The Saiva Siddhantin is constructed through the rites, with the texts of tradition being mapped on to the body. The occasional rites refer especially to initiation (diksd) and funeral rites (antyesti) which reflect the former. Most important for the Saiva Siddhantin is initiation, for through this he is given access to the tradition, its texts and rites, and guaranteed eventual liberation.
Initiation presupposes the master. The master of the tradition, called the dcdrya, guru or desika, is crucial in the transference of power to the disciple and in teaching the rites and mantras. The master has knowledge of Siva and the traditions, and mediates between the practitioner and transcendent goal. 54 This is not a comment on the inner awareness of the master; rather, the master is socially defined as having himself undergone a particular kind of consecration (the dcdrydbhiseka) that is itself indicative of his degree of traditional knowledge and ability to install icons, consecrate temples
and perform initiations. It is less the intellectual and moral qualities of the master that are important (although these are desirable, along with no bodily impurities) and more the ability and authority (adhikdra) to perform the correct rites at the correct time; the ability to act as a channel for the transmission of tradition. This ability is a formal, socially acknowledged qualification that functions independently of the inner qualities or personality of the teacher. Indeed, during the rites of initiation the master becomes Siva. It is Siva who initiates the disciple through the master. The most important quality that the disciple (sisya) should possess is the quality of devotion to the master (gurubhakti), which is thereby devotion to Siva."
The Tantras contain many kinds of initiation, and there is variability in the texts from formal acceptance by the master with minimal rites to more elaborate ritual procedures. In some texts, those of the Saiva Siddhanta among them, initiation is formalised with no anticipation of the disciple's inner condition; in others the disciple is required to display signs of possession by the deities of the mandala, such as trembling which reflects important differences within tantric traditions. Somasambhu, basing his account on Saiva revelation, describes three initiations - the general (samaya), particular (visesa) and liberating (nirvana) - although Brunner-Lachaux shows how the particular is assimilated into the general and how the distinction into three initiations is later.''' The general initiation (samaya-diksa) provides entry into the tradition, while the liberating liberation (nirvana-diksa) ensures final liberation at death. The structure of initiation follows the pattern of types of disciple as we have seen in the Pancaratra. Thus one who has undergone the samaya-diksa is called a samayin and one who has undergone the nirvana-diksa is a putraka, a son of Siva. There can be one or two further stages in the development of the disciple, should he become a teacher (dcdrya) through the rite of consecration (dcdrydbhiseka), 5 ' which means he then has the authority to initiate disciples. Alternatively there is formal recognition for someone to become a seeker of power and pleasure in higher worlds, a sddhaka, through that consecration (sddhakdbhiseka).™
The distinction between the dcdrya and sddhaka reflects an important distinction between seekers after liberation (mumuksu) and
seekers after power and pleasure in higher worlds (bubhuksu). The latter, says Brunner-Lachaux, desire liberation ultimately, but also desire supernormal power (siddhi) in this and future lives. 59 It is, of course, legitimate to explain the distinction in terms of personal preference - and this is what the tradition does, as reflected in the desiderative terms, 'those who desire' liberation or power - but we could also be witnessing here an echo or remnant of an earlier sadhaka tradition that has become assimilated into the Saiva Siddhanta system. The acarya sadhaka distinction reflects the earlier distinction between the path of mantras, which is considered to be a path of power, and the higher path (atimarga) classified as having only liberation as its goal. 60 It also reflects a distinction found in the Mrgendragama between the 'elemental' (bhautika) and 'unorthodox' (nasthika) sadhaka, the former being attached to lower goals such as riches (bhiiti), power, and obtaining an agreeable woman (satpatniparigraha), the latter to liberation. 61 Indeed, the term 'elemental' {bhautika) retains the ambiguity of the English rendering, suggesting both the basic elements (earth and so on) and a class of supernatural beings who possess people (bhiitas) and from whom followers of cremation-ground Tantrism sought controlled possession in order to gain power, especially the power of flight.
In the initiation procedures we see how the initiate is formed through the tradition being mapped on to his body and how the narrative of his life is made to conform to the narrative of tradition to the extent of his receiving a new name, and his inner life, including his dreams, becoming interpreted within the boundaries of tradition. The actual ritual sequence of the communal initiation involves preliminary rites that include the formation of a circle diagram (mandala) into which the deities of the Saiva pantheon are installed, homage to the guardians of the portals to the mandala, and preparation and performance of the fire ritual (homo). The communal initiation proceeds with the master identifying himself with Siva, placing Siva and his throne in the body of the disciple, and placing the hand of Siva (sivahasta) on his head, thereby conveying initiation to him. 62 The visesa-diksa completes the task of constructing the disciple as a samayin, the characteristic feature of which is the guru transporting the soul (dtman) of the disciple to the womb of the
Goddess of Speech (Vagisvarl), who has been installed in the fire. 63 He is then born from her. While symbolically he is clearly a 'son of Siva', as Siva in the form of Vaglsvara is her consort, he is not technically termed a putraka until after the next level of initiation, the nirvdna-dtksd.
The nirvana-diksd is the most important rite in the Saiva Siddhanta, which grants access to eventual liberation. Once having undergone this rite there is no turning back. The ritual itself takes two days, as described by Somasambhu; the first day comprises preliminary rites (adhivasana), followed on the second day by the initiation (diksd) itself. 64 The adhivasana rites are performed in a sacrificial pavilion (mandapa), the same as for the preliminary initiation. It is here that we begin to see the explicit entextualisation of the disciple's body. The main feature of this rite is that the master installs in the body of the disciple the totality of the cosmos contained in all the levels, and the entextualised body is then itself transferred to the substitute of a cord that extends his whole length. In his visualisation the master enters the central channel of the disciple's body through the aperture at the crown of the head. Having gone down to the heart, the master then leaves the body by the same route in his imagination, taking the disciple's soul with him along with the constitutents of the universe. He brings the soul and constitutents of the universe into his own heart through the aperture at his own crown, and finally emits them from there, establishing the disciple's soul and cosmos on the cord. This cord (pdsa), which represents the universe that binds his soul also represents the hidden channel (nddi) that pervades the vertical axis of the body. All the levels of reality need to be purified, which means detaching them from the soul. In theory any of the six ways can function to purify the soul in this way, but Somasambhu gives the purification by the way of the kalds. The five kalds are established by the master in the body and transferred on to the cord through nydsa; their purification is the purification of all the other paths as well. As Brunner-Lachaux remarks, the rite is very long because the master must extract each of the kalds from the disciple's body to place on the cord and must extract the disciple's very soul, to be placed in the cord also. In this way, Brunner-Lachaux remarks, 'the cord thus prepared is the image
of the disciple, with his atman imprisoned by bonds (hence the name pasasutra, "cord of bonds").' 65 The disciple spends the night in the pavilion, and the diksd proper commences the next day after the master has interpreted his dreams. If the dreams are inauspicious, the effects are redressed by expiatory rites (prdyascitta).
The second day of the rites comprises a repetition of the first initiations, after which the cord is suspended from the topknot of the disciple and each kala is purified in turn, beginning with nivrtti, so enacting the reabsorption of the cosmos. This involves the master imaging all the different worlds that the disciple could be born into, within that realm. The master visualises the sexual union of Siva and Sakti in the forms of Vaglsvara and Vagisvarl and places the soul of the disciple into the womb of Vagisvari. Somasambhu's text reads as follows:
93. He [the master] should declare to the Vidhi [Brahman] that which is to be done by your grace. 'O Brahman, I will initiate this mumuksu according to [your] authority'. 94. Then he should invoke the red Goddess Vagisvari with the heart [mantra], who is the cause of the sixfold way in the form of will, knowledge and action. 95. He should worship and satisfy the Goddess and afterwards [he should worship and satisfy] Vaglsvara in the same way, the cause of agitation in all wombs. 96. [Then] in the hollow of the heart, with the weapon [mantra] beginning with the seed syllable and ending with HUM PHAT, he should knock his [the disciple's] heart and should enter it, knowing the rule. 97. The consciousness of the disciple in the heart is like a spark. [The master] should then separate it with the Jyestha [mantra so that the soul is] joined by bonds to the place of nivrtti: om ham ham ham hah humphat. With [the mantra] om ham ham ham svaha, he pulls [the soul] up with the hook gesture when he breathes in and mentally grasping it with the atmamantra, he can then unite it to his own soul. Om ham ham ham atmane namah [homage to the self]. 98. Visualising the sexual union of the parents, he breathes out and takes the consciousness [of the disciple] from Brahman through the successive stages of the Lords of the kalas to the place of Siva. 66 99. Having offered the rite of impregnation, [the master] should cast [the soul] into the womb of Vaglsvari and simultaneously into all wombs, with the arising gesture associated with the Goddess Varna. [The accompanying mantra is] om ham ham ham atmane namah. 100. With the same mantra he offers worship and nourishes [the self] five times. With the heart [mantra] he should form a body for him [the disciple]
in all wombs. 101. He should not perform the rite of producing a male because [it may be] the body of a woman and so on, and [he should not perform] the ritual of parting the hair according to the sacred rite because the body may be blind and so on. 102. With the siras [mantra the guru] brings about birth of all the embodied ones simultaneously. Then again with the sikha [mantra] he should visualise their appropriate rank (adhikara). 103. With the kavaca mantra he should visualise their experience which is the erroneous identification of the self with its objects, and with the weapon mantra [he should visualise] the dissolution. 104. With the Siva [mantra] he performs the purification of the currents, with the heart [mantra] the purification of the tattvas, and for each [of the rites] from the rite of conception, he should offer five oblations in due order. 67
In this way the master extracts the soul from the disciple, places it in himself, transports it to the realm of Siva and then into the womb of the Goddess Vagisvarl, who is located in the sacred fire. This visualisation is accompanied by the appropriate section of the cord being cast into the flames. In entering Vagisvari's womb, the disciple's soul is entering all wombs, and being born from her represents the end of all other births in that realm. This birth is accompanied by three rites, which completely consume all remaining karma appropriate to that level, namely the rites of adhikara ('rank', 'authority'), bhoga ('enjoyment', 'experience') and laya ('dissolution'), which we are familiar with from the Jayakhya-samhita (see pp. 108-19). The master provokes the soul's birth, its correct place in the cosmic order, its experiences, and its erroneous identification with sense objects, through visualisation, through ritual gesture and, especially, through uttering the appropriate mantra. The following rites eradicate all trace of the soul in the realm of nivrtti, detaching all exhausted karma, parts of mdyd, and partially the power of mala. The master cuts the appropriate section of the cord representing nivrtti and burns it in the fire. He then retrieves the soul of the disciple from the fire and places it in the next, higher section of the cord. The process of purification occurs over again for the remaining four kalds. With the burning of the last kald, sdntyatitd, the soul is purified and replaced in the disciple's body.
The passage from Somasambhu's text, quoted above, is striking in a number of ways. It is rich in references, indicating the semantic
density of ritual action. The rite is a construction of the self, or rather the construction of a new self, whose bonds of action, illusion and pollution - at least at the level of nivrtti-kala - are destroyed, so that all that remains are the fruits of action that the disciple needs to work out in his present life as one initiated (and so ensured of liberation in due course). The term used for this construction is samskara, 'put together', the same term used in the vedic ritual construction of the rites of passage. There is an implicit identification of the rites of passage with the ritual procedures in the nirvana-diksa.™ The model for the tantric rite is provided by the vedic samskaras, although the process is speeded up and condensed into two days. Although a 'construction', initiation is in fact the elimination of most of the bonds that keep a being bound in the cycle of birth and death. The Kirana-tantra asks a pertinent question of Siva: if all bonds are removed by initiation, then how can the body remain? The Lord answers that as a potter's wheel still turns even after the making of a pot is completed, so too the body remains. The seeds of action of many existences (sancita-karma) are burned by the mantras at initiation and the acquiring of future action (dgamin) is also blocked, but that which sustains the body in the present life (prarabhda-karma) has to be exhausted through experience. 69 The exhausting of karma is also a journey through the levels of the cosmos. The womb of Vagisvarl, which represents all wombs at the respective levels to be purified, signifies the myriad births through which a soul must pass or would otherwise pass were it not for initiation. The journey along the cord is a journey through the cosmos and through the body.
The Ritual Process: Daily Rites
Having undergone the nirvana-diksa, although in one sense superfluous because the disciple is guaranteed liberation, he must nevertheless pursue a rigorous regime of daily rites (nitya karman). These use up his remaining karma so that at death he will go to liberation with Siva's grace. Many texts give details of the procedures and generally follow a pattern of purification through various kinds of
bath (water, ashes, mantras), the purification of the body and its revitalisation, followed by inner and outer ritual. /0 Some texts, such as the Rauravagama, do not give full ritual details for they assume the reader's knowledge of other sources (although the Rauravagama does give details for visualising Sadasiva). 71 It is important within the tradition that pollution is a substance that is erased through action rather than cognition. Yet while this is the general standpoint, there are passages in Siddhanta texts that stress cognition within the buddhi as having liberating force, 72 although such statements do not necessarily contradict the position in that even thought is a mental action, but generally after initiation it is ritual that destroys pollution with Siva's grace.
The Rauravagama says that there are two kinds of daily ritual, either performed for oneself (dtmdrthapuja) or for the sake of others (pardrthapuja) in public rites before the icon of Siva (linga) in the temple.' 3 In both we see the text mapped on to the body. The general pattern of daily rites is to purify oneself or one's body and ritual environment before going on to worship through visualisation followed by physical offerings. The Rauravagama lists purification of the self/ body (dtmasuddhi), purification of the place (sthdnasuddhi), purification of ritual implements and substances (dravyasuddhi), purification of the Siva linga, and mantra. One should praise the Lord of the heart (Sadasiva) with the mind first, followed by external oblations. /+ In the daily rite described in the Somasambhu-paddhati we have, as in the jfaydkhya-samhitd, morning ablutions, evacuation of bodily impurities (listed in the Saiva texts 7 '), bathing rites, 76 followed by the sequence we are now familiar with, of purification of the body, creating a divine body through mantra, mental worship and external worship. The text gives precise details on purification, more detailed than the jfaydkhya, and again closely akin to the vedic smrti texts on correct behaviour. 77 There are precise details about ablutions, excretions, and activities such as cleaning the teeth. We are a long way from any idea of spontaneous expression and bodily abandon: the Somasambhu, as with the jfaydkhya, presents a picture of establishing a regime for the strict control of the body and restriction of the senses.
The preliminary rites in the Somasambhu involve mantra repetition and empowering the body even before the bhutasuddhi proper. The
'pilgrimage sites' or 'crossing points' (tirtha) are established on the hands, in a process familiar from the jfayakhya. Thus the ancestors (pitr) are established on the index finger, the deity Prajapati on the little finger, Brahman on the thumb and the other gods at the ends of the fingers. 78 Offerings of purified water are made to Siva, to the gods, and to the ancestors within one's family lineage (gotra) from father to paternal grandfather up to the father of the father of the paternal grandfather. Offerings are made to the equivalent temporal distance on one's mother's side.' 9 This in itself is interesting in showing how the practitioner sees himself within a continuity of generations and wholly integrated through the daily ritual sequence into his family, which is in turn a part of the cosmic order. The narrative of the practitioner's life, its daily routines and mundane activity, from the very beginning forms part of the narrative of his family lineage, which itself is a part of the cosmical hierarchy, with Siva at the top. There is a flow of power through the cosmos, through one's ancestors, to oneself.
The Isanasivagurudeva-paddhati and Somasambhu-paddhati use the term dehasuddhi, along with bhutasuddhi, for the purification of the body and Isanasivagurudeva follows the account given by Soma-sambhu. As in the Jayakhya, self-purification (atmasodhana) occurs through the purification of the elements {bhutasuddhi), which is the first in a series of purifications in the Saiva system, along with a purification of the place, of ritual material, of mantras and of the lihga, the 'phallic' image of Siva used in worship. For the bhutasuddhi, the Somasambhu prescribes facing north with a self whose passions are subdued (vinitatman). m The practitioner - and here we have the explicit description of new elements entering the process - visualises two hollow tubes from the big toes of both feet running up the legs and joining a central channel, which then goes to the crown of the head. Along this central channel that traverses the body's vertical axis are cosmological blockages or 'knots' (granthi) at the heart, throat, palate, between the eyes and in the aperture of the absolute (brahma-randhra) at the crown of the head, which prevent the soul from rising to its freedom through the crown of the head to the dvadasanta. These blockages need to be broken (granthiprabheda) through the rising power of the self along the body's subtle channel, a process
which occurs in the imagination or inner vision in the context of the initiate's daily ritual. The soul (jiva), shining 'like a star in the cave of the heart' {tarakakaram jivam hrdayasamputam), travels up the central channel, imagined in the form of a drop (bindu), to Siva at or outside the crown of the head. 81 (There are two dvadasantas or 'end of twelve fingers'. Sometimes this is identified with the brahmarandhra, the length of three times four fingers' width from the centre of the eyebrows, and sometimes it is twelve fingers above the brahmarandhra.) Through uttering seed syllables (bija) the self is dissolved {find) in Siva; then one must perform the purification of the subtle body (suksma-deha-suddhi) by mapping the categories of the cosmos, or tattvas, on to it and reabsorbing them, each into its cause in inverse order of their manifestation, up to their origin, the cosmic substance known as the 'drop' or bindu (also known as mahamaya).
The Isanasivagurudeva is in complete concord with this account in describing the breaking of the 'knots' at the heart, throat, palate, between the eyes, and on the head, and visualizing Siva at the crown of the head, twelve fingers' length above the point of the meeting of the eyebrows (dvadasanta). S2 The adept should meditate upon the cutting of the 'dark and filthy' knots, which are pierced with the exhaling of the breath, to allow energy to flow in the esoteric channels (nadt). m He should imagine his soul, identified with the mantra HAMSA, in the pure lotus of the heart. By the force of the air (vayu) in the central channel he should lead the soul up to Siva, located in the dvadasanta at the crown of the head, seated in the centre of a lotus. 84 The adept then meditates upon his own body as an inverted tree whose roots are in his head, pervaded by the thirty-six categories that make up the cosmos (tattva), dissolved in imagination, each into its cause. 85 The sequences in the Somasambhu and Isanasivagurudeva are in some ways more complex than those in the jfayakhya. Only then does the text begin an account of the bhutasuddhi, and we are back on territory familiar from the jfayakhya. This suggests that an elaboration and complexifica-tion of the rite has occurred in which a stripped-down version of the bhutasuddhi has been embedded in a complex sequence of visualisation.
While the map of the subtle body has become more complex with the Saiva Siddhanta, with additional Saiva cosmological overlays, much in the accounts of the bhutasuddhi in the Somasambhu and Isdnasivagurudeva is recognisable from the Jayakhya, and the general process of the upward movement of the self from bondage to liberation remains the same. To illustrate the high degree of consistency with the Jayakhya let us consider a passage about the first stage in the process of purifying the earth element. The Isdnasivagurudeva reads:
The image of the earth (bhumandala), which is a yellow square, marked with the sign of thunder {yajra), whose quality is smell, with the Sadya mantra, and the sense-organ of smell, which is associated with the limitative energy of cessation (nivrtti-kala) and with the divine, four-faced one (Brahma). Through the seed-syllable HLAM, [the body] is then pervaded with the filling and holding breaths, from the head to the soles of the feet. There will be purification from repeating it [i.e. the seed-syllable] five times and he should [then] meditate upon it as entered into the air [i.e he exhales the earth element into the air element]. 86
As in the Jayakhya, the earth diagram is a golden square marked by the 'sign of thunder' (vajra) and associated with the sense of smell, but unlike the Jayakhya it is associated with the tattvas, with one of the five cosmic regions (kala) called nivrtti, and pervades the entire body, rather than from feet to knees. But this pattern is not wholly consistent within the Saiva Siddhanta; the Vdmadeva-paddhati follows the Jayakhya model with the earth pervading from feet to knees. The other elements follow the same general pattern, using the same symbols (the crescent moon for water, a red triangle for fire marked with svastikas, air as a hexagonal form marked by six drops (bindu), and space as symbolised by a round crystal). As in the Jayakhya, the adept burns the body in imagination and then floods it with the water arising from his meditation in order to create a pure, divine body for worship. The text follows the same pattern as the Somasambhu, on which it heavily relies.
A general picture therefore emerges of the bhutasuddhi as a shared ritual substrate that becomes identified with particular Saiva cosmologies. On the one hand the actual visualisation represented in the
texts has become minimised, from the Jayakhya's elaborate visions of each element to Somasambhu and Isanasivagurudeva's rather formal representation. On the other hand, more elaborate cosmologi-cal overlays have occurred. Indeed, the system of the bhutasuddhi has become identified with an independent system of the five 'knots' along the central channel of a subtle anatomy, and the five elements have become associated with the five faces of the aspect of Siva called Sadasiva. 87 We can therefore see strong continuity of ritual representation, although with later structural elaboration.
Following the symbolic destruction of the physical, elemental body in the imagination, the adept then creates a pure body made of mantras through imposing them in sequence upon himself, the sakalikarana sequence with the ahga mantras on the hands, in the way that we have seen in the jfaydkhya. The Somasambhu then describes a rite purifying the place of ritual (sthanasuddhi), although in other sources this follows the stage of mental worship. But let us take up the account of mental worship and the construction of the throne of the deity in the imagination. This throne is virtually identical in its formation with the lions identified with the constituents of the buddhi and so on in the Jayakhya, although there are nevertheless textual variations. 88
Having established the throne, the practitioner then visualises the deity (deva) Sadasiva upon it. His body is made of 'knowledge' (vidyasarira) and is without taint like a pure crystal. He has three eyes on each of his five faces (Sadyojata, Vamadeva, Aghora, Tat-Purusa and Isana), each of which is associated with a particular colour, mantra and cosmic function (creation, maintenance, destruction, concealment and grace). He has ten arms and holds a lance, a trident and so on. Furthermore, the vertical axis of the body is identified in the practitioner's imagination with the levels of the cosmos, the thirty-six tattvas, thus the throne corresponds to all of the tattvas up to Suddha Vidya, and Sadasiva to the tattvas up to Sakti (see Appendix). 89 As in the JS, external worship follows internal worship or making offerings to Sadasiva in the imagination, 90 followed by the fire ritual, which Somasambhu presents in great detail. 91 Other rites dealt with in the texts are occasional ritual such as festivals and rites for a desired end. 92
The Ritual Process: Behaviour
The entextualisation of the body can be seen not only in the specific, daily and occasional rites prescribed for the Saiva but also in daily comportment. The tradition is internalised by the initiate adopting Saiva observance, dietary restriction and communal behaviour (samanyacara). In the section on comportment (caryapdda), the Mrgendragama tells us that Saivas fall into the categories of master (desika), mantra specialist or sadhaka, putraka and samayin (see above p. 133), some of whom might follow a specific observance (vrata) and some who do not. The term 'observance' or 'vow' (vrata) indicates a specific kind of asceticism in varying degrees of intensity taken on for varying periods of time, often for a specific purpose. The Mrgendra defines an observer of vrata as someone who has given up meat, women and honey (possibly fermented beverage), who sleeps on the ground and is solitary, carrying a pot for water. He must avoid young women, garlands and similar things." These are standard prescriptions for the ascetic, and those who follow such asceticism should indicate their Saiva affiliation through wearing matted locks in a chignon or going with shaved head and making the body white with ashes, although sudras women, the sick and the lame cannot wear the matted locks (jata). 9 * Those who wear matted locks are themselves divided into the two groups previously mentioned, the bhautika, whose observance is limited for a specific period of time and the highest or nasthiika, namely gurus, putrakas and sadhakas, whose observance is throughout life. Some Saivas, says the text, are without observance (avrata), which seems to indicate that they are householders, although, as Brunner observes, no Saiva is completely without vrata throughout life. Indeed, all Saivas must perform ritual obligations daily at the junctions of the day and at junctures of the year marked by the moon (parvan), namely rites on the eighth and fourteenth days of the month, at the solstices and equinoxes. 95
Apart from ritual obligations Saivas must follow a mode of conduct generally in consonance with vedic orthopraxy. The Mrgendra presents the requirements of the master in terms that would find a place in the most orthodox of contexts, and the disciple too should study, listen to the scriptures, abandoning pride, jealousy, hypocrisy
and frivolous activity. He must also behave in specific, deferential ways before the master. 96 Even the sadhaka, by definition interested in obtaining pleasure and power, should behave in appropriate ways, not menacing anyone, begging for food, mentally reciting his mantra, and keeping silence. 97 If he sins voluntarily or involuntarily, such as interacting with a woman, or commits a great sin (rnahapataka) such as killing a Brahman, drinking alcohol or having sex with the master' wife, he must do a penance of reciting eleven mantras ten thousand times. 98 Indeed, the sadhaka in the Mrgendra does not appear to be so different from any Saiva ascetic and makes the contrast with the transgressive ascetics of the non-Saiddhantika traditions even more striking.
The texts of the Saiva Siddhanta provide us with detailed examples of the way in which the body is inscribed by the revealed text, from ritual performance to ethical behaviour and general bodily comportment. We have in these texts a description of the hierarchical cosmos presented in various schemes and terminologies which articulate with sequences of ritual action. Of particular importance are the purification and divinisation of the body, in which we see the textual representation of the cosmos mapped on to the body and a cosmological temporality of vast periods of the manifestation and contraction of the cosmos, enacted in the micro-temporality of daily ritual time. We have so far shown this structure to be in place in Pancaratra texts and in the ritual manuals of the Saiva Siddhanta, traditions which of course maintain distinct identities in terms of deities and mantras and at a philosophical level wish to distance themselves from each other. I wish, finally, to take one last example from the monistic tantric traditions of Kashmir.
SEVEN
Ecstatic Tantra
The non-Saiddhantika traditions, often referred to as 'Kashmir Saivism', assume the Saiva Siddhanta as their theological and ritual background. While, as we have seen, they draw on the more extreme znti-vaidika and antinomian revelation of the Tantras of the right and left currents, the tradition known as the Trika and its philosophical articulation in the Pratyabhijfia became established within the mainstream of medieval Kashmiri society. While probably always the activity of an elite minority because of the esoteric complexity and time-consuming nature of the practices involved, it nevertheless became extremely influential on the literatures and practices of all later tantric traditions. The non-Saiddhantika traditions assume the revelation of the Saiva Siddhanta and assume its cosmological and ritual schemes, adding layers of complexity to this already complex system and reading the tradition through the lens of a monistic metaphysics. As a consequence, their account of cosmology, while often being terminologically identical (especially in respect of the tattva hierarchy), differs from the Saiva Siddhanta in being understood as the manifestation of consciousness itself rather than an unconscious, material substrate (bindu or mahamaya). I refer to this range of traditions, especially the Trika, as 'ecstatic tantra' because of the emphasis of its key thinker, Abhinavagupta, on the spontaneous expansion of consciousness as the ground of being,
the source of revelation, and the source of a liberating, existential cognition. Abhinavagupta's tradition is 'ecstatic' in its emphasis on consciousness as a thematic trope and in its belief that individual consciousness can blissfully transcend itself to realise its true nature as boundless and objectless.
The non-Saiddhantika material presents us with formidable problems of interpretation, not least because of the extent and complexity of the texts and their interrelation. Rather than attempt an impossible survey or systematic exposition, 1 1 shall rather develop the argument about the mapping of experience within the body in terms of the textual tradition within the non-Saiddhantika religions by demonstrating this in four related areas: first, the filling out of subjectivity with the absolute subjectivity of pure consciousness, especially in the works of Abhinavagupta and Ksemaraja; second, the mapping of the pantheons of deities on to the body; third, the locating of centres of power within the body, the systems of cakras; and, fourth, a concern with sexual experience in the context of ritual. I shall confine my remarks to specific texts of the tradition, namely key texts of Abhinavagupta and Ksemaraja and an anonymous hymn, the 'Hymn to the Circle of Deities Located in the Body' {dehasthadevatacakra-stotra).
Absolute Subjectivity and Indexicality
The first-person pronoun that in the nominative case (namely aham) refers to the subject of predicates, the T, is used in the non-dualist tradition of Kashmir to refer to the supreme subject of consciousness, Siva or Bhairava himself, inseparable from his energy (s'akti) and containing within it the totality of manifestation. Abhinavagupta introduces the notion in his introductory verses to his commentary on his grand-teacher Utpaladeva's text, the Isvarapratyabhijnd, where he says that aham appears at first from the complete unmanifest condition of the absolute. 2 In his Tantrdloka Abhinavagupta defines this T as 'reflexive awareness of the omnipresent in the non-duality of Siva and Sakti, that is to say the supreme and cosmic emission within which all is contained'; 3 the definition by Utpala, cited in
Jayaratha's commentary, is that the 'tranquillity in itself of the light of consciousness is called the condition of the "I"' (prakasasyatma-visrantir ahambhavo hi kirtitah). 4 This T contains within itself the totality of manifestation, as indicated by the very word aham in so far as it contains the first phoneme of the Sanskrit alphabet a, which symbolises the initial emergence of creation from the unmanifest state, and ends with m, regarded as the 'drop' or 'dot', the bindu (m) to which all creation returns. Abhinavagupta continues in the Tantraloka:
The flowing forth [of the cosmos] whose nature is energy begins with the incomparable (a) and ends with ha. Condensing the whole universe, it is then reabsorbed in the supreme. This entire universe abides within energy and she in the highest absolute. This is truly an enveloping by the omnipresent one. In this way, the enveloping of energy [is described] in the revelation of the Trisika. The universe shines there within consciousness and on account of consciousness. These three factors combine and unite in pairs to form the one, supreme form of Bhairava, whose nature is the T. s
The cosmos emerges from the T and returns to it, although this separation and return can never be outside of that consciousness. The three elements of the word aham combine to form the totality of the cosmos. The cosmos is within the absolute subject, as the word aham contains the first and last letters and, by implication, all between them from a to ha. The three combinations of a and ha, ha and m, and m and a create a continuous flow of sound, with aham becoming maha, the former being the expansion of the cosmos, the latter being its contraction: both expansion from a and contraction into anusvara, the m or bindu, are mediated through the energy of ha. 6 The word aham is therefore treated as a mantra; indeed it is regarded as the force of all other mantras and the power that animates all living beings.' According to the commentator Jayaratha, this aham is unitary consciousness, the supreme beyond everything, the place where all rests, the light of knowledge, knower, and object of knowledge. The T is Siva, who is both father and mother of the universe, who abides as the universal agent (karta visvatra samsthitah), and who penetrates the universe as phonic resonance (nada). Thus a represents the father and initial movement of the cosmos as the
first phoneme, ha is the mother and in her subtle form the Sanskrit aspirate or visarga represented by two dots (transliterated as h), and this emission and manifestation finally retrieve the condition of the incomparable (anuttara) with the anusvara (m) or bindu. %
The passage from the Tantraloka quoted above refers to a text of the Trika sastra, the Paratrisikd, a series of short verses from the Radrayamala, one of the Bhairava Tantras of the southern current. In his commentary, Abhinavagupta repeats his point about the absolute subject being the source of all appearance and the goal of practice, whose 'highest meaning is uninterrupted continuity' (avicchinnataparamartham) in the cosmos and which is delight (camatkrti). 9 This T is absolute subjectivity, 'I-ness' (ahanta), pure consciousness (samvit, caitanya, cit) without an object, and the ground of being (dsraya), containing within it the entire spectrum of manifest universes. This consciousness is purely reflexive (vimarsa). 10 Indeed, it is the true experient and ultimately real subject of first-person predicates beyond the illusory conventionality of the everyday T, of everyday deixis. Abhinavagupta is aware that this use of the first-person pronoun is far beyond ordinary reference as it implies the undermining of any subject-object distinction. In that state of absolute I-ness, he says, there are no distinctions as are indicated by terms such as 'this' (idam), 'thus' (evam), 'here' (atra) or 'now' (iddmm); 11 that is, purely conventional indexicality has no meaning, for this ultimate state transcends conventional language. Indeed, the identification of the practitioner, of the 'indexical-F that refers to 'me' as a particular, located person, with this absolute T revealed in the texts is the highest goal of the entire, elaborate system.
What is revealed in the Trika sastra is that the true reference of the first-person pronoun is not the indexical subject of everyday language, but rather the transcendent subject as the source of all phenomena. Indeed, to speak of a subject, an T, in this way is to use the term such that it does not imply a distinction between subject and object. While this is a counter-intuitive use of the first-person pronoun, it is nevertheless at the heart of Abhinavagupta's thinking. The absolute T is yet mediated by a number of levels or realms within which the identification of the self with the implied self of the texts also occurs. Thus the supreme I is mediated through the
elaborate cosmology and levels in which there is variable identification of the self with its objects of perception. For example, in the pure course of the pure tattvas each level is characterised by a different emphasis of the 'I/it' (ahaml idam) distinction. Sadasiva, the thirty-fourth tattva and the highest level of the cosmos that is clearly manifested, contains the seeds of subject-object differentiation but nevertheless is dominated by a sense of subjectivity or I-ness (ahanta) over objectivity (idanta); their differentiation is as yet indistinct (asphuta) and Sadasiva is aware of the identity of subject and object as characterised by the sentence 'I am that' (aham idam). 11 As the cosmos unfolds at lower levels, the subject-object distinction becomes more pronounced and the greater is the sense of separation between them. 13
In his commentary on the Paratrisika Abhinavagupta, drawing on the Saiddhantika ontology, declares that everything in the universe consists in the triad (trikariipa) of 'man' (nam), Sakti and Siva. These three modes, ultimately united in consciousness, he relates to the three goddesses of the Trika - Para, Parapara and Apara - and to forms of language and address. Thus something that appears as 'this' (idam) when addressed becomes enveloped by the I-consciousness of the subject (ahambhava). When addressed as 'you', the other becomes a form of Sakti, and in this way the subject assimilates the autonomy of this other T into the delight of his own sense of T (ahambhavacamatkara) and so both become one in the act of addressing. This is the feature of the Goddess Parapara, whose nature is identity in difference. 14 In this freedom of delight the supreme Sakti, Para, is operating through the first person. At this point Abhinavagupta introduces a quotation from the Bhagavad-gita (15.18) that T, referring to Krsna, am the highest self who transcends the perishable and imperishable. Similarly, the first-person verb 'I am' indicates a transcendence of the perishable and imperishable, not the limited T but the real T, which is the self-luminous Siva. In contrast, however, when the autonomy of the I is subdued by the separateness of the other ('this one'), then the Goddess Apara predominates. 15 That is, the triad of goddesses is present in language transactions and in the processes of ordinary linguistic identification of the agent of speech with the objects of
speech. The reader of Abhinavagupta's commentary is invited to expand the sense of T and to fill out the empty signifier with the text- and tradition-specific content of a transcendent subjectivity. The aim of the Trika is to open awareness to a sense of a pure subject, deeper than the triadic relationship of ordinary speech, a process that occurs not simply through the analysis of linguistic situations but through ritual and practice. There is the explicit en-textualisation of the body in daily ritual practice, as we have seen with the Pancaratra and Saiva Siddhanta, but here with the Trika we have overlays upon this ritual structure that claims that awareness needs to expand beyond its boundaries to experience itself as identical with absolute subjectivity. The indexical-I becomes identified with the I of the text, which in this case is understood as limitless, through an expanding of reference such that the T is no longer bounded or limited by location markers such as 'here' or 'now'. This expanded sense of I is a further step in the entextualisation of the body in so far as the body becomes filled with the awareness that it is coterminous with the cosmos. As the T of Siva fills manifestation, so the indexical-I fills the body and breaks its boundaries, becoming identical with the I of Siva. Becoming identical with supreme I-ness is also to realise that the body is as boundless as the cosmos.
Of particular note in the non-Saiddhantika scheme is the use of terminology derived from the grammarian school of philosophy, particularly that of Bhartrhari. Abhinavagupta's faithful student Ksemaraja tells us that when Siva opens his eyes the cosmos is manifested as an appearance of him, and furthermore this manifestation is identified with levels of sound or speech {vac). The cosmos is divine speech and the entire circle of powers that comprises the cosmos can be understood as Siva's voice. This divine speech that makes up appearance forms a graded hierarchy from the pure to the impure (as we have seen in the example from the Pancaratra), from the highest level of Siva to the level of the individual experient. Ksemaraja expresses this concisely when he writes:
Now the power of speech (vaksakti), who is the Goddess Supreme (para), comprises awareness of complete subjectivity. Her form is the eternally enunciated great mantra, without desire due to [being one with] the light of consciousness, she is pregnant with the complete
circle of powers (iakticakra) whose form [comprises the letters] from a to ksa. She therefore manifests the levels of [limited] subjectivity through the gradual stages of [sound, namely] the 'the seeing' (pasyantt), 'the middle' (madhyama) and so on. Not manifesting her true nature as the Supreme state, she illuminates mental activity, new every moment, and displays to the experient [bound by] illusion, particular objects which had not been hitherto manifest. She also reveals the perfect (avikalpa) level covered by that [mental activity] although it is [really] pure."'
Here we see how the embodied individual experient is the consequence of the contraction of supreme consciousness, and how the limited sense of I, the indexical-I, is a result of the contraction of the supreme T (purnaham), the unlimited textual-I or the 'I of discourse' in the text, through the power or goddess of speech. 17 The goddess gives birth, as it were, to the cosmos as the circle of powers, which is envisaged as the letters of the Sanskrit alphabet. 18 This unfolding of sound develops as a graded hierarchy, mapped on to the four levels of language that the Kashmiri non-dualists take from the grammarian Bhartrhari, namely pasyantt, madhyama and vaikhart™ adding a supreme level (para) beyond pasyantt. 20 Subjectivity appears to be particular and limited due to the action of Sakti, but also due to her power she reveals the pure state of consciousness, which only appears to be covered over by the impurity of apparently external mental activity.
This process of the cosmos opening out and closing in is continuous and occurring at each moment, reflected in the mantra aham. There is, as it were, a process of systole and diastole, opening and contracting. When pure consciousness contracts as Sakti, the limited embodied experient results, and when consciousness opens out to itself again, limitation is eradicated. As Ksemaraja says, 'the power of consciousness (citi), which is contracted to the object of consciousness, (becomes particularised) consciousness, descending from the level of uncontracted consciousness.' 21 Particular consciousness is the contraction (samkoca) of Siva, of pure I-ness, while appearance (abhasa) is the manifestation of Sakti, a process which is also described as the universe opening out (unmisati) in appearance and continuation, space and time, subject-object distinction, and as closing in (nimsiati) with the turning back of appearances. 22 Thus the opening
out or manifestation of the cosmos as a graded hierarchy of levels from the pure to the impure is a closing in of pure consciousness in so far as this manifestation conceals pure consciousness. Conversely, the contraction or closing in of appearance is the opening out of pure consciousness. To the degree that the universe is manifested, the pure consciousness or I-ness of Siva is concealed, while to the degree that the universe is contracted, pure consciousness is revealed. The journey through the cosmos to the goal is a journey through less particularised forms of perception to the universal consciousness of Siva. This is envisaged as a journey through the body and a journey through different stages of awakening. 2 ' Furthermore the body provides the map for this journey, both as a representation of the cosmic hierarchy through which the soul ascends and as the means or vehicle for experiencing that journey.
In the last verse of his Pratyabhijnahrdaya, Ksemaraja says that upon realising absolute subjectivity, the supreme I-ness, one attains power over the group of deities that animate the body and the cosmos, the group of deities identified with the alphabet or circle of power {sakticakra). He writes:
Then due to entry into complete I-ness, whose nature is the energy of the great mantra whose essence is the joy of the light of consciousness, there is the attaining of Lordship over the circle of the deities of consciousness, who are innate and produce the creation and destruction of everything. All this is Siva. 24
Upon attaining liberation, understood as the identification of the indexical-I with the absolute subjectivity of revelation, the practitioner attains power over the circle of deities who animate the cosmos and body and who are themselves manifestations of pure subjectivity. On attaining liberation, the yogi realises that the indexical-I has expanded to the absolute I-ness of Siva and everything is therefore an extension of his own body, 25 as the universe iteself is an extension of pure I-ness. The deities of consciousness are the forces or instrumental causes that bring about the manifestation and destruction of the cosmos. They allow for experience and the interaction of self and world, and allow for the destruction of limited experience in liberation. As the deities of consciousness are expansions of
pure consciousness itself, so upon the recognition (pratyabhijna) of the identity of self and absolute, the deities of conciousness are recognised as expansions of one's own consciousness.
The Circle of Deities in the Body
The body is animated by deities who are nothing other than emanations of consciousness itself In a text that has probably been wrongly attributed to Abhinavagupta by Pandey and Silburn, 26 these deities are described as goddesses of the sense faculties offering their objects or spheres of operation to the absolute, Siva in union with Sakti in the forms of Anandabhairava and Anandabharivl. The 'Hymn to the Circle of Deities Located in the Body' (dehasthadev atacakrastotra) 11 describes the deities of the Krama system, one of the Kaula traditions, which were absorbed within the Trika. 28 This anonymous text presents us with a pantheon of deities lying at the esoteric heart of Abhinavagupta's system. What is significant about the text is that it occurs within a liturgical setting, as part of a daily ritual of visualisation and identification of the self with Siva. In the text we have the identification of a lotus containing a pantheon of deities who represent the totality of the cosmos identified with the body. The text describes how Anandabhairava and Anandabhairavl are located in the calyx of a lotus, identified with the heart. They are in sexual union, which symbolises the non-differentiation of consciousness from the world, and are regarded as the essence of a person. They are the essence of experience (anubhavasara) both in the sense of ordinary, unawakened experience that oppresses, as Silburn observes, 29 and in the sense of the liberating experience of recognising the self as consciousness. In this sense, experience or anubhava refers to the telos, the goal of practice, the awakening to the recognition of one's identity with both transcendence and immanence.
The text would be recited by the practitioner to identify the deities of his pantheon with himself. The hymn is thus a text of visualisation set within a ritual context. The practitioner, says the text, 'should visualise the splendour which is the basis of every-
thing, a deep bliss of awakened consciousness, one's own tranquillity, without filth, pure, without taint and all-pervading.' 30 There is a central deity, a Lord of the clan (Kulesvara), along with his consort (Kulesvarl), surrounded by a harem of goddesses, located in the heart. He is seated upon a throne of jewels, anointed with musk, sandalwood and nutmeg, with various foods being offered to him such as milk, sweetmeats and fruit, all entirely constructed within the mind. Having given the liturgical visualisation, the text presents the hymn that locates the circle of deities in the heart which are also identified with the whole body and with the cosmos. I cite the entire text here:
1. Om Homage to Ganesa. Om holy! I praise Ganapati whose body is the inhaled breath, who is worshipped at the beginning of a hundred philosophical systems, who delights in the bestowal of desired wishes.
2. I praise Vatuka, known as the inhaled breath who removes people's pain; his feet are worshipped by the lineage of Perfected Ones, the hordes of yoginis, and the best heroes. 3. I always praise the pure, true master whose nature is attentiveness. By the power of his thought he reveals the universe as a path of Siva for his devotees. 4. I praise Anandabhairava, who is made of consciousness, whom the goddesses of the senses constantly worship in the lotus of the heart with the pleasures of their own sense-objects. 5. I praise Anandabhairavi, whose nature is awareness, who continually performs the play of creation, manifestation and tasting of the universe. 6. I constantly bow to Brahmani, whose nature is higher mind, situated on the petal of the Lord of gods [i.e. Indra in the east], who worships Bhairava with flowers of certainty. 7. I always praise Mother Sambhavi, whose nature is the ego. Seated on the petal of fire [i.e. Agni in the south-east]; she performs worship to Bhairava with flowers of pride. 8. I always praise Kumari, situated on the southern petal, whose essence is the mind, who gives offerings to Bhairava with flowers of discrimination. 9. I constantly bow down to Vaisnavi, seated on the south-west petal, the power of whose nature is that which is heard, who makes offerings to Bhairava with flowers of sound. 10. I honour Varahi, who possesses the sense of touch. Seated on the western petal, she satisfies Bhairava with flowers of touch which captivate the heart. 11. I praise Indrani, whose body is sight, whose body is seated on the north-west petal, who worships Bhairava with the most beautiful and best of colours. 12. I bow to Camunda, called the sense of taste, dwelling on the petal of Kubera [i.e. north]; she constantly worships Bhairava with offerings of the varied six flavours. 13. I always bow down to Mahalaksmi, known as the
sense of smell, who, seated on the petal of the Lord [Siva in the northeast], praises Bhairava with varied fragrances. 14. I praise constantly the Lord of the body, who gives perfection known as the self, united with the thirty-six categories; he is worshipped as the Lord of the six systems of philosophy. 15. In this manner I praise the circle of deities innate within the body, an elevated assembly continually present, the end of everything, vibrant, and the essence of experience. Thus the sacred hymn to the circle of deities in the body is fully completed."
These are the eight mothers of the Kaula tradition, sometimes listed as seven, namely BrahmanI, Sambhavi, Kumari, Vaisnavi, Varahl, Indrani, Camunda, and Mahalaksml. They are also found, with some variation, in the Puranic texts, particularly the Devimahatmya, as forms of Durga, 32 and in the Agni-purana, where they are framed by Tumburu/Vlrabhadra and Vinayaka." In one of the earliest tantric references they are listed in the Netra-tantra, where they are the entourage of Kulesvara. 34 The Tantraloka refers to them in the context of the secret ritual focused on Kulesvara and Kulesvarl, where each is in sexual union with a form of Bhairava. 35 In the Isdnasivagurudeva-paddhati we find seven mothers in the context of the worship of attendant deities to Siva, each with her particular visualised form, colour, mount and so on. 36
In the stotra, quoted above, we see that the body becomes the text upon which the deities of the tradition - the goddesses of the senses - are inscribed. The body is inhabited by the circle of deities; this pantheon animates the body, which becomes the mandala wherein they reside. One of the terms for the pantheon of goddesses here represented is 'clan' or kula, a term which itself is rich in meaning, as we will see, but one of whose meanings according to a scripture cited by Jayaratha is, indeed, 'body'. 37 These goddesses are identified not only with the body but with different levels of the hierarchical cosmos, thereby creating a homology between body and cosmos. While there is no narrative dimension to this text, set in a broader context of its liturgy this sacralisation of the body entails a temporal and so narrative identification of the practitioner with the cosmos, constructed through text and ritual. We might even say that the story of the body becomes the story of the cosmos, which is the story of the unfolding of the essence of experience. The hymn is an excellent
illustration of the entextualisation of the body in a ritual context and how the metaphysical speculation about pure subjectivity is textually and ritually (and so somatically) located. The body becomes the text through the identification with the deities revealed in the revelation and all action is understood as offerings made to the supreme deities Siva and Sakti, who, as Abhinavagupta and Ksemaraja tell us, are both contained within absolute I-ness. The circle of deities in the body who animate the cosmos are emanations of the self and also deities who animate the levels of the cosmos as manifestations of pure consciousness. This idealism is at the heart of the Krama system absorbed within the Trika. The Krama categories of creation, maintenance, destruction, the nameless (anakhya) and splendour (bhasa) are implicitly contained in the man data, the circle of bliss realised as the true nature of one's own experience. 18 As the self animates the limbs of the body, so the Lord animates the universe. 39 In the last verse of the Pratyabhijndhrdaya Ksemaraja explicitly links the deities of the senses with pure subjectivity in that they are expansions of it, represented in the expansion of the term aham. Aa
Kundalini and the Cakras
The term used for the deities within the body in the text just discussed is 'wheel' or 'circle' (cakra), which also refers to a lotus and the heart as a lotus. This sense of cakra as lotus is used more generally for locations within the body itself. Indeed the cakras have become part of a common, New Age esotericism in the West, entering from pan-Hindu use of the six or seven cakras in Yoga to indicate centres of power within the body and specifically arranged along the central axis of the trunk. Within Indian medicine this central axis became identified with the spinal column, and there are curious fusions of Western anatomy with yogic esoteric anatomy. 41 While the system of cakras has become synonymous with tantric esoteric anatomy in popular representation, it is important to remember that there are other systems of mapping the cosmos on to the body, as we have already seen, and that these systems of mapping are text- and system-specific; less reified than modern conceptions
yet also more text- and tradition-based than some modern exponents would acknowledge.
The term cakra as referring to centres of subtle anatomy first occurs in the Tantras, although earlier texts contain cakra-Vike references. David White has argued that probably the earliest Hindu source is the Bhagavata-purana where six sites (sthana) are listed at the navel (nabhi), heart (hrt), breast (uras), root of the palate (svatalumula), the place between the eyebrows (bhruvorantara), and the cranium (murdha). He goes on to suggest that the earliest Hindu source for the application of the term cakra to these centres is the Kaulajndna-nirnaya. 42 In this text there are eight cakras listed, meditation and worship (dhyanapuja) of each in turn bestowing different magical powers: worship and visualisation of the first cakra giving the power of being one with Yoginis and the yogic powers of becoming minute and so on; visualisation of the second cakra giving the powers of attraction and subjugation, the ability to project oneself and break objects at a distance; and so on. 43
Yet the earliest text that documents the six cakras, known to later Kaulism and yoga traditions, is the eleventh-century ce Kubjikamata-tantra. 44 Here, in chapter 11 and elsewhere, we have the standard list of the muladhara (anal region), svadhisthana (genital region), manipura (navel), anahata (heart), visuddha (throat) and ajna (between the eyebrows), plus the 'centre' beyond the cakras at the crown (sahasrara), although later chapters only present five cakras, not linked to Kundalini, as Padoux has observed, but associated with the five elements. 45 Indeed the humpbacked or crooked Goddess Kubjika of this text is identified with Kundalini. 46 This list of six is unknown to the earlier tradition, where instead we find a variety of terms and text-specific systems of mapping the cosmos on to the vertical axis of the body. Sanderson writes:
In fact it [the system of six cakras] is found in none of the early traditions mentioned. Instead we find there a great variety in the division of the vertical line of the central power (susumnd). There are six 'seasons', five 'knots' (granthayah), five voids (vyomant), nine wheels (cakrani), eleven wheels, twelve knots, at least three sets of sixteen loci (ddhdrah), sixteen knots, twenty-eight vital points (marmani), etc. 47
By the time of the later Kaulism, especially the Sri Vidya associated with the Goddess Tripurasundarl, along with medieval Hatha yoga and Nath Siddha texts such as the Siddhasiddhanta-paddhati and the famous sadcakranirupanam, the term cakra refers to points or lotuses (padma) with varying numbers of petals, specific letters of the alphabet and colours, located along the central axis of the body. 48 Indeed the cakras are connected by subtle channels (nadl) along which power or subtle energy (prdna) flows to animate the body and which needs to be controlled through yogic and tantric practice. But an important point is that there is textual variety in these systems, exhibited not only in the Netra-tantra but in other texts as well. The Laksmi-tantra, for example, cites three centres for visualisation as well as thirty-two located along the body's axis, 49 we have seen systems of subtle anatomy in the JS and Saiva Siddhanta texts, Aghorasiva describes visualising the subtle body as an inverted banyan tree, and the Dehasthadevatdcakra-stotra, discussed above, has the body as a circle of goddesses. The Saiddhantika Sardhatrisatikalottara devotes a chapter to the circle of channels (nddtcakra), knowledge of which is necessary to attain supernatural power. The text describes the principal kind of channel and the secondary channels, totalling 72,000 in total. These channels flow upwards and downwards from the navel to all parts of the body, along which flow blood and subtle breath (prdna).' 0 These breaths are classified into ten types in the text, the descending breath (apdna) responsible for digestion and excretions, the uddna responsible for movement of the eyes, and so on. 51 While there are textual variations, and though the subtle anatomy of visualisation is sometimes conflated with physiological processes, there is a general shared structure of locating a column of power along the body's axis. This structure, however, has some variability in our texts and always occurs within the context of ritual and visualisation. While there are ancient precedents for the idea of a subtle anatomy in the Upanisads, especially a focus on the heart,' 2 the system of six cakras and three principal nddis that pervades medieval and later Hinduism is post-eleventh century.
Let us describe one of these early systems. Probably before the Kubjikdmata-tantra, perhaps before the tenth century, the Netra-tantra lists six cakras without the svadhisthdna or sahasrdra, as Padoux
has observed, 53 but rather with a cakra of the palate (talu) along with the dvddasdnta, the point either twelve fingers from the brow centre or twelve above the crown of the head. The Netra-tantra presents these six in describing the subtle visualisation of the form of Siva, Mrtyunjit, and then connects them to six centres (adhara) and twelve 'knots' (granthi) and six spaces (vyoma) located along the central axis. Although the text does not mention Kundalini, it does say that the yogi should visualise Sakti in the central breath (uddna) that is manifested between inhalation (prdna) and exhalation (apdna). This is similar to the Vijiidnabhairava-tantra, which refers to the upward movement of prdna within the body without mentioning the term kundalini. In other places kundalini is explicitly linked to prdna}'' The practitioner fills this power with his own virile energy (vlrya) through identifying the Sakti with mantra. She then arises from the organ of generation (janmddhdra or dnandendriya) up through the central channel that pervades the body, through the navel (ndbhi), heart (hrt), throat (krttha), palate (talu) and the centre between the eyebrows (bhrumadya), piercing the twelve knots and voids to the crown of the head where Siva in the form of Mrtyunjit is located. She descends from there to the heart, where the body is filled with the elixir of longevity (amrta or rasdyana) that flows through the innumerable channels bestowing agelessness and immortality. 55 The basic structure of the rising of energy in the body that we find in later tradition is here, although the details of alignments and terminology are text-specific. 56
The rising of energy in the body that we see in the Netra-tantra is also found in the Kubjikdmata-tantra where a serpentine energy is associated with mantra and levels of speech. In many texts this energy is named Kundalini, the coiled one, although the 'crooked goddess' Kubjika is earlier and perhaps a precursor. She sleeps in the lowest cakra; once awakened through yogic practice, especially breath control through the two channels from the nostrils that meet the central channel in the mulddhdra, she rises the central channel to Siva at the crown. According to White, the earliest occurrence of 'this indwelling female serpent' is the Tantrasadbhdva-tantra, possibly dated as early as the eighth century ce, where this indwelling power is described as kundall, she who is 'ring shaped'. 57
Ksemaraja cites this text, which would appear to be a visualisation in which Kundalini is unconscious and appears as if poisoned. Once awakened she rises up and so transforms the poison of ignorance into a force of liberation. 58 Abhinavagupta identifies different levels of Kundalini and stresses her cosmological dimension, expanding from bindu, the source of manifestation, and shining in all things in the form of energy (saktikundalka) and in the form of breath {pranakundalika), then up to the extreme point of emission where she is the supreme Kundalini. 59 For Abhinavagupta there are two main forms: an 'upward' Kundalini (urdhva) associated with expansion, and a 'downward' Kundalini (adha) linked with contraction; she is the systole and diastole of cosmic expansion and contraction. In his commentary on the Paratrisika, Abhinavagupta links Kundalini with the kauliki sakti, a name for the supreme or highest form of energy, from whom the Lord is inseparable. The Paratrisikhd identifies kauliki sakti with the supreme power of the Lord called the kulandyikd, the Lord of the clan, who resides in the heart. In his commentary Abhinavagupta identifies this goddess with the power that brings into manifestation the body, breath, and experiences of pleasure and pain (sarira-prana-sukhadeh), and the energy of the whole circle of deities within the body (Brahml and the others discussed above). This is also the power within the body and the power of sexuality as the source of reproduction. He furthermore links Kundalini to the force of the syllable ha in the mantra and the concept of aham, the supreme subjectivity as the source of all, with a as the initial movement of consciousness and m its final withdrawal. 60 Thus we have an elaborate series of associations, all conveying the central conception of the cosmos as a manifestation of consciousness, of pure subjectivity, with Kundalini understood as the force inseparable from consciousness, who animates creation and who, in her particularised form in the body, causes liberation through her upward, illusion-shattering movement.
What is significant about the descriptions of the central channel within the body and the power that moves along it are the mercurial nature of the accounts. The texts do not intend to reify the subtle body and its centres; although admittedly Abhinavagupta uses Kundalini as an explanation, generally in the texts the bodily centres
and the upward movement of energy are intended for visualisation purposes. This is stated in the Netra-tantra, where the text presents a list of the centres in the context of the visualisation of Mrtyunjit, and Siva explicitly declares that he will speak about the supreme, subtle visualisation (dhydna). 61 This is an important point. The centres of the subtle body are given meaning and form a part of the practice only in the context of ritual and meditative visualisation grounded in text. The Kundalini image is complex and claiming that it must be understood within the tradition and within specific forms of practice that intend to eventuate in the 'experience' of Kundalini is not to disclaim or reduce these practices, although it is to be suspicious of the claim that Kundalini is universal and found in different cultural locations. Abhinavagupta would have regarded the raising of Kundalini as an experience, as indicated by his claim that if this rising force should descend, then possession by demons (pisdcavesa) would ensue, 62 but such experience can only be understood in the context of the texts and traditions of its occurrence. The body is constrained by text and tradition. Visualising the body as being mapped with these subtle centres is clearly an entextualisation of the body, a mapping of the cosmos and journey of the self to its transcendent source in ways specified within the tradition. Indeed, to seek to understand the cakras outside of this context as if they are intended as extra-textual, ontological structures is incoherent. The rising of sakti within the body, the piercing of the centres along a central axis, and the accompanying mantras are part of the practitioner's aligning of himself with tradition and part of the construction of his body in tradition-specific ways to attain the tradition-specific goal.
Finally we must examine the same processes of entextualisation at work in what has sometimes become synonymous with Tantra, its sexualised ritual.
Two Ritual Systems
An important difference between the Trika and Saiva Siddhanta is that for the Trika the ritual sequence of daily rites, the entextualisation of the body, is not understood as a manipulation of material
substance but as action within consciousness. Ritual actions must be understood in terms of cognition and knowledge for the Kashmiri non-dualists, for liberation is the recognition of the subject's identity with absolute consciousness. Given this understanding, the monistic commentators on Saiva ritual texts had to interpret ritual in term of consciousness and stages of awareness. Apart from the three methods (updya) and sudden awakening in the non-means (anupdya), 63 there were two principal forms of rites for the initiate into the Trika tradition: the normative rite of the Trika initiate called the tantra-prakriyd, lucidly described by Sanderson, 64 and the esoteric rite called the kula-prakriyd for the tantric virtuosi, which involved ritualised sex outside of orthodox, vedic bounds. 65 The normative rite followed the basic pattern we have outlined in the Saiva Siddhanta of purification of the body, the divinisation of the body through nyasa, mental worship and external worship, although with the transgressive addition of the consumption of meat and wine.
I refer the reader to Sanderson's article, which describes how the initiate installs the mantras of the Trika deities into two wine-filled cups, makes offerings to the guardian deities surrounding the place of worship, performs the purification of the body in the way previously described, although he understands it as the destruction of his public and physical individuality (dehdntata), leaving him with the awareness that his identity is 'pure undifferentiated consciousness as the impersonal ground of his cognition and action'. 66 Following his divinisation through nyasa, the initiate visualises a trident mandala (trisuldbjamandala) along the axis of the body, with the three goddesses of the Trika - Para, Parapara and Apara - located at its prongs above the crown of the head. The trident is identified with the tattva hierarchy, and Sanderson shows how Abhinavagupta overcodes the rite with terminology and deities derived from other tantric systems, notably the Krama and Kula. The initiate identifies himself with the Goddess Para located on the central prong and ascends up the trident, through his own body and so through the cosmos, to merge with the transcendent source of the three goddesses, the absolute Kalasamkarsini, the fourth power behind them, of which they are emanations. Kalasamkarsini herself is not visualised in the sequence as she is the ground of consciousness
behind all appearance and beyond representation. In the ritual sequence the initiate transcends the usual identification of the T with the subject of first-person predicates, the indexical-I, to construct in his visualisation an expanded sense of T coterminous with the ground of appearance and the goal of practice, an idea, as we have seen above, that Abhinavagupta develops in his commentary on the Paratrlsika.
This normative ritual is assumed by the more esoteric rite for high initiates only, the kula prakriyd, the secret rite that involves the ritual consumption of meat, alcohol and fish along with the practice of taboo-breaking sex in a ritual setting. The ritual use of sex, an exceedingly difficult observance (asidharavrata), is mainly the preserve of the non-Saiddhantika traditions, although it is not wholly unknown within the Siddhanta. 67 Chapter 29 of Abhinavagupta's Tantraloka is probably the clearest description of the rite. It has now become the object of scholarly attention, as has the inquiry into tantric sex. White has written a definitive work on 'tantric sex' and put paid to the connection between Western 'tantric sex' and the ancient traditions of India. I do not intend to attempt to reproduce his very thorough and engaging work but will simply illustrate how sexualised ritual is indeed another example of the entextualisation of the body. But it is necessary to outline White's argument very briefly. Put simply, White argues that originally 'tantric sex' was 'nothing more or less than a means to producing the fluids that Tantric goddesses ... fed upon'/' 8 In the quest for power, generally male practitioners courted generally female supernatural beings, such as the Yoginis, who needed to be appeased (and controlled) through taboo-breaking offerings of meat, alcohol and sexual fluids. Texts in these traditions continued to be composed into fairly modern times; the sixteenth- or seventeenth-century Yoni-tantra describes such a ritual. The practitioner (sadhaka) needs to procure a woman who is wanton (pramada), free from shame, whom he worships in the centre of a mandala, offering her cannabis {vijaya) m before performing the sexualised rite (preferably during menses) to produce the yoni-tattva, the fluids necessary to offer to the Goddess.' 0 Indeed, the basic structure of Hindu ritual worship (puja) of making an offering to a deity and receiving a blessing, usually in the form of the food
that had been offered, consumed as 'grace' (prasdda), is followed in tantric rites. But instead of offered rice or fruit, it is meat, alcohol, and above all sexual fluids produced in a ritual context, which, in the Veda-aligned, later tantric tradition of the Sri Vidya, may be replaced by substitutes (pratinidhi). This sexualised ritual (White's phrase) serves to satisfy the ferocious and dangerous deities of the tantric pantheons and to allow the practitioner to gain control over them, power being the main concern of these practitioners, especially the power of immortality. 71
Such acts of ritual appeasement, the offering and consumption of mixed sexual fluids to ferocious goddesses, is at the origin of the 'hard' tantric traditions, the more extreme cults of what Sanderson designates the 'left'. 72 Indeed, the Trika in its origins is such a tradition, whose foundation lies in the Kaula religion of cremation-ground asceticism, which worshipped a pantheon of goddesses of the clan or family {kula) surrounding a lord and/or his goddess (Kulesvara and Kulesvarl), as, for example, the deities of the senses surrounding Anandabhairava and Anandabhairavl described above. The Trika added to this the worship of the three goddesses Para, Parapara and Apara in a triangle, within which is the Lord of the Kula. Sanderson writes:
The worship could be carried out externally, on a red cloth upon the ground, in a circle filled with vermilion powder and enclosed with a black border, on a coconut substituted for a human skull, a vessel filled with wine or other alcohol, or on a mandala,. It may also be offered on the exposed genitals of the duti [female practitioner], on one's own body, or in the act of sexual intercourse with the duti. Later tradition emphasises the possibility of worshipping the deities in the vital energy (prana) - one visualises their gratification by the 'nectar' of one's ingoing breath. We are told that the seeker of liberation may carry out this worship in thought alone {sdmvidl piija). However, even one who does this must offer erotic worship with his duti on certain special days of the year (parvas). 7i
This erotic worship was a requirement for those initiated into the Kaula dimension of the Trika tradition, regarded by Abhinavagupta as its esoteric heart, the quintessentially tantric system which regarded vedic injunctions and worship restricted by caste as founded
on a restrictive prohibition that prevented the realisation of the spontaneous expansion of consciousness.' 4 The feminine is given precedence, and women are to be worshipped and their homes treated as thrones of deities (pitha). 1 ' Here ecstasy takes precedence over dharma.
While this rhetoric might seem to go against tradition and established authority, it only goes against a particular kind of tradition and in so doing aims at establishing the superiority of its own revelation. The tantric traditions - including the extreme ones - set themselves against what they perceive to be the restrictive and lower revelation of the Veda (see pp. 55-60). The erotic worship of the pantheon, while being clearly at variance with vedic injunction and purity rules, is nevertheless within a tradition of practice based on a body of texts. The earliest layers of the traditions of the left emphasised the appeasing and control of ferocious deities through the offering and consumption of sexual fluids from around the seventh century CE, but these traditions widened their appeal through time, becoming adapted to householder ways of life. By the time of Abhinavagupta we have the traditions being reinterpreted and a shift of emphasis from the production of sexual fluids in ritual intercourse to sexual experience being an analogue of the bliss of the experience of pure consciousness. The production of sexual fluids for ritual purpose is still important, but, as Sanderson observes, the stress comes to be on sexual experience itself as a method of realising the expansion of consciousness. Sexual experience between the male practitioner and his female partner becomes a reflection of the joy of Siva and Sakti. The rite becomes aetheticised.' 6
It is in this context that Abhinavagupta composes his chapter on the kula prakriya. The chapter and Jayaratha's commentary show that this was a well winnowed tradition by the tenth and eleventh centuries, with a history of textual transmission and teachings handed down through lineages of masters. While the kula rite in the Tantraloka undoubtedly reflects the earlier tradition of consuming sexual fluids - and this would seem to be a part of the rite - there is also an emphasis on an aesthetic dimension and the realisation of the bliss of the consciousness of Siva and Sakti in union. In his commentary on the Paratrisika-tantra, Abhinavagupta writes:
In the case of both sexes sustained by the buoyancy of their seminal energy, the inwardly felt joy of orgasm (antahsparsa-sakham) in the central channel induced by the excitement of the seminal energy intent on oozing out at the moment of thrill is a matter of personal experience to everyone. This joy is not simply dependent on the body which is merely a fabricated thing. If at such a moment it serves as a teaching of remembrance of the inherent delight of the divine self, one's consciousness gets entry in to the eternal, unalterable state that is realised by means of the harmonious union with the expansive energy of the perfect I-consciousness which constitutes the venerable supreme divine Sakti who is an expression of the absolutely free manifestation of the bliss of the union of Siva and Sakti denoting the supreme Brahman. 77
Sexual experience, specifically orgasm (kampakdla), can reflect the divine union of Siva and Sakti. Ordinarily sexual experience does not, and sexuality only becomes a transpersonal joy once it is a 'teaching of remembrance' (abhijndnopades'a); that is, the remembrance of tradition. Sexual experience can become an embodiment of the memory of tradition 78 if performed in awareness of the truth of revelation. This is true of other emotional experience according to Abhinavagupta, such as the joy of seeing one's wife and son or the delight when two pairs of eyes meet or on hearing a sweet song, all of which stir up energy (virya) 79 and have the potential to awaken awareness and stir the memory of the supreme I-consciousness. In such experiences the indexical-I can potentially realise its identity with supreme I-ness mediated through the revelation of tradition. Only through the text and tradition can such experience be evoked and such an expansion of the indexical-I take place.
Establishing a connection between human sexual experience and trans-human cosmic forces is not unique to Tantra; it had precedents much earlier in the Indian traditions. Perhaps the most famous example is from the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad, where human sexual experience is akin to a person realising the self: 'As a man embraced by a woman he loves is oblivious to everything within or without, so this person embraced by the self (atman) consisting of knowledge is oblivious to everything within or without.' 80 The same is true of the Chdndogya Upanisad, where the vedic recitation is identified with the sexual act. 81 So the Trika claim is not unusual in the Indian context, although the emphasis on the liturgical use
of sexual fluids is unique to the 'hard core' tantric traditions, as White has shown. What I would wish to emphasise is that there is a tradition of understanding human experience in a way that links it to trans-human powers and forces in the cosmos, and that such links are always mediated through the texts. Indeed, the female practitioner in the rite conveys the power of the deity, the power of pure consciousness, to the male practitioner in a process that parallels the consumption of blessed food (prasdda) that was previously offered to the deity (she also thereby reflects temple women of the later medieval period). 82 Human sexuality reflects cosmic process because revelation tells us so; the I-consciousness of Siva can be realised in sexual encounter because the text and tradition tell us that it is so and not because of any properties of an unmediated experience (whatever that could be).
While the expansion of pure consciousness, the filling out of the indexical-I with the I-ness of Siva, can be realised in ordinary, everyday transactions, it can also be evoked through ritual. The kula prakriya sets up a situation in which the intention is the identification of the practitioner and his partner with Siva and Sakti and the resulting sexual experience with the joy of their union. This identification can be seen in terms of the remembrance of tradition, always mediated through sacred text or revelation and through the teacher. To undergo the kula prakriya means that the couple need to have the requisite qualification (adhikara),* 3 which means having undergone an initiation into the practice but also having certain personal qualities and high levels of receptivity, such as the displaying of signs of possession (trembling, loss of consciousness) during initiation. While I have shown in more detail elsewhere how the kula prakriya enacts the memory of tradition (where I have also discussed the gender implications of the rite), 84 for our purposes we need to describe briefly the ritual process in order to see its relevance for the entextualisation of the body.
The kula rite entails the male practitioner (sadhaka) performing preliminary purifications that include the visualisation of the rise of Kundalini. Once the female partner, called the 'messenger' or duti, joins him they both perform nydsa, thereby divinising their bodies, before the practice of the 'three ms' (makdratraya), namely consump-
tion of wine (madya), meat (mamsa) and sexual fluids resulting from their union (maithuna). According to Jayaratha, sexual substances are actually passed from mouth to mouth in the rite (a practice which, observes Silburn, reflects Kashmiri marriage custom of passing food from mouth to mouth 85 ). These three were to become transformed into the famous 'five ws' (pancamakdra) or substances (pancatattva) of later Sakta Tantrism, with the addition of fish (matsya) and parched grain (mudrd), which in the Sri Vidya Brahmanical response to the earlier tradition were substituted with 'pure' substances (pratinidhi),* 6 Abhinavagupta even redefines 'celibacy' or brahmacarya as the ritual use of these three substances, forbidden to orthodox Brahmans, while he still accepts the legitimacy of the celibate renouncer whose semen is upturned (urdhvaretas)} 1 The hero (vim) or perfected one (siddha) who follows the esoteric path (kulavartman) must nevertheless perform the rite with complete detachment and without desire, consuming the probhibited substances as integral to the ritual process, for otherwise the hero would simply remain as a beast (paw). Indeed, later Sakta Tantrism evokes a distinction between three dispositions (bhdva): the beast (pas'u), who does not perform worship with the five ms; the hero (vtra), who does; and the divine (divya), who has realised the goal, 88 although these are not found in Saiva texts. The bodies of the participants in the kula rite are mapped by the textual tradition. For Abhinavagupta and Jayaratha the Siddha and DutI have themselves developed to a high level of attainment within the tradition; they have already shaped their lives in accordance with the prescriptions of the tradition, and they reflect Siva and Sakti in the ritual process. The aim of the rite is perfection in a condensed time period, which, in the rhetoric of the tradition, would otherwise take countless years with floods of mantras; 85 the kula practice is a quick path to liberation.
From these examples from non-Saiddhantika traditions we can see that the same processes are at work as in the Saiva Siddhanta and Pancaratra tantric traditions. The body is structured in accordance with text, and tradition becomes a map of the self by which the practitioner navigates towards the goal. In the case of the Trika this is particularly marked in the recognition of the identity-limited self with the transcendent subjectivity of Siva, in the hierarchical
structure of the body in alignment with the cosmos, in the various pantheons of deities located within the body, and in the sexualised ritual at the Trika's heart.
EIGHT
The Tantric Imagination
SO far, we have seen that there is a variety of tantric traditions, practices, terminologies and metaphysics, and that while practices are unique to specific texts there are shared processes and structures filled out with different content across traditions. I have characterised this as the body as text or its entextualisation. The body is central to the tantric imaginaire, 1 serving as the focus for the self-enactment of tradition through ritual and asceticism and serving as the focus for the self-declaration of tradition in tantric theology. Indeed, if anything is common to tantric traditions it is the divinisa-tion of the body through the processes we have described: mantra, the bhutasuddhi, nyasa and so on. The body is the central organising topos or metaphor of the traditions, which structures ideas of power, vision and levels of awakening in our texts. Furthermore, the body entails a corporeal understanding that functions not only as a conceptual scheme but as a lived experience; an experience always within the boundaries of tradition. Through paying close attention to textual detail of the body's representation in ritual and theology, we have seen how the body is encoded in text-specific ways. We can now make some more general remarks about shared processes. Of particular importance is how deixis or metalepsis functions within the texts: that is, how the practitioner becomes identified with the text, how he transgresses the boundaries of the everyday self or
everyday indexicality to align himself with the implied 'reader' within the texts. In the technical jargon, the indexical-I becomes identified with the T of discourse, the T of the text. This is also to say that the text becomes the body, becomes entextualised. We have seen this especially in the ritual procedures of vision, gesture and the use of icons.
Vision
There is an inseparable link between body and vision in the tantric traditions. The body, as we have seen, is envisaged and constructed as divine in the ritual imagination. This construction is a corporeal understanding of text and tradition that is enacted not simply through reading the texts but through enacting the texts in ritual procedures that entail a high degree of visual imagination. Indeed, the visionary is of crucial importance in the tantric traditions; there is no connotation of the 'imagined' as unreal. The visions constructed in inner awareness in conformity to the texts, the 'imaginative' construction of the body through visualisation, are not less real for the tantric practitioner than ordinary sense perception; they are more real. The visualisation of deities and the body are not categorised as the mere imagination of the wandering mind based on personal memory that is distracting from the goal of higher awareness, but are the construction of a world that, while being removed from the material realm of everyday transaction, is closer to the source of creation, and so the quality of reality is intensified. The world of everyday transaction for monistic Saivas (the world wherein the indexical-I operates) is ultimately unreal, although it is real for the Saiva Siddhantin, where 'real' means ontologically distinct. The power of visualisation is the realisation of a higher level or deeper world of experience, an intensification of aesthetic experience, and an intensification of the truth of the body; that it is truly divine, and as such can approach and serve the Lord and his or her forms. Visualisation is realisation. Meditation or visualisation is a technique of experiencing a higher reality for the practitioner beyond the imaginatively restricted world of sense
experience determined by past actions and ignorance. Through a tradition-constrained imagination, a new world of clarity, light and joy is opened to the practitioner.
One way of speaking about visualisation is that it is a representation of the body within the text, enacted in the inner vision of the practitioner. The representation of the body, the visionary body of tantric ritual imagination, occurs within the texts (as we have seen), within practice, and as objects in the form of icons of deities, paintings, and diagrams used in ritual. There are two aspects to tantric representation and vision. The first is that there is a strong connection between visionary representation and the symbolic order; the symbolic order of the system, text or tradition is envisaged in visionary terms (as in the visualisation of Narayana in the heart, supported by a throne whose legs are made up of different aspects of the cosmical hierarchy and the sacred revelation of the Vedas - see pp. 116-17). Second, the lived body, the body of experience, and the visionary representation of the symbolic order are interpenetrated. The lived body experiences the symbolic order as a more intensified level of imagination than the world of everyday transaction bereft of imagination, where the common denominator is merely cultural functionality. The tantric practitioner constructs the world she or he inhabits from the texts, which provide, as it were, the architecture of the building of the imagination he, or indeed she, inhabits. This building is the palace of the deity with whom the practitioner is ritually identified at particular ritual junctures of the day, even in traditions that are metaphysically dualist. The tantric practitioner lives within the mandala, lives within the yantra, lives within the vision of divinity such that the symbolic world of the text becomes the lived world of the body. Representation in text, icon and rite coalesce in the experience of the lived body. The world of the practitioner becomes a ritually constrained world or, to use Hanks's term, 'frame space', 2 which contains limited options within which the practitioner can operate. This construction of what is seen to be a more real edifice around the practitioner is both the mapping of life's journey from bondage in the cycle of transmigration to power and freedom, and the entextualisation of the body within a text-dependent symbolic order or representation. The practitioner
lives within the frame space of the ritual edifice or within the ritual canopy (vitanaka) constructed in his visionary imagination.
Vision is therefore suffused with power (sakti) in these imaginative constructions, which are also realisations. The verb star, 'to remember', is often used for visualisation, a term that has wider connotation than 'memory' and might be better understood as recollection or bringing to mind and evoking the forms of tradition (see below p. 178). The tantrika lives within 'memory' understood in this way as an edifice of a ritual-visual symbolic order that his body is within and that is also within his body. The lived body reflects the level of representation and symbolic order, or, to put it less passively, acts out and performs that symbolic order. Indeed, the acting out of the particular symbolic order or visionary representation, which is the deification of the self and entextualisation of the body, is a defining feature of tantric culture. The imaginative mental actions of ritual, accompanied by ritual utterances, have illocutionary force. The utterance of the mantra is the making present of the deity; the inhabiting of the visionary universe is making it present as a stronger reality than that of the merely everyday or of the frame space of those who inhabit a lower revelation.
The Tantras and tantric theologians are therefore opposed to the views of the materialist tradition (carvaka, lokayata) on the grounds that materialism is in fact moving away from the truth of higher worlds, and to strip imaginative vision away from any account of reality is to strip away the very foundational nature of the world. Without imaginative vision the world is nothing and almost unconscious. In Saiva Siddhanta theology, without Siva's enlivening gaze the cosmos is indeed unconscious (Jada); the practitioner recapitulates this creative vision in his own practice, especially in animating complex visualisations (dhyana) within the ritual and meditative process.
Gesture and Utterance
Inseparably associated with visualisation are the two practices of ritual hand gestures or mudras and the utterance of mantra. There is a variety of mudras that accompany ritual, described in various texts including foundational ritual texts such as the Mrgendragama?
The term mudra, 'seal', is rich, with levels of meaning that exceed the primary reference to gesture. Its principal designation is to hand gestures that accompany ritual action; hence it might be seen as the gestural equivalent of mantra. Mudra is the gestural form of the deity. Yet the term can refer not only to ritual gestures that 'seal' and protect the body but to practices that seal power within it in the form of semen: the practice of the vajroli mudra in which mixed sexual fluids are retracted into the penis for the purpose of gaining power, 4 and the khecarl-mudra of hatha yoga, the practice of turning the tongue back above the palate in order to drink the nectar of immortality dripping from the thousand petalled lotus at the crown.' The term mudra is even used for levels of the cosmos, perhaps in the sense that one level is sealed off from the next. Andre Padoux has outlined the meanings and contexts of the term's occurrence, especially with reference to the Vdmakesvarimata-tantra and to Abhinavagupta. 6 Mudra, explains Abhinavagupta, is of four sorts, done with body, hands, speech or mind and he gives an etymology (nirukta) of the word: that it 'is so called in the sastras because it is that which gives, that which bestows, upon the self, through the body {dehadv arena), a bliss which is the attainment of one's real nature'. 7 Mudra is not simply a ritual gesture but a reflection (pratibimha) of a deity and energy (sakti) that liberates beings from all conditions of existence. The Yoginihrdaya gives ten kinds of mudra as hand gestures which are aspects of the deity Tripurasundarl, and indeed only discusses their cosmic significance as ten aspects of her energy of action. Padoux observes that the procedure of the mudras takes place on several levels, the divine-cosmic, the corporeal-mental and the ritual, and 'brings into play, through thought and bodily action, a cosmic, mental and corporeal totality'. 8
Mantra is connected to mudra in that as mudra is the expression of the deity in the body through gesture, so mantra is the sonic form of the god. It is not within the scope of this work to offer a systematic study of mantras; such study can be seen in the works of Andre Padoux 9 and the important volume of papers published by Alper, 10 and Gonda's important paper is still germane to the topic. 11 In the tantric traditions mantra is the sound form of the deity empowered by the master and given at initiation. The master, says the Malini,
illuminates the energy of mantra (mantravirya), 11 and Ksemaraja in his commentary on the Siva-sutras links the guru with the energy of mantra and mudra. u This notion of mantravirya is important in that as the master enlivens the mantra, brings it to life as he would the icon of a deity, so the mantravirya is internalised by the practitioner. Through mantra his body is brought to life as the divine body; the repetition of mantra (japa) is clearly an entextualisation of the body. This has to be well taught (susiksita) says Abhinavagupta. Although the mantra comes through the mouth of the master its real source is pure consciousness, absolute subjectivity (aham), which is the greatest mantra. 14 Mantra embodies the energy of the deity, which is activated by the master and through its repetition, thereby enabling the adept, in Gonda's words, 'to exercise power over the potencies manifesting in it, to establish connections between the divinity and himself, or to realise his identity with that divinity' 11
In his study of Ksemaraja's commentary on the Siva-sutras, Alper shows how mantras must be taken on a number of levels, in a social context (attitudes, expectations, socialisation) and in an epistemological context as 'tools for engendering (recognizing) a certain state of affairs'. 1 '' They also have illocutionary force in so far as uttering the mantra is the performance of a ritual action, although we must be aware here of the subtlety of the tantric cosmology that links mantras to worlds, sign to function. 17 Different mantras (and therefore different deities) correspond to or have their source in different levels of the cosmical hierarchy, as Padoux has shown. 18 We might say that mantras embody the vibrational energy of a higher level of the cosmos and/or deity. By repeating the mantra the adept is attempting to access or conform to the mantra's source. As this source is textual and revealed, the internalisation of the mantra is making the body conform to the textual revelation. Repeating mantras is entextualising the body.
Icon
We have then, different forms of the tantric deity internalised by the practitioner: the icon of inner vision, the mudra as an expression of the deity, and the sound-form of the deity in mantra in
all tantric traditions, including the Buddhist where visions of the body become highly ornate. 19 The inner vision and mantra of the deity also have external correlates in the icon. This is particularly important in external worship which follows divinisation and mental worship. The inner vision of the deity and retinue, which is the mandala, has an external correlate installed and empowered as a temporary focus for daily rites or on a more permanent basis as a temple icon. The temple itself is an icon of the deity and the deity's body. The identification of the temple with the deity is a standard idea, well documented in medieval Hindu kingdoms (see pp. 81-3). As vision is to the practitioner's body, so the icon in the temple is to the temple as a whole. The representation of the body of the deity at the heart of the temple is a correlate to the inner vision of the deity by the practitioner, and as the external practice can be seen as an extension of the inner practice of mental worship, so the temple itself can be seen as an extension of the icon at its centre - the extended body of the deity extended in precise ways as laid down in tantric revelation.
The material representation of the deity in the image or icon (murti, vigraha, bimbo) is the correlate of the deity within the practitioner's body; indeed, the traditions of the left tend to disparage physical manifestations of the deity as inferior. The representations that remain generally follow the descriptions in the texts; material reality follows textual prescriptions. A number of texts contain iconographic descriptions of pantheons of deities, of particular note being the sixteenth century Tantrasara by Krsnananda, 20 edited and translated by Pal, and three texts translated by Buhnemann: the Mantramahodadhi, also of the sixteenth century, the tenth-century Prapancasara, and the slightly later Saradatilika by Laksmana. 21 Buhnemann observes that these texts, while being tantric, were also Smarta, composed by tantric, orthodox Smarta Brahmans for Brahmans. A discussion of this material, generally much later than the texts that have been our main concern here, would not contribute much to our argument; nevertheless it is significant that the bodies of the deities are represented in plastic form. Within the tantric imaginaire, this plastic expression is a physical manifestation of a higher power, at least once made subject to ritual invocation. We have, then, a two-stage process
of the forming of the icon in accordance with iconographic texts, followed by the empowering of the image, the bringing down of the deity into it by the qualified tantric priest. The icon is divinised in a way that directly parallels the divinisation of the body; the icon becomes the body of the deity and the mantra energised by the guru becomes the body of the deity, as the human body becomes divinized through the bhutasuddhi and nyasa.
Indexicality
The practices of vision or visualisation (dhydna), gesture (mudra) and divinizing the icon (miirti, bimba, vigraha) are shared across the tantric traditions. To establish the idea of variable indexicality more firmly we need to take a short, technical diversion, looking at the language our texts use for ritual meditation or visualisation. 22 The verbs used for ritual meditation or visualisation are from the roots smr, dhyd, bhu. caus., and cint. The term smr, 'to remember', is particularly interesting, having a wider semantic field than simply recalling something past. Although a more thorough study of its occurrences would be needed to substantiate the claim fully, the term seems to refer to the holding of a mental image in imagination. 23 In terms of grammar in the texts we have presented, these verbs are generally used in the third-person optative, the mood expressing a wish, apart from gerundives, which is all-pervasive in these texts and is nothing unusual, but is perhaps significant in supporting our claim about the body becoming inscribed by the text. Let us take three random examples of the use of the optative from the Jayakhya.
1. In context of the destruction of the earth element we read: '[The practitioner] should visualize a quadrangular, yellow earth, marked with the sign of thunder'. 24
2. At the completion of the dissolution of the water element, 'with the inhaled breath he should bring to mind, O twice-born one, the body is its own sacred diagram, completely filled with that [water element].' 2 '
3. In the dissolution of the air element 'he should meditate upon [the air element] pervading from the throat to the place of the navel.' 26
In these examples the main verb, 'he should meditate' ... etc, is in the third-person singular optative, a mood which, according to the famous grammarian Panini, is used in five senses: to denote a command (vidhi), a summons (nimantrana), an invitation (amantrana), a respectful command (adhista), an enquiry (samprasna) or a request (prarthana). 27 All of these senses have the implication of conditions; that the performance of certain actions will lead to certain future effects. Indeed, the optative implies action and its effects in future time, as it cannot refer to the past or to the actualised present. As used here, the optative corresponds to Panini's analysis in that the Pancaratrin's religious discipline (vrata) is a command from the lord {vidhi, as in 'you must go to the village' - grdmam bhavdn gacchet), and is also an invitation (amantrana, as in 'do sit here' — iha bhavdn dsita) or a request from an authoritative source (prarthana, 'I would like to study grammar' - vyakaranam adhlylya).
The analysis of the optative mood within different schools tended to focus upon the relationship between the person or text uttering the injunction, the receiver, and the action to be performed. According to one commentator on Panini, Nagesabhatta, the first four definitions (vidhi etc.) can be included within a fifth, namely pravartana or 'instigation', an activity on the part of one person which leads to another's performing an action. There is a sequence of implication in the use of the optative. Namely, that the instigation is uttered by an authoritative person (dpta); that there is nothing inhibiting the instigation; and that the 'instigatee' infers that the action he is being asked to perform is something he desires and is achievable. 28 Nagesa defines the qualified person as being one who is free from confusion, anger and so on, and who does not perform actions that lead to undesired results. A vidhi, he says, is connected with certain properties of an action, the property of being a means to something desired (istasadhyatva), its feasibility (krtisddhyatva), and the absence of inhibitory factors (pratibandhakabhava)} 9 The use of the optative in our texts is therefore consonant with this understanding.
There is therefore an imperative to perform mental action as prescribed in these texts, in the sense that if a certain course of action is undertaken then certain results will follow, a fact that can be inferred from the imperative coming from an authoritative source. Indeed, the
terms smaret (e.g. at 10.34a), cintayet (e.g. at 10.28a), dhyayet (e.g. at 10.54a) and bhavayet (e.g. at 10.46a) are the same grammatical form as terms denoting physical actions, such as imposing or infusing the body with mantra {nydset, e.g. at 10.66b). In this sense, it would seem that the use of the optative in the Tantras is akin to its use in the Vedas, as in the injunction 'one desirous of heaven should perform the jyotistoma sacrifice' (jyotistomena svargakdmo yajet). 30 There is no grammatical distinction within these texts between actions performed 'in the mind' and actions performed 'with the body'. Indeed the grammar points in quite the opposite direction to a mind/body dualism, namely that mental action is directly akin to physical action, and that as physical action has effect in the ritual realm, so too does mental action. This is because the hierarchical cosmology assumed in these ritual operations is a 'magical' cosmology that enables actions (including mental action) to have effects at spatially and temporally distinct locations.
One might speculate further that the use of the optative, with its implication of possible future action, is related to the imagination or the metaphorical space in which events and abstractions are projected; a projection which is permitted by the very structure of languages with at least three tenses. 31 While, as Lakoff and Johnson have shown, all of language is pervaded by metaphor, 32 the use of the optative is particularly suggestive of the possibility of metaphor and of the kinds of mapping and overcoding on to the body that we find in our texts. The terms ksipet and nydset imply that the adept should project the mantra or image into the metaphorical space of his creative imagination. This is indeed a mental action that has effect in that metaphorical space, and will have consequences for the practitioner in terms of liberation at death.
Reading
The use of language and metaphorical space of projected meaning allows for the identification of the self with the implied T of the texts. While I have developed this in relation to scriptural traditions elsewhere, 33 we need briefly to restate this fundamental idea here.
Reading these texts through a dialogical lens, the use of the optative tells us something of the relationship between the 'reader' and the 'text', and tells us something about the nature of the self assumed. In one conception, the fundamental structure of semiotics is an addresser transmitting a message to an addressee, who receives it, almost in a passive fashion, and decodes it. This requires 'contact' between the two, a 'code' in which the message is formulated, and a 'context' that gives sense to the message. 34 In the case of the JS, for example, the addresser, the redactor of the text, sends the message of the text (the ritual representation) to an addresser, the Pancaratrin, who receives it. If, however, we look at ritual representation through the lens of dialogism, we are presented with a different picture. The dialogists reject the emphasis on language as a purely abstract system, seeing it rather as constantly changing and adapting to concrete historical situations and not, to use Volosinov's phrase, as 'a stable and always self-equivalent signal'. 3 ' On this view the meaning of words is governed by the contexts of their occurrence, so utterance can be accounted for only as a social phenomenon. Language is a process generated in the interaction of speakers within social contexts. Turning to our texts, whereas a structuralist reading of the JS and ISP might present the Brahmanical addressee in purely passive terms as the decoder of a message from the text (and from the past), a dialogical reading would see both addresser and addressee as constructing the text's meaning. That is, there is a dialogical relationship between 'sender' and 'receiver' and meaning is constructed between the two rather than passively received and an original meaning decoded. This is more in line with Peircean semiotics, where the basic pattern is threefold, of a sign, that to which it points, and the interpreter. 36
This general relationship between the 'reader' and the 'addresser' can be more closely analysed and textually instantiated in terms of what might be called a relationship between extra-textual indexicality and intra-textual anaphora. The dialogical relationship is between the implicit (Brahman) reader, a notional T, and the 'characters' of the text who yet can function indexically as Ts. Indeed, we have already encountered deixis or metalepsis in our study, the idea that first- and second-person pronouns and locative and temporal adverbs
such as 'here' and 'there' can be contrasted with anaphoric terms which refer to a previous item in a discourse (such as 'he', 'she', 'it' and 'they'). Thus indexicality always refers outside of itself to a context (as would be indicated by 'you' or 'there'), whereas anaphora does not refer outside of the utterance; the term 'he', for example, would refer to a previously named person. The qualities of indexicality are both generalised and referential, inexorably linked to the context of utterance. When we shift to anaphoric terms, to the third person for example, discourse ceases to have the indexical qualities of deixic language. Anaphora is always discourse-internal in that terms such as 'he' or 'her' are substitutes for some previously named person or entity. As has been discussed by Urban in an important paper, a complication arises when apparently indexical terms, particularly the floating signifier T, are used anaphorically in direct discourse. 37 T becomes anaphoric when placed in a sentence such as 'the Brahman said "I perform the sacrifice'" where the T does not refer to anything outside of the narrative itself. The T is an empty sign in the sense that it is not referential with respect to a specific reality. This is important in the context of the ritual representations in tantric texts.
The Jayclkhya, for example, is a dialogue between the Lord (Bhagavan) and the sage Narada, where Narada is addressed in the second person. The Lord uses the imperative, 'hear this' (tac chrnu), which is anaphoric in that the implied tvam ('you') refers to the sage often named in the vocative ('O Narada'). Yet ritual prescriptions are usually in the third-person singular optative, as we have seen above, in phrases such as 'he should visualise' or 'remember' or 'know'. The third person here takes the place of the second person directed to Narada and indirectly to the reader of the text, but its use serves to formalize and distance the discourse from any direct indexical reference. The ritualist 'reader' of the text is being addressed by the Lord indirectly through Narada, who stands in for the practitioner. Indeed the Mlmamsaka school of philosophy corroborates this general point in claiming that the use of the third person optative in vedic injunction actually refers to 'me', the reader of the text, performing the ritual injunction. 38 We might make a similar claim of the ritual injunction here. This linguistic form, the
objectification of the ritual performer, has the effect of controlling the dialogic relations between the characters and the reader, and of allowing their identification in imagination. In the passages cited above, the anaphoric third person is indirectly understood by the text's receiver or reader to be referring to the indexical T. The reader understands that the third person actually refers to 'me' (the indexical T) through Narada. The object of the second-person discourse is also the grammatical subject of the third-person optatives, and moreover indirectly refers outside of the text to the reader.
In this way, the text's meaning is constructed through the identification of the indexical T, the tantric Brahmanical reader of the text, with the third person understood as though indexical. Yet being articulated in the third person optative also maintains an impersonal voice concordant with the claimed universality of the revelation. The use of the optative allows for the imaginative identification of the indexical T with the implied T of the text itself. The grammar of the text allows for the imaginative identification of the reader with the representation of the ritual practitioner and the structure of the texts' language, its ritual injunctions, allows for variable indexicality.
Through this kind of analysis we can see how the text achieves the replication of ritual processes, and so the perpetuation of tradition, through the identification of the indexical T with the anaphoric third person in the optative mood. The third-person optative functions as a substitute for an anaphoric T in the text: the anaphoric T is deferred through the third person. The social agent - the tantric Brahmanical reader - wishes to close the gap between the indexical T (himself) and the deferred anaphoric T of the texts through imagination and projection into the metaphorical space allowed by the use of the optative. Imagination provides awareness of the possibility of transformation and the possibility of behaving in a way that allows the goals of the tradition, internalized through the identification of the two Ts, to be realised. The replication of the text and the truth-value it contains for a community, suggests furthermore that the text, as Urban and Silverstein have argued, is a trope of culture which is constantly decontextualised, or liberated from a specific historical context, and recontextualised in a new
context. 39 Texts are the result of continuous cultural processes that create and re-create them over again as meaningful objects or tropes, which are constructed as having de-temporalised and de-spacialised meanings.
By way of conclusion, then, we can see this process occurring in the divinisation of the body in the tantric ritual texts. These texts transcend the boundaries of their production and are reconstituted through the generations, especially through the identification of the reader of the text with the ritualist represented. The textual representation of the bhutasuddhi is made meaningful both by the content of the texts and by the construction of its meaning in the imagination by the Brahmanical reader. One of the tasks in the study of tantric traditions becomes the inquiry into the ways in which these texts have been transmitted, their internalisation by the individual practitioner, and the function of these texts within the practices of the tradition. Through focusing on the divinisation of the body, it is hoped that this work has made some contribution to this understanding.
Epilogue
We have come a long way in our journey into the tantric body. In many ways this account is preliminary in that there are so many other texts that could be drawn on, critical editions of many texts are still to be made, and the map of historical trajectory of tantric traditions is far from complete. However, I hope to have presented a coherent picture of the processes at work in the development of representation and practice in some tantric material, namely the Saiva and Pancaratra traditions. I also hope to have contributed to a corrective reading through presenting the tantric body in terms of text and tradition rather than in terms of a popular misconception of a dislocated 'experience'. The tantric body that thrived in tantric civilisation for centuries is not that of modernity. I hope to have shown how the tantric body in tradition is less reified than its modernist, literalist rendering, and how the subtle anatomy of the tantric body must be located in text and tradition and seen in terms of the body's divinisation, which is, I have argued, the body being inscribed by the text. This is, second, to show that the tantric body is not only less reified than its modern version but more conservative and tradition-based. The tantric body has been established within traditions of specific revelation, ritual practice and initiatory teachings from which it cannot be separated. Attempts to identify the tantric body with eroticism in the West are distortions of a rich
and complex tradition. This distortion has taken two routes, one a laudation of an imagined tantric body as being a way of maximising erotic pleasure, the other a condemnation of the tantric body as being irrational in promoting 'magic' and 'immorality', an attitude found in nineteenth-century scholarship and in Hinduism itself in the trajectory stemming from the Hindu renaissance.
Yet while the tantric traditions are attenuated, the traditions that do remain - in Kerala, for example - will inevitably continue to undergo change and probable erosion. I suspect that the tantric body is at odds with modernity because it can only be understood in relation to a hierarchical cosmology in which the material world is a coagulation of more subtle forces. Although there have been attempts to reconcile or synthesise a hierarchical world-view with an evolutionary perspective (in the work of Aurobindo, for example) the order of being in the tantric universe remains at odds with a materialist, evolutionary understanding of the world. The tantric body of tradition is also at odds with contemporary expectations about gender and a feminist discourse that implicitly questions and critiques the tantric body.
So does the tantric body have anything to say to us today? The answer to this question is complex. Clearly there are elements within the tantric body that have appeal in Western modernity but that have been distorted through their extirpation from their historical and textual locations. This appeal is inevitably linked to the critique of religion as the history of error and the professed liberation of the individual from a straitjacket of conservative, Christian morality. There are, of course, Hindu-based traditions in the West, such as Siddha Yoga, the Nityananda Institute, and the Western inheritors of the Laksman Joo's 'Kashmir Saivism', which claim to inherit the tantric traditions, and indeed sometimes guru lineages can be traced (as in the case of Laksman Joo), but inevitably these traditions are strongly affected by modernity and the tantric body they promote is not the tantric body of tradition. While all traditions undergo constant reinvention in new generations, traditions in modernity have been particularly susceptible to erosion. But the tantric body does contain resources that could arguably contribute to discourse in late modernity. Because the tantric body is so much a part of the
wider cosmos, there are perhaps ecological implications contained within the traditions that those interested can draw upon, and there are transformative implications of tantric practice that could be a resource for those engaged with other traditions such as Christianity. I am sceptical that Hindu tantric traditions could in their richness be transplanted outside of the particular conditions of their past flourishing in South Asia. The Buddhist tantric traditions from Tibet have had considerable success, but the Hindu tantric traditions do not have the infrastructure or institutional history to affect such a successful transfer across cultures. Yet our study of the tantric body reveals a number of important things. The tantric body shows us the importance of text and tradition in the construction of human lives. It shows us a particular way of conceptualising the body distinct from either a Western dualism or materialism, it shows us how subjectivity is formed by tradition, and it shows us that such a tradition-formed subjectivity must be distinguished from Western individuality. There is arguably a wisdom here that has implications across cultures: that subjective transformations occur not through the assertion of individuality but through subjecting self and body to a master and to tradition.
APPENDIX
The Jaydkhya-samhitd, Chapter n
Now the procedure for fixing the mantra (Nyasa)
1-3 The reciter of mantras, whose body is completely pure [due to the purification of the body rite or bhutasuddhi\, should perform the fixing of mantras [on the body]. Only through the imposition of mantras can be become equal to the God of Gods. By this worship he wins power {adhikara) over all outcomes and gains all supernatural powers. He will then be fearless, even in a place crowded with bad people, and attain victory over accidental death.
Making the throne
4—5 Upon the raised plank on the ground previously described [at 10.6], [the practitioner should] set down an ocean and lotus [in his imagination]. He should make effort with his own mantra accompanied by visualisation, then having fixed and visualised Tarksya [i.e. Visnu's mount] he should sit down.
Making a protective wall around the throne
6—9 Having repeatedly purged the directions with the Weapon mantra {astra) and visualised the wall outside the throne like a web of arrows, the practitioner should cover the wall with the protecting mantra {kavaca), whose form is a shining breastplate. Like the perfected ones dwelling in heaven, O twice born one, he can become invisible. He should perform the fixing of mantras on himself. He should perform
the protection according to this ordinance, since they [the demons?] take the strength of the mantra-born one who is not protected. Having first fixed mantras on his hands, he should then perform the fixing of mantras on his body.
Fixing mantras on the hand
10 The root {mulct) mantra followed by the mantra of form (murti) is on his thumb, followed by the remaining deities in due order beginning with the forefinger.
11-13 Having fixed all [the deities] ending with the little finger, he should fasten the [other] parts of the body [with mantra]. [He should establish the deities] in due order beginning with the Heart mantra on the little finger and so on. The Weapon mantra is on the thumb, whilst the Eye mantra is on the tips of the fingers. The Man-lion (nrimha) should be fixed on the right hand and the sage Kapila on the left. Beginning with the left hand [he should fix] the Boar mantra on the fingers of both [hands]. The Kaustubha mantra is on the right palm and the Vanamala mantra on the other.
14—16 He should fix the Lotus mantra in the middle of the right palm and the Conch mantra on the left palm. Afterwards, [he should fix] the brilliant, Disc-weapon mantra there as well. He should fix the Club mantra on the right hand, flaming with its own splendour. Beginning from the right thumb to the least part [the little finger] at the end of the left, he should fix the Garuda mantra on all ten fingers in due order, followed by the Bond mantra on the palm of the left hand and the Goad mantra on the right.
17 He should establish the Heart [and other mantras] on both hands in due order. [Then he should fix] the secondary mantras, the five Seed mantras, beginning with Satya and ending with Aniruddha.
18-iab Then on both hands, from the fingernails to the end of the wrist, he should fix the Seven Syllable mantra [i.e. the vyapaka mantra], which is laid over all the other mantras. By this ordinance he should perform the fixing of the hands mentioned previously.
Fixing mantras on the body
19c—22b The powerful, supreme Sakti is located in the cave of the heart centre. Her form is the wind and [her power] is established as tenfold. By her will through the current of the path of the hands, [ten
channels of power] have gone out [from her]. The fingers are thus regarded as containing the ten channels. So, O best of twice-born ones, having first fixed the horde of mantras in the body of the Lord where they are known as [his] powers (sakti), one should then fix the elements.
22c-24b After placing the mass of mantras correctly on the body, the root mantra on the body as before from head to feet, and having fixed [mantras] all over himself from his feet to the end of his head, he should perform the fixing of all parts [of the body] with the mantra of form.
24c-25b [He should fix mantras] on his head, mouth, and left and right buttocks, in due order, then on the heart, on the back, in the navel, on the hips, on the knees, and then on the feet.
25c-20,b In succession, beginning with «a and ending with /za there are twenty-two syllables. After fixing the mantra of form he should then fix the deities. On the left shoulder he should fix LaksmI and on the right Kirti. Next he should fix Jaya on the right hand and Maya on the left. Following [that he should fix] the Limb mantras, [namely] the Heart [mantra] and so on. The Heart mantra is placed on the breast and the Head mantra on the head. The Tuft mantra is on the tuft and Breastplate mantra on the shoulders. He should fix the Eye mantra on both eyes and the Weapon mantra on the palms of the hands, O twice-born one.
29c—3ic The Man-lion [he should fix] on the right ear and the Kaplila mantra at the throat. 1 Having fixed the chief mantra, Varaha, at the lower part of the left ear, [he should then fix] the Kaustubha mantra in the middle of the chest and the Vanamalika mantra at the throat. Then [he should fix] the Lotus mantra and so on, as before [in the right palm], and, O twice-born one, the great Garuda mantra between the two thighs.
3id~35b Then he should fix the group of secondary mantras beginning with Aniruddha, O best of twice-born ones, in sequence on the feet, between navel and penis, at the navel, at the heart, and at the base of the tuft. He should once more fix the fivefold Satya mantra and so on in succession, at the end of the aperture of Brahma, in the middle of the heart, in the lotus of the navel, between the navel and penis, and on the feet, in correct order. Then he should apply the great mantra of seven syllables of Visnu, the Lord Narayana, to the body from the head, like armour.
35c—36. All mantras are located in him and he is in them. He is the supreme power (karana) of this group of mantras and stands at their head. Therefore one should fix him over all.
37 _ 39 D The circle of powers is variously fixed [in this way] from the heart to the navel, O best of sages, and he establishes their connection through mantra. Having performed the fixing [of mantras] in this way, he should next perform his own hand gesture for the mass of mantras that have been fixed, and for all of the root mantras and so on, on the body and on the hands. [These gestures] are associated with his mantra and how they are fixed [on the body].
39C-40 [The practitioner] should then visualise himself with his body in the form of Visnu, possessing the six great qualities, by means of the visualisation practice previously described. 2 In this way his own form and the form of the universe are imagined as possessing [a single] form.
4i~43b I am the Lord Visnu, I am Narayana, Hari, and I am Vasudeva, all pervading, the abode of beings,' without taint. Thus having put down the ego [he establishes] a firm form, O sage. The best practitioner speedily becomes absorbed in that [form], due to the fixing of mantras, due to visualisation, and due to being in the midst of contemplation born from yoga.
43c—44b The action of fixing has been concisely taught to you by me. Practising diligently you must guard [this ritual knowledge] against others.
The Mantras Used in these Ritual Sequences
This table is derived from the mantras given by the editor of the Jayakhya, Embar Krishnamacharya, pp. 31-7. Rastelli also gives a list of mantra names associated with nyasa, Philosophisch-theologisch Grundanschaungen der Jayakhyasamhita, pp. 243-4.
The mula mantra with the murti mantra
om ksim ksih namah, narayanaya visvatmane hrim svaha
The Sakti mantras
Laksml mantra om lam laksmyai namah, paramalaksmavasthitayai lam srim hrim svaha
Klrti mantra om kam kirttyai namah, sadoditanantdavigrahayai hrim
krim svaha Jaya mantra om jam jayayai namah, ajitadhamavasthitayai jam jrim
svaha Maya mantra om mam mayayai namah, mohatitapadasritayai mam
rnrim svaha
The ariga mantras
Hrt mantra om ham namah, om hamsah sucisade hrdayaya namah Siras mantra om ham namah, om parabrahmasirase svaha Sikha mantra om him namah, om pradyotanisikhayai vasat kavaca mantra om hum namah, om sasvatasaranyakavacaya hum netra mantra om haum namah, prakasaprajvalanetraya vausat astra mantra om hah namah, 'diptodrptaprabha astraya phat
The vaktra mantras
Nrsimha mantra om tjrom tj dmruaum namah, jvalanayutadiptaye
nrsimhaya svaha Kapila mantra om thum tghruaum namah, anantabhasaya kapilaya
svaha Varaha mantra om tglom tsvum namah, krsnapihgalaya parahaya
svaha
The lafichana mantras
Kaustubha mantra om tham rhrum tham namah prabhatmane
kaustubhaya svaha Vanamala mantra om lsbim namah sthalajalodbhutabhusite vanamale
svaha Padma mantra om bsum namah srinivasapadmaya svaha Sahkha mantra om hum hum hum namah mahasarikhaya svaha Cakra mantra om jrah krah phat hum namah phatphatphadvisnucakraya
svaha Gada mantra om gmlem jlm namah sahasrasrigade svaha Garuda mantra om rksruaum rkhruauh namah anantagataye garudaya
svaha Pdsa mantra om rnam kadhdha kadhdha thatha parapasaya svaha Ankusa mantra om lrm krm nisitaghonaya svaha
The upahga mantras
Satya bija mantra om ksaum om Vasudeva bija mantra om hum om Sankarsana bija mantra om sum om Pradyumna bija mantra om sim om Aniruddha bija mantra om sam om
Abbreviations and Sources
AD Agamadambara of Jayantha Bhatta. V. Raghavan and A Thakur (eds.),
Agamadambara, Otherwise called Sanmatanataka of Jayantha Bhatta (Darbhanga: Mithila Institute, 1964).
AG Agamapramanya ofYamuna. M. Narasimhachary (ed.),Agamapramanya
of Yamuna (Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1976). English translation by J.A.B. van Buitenen, Yamuna's Agamapramanya or Treatise on the Validity ofPdncaratra. Sanskrit Text and English Translation (Madras: Ramanuja Research Society, 1971).
Ajit Arthasdstra. R.R Kangle, The Kautilya Arthasdstra (University of
Bombay, 2nd edn, 1969).
Ast Astadhyayi of Pdnini. Trans. Sumitra M. Katre (Delhi: MLBD,
1989).
Bhut Bhutasuddhi. Transcript no. 656 (Pondicherry: Institut Francais
d'Indologie, n.d.).
DH Dehasthadevatdcakrastotra. H. Sri Ragunath Temple Manuscript
Library, Jammu, pp. 205-6, 290-92. Copy courtesy of Alexis Sanderson. French translation by L. Silburn, Hymnes aux Kali, La Roue des Energies Divine (Paris: de Boccard, 1975), pp. 85-6. Source unattributed, but probably from the text published by Pandey which differs slightly from the Ragunath Temple manuscript.
IP Isvarapratyabhijnd-kdrika by Utpalaseva. Ed. M.S. Kaul (Srinagar:
KSTS no. 34, 1921).
IPV Isvarapratyabhijndvimarsini by Abinavagupta, vol.i, ed. M.R. Sastri
(Srinagar: KSTS, no. 22, 1918); vol. 2, ed. M.S. Kaul (Srinagar: KSTS no. 33, 1918). English translation by K.C. Pandey, edited with K.A.S. Iyer, Bhaskari, 3 vols (Delhi: MLBD reprint, 1986 [1938, 1950, 1954]).
Abbreviations and Sources
195
ISG Isdnasivagurudeva-paddhati. Ed. M.M.T. Ganapati Sastrl with an
introduction by N.P. Unni, Isdnasivagurudeva Paddhati of Isdnasiva Gurndeva, 4 vols (Delhi and VaranasI: Bharatiya Vidya Prakashan, 1988).
JS Jaydkhya-samhitd of the Pdhcardtra Agama. Ed. E. Krishnamacharya
(Baroda: Gaekwad's Oriental Series, no. 54, 1931).
KA Kdmikdgama (Uttara Bhdga). Ed. Sri C. Svaminathasivacarya
(Madras: South Indian Archarkar Association, 1988).
Kaul Kaulajhananirnaya and Some Minor Texts of the School of Matsyen-
dranath. Ed. P.C. Bagchi (Calcutta Sanskrit Series, 1934). English translation by Michael Magee, Kaulajhdna-nirnaya of the School of Matsyendrandtha Tantra Granthamala no. 12 (Varanasi: Prachaya Prakashan, 1986).
KMT Kubjikdmata-tantra. Critical edition by T. Goudriaan and JA.
Schoterman, The Kubjikdmatatantra, Kulalikdmnaya Version (Leiden: Brill, 1988).
KSTS Kashmir Series of Texts and Studies.
KirT Kirana-tantra. Bhatta Rdmakantha 's Commentary on the Kiranatantra,
vol. 1 chapters 1-6. Critical edition and annotated translation by Dominic Goodall (Pondicherry: Institut Francais d'Indologie, 1998).
KT Kuldrnava-tantra. Edited and translated by Arthur Avalon (London:
Tantrik Texts vol. 5, 1917).
KumT Kumdratantra. Jean Filliozat, Le Kumdratantra de Rdvana et les textes paralleles Indiens, Tibetains, Chinois, Cambodgien, et Arabe (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1937).
LT Laksmi-tantra. A Pdhcardtra dgama. Ed. Pandit V. Krihnamacharya
(Madras: Adyar Library and Research Centre, 1959). English translation by Sanjukta Gupta, The Laksmi Tantra (Leiden: Brill, 1972).
Manu Manavadharmasdstra, the Code of Manu. Critically edited by J. Jolly
(London: Triibner, 1887). Manusastravivarana.}. Duncan Derrett M. Bharuci's Commentary on the Manusmrti (the Manu-sdstra-vivarana, books 6-12), text, translation and notes, vol. 1 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1975).
MManj Mahdrthamahjari with parimala by Mahesvardnanda. Ed. M.R. Sastrl (Srinagar: KSTS, no. 11, 1918). French translation by Lilian Silburn, La Mahdrthamanjari de Mahesvardnanda (Paris: de Boccard, 1968).
MNPrak Mahdnayaprakds'a edited by K. Sambasiva Sastrl, Trivandrum Sanskrit Series 130 (Trivandrum: Government Press, 1937).
Mrg Mrgendrdgama (Knydpdda et Carydpdda) avec le commentaire de
Bhatta Nardyanakntha. Critically edited by N.R. Bhatt (Pondicherry: Institut Francais d'Indologie, 1962). French translation by Helene Brunner-Lachaux, Mrgendrdgama: section des rites et section du comportement avec la vrtti de Bhatta Nardyanakantha (Pondicherry: Institut Francais d'Indololgie, 1985). French translation by Michel Hulin, Mrgendrdgama: sections de la doctrine et du yoga avec la vrtti de Bhattandrdyanakantha et la dipika dAghordsivacarya. (Pondicherry: Institut Francais d'Indololgie, 1980).
The Tantric Body
MVT Malinivijayottara-tantra. Ed. M.S. Kaul (Sringar: KSTS no. 37,
1922). MVT vart Malinislokavdrttika. Jiirgen Hanneder, Abhinavagupta 's Philosophy of
Revelation: Malinislokavdrttika I, 1-399 (Groningen: Egbert Forsten,
1998). MTP Matahgaparamesvaragama. See below.
MTPVrt Matahgaparamesvaragama (vidydpada), avec le commentaire de Bhatta
Rdmakantha. Critically edited by N.R. Bhatt (Pondicherry: Institut
Francais d'Indologie, 1977). NeT Netra-tantra with uddyota by Ksemardja. Ed. M.S. Kaul, 2 vols
(Srinagar: KSTS nos 46 and 61, 1926 and 1927). NJ Nyayamahjari of Jayantha Bhatta. English translation by V.N. Jha
(Delhi: Sri Satguru publications, 1995). PH Pratyabhijhahrdaya by Ksemaraja. Ed. J.C. Chatterji (Sringar: KSTS
no. 3, 1911). English translation by Jaideva Singh, Pratyabhijnahrdaya
(Delhi: MLBD, 1980). PS Paratndrthasdra by Abhinavagupta with vivrti by Yogaraja. Ed. J.C.
Chatterjee (Srinagar: KSRTS no. 7, 1916). French translation by
Lilian Silburn, La Paratndrthasdra (Paris: de Boccard, 1957). Ptlv Pardtrisikdlaghuvrtti by Abhinavagupta. Edited with notes by Mahama-
hopadhyaya Pandit Mukunda Rama Shastri (Srinagar: KSTS, vol. 18,
1918). French translation by Andre Padoux, La Pardtrisikdlaghuvrtti
de Abhinavagupta, Publications de l'lnstitut de Civilisation Indienne,
fasc. 38 (Paris: de Boccard, 1975). English translation by Paul Muller-
Ortega, The Triadic Heart of Siva: Kaula Tanrism of Abhinavagupta in
the Non-dual Shaivism of Kashmir (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989), pp.
205-32. Ptv Paratrisikdvivarana. Jaideva Singh, Abhinavagupta: A Trident of
Wisdom, Text and translation (Delhi: MLBD, 1989). RA Rauravagama. Critical edition by N.R. Bhatt, 3 vols (Pondicherry:
Institut Francais d'Indologie, 1988). RAot Rauravottardgama. Critical edition by N.R. Bhatt (Pondicherry:
Institut Francais d'Indologie, 1983). Sard Sdrdhatrisatikdlottardgama avec le commentaire de Bhatta
Rdmakantha. Critical edition by N.R. Bhatt (Pondicherry: Institut
Francais d'Indologie,i979). SP Silpaprakdsa, a Medieval Orissan Sanskrit Text on Temple Architecture
by Ramacadra Kaulacara. English translation by Alica Boner and
Sadasiva Rath Sarma (Leiden: Brill, 1966). Spand Spandapradipika by Utpalacarya. Ed. Mark S.G. Dyczkowski, The
Spandapradipikd, a Commentary on the Spandakarikd (Varansi: private
publication, 1990). SSP Somasambhupaddhati. Ed. and French trans, by Helene Brunner-
Lachaux, 4 vols (Pondicherry: Institut Francaise d'Indologie, vol. 1,
1963; vol. 2, 1968; vol. 3, 1977; vol. 4, 2000).
SSV Siva-sutra-vimarsini by Ksemaraja. Ed. Jagadisha Chandra Chatterji
(Srinagar: KSTS, vol. i, 1911). English translation by Jaideva Singh
(Delhi: MLBD, 1979). SVT Svacchundabhairava-tantra with uddyota by Ksemaraja. Ed. M.S.
Kaul, 7 vols (Srinagar: KSTS, 1921-55); reprinted in 4 vols (Delhi:
Sanskrit Gian Sansthan, 1986). TA Tantraloka by Abhinavagupta with viveka by Jayaratha, 12 vols. Ed.
by M.S. Sastri (vol. 1) and M.S. Kaul (vols 2-12) (Srinagar: KSTS,
1918-38). Edition by R.C. Dwivedi and N. Rastogi, 8 vols (Delhi:
MLBD, 1987). Italian translation by R. Gnoli, La Lucce delle Sucre
Scrittare (Torino: Boringheri, 1972). French translation by Lilian
Silburn and Andre Padoux, La Lumiere sur les Tantras: La Tantraloka
d'Abhinavagupta chapitres ids (Paris: de Boccard, 1998). TatPrak Tattvaprakdsa Siddhdntasaiva darsanam by Bhojadeva with tdtparya-
dipikd andvrtti Commentaries by Sri Kumdradeva and Aghoraiivdcharya.
Ed. Kameshwar Nath Mishra (Varanasi: Chaukhamba Orientalia,
1976). TS Tantrasara by Abhinavagupta. Ed. M.S. Kaul (Srinagar: KSTS no.
17, 1918). TSam Tantrasamuccaya by Narayana with the commentary vimarsim of
Sankara. Ed. M.T Ganapati Sastri with an introduction by B.P. Unni
(Delhi: Nag Publishers, 1990 [1921]. TSG Tantra Sara Sangraha with commentary, critcially edited by M.
Duraiswami Aiyangar (Madras: Government Oriental Manuscripts
Library, 1950). VK Vdkyapddiya by Bhartrhari. Ed. with English translation by K.A.S.
Iyer, 3 vols (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1983). YH Yoginihrdaya. A. Padoux, Le coeur de la yogini: Yoginihrdaya avec le
commentaire Dipikd D'Amrtananda (Paris: de Boccard, 1994). YT Yoni-tantra. J.A. Schoterman, The Yoni Tantra Critically Edited with
Introduction (Delhi: Manohar, 1980).
Notes
Chapter 1
M. Monier-Williams, Hinduism (London: Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, 1880), p. 129.
M. Monier-Williams, Brdhnianism and Hinduism or Religious Life and Thought in India (London: John Murray, 1891 [1883]), p. 190. It is, of course, easy to take pot shots at texts from the colonial past that reflect very different values to those of late modernity. This is not my intention. I wish, rather, to point to one important way in which Tantrism has been represented. Monier Williams is in many ways an exemplary scholar. His value judgements aside, his comments on the texts are remarkably accurate considering the limited knowledge of these traditions available to him.
Bhagavan Shree Rajneesh, The Book of Secrets 1: Discourses on the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra (Poona: Rajneesh Foundation, 1974), pp. 3-4. I take 'first-order discourse' to be the texts of tradition or tradition itself; second-order discourse is the application of methods (such as critical reading, text editing and so on) to the first-order discourse; and third-order discourse is metatheoretical reflection that assumes the second-order discourse but wishes to go beyond this in establishing interpretations and theories that exceed the texts themselves. We might say that a third-order discourse allows reflection on a first-order discourse through its being embedded in that third order, through the second-order discourse. Translated to a terminology of phenomenology, the noema is linked to the noests through the second-order discourse. To use a different kind of terminology, we have a dialogical process of constantly shifting readers; the dialogical process mediated through the structures of reading. I am aware that these are Western, and so contentious, categories to use in
the context of Tantra. I tend not to put such terms in scare quotes. For now I shall simply say that we have to use some categories and some language in which to describe these traditions on to which terminologies of the traditions can be mapped. As will become clear, I do not hold to a strong incommensurability thesis.
6. Inden substitutes this phrase for 'ritual'. R. Inden, 'Introduction: From Philological to Dialogical Texts', in R. Inden, Jonathan S. Walters, and Daud Ali, Querying the Medieval: Texts and the History of Practices in South Asia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 3-28; p. 22.
7. I am indebted to James Gentry for this felicitous phrase. On my understanding of subjectivity, see G. Flood, The Ascetic Self: Subjectivity, Memory and Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 16—19.
8. One particularly pervasive Western reification is 'tantric sex'. See, for example, Val Sampson, Tantra: The Art of Mind Blowing Sex (London: Vermilion, 2000), although many others could be cited. White has argued against this Western appropriation: D. White, The Kiss of the Yogini: 'Tantric Sex' in its South Asian Contexts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), pp, xii-xv, 258.
9. Northrop Frye, Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (Boston MA: Beacon Press, 1947), p. 9.
10. See Hugh Urban, Tantra (California University Press, 2003), especially pp. 203-81. On the pioneer of tantric studies, John Woodroffe, see Kathleen Taylor, Sir John Woodroffe, Tantra and Bengal: An Indian Soul in a European Body'? (Richmond: Curzon Press, 2001).
11. Alexis Sanderson, 'Saivism and the Tantric Traditions', in S. Sutherland et al. (eds), The World's Religions (London: Routledge, 1988), pp. 660-704; pp. 660-61. For an account of the structure of the Saiva tantric canon founded on Sanderson's work, see Mark Dyczkowski, The Canon of the Saivagama and the Kubjika Tantras of the Western Kaula Tradition (Albany NY: SUNY Press, 1988).
12. Sanderson, 'Saivism and the Tantric Traditions', p. 661.
13. Gavin Flood, 'Introduction: Establishing the Boundaries', in G. Flood (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), pp. 1—19;
P- 3-
14. Alexis Sanderson, 'Saivism: Its Development and Impact' (incomplete draft, 2002), p. 4. Note 5 gives full references to the use of the term by the historian Srlvara, who was at the court of Sultan Zain-ul-abidin (r. 1420-70). For the use of the term in Bengal, see J.T O'Connell, 'The Word "Hindu" in Gaudiya Vaisnava Texts', Journal of the American Oriental Society 93/3 (1973), pp. 340-44. Also see Julius Lipner, 'Ancient Banyan: An Inquiry into the Meaning of "Hinduness"', Religious Studies 32 (1996), pp. 109-26.
15. Inden, 'Introduction', p. 22.
16. Alexis Sanderson, 'Vajrayana: Origin and Function', in Mettanando Bhikkhu et al. (eds), Buddhism into the Year 2000 (Bangkok and Los Angeles: Dhammakaya Foundation, 1991), pp. 87-102; 'History Through Textual Criticism in the Study of Saivism, the Pancaratra and the Buddhist Yoginitantras', in Francois Grimal (ed.), Les sources et le temps (Pondicherry: