies (kārana, sūkṣma and sthūla śarīra) whose structures correspond. Thus, if nyāsa is made by human hands on the body’s surface, the effect of this action which is mainly mental or spiritual bears as much, or even more, on the subtle body than on the gross body. This appears clearly in the case of placings (antarmātṛkanyāsa, for example) done on the cakras, which do not have a physical reality but are ‘localisations’ in the gross body of elements of the (so-called) ‘subtle body’,12 as we shall see later.
We shall also see nyāsas associated with Tantric yoga, which, while using physical methods, rests theoretically as in its practical application on the ‘mystical physiology’ of the cakras and nāḋis where circulate the various currents of prāṇa, the ‘breaths’, whose nature is both bodily and subtle, and also cosmic insofar as prāṇa is a form of divine energy (śakti).13 We could say that we are here in a psychosomatic domain, were it not that this term implies a dichotomy between psyche and soma which India ignores and always adds a cosmic dimension.
But if the nyāsa is in practice, and most often in the mantraśāstra, the placing of phonic elements on the body, we must not lose sight of the fact that in ritual, where their usage is so frequent, nyāsas serve also to place divinities or entities on the instruments of worship or on various points of the ritual area. That is, they also appear as a way of placing materially (if one can say this in spite of the fact that the mental and linguistic aspect is present) something, without reference to the body of the officiant.
Finally, an essential element of nyāsa is the form of speech which it serves to place on a body or an object which it penetrates and impregnates by its energy. One must therefore recall the importance of speech (vāc) in Tantra and how it is conceived. Speech, which is the divine energy itself or the energy aspect of the deity which is supreme Being and supreme Consciousness, emits the universe, animates it and reabsorbs it. It is difficult to be precise about the essential and ultimate nature of this speech – is it sound or consciousness? Explanations vary according to the different schools. Perhaps it is possible to say – if one may adopt a non-dualist Śaiva perspective – that there is on the highest level an ultimate Reality, pure consciousness, where speech is in seed, being co-essential with it and being its aspect as energy. This speech, which is at the same time consciousness and energy, evolves becoming more explicitly sound, then discourse, manifesting thus the universe, bringing it into existence by saying or naming it. Speech is ‘that which says or expresses’ (vācaka) all things, which are ‘that which is to be said, or expressed’ (vācya). Such is the correspondence between mantras, or phonic seeds (bīja) and the divinities which they represent (or rather of which they are the subtle and essential form).14 In nyāsa, it is this phonic or consciousness element – we can say this spiritual force – having a sonorous form for support (itself the essential form of the deity), that is transported and deposited by the hand with the ritual gesture of placing (or through the mental concentration which accompanies, or replaces, this gesture).
If there is a gesture in nyāsa, how is one to understand the link between this purely physical act and the transfer of spiritual energy? Of course, seen objectively, this is merely one form among others of the manipulations of symbols or of organs which many cultures use to transform the body (or to modify its image), or to act upon objects, practices which are cases of symbolic effectiveness. But if this is for us a clear and simple explanation of the functioning of nyāsa, it was felt as an important problem within Indian thought for the practitioners of nyāsa, in terms of their problematic: there was for them an effective – one could say material – transfer of the phonic and spiritual force of the mantra and a ‘sealing’ of it through a gesture on the chosen place; not simply an accompanying gesture and still less a symbolic operation. The question, in fact, is hardly discussed, the practitioners not being accustomed to putting in doubt the received tradition. Some of them, however, did ask themselves what is really the nature of nyāsa: is it a mental or spiritual operation, or a material one? Or rather, what is the part of each of these two elements? This is done, for instance, at the beginning of chapter 4 of the Pārameśvarasaṃhitā, entitled ‘Rules concerning the placing of mantras’ (mantranyāsavidhi)15 where we read:
The mantrin, his body purified, is to perform the placing of mantras which identifies him with the god of gods (devadevasamo bhavet) and makes him qualified to accomplish all ritual action such as pūjā and so on, [placing] thanks to which he will appear [in or for himsef] all perfections or supernatul powers (siddhi). Having accomplished this, he will be without fear among wicked people and will be able to triumph over all dangers. Although what is called nyāsa must be considered a mental operation, it does not create a [new] situation immediately and outside of the [material] action [which constitutes it].16
This last sentence is very explicit. The intellectual, ‘mental’ (mānasa) component of nyāsa is what the tradition considers essential. It is the concentration of the practitioner’s spirit that is effective: it is the concentration of his mind on what he is doing, that is, his one-pointed mental concentration on the phonic and spiritual assemblage comprising the mantra (or the bīja) that he places, or the mental representation, the visualisation (dhyāna or bhāvanā) of the entity to be imposed, or the inner experience or feeling in the self of the transformation effected by the nyāsa.17 Since the placing acts on the plane of the so-called ‘subtle body’,18 or that of consciousness, and due to the element of speech (the imposed mantra) whose nature is divine energy, there is a natural pre-eminence of the mental or spiritual element. Parallel to this, there are actions (kriyā) described in the manuals, that is, the gestures of the placing of which there can be many (for example, if one must impose all the mātṛkā), gestures which are equally indispensable as nothing is effective without their being performed.19 But these actions are subordinated to the most important element which is spiritual or mental, and without which they would remain without effect: what is mental is always superior, in India, to that which is material or perceptible to the senses. This, however, without losing sight of the fact that there is no difference in nature between the bodily and the mental, but rather a difference of level. Without forgetting too that the nyāsa is generally carried out by the adept after a ritual or spiritual exercises which purify his body20 or which purify and divinise the hand which performs the nyāsa so as to render it capable of serving this spiritual manipulation.21
This nature of nyāsa, without being clearly explicated, is clearly implicit in many texts. All, for example, which prescribe before the nyāsa to concentrate on the divine or otherwise entity to be placed, or which say that one must first reabsorb and assimilate the mantras in oneself (that is to say, what they symbolise) before imposing them. Thus in the ŚT (chapter 5, śl. 118–120, in relation to the varṇamāyī dīkṣā), the master first identifies with the divinity, uniting himself with the supreme self, and then imposes the phonemes of the Sanskrit alphabet on his disciple, impregnating him with their spiritual force and identifying him with the divinity: he transmits through nyāsa the condition which he had previously brought about in himself.22 In all cases, too, where what is imposed is not a mantra or bījā but a figure (the śrīcakra for example – thus in YH, chapter 3), or when a mantra is made of a group of unpronounceable letters such as the navātmamantra RHRKSMLVYUM (TĀ 15, 239f. see also here, p. 60), the essentially mental or spiritual character of the operation of nyāsa is evident.
There exists, finally, complex nyāsas which are more tantric meditations than placing properly so called, where the adept must first visualise (and feel) that all or part of his body is transformed by the imposed mantras and becomes identified with energies, cosmic divisions, etc. There is also the case where the nyāsa of various energies is done in the ‘breath’ (prāṇa) of a yogi whose body has first been divinised by other nyāsas,23 etc. In cases of this sort we can ask whether we are still in nyāsa, but this would be to forget that nyāsa always has a mental or spiritual aspect which is often (notably in more complex cases) an operation almost uniquely intellectual. This explains why the texts prescribing the placings, in place of nyaset or vinyaset, use the verbal forms smaret, cintayet, dhyayet, bhāvayet or kalpayet.24
Let us finally note that alongside such terms as underline the mental aspect of nyāsa, we also encounter in ritual texts, so as to underline the act of placing, other words for nyāsa. Thus the verb KṢIP (to project, to place, to pour) can serve to indicate the placing of certain entities on the body or on an object (for example, TĀ, 16, 231, for the imposition on previously imposed tattvas; or TĀ 17, 2–3, the projection of the three malas on the body of the disciple after the placing on him of the adhvans): in effect these are nyāsas. The Indian lexicographers often gloss nyāsa with kṣepa or nikṣepa: thus Kṣirasvāmin in Amarakośa II, 9, 81, nyasyatenikṣepyate nyāsaḥ. One also finds niveśa and viniveśa, viniyoga, samarpaṇa (or YUJ: yojayet, or ni-DHĀ: nidhāpayet etc.). All these terms have near meanings: the sense of to deposit, to place, to install, to apply, to put, or to consign to a place, or else, to join, to conjoin – the words differ but refer to the same thing.
There are also texts using the verb LIKH, to write, when prescribing or describing nyāsa. This is very natural when it refers to placing mantras or bījas on a diagram: one places and traces them there according to precise rules.25 Or, in certain rites where one must draw a yantra and bījas on a liquid while reciting the bījas in order to consecrate the liquid, thus for the preparation of the arghya for the pūjā. But there are cases where the texts are more ambiguous. For example, in chapter 293 (mantra-paribhāṣa) of the AgPur (śl. 39–47), the ‘Lords of the letters’ (lipīśvara) and the energies of Rudra (represented by phonemes) must be written then imposed (likhyā … vinyaset), without the text indicating how or where the phonemes are to be written before being imposed. We do not have, it is true, an entirely reliable text of this purāṇa: the passage in question is perhaps corrupt or incomplete: the uncertainty remains.26
To gain a complete sense of what nyāsas are, their nature and role, we must examine several types and different usages (their range and diverse effects). In effect, as in nearly all Tantric ritual, Hindu or Buddhist, the nyāsas are used in a wide variety of circumstances and conditions, from the highest spiritual practice to the most vulgar magic (including an important zone where it is difficult to know if one is in the religious or the magical, the two domains being difficult to separate, especially in India: ‘There is no religion without magic and no magic that does not contain a grain of religion’).
As the more complex nyāsas are those which best show the sense and scope of this practice, we will first consider this type of procedure. We will then examine more rapidly diverse sorts of simpler nyāsas which we find in ritual worship (pūjā), in spiritual practices or magic, as well as in the ritual acts of daily life. Not that the sense of these diverse types of nyāsa differs: it is always the same, the impregnation of the body or of an object touched by a divine or cosmic entity or a spiritual force. But this ‘metaphysical’ dimension is more or less noticeable and in particular more or less explained in the prescriptive texts: it is only for this reason that I distinguish them.
Let us now look at the texts rich in ritual developments and in religious and cosmic implications. I will resort mainly to two works which are easy to have access to, both of them Śaivite: the one Kashmirian, Abhinavagupta’s TĀ, the other also connected to Kashmir and commented upon in the spirit of the Pratyabhijñâ by Amṛtānanda, the Yoginīhṛdaya (YH).27 For the TĀ we will look at passages from chapters 15 and 16, the former dealing with the so-called regular initiation (samayadīkṣ ā), the latter with the putradīkṣā, the initiation of a ‘spiritual son’.28 It may be useful to recall in this connection that, in the TĀ, initiation is not limited to the transmission of a mantra by a master to his disciple, a type of rite of passage giving access to a particular form of spiritual life, but is a procedure enabling the initiated disciple to realise, from the particular point where he finds himself (hence the diversity of dīkṣās29), his identity with Śiva. These rites being all the more complex as the disciple has a longer road to travel and more elements to transform and purify. Moreover, the goal aimed at being usually liberation in life (jīvanmukti), being in all cases the liberation of an incarnate being, the body (or rather, the bodies, gross and subtle) of the initiand, as well as his thought must be transformed and divinized. Hence the important role, in this process of that fundamental means of corporeal transformation, and of interiorised action, that is nyāsa.
The ritual of the samayadīkṣā as described in chapter 15 of the TĀ is particularly long and complex. Nyāsas are used there in nearly all the rites and there are moments when they are the essential part of the rite. To begin with, we find a general placing (sāmānya nyāsa) of the fifty phonemes of the mātṛkā and of the mālinī,30 after which the disciple to be initiated purifies his body and his ‘breath’ (prāṇa) (that is, destroys in himself all that binds him to empirical life and duality) through meditating on the flaming image of the astramantra PHA:Ṭ31 (śl. 232–36). He thus finds himself in the pure, divine Self (tiṣṭhecchuddhātmani), immobile and without waves, but where there nevertheless appears as a primordial wave the image (mūrti) of Śiva formed by the mūrtimantra OṂ HAṂ.32 It is in this state, the adept being already very purified and detached from empirical life, that the ‘special placings’ (viśeṣa nyāsa) that interest us here will be performed.
These comprise, first, a ‘great sixfold nyāsa’33 of the ‘god Navātman’,34 that is to say of the navātmamantra formed from nine letters RHRKṢMLVYUṂ. These are imposed on nine points of the body; followed by nyāsa on fifty points of the body of the mātṛkā; then of the śiva-, vidyā- and ātma-tattvas (which cover the whole manifestation) on the tuft, the heart, and the feet; then of the eight gods or mantras Aghora etc. on the head, face, neck, heart, navel, generative organs, thighs and feet; of the mantra god Bhairavasadbhāva, with his ‘limbs’ (aṇga) on the usual places for nyāsa of the aṅgamantras (heart, head, tuft of hair, chest, eyes – sometimes also the ‘weapon’); and finally, on the same places, of the mantra god Ratikśekhara, RYLVUṂ, which must be specially worshipped at this moment in the rite.
This first mahānyāsa is that of the various aspects of Śiva. It is followed by a second series of six placings: of aspects of the Energy (śāktaṃ nyāsam śl. 248) which must be made ‘on the preceding ones’, that is, on the same places. This is important: it is necessary to exactly superimpose the two series of nyāsas in order to make the two categories (male and female) of cosmic or divine entities coincide and so to unite Śiva and Śakti (and thus have the divinity in its totality) in the body of the adept. One therefore imposes on the navātmamantra the energy Parāparā with her ‘limbs’ and ‘faces’ (sāṅgavaktra); on the mātṛkā, the mālinī,35 on the three tattvas of Śiva etc., the three aspects of divine energy (or, more exactly, the three goddesses) Parā, Parāparā and Aparā; on Aghora etc., the eight energies Aghorī etc.; on Bhairavasadbhāva and his aṅga, the five Vidyāṅga; finally one must place on the same spots the Energy as Mātṛsadbhāva, Mistress of Yoga, in her plenitude, supreme and unwavering, destroyer of time, the initiating master having at the same time (as for Ratiśekhara) to worship her specially, mentally evoking her ‘limbs’ and ‘faces’ and her retinue of twelve energies. For this is, in fact, the energy at her most high and pure level, the supreme Consciousness, present without any division in all other deities or entities previously imposed. It is this supreme Śakti united with Śiva that the double mahânyāsa infuses in the body and spirit of the disciple.
Abhinavagupta (śl 259–61) makes clear the scope of this operation in putting in parallel the six parts of the double nyāsa and the five modalities of consciousness (from jāgrat to turyātīta) to which he adds anuttara, the first principle, ‘without second’, each of these six states being considered as being formed by itself along with the five others. This makes 6 × 6, that is 36: the number of tattvas from Śiva to earth. The nyāsa therefore has the effect of imposing on the body of the adept all the modalities of consciousness (from the ordinary waking state to supreme consciousness) along with the group of thirty six principles that constitute the cosmos. He thus is identified with the totality of consciousness and the pure, cosmic emanation paradigmatically present in Śiva. The adept is thus identified with the Supreme Śiva united with Śakti, pure,36 total Consciousness, dazzling, where appears in all its diversity; but archetypally and without duality, the totality of the cosmic manifestation (śl. 262–68).
It is interesting to note that at this point Abhinavagupta thought it useful to approach the problematic of nyāsa. He notes in effect (śl. 268–269) that it is paradoxical that an empirical method such as the placings can produce a result of a transcendent order: the transformation of a man into a god. But this is, he says, because nyāsas are operations of an interior, spiritual order: that which one thinks, for good or bad, that one becomes. Whoever therefore thinks intensely (bhāvayati) ‘I am Śiva and nothing other’ becomes Him (śl. 269–270). ‘He creates for himself there an unwavering certainty, an awareness in the depth of the heart, associated with a thought without duality which, itself, generates a flood of thoughts bound to duality [but all] orientated toward the identity [of the empirical subject] with Śiva’.37 One thus comes to destroy all belief of another (mundane) kind and to have only the unshakeable conviction that our nature is pure, eternal and divine. The spiritual character of the activity of nyāsa cannot be better underlined.
Having by this sacrifice thus transformed his body, full of bliss, entirely away from the world, the adept should meditate on the body as identical with Śiva. Any connection with the world once destroyed and the limited condition being dissolved, what remains in his body other than the essence of the bliss of Śiva? Worshipping his body day and night and carrying in himself the thirty six tattvas, the adept is identified with Śiva. Perfectly content he lives in peace in this cosmic body.
(śl. 238–236)
Thus Abhinavagupta sums up the condition of the person who has received the double mahānyāsa. What else, indeed, could he want?
This is not, however, the end of the rite of initiation, but only a necessary condition for its complete accomplishment. The process therefore continues, first, with a new group of nyāsas which is also worth summarising.38 There again the initiand is to identify himself with Śiva. One could believe that this condition has already been attained through the previous nyāsa. But it is completed here through an ‘interiorisation’ by the adept of a group of aspects of the divinity or, more precisely, of an ascending movement of energy which he will integrate with his ‘breath’ (prāṇa). He imposes, in effect, on his ‘breath’ a series of entities representing the rise of energy from its lower base to the supreme level, a series visualised as a trident extending from the point of departure of the breath in the area of the navel, to a point twelve fingers above the head. This ‘breath’, conceived as present in the physical body, is an element of the yogic structure of centres and veins imagined as present (‘intraposed’ to use T. Goudriaan’s term) in the physical body. The nyāsa thus, even if accompanied by hand gestures which impose the entities, is essentially internal, mentally visualised. It completes the preparation of the adept to the mental and material acts of worship that are to follow by making his ‘breath’ and his consciousness – and not only his body – the seat (āsana) of the deity.39
He first places the Power that supports (ādhāraśakti) four fingers below the navel, then on top of that the four elements: earth, water, fire and air together with the fifth one, ether, the whole occupying four fingers and being imagined as forming the swelling (āmalaka) near the base of the trident. The latter, called ananta, rises above the swelling through twenty-four finger-spaces from his navel to the uvula (the cakra of the palate), being made up of the twenty-four tattvas from tanmātra to kalā. Then, on the knot formed by the māyā tattva, one finds the eight qualities of consciousness (dharma, etc.) placed on a square maṇḋala in the four directions of space and their intermediaries. Just above this knot (between the uvula and the brahmarandhra), the initiand is to meditate on (dhyāyet – not nyaset) the śuddhavidyā tattva in the form of a lotus with eight petals: on these and in the calyx one places and worships the nine energies Vāma, and so forth, from right to left (pradakṣina), then the nine energies Vibhvī, etc. in the reverse order. After this the adept is to evoke (smaret) the sun, moon and fire with the gods Brahmā, Viṣṇu, and Hara placed respectively on the petals, the stamen and the calyx of the lotus. Above these he places Īśvara, then above him (at the level of the top of his skull) Sadāśiva, the mahāpreta, lying as a blazing corpse, emaciated but filled by the laugh of destruction.40 He should then evoke (smaret) three shafts of light which, rising up from the navel of Sadāśiva, go up from the brahmarandhra – these are the three energies śakti, vyāpinī and samanā – forming the trident (trisūla), they spread out and up to the plane of the dvādaśānta, twelve finger-spaces above the head, reaching the level of unmanā.41 where the three supreme goddesses of the Trika are seated each on a Bhairava lying on, a white lotus. The initiation ritual goes on, a cult being then to be performed on the lotuses to this supreme plane of the deity.42
We have here, then, a nyāsa where cosmic and divine entities are imposed (placed, seen, and felt) and the image to be visualised of a trident. This implies a double identification with the one and with the others and implies that the visualisations and meditation occupy the main place, with physical touching, insofar as there is any, having only a secondary role. This passage well illustrates the role that nyāsa has in a spiritual practice that rests on mental representations; and how the hand gestures on the body (when there are such gestures) bring about, through the representations and mental effort which accompany them, a transformation of the body image, the ‘cosmicisation’ of the performer and his assimilation to the divine.
In chapter 16 of the TĀ, on putrakadīkṣā, there are interesting passages (śl. 77–163 and 207–247) where the cosmic sixfold division of the ‘ways’ (adhvan) and the mantras which express and are used to purify them are imposed on the body of the adept. There is here again a complex nyāsa in which mental representations play a crucial role. It would merit being examined, but to do this here would give too much space to this kind of operation.43 On the subject of complex nyāsas, it will be better to look at those which are more directly linked with the cult and use of a maṇḋala (or cakra).
There is a good example of this in chapter 3 of the YH (śl. 8 to 92), which describes the cult of the goddess Tripurasundarī which, as with the rites we have seen, has as a goal not only her worship but also the identification of the performer with the deity. The ‘external’ cult allows – thanks to the ritual and above all thanks to the nyāsas – the adept to attain this identification that those more talented or more favoured by divine grace would attain merely by contemplation (bhāvanā: śl. 5–6).
The adept must first make a sixfold nyāsa (ṣoḋhānyāsa)44 of: 1) the fifty Gaṇeśa, placed where one normally imposes the mātṛkā; 2) the nine planets, imposed on various points of the body with each of the eight series of phonemes plus kṣa; then 3) the nakṣatra, associated with phonemes; 4) the six groups of Yoginīs on the six cakras from mūlādhāra to ājñā, with syllabic bījas; 5) the twelve signs of the zodiac with groups of phonemes; 6) finally the fifty pīṭhās associated with the fifty mātṛkās.45 One thereby achieves a first ‘cosmicisation’ of the body of the officiant since one finds there the stars, places of sacred geography, together with such forms of divine energy as are the mātṛkā and the bījas. The officiant thus already transcends his human condition.
He must, however, still identify with the Goddess and, to this end, he will become assimilated to her as she resides, surrounded by secondary deities, in the śrīcakra used to worship her (since she abides at its centre), but which also, and mainly, symbolises her cosmic dynamism as she eternally emits and reabsorbs the universe. The adept therefore imposes the cakra on his body, the nyāsa bringing him to merge with the deity in total non-duality (therefore going back to the origin). The ritual process unfolds going from the outer part of the cakra to its centre.
First, the process requires the outside line of the square surrounding the cakra to be placed on ten points of the body with the mantra ‘homage to the outside line of bhūpura’. Then, invoking in the same way the two other lines of the square, he imposes on the same points of the body these lines as well as ten siddhis, then the ten mudrās which also reside there. In the same way he imposes the other parts of the cakra (the two lotuses with sixteen and eight petals, then the four concentric series of small triangles formed by the intersections of the nine triangles that are within the cakra) on various points of the body, with a mantra of homage to each of these parts. He then imposes on the same points the divine entities residing in each part of the cakra. This is thus a double operation, identifying the body with the cakra by the placing of its nine parts, then achieving the divinisation by placing all the aspects of the goddess associated with the cakra.
Then the adept imposes in his heart, with the mantra ‘homage to the triangle’,46 the central triangle of the cakra on the outside of which are the three goddesses Kāmeśvarī, Vajreśvarī, and Bhagamālinī and in the centre the goddess Tripurasundarī.
But the process does not stop there; another series of impositions must still be made on the body, this time going from the centre to the exterior, from the mūladevī to the secondary divinities and to the siddhis, from the central bindu to the outer square. This being done, the adept comes to realise that the goddess, Mistress of the gods – says the commentator – and his own self are identified, inseparably united, the supreme reality, dazzling and vibrant, ‘the unifying fusion of light and consciousness’ (prakāśavimarśasāmarasyarūpa). Being the cause and foundation of the process of nyāsa, the goddess brings the adept to unity with the divine self (śl. 83); it is therefore with her that the nyāsa reaches its ultimate aim.47 The process, in fact, does not end there, but it is not necessary to follow it further.48
If nyāsa is essentially a mental or spiritual practice – especially in cases where its scope and aim are the most profound – it is nonetheless, as a general rule, accompanied by a gesture and consists, in the most common practice, in the manual act of placing a mantra – hence the importance, already mentioned above (pp. 55–56), of everything relating to the hand; though, probably, as we have already seen with the theory of nyāsa, the role of the hand appears as subordinate to the mental operation. One can say that above all it is a symbolic act (which would not be disparaging, for anything related to mantra is precisely of symbolic effectiveness). It is, on the other hand, in more elaborate philosophical texts (not very frequent in a Tantric milieu – except, of course, in the Saiva exegesis) that the spiritual foundation of nyāsa is expressed. A less intellectual thinking will naturally give the hand a directly effective role. It goes without saying that, for most adepts of yore or of today – be they devotees, mantrins, or magicians (very numerous, those!) – the hand is really charged with the influx that it places. But in Tantric texts too (the TĀ, for instance) one often finds side by side these two levels of practice or of religious discourse. These works thus prescribe nearly all the rites for purifying the hand which performs the nyāsa and for charging it with the effective force it must transmit. This is in particular what justifies the rite of karanyāsa or of karāṅganyāsa (placing on the hands, or placing of the aṅgamantra on the hands) often prescribed first when a series of placings is required.49 One thus finds at the beginning of the Śaiva samdhya the sakalīkaraṇa50 rite, whose goal, according to Aghoraśiva, is first to penetrate the hand with divine energy (sakalahastavy āptaśaktitvena), then with this transformed hand, to identify different parts of the body of the officiant with the ‘parts’ (kalā51) of Śiva.
The fourth chapter of the Pārameśvara-saṃhitā (after the fourth śloka, which we have seen given a definition of nyāsa as a mental process) describes a karanyāsa (or hastanyāsa) characteristic enough to merit being reproduced here:
Given the role of the hands in the placings, one should begin with their nyāsa. Thus ‘imposed’, the hands are charged with a luminous force. One places there, indeed, twelve phonemes52 from wrists to fingertips, that are thereby as full of light and heat as the sun (ādityatapavat). The rule is that nyāsa is done three times: according to emanation, conservation and resorption. In the sṛṣṭinyāsa (emanation), one imposes the tāra (mantra) on the palm of the right hand, then on the thumb, etc.: the ten fingers, in order, up to the left little finger, thus receive ten phonemes, the twelfth being placed on the left palm. In the nyāsa of conservation (sthiti), one begins with the left thumb, then the four other fingers, and ends with the palm, imposing six phonemes beginning with the tāramantra. Then follows in due order the six other akṣara on the left hand, from the thumb to the palm. (The saṃhāra – resorption – nyāsa is made from the left palm to the right.) After this, one must impose the rest of the phonemes ending with the praṇava. The nyāsa must be made with the index finger on the thumb of the same hand, then with the thumb on the index and the other fingers, going from the right thumb to the left little finger, then the two palms, right and left. One must then impose the mantras hṛdaya etc., the twelve luminous members (aṅga) (of Viṣṇu) right in the middle, the lotus with shining rays, the club shining with its own brilliance on the left palm, in the right the luminous disc, the conch in the left palm, the kiriṭa on the right hand, the śrīvatsa in the middle of the left, the kaustubha on the right palm and the rosary on the left, Śrī on the right hand and Puṣṭi on the palm. He must then impose the garuḋamantra on the ten fingers, going from the right thumb to the left little finger. This is the rule of the hastanyāsa. By this the supreme energy of the Lord will penetrate to the centre of the lotus of the heart where it is transformed into vital breath; then, dividing itself into ten, it extends up to the hands (pāṇimārgena nirgatā), where it fills the ten channels (nāḋī) which reach to the fingers.53
In the Śaiva context one finds, as well as the karanyāsa already mentioned, a particular rite of the ‘hand of Śiva’ (śivahasta) used, above all, for initiation (and sometimes in worship): it transforms the right hand of the master into a divine hand. Abhinavagupta mentions it in relation to the samayadīkṣā in the fifteenth chapter of the TĀ:
The master should, with the left hand, worship on the right hand the luminous wheel of mantras, containing all the ‘ways’ (adhvan) and destroying all the bonds. He places it on the head of the disciple, on which the ‘ways’ have been first imposed, then touching his whole body, this hand shall destroy all bonds which bind him, and [the disciple] will then be an initiated samayin, shining, united in his lifetime to the Supreme Lord.54
In the offering of the pavitras, described in the SP, the master transforms his hand by means of various anointments and imposes there the aṅgamantras.55 This ritual of śivahasta can appear as outside the domain of nyāsa, but it is not. One is still within the problematic of placings, mental or manual, and of the transmission through thought or hand of a transforming power.
The hand, as we have seen, is generally the right hand but it can be the left or both. A nyāsa can also be made in a different way, with a flower for example. Being a beneficial ritual, the nyāsa should normally be made with the right hand. The texts sometimes make it clear. They especially mention the cases, rather rare, in which the left hand is to be used. Thus the fourteenth chapter of the TĀ, in a passage previously summarised, indicates the practice expounded being ‘of the left’ (vāmācāra),56 all the rites prescribed there are to be performed with the left hand (except where both hands are prescribed) using the thumb and ring finger.57 The left hand, hand of impure activities, is also to serve in harmful magical practices (abhicāra). Finally, there are several cases of using both hands together or separately. Such is the case (cf. p. 76) of the vyāpakanyāsa. There are others cases, those notably of nyāsa on symmetrical parts of the body, or when (in the karanyāsa) the placings are made separately on each hand.
Whatever hand is used, the nyāsa is done with a particular gesture of the fingers, a mudrā: usually (as said above) the thumb and ring finger joined, which is often called mahāmudrā. The TBhS says:
The sage must perform the placing with flowers, with the ring finger, or mentally, says another text on mantra. [‘ring finger’ being understood as:] with the ring finger united to the thumb. The Padyavāhinī says in effect: it is everywhere understood that nyāsa is made with the thumb and ring finger joined. It explains further: with flowers on the image,58 with the ring finger and thumb on his own body and mentally on the mūlādhāra and other cakras. This is excepting the nyāsa of the ṛṣi etc., of the karāṅganyāsa and of the external nyāsa of the mātṛkā for which other mudrās are prescribed.
These mudrās are enumerated in the same work (p. 163): they vary not only with regard to the phonemes imposed but according to the place where the placings are made: ring finger and middle finger on the forehead and the mouth, index, middle finger and ring finger on the eyes, etc. Other texts give different prescriptions – and there are evidently other prescriptions in Buddhist texts (or in Jain ones).59
Mudrās are continually used in Tantric ritual; they have coded meanings and accompany or support speech – above all mantras – uttered in pūjā as well as during other ritual or magical actions. There are lists or descriptions in a number of works.60 As noted above, mudrās like mantras surely go back a long way: they are archaic quasi-universal forms of behaviour that India has particularly developed and codified. As previously mentioned, the relationship existing between mantra and mudrā does in several respects pose problems that go beyond the scope of this brief study. Remaining in its frame, we have already seen that the Indians did ask themselves the question of the relationship between the effect of nyāsa and its material performance. On the subject of mantras and mudrās in general, the following formulas, usually ascribed to the Mahānayaprakāśa,61 are sometimes quoted: svarūpajñānapanarūpaṃ mudrā-samsthānam and svavimarśātmanā trānam īṣyate mantralakṣanam; the mantra would thus bring liberation by reflexive awareness of the self, whereas the role of the mudrā would make known the nature of reality. We may consider these formulas as largely arbitrary since they are based in part on a play of words; we must, however, retain the distinction they set between, on the one hand, the awareness and, on the other, the visible expression or sign of the essential nature, for this is certainly the manner in which mantras and mudrās are understood and experienced by those who use them. We may note too that among other meanings the term mudrā means ‘seal’ (or ‘imprint’ made with a seal) and that, in the case of nyāsa, the hand gesture appears precisely to seal in the prescribed place the entity or mantra being imposed (mudrā is also translated into Chinese as yin which designates an official seal).62
As a gesture, mudrā is an essential element in the bodily participation of the adept in the transformation of his body that nyāsa is to bring about: the movement reinforcing and concretising in a visible manner the action accomplished by mantra and mental concentration.63
But although corporeal by nature, the mudrā, too, can be done internally. Thus the LT 35.74, in a chapter describing the rites to be performed for the internal worship (antaryāga) of the deity, says: ‘The sādhaka should meditate on the mudrās in spirit’ (manasā bhāvayen mudrāḥ). The mudrās, in this case, are mentally performed or, more exactly, intensely meditated upon and ‘realised’.64 Cases of this sort, of mental or interiorised ritual worship, where no gesture is made, are not exceptional and they are always considered as of a higher nature than materially performed rites. The mudrā, too, in such cases, acquires a higher value.
Mudrās, in fact, necessarily have a mental aspect since they are not merely performed, but also thought, held in mind, mentally imagined by the adept at the same time as he performs them bodily.65 But there may also be something more: they can be ‘lived’, experienced, by him on a metaphysical plane. When, for example, the YH 1.57–71 describes the divine energy as taking the form of nine mudrās, the sādhaka must at that time make the prescribed, symbolic gestures, the mudrās, with his hands, and realise them as being forms of the Energy (kriyāśakti) – deities also – thus closely associating the bodily, theological and metaphysical planes.66
We can cite on the same subject another work of the Krama tradition of Kashmir, but by an author of South India, Maheśvarānanda (tenth century), who put forward an interesting metaphysical interpretation of nyāsa in stanza 45 of his Mahārthamañjarī. Here is an approximate rendering of this text: ‘The network of gestures pertaining to the domain of dualistic thought brings about a contact with non-duality. The water of the offering is the play of the knowable; the flowers are the nourishing states of our own essence.’67 Maheśvarānanda, in his own commentary, the Parimala, explains that this ‘network of gestures’ is the aṅganyāsa effected by the adept who, when making these placings on his body, becomes aware of the Self, which destroys all duality. In effect he unites the awareness of the absolute with the parts of his body touched by the nyāsa which are thus understood in spirit through a synthetic, undifferentiated intuition whose nature is the realisation of the total plenitude of the absolute ‘I’. Maheśvarānanda cites then a verse from his paramaguru Śivānanda:
I accomplish the purification – the total purification of the two hands – which is pure consciousness expanding to the fingers and where the action being done coincides exactly with its Cause. I realize and make present by the practice of the ṣaḋaṅga [nyāsa] the surging of the noble energies, the Omniscient and the others, which abide in the Self of the Lord.
Neither these stanzas, nor their gloss, are easy to grasp; the terminology, the metaphysics, are those of the Krama of Kashmirian Śaivism. But the interpretation of nyāsa as an operation of a metaphysical order where gesture is subordinated to consciousness, itself dominated by the non-dual awareness of divinity, is clear: the scope and field of action of nyāsa is transcendent, its nature is spiritual. The formula of the Pārameśvara-saṃhitā – vyāparo mānaso hyeṣa nyāsaḥ – appears in comparison to be modest; but all the formulations encountered – and I think I have made an impartial choice – put the placings on the same side, that of consciousness.
It remains, to complete this study, to review briefly some examples of nyāsa prescribed in the texts and the manuals (examples, of course, that we have not already seen).
When a text prescribes the use of a mantra for certain ends, the announcement is almost always followed by an indication of the sage (ṛṣi) to whom it was revealed, by its meter (chandas), the devatā it ‘expresses’, the syllable or word which is its seed (bīja), that is, its abbreviated form or essence. Sometimes, too, its energy (śakti) is indicated along with its pointed end (kīlaka) and, finally, its use (viniyoga).68 Now, the first thing to do, if one wants to use the mantra, is to impose on oneself those of these elements that are quoted: an obligatory rule to be followed even when it is not expressly prescribed. This may take place at the beginning of the ritual, if only one mantra is concerned (as in most cases cited in the Mantramahārṇava); but if a longer rite requires the use of several mantras, the ṛṣyādinyāsa can be prescribed each time – thus the placing of the mātṛkā, which very often must follow the ṛṣyādinyāsa and the ṣaḋaṅganyāsa of the principal mantra, begins with the placing of the ṛṣi etc. (see below p. 79). (This is so much so that even the hamṣa mantra of the ajapājapa, which in many regards is only the natural movement of the breath accompanied by the two syllables ham and sa, is supposed to have its ṛṣi etc. that it is necessary to place initially: at most it is sometimes admitted that there is a spontaneous placing–sahajam nyāsam, cf. Dakṣinamūrtisaṃhitā 7.17–20). The raison d’être of this rite is that the practitioner thus begins his assimilation of the mantra by effecting a first general identification with it through taking into himself its principal elements, after which comes the rest of the ritual (of which we have seen examples), at the end of which the adept will attain a perfect identification with the supernatural entity of which the mantra is the phonic form and through which the sought after goal is reached. But to be able to effect a complete transformation, a veritable ‘change of ontological status’ (to speak like Mircea Eliade), since it is a question of passing from ordinary life to a state of liberation in life, of identification with the absolute69 – or even, more modestly and more usually, when the aim of the rite is merely to become able to use the mantra for utilitarian ends – it is necessary for the adept to have from the outset a body and mind prepared and already somewhat modified and purified by assimilating something of the mantra. This is why this preliminary nyāsa is useful.70 ‘Without the placing of the ṛṣi, the metre and the devatā, the recitation of a mantra, even indefinitely multiplied, would remain fruitless’ (a tantra cited in the TBhS, p. 189).
This nyāsa is always done in the order given above and on the same points of the body, successively: the head, the mouth, the heart (which are the three obligatory points corresponding to ṛṣi, chandas and devatā), then genitals (or mūlādhāra), feet and/or navel and on the entire body (sarvāṅga). The formula used is of the type: (Om) + the utterance of the ṛṣi etc. in the dative + namaḥ (the part of the body touched being sometimes also stated in the locative). Thus, for the mantra Om namaḥ śivāya, the ṛṣi etc. are presented as follows:
ṛṣī Vāmadeva, paṇktichandas Īśānadevatā oṃ bījam, namah. śakti, śivāya kīlakam, caturvidhapuruṣārthasiddhyarthe nyāse viniyogaḥ.
We have thus:
om vāmadevārṣaye namaḥ, on the head
paṅktichandase namaḥ, on the mouth
Īśānadevatayai namaḥ, on the heart
om bījāya namaḥ on the genitals
namaḥ śaktaye namaḥ on the feet
śivāyeti kīlakāya namaḥ on the navel
caturvidha … viniyogāya namaḥ on the body.71
One might ask what motivates the choice of one or another part of the body for the nyāsa. Perhaps comparing nyāsas in several different traditions would make it possible to discover permanent elements and to reach conclusions: such an enquiry (if it is worth the trouble) remains to be carried out. For the present case, the selection of the places where to impose mantras seems to be that of important points of the image of the body as it is mentally experienced in ritual worship, in yoga, and in mantric practice.72
Sometimes this series of placings is to take place after the karanyāsa, but it normally precedes another series, also a general occurrence: the aṅganyāsa or karāṅganyāsa.
The placing on the body – or on the hands, then on the body – of the aṅgamantras is also one of those somehow preliminary operations which, taking place at the beginning of a rite, serve to impregnate the body and the mind of the officiant with the energy and powers of the mantra or of the deity of whom the aṅgas represent qualities or fundamental aspects. Necessary at the beginning of all mantric practice, included therefore in the obligatory rites, it is part – as the nyāsa of the riṣyādi and that of the mātṛkā – of the everyday practices of Hinduism.
This rite is also called sakalīkaraṇa. The SP defines it thus: ‘One must understand by sakalīkaraṇa the placing on the body, beginning with the heart and ending with the hands, and on the fingers beginning with the little finger, of the mantras of which the first is HṚD’.73
The six aṅgamantras (with which are associated, in Śaivism, the five vaktras, faces or mouths of Śiva, to form the eleven samhitāmantra) are perhaps originally a Śaiva conception, but one finds it in all of purānic or tantric Hinduism and also with the Jains. In spite of their name, the aṅgas are not limbs or parts of the body, but elements with symbolic value, corresponding to parts of the mental (visualised) image of a divinity or a mantra – or else to the powers which emanate from deity or mantra, such as the rays from the sun74 – and which are placed by nyāsa on different points of the human body which is thus put in correspondence with them. These elements are ‘lived’ by the adept and experienced as such and as pervaded by divine powers.75 ‘One must perform the ṣaḋaṅganyāsa to acquire perfection of body (dehasya siddhaye),’ says the Pārameśvara-saṃhitā (7.21). (This is apropos the ajapājapa of the hamsamantra which has no limbs nor body, since it is nothing else than the breath assimilated to the divine energy: besides, the placing of the aṅgas of this mantra is in fact done with luminous entities: the sun, moon etc. – the Hamsopaniṣad, 12, gives a similar prescription). The aṅgas are the heart (hṛdaya), the head (śiras), the tuft of hair (śikhā), the ‘cuirass’ (kavaca), the eye (netra)76 and the weapon (astra). They are placed respectively on the heart, the head, the place of the tuft, the upper part of the arms close to the shoulders, the eyes or the forehead, and the hands; or, in the case of placings upon the hands, on the fingers and the palm. They are always enumerated and placed in the same order and the way they are formed obeys precise rules, the same, apparently, in all traditions. These mantras are uttered in the following manner: one first utters (although not always) Om which is followed by one or several monosyllabic bījas77 and sometimes by another element78 – these varying according to the principal mantra. After which comes the enunciation of the aṅga in the dative, then the final exclamation, which is, according to the aṅga and in order: namaḥ, svāhā, vaṣaṭ, huṃ, vauṣaṭ and phaṭ.79 This order being fixed, the placings are made sometimes with only this part of the mantra – called jāti, that is, species or category – which suffices to represent and identify the aṅga.80
Here is, by way of example, the aṅgamantra of the triple vidyā Parā, Parāparā and Aparā according to the MNT, a modern fabrication, to be sure, but propounding many traditional notions:
Oṃ sāṃ hṛdayāya namaḥ, oṃ sīṃ śirase svāhā,
Oṃ sūṃ śikayai vauṣat, oṃ saiṃ kavacāya hum,
Oṃ sauṃ netrebhyaḥ vaṣaṭ, oṃ saḥ astrāya phaṭ
(ibid., III, 60–61)
According to certain texts (as in a tantra cited in the TBhS p. 170), the hand forms different mudrā according to the aṅgamantra being placed.
This sixfold placing is sometimes made on the hands before being made on the body: the hand, naturally, receives the aṅgas before it places them elsewhere. One has then a variant of the karanyāsa mentioned previously – where sometimes (in the sakalīkaraṇa for example) the aṅgas are also placed.
The formula used is a little different from that of the aṅganyāsa. It is either a short formula, of the type anguṣṭhabhyāṃ namaḥ, tarjanibhyām svāhā, etc.,81 or a more complex one, of the pattern: bīja + divinity and aṅga with the dative, + finger or palm with the locative, + final exclamation, as, for instance, hrīṃ śrīmadekajaṭayai hṛdayāya aṅguṣṭhabhyāṃ namaḥ. The placing is normally made from the thumb to the little finger, then on the two palms. As with other nyāsas, it must sometimes be done three times: according to emanation, from the thumb to little finger; according to resorption in reverse; or according to maintenance, going from the base of the middle finger to the index finger.82 Certain texts prescribe different mudrās for different placings (TBhS, p. 170). The formulas use the locative dual for the fingers and palms because the nyāsa must be made simultaneously and separately on the two hands: with the thumb on the fingers of the same hand, with the index finger on the thumb, then with the four fingers of the right hand on the left palm and vice versa.83
We remain, with the mātṛkānyāsa, in the placings which ensure the preliminary divinisation of the officiant, essential for effectively worshipping a deity or a mantra. One thus finds it almost always in the first part of the pūjā, although in principle not in the worship of a mantra where, on the contrary, the nyāsa of the ṛṣi etc. and of the aṅgas is always present. This last, however, is usually associated with the placing of all letters of the mantra (mantramātṛkānyāsa), an operation which one can be all the more tempted to parallel with the nyāsa of the mātṛkā since the latter, when imposed, is treated as a mantra (one sometimes says mātṛkāmantranyāsa) with its ṛṣi, aṅga etc: all these procedures are repetitive and tend to interpenetrate. The TBhS underlines this when it begins the section of the mātṛikānyāsa by citing the Pheṭkāriṇītantra: ‘without the placing of their letters, the mantras are dumb. To ensure the success of all the mantras, one must therefore first place the letters’.84 In many cults, we find series of mātṛkānyāsas added to the antar- and bahir-nyāsa which form the mātṛkānyāsa in the strict sense, which we describe here, the imposition of the same fifty or fifty-one phonemes associated to cosmic elements (for example, the kalās – see the kalāmātṛkānyāsa cited below p. 77) or the nyāsa of the letters of a mantra itself sometimes associated with that of the mātṛkā. One obtains in this way series of mātṛkānyāsas: nine are enumerated later (p. 78) and many other examples could be given.
The mātṛkā – or the mātṛkās: the ‘little mothers’ – are the phonemes of the Sanskrit alphabet regarded as discrete aspects of divine energy or, taken all together, as the totality of this energy under the form of speech (the ŚT 6.2, calls this the phonetic body, varṇatanu, of the goddess) which ‘expresses’ the cosmic manifestation, bringing it into existence by enunciating it. They are the basic phonic elements being used to form the mantras as well as to create, support, animate (and to reabsorb) the universe.85 Their placing can therefore appear as an essential factor in the divinisation of the officiant, this they may be in theory if not in practice. The mātṛkānyāsa may seem to have a more important role in the traditions where – as in the Śaiva non-dualistic systems of Kashmir – speculations on the cosmic role of the phonemes were particularly developed. The importance and role of the mātṛkā is, however, part of a shared Tantric fund, it is therefore not surprising that this nyāsa is also found in one form or another in all traditions. It is, however, especially in the Śaiva and Śākta texts that one finds the mātṛkānyāsa in the complete form that we will describe now.
The placing of the mātṛkā usually follows the ṛṣyādi- and karāṅga-nyāsa. It is normally divided into three parts. First, since the mātṛkā is considered as a mantra, the ṛṣi etc., then the aṅga, will have first to be imposed. This is arbitrary and is due only to the idea that the mātṛkā is, in this context (insofar as one imposes it?), to be treated exactly as a mantra. Of course, ṛṣi, metre, etc. vary according to the texts and the schools. The nyāsa is done in the usual way. It is followed by karanyāsa and aṅga;- or karāṅganyāsa on the hands and/or on the body.86
Then the internal placing, antarmātṛkānyāsa, takes place in general a process entirely mental, consisting of concentrating mentally on the six cakras (or ādhāras, of the yogic body) which are tiered from the base of the spinal column to the summit of the head and which must be visualized as lotuses, each with a different colour and a particular number of petals from two to sixteen, on each of which one places mentally one of the fifty phonemes: ‘That which is called the internal nyāsa consists of placing and [mentally] uttering (uccārya) each phoneme followed by the word namaḥ, going from the mūlādhāra to the brahmarandhra’.87 The texts in general underline the importance of mental concentration, of the image mentally evoked, of the centres of the yogic body and of the phonemes. The adept must – at least in theory – clearly visualise the cakras of his body and ‘see’ there the phonemes he has placed as brilliant letters forming drops of energy whose presence transforms him by awakening these centres of vital and cosmic energy. This mental representation can be accompanied by the recitation, audible or murmured, of the phonemes placed. To this is sometimes added a visualisation of a divinity also mentally perceived in the body.88 ‘This nyāsa must be made in meditation, the mind well concentrated. One must visualize Viṣṇu, pure Consciousness, extending from the mūlādhāra to the brahmarandhra and place the mātṛkā with the essence of nectar flowing from the supreme bindu, while separately uttering each of the letters’.89 Some texts prescribe, to accompany the placing (or to precede it), a prāṇayāma where the breath is imagined as associated with different categories of phonemes, then as circulating with them in the entire body which they impregnate with their energy.90 The antarmātṛkānyāsa reflects, in this regard, the same spirit as the complex nyāsas that we have seen above (p. 59f.) where the image of the body mentally evoked plays an essential part.
Finally comes the external placing (bahirmātṛkānyāsa) of the fifty phonemes in grammatical order from A to KṢA, on fifty points of the ‘gross’ body, made with the hand – generally with a different mudrā according to the part of the body and by enunciating either only the phoneme ‘decorated’ with the bindu and followed by namaḥ, or these elements preceded by a bīja variable according to different schools.91 The external nyāsa is often made three times in a different order, according to whether the phonemes are placed emanationwise, from A to KṢA (since that is the order which manifests the universe), or according to conservation, or from KṢA to A, and in this case it is the process of phonetic resorption which is imposed. We have already seen the triple sṛṣṭi-stithi and saṃhāra-nyāsa and explained its meaning (see above p. 65). The rules of external nyāsa vary also according to the texts: the Tārābhaktisuddhārnava quotes several.92
There is another placing of the fifty phonemes which is less frequent: the mālinīnyāsa, that we have already seen (above p. 60) as part of a complex nyāsa described in the TĀ. The mālinī is a particular order of phonemes, the first being NA and the last PHA (it is therefore called nādiphāntakrama): it is the alphabetical form of the goddess Mâlinî, an ‘alphabet deity’ (see above p. 60 and note 30). It is found especially in the non-dualist Kashmirian Śaiva system of the Trika (being described in particular in the third chapter of the MVT, quoted and paraphrased by Abhinavagupta in his PTV), and also in the Kubjikā tradition. The mālinī is considered as an especially effective and energetic form of the phonemes in, the passage that I have just recalled (TĀ 15.121–142), its nyāsa is prescribed to charge the body with energy (nyasecchāktaśarīrārthaṃ bhinnayoniṃ tu mālinīm), which is a citation from MVT 3.36. We also meet it in chapter 145 of the Agni-Purāṇa (which is a sign, among others, of the influence of the kulāmnaya on this text). In these cases, the nyāsa is not described as part of a complete rite of mātṛkānyāsa that we have just seen, and does not take place necessarily at the beginning of the rite. A particular aspect of those nyāsas is that the letters of this alphabet are conceived as being disposed vertically from head to feet in the shape of a human body – that of the goddess Mâlinî, and thus, if imposed on the body of an adept, the phonemes are placed in the same way on his body. The operation is therefore somewhat different, but its meaning and effect – a transfer of power embodied in an alphabet – remains the same.93
The three nyāsas that we have seen are probably the most frequently and most generally used in Hinduism (they even appear to some measure in Jainism). They help us to underline some traits of the theory or practice of the placings. There are, however, other nyāsas, probably less common but not uninteresting. We will therefore mention some of them chosen among the most characteristic.
We have already encountered the pīṭhanyāsa when dealing with the ṣoḋhānyāsa, of which it usually forms a sixth part, having the effect of placing in the body of the adept the fifty-one sanctuaries of the goddess, thereby identifying the body with a sacred world where, on pilgrimage, one goes from one sanctuary to another. One could say in this regard that the pilgrimage is internalised together with the fifty or fifty-one divine places, or centres of divine energy, distributed at different points of Indian territory. This nyāsa is both Śaiva and Śākta since it refers to the myth of the dismemberment of the body of Satī.94 There are variants corresponding with variants in the numbers of pīṭha being invoked which goes from four to fifty-one (and according to a later tradition up to 108). It may be found also in other traditions.95 In fact, the expression pīṭhanyāsa, in its most current sense, designates the placing of entities serving as seat or throne (pīṭha) of the divinity on the lower part of the icon being used for worship. This is well attested in ritual texts (for example, for the Pāñcarātra in the JayS, chapter 20, pp. 223–227).96
We have previously seen other placings which divinise or ‘cosmicise’ the adept, as with the placing of the tattvas or the adhvans. There is also the nyāsa of the kalās, etc. We can also mention, among such notions, the mūrtinyāsa prescribed in the SvT (1.59–60, vol. 1, p. 50), where the adept must place on his entire body (sarvaṅgeṣu) the nine tattvas from kalā to śiva,97 then the tritattva (ātma, vidyā and śiva-tattva) covering the thirty-six tattvas. He thus places in himself the divinity as it manifests the universe: this is a process of deification.
The nyāsas examined so far are essentially those that the adept makes on his own body to purify or transform it. But placings are very often made on objects to which they transmit the power of a deity or mantra; a power that the adept must in theory first assimilate by an initial and more or less complex nyāsa.98 This is continually met in the ritual: the placing of a mantra on water used for worship (arghya) and which, when thus ‘sacralised’, becomes the nectar of Śiva, etc. But there are several more curious ways of proceeding. One could thus mention the ritual for the invocation of Śiva (śivāvāhana) of the SP1 (III, 61–64, vol. 1, pp. 184–91), where the officiant, meditating on the supreme Śiva, utters internally the bīja Hauṃ, making it go up from the mūlādhara to the brahmarandhra and, from his face where it shines like the moon, he visualises it descending in a flower kept in the cup of his hands (puṣpāñjaligataṃ dhyatvā); he then unites it to the icon (mūrti) which is used as support for the worship, where the divinity itself will consequently reside: a process which is made entirely mentally (dhyāna or bhāvanā), then by mudrās, without there being, strictly speaking, nyāsa. We can ask, here, again if we are still in the domain of the placings. In fact, the ritual seems to provide instances where mantras produce an effect without any nyāsa being really performed: sometimes a mudrā or a gesture accompanies them, sometimes touching with a flower.99 There are also some cases where the mudrās seem to be active by themselves.100 It would probably be too much to consider these practices as being strictly speaking placings. They are, however, very near, be it only because they fall within the same problematic: that of the transfer of energy by mental concentration and/or gesture. Or, from a more general point of view, partake of the problem of the efficacy of gesture which in fact lies at the centre (or in the background) of the practice of nyāsa.
It should be noted also that, in a ritual close in spirit and in its effect, the jīvanyāsa (a term that could be translated as ‘the placing of life’), such as described in the AgPur (chapter 96, śl 90–93), the master enunciates the mantras, making them go up from the navel cakra to the dvādaśānta where they dissolve in the effulgence of the supreme Śiva, who is carried by mental concentration and placed on the liṅga being used for the worship, where from now on the god will abide. This purely mental ritual process (manasā … dhyatvā) is called nyāsa (jīvanyāso bhaved evam). It is followed by other placings on the base of the liṅga. Chapter 59 (this one Vaiṣṇava) of the same purāṇa, describing the rite of the adhivāsana of Viṣṇu, says in a similar way that the deity is installed (sthapana) in the image which is vitalised (sajīvakaraṇa) by placing on it the mūrtimantra.
The jīvanyāsa is normally used for infusing the icon used in worship with life. It can, however, also be used for the adept after the rite of bhūtaśuddhi or dehaśuddhi (purification of the elements of the body), by which the adept reabsorbs the elements of which his body is composed one in the other (a resorption that makes the gross body disappear). His vital principle (jīva) finds itself thus outside of him because it resides, for a moment, in the dvādaśānta or in the bindu. To this ancient body it is necessary to substitute a new body, pure, subtle, into which one will bring back the principle of life previously displaced. This is done through the rite of jīvana, or sakalīkaraṇa, where some nyāsas are used.101
When a pūjā is made to a deity using a diagram, it is by nyāsas – normally done using blades of darbha grass – that the deity, then his/her aṅgas, attributes, and the secondary deities who surround him/her, and so on, are placed in the cakra or maṇḋala (see for example, LT chapter 38 or SP3). It is the same for any rite where a maṇḋala is used in which deities are placed (cf. SP2, vol. 2 p. 320 with regard to prayaścitta; or various passages of SP3, etc.).
In more current use, mantras are put on objects to make them sacred, to purify and protect them etc. Thus the astramantra is placed on the doorframe of the door to the sanctuary or on the threshold to protect the place of worship (SP2, vol. 2, pp. 48 and 356); or nine deities are placed on the blades of grass used to make a pavitra (ibid. p. 102); or the mantras astra, kavaca and hṛdaya are deposited on a receptacle where they constitute a phonic and spiritual ‘casket’ so as to protect these same pavitras (ibid., pp. 130–131). Examples could be multiplied indefinitely.
But rather than pursue this enumeration, it would now be better, after having seen separately different nyāsas, to try to follow – briefly – a whole ritual where placings play a role, whether the ritual is centred on a mantra or is the pūjā of a deity.
In the cult of a mantra, the mantrasādhana or puraścaraṇa, the adept, who has received a mantra from his master through initiation, is to perform rites and follow observances which will give him, in the end, control of the mantra from which he will be able to draw all possible spiritual (or material) benefit. Hélène Brunner, in her study already cited (above, note 29) on the sādhaka, has summarised this ascesis according to the Mṛgendrāgama and several other āgamas. There are very similar prescriptions in other Śaiva, Śākta and Vaiṣṇava texts. The schema is generally the same, comprising a certain number of nyāsas placed especially at the beginning of the practice in order to communicate to the adept, by several series of placings, the energy of the mantra which will serve him as instrument of action and/or of salvation. As it is usually necessary, during the sādhana, to perform a worship to the mantra, this is done using a diagram, on which nyāsas will also be made.
The placings are in general in the following order. The ṛṣyādinyāsa, a vyāpaka-nyāsa102 on the entire body, the kara- or karāṅganyāsa on the hands, the hṛdayādiṣaḋaṅganyāsa (sometimes also the placing of the five brahma- or vaktra-mantra, sadyojāta etc.); then the placing on the body of the letters and/or the words of the mūla-mantra (mantravarṇa and mantrapada-nyāsa) follow from those of the aṅga, upāṅga and secondary elements.
After this comes the pūjā of the mantra, normally done with a maṇḋala where the mūrtimantra must be placed in the centre by nyāsa, which installs there the image of the mantradevatā, then, of course, around it, the aṅga, upāṅga, āvaraṇa-, or parivara-mantras etc.103 The pūjā itself and all that follows it then remain to be performed, during which rites other nyāsas will take place and where, in particular, it might happen that the sādhaka must place the cakra on his own body (cf. YH 3 cited above p. 64): the succession of the nyāsas is considerable, and even quasi-infinite if one thinks that the operations are repeated hundreds or thousands of times.
It is, however, in the pūjā of the divinities that the series of nyāsas are longest and where they take place most often. This is quite natural considering the number of elements playing a role in the worship at the same time which it is necessary to purify or consecrate, and all the more in the context of manipulation of divine energy and of internalisation or ritual identification which is that of the Tantric pūjā. Evidently, we do not meet here as complex nyāsas those which took place in initiations: those which are supposed to involve a total spiritual and bodily transformation of the disciple and which, quite naturally, require the most complex and effective procedure for the transfer of energy. The case of the pūjā is different and, one could say, simpler. But even here the number and the diversity of the placings are considerable because the worship is often a long process, sometimes involving a number of deities. Now, rites as well as divinities vary according to traditions and sects and even according to worshippers; it would therefore be vain to try to draw up a complete list. It will suffice to end this overview of nyāsa by giving a few brief elements concerning the usual succession and function of some of the placings made during the pūjā.
There is a brief exposition of nyāsa in the cult of Kṛṣṇa, pp. 90–92 of the thesis of R.V. Joshi, Le rituel de la dévotion kṛṣṇaïte.104 They are part of the worship of the already consecrated image (without nyāsa apparently) and are done on the image itself. They are limited to very few elements: antarmātṛkanyāsa on six parts of the image which correspond to the six cakras of the body; keśavanyāsa: the placing of fifty-one phonemes with fifty-one different names of Kṛṣṇa and his Śakti (am Keśavāya Kīrtyai namaḥ etc.); and lastly a tattvanyāsa considered to be particularly important. Mantras accompanied by mudrās are used during the rest of the ritual but they are not strictly speaking nyāsas, which appear to be remarkably few in number.
Appreciably longer are the following lists which seem much more characteristic. These are drawn from manuals of different epochs. The Pūjāvidhinirūpaṇa of Trimalla105 first enumerates only eleven placings, performed at the beginning of the pūjā:
1. ṛṣyādinyāsa;
2. ṣaḋaṅganyāsa;
3. antarmātṛkānyāsa;
4. bahirmātṛkā- (saṃhāra-sṛṣṭi and sthiti);
5. mūlavidyāsaṃpuṭitamātṛkānyāsa;
6. nyāsa of six goddesses;
7. nyāsa of five vaktras of Śiva, followed by:
8. ṣaḋaṅganyāsa;
9. yoni-nyāsa: two placings of nine divinities;
10. nyāsa of the eight mothers Brahmī etc.
11. lastly, we have the vyāpakanyāsa of the mūlamantra of Bhuvaneśvarī; followed by various offerings, the dvārapūjā, the pīṭhapūjā, then the cult of the divinity.
If we look at the Tāriṇīpārijāta (which quotes several Tantras), we find, in the pūjā, after the preliminary libations, the construction and offering of the throne, prāṇāyāma and bhūtaśuddhi, a series of eleven nyāsas:
1. jīvanyāsa comprising several elements (see above note 101);
2. antarmātṛkānyāsa comprising first several placings on the body, then ṛṣyādi- and aṅganyāsa, dhyāna of the goddess, ending with placings of fifty phonemes in the cakra;
3. a triple bahirmātṛkānyāsa (sṛṣṭi sthiti and saṃhāra), each comprising ṛṣyādinyāsa and dhyāna of a devatā with the placing of the mātṛkā;
4. kalāmātṛkānyāsa: the placing of the mātṛkā associated with fifty-one kalās, preceded by the ṛṣyādi and aṅganyāsa and a dhyāna;
5–10. ṣoḋānyāsa (described according to the Tantracūḋamaṇi) comprising the placing of fifty Rudras, nine graha, eight lokapāla, Śiva and Śakti on the six cakras, Tārā (nyāsa of fifty phonemes on the six cakra), and lastly ten pīṭhas with groups of phonemes on ten points of the body;
11. nyāsa on the body of the ṛṣi etc., then of the aṅga (karāṅganyāsa) mantra of Tāriṇi on the hands. After this the adept must trace the yantra used for the worship, followed by nyāsa of fifty pīṭha (seen previously, p. 74, lastly the rest of the pūjā.
The two series do not differ much except by the presence in the second one of the jīvanyāsa and of the sixfold ṣoḋaśanyāsa. These are simple models. An example of a longer series can be found in the Balārcanapaddhati, a Śākta ritual manual published in 1933 in Surat.106 This work is taken simply as an example among others of contemporary prescriptions where the placings are multiplied one could say for pleasure’s sake, without this abundance adding anything to the significance or interest of the operation; it is typical of the Tantric tendency to ritual multiplication and redundancy.
The part of the text concerning nyāsas begins with the bhūtaśuddhi which is made by placing the fifty phonemes from A to KṢA on different parts of the body (ending with the thousand petal lotus at the top of the cranium). This purification is followed (as already seen, p. 75: jīvanyāsa) by the ‘infusion of breath’ prāṇapratiṣṭhā, realised by ṛṣyādi-, karāṅga-, then vyāpakanyāsa, followed by a dhyāna of the devatā, after which the placing of the vital breath itself is made on the body of the adept with the prāṇapratiṣṭhāmantra. Then come the following nyāsas:
1. antarmātṛkānyāsa: first a prāṇāyāma – inhaling with the vowels, retaining the breath with the pavarga (the occlusives from pa to ma) and expiration with ya etc.; ṛṣyādinyāsa, then karanyāsa with the vowels and the vargas of the consonants followed by their hṛdayādiṣaḋaṅganyāsa. Dhyāna of the kuṇḋalinī coiled up in the mūlādhāra with all the phonemes, then mounting with them along the suṣumnā – one must visualise the six cakras and mentally place there the vowels and the groups (varga) of consonants.
2. bahirmātṛkānyāsa: first, as previously, the ṛṣyādi-, kara, and ṣaḋ aṅganyāsa, then placings of the sixteen vowels (oṃ aṃ namaḥ to oṃ aḥ namaḥ) and of the eight groups of consonants to which one adds two supplementary ‘groups’: ham-ḥam and kṣam placed on the two hands.
3. śuddhamātṛkānyāsa: ṛṣyādi-, kara and aṅganyāsa. Dhyāna of the goddess associated with fifty phonemes, then nyāsa of them on fifty points of the body.
4–5–6. mātṛkānyāsa according to saṃhāra, sṛṣṭi and sthiti.
First, the ṛṣyādikaraṣaḋaṅganyāsa. Then a dhyāna, different in each of the three cases. Then nyāsa of the phonemes ‘decorated’ with bindu (oṃ kṣaṃ namaḥ to om aṃ namaḥ) on different points of the body for the saṃhāranyāsa; or the phonemes with the visarga (oṃ aḥ namaḥ etc.) for sṛṣṭi, or, for sthitinyāsa, the phonemes with bindu and visarga, going from ḋa to ṭha (the three placings are to be done in a different order according to whether one is a brahmacārin, a householder or a renouncer).
7. śaktimātṛkānyāsa: ṛṣyādinyāsa, ṣaḋaṅga- then karanyāsa. Dhyāna of the Śakti, then mātṛkānyāsa (oṃ aṃ hrīṃ namaḥ on the head, oṃ āṃ hrīṃ namaḥ on the mouth etc.).
8. śrīpraṇavakalāmātṛkānyāsa: ṛṣyādi, then hṛdayādinyāsa. Dhyāna of Praṇavakalāmātṛkāsarasvatī, to whom homage is to be paid; then invocation of the fifty kalās and their placing with fifty phonemes from A to KṢA.
9. Śrīkaṇṭhādimātṛkānyāsa: ṛṣādi, then hṛdayādinyāsa of a rather long formula: ‘oṃ hrīṃ śrīṃ namaḥ śivāya aṃ brahmāṇi māṃ rakṣa rakṣa haṃsavahane mām rakṣa rakṣa padmahaste māṃ rakṣarakṣa hāṃ hrīṃ hrūṃ. aṃ kaṃ aṃ aṃ aṃ aṃ hrāṃ hrīṃ hrūṃ hsauḥ saṃjīvāni hṛdayāya namaḥ’ etc. Next dhyāna, then placing of the fifty phonemes according to the pattern: oṃ hsauḥ aṃ śrīkaṇṭheśa pūrnendarībhyāṃ namaḥ (on the head) etc.
10. Keśavādinyāsa: ṛṣyādinyāsa, dhyāna, then the placing, after having made mentally the offerings, of the pūjā (mānasopacaraiḥ saṃpūjyanyaset). Nyāsa of the fifty phonemes as: oṃ klīṃ aṃ etc.; next a prapañcayāgamātṛkānyāsa with ṛṣyādi and karanyāsa, and then an ‘oblation’ (homa) of phonemes (varṇamayam homam) with the formula oṃ hrīṃ kṣam hamasaḥ so’haṃ svāhā (for KṢA) up to oṃ hrīṃ aṃ haṃsaḥ so’haṃ svāhā (for A) on different parts of the body.
11. mūlamantranyāsa, that is, the main, basic (mûla) mantra of Bālātripurasundarī: ṛṣyādinyāsa, then a triple placing of aiṃ, klīṃ and sauḥ (which are the bīja, the śakti and the kīlaka of the mantra). Then a triple nyāsa of fifty phonemes by encasing (saṃpuṭa) each one of them successively between one of the three monosyllables (e.g. aiṃ aṃ aiṃ, klīṃ aṃ klīṃ etc.).
12. navayoninyāsa: nine placings of aiṃ, klīṃ and sauḥ on the body.
13. Rityādinyāsa: ‘aiṃ rityai namaḥ on the mūlādhāra, klīṃ rityai namaḥ on the heart and sauḥ mano bhavayai namaḥ between the eyebrows, such is the nyāsa’.
14. amṛteśvaryādinyāsa: sauḥ amṛteśvaryai namaḥ between the eyebrows, klīṃ yogeśvaryai namaḥ on the heart and aiṃ viśvayonyai namaḥ on the mūlādhāra.
15. mūrtinyāsa: placing on the head, mouth, heart, genitals and feet of the five brahma- or mūrti-mantras:shrauḥ īśanāyamanobhavāyanamaḥ, shreṃ tatpuruṣāya makaradhvapāya namaḥ, shrīṃ shrum aghorāya kandapāryāya namaḥ shrīoṃ vāmadevāya manmathāya namaḥ and shrīoṃ sadyojātāya kāmadevāya namaḥ
16. cakranyāsa: same placing of the five mantras īśāna to sadyojāta on the five faces (pañcavaktāni) of, probably, a liṅga.
17. [nyāsa given as uncertain: mūlamantraṣaḋaṅganyāsa: aṃ klīṃ sauḥ, two times on the heart, tuft etc.].
18. bāṇanyāsa: five placings on the head, neck, face, genitals and heart: draṃ dravaṇabhānāya namaḥ, driṃ kṣobhanabāṇāya namāh, klīṃ vaśīkaraṇabāṇāya namaḥ, blūṃ ākarśaṇabāṇāya namaḥ and saḥ sammohanabāṇāya namaḥ.
19. devatānyāsa: eightfold placing with the bījas aiṃ, klīṃ, blūṃ, strīṃ of eight female divinities (Subhaga, Bhagā, Bhagamālinī, etc.) on different points of the head, heart, navel and mūlādhāra.
20. pīṭhanyāsa: placings on different points of the body of entities forming the seat or base (pīṭha) of the divinity. Then dhyāna of Bālātripurasundarī, which completes and ends the whole series of nyāsas.
It would have been useful to complete this exposition, which rests on Hindu examples only, with an examination of nyāsas such as those practised in Jainism and Buddhism. We have already quoted several examples of practices similar for Hindus, Jains or Buddhists, but it would be interesting to do more and notably to mark in what ways the two last traditions, especially the Buddhist, differ from the first. I have, however, not been able to gather enough documentation to enable me, as for Hinduism, to give a kind of general outline of usual uses in the Jain of Buddhist milieus. What would be especially worth examining are the practices (along with the discourses that accompany them), rather than the general problem of the nyāsa which, it seems to me, is in many regards the same – mutatis mutandis – in all traditions: it is always a matter of making the body or an object sacred by the placing of entities which carry a divine or spiritual force. But this not a topic I can enter into now.
Limited thus to Hinduism, this brief examination of nyāsa will, I hope, contribute to show the importance of this ritual practice in the Tantric or ‘tantricised’ forms of the Hindu religion. In the developed and organised form we have described (and which is still used in India), the practice is perhaps comparatively recent. But it is very likely that its origin goes back to an ancient past, and, above all, that it is founded on an ancient way of conceiving, apprehending and ‘living’ the body in religion and asceticism. India, indeed, has always invested the religious and the cosmic in the body. It is the place where the sacred geography, the levels and structure of the cosmos, the gods (‘like cows in a cattle shed’) are reflected and incarnated, where is played out again on a human scale – but in connection with the divine – the cosmic process of creation, manifestation and resorption. The role and raison d’être of the nyāsa is precisely to actualize the cosmic potentialities of the body, to structure it in cosmic correspondences or equipollences, an actualization that is the very goal aimed at by the rites and the religious or spiritual practices. Hence the importance of nyāsa as one of the essential components of the practice of the Indian religious man who seeks release not only in spirit but ‘in this life and this body.’