Just as spirits [grahan] possess [avisanti] people in ordinary life, in the same way those with attributes of the Lord possess [avisanti] those who are liberated.
—ŚIVĀGRAYOGIN in Śaivaparibhāṣā
Tantra is a category increasingly subject to debate. It is now regarded by many of the most informed scholars as a category with vague characterization and definition, an amorphous medley of practices, rites, and doctrines that became tantric by attrition; they simply do not fit elsewhere.1 This, combined with a Western fascination for things tantric (especially a mistaken identification of Tantra with sex), enables most nonspecialists to dodge the problem of Tantra. Bearing in mind this caveat, I can now undertake to unpack a knowingly (and frustratingly) incomplete inventory of possession-related practices and phenomena in mostly South Asian tantric literature. This includes, first, initiatory possession, which in many tantric texts is identified as samāveśa. This term may also designate another shadowy concept usually polluted by Western expectations, namely, enlightenment. Thus, samāveśa is not only the process of realization in tantric texts, an initial and startling possession by a deity that is invoked by the ācārya for the benefit of the disciple during a carefully orchestrated initiation, but its goal as well. In these Tantras, samāveśa is a brahmanical, body-centered, transformation (probably tantric by attrition) in which the deity to be realized is an active participant. With or without the name samāveśa, however, tantric possession may also be a kind of ritually induced oracular experience practiced by people who would never consider themselves tāntrikas. It may also indicate certain exorcistic practices that survived at the margins of Tantra (and Āyurveda).
This chapter first discusses the notion of samāveśa as it appears in the Tantras of Kashmir and northeastern India. We then turn to the phenomenon of divinization of the body, a peculiarly brahmanical practice involving the use of mantras and hand gestures (mudrā). This quasi-Vedic practice gained wide currency in a variety of Indian ritual traditions, where it was continually modified, especially, as we shall see toward the end of the chapter, in Tantric Buddhism. Another topic that must be addressed in the same context is pratiṣṭhā or prāṇapratiṣṭhā, consecration or divinization of images, the transformation of prepared (kṛtrima) stone or wooden objects into deities by investing them with eyes and breath. These discussions strongly affect our deliberations on Indic notions of selfhood and personality, which, as we have seen, bear strongly on South Asian constructions of possession. These deliberations finally lead us into an area of cultural discursivity that is often neglected in studies that are largely philological, philosophical, theoretical, and text-critical, as this one is: This is the area of artistic representation. One of the principal notions explicated here is that of multiple personality and the ease with which it is accepted in South Asia. As fully as this is represented in the ethnographic record, in an array of Sanskrit texts from the Ṛgveda to the Mahābhārata to devotional literature to the Tantras we discuss in this chapter to the ayurvedic and allied texts discussed in Chapter 12, it is perhaps nowhere better seen than in Indian art. Because the Tantric literature explicates the themes of internal spaciousness and the divinization of the body better than other genres of literature, this chapter concludes with a few examples of how this manifests in Indian art.
Along with the Vedas and the two Sanskrit epics, the Tantras provide the richest sources for the phenomenology of religious possession in premodern India, and, along with the Mahābhārata (MBh) the richest sources for its analysis. Indeed, it is evident that the Tantras, particularly those of the Śaiva and Sākta sects of Kashmir and northeastern India that developed around the turn of the first millennium C.E., confront the issue of possession and problematize it more concretely than anywhere else in Sanskrit literature. The Tantras of both the dualistic Śaiva Siddhānta and the nondualistic Trika and Pratyabhijña Śaiva sects of Kashmir address possession practically and philosophically, domesticating it ritually and conferring on it philosophical credibility, apparently sensitive to its historical prominence as a popular and legitimate mode of religious experience and expression.2 Drawing from northern and northeastern Tantras (mostly unpublished) of the eighth to twelfth centuries C.E., Alexis Sanderson describes tantric initiates, skull and trident in hand, muttering invocations
precisely where the uninitiated were in greatest danger of possession: on mountains, in caves, by rivers, in forests, at the feet of isolated trees, in deserted houses, at crossroads, in the jungle temples of the Mother-Goddesses, but above all in the cremation grounds.…[These initiates] moved from the domain of male autonomy and responsibility idealized by the Mīmāṃsakas into a visionary world of permeable consciousness dominated by the female and the theriomorphic.3
Moreover, their spiritual practices were focused intensely on the “liberating possession” of ferocious female deities acknowledged as incarnations of Śiva’s śakti.4
Assuming the centrality of a statement in a Kāpālika text, representing a Kashmiri sect of cremation ground ritual (smasāna sādhana) specialists in which possession must have been prominent (as noted by Sanderson), both the Śaiva Siddhānta (saiddhāntika) and nondual (non-saiddhāntika) Kashmiri sectarian texts turn the concept of possession around, at least philosophically.5 The non-saiddhāntika (or atimārga) Kāpālika Śaivaparibhāṣā, by Sivāgrayogin, states succinctly, “Kāpalikas attain equipoise [sāmyam, i.e.. enlightenment] through samāveśa. Just as spirits [grahāḥ] possess [āviśanti] people in ordinary life, in the same way those with attributes of the Lord [viz., Śiva] possess [āviśanti] those who are liberated.”6 This position is attacked by the saiddhāntika Śaivas because of “its dangerous resemblance to possession by evil spirits and the subject’s loss of identity and autonomy.”7 As a correction to the Kāpālika view, the Śaiva texts posit a multifaceted possession. Three facets may be identified here: first, āveśa or samāveśa as spiritual practice, from unassisted meditation to ritually assisted initiation;8 second, as a kind of special knowledge; and, third, as a state of enlightenment. Because the texts do not deal with these separately, and because they are readily evident from the discourse, it will not be necessary here to separate them as if they were distinct categories. The texts primarily consulted here are Utpaladeva’s Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā, Abhinavagupta’s two commentaries on this text, called Vimarśinī (on the text itself) and Vivṛtivimarśinī (on Utpaladeva’s lost autocommentary), Abhinavagupta’s great Tantrāloka, and Kṣemarāja’s Pratyabhijñāhṛdayam.
With respect to practice, samāveśa is identified by Abhinavagupta, in his Vimarśinī on Utpaladeva’s nondualist Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā, as abhyāsa, yogic and spiritual practice.9 Through such discipline, says Abhinavagupta, the practitioner may realize his or her identity with the Supreme Lord, even if this identity is qualified or limited by the human body, which has the capacity to realize the divine powers of the Lord only partially.10 Samāvesa is not only practice, however; it is also the goal. As Louise Finn says unambiguously, citing a commentary on the Vāmakesvara Tantra, “in Kashmir Saivism liberation is achieved not through samādhi but through samāveśa.”11 This is consistent with the general tenor of non-saiddhāntika Śaiva thought, in which mokṣa is viewed as a state of possession or samāveśa in that it is determined by levels of initiation, which are in turn verified by symptoms of śaktipāta, recognized as a variety of āvesa.12 This śaktipāta is divine energy transmitted either by one’s guru or by a siddha who, apparently, may not necessarily be one’s guru. Abhinavagupta presents a fourfold classification of siddhas: celibates (ūrdhvaretas), heroes (vira) who are on the path of Kula (kulavartman), noncelibates, and “non-physical siddhas who are non-physical gurus” (Tantrāloka [TĀ] 29.41–43).13 Jayaratha says that these disembodied gurus can enter (praveśa) the bodies of practitioners during the Kaula rite. Śaktipāta causes the initiate to become possessed (āvesa); symptoms are convulsions (ghūrṇi, kampa) and loss of consciousness (nidrā), the degree of possession revealed by their intensity (tīvra). Thence the objective was “immersion [samāveśa] into the body of consciousness; to make possession, or the eradication of individuality, permanent” (TĀ 29.207–208).
The saiddhāntika texts recognize four means of realizing samāveśa, from least effective to most: (1) āṇavopāya, corresponding to kriyā yoga with a dependence on external rituals; (2) sāktopāya, depending on the verbal practice of mantra śakti; (3) śāmbhavopāya, requiring a highly concentrated mental practice (icchā śakti) in order to merge with the absolute supreme being; and (4) anupāya, requiring no practice at all, in which merging with the absolute is achieved spontaneously, effortlessly.14
Utpaladeva asserts in his Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā (3.2.12) that true knowledge (jñana) is the primary characteristic of samāveśa. This arises when the manifestations of individuation brought on by Śiva’s projection into the individual are subordinated through appropriate yogic or spiritual practice, allowing the agency and knowledge of the conscious self to reveal themselves naturally.15 Somānanda states the goal in the opening verse of his Śivadṛṣṭi: “Let Śiva, who is realized [samāviṣṭaḥ] as our true nature, as a result of overcoming our self with his, perform obeisance to his own extended self with his innate śakti.”16 In his long commentary (Vivṛtivimarśinī) on this passage, Abhinavagupta compares and equates the present usages of samāveśa and abhyāsa17 with Bhagavadgītā 12.2,9–10, the foundational bhakti context of āvesa, in which Kṛṣṇa asserts that the best of yogins are those whose “minds are immersed in me” (mayy āveśya manaḥ) and, furthermore, that any spiritual strategy for bringing this about is acceptable. Abhinavagupta seemingly positioned himself on both sides of the debate between the saiddhāntika and non-saiddhāntika Śaivas, as he comments impartially but favorably on texts of all schools. On the one hand, his advocacy of saiddhāntika initiatory ritual (dīkṣā) in the Tantrāloka and, on the other hand, his uncompromising nondualism evidenced in his Vimarśinī, Vivṛtivimarśinī, Parātriśikālaghuvṛtti, and elsewhere point to his acceptance of samāveśa as legitimate in both conservative, brahmanical initiation and transgressive nondualistic devotional, ritual, and meditative practice. In any case, the overall context was always permeated with bhakti sentiment, and, consistent with this, Abhinavagupta offers the striking, and perhaps inevitable, statement that all acts of worship, including singing hymns of praise to the Lord, making obeisance, meditation, and pūjā, are modes of possession.18
Both of these contexts, of bhakti and abhyāsa, emphasize the ritual nature of āveśa and samāveśa, irrespective of whether the ritual is external or internal. A saiddhāntika Krama example is samāveśa within the framework of a tantric initiation consisting of the ritual construction and installation of an internal maṇḍala, the Triśūlābjamaṇḍala.19 Similarly, samāveśa or “interpenetration” of the individual with the śakti or essential energy of Śiva is one of the goals of Śaiva nondualist meditative practice. While the latter may not be as complex in its ritualization as the former, meditative practice does indeed qualify as ritual—and it always did in India, accompanied as it was by rites of purification that inevitably preceded the practice, rites demarcating psychic and physical space in preparation for full immersion into ritual liminality. One of these prerequisites or ritual framing devices generally employed in both meditative practice and in the (internal or external) construction and installation of a maṇḍala is divinization of the body through nyāsa, a mode of possession about which more is said below. For the moment, it must suffice to note a statement by Sanderson that could apply to nondualist meditative practice as well as to the saiddhāntika situation he is addressing: “That this internal worship should be preceded by the deification of the body accords with the general Tantric principle that only one who has become the deity may worship the deity.”20 The term rudraśakti-samāveśaḥ (possession by Rudra’s energy), found in Tantrāloka 30.50, indicates a permanent infusion of this highest śakti within the individual. This indicates full identification of the individual with Śiva, though Sanderson notes that this term must be understood from its appearance in the Mālinīvijayottaratantra to indicate degrees of possession attained during initiation.21
Finally, āveśa/samāveśa is itself posited as a state of liberation or, more specifically, as two such states. In the text that marks the pinnacle of his teachings on Tantra, the Tantrāloka, Abhinavagupta offers a definition of āveśa: “Āveśa is the submerging of the identity of the individual unenlightened mind and the consequent identification with the supreme Sambhu who is inseparable from the primordial Śakti.”22 Thus the tantric sense of āveśa as possession must be nuanced as “interpenetration,” as suggested above. In this way, it represents a state of enlightenment. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this definition is that it is there at all; indeed, it may be the only definition of āveśa found in Sanskrit literature. Its definition, a description of liberation according to nondualist Śaivism, reflects the discussion noted above in Utpaladeva’s Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā and Abhinavagupta’s commentaries. This discourse on āveśa is continued in discussion on the variant term samāveśa, which, as surmised, is attested much more frequently than the former in Śaiva philosophical texts.
According to the nondual Śaiva texts, samāveśa as abhyāsa or spiritual practice leads the practitioner to samāveśa as ontological state, here regarded as the “fourth state” (turyā) of the Upaniṣads. Then, through samāveśa on that initial state of liberation, one enters a state “beyond the fourth” (turyātīta). Abhinavagupta expresses this in several ways. He states in the Vivṛtivimarśinī that samāveśa indicates a complete and perfect entry into one’s own true nature.23 Thus, Abhinavagupta “understands samāveśaḥ to mean not the act of being entered but that of entering (into one’s true nature).”24 The reversal mentioned above, the reification of possession, is that samāveśa is no longer an externally induced phenomenon or experience but one that is recognized as a facet of “recognition” (pratyabhijñā) within a thoroughly (and ritually) divinized individuality. Acknowledging Abhinavagupta’s dual use of samāveśa as epistemological process and ontological state, Kaw writes: “Turyā and Turyātīta are reached by yogins only when their samāveśa becomes uninterrupted after some practice. Such yogins who attain the highest state of Samāveśa are known as Jīvan-muktas, for even in their life time, they are said to be released.”25 This movement from samāveśa as process to samāveśa as state takes one further step beyond mere jīvanmukti, however. Assuming a prior equation of samāveśa with jīvanmukti, Abhinavagupta states that the highest state of contentment (tṛptiḥ), a state of divine comportment, is to be achieved by samāveśa or meditative immersion in jīvanmukti itself.26 In other words, the higher state of samāveśa is a transformation from a state of spiritual realization, an adhyatmika state, to a divine state (vibhūtirūpā tṛptiḥ), an adhidaivika state, “where the components of limitation, including saṃskāra, are totally dissolved and incorporated into the I.”27
Finally, Abhinavagupta sums up his position and issues a warning, which I paraphrase: “When the body is filled with light and takes on the form of consciousness [saṃvidrūpam], then, as a result of further spiritual practice [abhyāsāt], all the relative projections of Śiva from the void to the corporeal body [śūnyādidehāntam] become luminous with awareness and its aesthetic flavor. Then the qualities of consciousness [saṃviddharmāḥ], empowered by the requisite śakti, rise to a divine state [vibhūtiḥ]. But in the absence of spiritual practice this āveśa is only a momentary experience. In this case the physical characteristics may be the arising of bliss, shaking, collapsing, whirling, etc.; but a state of jīvanmukti is not achieved.”28
A generation after Abhinavagupta, his student Kṣemarāja wrote a primer on the Pratyabhijñā Śaiva teachings as they were transmitted through a lineage culminating most recently with Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta. This text, the Pratyabhijñāhṛdaya, consists of twenty sūtras and Kṣemarāja’s auto-commentary. In this text, samāveśa is elevated from a term that is used only occasionally by Utpaladeva, Abhinavagupta, and other nondualist Śaiva philosophers to one that obtains the greatest importance. In his introduction to sūtra 19, Kṣemarāja states that cidānanda, the primary characteristic of enlightenment, a state of immeasurable ecstatic bliss, is a samādhi also known by the names samāveśa and samāpatti. Samādhi and samāpatti are, of course, the principal terms used in yoga for such transformational states of mind. In spite of this stated equivalence, samāveśa is differentiated from them. It is a specific mode of merging with the Lord that assumes a process of demaniFestation or deconstruction from the orderly processes of the manifestation and construction of individuality (krama). As a mental, psychological, and physical state, samāveśa may be identical to samādhi or samāpatti (which are differentiated in yoga texts), but it is cast in terms of specific processes and a specific teleology.
In his commentary on sūtra 19, which discusses the possibility of integrating samādhi into ordinary waking state activity (vyutthāna), Kṣemarāja cites a passage from the now-missing Kramasūtras: “The aspirant whose attention is directed outward remains in samāveśa by practicing kramamudrā, the nature of which is internal directedness. Under the influence of āvesa, there occurs in this practice first an entrance [praveśaḥ] into the internal from the external, then an entrance [praveśaḥ] into the external from an internalized state. Thus, this procedure, mudrākrama, includes the dynamics of both externalization and internalization [sabāhyābhyantaraḥ].” Kṣemarāja comments that this process confers the highest śakti on the aspirant at all times through āvesa/samāveśa, which is to say through complete immersion into or possession by cit (universal consciousness). Kṣemarāja’s phrase is worth repeating: samāveśa has as its nature the unfolding of the concentrated essence of universal consciousness (cidrasa-). All of this, Kṣemarāja concludes in his twentieth and final sūtra, is tantamount to entering completely into I-ness, into a state of full self-possession, possession of one’s complete and perfect self (pūrṇāhantāveśa), a state in which one has total control over the vicissitudes of the external and internal realms, a state that is none other than Śiva.29
Michel Foucault noted that the body is the primary site of ritualization, where “the most minute and local social practices are linked up with the large-scale organization of power.”30 This is perhaps nowhere truer than in a ritual system in which the body is regarded as a receptive replicator of the cosmos. This is the case in much of Indian ritual, in which the macrocosm is classically held to naturalize, animate, and regulate, through ritual performance, the microcosmic power structures that engender and are defined by local social arrangements and practices. Such ritual is characterized by a close relationship, more precisely, a seamless flow, of body and cosmos. A well-developed strategy for burnishing this relationship is ritual divinization of the body.
One of the prominent features of religious experience as described in the Tantras, evident from the Śaiva (especially saiddhāntika) formulations of samāveśa, is the emphasis placed on the body, especially during initiation. The body is “immortalized” through the grace or revelation of Śakti in her jñāna (knowledge) aspect. One may be liberated not only while in the body, but through the body as well.31 The deity manifests within the body; indeed, it manifests as the body. This requires śaktipāta, described as a violent “descent” (pāta) upon the initiate, an immersion or possession (āvesa) of the initiate’s body and self by the śakti,32 which may be thought of as “power,” “grace,” and “cosmic (feminine) energy” together.33 The symptoms of śaktipāta resemble those of possession as described in ethnographic reports, for example, exhibitions of blissfulness, shaking, staggering, whirling, or falling on the ground unconscious.34 For example, Sax’s informants in Garhwal report that “the innermost self shakes” during possession.35 Diemberger reports that Tibetan female oracles have this sort of characteristic experience after having their “energy-channels” opened by a lama. She writes: “The god, in fact, is said to enter the body along the energy-channels and if these are not purified, the person may be affected by a variety of mental and physical illnesses. Uncontrolled visions, voices, fainting, weakness, and the experience of a death-like state are the most common symptoms.”36 There appears to be tantric influence in these initiatory experiences. The Vijñānabhairava (verse 69) also describes the entry of or possession by śakti (śaktyāvesa) in terms of sexual absorption, the man immersed not just in the śakti as the spiritual energy of the Goddess, but as real, live, full-bodied woman. This is compared to absorption in the bliss of brahman, which is then said to be the bliss of one’s own self.
References to āvesavidhi (injunctions intended to bring about ritual possession) may be found in saiddhāntika Śaiva Tantras. Among these saiddhāntika texts are the Yoginītantras (employed by Sanderson) in which one of the features of an elaborate abhiṣeka (ritual of empowerment) is the leading of blindfolded male initiates by female adepts (yoginī) or male assistants (karmavajrin) to the edge of a maṇḍala inscribed on the floor or ground. The initiates, writes Sanderson, “are made to take an oath of absolute secrecy (koṣapāna) and are then made by means of mantras to become possessed by the maṇḍala-deities (āveśavidhi).”37 This sort of divinizing of the body is wholesale: The divinity or divinities are seen as discrete and identifiable entities generated from without, and with the power to possess if only the connection is properly forged.
Nyāsa
Two phenomena that share conceptual territory with āveśa are nyāsa and (prāṇa-) pratiṣṭhā. There is an important distinction between them: The latter two are intentional, textualized, and enjoined bodily constructions, transformations of intellectual and social practices (arguably these are the same thing) into sacred physical terrain. Nyasa (literally “setting upon, placing down, imposition”)38 is a common, and often standard, part of brahmanical worship that finds its greatest advocacy in the Tantras and Purāṇas. As a result, extended instruction of nyāsa may be found in virtually every manual of Hindu daily practice, including those sold outside the gates of Hindu temples everywhere in India.39 Nyasa is employed in obligatory rites (nitya) such as the daily saṃdhyā, the twice-daily rites of the twice-born performed at sunrise and sunset, as well as in the full range of rituals to be performed on special occasions, some calibrated calendrically (naimittika), and others performed to fulfill personal desires (kamya).40 Related to mudras or hand positions of esoteric significance (cf. Tantraraja Tantra 4.44d, which explicitly links a certain mudra with āveśa),41 nyāsa is a practice that combines simple mudras with brief mantras invoking names of deities, divine powers, ṛṣis, Vedic sacrifices, or letters of the alphabet. The intent of nyāsa is to impose or place the power of the mantras, and perforce the deities, and so on, which they inscribe, on or within various body parts, either one’s own or that of an image of a deity. This is effected, according to the widespread theology of nyasa, through a process called bhūtasuddhi, purification of the five fundamental elements (mahabhūtas)—earth, water, fire, mobile air, and all-pervasive space.42 The idea of a conjunction of deity and ritualist is old in India. The Bṛhaddevatā, a text of probably the mid-first millennium C.E. that organized Vedic knowledge according to the deities of the Ṛgveda, states as part of its conclusions that “fully introducing the deity into the mind” (manasi saṃnyasya devatām) while performing a sacrifice is a true signifier of knowledge.43
Abhinavagupta and Kṣemarāja describe mudra as both an instrument of āveśa and a state of possession itself. Gavin Flood explicates this: “To say that mudrā is a way of accessing higher layers of the cosmos means that individual consciousness is absorbed into or possessed (āveśa) by mudrā, or that the individual body absorbs mudrā into itself. The PTLV [Parātriṃsikālaghuvṛtti] says that one’s own body becomes possessed (āvesa) by mudrā and mantra, which can be read as, becomes a channel for, higher cosmic powers which erode the sense of individuality and distinction.”44 This agrees with the idiomatic use of āveśa and samāveśa elsewhere in the Kashmiri Śaiva and Sākta literature. Furthermore, say these philosophers, the body can become a bridge to these “higher cosmic powers” not just through mudrā but through āsana, the practice of yoga, presumably indicating variations on the teachings of Patañjali and other advocates of classical yoga.45 Āsana, they claim, is the yogic equivalent of bhūtaśuddhi, described above as the essence of nyāsa. “Both represent the destruction or purification of the gross individual body, in order that a divine body can be created.”46
Āsana, says Kṣemarāja, is not simply posture but the power (bala) of the supreme śakti.47 As such, it is the original and final agent of transformation. It follows, then, as Abhinavagupta states, that mudrā is also an exercise of power, bestowed in initiation.48 Kṣemarāja reinforces this, stating that all the actions of an awakened one (buddha) are in fact mudrā. In the Pratyabhijñāhṛdaya, he quotes the Kramasūtras, “which define this mudrā as the interpenetration of the inner and the outer due to the force of possession (āveśavaśāt); the entrance (praveśa) of consciousness from the external to the internal (antaḥ) and from the internal to the external.”49 Mudrā, āsana, and nyāsa, then, are not mere gestures or movements; they are nuances, signifiers, or resonances of āvesa, thus āveśa itself. In the same way, they are emblematic of an empirical, even scientific, paradigm in which spirit (śakti) or, more amorphously and less specifically, consciousness (cit), transmutes into power, pattern, and matter. As matter, they qualify as substance codes, in Marriott’s terminology. They operate through an alchemical process, replicating the process of symbolic and material creation (e.g., vegetable matter > coal > diamond, solar energy > potable gold), employing śakti as a beginning as well as an ending point.
Another phenomenon treated in the same conceptual terms as nyāsa and mudrā, being at once parts and the whole of āvesa, as well as its process, is orgasm (kampakāla). These four are viewed as the culmination of an organically fruitful act that replicates and “imposes” cosmic processes. According to Somānanda, orgasm reflects and recapitulates the ānanda (bliss) and camatkāra (astonishment) of Paramaśiva and thus, in the right perspective, can be a kind of realization. According to Somānanda, “pure consciousness is perceived in the heart when semen is discharged (visargaprasara).”50 The Vijñānabhairava states that “possession by Śakti or absorption in her—the term āveśa is ambiguous—occurs during the (sexual) excitement of uniting with Śakti (śaktisaṃgamasaṃkṣubdha).”51
As a process, nyāsa and mudrā are intended both to mirror and replicate the constitution of the original cosmic “person” as expressed in the Puruṣasūkta (Ṛgveda [ṚV] 10.90) and, in more extended fashion, in Purāṇic deities like Varāha, who is described at great length as Yajñavarāha, “Varāha as the embodiment of the sacrifice,” Varāha whose very body is composed of the spectrum of sacrifices.52 Both nyāsa as a practice and Yajñavarāha as a cosmic image represent an extension of the theme of a composite body and self noted earlier in examples from the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa and other vedic texts. It is important here to remember that in the Indian concept of possession, identity is not closed or limited by name or definition, but is open, flexible, and integrative. Nyāsa is all of these in both the construction and embodiment of the deity, ṛṣi, or other structure imposed on the ritualist.
Nyāsa mirrors and reconstructs an original or archetypal Puruṣa as well as later composite deities such as Yajñavarāha in that it is a process of resorption rather than emanation of the constituent units of the cosmos. It is an absorption into oneself, into one’s body and being or, in the case of (prāṇa)pratiṣṭhā, into the embodied form of the deity. The cosmic Puruṣa and Yajñavarāha not only emanate and disseminate the parts of the cosmos from their bodies, but embody these parts as their physical essence, a condition that is replicated in nyāsa. In this sense, nyāsa may be viewed as a simplified and dramatic reduction of the agnicayana, where the parts of the cosmos are reassembled in the form of the bird-shaped fire altar. This reassembled organic whole is regarded as nothing less than the creator god Prajāpati himself, who contains within him the entire cosmos. Both the agnicayana and nyāsa, then, become strategies for effecting “natural circulation,” though in these instances it is not essences or abstractions such as medhas (cf. Chapter 5) that are transferred or circulated, but actual cosmic (and social) structures that are collected into various patterns and energized, to be taken up anew by Prajāpati or any other deity (such as Kṛṣṇa or Śiva) and dispersed throughout the cosmos. In practice, nyāsa is envisioned as a procedure for consecration or enlivenment, performed in order to empower, sanctify, and protect the individual, the body (part), or the iconic form of a deity, all of which must be rendered pure for ritual and other spiritual activity. And what better for accomplishing this than (ritual) introduction of sacred elements into the body (or image) itself?
The Bhāgavata Purāṇa (BhP) provides an excellent example of nyāsa, along with compelling reasons why it should be practiced. BhP 6.8 provides the text of a Nārāyaṇa kavaca, or ritual construction of “armor” (kavaca), which enables the devotee to obtain the protection of Viṣṇu, here called Nārāyaṇa. The kavaca consists of nyāsa followed by a long hymn appealing to Viṣṇu and his many incarnations, body parts, and weapons (e.g., discus, mace, conch), for protection. The BhP (6.8.4–11) states that the nyāsa should be performed with “speech controlled” (vāgyataḥ), meaning that the mantras should be muttered inaudibly or recited silently. “One should equip or harness oneself with a protective covering fashioned from Nārāyaṇa”53 by placing different syllables of various mantras (e.g., om namo nārāyaṇāya, om namo bhagavate vāsudevāya) on parts of the body, hands, joints of the fingers, heart, and crown of the head. Finally, the devotee should complete the transformation by visualizing him or herself as the Supreme Self in the form of the embodied Lord manifest as knowledge, splendor, and ascetic heat, and possessed of the six divine virtues (power, beauty, fame, wealth, wisdom, and dispassion). In this condition, one should then recite the hymn (BhP 6.8.11). In addition, Vaiṣṇavas in practice inscribe tilakas or sectarian marks with white sandalwood powder (gopīcandana) on twelve different parts of the body, each one accompanied by the recitation of one of the twelve principal names of Kṛṣṇa. This is for the purpose of forming the image of Kṛṣṇa on and in one’s body.
Another extended example of nyāsa demonstrates the manner in which brahmanical thought constructed a “self,” an entity close to a “person,” through an accumulation of powers that are conferred a nondual or advaitic trajectory as they accumulate. The text is a quasi-vedic series of brief mantras, some of which bear vedic accentuation, which occurs as part of the introductory apparatus to the recitation of the Rudrādhyāya, the “Chapter on Rudra” from the Taittirīya Saṃhitā (TS, 4.5.1–11). This introduction, including the nyāsa, is an invention of post-vedic ritualists who recognized that the Rudrādhyāya, the most revered of all recited passages from the TS, had acquired a special sanctity and therefore deserved its own ritual apparatus. Although the Rudrādhyāya was initially prescribed for recitation during the agnicayana,54 the content of the text suggests that it likely stood on its own as an early recitational passage.55 As an independent text, it is today (as has likely been for thousands of years) recited in a large number of semi-vedic, which is to say Purāṇic and Agamic, rites practically in an ad hoc fashion. As such, the recitational ritual has grown around it. The text of the Rudrādhyāya from the TS is enveloped in a classic ritual framework in which it is conferred a liminal existence, following Victor Turner’s notion of framing liminality.56 During the initial part, the rite of entering that liminal, timeless, space during which the text is recited, the ritualist, who is assumed to be a brahmanical follower of one of the half-dozen ritual sākhās or branches of the TS,57 recites this nyāsa and “intends” it on his body. After entering into this mantrically instigated state of divine personhood, the ritualist then recites the text of the Rudrādhyāya. The following account of this is taken from a popular handbook published by the Ramakrishna Mission called Mantrapuṣpam.58
After enjoining the ritualist to bathe and perform appropriate purification, to keep the senses under control and observe celibacy, to wear white garments and face the deity, he should establish the deities in his body (ātmani). The text continues:
prajanane brahmā tiṣṭhatu | pādayor viṣṇus tiṣṭhatu | hastayor haras tiṣṭhatu | bāhvor indras tiṣṭhatu | jaṭhare ’gnis tiṣṭhatu | hṛdaye śivas tiṣṭhatu | kaṇṭhe vasavas tiṣṭhantu | vaktre sarasvatī tiṣṭhatu | nāsikayor vāyus tiṣṭhatu | nayanayoś candrādityau tiṣṭhetām | karṇayos aśvinau tiṣṭhetām | lalāṭe rudrās tiṣṭhatu | mūrdhnādityās tiṣṭ.hantu | śirasi mahādevas tiṣṭhatu | pṛṣṭhe pinākī tiṣṭhatu | purataḥ śūlī tiṣṭhatu | pārśvayoḥ śīvāśaṅkarau tiṣṭhetāṃ | sarvato vāyus tiṣṭhatu | tato bahiḥ sarvato ’gnir jvālāmālāparivṛtas tiṣṭhatu | sarveṣv aṅgeṣu sarvā devatā yathāsnānaṃ tiṣṭhantu | māṃ rakṣantu ||
May Brahmā be established in [my] organ of generation. May Viṣṇu be established in [my] feet. May Hara be established in [my] hands. May Indra be established in [my] arms. May Agni be established in [my] belly. May Śiva be established in [my] heart. May the Vasus be established in [my] throat. May Sarasvatī be established in [my] mouth [organ of speech]. May Vāyu be established in [my] nostrils. May the Sun and the Moon be established in [my] eyes. May the two Aśvins be established in [my] ears. May Rudra be established on [my] forehead [lalāṭa]. May Āditya be established on the front of [my] head [mūrdhan]. May Mahādeva be established on [my] head [siras]. May Vāmadeva be established on the crown of [my] head. May the Staff-Bearer [pinākin] be established on [my] back. May the Bearer of the Trident [śūlin] be established on [my] chest. May Śiva and Śaṅkara be established on [my] flanks. May Vāyu be established everywhere. Finally, may Agni be established everywhere outside [me], surrounding [me] like a garland of flames. May all the Gods [devatāḥ] establish their respective places in all [my] limbs. May they protect me!
agnír me vācí śritáḥ | v
g gh
daye | hdayaṃ máyi | ahám amte | amtaṃ bráhmaṇi | vāyúr me prāṇé śritáḥ prāṇó hdaye | hdayaṃ máyi | ahám amte | amtaṃ bráhmaṇi | s
ryo me cákṣuṣi śritáḥ | cákṣur hdaye | hdayaṃ máyi | ahám amte | amtaṃ bráhmaṇi | candrámā me mánasi śritáḥ | máno hdaye | hdayaṃ máyi | ahám amte | amtaṃ bráhmaṇi | díśo me śrótre śritáḥ | śrótraṃ hdaye | hdayaṃ máyi | ahám amte | amtaṃ bráhmaṇi | po me rétasi śritáḥ | réto hdaye | hdayaṃ máyi | ahám amte | amtaṃ bráhmaṇi | pṛthivī me śárīre śritáḥ | śárīraṃ hdaye | hdayaṃ máyi | ahám amte | amtaṃ bráhmaṇi | óṣadhivanaspatáyo me lómasu śritáḥ | lómāni hdaye | hdayaṃ máyi | ahám amte | amtaṃ bráhmaṇi | índro me bále śritáḥ | bálaṃ hdaye | hdayaṃ máyi | ahám amte | amtaṃ bráhmaṇi | parjányo me mūrdhní śritáḥ | mūrdh hdaye | hdayaṃ máyi | ahám amte | amtaṃ bráhmaṇi | īśāno me manyáu śritáḥ | manyúr hdaye | hdayaṃ máyi | ahám amte | amtaṃ bráhmaṇi | ātm me ātmáni śritáḥ | ātm hdaye | hdayaṃ máyi | ahám amte | amtaṃ bráhmaṇi | púnar ma ātm púnar yur gāt | púnaḥ prāṇáḥ púnar kūtam gāt vaiśvānaró raśmíbhir vāvṛdhānáḥ | antás tiṣṭhatv amtasya gopḥ ||
Agni abides in my speech. My speech abides in my heart. My heart abides in me. I abide in immortality. Immortality abides in bráhman. Vāyu abides in the lifebreath. My lifebreath abides in my heart. My heart abides in me. I abide in immortality. Immortality abides in bráhman. Sūrya abides in my eye. My eye abides in my heart. My heart abides in me. I abide in immortality. Immortality abides in bráhman. The moon abides in my mind. My mind abides in my heart. My heart abides in me. I abide in immortality. Immortality abides in bráhman. The directions abide in my ear. My ear abides in my heart. My heart abides in me. I abide in immortality. Immortality abides in bráhman. Water abides in my semen. My semen abides in my heart. My heart abides in me. I abide in immortality. Immortality abides in bráhman. The earth resides in my body [śárīra]. My body abides in my heart. My heart abides in me. I abide in immortality. Immortality abides in bráhman. Cultivated and wild plants abide in my hair. My hair abides in my heart. My heart abides in me. I abide in immortality. Immortality abides in bráhman. Indra abides in my strength. My strength abides in my heart. My heart abides in me. I abide in immortality. Immortality abides in bráhman. Parjanya abides on the front of my head. The front of the head abides in my heart. My heart abides in me. I abide in immortality. Immortality abides in bráhman. Isāna abides in my passion [manyu]. My passion abides in my heart. My heart abides in me. I abide in immortality. Immortality abides in bráhman. The self [ātmán] abides in my ātman. My ātman abides in my heart. My heart abides in me. I abide in immortality. Immortality abides in bráhman. Again, may my ātmán come to me for another lifespan [púnar yuḥ]. Again, let my lifebreath come to another desire [púnar kūtam] and let that Agni common to all [vaisvānará] choose me with his rays of light [raśmí]. Let the final limit of immortality be established as my protector.
asya śrīrudrādhyāyapraśnamahāmantrasya aghora ṛṣiḥ anuṣṭupchandaḥ saṃkarṣaṇamūrtisvarūpo yo ’sāv ādityaḥ paramapuruṣaḥ sa eṣa rudro devatā | naman śivāyeti bījam | śivatarāyeti śaktin | mahādevāyeti kīlakam | śrīsāmbasadāśivaprasādasiddhyarthe jape viniyogaḥ ||
Aghora is the seer of the great mantra that constitutes this chapter called the Illustrious Rudrādhyāya. The meter is anuṣṭubh.59 The deity is Rudra, the Supreme Being [paramapuruṣaḥ] who is the same as yonder Sun, whose natural embodiment is that of Saṃkarṣaṇa. The seed mantra is namaḥ śivāya [“Obeisance to Śiva”]. The śakti mantra is [namaḥ] sivatarāya [“Obeisance to the Greater Śiva”]. The kīlaka mantra60 is [namo] mahādevāya [“Obeisance to Mahādeva”]. When the goal of repeating [the Rudrādhyāya] is to obtain the grace of Sāmbasadāsiva, [this is the] ritual procedure [to be followed].
oṃ agnihotrātmane aṇguṣṭhābhyāṃ namaḥ | darśapūrṇamāsātmane tarjanībhyāṃ namaḥ | cāturmāsyātmane madhyamābhyāṃ namaḥ | nirūḍhapaśuban dhātmane anāmikābhyāṃ namaḥ | jyotiṣṭo mātmane kaniṣṭhikābhyām namaḥ | sarvakratvātmane karatalakarapṛṣṭhābhyāṃ namaḥ | agnihotrātmane hṛdayāya namaḥ | darśapūrṇamāsā tmane śirasi svāhā | cāturmāsyātmane śīkhāyai vaṣaṭ | nirūḍhapaśubandhātmane kavacāya huṃ | jyotiṣṭhomāt mane netratrayāya vauṣaṭ | sarvakratvātmane astrāya phaṭ | bhur bhuvas suvar om iti digbandhaḥ |
Om! Obeisance to the two thumbs, which have as their nature the agnihotra. Obeisance to the index fingers, which have as their nature the darśapūrṇamāsau. Obeisance to the middle fingers, which have as their nature the cāturmāsyas. Obeisance to the ring fingers, which have as their nature the nirūḍhapaśubandha. Obeisance to the little fingers, which have as their nature the jyotiṣṭoma. Obeisance to the palms and the backs of the hands, which have as their nature all the sacrifices. Obeisance to the heart, which has as its nature the agnihotra. Obeisance to the head, which has as its nature the darśapūrṇamāsau. Obeisance to the crown of the head, which has as its nature the cāturmāsyas. Obeisance to the aura,61 which has as its nature the nirūḍhapaśubandha. Obeisance to the third eye, which has as its nature the jyotiṣṭoma. Obeisance to the astral weapon, which has as its nature all the sacrifices. Phaṭ! Thus, the syllables bhuḥ, bhuvaḥ, suvaḥ, and om are fixed in the [four] directions.
It is important to read this in full, to translate this simple passage replete with redundancies, because the cadence of the text, its simplicity and comprehensibility, its organization and teleology, are reminiscent of drum rolls and chants of shamanic ritual.62 These are the cadences of possession, even as it is Sanskritized and brahmanized. Nyāsa, we can say, is brahmanical possession. It is a re-anatomization within an individual of the dismembered Puruṣa. The performer, a ritualist familiar with the cadences of Sanskrit, is not just reciting a text and connecting the dots between mantras and body parts—he (usually he) is training and prompting his body to resonate with the cadences of the text. These cadences, in Foucault’s words, embed “minute and local social practices” that wield and articulate cultural and, eventually, political power. In addition to the minimal speech-act of recitation, hence re-creation, the ritualist employs various mudrās regularly during the course of the recitation. Holding these mudrās, he touches the respective body part into which the deity is said to enter, with his right (or if necessary his left) hand. Thus, this performance of the Rudrādhyāya is physically engaged, not merely recited. Ritually, which is to say intentionally and therefore not meaninglessly, the reciter adopts the persona of the gods as he recites the text. As he invests his body with divinity, he confers on himself the power and authority with which the performance becomes effective. The brahman ritualist who recites the Rudrādhyāya in this context does not experience deity possession in the same manner as does a devotee at the temple of Khaṇḍobā in Jejuri on the new moon day that falls on a Monday (somavatī amāvāsyā).63 Nor will he experience the devotionally driven āveśa of a devotee performing sevā on his or her beloved deity, or the possession that Śaṅkara experienced upon entering the body of the dead king Amaruka. But there can be little doubt that the ritual is designed to reorient the ritualist toward a divine realm that is the product of millennia of brahmanical tinkering. This tinkering, which has a track record of success, at least in the minds and hearts of the ritualists, is in fact tinkering with practices of power. These practices are acts of purification, isolation, and proprietary possession of divinity, facets of brahmanization that are discussed elsewhere and need not detain us here.
Two further matters must be mentioned here. First, this possession, as I designate it, is described without the use of the primary critical vocabulary discussed here, derivatives of ā/pra-√viś or √gṛh. Instead, the verbs √sthā (tiṣṭhatu, etc.) (to establish, stand) and √śri (śritaḥ) (abide in, cling to, take possession of) establish both the motion and the contiguity that characterize āvesa, praveśa, and so on, and are nearly synonymous with them in expressing an appropriate entrance or pervasion. The root √sthā (tiṣṭhatu, etc.) is employed to express the occupation of deities on or in body parts. These deities are Brahmā, Viṣṇu, Hara, Agni, Śiva, the Vasus, Sarasvatī, Vāyu, Sun, Moon, the Aśvins, Rudra, Āditya, Mahādeva, Vāmadeva, Pīnākin, Śūlin, Śiva, and Śaṅkara, and finally all the gods together (sarvā devatā). Just as appropriately, √śri (śritaḥ) provides the sense of pervasion for natural forces, including fire, wind, sun (these three are the representatives of Agni on the terrestrial plane, the mid-region, and the celestium), the moon, the directions, water, earth, wild and domestic plants, Indra, Parjanya (Rain), Īśāna (one of the eleven Rudras, Śiva as the sun), and the self (ātmán). Thus, forms of these two verbs are used to express different aspects of what may be expressed broadly as possession.
Second, to return to an earlier point, the entire passage reflects a late first- and early second-millennium C.E. brahmanical strategy of advaitic reinscription that homogenizes the earlier, much more diverse but by now superannuated, vedic ritual theology. Although the phenomenon of identifying one entity, idea, or object with another—not randomly but as a “code of connections”64—has long been noticed in vedic and succeeding brahmanical thought, here is a text (and I could easily locate dozens of similar ones) that is engineered to reconstruct personal identity through acts of self-identification with deities and vedic sacrifices while simultaneously subordinating each identification to an absolute bráhman. In the key second section of the passage translated, Agni is said to abide in speech, speech in the heart, the heart in the “me” of the ritualist, that “me” in the immortal, and finally the immortal in bráhman. Thus commences a strategy of “practical Vedānta”65 designed to compel the ritualist to realize the identity of a deity with a body part, then with the individual self, and finally with bráhman. In this ritual exercise, the individual’s body parts, heart, and self are so fully identified with specific deities that it must fall within the range of deity possession, though that possession is ultimately nullified and transcended by a final identification with the absolute brahman.
Regardless of the perfunctory manner in which this is ordinarily performed (doubtless a consequence of text-based performance), a transformation in perception is assumed to occur. At the very least, this transformation is a result of a mantra-induced realization of a pre-existing condition, a transformation of quality, or a transfer of essence, at most through a more substantial infusion of the very deity, ṛṣi, and so forth, into the body or image. This infusion, clearly, is reminiscent of certain aspects of āveśa: it is envisioned, intended, and set in motion by the practitioner, and it is an immersion of distinctly positive forces into oneself or an image of one’s deity. In short, deities, powers, and so on are invited to take possession of the body. But they are invited in a brahmanically programmatic, that is, “textual,” way, one that emphasizes purity at the expense of spontaneity and danger. It is likely that the introduction of nyāsa into standard brahmanical ritual represented a domestication of certain tantric (or vedic) initiatory processes or even those of popular religious possession. Through exercising programmatic control, which occurred as a result of the elimination of its unstructured, noninstitutionalized, unpredictable, and (thus) frightening aspects, possession was drained of its spontaneity. It became vidhi (ritual prescription), which denied to it experiential possibilities beyond text, by rendering it representational in the sensibilities of the ritualist, rather than actual. This is not, however, to say that, as a general rule, confinement of possession within ritual boundaries necessarily reduced its experiential potency. Indeed, for many, particularly among non-brahmanized sects, such confinement served to confer acceptable social dimensions upon it, thus legitimizing it as a viable form of religious expression, as ethnographic work has decisively shown. Examples of the successful ritual demarcation of the unpredictable can be readily seen among the devotees of Khaṇḍobā at Jejuri or in dramatic performance such as Terukkūttu or Teyyam.
One further example of nyāsa should be discussed. This may be seen in the fourth chapter (ullāsaḥ) of the Kulārṇavatantra (KAT). The author of this well-known text of the Kaula tradition of Śaiva ritual, written sometime in the first centuries of the second millennium C.E., is unknown, but, according to the colophon at the end of the first ullāsa, the text is supposed to be the fifth section (khaṇḍa) of the Urdhvāmnāyatantra, a text now lost, but said (surely symbolically) to have consisted of 125,000 verses. Such statements aside, the fourth ullāsa consists of instructions for two progressions of nyāsa, one called “small” (alpaṣōḍhā, 4.17–18), the other “great” (mahāṣoḍhā, 4.19–130). Strikingly, the KAT states that the mahāṣoḍhānyāsa, which is indeed quite intricate, is for the purpose of devatābhāvasiddhi or perfection of the psychophysical experience (bhāva) of the deity (4.19), in this case Śiva. We have seen above that in bhakti texts the term bhāva is tantamount to āvesa; thus here the KAT can mean only that the aspirant transforms every aspect of his being (usually a male is presumed) into that of Śiva. This is nothing less than possession, as discussed above. In a verse at the end of this ullāsa (4.128), Īśvara or Śiva, who reveals this secret, reinforces the importance of this nyāsa to the goddess, his dialogical partner: “One who practices this nyāsa obtains ājñāsiddhi [the power to assure that whatever one orders is carried out]. In the world there is no protection greater than this, the bestower of the siddhi of devatābhāva. This, no doubt is the truth, it is the truth, O Fair-faced One.”
The nyāsas in this ullāsa are sixfold and construct—or reveal—systematic links between mantras, deities, body parts, and elements of the cosmos. These identifications disclose a transformation of the aspirant, his devatābhāva, brought on through a code of connections that harks back to the vedic Brāhmaṇa and Āraṇyaka texts for their authority. The first is called prapañca-nyāsa (the nyāsa of manifest creation). This consists of three parts. In the first, the aspirant links a string of bija mantras, Sanskrit vowels, sixteen names of the goddess Lakṣmī, body parts, and geographical forms, and at the end the same bija mantras in reverse order. For example, the first two to be recited are: au
ai hrī śrī hsau a prapañca rūpāyai śrīyai namaḥ śirasi s-hau śrī hrī ai au, meaning “au ai hrī śrī hsau a obeisance to Śrī on the head in the form of the manifest universe s-hau śrī hrī ai au”; then au ai hrī śrī hsau ām dvīparūpāyai māyāyai namaḥ mukhavṛtte s-hau śrī hrī ai au, meaning “au ai hrī śrī hsau ā obeisance to Māyā on the face in the form of a continent s-hau śri hrī ai au.” The remaining loci are: ocean (jaladhi), mountain (giri), town (pattana), ritual altar (pīṭha), field (kṣetra), forest (vana), religious refuge (asrama), cave (guha), river (nadī), crossroad (catvara), the domain of “sprout-born” entities (udbhidja, viz. plants), the domain of “sweat-born” creatures (svedaja, viz. mosquitoes, insects, etc.), the domain of egg-born beings (aṇḍaja, viz. birds), and the domain of “embryo-born” creatures (jarayuja, viz. mammals and higher primates). In this way, the aspirant realizes the entire physical universe within him. The second part of the prapañca-nyāsa does the same for units of time, from the smallest, the lava (tiniest fraction of a second), to the largest, the pralaya (period of cosmic dissolution), identifying these with manifestations of the goddess Kālī. The third links the ten manifestations of Sarasvatī with various aspects of the functioning being. These are the five fundamental elements (pañcabhūta) linked with Brāhmī; the five senses (tanmatra) linked with Vāgīśvarī; the five organs of action (karmendriya) with Vāṇi; the five sense organs (jñanendriya) with Sāvitrī, the five principal prāṇas with Sarasvatī; the three guṇas with Gāyatrī; the fourfold inner sense organ (antaḥkaraṇa) consisting of mind (manas), intelligence (buddhi), ego (ahaṃkāra), and consciousness (citta) with Vākpradā; the four states of awareness (waking, dreaming, deep sleep, and turiya, the “fourth” or transcendental state) with Saradā; the seven bodily constituents (skin, blood, flesh, fluid, marrow, bone, and semen) with Bhāratī; and the three bodily humors (doṣa: vāta, wind; pitta, bile; and kapha, phlegm) with Vidyātmika. Thus, through the prapañca-nyāsa, space, time, and human function are appropriated, experienced, and transformed within the body of the individual.
The remaining sections of the sixfold nyāsa are the bhuvana-nyasa, in which different divine Śaktis and their entourages of hundreds of millions of yoginīs are identified on the body with the fourteen planes of the universe, employing the same bija mantras and formulaic pattern as used above. In the murti-nyasa, the aspirant places on his body the sixteen forms of Viṣṇu and their corresponding śaktis, the twelve manifestations of Śiva and their śaktis, and the ten forms of Brahmā and their śaktis. Then follows mantranyāsa, in which billions of two-lettered mantras, three-lettered mantras, and so on ascending up to sixteen-lettered mantras are placed symbolically by their goddesses on ascending parts of the ritualist’s body. Then comes devata-nyasa, in which various goddesses and their respective legions of thousands of realized beings, celestial beings, and male deities are imposed on various body parts. Finally, in mātṛkā-nyāsa the aspirant places different “Mother Goddesses” (mātṛkā) along with myriad tens of millions (anantakoṭi) of members of the families of the Bhairava form of Śiva, including negatively charged beings (bhūta, preta, piśāca, etc.) and other denizens of the universe under their authority, on ascending body parts and energy centers. In sum, says Śiva himself in the KAT (4.119), “When nyāsa is performed in this way, O Goddess, the mantrin who is patient in times of both contraction and grace without doubt becomes a direct manifestation of the highest Śiva.”
In this way the individual, rather than retreating into a kind of advaitic oneness, expands into one. The process is, literally, one of taking possession of, arranging, and integrating the constituent parts of this world, the cosmic realms, all earthly and divine beings, and the functions of manifestation. The nature of life as a practical reality requires that the individual protect him or herself in infinite ways from the responsibility and awesomeness of the universe (cf. Arjuna in the eleventh chapter of the Bhagavadgītā). This shield—culturally, individually, or otherwise configured—enables that person to construct and conduct a manageable definition of his or her own individuality. Nyāsa, when used as part of an initiatory apparatus, as it is in Tantra, becomes an instrument for effacing that safe definition and emerging as a complex multiform personality that assumes divine and incomprehensible proportion; indeed, it is so awesome that it forces the individual to reconsider selfhood.
Pratiṣṭhā
Related to nyāsa are pratiṣṭhā (establishment of a deity in a material object), attested as early as the vedic Brāhmaṇa literature and, more specifically and recently, praṇa-pratiṣṭhā (installation of vital breath [prāṇa] into an image of a deity).66 The relatively recent Tantrarāja Tantra (2.39–40) notes the possible loci of pratiṣṭhā in the case of the goddess: She can be established in a cakra (viz. a yantra), a disciple, or a fashioned image of herself. Pratiṣṭhā and prāṇapratiṣṭhā are (when they can be distinguished) intricate brahmanical rituals as well as the immersion or pervasion of deities within physical objects. Like nyāsa, these actions share conceptual territory with āveśa in that they engage positive forces (viz. deities), are induced by the performers, and are highly regulated.67 Interestingly, one of the older citations of prāṇapratiṣṭhā is from the Brahmāṇḍa, Purāṇa (3.30.4; fourth to tenth centuries C.E.),68 where it refers to the restoration of life to a corpse. Generally, however, it involves rites that infuse life breath and open the eyes of a deity. This transformative process occurs in both Sanskritic and non-Sanskritic ritual.69 An example from a recent ethnography of Tamil possession states: “Periyānṭavar’s divine essence (murtiharam) is transferred to the earthen body through an ‘eye opening rite’ (kaṇ tiṟappu). Beyond a cloth screen a musician paints with black charcoal the pupils of the god’s bulging eyes. When a camphor flame is waved before his face, the crowd cheers ‘Kovintā! Kovintā!’ the cry that always greets the reincorporation of gods in human bodies.”70 This cry, “Kovintā! Kovintā!” (Govinda, Govinda), is common in Tamilnadu when possession is invoked.71
It is not irrelevant, especially given the discussions in Chapter 11, to mention that practices startlingly similar to nyāsa occur elsewhere in Asia. In China, such practices were an important component in Daoist meditation. Isabelle Robinet notes: “Before reciting a sacred text, the adept concentrates himself by calling the deities of the four horizons and by naming and summoning the spirits of his various body parts (his face, members, and viscera). It is necessary that the divine bodily spirits fix or stabilize his body and stabilize themselves within the body.”72 One of the most spectacular of Daoist practices is meditation on the stars, particularly the Big Dipper (which the Chinese call the “Northern Bushel”). In this meditation, the stars are made to descend into the practitioner’s body, after which the practitioner reciprocates and ascends onto the stars. Robinet writes, “before stepping on the dipper,” the adept “must dress himself with stars.” Each star of the Dipper is visualized and “invoked one after the other … and made to enter into, after each invocation, a bodily organ. After this is accomplished, they enlighten the whole body.”73 The repercussions of such practices on notions of the self in China, discussed below, resemble those in India.74
Also relevant is the frequent attestation of āveśana (entrance, possession) in both Buddhist texts and classical Sanskrit lexicons, in the sense of śilpiśālā (factory, workshop, cottage industry, or sculpture studio).75 This suggests that the nature of artistic creation was regarded as an invocation or pervasion of ordinary material by positive, if not divine, forces. Āveśa, āveśana, and related notions such as nyāsa and (prāṇa-)pratiṣṭhā indicate a more attendant premeditated and performative context than do instances of praveśa, grahaṇa, and other evolutes of possession. Āveśana, like āvesa, indicates a positively charged immersion, a state of absorption in which, rather ironically, the one possessed instigates the possession. This combination of positive with apparent externally imposed possession is unusual, but must be explained by regarding the created image as uniquely capable of attracting the deity, and so on, which ultimately settles into it.
Tantric or Vajrayāna Buddhism spread from North India, Kashmir, and Nepal into Tibet between 500 and 1000 C.E., as many scholars have shown. It was then enhanced in Tibet by the indigenous Bön and other local cults and cosmologies and by the spectacular environment that is Tibet, all of which have conferred on it a unique position among the various versions of Asian Buddhism. Among the unique features of Vajrayāna Buddhism is the importance of initiations, a legacy of the Śaiva traditions of Kashmir and northern India. It was not simply a matter of taking refuge in the Three Jewels—the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Saṇgha—but of receiving initiation into the practice of multiple Buddhist deities and maṇḍalas. Indeed, the path as conceived by Vajrayāna Buddhism was fueled by initiations. This is not to discount the complexity of tantric Buddhist doctrine, the subtle layerings of Buddhist philosophical thought, the profound sectarian differences, the importance of assiduous practice, or the complex relationship between lay Vajrayāna and monastic practice and institutions. But it was initiation—infusions of divine energy delicately forged by detailed attention to ritual—that motivated the remaining aspects of Vajrayāna Buddhism.
An opportune, though admittedly uneasy, comparison may be made with the Mahābhārata. Bearing in mind that the latter is a single (if multi-authored)76 text, albeit a gigantic all-encompassing epic, while Vajrayāna Buddhism is a complex and far-reaching religious system, we must recall an observation made earlier: that the plot of the MBh is consistently advanced through curses and boons, acts of divine intervention, possession, odd synchronicities, and other extraordinary occurrences. If the Vedānta, Sāṃkhya, Dharmasāstra, and other palimpsests of orthodoxy were stripped away (even from the critical edition), a mythic series of miracle tales, some wondrous, some horrific, would be most of what remains of the MBh.77 At the risk of oversimplifying, I might say that in the case of Vajrayāna, if the yāna were stripped away, what would remain is the vajra. By this I mean tales of innumerable saints, such as Padmasambhava, Nāropa, Saraha, and Milarepa, arduous pilgrimages to far-flung places such as Kailāśa and Mānasarovara, devotionalism with powerful resonances in South Asia, and yogic siddhis. But most prominent as vajra are the initiations. We can see from the following brief extract that these have obvious points of resonance with Śaiva śaktipāta initiation described by Abhinavagupta in the Tantrāloka.78
The passage is a translation from the Vajrabhairava abhiṣeka as compiled initially by the seventh Dalai Lama, based on Indian sources. Also included is a brief section from this Dalai Lama’s autocommentary in which he quotes Nagabodhi’s description of the signs of āveśa.79
Expunge [obstructers] with: oṃ hrīṃ śrīṃ vikṛtānana hūṃ phaṭ.
Purify into emptiness with: oṃ svabhāvaśuddhaḥ sarvadharmaḥ svabhāvaśuddho ’ham.
Think the following: From emptiness I myself become the syllable hūṃ; I myself, the syllable, become a vajra marked with hūṃ; I myself, the vajra, become the great Vajrabhairava; my body is dark blue with one face and two arms holding in my hands a goad and skull bow; I stand with my left foot extended. On the crown of my head from baṃ arises a circular white water-shape marked with a vase; on that shape is haṃ. At my heart from laṃ arises a square yellow earth-shape marked at its corners with three-pronged vajras; on that shape is huṃ. At my navel from raṃ arises a red triangular fire-shape, intense and blazing; on it is āḥ. Under my feet from yaṃ arises a bow-shaped, rippling blue wind-shape, its two far corners marked with pennants; on it is jhaiṃ, in a fierce and unbearable form. Agitated by the wind, the jhaiṃ ascends to the lotus of fire at the navel; again due to the wind’s agitation, the earth at the heart begins to blaze, and from the water at the crown a stream of nectar falls; it completely satisfies me. Chant: oṃ hrīṃ śrīṃ vikṛtānana hūṃ hūṃ phaṭ phaṭ / āveśaya sthambhaya / ra ra ra ra / cālaya cālaya / hūṃ haṃ jhaiṃ hūṃ phaṭ //80 As a result of saying this many times, the wisdom [beings] enter. At that time, with the visualization of it being thrown by the wind and with firm deitypride in Guru Vajrabhairava, one should brandish the vajra with the right hand, ring the ghaṇṭa [bell] with the left, and properly scent [oneself?] with incense. Visualize that the light-rays of the fire in one’s body spread out to the ten directions and invite all the buddhas and bodhisattvas in the form of Mañjusri Yamāri; like rain falling, they melt into one. Then the vajra is placed on one’s head, and by saying, tiṣṭha vajra (“Stay, Vajra!”), one should make the blessing firm.
[After going through the meaning of the mantra, the Dalai Lama comments as follows]: As a result of the Wisdom beings entering in that way, the minds of the deities—i.e., the non-dual wisdom that has the nature of the first bodhisattvabhūmi and so on—actually enter the mindstream of the disciple, or else one visualizes and believes that it has done so. Thereby, the wisdom blessing has entered the disciple; this is called the “Shared [blessing]” [Tib. skal mnyam; Skt. sabhāgaḥ]. Concerning the signs that [the wisdom beings] have entered, the root Tantra of Guhyasamāja says, “… shaking and tremors …” Ācārya Nāgabodhi comments, “One should know that the signs of entrance are shaking, elation, fainting, dancing, collapsing, or leaping upward.” In the translation by Chag lotsawa, it says, “… shaking, hair standing on end …” Thus, many signs are said to arise, from leaping—to a height of one cubit, two cubits or even eight cubits—to hair standing on end, trembling and so on.
The use of long series of bija mantras, the visualization of maṇḍalas as embodiments of deities, the assertion of deities entering the initiate, and Nagabodhi’s citation of “shaking and tremors,” and so on as signs of successful initiation are familiar from Indian Śaiva initiatory sequences. We might here recall the term ātmabhāvaparigraham (taking possession of a [new] personal existence), discussed in Chapter 7, appearing in an early Buddhist text. In that text, it appeared to indicate taking on a new rebirth. Here, however, many centuries and Buddhist cultures removed, the notion of taking possession of a new personal existence is radically altered to indicate a transformation occurring in this life as a result of undertaking a powerful initiation. As one might expect, Vajrabhairava, called Vajrāveśa (“he who is possessed by a vajra”), is represented iconographically, as the image in Plate 2 attests.
This transformation is analyzed in the Kālacakratantra (KT) more explicitly in terms of possession. It is a possession strongly reminiscent of the brahmanical, liturgically actualized possession discussed earlier in this chapter. Like the brahmanical example, this discussion is situated in terms of constructing a divine body from the visualized image in a maṇḍala. Among the texts that describe such maṇḍalas are, in addition to the KT, the Vajrayāna texts Sādhanamālā and Niṣpannayogāvalī, which describe a large number of maṇḍalas to be used as meditation aids.81 These texts describe two types of beings, called samayasattva and jñanasattva. Both Stephen Beyer and Alex Wayman translate samayasattva as “symbolic being” and jñanasattva as “knowledge being.” These, says Wayman, “are among the most difficult and important ideas of the Buddhist Tantric literature.… The samaya-sattva is the yogin who has identified himself with a deity he has evoked or imagined, while the jñāna-sattva is either a human Bodhisattva, or a celestial Bodhisattva or Buddha.”82 The samayasattva, more accurately, is the visualized image of the deity, with which the meditator can identify in the “self-generation” stage of deity yoga. Beyer states that the samayasattva is “the projection upon the ultimate fabric of reality of the practitioner’s own visualization,” that the meditators visualization manipulates and “empowers the senses”83 of a jñānasattva, thus dissolving it into the figure of a samayasattva.84 This occurs through the operation of the mantra jaḥ hū ba hoḥ, which summons, absorbs, binds, and dissolves the former into the latter. Beyer quotes Tsongkh’apa: “If one makes the knowledge being enter in, his eyes and so on are mixed inseparably with the eyes and so on of the symbolic being, down to their very atoms: and one should visualize their total equality.”85 It is striking how close this is to the precise physiological mirroring and pervasion that define āveśa in the yoga literature, to Vipula Bhārgava’s possession of Ruci in the MBh and to the imprinting of form and essence found in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka and Kauṣītaki Upaniṣads’ description of a moribund father entering the body of his son.
PLATE 2. Vajrāveśa (rDo-rje dbab-pa), a gate guardian (dvārapāla). His mantra is oṃ sarvavit sarvāpāyagatigahanaviśodhani hūṃ hoḥ phaṭ (Om, Omniscient One, the Deliverer from the Bonds of All evils, Hūṃ Hoḥ Phaṭ).
The image of Vajrāveśa is taken from Laxman S. Thakur, Buddhism in the Western Himalayas (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), 115. For the mantra, see Tadeusz Skorupski, The Sarvadurgatiparisodhana Tantra: Elimination of ‘All Evil Destinies (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1983), 9, 128; cf. 93, 260–261.
The Vajratārā sādhana chapter of the Sādhanamāla describes the attraction of a jñānasattva being located in the northern part of a certain maṇḍala. The āveśa is initially induced by repetition of the syllable ra (rekāra), the same syllable prescribed for possession of Vajrāveśa.86 Then a specified pose is maintained with vajra, bell, and so on. The aspirant then installs this being on a lunar orb in the heart and worships it appropriately. The mantra jaḥ hū va hoḥ should be recited, says the Sādhanamālā, while performing the attracting, entering, fixing, and pleasing (ākarṣaṇapraveśanabandhanat oṣaṇam) of the jñānasattva.87 The agents in the following passage from the KT are, then, aspirants who fit the description of samayasattva.
The KT passage in question, from the abhiṣekapaṭala, the section on initiation, contains a passage on the visualization and internal manifestation of both bodhisattvas and wrathful deities (krodharāja), notably Vajrāveśa, who is emblematic in this text of the latter category. The commentator, Kalkin Śrīpuṇḍarīka, fills in important lacunae; thus the following account weaves together the KT and Kalkin’s commentarial notes. The aspirant (which the KT consistently calls śiṣya [disciple]) first prepares himself for this possession or re-embodiment by reciting the mulamantra for Vajrāveśa ten million times followed by one hundred thousand offerings with it into a fire. This mantra is: o a ra ra ra ra la la la la vajrāveśāya hū.88 Then the maṇḍala is consecrated with a long series of mantras, and the aspirant positions himself ritually, with bell and vajra in place, hands and fingers arranged in proper mudrās, suitably attired, and gifts properly distributed.89 He then declares vows of good conduct, service to gurus, buddhas, and bodhisattvas, protection of his senses, and so on. He bathes, freshens his body with scented powder, and reinforces his vows (vrataniyamayutaḥ, v. 87). He momentarily assumes earlier stages of practice (pūrvabhūmyāṃ nivesya, v. 87) by inviting and pacifying the directional buddhas and those of the external circles of the maṇḍala with the standard meditation mantra o āḥ hū. He purifies his tongue with three mouthfuls of pañcāmṛta,90 screens off or places a cloth over these external circles of the maṇḍala (presumably to sharpen his concentration), and lights incense, which encourages possession (dhupam āveśanārtham). Then, says Kalkin Śrīpuṇḍarīka, through meditation alone he gains the ability to become possessed by the wrathful deity (smaraṇamātreṇa krodhāveśaṃ karoti).
The next verse (v. 88), with Kalkin’s help, tells us how this deity behaves. After the deity is fully manifested within the aspirant, he is capable of killing all beings moving and nonmoving, of crushing them, by easily obstructing their progress. By threatening that host of Māras (māravṛndam), that destroyer of dharma (Kalkin glosses this as dharmaviheṭhakam), he makes them fall to the ground, immobile. Even an aspirant who does not know the proper movements is then able to perform the “vajra dance” (vajranṛtyam). He executes this dance in mid-air, thus slaying these killers of dharma, by placing his left foot forward and right foot back (pratyālīḍhādipādaiḥ). Then he laughs and sings the vajra in the form of a loud hū, which could never emanate from a human and which creates fear in this inimical host of Māras. This, then, is the nature of a wrathful deity when the practitioner is being possessed by it.
The next several verses of the KT are best translated in full, along with Kalkin Śrīpuṇḍarīka’s introductions.
“[The commentary states:] Now, with respect to establishing [within oneself] the body, etc., of a wrathful deity [krodharāja] or bodhisattva, it is said: After the body is possessed [kāyāveśena], a yogin will realize the purpose of that body by acting under the influence of its fundamental qualities [prakṛtiguṇavaśāt]. After becoming possessed by its voice [vāgāveśena] the yogin becomes its spokesperson and secures victory over gods, nagas, and asuras. After becoming possessed of their mind [cittavesena], the past and present, secret within everyone’s heart, becomes known. After becoming possessed of their knowledge [jñānāveśena], the yogin becomes a buddha, a guru of gurus, an achiever of great worldly attainments, and a ruler over all.
The commentator explains that the fundamental qualities (prakṛtiguṇa) of a wrathful deity and a bodhisattva are, respectively, ferocity (raudra) and peacefulness (śānta), startlingly in keeping with the discussion in Chapter 8 of the rasas associated with possession in South India. Just as wrathful deities and bodhisattvas can fly through the air (kurvanty ākāsagamanam), a good disciple should be able to enter hell worlds, fly over the world, become invisible, and fly to mountain tops as a result of possession by a divine body. Just like Mañjusri, even a stupid student whose senses are under control as a result of possession by divine speech should be able to overcome gods, nāgas, and asuras. Possession by a divine mind91 enables the pupil to know the past, present, and future, all of which are invisible (atītānāgataṃ vartamānam adṛṣṭaṃ sarvam). Becoming possessed by knowledge means that gaining control of the psychomental predispositions from previous births enables one to become perfected in the world.
[The commentator states:] Now, with respect to establishing [within oneself] the eye, etc. [of a wrathful deity or a bodhisattva], it is said: After becoming possessed by its earth element, the yogin becomes sturdy as a mountain, and after becoming possessed by its water element, it attains the same coolness. After becoming possessed of its fire, the yogin acquires its fiery nature, and by becoming possessed of its wind, similarly he acquires its dryness. After becoming possessed of its emptiness, the yogin becomes invisible and becomes like an aereal being on the surface of the earth.92 In this way, the composite form, constructed under the influence of fundamental qualities, is to be understood.
Kalkin discusses the results of possession by (as well as of) divine elements and divine senses. He says that the aspirant becomes so powerful as a result of arrogating the divine counterpart of the earth element that he cannot be moved even by hundreds of men. Embracing the divine water element enables him to ward off fever even when it rages within him. After assuming within his body the divine fire, he gains the ability to burn whatever he touches. By taking possession of the wind element of a wrathful deity or bodhisattva he can blow anything he embraces many leagues away. And by assuming the element of emptiness he can make anything he touches invisible. When possessed by the divine eye, he sees divine form, though it is insubstantial (adṛṣṭadravyam). Similarly, possession by divine hearing enables one to hear the unheard sounds of beings; possession by a divine mind (divyamanas) permits one to gain the knowledge of another’s thoughts (paracittajñānam); possession of a divine body and sense organs enables one to obtain divine touch and achieve a divine abode; possession of a divine tongue results in a divine sense of taste, and of a divine organ of smell a divine sense of smell.
[The commentator states:] Now the symptoms of those with divine possession will be explained. O king, for those who know the proper mantras, possession [āvesa] is realized through powerful meditation [bhāvanā]; but sometimes also through different kinds of devotional service [sevā], through various kinds of stipulated practice, through repetition of mantras, and so on. Success in achieving this kind of possession [siddhi] of those who know mantras is nowhere possible in the generation of a maṇḍala [even] by buddhas with a great variety of richly textured experiences, without first establishing themselves in this manner.
Kalkin states that “various kinds of stipulated practice” (bahuvidhasamaya-) means protective or reinforcing practices that engage bodhicitta or the vow to work towards the enlightenment of all beings. Most of the practices referred to here are visualizations and possession of different classes of Buddhist divinities and spirits. These, says Kalkin, involve entrance into a maṇḍala and are described in the fifth paṭala of a text called the Jñānasiddhi or otherwise taught by one’s guru.
[The commentator states:] Now, for quelling one’s possession, the following is said: After the aspirant relinquishes his possession, the Jinas, who have gone to the part of the maṇḍala that represent his Buddha-families, should touch his forehead, his heart, the top of his head, his navel, his throat, and his anus with their triple-pronged vajras [svatrivajraiḥ] in order to invoke protection for him. Then the disciple becomes eligible to enter the maṇḍala [atra] upon being blindfolded and given a yellow robe. For the sake of convention [i.e., the collection of merit, not wisdom], one should also grant to him the vows that contain the station [gati-, i.e., rank] of the supreme ones.93
Because it is believed to be as fraught with danger as entering into or remaining in a state of possession, disembarking from such a state is equally specified. All Indic ritual texts on possession (mostly unpublished manuscripts, as we see in Chapter 11) give detailed instructions on how to “abandon” (tyaktvā, KT 92) or, in Kalkin’s gloss, “calm” or “quell” (upasamana) possession. Kalkin, consistent with others, prescribes a series of mantras designed to invoke the protection of various buddhas. He states that if an aspirant is possessed by a wrathful deity, and so on, then the teacher (ācārya) should ask him what the effect was. He should recite the three syllables o āḥ hū over a flower and place it on the aspirant’s head. The latter will then be released from his possession and return to his own place. This appears to mean that after the aspirant leaves the consecrated space, in this case, the proximity of the maṇḍala, he is back in “his own place” (svasthānam). Unlike in other texts we examine in Chapter 11, neither the KT nor Kalkin states explicitly that the aspirant enters a maṇḍala or yantra that is drawn on the ground and sits down on it, thus becoming himself a quasi-deity within the maṇḍala and enacting his possession from that locus of power. This, however, is certainly the case,94 enabling the aspirant to more easily convert the visual to the visualization. With the syllable o, the ācārya invokes the protection of the buddhas on the aspirant’s head, then with hū on his heart, and with haṃ on the crown of his head. This is accomplished through the practice of his own “triple-pronged vajra,” which Kalkin clarifies as his body, speech, and mind. Similarly the ācārya should place the syllable ho on his navel, āḥ on his throat, kṣaḥ on his perineum. Thus, this nyāsa follows the possession rather than precedes it and, unlike the brahmanical recorporealizing, is enacted by the teacher. Kalkin adds that the long (dīrgha) syllable hū is the vajra of speech, while the short (hrasva) syllable (presumably hū) is the vajra of the mind. The latter part of this verse seems to indicate that the aspirant’s monastic vows only superficially, or at least only in part, serve the purpose of “traditional” study of Buddhist doctrine and practice. In fact, however, in tantric Buddhism they may be deployed to keep secret more esoteric practices. These secrets, says Kalkin, are laden with merit (puṇyādisaṃbhāraḥ) and include auspicious rebirths in buddha realms all the way up to the status of Tathāgata Sakyamuni. This is in keeping with a theme of secrecy in India that extends back to the vedic Brāhmaṇas and, most pointedly, the Āraṇyakas, texts that were to be studied only in the seclusion of a forest.
What is revealed here is a continuum of practice from brahmanical to Buddhist, always with the underlying themes of physical divinization and multiplicity within an apparent singularity of personality. First, we briefly explicated the important term samāveśa, which occurs frequently in the Śaiva Tantras to indicate both the practice of immersion into a deity and the state of liberation that results from this practice. The unvarying requirement for these, the contingency that confers eligibility (adhikāra) for samāveśa, is tantric initiation. Second, we described the practice of nyāsa. In this practice, abbreviated mantras based on vedic models are employed to purify the five elements that constitute the body and all other materiality (bhutasuddhi). Subsequently, brief cadenced mantras are employed to compel deities and archetypal forms to enter the body, thus ontologically transforming and substantively re-indexing it. This process is complemented, even replicated, by the brahmanical practice of consecration and enlivening of images ([prāṇa-]pratiṣṭḥā), an ontological movement from inert material to sentient deity comparable to movement in nyāsa from the human to the divine.
This practice, which became widespread in Asia beyond brahmanical text and lineage boundaries, was transmitted into tantric Buddhism through the Śaiva lineages of Kashmir and north India late in the first millennium C.E. In this delineation, the individual and the cosmos were amalgamated by mantrically situating the practitioner inside a maṇḍala and enacting a simultaneous transformation on both. Bhutasuddhi, nyāsa, and the ontological (as well as physical) repositioning of the person within the maṇḍala may be viewed as initiatory renewals, which led the practitioner to meditate on his own body as the basis for the deity. This is recognized in Himalayan and East Asian Buddhism as āvesa, where the deity Maheśvara is realized in this manner.95 Thus, the use of bhutasuddhi, nyāsa, mudrās, and pratiṣṭhā mantras rendered the sonic reconstitution of the body a form of possession. As in other modes of possession, the tantric practitioner’s identity and persona were eclipsed, even if the individual in this case retained a grounded, continuous, and prepatterned interior sense of personal identity. This, then, is proximate to what we examine in Chapter 11: tantric ritual that is more definitively oracular, in which the practices described here are compressed for greater practical applicability. Even if the argument is put forth that much of what follows is a brahmanical or tantric palimpsest on local practices, the fact remains that it bears a striking continuity with the material presented here.
In this way, too, nyāsa and pratiṣṭhā may be regarded as ritualizations of a multifaceted and multiform self. This is consistent with most of the other material found in these pages, including the ethnographies, Upaniṣadic accounts of creation and notions of transfer of essence, an expanding and nuanced corpus of ritual inclusiveness (e.g., the thousand bricks of the agnicayana), apocryphal tales of possession (such as that of the dead king Amaruka by Śaṅkara), and bhakti-induced possession. The ethnographies in particular argue that Indian culture on a local non-Sanskritized level bears witness to a complex and permeable self. This is disclosed at spirit healing centers such as Bālājī and at various places in Sri Lanka, among shamanic healers in the Himalayas, and in divine, oracular possession virtually everywhere else in South Asia.
PLATE 4. Yajñavarāha. Wadhwan, Surendranagar, Gujarat (thirteenth century). See http://dsal.uchicago.edu/images/aiis/aiis_search.html?depth=large&id=32166/. For another, similar example, see Vasudeva S. Agrawala, Matsya Purāṇa—A Study (Varanasi: All-India Kashiraj Trust, 1963), 311. Another example of this figure, also from Gujarat, may be seen at the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City.
Watson Museum, Rajkot, Gujarat.
As mentioned earlier, we conclude this chapter by briefly looking at another area of South Asian culture in which divinized bodies are employed to express a multivocal yet integrated selfhood: the diverse realm of Indian art. One can argue, effectively in my view, that art may not be the most promising medium for expressing a pure, uninvolved, disengaged, unadulterated self, a brahman-ātman relationship. Many examples of modern Indian “Vedāntic” art testify to this (for example, the art of the Brahma Kumāris). However, in its capacity to graphically represent the interests of complex, imaginative relationships, to portray internal psychological, mental, and even physical conditions, art should in fact prove a valuable locus for confirmation of the themes that we are working with here, in particular, a ritually constructed complex self. The complex self in possession, which has been shown repeatedly to disrespect geography as well as class and caste boundaries (for example, oracular possession in the Himalayas [Erndl, Sax, Srinivas, Mumford, etc.] or festival possession in south India [Hiltebeitel, Honko, Claus, etc.]), is invariably physical and representational, not just mental and psychological. Such pellucid dimensions of disease-producing possession are also abundantly in evidence in āyurvedic texts, the Mahābhārata, and tantric literature. Thus, the tendency of Indian art to represent the self as a complex and not always perfectly interlocking set of identity structures is well worth our consideration here.96
Let us, then, look at a few examples of such artwork here, including a remarkable drawing of a human body enclosing the lunar asterisms, the kāmadhenu, and the Yajñavarāha constituted of the Vedas and the parts of the vedic sacrifices. Most of these refer back to the complex Puruṣa of the Ṛgveda (10.90), constructed of a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, the seasons, the four varṇas, the sun and moon, and much more.
The most obvious common element of these plates is that they depict embodiments of cosmic or elemental powers. They all help define the embodied being, whether, in the case of the Indian images, a man, a boar, a cow, a bird, or an elephant. Plate 3 depicts the lunar asterisms (nakṣatra), the twenty-eight constellations through which the moon passes in its monthly journey, enveloped in the body of a man, himself stretched out like a constellation. Plate 4 shows the Yajñvarāha, the “boar as sacrifice,” in a thirteenth-century sculpture from Gujarat. This image is described at length in Matsya Purāṇa, chapter 238, while the iconography is given in the Vaikhānasa Āgama.97 Every part of the boar’s body is identified with a different part of the Vedic sacrificial ritual. The boar is Varāha, the avatāra of Viṣṇu that descended to earth to bore to the bottom of the cosmic ocean and rescue the Vedas, which had been endangered by demons. Plates 5 and 6 show the kāmadhenu (wish-fulfilling cow), a popular and enduring image in Indian art. According to Hindu mythology, this friendly beast was created by the gods and demons during the “churning of the ocean of milk” (kṣīrasāgaramanthana) and was taken by the seven sages (saptarṣi) who comprise the Great Bear constellation. She is considered the mother of all cows. Her four legs are the Vedas, her horns are the gods, her face the sun and moon, her shoulders Agni, and her legs the Himalayas. Her all-inclusive nature, along with her origins as the offspring of both the gods and demons, reveals the deep complexity of this apparently simple and unadorned mythical beast. Plate 7 depicts the elephant, large, powerful, and multifaceted, which has been a source of unending fascination in India. Plate 8 depicts the mighty bird Garuḍa, with the great god Viṣṇu and his consort Lakṣṃī astride. This visual representation of dual divinity, male and female, all-encompassing, naturalizes a complex and multiform godhead.
In sum, the symptoms of Tantric initiation and the brahmanical ritual actions of nyāsa and pratiṣṭhā transform the initiate, the ritualist, or the inert form, respectively, by imposing on or constructing within them a divine body, or even a deity. This, I am asserting, is a Sanskritized mode of possession, supported by a vocabulary and structure of selfhood that matches what is found elsewhere in the Indic discourse of possession. This reverberates through Indian culture, and is reconfirmed in South Asian art, where esoteric portraits of human and animal forms reveal a complex visual discourse of possession.
NOTES
1. See Lopez 1996:83–104; Padoux 2002; Sharf 2002:263ff.; Urban 1999; White 2000:4ff. and his elastic definition of Tantra on p. 9.
2. See Muller-Ortega, who notes: “There were various forms of non-dualistic Tantric Saivism represented by a series of related preceptorial lineages: the Trika, Pratyabhijñā, Kaula, Krama, and Mata, which were by no means identical in practice or doctrine. In addition, there were also powerful lineages of conservative, dualistic Śaiva Siddhānta in Kashmir, as well as the centrist cult of the worship of Svacchandabhairava. Of these, it is the first, by no means homogeneous, group that seems to have generally and imprecisely been referred to as Kashmir Saivism” (1996:188). On the history and development of these sects, see Sanderson 1988:692ff.
3. Sanderson 1985:201. Sanderson writes of his work, that it “is concerned with the processes by which the learned tradition has transformed (and domesticated) the element of possession in Śaiva practice” (personal communication, October 1993). The places Sanderson lists in this passage (mountains, caves, forests, etc.) are among those that the MBh also regards as liminal, and for which the epic employs the verb āv√iś denoting entry into them; see above pp. 248f.
5. The most complete description of smasāna sādhana, in fact of savasadhana, a ritual that employs a corpse, occurs in the Agamarahasyam, pp. 117–135. This is not a Kashmiri Tantra, but a copious modern north Indian compilation of all manner of tantric and domestic ritual, including sections on nyāsa, haṭhayoga, and initiation.
6. kāpālikāḥ samāveśena sāṃyam upagacchati | tathā hi–yathā grahāḥ puruṣeṣv āviś-anti tatheśvaraguṇā mukteṣv āviśanti | cited in Torella 1994:xxxiii n. 49; also mentioned in Sanderson 1985:213n90. On symptoms of āveśa according to the Kāpālikas, Pāsupātas, and the Lākulas/Kālamukhas, see Śaivaparibhāṣā, p. 156. Though the Kāpālikas aspire to the Lord’s qualities (guṇa) through samāveśa, the other atimārga sects, the Pāsupatas and the Kālāmukhas, aspire to the same through saṃkrānti and utpatti.
7. Torella 1994. See also Bhaṭṭa Rāmakaṇṭha’s views expressed in his commentary on the Kiraṇatantra 1.20c–22b: [śivatvasya] vyaktir iha mokṣāḥ na [tu siddhe] saṃkrāntir āveśaḥ samutpattir vety etad apy ataḥ siddham | “In this system (iha) liberation is the revelation of [innate] Śivahood. It is not [characterized by] transference [of Śivahood] into the adept (siddhe) or possession or the coming into being [of Śivahood]. This too is proved by this [verse].” Cf. Goodall 1998:28; see also Brunner’s observations (1986:518–519) on the sectarian distinctions between saṃkrānti, āveśa, and samutpatti, seen in this passage.
8. For an intriguing possibility of initiatory possession from a different culture, note the case of Jesus. The evidence for this was reviewed in a very interesting article by DeMaris (2000), who enters an older debate over the historicity of Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist. If in fact it occurred, argues DeMaris, then the baptism could represent a case of positive, ritually induced, possession of the Holy Spirit. If it did not occur and was a later addition to the Bible, as some suggest, then Jesus’ visions could be a case of negative, spontaneous, nonritually induced possession by a spirit. Either of these scenarios challenges certain articles of Christian belief. In the former, the baptism would challenge the notion of Jesus’ born perfection, which calls into question his very need for a baptism, while in the latter the baptism would legitimate Jesus’ spontaneous possession. DeMaris raises the issue because of the frequent references in the Old Testament (which he discusses) to possession as an accompaniment to visionary experience.
9. See also the reflections of Padoux 1999.
10. See Kaw 1967:230, KSTS ed. of the text, 131–132.
12. Failure is also possible: Tantrāloka, ch. 31, uses the term pisācāvesa to indicate incorrect rise of kuṇḍalinī.
13. Adapted from Flood 1993:294.
14. Summarized from Finn 1986:65f. For an elaboration of this see Vasudeva 2004:185ff., 303ff. Sanderson states that Abhinavagupta “understands samāveśaḥ to mean not the act of being entered but entering (into one’s true nature)” (1986:177n33). This is to be distinguished from the Mālinīvijayottara’s use of āveśa as being possessed by the deity (Vasudeva 2004:304n10), in this case the śakti or goddess Parā. It is important here to examine Mālinīvijayottara 2,17–23, 12.15–20. For more on the Mālinīvijayottara’s nuancing of both samāveśa and āvesa, see Biernacki 2006.
15. Cited in Kaw 1967:233, 1975:175; Sanderson 1986:176; Torella 1994:203. Śiva’s projection into the individual is fourfold: as a sensationless void (sūnyam), as internal sensation (āntaraḥ sparśaḥ), as the intellect (buddhiḥ), and as the body (śarīra) (cf. Sanderson 1986.).
16. asmad rūpasamāviṣṭaḥ svātmanātmanivāraṇe | śivaḥ karotu nijayā namaḥ śāktyā tatātmane ||
17. Cf. Utpaladeva’s Vṛtti on Śivadṛṣṭi 1.1, that samāveśa is to be practiced assiduously, after which it grants fruit commensurate with the vision it generates.
18. tasyaiva ca pallavabhūtāḥ parameśvarastutipraṇāmadhyānapūjādayaḥ.
19. See Sanderson 1986:176ff.
21. Sanderson 1986:177n33 cites only the Mālinīvijayottaratantra.
22. āveśaś cāsvatantrasya svatadrūpanimajjanāt | paratadrūpatā śambhor ādyāc chaktyavibhāginaḥ || Tantrāloka 1.173. Gnoli translates this as: “La penetrazione (āveśa) consiste nell’assunzione della natura suprema, preceduta e determinata dalla sparizione della nostra natura individua di essere non liberi. Tale assunzione proviene da Sambhu, l’originale, inseparato dalle sue potenze” (1980:92).
23. satyasvarūpe samyag ā samantāt praveśalakṣaṇam, Vivṛtivimarśinī on ĪPK 3.2.12.
24. Sanderson 1986:177n33.
25. Kaw 1967:236; citing Abhinavagupta on Īśvarapratyabhijñāvimarśinī (p. 236n35): seyaṃ dvayy api jivanmuktāvasthā samāveśa ity uktā sastre.
26. Laghuvṛtti on Parātrisikā, verse 2, cited by Muller-Ortega 1989:183; 1996: 191–192. My interpretation of this passage is as follows: “Contentment [tṛpti] is of two kinds: as a state of living liberation it is to be attained by conscious realization [lit. “recourse to the heart”]. But it is also a state of divine comportment to be attained by samāveśa on that [state of living liberation].”
28. Vivṛtivimarśinī on Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā 3.2.12, see also this chapter, note 34.
29. For an explication of this text, with notes, see Singh 1963. For a statement approximately two centuries earlier than Kṣemarāja of this same identity achieved through full possession, see the first verse of the Śivadṛṣṭi cited in note 16.
30. See Bell 1992:202 for an elaboration of this.
31. See White 1996, which deals extensively with this theme.
32. Cf. Goudriaan in Gupta et al. 1979:60–62. Also Mālinīvijayottara 2.17ff. (devāgre viniveśayet, 2.17); Vijñānabhairavatantra 111–112; Kavirāj 1963:58f. Paramārthasāra supplies a formal description of śaktipāta: “As one’s face is illumined in a spotless mirror, this (Lord) who is the very embodiment of illumination [bhārūpaḥ] is revealed in the faculty of illuminated intellect [ dhitattva], which is spotless as a result of the śaktipāta of Śiva” (ādarśe malarahite yadvad vadanaṃ vibhāti tadvad ayam | śivaśaktipātavimale dhītattve bhāti bhārūpaḥ ||9||). The methodology is supplied later in the text: “When one completely realizes this supreme path quickly from the mouth of the guru, then only, as a result of this extremely intense śaktipāta, can one obtain Śiva alone, without any obstacle” (paramārthamārgam enaṃ jhaṭiti yadā gurumukhāt samabhyeti | atitīvraśaktipātāt tadaiva nirvighnam eva śivaḥ ||96||).
33. Śakti, grammatically feminine, can, however, be the property of males: cf. rudraśaktisamāveśāḥ in Mālinīvijayottara 2.17, 20.29.
34. Mālinīvijayottara 11.35 lists the qualities of śaktipāta, when constitutive of an advanced initiation, as bliss (ānanda), the awakening of kuṇḍalinī (udbhava), physical shaking (kampa), sleep (nidra), and whirling (ghūrṇi) (lakṣyec cihnasaṅghātam ānandādikan ādarāt | ānanda udbhavaḥ kampo nidrā ghūrṇiś ca pañcamī ||). The Tantrāloka mentions similar symptoms of possession by Rudra’s sakti: āviśantī rudraśaktiḥ kramāt sūte phalaṃ tv idam | ānandam udbhavaṃ kampaṃ nidrāṃ ghūrṇiṃ ca dehagām || (29.208). The commentary glosses kampa as shaking of the subtle body (prāṇātmani vāyau tatkāritvāt kampasya), nidrā as the focusing of the intellect inside the body, which occurs as a result of sleep bringing about a state in which false notions of physical consciousness cease (antas tanau buddhir puryaṣṭake tattanmāyiyavṛttinirodhāt nidrāyāḥ), and ghūrṇi or whirling as external activity which is no longer dependent on the ego (bahis tanāv ahantāvaṣṭambhabhaṇgāt ghūrṇiḥ). The commentator adds that this extremely sharp śaktipāta incinerates the pāsas (nooses) that bind one to the relative world. The Mālinīvijayottara continues: evaṃ āviṣṭayā śaktyā mandatīvrādibhedataḥ | pāśastobhapaśugrāhau prakurvīta yathecchayā || gṛhītasya punaḥ kuryān niyogaṃ śeṣabhuktaye | athavā kasyacin nāyaṃ āveśaḥ saṃprajāyate ||. See also Tantrāloka 5.100c–108b, for further associations of āveśa with śaktipāta; esp. 5.102. This can be compared to similar phenomena described in ethnographies; cf. Erndl, Freeman, etc.
35. Sax, using the Hindi ātma hil jātā hai (personal communication, June 2000). For similar notions in his work, see Sax 1991a:185, passim.
38. For general information and examples of nyāsa, see Kane HDh II.1:319f., 2.2:900, 5.2:1120ff. For descriptions of different varieties of nyāsa, see also Śabdakalpadruma 2:935ff. An important exposition of nyāsa is found in Davis 1991:47–60. The diagrams on pp. 76–82 show nyāsa being performed on one’s own body as well as on a Śiva liṇga. Khanna 1986:222ff. also contains much relevant information. Khanna (ibid.:225) cites an esoteric etymology of nyāsa provided by a Śrīcakra practitioner from Varanasi, viz. from √ni (to lead, set or fix down) and √as (to dwell or abide). In fact, however, it is surely from the prefix ni + √as (to throw or cast).
39. For example, Hanumad-Rahasyam (cf. Mishra 1971), has dozens of pages of nyāsa for different manifestations of Hanumān (e.g., five-faced, seven-faced) drawn from ritual handbooks and mantra compilations with titles such as Hanumadrahasya, Atharvaṇarahasya, and Sudarśanasaṃhitā (for more on this text, see Chapter 11).
40. This division of ritual into nitya, naimittika, and kāmya has been productive since vedic times; see F. Smith 1987:122–131.
41. parivṛttāṇgulī kṛtvā nakhāśliṣṭatalau karau | aṇguṣṭau tarjanīśliṣṭau nakhair āveśakāriṇi || (One should curve the fingers of both hands so that the nails embrace the surface of the palms, then touch the nails of the thumbs and ring fingers. [This is the mudrā that] brings about āvesa.” The commentary calls this the āvesanamudrā and glosses āveśakāriṇī as devatābhāvodbodhanakāriṇī (inducing awakening of the experience [bhāva] of the deity).
42. Cf. Flood, who writes of its presentation in the Jayākhya Saṃhitā: “The textual representation of the bhūtasuddhi is set within a sequence in which the physical or elemental body (bhautika śarīra) is purified and the soul ascends from the heart through the body, and analogously through the cosmos, to the Lord Nārāyaṇa located at the crown of the head” (2002:29).
43. Bṛhaddevatā 8.132cd: tasmān manasi saṃnyasya devatām juhuyād dhaviḥ (Thus one should offer an oblation after fully introducing the deity into the mind). See Patton 1996a:188.
45. Yoga was always (or nearly always) practiced as an adjunct to realization through theological frameworks outside Patañjali’s YS. Like Sāṃkhya, yoga has always worked better as an auxiliary to other systems, usually those self-identified as varieties of Vedānta. In the present case, haṭhayoga texts such as the Haṭhayogapradīpikā or Gheraṇḍasaṃhitā, with Nāthayoga affiliations, provided the reference points.
47. Ibid., on Śivasutravimarśinī of Kṣemarāja, p. 94, commentary on Śivasūtra 3.16. The sūtra reads: āsanasthaḥ sukhaṃ hrade nimajjati | (one happily established in the posture plunges into the ocean [of consciousness]) (translation by Flood). Kṣemarāja comments: āsanaṃ paraṃ śaktiṃ balam.
48. Parātriṃśikāvivaraṇa, p. 86.
49. Flood 1993:244; PH, p. 86. Dyczkowski writes: “Abhinavagupta says that mantra and mudrā have a body made of the powers of cognition and action (jñānakriyaśaktiśarīra)” (1987:161), and PTLV, p. 11.
51. Ibid. Vijñānabhairava 68–69: vahner viṣasya madhye tu cittaṃ sukham ayaṃ kṣipet | kevalaṃ vāyupūrṇaṃ vā smarānandena yujyate || śaktisaṅgamasaṃkṣubdhaśaktyāveśāvasānikam | yatsukhaṃ brahmatattvasya tatsukhaṃ svākyam ucyate || (One should cast this sublime mind [citta] into the midst of contraction and expansion [downward and upward moving kuṇḍalinī]; this by itself or with the breath suspended yields for one the bliss of sexual union. The bliss which results from possession [āvesa-] of feminine energy brought about through orgasm [saṃkṣubdha-] during sexual intercourse with a woman is said to be the bliss of brahman that is inherent in one’s own self). See the explanatory notes on this passage in Singh 1979:65–67.
52. Cf., e.g., KālikāP 31, MatsyaP 22.13, VāyuP 6.11–23. See the visual representation of this below.
53. Nārāyanamayaṃ varma saṃnahyet, BhP 6.8.5.
54. In an important rite called śatarudrīya, “that during which the hundred names of Rudra are recited” (though in fact the designations of Rudra total far more than a hundred), the Rudra chapter is recited while milk is poured in a steady stream over the front of the left wing of the completed bird-shaped altar; cf. Staal 1983: 1:509–525.
55. The popularity of the Rudrādhyāya may be noted in its frequent use as a solo recitation in large performances. These performances, called atirudra, are fairly frequent today. In them the Rudrādhyāya is recited by eleven (because there are eleven sections in the text) or even 108 brahmans, 11 or 108 or 1,008 times, usually with offerings of rice mixed with black sesame seed into one or more fires. For example, the Sringeri Śāradā Pīṭham advertised fairly extensively (including on the Internet) for an “Athi Rudra Maha Yagnam” in 1997 to consecrate the opening of a branch of the Pīṭham in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. In 2006 the well-known saint Sathya Sai Baba from Puttaparthi, Andhra Pradesh, sponsored an event with 121 brahmans reciting the Rudrādhyāya 121 times per day for 11 days, with 11 brahmans sitting around 11 fires into which they made offerings after each verse.
56. V. Turner 1969:94ff., passim.
57. These are the followers of the Śrautasūtras of Baudhāyana, Apastamba, Bhāradvāja, Saṭyāṣāḍha-Hiraṇyakeśin, Vaikhānasa, and Vādhūla. Cf. Gonda 1977:514–525; Kashikar 1968:48–69.
58. Mantrapuṣpam, pp. 218–221. An earlier, nearly identical, edition was published under the title Taittirīyamantrakośa. Two of the six śākhās of the Taittirīya school of the Kṛṣṇayajurveda, Bhāradvāja and Vādhūla, are virtually extinct, with no active followers today. Of the remaining sākhas, the greatest number of those who might use the Mantrapuṣpam are followers of the Apastamba sutra texts, as they predominate in most of south India. The Mantrapuṣpam was probably composed with an audience of Apastambins in mind. Indeed, the prototype for these (and other) extended nyāsas is the camakādhyāya (hymn containing words ca me), TS 4.7.1–11 (cp. Śuklayajurvedasaṃhitā 18.1–27, cf. Staal 1983.1: 563–570 for its use in the agnicayana), in which the entire creation is, piecemeal, dedicated to the chief ritual patron (yajamana), in the first person.
59. Because the Rudrādhyāya is a prose text, there can be no identifiable poetic meter. Apparently, a ritualist who (perhaps long ago) redacted this introductory material believed that the identifying markers of a Ṛgvedic hymn—a ṛṣi, devatā, and chandas—were necessary to situate the Rudrādhyāya within the most sacred of Vedic frameworks.
60. Kilaka (nail, pin) is a tantric term indicating “fixing” of the deity in order to better obtain his or her grace or power. The terms kilana (piercing, nailing) and stambhana (immobilizing, rendering inert) are often used together to indicate ritual control of a deity. These two terms are also used interchangeably as one of the “six acts” (ṣaṭ karmāṇi) of Tantra; cf. Goudriaan 1978:263,374f.
61. Kavaca, usually translated “armor,” “shield,” etc. In the context of body parts, this makes the best sense.
62. Ripinsky-Naxon writes that “means of attaining a shamanic state of consciousness … include fasting, self-immolation, physical and mental deprivations, torture, lack of sleep and other exhaustions, ceaseless dancing, and rhythmic activities, such as drumming and chanting” (1993:142).
63. Cf. Stanley 1977:27–43. I have observed this festival twice (in 1975 and 1990), both times from atop the wall that surrounds this fortresslike temple. Without relating much detail of this remarkable spectacle, I can report that a large number of people (fifty or more) at each festival were in possession states. They were clearly dancing to a different tune, so to speak, with body movements, gestures, and articulations guided from sources other than their own conscious motivations.
64. Heesterman 1957:6; Brian K. Smith 1989, 1994; Witzel 1979.
65. I take the phrase, though not the content, from Halbfass 1995, who took it from Paul Hacker and Swami Vivekananda.
66. Cf. BhaviṣyaP 379.16, 388.1; ŚivaP 2.1.13.36; Śāradātilaka 4.78; Īśānaśivagurudevapaddhati 1.43.6, 1.47.55; Nityotsava 18.24, 20.10; Nirṇayasindhu 249.16 and elsewhere in the Purāṇas and Dharmanibandhas. Gonda describes prāṇa pratiṣṭhā as “the establishment or installation of vital breath, or life, endowment with animation, … a process of ‘consecration’” in which the images of deities “become containers of life and supranormal power” (1954:34). In addition, prāṇapratiṣṭhā is a ceremony that “serves to ennoble the worshipper to realize the presence of the divine power, God’s presence, in the image, so that it becomes an effectual means of contact between the divinity and himself” (ibid.). See also Kane, HDh II.2:896ff. on Devatā-pratiṣṭhā.
67. Cf. Devībhāgavata Purāṇa 5.34.6, which mentions prāṇapratiṣṭhā and nyāsa together. On the role of nyāsa in maṇḍala construction in Southeast Asian Hinduism, see Hooykaas 1983:541ff.
68. See Rocher 1986:157 for dates of this Purāṇa.
69. A process astonishingly similar to prāṇapratiṣṭhā is recorded in the medieval and Renaissance Christian debates surrounding the “god-making passages” in the Hermetic Asclepius. The Egyptian Hermes Trismegistus, though a Christian prophet and defender of monotheism, is said in the Asclepius to have defended practices in which the Egyptian priests would animate their temple statues by attracting the souls of higher beings to enter them. See Hanegraaff 2004.
71. See Hiltebeitel 1991:454–455, 465, passim.
72. Robinet 1993:103–104.
73. Ibid.:205–206. See also Andersen 1989–90:17 for an account of what may be considered a reverse nyāsa, in which millions of demigods “issue forth from my body to assist me in writing the talisman and to manifest their power and exterminate evil demons, monsters, goblins, wicked devils, and noxious influences”; also Andersen 1995, esp. 194ff.
74. For more on the diffusion and lines of transmission of related non- or quasi-Buddhist ideas from India to China, see Chapter 11. Along different lines, Victor Mair has written extensively on this project, with highly controversial results among Sinologists (see, for example, 1990:140ff.).
75. Cf. Mahāvastu 1:328, for āvesanasālā (workshop), and Senart’s note, p. 612; also Rhys-Davids and Stede 1921:113 for āvesana. See also the following lexicons: Trikāṇḍaśeṣa (1080–1159 C.E.) 3.230; Anekārthasaṇgraha of Hemacandra (1089–1172 C.E.) 4.161; Vaijayantīkośa 160.22; Kauṭilya’s Arthasāstra 2.36, also 2.14 āvesanin (artisan).
76. See Inden’s comments on “composite authorship” (Inden et al. 2000: 33–41).
77. One might imagine the appearance of many more non-brahmanized, non-Bhārgavized Mahābhāratas, such as the Draupadī cult in Tamilnadu or the Pāṇḍavalīlā in Garhwal, documented by Hiltebeitel (1988, 1991) and Sax (1995, 1996, 2002), respectively.
78. John Dunne informed me that though āveśa is discussed in Buddhist Tantras and duly commented on, the practice has almost entirely disappeared in Tibetan Buddhism, the exceptions being high-profile examples such as the Nechung oracle (personal communication, October 2001). This observation was confirmed by Georges Dreyfus (personal communication, November 2003). The example of the oracle I note near the end of Chapter 11 and other examples of spirit mediums among practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism cited in Chapter 4 must be considered differently, as their possession is not instigated by tantric initiation by lamas, nor are their oracular visualizations knowingly derived from Vajrayāna texts. Their experience is more akin to spirit mediumship found across northern India and Nepal, regardless of religious affiliation. Nevertheless, as I discussed in Chapter 4 and elsewhere, the experience of these mediums feeds into the ebb and flow of regular traffic between folk and classical that I assert has been going on for millennia in South Asia.
79. Translated from the Tibetan by John Dunne, from two works by Dalai Lama VII: Rgyal ba bska …, folio 52a3ff.; and Rgyal ba Sbkal bzang rgya mtsho.
80. Compare this to some of the Indian tantric mantras used in oracular possession discussed in Chapter 11.
81. For rather quaint notions of the “psycho-physical changes” associated with visualization, drawn from the Sādhanamālā and other texts, see Tachikawa 2000.
82. Wayman, in Lessing and Wayman 1978:162–163; see also ibid.:n17; Beyer 1973:100ff., passim. Wayman is here citing the Tibetan Tantrārthāvatāra-vyākhyāna. He also cites the Sṇags rim chen mo (338a–3, 4) to the effect that “[t]he samayasattva is the body of the deity graced with face and hands, actually the manifestation of one’s own mind, a transfiguration of ordinary ego” (pp. 163–164). The text Lessing and Wayman translated is Mkhas Grub Rje’s Rgyud sde spyiḥi rnam par ’zag pa rgyas par brjod. The text states, “One generates the Symbolic Being (samaya-sattva) and draws in the Knowledge Being (jñāna-sattva)” before applying mudrās. In a footnote, Wayman says: “The idea seems to be that the Knowledge Being is a veritable manifestation of the self-existent Buddhas, or the tenth stage Bodhisattvas such as Mañjuśrī, while the Symbolic Being is the imaginary deity which the yogin generates himself into” (p. 235). These terms frequently occur in the Sādhanamālā and the Niṣpannayogāvalī, cf. the latter pp. 7, 9. Hartzell adds the following, in his massive unpublished dissertation on Tantric yoga: “As we see in Tantric initiation sequences, a samaya-sattva or ‘covenant being’ is a Tantric initiate who has been accepted into the Tantric community and is permitted to undertake practice of sexual Yogas” (1997:889). See also Bentor’s discussion of the Tibetan “Literature on Consecration (Rab gnas),” (1996:292ff.) for the use of the jñanasattva (Tib. ye shes sems dpa’) and the samayasattva (Tib. dam tshig sems dpa’) in the generation (utpatti; Tib. bskyed pa) and consecration (pratiṣṭhā; Tib. rab gnas) of images, books, stūpas, etc., as receptacles into which the body, speech, and mind of the Buddha are to flow. Tachikawa understands jñanasattva to be “the existence of wisdom” and samayasattva to be “the existence of promise” (2000:234).
84. See Jamgön Kongtrul Lodrö Tayé 2005:277, 278. The translators of this volume have a more elegant and exact suggestion for this process: the “ritual procedure through which the pristine awareness deities [viz. jñānasattva-s] merge with and are stabilized within the pledge deities [viz. samayasattva-s].”
86. The Sādhanamālā does not provide the actual mantra (for which see below), but it could be sequenced similarly, replacing the masculine vajrāveśāya with the feminine vajratārāyai.
87. Sādhanamālā, p. 191. Tachikawa asked Tibetan Buddhist monks in Kathmandu about their experience of unifying jñānasattva and samayasattva. One monk commented to him that, though it is rare, “it does happen on occasion. When the unification of the two existences is obtained, the Tantric monk practicing visualization will feel pain in several parts of his body, and cannot hold his body straight” (2000:235).
88. Kalkin (on verse 87, KT vol. 2:85): asya koṭijāpena daśalakṣahomena pūrvasevāṃ kuryāt; also Dalai Lama and Hopkins 1989:446, replaces a with āḥ.
89. The commentator cites the following verse: loharatnānnagovājigajakanyāvasundharā | iṣṭā bhāryā svamāṃsāni dānaṃ daśavidhaṃ matam || (The ten kinds of gift are said to be iron, gemstones, food, cows and horses, elephants, virginal girls, land, sacrifices, one’s wife, and one’s own flesh).
90. The ingredients of this vary, but usually this mixture of “five immortal substances” consists of ghee, milk, sugar, honey, and dates. Dates, not known in ancient India, are probably a replacement for butter or another fruit.
91. In different contexts, citta can mean “mind,” “intellect,” or “thought.” In the present instance, “mind” is most apt.
92. That is to say, the possession is of the five elements (pañcamahābhūtāni) that constitute its physical form. The fifth element, ākāsa (empty space) is, in this Buddhist text, interpreted more forthrightly as “emptiness” (śūnyatā) than would otherwise be the case.
93. The Sanskrit text for all four verses reads:
idānīṃ krodharājasya bodhisattvasya vā kāyādyadhiṣṭhānam ucyate—
kāyāveśena yogī prakṛtiguṇavaśāt kāyakṛtyaṃ karoti
vāgāveśena vādī bhavati ca vijayī devanāgāsurāṇām |
cittāveśena sarvaṃ parahṛdayagataṃ jñāyate bhūtabhavyaṃ
jñānāveśena buddho bhavati guruguruś ca rddhimān ekaśāstā ||89||
idānīṃ locanādyadhiṣṭhānam ucyate—
bhūmyāveśena yogī bhavati girisamo ’mboś ca śītaṃ prayāti
vahnyāveśena dāhaṃ vrajati ca marutā śoṣam evaṃ prayāti |
śunyāveśair adṛśyo bhavati bhuvitale khecaratvaṃ prayāti
evaṃ rūpādisarvaṃ prakṛtiguṇavaśād veditavyaṃ krameṇa ||90||
idānīṃ divyāveśānām utpādalakṣaṇam ucyate—
āveśo mantriṇāṃ vai bhavati narapate bhāvanāyā balena
sevābhedaiḥ kadācid bahuvidhasanayair mantrajapādibhiś ca |
buddhair āsvādyamānaiḥ kvacid amṛtavaśān maṇḍale bhavyasunor
na svādhiṣṭhānahīnā bahuvividhabhavair mantriṇāṃ siddhir asti ||91||
idānīṃ āveśopaśamanādikam ucyate—
tyaktvāveśasya paścāc chirasi ca hṛdaye mūrdhni nābhau ca kaṇṭhe
guhye rakṣāṃ jinaiś ca svakulabhuvigataiḥ kārayet svatrivajraiḥ |
dattāṇge pītavastrasya pihitanayanasyātra śiṣyasya veśaḥ
saṃvṛtyarthaṃ vratāni pravaragatigatāny eva deyāni tāni ||92|| (KT, pp. 86–87)
Thanks to John Dunne for help with the translation of the last verse. The meaning of dattāṇge remains unclear.
94. See Snellgrove 1987:205 for a related example from the KT.
95. See Granoff 1979:78, in which the Japanese word abisha, a cognate of āveśa, is given (see Chapter 11 for more on this).
96. This art of fabulous beings, mostly mythical animals, has a long history. They have been represented in Persia, Harappa, Crete, Sumer, Central Asia, and elsewhere for millennia. In India, such beasts include a variety of dragons, the griffon, the Persian simorgh, a fabulous bird of wisdom, the śārdūla (Sanskrit), and a lion, sometimes winged. The Rudrādhyāya of the Taittirīya Saṃhitā, discussed above, attests to the centrality of animals in the mythology of Rudra/Śiva in antiquity, especially in his form as Pasupati, the “Lord of Beasts.” For more on this kind of body cosmology, see White 2003:174ff.
97. For the descriptions from the Matsya Purāṇa, see Agrawala 1963:313–331; and Nagar 1993:65–70. See the latter (pp. 76–77) for the account of the iconography from the Vaikhānasāgama.
