In the following pages the reader will find a systematic exposition and explanation of Tantric mantras as they have existed broadly speaking within ‘Hindu’ Tantric traditions. It could be argued that mantras are at the heart of Indian religious practice and although they have been studied both from the perspective of indigenous philosophy and through western academic disciplines, there is still much that can be said about them. Some twenty years ago Professor Padoux reminded us of the vastness of the subject of mantras and the need for us to understand Tantric theories of mantra, such as those that developed in the medieval period in Kashmir and elsewhere, and also contemporary practices and practitioners of mantra.1 The present book goes some way to filling that gap and addresses questions of fundamental concern to Indology, South Asian Studies, and the study of religions, describing what mantras are, showing how they are used in a ritual context, and presenting what the Tantric traditions themselves regard mantras to be. The purpose of this foreword is not so much to summarise the following chapters but rather to introduce the idea of mantra and to put the material Padoux presents into a wider historical perspective.
But what are mantras? This entire volume might be seen as an answer to that question within the remit of the Tantric traditions. Among the definitions listed in Monier-Williams’ Sanskrit Dictionary are ‘sacred text or speech, a prayer or song of praise … a Vedic hymn of sacrificial formula … a sacred formula addressed to any individual deity … a mystical verse of magical formula (sometimes personified), incantation, charm, spell. …’2 This is a beginning but these definitions do not tell us much about the nature of mantra, its scope or precise use. As Padoux has observed, mantras are in Sanskrit, they are conventional formulas transmitted through tradition, and are not made up.3 In the Tantric traditions mantras must be seen in a cosmological context and different mantras correspond to different levels of the hierarchical cosmos understood as levels of consciousness or speech, as Padoux has demonstrated. This association of mantra with cosmology is arguably the case throughout the history of Indian religions. The cosmos is understood as the flow of the energy of the word (vāc) emanating from its transcendent source and returning there. Mantras are both expressions of this word and means of returning to that source. Mantras, Padoux writes:
appear as privileged instruments for the return to the source of the energy of the word. More than that, a mantra is often itself a symbol or, rather, a form of this primal energy. It retains this pre-eminently in a most effective and practical form. But it is also alive with an inner force tending intensely toward the primal source of all speech, toward the Power which is the Word. Mantra, therefore, brings together both the practically effective and creative, and the transcendental and liberating, powers of the Word.4
Mantras express or embody principles, powers, or deities that are thought by the tradition to exist at higher cosmic levels. Thus to repeat a mantra is to directly engage with a deity and become located within the cosmical hierarchy. We might say that even if mantras are non-linguistic, as with the ‘seed syllables’ or bīja mantras, they are meaningful in so far as they serve to locate a person within the structure of the universe and they are drawn from the Sanskrit alphabet. As Padoux has shown, one of the characteristics of Tantric mantras is that the mantra is the sonic form of a god. Jan Gonda also makes the point that a mantra that contains the name of a god ‘is indeed regarded as embodying the energy of the god which is activated by pronouncing the formula.’5 This sound form of the deity is generally imparted to the disciple at initiation at which time the master (guru) empowers the mantra with divine energy (mantravīrya). The master illuminates the energy of mantra, says the Mālinīvijayottara-tantra,6 thereby bringing it to life and making it efficacious.
While Tantric traditions entail different metaphysical systems, they all share the basic assumptions about mantra and the practices associated with it. Mantra pervades Tantric practice from esoteric meditation on the letters of the alphabet to repetition of mantras that accompanies the general ritual sequence of purification of the elements of the body (bhūtaśuddhi), the construction of a divine body through imposing mantras upon it (nyāsa), inner or mental worship involving the visualisation of the deity, and outer worship where the deity is offered external substances such as flowers and incense. By repeating mantras the practitioner is attempting to gain both power and liberation in the belief that repetition will make his mind conform to the mantra and so imbibe its power. Mantras can thus be used for magical or daily purposes, as Alper has observed, such as locating lost cattle, and also for redemptive purposes such as ‘escape from saṃsāra, the diminution of the effect of bad karma, transportation to the realm of the god to whom one is devoted.’7 Mantras have been used for magical purposes such as attempting to kill enemies or attract women, and soteriological purposes such as uniting with the pure consciousness of Śiva in non-dualistic Śaivism or become equal to Śiva (śivatulya) in the dualistic Śaiva Siddhānta.
Mantras have been used not only in ‘external’ ritual but also in yoga and meditation where they are linked to the breath (prāṇa). This would seem to be an ancient practice and is found in Tantric Upaniṣads such as the Dhyānabindu and the Yogaśikhā, where the breath is linked to the mantra haṃsa. This comprises two syllables HA and SA which are thought to be produced naturally in the process of breathing and when combined can make the phrase aham saḥ, ‘I am he’ and so’ham, ‘he is me’, indicating the practitioner’s identification with Śiva. Furthermore, the natural respiration is thought to be automatically repeating this mantra in a ‘recitation of the non-recited’ (ajapājapa).8
Behind these practices, even within traditions that have divergent metaphysics, a model of the mind is entailed that consciousness conforms to its objects: the nature of consciousness is such that it is purified by focussing on a pure object or conversely made impure through focussing on an impure object (driven by anger or lust). Perception, usually driven by desire, reaches out into the world to grasp objects and then conforms or is formed by them. This is not dissimilar to the medieval Christian idea of extramission in which perception grasps its objects through the eye actively reaching out and emitting a ray into the world.9 Through repeating a mantra which has been brought to life by the master and filled with divine power, the disciple’s mind is grasping a pure object, thereby becoming pure itself. This is an ancient idea attested in the Yoga-sūtras where yoga is understood as the process of redirecting the mind away from this habitual conformity to objects of consciousness that it calls ‘the fluctuations of consciousness’ (cittavṛtti).10 This fundamental idea seems to be unchanged in the Tantric period and helps us understand the way in which mantras are believed to be efficacious.
One of the major issues is whether mantras are, in fact, language. On the one hand we have the view that mantras have illocutionary force in that to utter a mantra is to perform a speech act, while on the other we have the view that mantras are not speech acts at all for they are not meaningful. Frits Staal has presented a systematic argument that vedic mantras are not language in the sense of conveying meaning and therefore cannot be understood in terms of semantics.11 Mantras are connected to ritual which certainly has a structure or syntax but has no semantics, being a kind of evolutionary leftover from a pre-linguistic stage of human evolution. On this view, what is important about mantras is their rhythm and their location within a ritual structure, not their meaning. While this is not the place to outline Staal’s argument or to systematically present any counter-argument, the material presented in this book lends weight to the idea that mantras must be understood in the context of human meanings and the worldviews they inhabit. While many mantras in themselves do not have direct linguistic meaning, they are used within a meaningful human context of intention and purpose, the achieving of particular human goals and the expressing of hope for power or liberation in this or some other life.
Mantras have been used for a very long time. They are attested from some of the earliest documents of religious history, namely the hymns of the Ṛg-veda, and may go back millennia before that. Mantras are attested in mainstream brahmanical tradition and are central to brahmanical ritual, they are pervasive in Tantric traditions (the subject of the present volume), and exist in the other indic religions of Buddhism and Jainism. Mantras travelled to Indonesia, China, and Japan and now to the West and related practices are found in other religions – dhikr in Islam as Eliade observed,12 and prayer, such as the Jesus Prayer, in Christianity. But it is in the pre-medieval and medieval Tantric traditions that mantras became particularly important in religious practice, with systematic teachings about mantras, the mantraśāstra, being developed. Indeed a name for the Buddhist Vajrayāna is mantrayāna, a term that could equally be applied to Hindu Tantric traditions.
The history of Tantrism has been well documented by Alexis Sanderson in a number of publications13 and André Padoux himself has written a masterful survey.14 A general picture emerges of traditions developing in the medieval period that held to a different source of religious authority other than the primary revelation of the Veda and the secondary revelation of the epics and Purāṇas, namely the Tantras. A distinction was therefore made between a follower of the Vedas, a vaidika, and a follower of the Tantras, a tāntrika, a distinction that operated across sectarian divides of Śaivism, Vaiṣṇavism and Śāktism. Within these emergent Tantric traditions were varying degrees of conformity to vedic values and traditions with extreme Kaula and Kāpālika groups, on the one hand, rejecting vedic, brahmanical values as mere social convention and inhibition that had to be transcended for a higher enlightenment, to more conformist traditions such as the Śaiva Siddhānta, on the other, maintaining the compatibility between vedic and Tantric revelation. Indeed, intellectuals in Kashmir such as the Nyāyika Jayantha Bhaṭṭa, writing apparently from his prison cell, towards the end of the ninth century, defended the Tantric revelation but within the boundaries of reason and vedic values.15
Within Śaivism, by the time of Abhinavagupta (c. 975–1025 C.E.) as Sanderson has outlined in his publications, alongside orthoprax and orthodox vaidika tradition whose followers were known as Maheśvaras or Rudrabhāktas and who worshipped deities according to the Purāṇas, we have, technically, the teachings of Śiva (śivaśāsana) followed by the Śaivas who have undergone an initiation (dīkṣā). The Śaivas themselves can be distinguished between the Ati Mārga, the higher or outer path of the Pāśupata ascetics, and the Mantra Mārga, the path of mantras that can be divided into the Śaiva Siddhānta and non-Saiddhāntika groups, particularly the Trika, Krama and Kaula groups. Both the Śaiva Siddhānta and non-Saiddhāntika groups revered different Tantras as revelation and differed as regards metaphysics. The Śaiva Siddhānta were dualists or pluralists who maintained an absolute ontological distinction between Lord (pati), self (paśu lit. ‘beast’, ‘cow’) and world (pāśa, lit. ‘bond’, ‘noose’) whereas the non-Saiddhāntika groups tended to be non-dualists, maintaining that self, world, and Lord are ultimately identical, the world being identical with consciousness (saṃvit, cit, caitanya) or an emanation, a vibration (spanda) of consciousness. These non-Saiddhāntika groups tended to be non-dualistic also in their ritual practice, denying a distinction between the pure and the impure and using impurity in a ritual context such as the consumption of alcohol, the ritualised use of sex outside of caste restrictions, and offering meat to often ferocious female deities. A similar pattern can be found among Vaiṣṇavas with the Pāñcarātra being the Tantric wing of the Vaiṣṇava tradition revering a body of Tantric texts generally called Saṃhitās, although here the element of impurity is lacking. The Śākta traditions similarly develop in the early Tantric period with the Śrī Vidyā focussed on the Goddess Tripurasundarī and generally conforming to vedic values, especially with the adoption of the tradition by the Vedānta and the Śaṇkarācārya of Śṛṇgerī.16
All of these groups use mantras which are a defining feature of different Tantric traditions. There is, for example, a classification of Śaiva traditions flowing from the five mouths of Śiva in his form as Sadāśiva, namely Īśāna, Tatpuruṣa, Aghora, Vāmadeva and Sadyojāta, each of these facing one of the directions and from which a Tantric tradition flows.17 Similarly, as Padoux describes, Kaula traditions or transmissions (āmnāya) are based on the directions, each transmission associated with different deities and different mantras. Thus, for example, in the eastern transmission (pūrvāmnāya), Kuleśvara and Kuleśvarī are worshipped surrounded by the eight Mothers, Brahmī and so on.18 While these classifications are idealised, what is notable in all this is the centrality of mantras and the identification of the deities of the traditions with mantras. Indeed, as Padoux shows in the present volume, great emphasis is placed on mantras in all of our texts, with details of how to form them, how to use them, and their fundamental nature as identical with or emanating from a deity. Thus Abhinavgupta in the Tantrāloka identifies speech (vāc) as the essence of a deity and as power (śakti) expressed through the Sanskrit language. Thus the alphabet from the letter a to kṣa expresses the inner nature of the Lord, outside of time.19 While these traditions somewhat declined during the colonial period, they have not completely disappeared and the old traditions of mantra are still current in modern India along with the revived or more recent uses of mantra by modern gurus, particularly as they have come to the West. In Kerala, for example, mantras are used by the Tantris, orthodox Nambudri Brahmins, in temple worship and they are also used at a popular level in the mantravādam to cure disease and snake bites.
André Padoux presents us here with important studies in mantraśāstra which are brought together for the first time in this book. The importance for Indology and the study of religions of his meticulous work cannot be underestimated. Through focussing on the mantraśāstra, Padoux has demonstrated in detail how a concept and practice has gripped the imagination of a civilisation. In the following pages the reader will discover the Hindu Tantric understanding of mantra and the implications this work has for future research. We cannot understand Indian religions without understanding the place of mantra and the treatment of the Hindu Tantric systems presented here also needs to be done with Buddhist and Jain traditions as well. There are promising avenues of inquiry for comparative religion, for in understanding human spiritual practices we need to understand the place of verbal utterance (mantra, prayer, dhikr) in their ritual and meditational contexts across religious traditions and thereby deepen our understanding of ourselves and the institutions we have created and inhabit. But that is a task for another day.
1 Padoux, A. ‘Mantras – What Are They?’ p. 295. In Harvey Alper (ed.) Understanding Mantras (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989), pp. 295–318.
2 Monier-Williams, M. Sanskrit-English Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1899), pp. 785–86.
3 Padoux, A. Comprendre le tantrisme: les sources hindoues (Paris: Albin Michel, 2010), p. 176.
4 Padoux, A. Vāc: the Concept of the Word in Selected Hindu Tantras, trs by Jaques Gontier (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990), p. 85.
5 Gonda, Jan. Vishnuism and Shivaism: A Comparison (London: Athlone Press, 1970), p. 67.
6 MVT 2.10.
7 Alper, H. ‘Introduction’, p. 7.
8 Padoux, A. Comprendre le Tantrisme, p. 183.
9 Tachau, Katherine ‘Seeing as Action and Passion in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,’ p. 337. In Hamburger, J.F. and A.-M. Bouché (eds) The Mind’s Eye: Art and Theological Argument in the Middle Ages (Princeton University Press, 2006), pp. 336–59.
10 Patañjali Yoga-sūtras 1.4 trs with commentary by Hariharānada Āraṇya. The Yoga Philosophy of Patañjali, trs by P.N. Mukerji (Albany: SUNY Press, 1988 (1963)).
11 Staal, Frits. Discovering the Vedas: Origins, Mantras, Rituals, Insights (New Delhi: Penguin, 2008), p. 191. ‘Mantras are not mysterious statements with deep meanings. They have no meanings because they are not language.’ For some discussion of the relation between mantras, language, and meaning, see Alper, H. (ed.) Understanding Mantras (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989); Yelle, Robert A. Explaining Mantras: Ritual, Rhetoric, and the Dream of Natural Language in Hindu Tantra (Routledge, 2003)
12 Eliade, M. Yoga: Immortality and Freedom, trs W. Trask (Princeton University Press, 1970), pp. 216–19.
13 Sanderson, A. ‘Śaivism and the Tantric Traditions’, in Sutherland, S. et al. (eds) The World’s Religions (London: Routledge, 1988), pp. 660–704; ‘The Śaiva Age – The Rise and Dominance of Śaivism during the Early Medieval Period’, in Shingo Einoo (ed.), Genesis and Development of Tantrism (Tokyo: University of Tokyo, Institute of Oriental Culture, 2009), pp. 41–349.
14 Padoux, A. Comprendre le tantrisme: les sources hindoues.
15 Jayantha Bhaṭṭa. Nyāyamañjari. English translation by V.N. Jha (Delhi: Śrī Satguru Publications, 1995), p. 562.
16 On the development of the Śrī Vidyā, see Padoux, A. Le Coeur de la Yoginī: Yoginīhṛdaya avec le commentaire Dīpikā d’Amṛtānanda (Paris: de Boccard, 1994), pp. 29–34.
17 Hanneder, J. Abhinavagupta’s Philosophy of Revelation: Mālinīślokavārttika I, I-399 (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1998), p. 16 quoting Abhinavagupta’s Tantrāloka 15.203cd–206ab.
18 See Padoux, A. Le Coeur de la Yoginī, pp. 35–40.
19 Padoux, A. Comprendre le tantrisme, pp. 166–67.