REFLECTIONS ON THE TANTRAS SUDHAKAR CHATTOPADHYAYA MOTIIAL BANARSIDASS PUBLISHERS PRIVATE LIMITED DELHLFirst Edition Delhi, 1978 Reprinted Delhi, 1990 © MOTILAL BANARSIDASS PUBLISHERS PVT LTD Axt Ricuts Reserved ISBN 81-208-0691-3 Alsoavailable at MOTILAL BANARSIDASS Bungalow Road, Jawahar Nagar, Delhi 1100007 Chowk, Varanasi: 221001 Ashok Raypath, Patna 800 004 24 Race Course Road, Bangalore 560001 120 Royapettah High Road, Mylapore, Madras 600 00¢ PRINTED IN INDIA BY JAINENDRA PRAKASH JAIN AT SHRI JAINENDRA PRESS, A-45 NARAINA INDUSTRIAL AREA, PHASE 1, NEW DELHI 110028 AND PUBLISHED BY NARENDRA PRAKASH JAIN FOR MOTILAL BANARSIDASS PUBLISHERS PVT LTD , BUNGALOW ROAD, JAWAHAR NAGAR, DELHT | 10007PREFACE Tantricism has often been looked upon from the sociological or the Marxist points of view, the former arriving at the con- clusion that it 1s a cult or practice full of vulgarism of the uncul- tured and half-civilised people, and the latter maintaming that it 1s nothing but a crude form of the worship of earth with her fertility often regarded as a femaledeity In the following pages, an attempt has been made to present a brief outline of the system from the point of view of the Tantrics themselves The author has the advantage of living ina place abounding in followers of Tantricism, genume or fake, following the highest philosophy or the meanest methods likely to do myury to enemies or good to friends Some such practices, however, may appear to us to border on the verge of blackart In my treatment of the subject, I have ventured to differ from DC Sircar’s account of the Mahabhérata 1n connection with the fithas and the reasons for the same have been stated in the Addenda My best thanks are due to Professor Dr Dip Kumar Biswas and to Adhyapaka Kanchan Chakravarty, Reader, Kala- Bhavana for drawing my attention to a passage of the Chandogya Upanisad dealing with esotericism and to the artistic represen- tation of the esote1ic form of Tantric Sadhana respectively To Adhyapaka Dr Pranabananda Jash my thanks are also due for taking upon himself the laborious task of proof-reading The indices have been prepared by my wife Dr Latika Chattopadhyaya Santumketan S Chattopadhyaya January 1, 1978C©OYURH RON CONTENTS Preface Abbreviations Introductory Esotericism in the Tantras Further Notes on Esoteric Practices Sakta Pithas On Some Tantric Concepts Bya, Mantra and Gayatri Appendix I On Diagrams and Images Tantias and Magic Appendix II Antiquity of Esoteric Practices in Hindu Sadhana Bibliographical Index General Index Addenda et Corngenda vu 94 97 100 106Apastamba Cam Cat Corpus Des Cat Sans Mss RASB Dictionary EHVS Ep Ind ERE JAOS ASB Manu Nepal Catalogue, Durbar Library Catalogue Num Suppl OST Sects Vaststha Vigsnu ABBREVIATIONS Apastamba Dharmasiitra Cambridge Catalogue Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum. Descripuve Catalogue of Sanskrit Manus- cripts in the (Royal) Asiatic Society of Bengal The Student’s Sanskrit English Dictionary Early Mistory of the Vaishnava Sects Epigraphia Indica Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics Journal of American Onental Society Journal of Asiatic Society of Bengal Manu Samhita Cat Palm-leaf and Selected Paper Manuscripts belonging to the Durbar Library, Nepal Numismatic Supplement Onginal Sanskrit Texts Evolution of Hindu Sects Vasistha Dharmasitra Visnu SmrtiINTRODUCTORY The Saurasamiuta, coped in 941 AD, ‘with two leaves in Gupta characters giving a number of Tantric formulae’, the Aubyikdmatatantra,! Viksvasatattvasanita and Péramesvaramatatantra, in traditional Gupta scripts, make an interesting study ? They show that Tantrism came to the forefront in the Gupta age, and further that whateve: may be the date of a copy, (cf Saurasamht@) the original may be, at least in some cases, an older one As the texts show, it 1s wrong to believe that Tantnism began solely centrmg the Mothe: Goddess The first deities in the Tantras were theSun (cf the Saurasamhta, and the Sahtis, ike Vagisvari (of Péramefoaramatatantra, where she 1s desciibed as the highest Sakt:) and Kubpha, a goddess of the potter class It is therefore not without significance that the Gangdhar inscnption, referring to the Great Mother with her associates, the dakinz, and the magic rites, comes from the same period, 423-4 aD As the Aubythamata text refers to pirvatantra, itmay be assumed that Tantrism began in an age when the Scytho-Kusana impact was still in force, masmuch as the Sun cult of the period shows Magian influence, while the Kubyha actually rcfers to the Magas* 1 In his Durbar Library Catalogue, HP Sastri refers to xt as the Ai or ha mata1¢ the text of the Kubykamata school (:hxvin) The term mata means doctrine (Apte) 2 Durbar Library Catalogue, 1 44, no 1230, 10 & 137 no 277, 1, 46 where we find a refirence to Prof Bendall’s Cam Cat 27 3. The Magas came to India in the train of the Sakas and are descnbed an the Mahabharata as th Brahmanas of the Saka community in India ($ Chattopadhyaya, The Sakas mm India, 1967, 5) The date of the Tnatra preserved in the Nepal Durbar Library has been a matter of some speculanon (contd2 Reficctions on the Tantras Some scholars have claimed a hoary antiquity for Tantrism on the followmg grounds @ the earliest trace of animal sacrifice which forms an 1m- portant part of Tantric worship 1s found to have been prevalent as early as the pre-historic Indus culture days , & the Nardyanuyatantra says ‘that the Vedas have originated from the Tantras’ proving thereby that the Tantras were prevalent before the Vedas were composed , ¢ many of the semrmagical elements found in the Tantras bear close resemblance to those found in the Atharvaveda , d@ many of the deities hke Siva,Saku, Visnu Sirya, Ganapati and others who find a promiment place in the Tantras are also mentioned m the earlier texts * There cannot be any denying of the fact that many of the amportant elements that find a place in the Tantras can be traced in earher documents This was evidently due to the The text betrays a nervousness that a day may come when the Magas will be equal to the Brahmanas Already in the Geography of Ptolemy, we find refer- ence to the Brakkmanot Magot or the Maga Brthmanas as hving near the Malaya range, but thei distinct entity 1s clearly preserved We may note in this connection the following observation of RP Chanda ‘Var thamihira, who died in 4D 587, says in his Brhatsamieta (60,19) that the installation and consecration of the images and the temples of the sun should be caucd to be made by the Magas Bina in his Harsacarta (Chap 1\) intioduces us to an astrologer called Paraha the Bhoyaha (Maga) In the Deo Burana inscription of Javitagupta II of Magadha, who floutished an the aghth century AD, recorded with the object of continung the grant of 1 village to. the Sun under the name of Varunasyamin, sercral generations of Bhos thas are referred to (The Indo Aryan Races, 83) These examplis show how the Bhojaha or the Maga Brthmanas were gradually A study of the Vedas reveals that the phvsical phenomena first attracted the attention of the people and late: on they came to be deified, and this brought in its train ats bad effects as will This happened in case of early Greek and Indian religions Thus as Gilbert Murray states ‘To make the elements ofa nature religion human 1s inevitably to make them vicious There 1s no great moral harm in worshipping a thunderstorm even though the hghtning strikes the good and the evil quite recklessly There 1s no need to pretend that the lightning is. 5 N K Brahma, Philosophy of Hindu Sadhana, 274ff In fact, the Tan- ras make a synthcss of all the carher forms of sadiana and we have, besides the Buddhist Tantras, the Tantras of the Savas, Saktas, Vaisnavas and other sects (Woodrofle, Shakti and Shakia, 55) It 1s thus clear that the Tantras preach a new doctune that was accepted by all Elhot is undoubtedly nght when he makes a distinction between Tantrism and Sahtassm (C_ Elhot, Hindiism and Buddluym, 280f) The basis of the Tantric philosophy asthe doctrine of pratrtt and purusa as propounded by the Simhhya school of thought The purusa can work but only through prakrtt, or, in other words, purusa 1s mactive while prakrtt 1s active and hence she 1 apparently more important than the former Agehananda Bharat: points out that in Trbetan doctrin, on the other hand, the dynamic function 1s assigned to the male, and ‘the static to. the female metaphysical priniple The homology as mgid there are a few instances (in Hindu Tantnc literature) in which the dynamic function 1s assigned to Siva (the mal principle), as for mstance an the Pertyapuranam, a canomeal text of Tamil Saivism, also the static function 1s assigned to the female principle in at least two passages in the Markandeya Purana, Candipatha’ (The Tantric tradition, 2123) The description of the goddess Kal or Syama as viparitaratasah‘am in the Tantrasara (310) illustrates the Hindu Simkhya view indirectly, there 1s no vulgarity in it, inasmuch as at represents a doctrine through icon4 Reflections on the Tantras exercising a wise and nghteous choice but when once you wot- ship an imaginary quasi-human being who throws the lghtning you are madilemma Either you have to admit that you are worshipping and flattering a being with no moral sense, because he happens to be dangerous, o: else you have to invent reasons for his wrath against the people who happen to be struch And they are pretty sure to be bad reasons The God 3f personal becomes capricious and cruel’® Thus the worship becomes utihtarian as we findit in the Vedas Dhrfferent gods are in- voked for different purposes, some time moral, and some time immoral in the sense of doing harmto others The Takman verse of the Atharvaveda transfers Takman or high fever to others” body so that the sufferer may be cured? One mav naturally doubt how far this 1s in keeping with the true spmit of 1ehgion which, however, has no absolute standaid, varying from people to people Different methods were evolved to satisfy different gods and these methods included, among others, offering of oblations mto fire ht up ona diagram dawn on the ground while the fuel consisted of branches of different hinds of trees Naturally fire ht up with one staff meant for domg good to one should differ from the other meant for mjurmg another person and eliciting from the god a diametrically opposite type of favour If thus the Vedas proper bequeathed for the posterity an ulterior or utihtarian worship, it left side by side a noble heritage of philosophical speculations that ultimately led to the rise of the Upanisads and other philosophical treatise * This 6 Four Stages of Grech Rehguon, 88, as quoted by S Radhakrishnan, Indian Phulosophy, 1, 106 7 Atharvaveda, v, 22, 5-14 Here Takman, possibly a kind of malanal fever, 1s transferred through a chant to the Gandhans the Muavants, the Angas and the Magadhas, showing that the composer, who evidently lived in the Madhyadesa region, shows a diskhe for men hving outside his own territorial division, for Gandhan, or the Gandhara country, denoted the region lying on both the sides of the mer Indus, though later on the modern, Peshawar district m Pakistan, while Magadha and Anga comprised South Bihar 8 S Radhakrishnan observes ‘The hymns form the foundation of subse- quent Indian thought While the Brahmanas emphasise the sacrificial ritual (contdIntroductory 5 twotold character of the Vedas simply reflects the mmd and aspirations of the people in general \Vhen we 1emember the fact that Hinduism was not started by any prophet, that it aiose as cumulative religious impacts of the various ethnologi~ cal groups hving im India,® we can at once discern various different stages im it and its first indication 1s offered to us by the Vedas which in its giadual development began showing such traces As the Tantras also betiay ethnological influence of diverse types we may note at this stage the racial elements in the population of India B S$ Guhahas divided them into sia groups the Negrito, the Proto-Australoid, the Mongoloid, the Medhter:anean, the Western Brachycephals and the Nordic These may again be divided into four hnguistic groups which present an indirect picture of the four tvpes of culture, with their zonal variations that exerted mfluence on the Tantras, they are, Indo- Aryan, Dravidian, Morgoloid and Austialoid o1 Austric 7 We shall turn to this discussion late: on, as we can undoubtedly trace the fluence of the religious thoughts and practices of each of these gro ips very markedly on the Tantras which aimed at shadowed forth in the hymns, the Upanisads carry out their philosophical suggestions The theism of the B?agavidg’ta 1s only an idealisation of Varuna- worship The great doctrine of karma is yet in 1ts infancy as Rta The duahstc metaphysics of the Samkhya 1s the logical development of the conception of Hiranyagarbha floating on the waters The description of the ecstatic condi- tuons caused by the performance of sacrifice or the singing of hymns or the effects of the Soma yuice when we see the glories of the heavenly world remind us of the yogic states of divine blessedness where voices are heard and visions seen’ (Indian Philosophy, 1, 116) 9 S Chattopadhyaya, Sects, 26f 10 The mention in the Rgwda of the black rns side by side with the white ones shows clearly a muxture of the Nordics with the pre Nordic black people in the early stage of ther religious development ‘This 1s carried to a greater extent by the evidence of Patafyah’s Mahabhayya, which states iter alia that real Brihmanhood was characterised by white complexion, pure conduct, yellow or red hair ete (Chanda, The Indo-Aryan Races, 14) 11 BS Guha, Ractal Elements m the Indian Population, no 22 ‘Orford Pamphlets on Indian Affairs’, S S$ Sarkar, The Aboriginal Races of India, 15f, SK Chatteryec, Vedic Age, ed, R C Majumdar and A S Altekar, 145, of R Shaler, Ethnography of Anctent India, 5, fn 1 ‘We are hardly 1n a position at this time to distinguish carefully between race and language We are for- tunite to obtain clues to either’6 Reflections on the Tantras the evolution of a uniform pattern in the field of Indian rehgious thoughts and practices Already in the later Rgvedic age, the Nordics, who composed the bulk of the Vedic works, appear to have med up with other ethnic groups, as proved by the appearance of the un- Nordic black rsis, and were living in the tertile Ganges-Jumna valley in contast to their eather home im the rugged Punjab and the NWFP region where man had to woth hard to earn his morsel?2 This geographical change is reflected m thei religion too In the Rgveda, the religion 1s mote cor cerned with prayer to different gods for food and other necessities, while in the post-Rg:edic work we tind the fine development of philoso- phical speculation which is posstble only when man has a leisure for thinking Thus grew the bulk of the Upanisids and these grew up mostly in the eastern region where there 1s copious rainfall and nature is moe kind S Radhakushnan wiites ‘The Upanisads presciibe thiee stages in the growth of the rehgious consciousness, viz s/avena, which hterally means listening, manana o1 reflection and ndidhyasana or contemplative meditation’ Then he goes on to explain each of them , ‘the first stage points to the place of tradition in religious hfe the bulk of mer rest with tradition and symbol’ Under this category would fall the vanous religious practices of the common men and the elite as well as the presciiptions of the priests who deal with many cumbrous forms of 1eligion not understood by ordinaty men but followed rigorously by them This evidently led to the rise of the pricstly class! and ulti- 12 ‘We pray to Indra to send down rain, and yct beg him not to send the storm The sun is implocd to impart 2 gentle watmth and not force the world into drought and famine b scorching heat The gods become the sources of material prosperity and prayers for the gods of the world ae very common And since there 1s a division of functiony and attributes we pray to particular deities for specific things” (S Radhakusbnan Indian Philosophy, 1, 106) 13 Ind, 2301 14 The priestly class in the Vedic age gradually came to the forchunt when the sacrifices became too much comphicrted centring round prescribed. formulae which could have been known only to the expurts, especially im the age when the Brakmana works (1000 800 Bc) were compoxd The carl est (contdIntroductory 7 mately of the gurus in the Tantras which however cut them to proper size so that no business in religion, as done in the pre- vious days, would be possible The Tantras were very parti- culai on this matter In the wake of the traditions in religious life as noted above, we should not muss the fact that in the period when the Upanisads were wiitten the Nordics had already mixed up with other ethnic elements and many of their religious tradi- tions had crept into the so-called Indo-Aryan fold Thus the Bhagavadgita of the Mahabharata which claims to give us the pure milk of the Upanisads ( sarvopantsado gavo dogdha Gopdlanandanah ) presents before us three distinct forms of sadhana according to preference a acquiring of subhme knowledge which would make one- self realise the 1eal self within one’s mortal coil , b offering to god by vaiious Vedic methods of oblations and sacrifice , and, c worshipping the deity by offerings of flower, leat, water, etc with devotion The third form of sédhané which plays such an important role in modern Hinduism comes fiom un-Indian sources'® and reference towrrds devotion to guru is posubly found in the Svetasvatara Upani- sad The last verse of the Upanisad runs as follows vasya deve para bhahtiryatha dite tatha gurat, Tasraite hathata hyartuah prakasante mahatmanah 15 Bhagavadgita 1. 24-26 16 S K Chatteryec in The Vedic Age, 1601 ‘The characteristic offer ings in the piya rite, rz flower, leaves, fruits, water etc , are not known to the homa 110e, except 1m instances where it has been influenced by the pya It has been suggisted with good reason that pya is the pre-Aryan, in all likelt- hood the Dravidian, form of worship, while home 1s the Aryan, and through- out the cntre carly Vedic literature, the pija ritual with flowers ete offered to an image or symbol » unknown’ Thus the injunction of offiring pya with flowers, kaves, water ete found in the Puranas and th Tantra coms ulumatc!y from thc pre Aryan sources This shows that the Tantras were deriving their matetials from diverse sources, pre Aryan Arvan and even extra Indian, (cf Cinacara infra) The injunction of the Tantras belonging to the Kubjtha school that the goddess Kubyhiis to be worsinpped m the houst of the weavers and potter class show that some of the Tantne practices came fiom the lower strata of the Hindu society cf telikanam erkam gatva humbhakaragrham tu more orthodox im comoarison This is due to the fact that the cult of the Mother Goddess, which more and more made an alliance with Savism, flourished mamly The above statement stands in great contrast to the account of the Para- metvaratantra opening with an invocation to god Siva and 1ccording the con- versation between Reika and Matanga It speaks about diksa mukti, Veda, Semhhya and yoga The statement ‘na hi Vedut paraituanyad yogt seers to mducate that 1t came from the upper class Thus the Tantras combine in themsels es various forms of sadhana prevalent since ¢ 300 We find an echo of it in the Kularnava mathitwa jianamanthena vedagamamaharnacam Sarcajfena mara devs kuladharmah samuddhrtah ehatah sakala dharma yajRatirthavratadayah chatah kuladharmam tatra haulo'dhihah proe Pravsanti yatha nadyah samudram rrwvakragals tathawa vwidha dharmah pransjah kulameva he (ch 18) So when the Tantras were drawing from all earlier forms of sadhana, we find in them side by side high philosophical speculations as well as primitive taboos, totemism and superstitions along with many of the extra Indian fac- tors The Tantias in which the primitive and extra Indian ideas dominate are naturally heterodox in characterIntoductory 9 outside the orthodox brahmanical fold’? and hence the Sakta Tantras to the laigest extent, and Saiva Tantras to some extent, show unorthodox influence Again like the Rudrayamala some Tantras, showing miature of Siva-Sakt: worship, betray unoithodox characteristics Similar character 1s also exhibited by a few Saura texts All these factors clearly point to a legacy of the past As regaids the foreign influence we may note that the kdd:mata, to which many of the Tantras belong, refers to magic, sorcery etc, of the Himalayan and the trans-Himalayan region 1* There are again practices which are specifically described as coming from Mahacina 17 Chattopadhyaya, Sects, 151ff As regards the orthodox outlook of the Aularnava we may note the following slohas sukhena sarvaphaladam kaulam ko'tra tyajatyaho, kulayho ha ca sarvayRo vedasastrarpto pr va yabanto manava mtyam vrthayasaphalant vat, vedasastragamath proklam bhogamoksatkasadkanam (u 12-3) For the extolation of vatdrha harva (v 34 daksine vamaseddhante vardikadssu Portatt) For reference to the so called Cinacara (x 63) 18 Agehananda Bharan, The Tantric Tradition, 70-712 ESOTERICISM IN THE TANTRAS The esoteric practices enjoined im the Tantras have been a matter of much speculation among scholars and 1t has naturally been asked how such vulgarism can form a part of sadhana HV Guenther has tried to give a philosophical background of the whole practice,! butit must be agreed that philosophy can be formed in the background of any and everything and we can remain satisfied with such speculation The Tantras have no doubt a philosophy of their own, but such texts are more concerned with practices which have influenced the votaries more than philosophy The question arises, therefore, what may be the significance of such practices ? For an answer we have to turn to two Tantric works the Mahdcindcdrakrama and the Kamakhydatantra To begin with the Mah@cinacarakrama, which may be regarded as an important standard manual of esote1icism As the name indicates, 1t 1s formulating the a@dra ot the practices prevailing in Mahacma Mahacina has been variously identified with Tibet, China, Mongolia etc Agehananda Bharat: observes ‘I am not even quite sure if Mahacina eve1 meant Tibet the late Dr Raghu- vira told me he thought it was Mongolia, and this 1s what Bagchi appears to have held Most scholars in India seem to agice that Mahacina and Bhota are synonyms, I would, however, suggest that the term should not really be equated with an acmal geographical name —I think ‘Mahdcina’ to Hindu Tantric authors suggested the entire region to the north of the Himalayas, Tibet, and at least parts of Mongolia and 1 HV Guenther, Yuganaddha, Varanas, 1969Esoterveism in the Tantras nN Western China There isno text in tantric hterature which would indicate a serious attempt to demarcate any regions lymg outside India ’* The story in the Tantra runs as follows The sage Vasistha, son of Brahma, worshipped the goddess Tara for ten thousand years at Nilacala in the region of Kama- khyA and yet the goddess did not come before him Then when he was about to curse the goddess, she appeared and said Go to Mahdcina and there you will find that the Janardana- Visnu Buddha 1s performing my worship Learn from him the secret, because he only knows about it, and by that method you will be successful ® Then Vasistha went there and saw that the worship of the goddess was being performed by the Buddha, surrounded by damsels, with madiré or wine etc Vasistha came back to Nilacala and performed the worship with the help of five Ms 1€, madya or wine, mdmsa or meat, matsya or fish, mudré or parched kidney beans and matthuna or mtercourse with a candala woman * If we study the above account strictly from the sociological point of view we may possibly come to the followmg conclusions that this vulgar form of worship originally came from the Semi-Mongoloid region, that, 1t became prevalent among the low-caste people in the Hindu caste huerarchy, that, 1t 1s for this reason that the Kamakhy4 m Kamardpa or Assam 1s called the yonprtha or the place where the pudendum 2 Agehananda Bharat, Ic, 61 3 mays aradhanacaram Buddhaript Janérdanah, eka eva vyanati nanyah kascana tattoatah vrthawa yamavahulya kalo’yam gamitastoaya, viruddhacarasilena mama tattvamaydnatdn udvodhariipino visnoh sanmdhum yakt samprat, tenopadsstacarena samaradhan suvrata tadawa suprasannakss tways yasydmyasamsayah (Patala, 1) 4 Nilacalam samagamya kulacarapardyapah, tato’ksamalam yuvatim candalim ramayenmunth12 Reflections on the Tantras muliebre of the Great Mother fll after he: body was cut to pieces by the discus of Visnu Whatever may the sociological interpretations be, the account of the Tantia gives this form of worship an entirely new meaning The identification of the Buddha with Janardana- Narayana is not without significance, for, m a passage in the S4ntiparvan of the Great Epic Janardana-Na:ayana 1s asso- ciated both with grairti: or worldly association and tapa or tapasya (austerity) and dharma It 1s generally held that the Diadactic section of the Mahabharata was composed about 200apD 1¢, just after the Scvtho-Kusana age and it 1s therefore very hkely that the theory of pravrtts and nwwrttz, which form the keynote of the esoteric practices in the Tanttas, 1eally draws its inspiration from the texts already prevalent in which we find the presence of many trans Himalayan ideas ® 5 Mbh, xu 147 80-83 esa vedanidhth Srimanesa var tapaso nidhth, esa yogasca Samkhyam ca Bralyna cagryam havirt bhuk Narayanapara veda yaa Naravanatmakah, tapo Narayanaparam Narayanapara gatth Naravanaparam satyamrtam Narayanatmakamy Narayanaparo dharmah punaracriitidurlabhah pravrttlaksanascana dharmo Narayan xtmakah, Narayanatmako gandho bhumau sresthatama’ smrtah 6 The trans-Himalayan ideas evidently crept ino Indian hterature durmg the Greco-Scythan age when India had inumite connection with Central Asta Thus the Narayana section of the Mahabharata (Mbh, This evidently shows indirectly that Tantrism in course of time became a proselytizing agent in India 4 Wintermtz, History of Indian Literature, 1, 59228 Reflections on the Tantras strong in Mithila, some traces of it were to be found in Maharastra, while it met its end m Gurjara or Gujarat 5 When, however, we find that of the four onginal pthas mentioned in the Tantras, three are located not far from the Indus and one an Assam (infra, pzthas), such theorses can hardly be maintained Bagch: has shown that the mspiration came possibly from extra- Indian region ® H P Sastri thinks that Tantrism was intro- duced into India by the priests of Turkistan when the local religion of the place was ousted by Islam? But as we have already seen Tantrism must have flourished much earlierie, im the early Gupta age ora little earher when the Scytho- Kusana influence has been operating in India If we can understand the mazthuna aspect of the sddhand m its proper perspective, the significance of the ydmala works and some sculptures of the medseval age may become clear to us, instead of exhibiting a vulgar aspect of worship Examples of ‘mithuna miirts’ are quite in prevalence in almost all the South Indian temples since the xm/xivth century period of great temple-building activities The examples indeed frequent during xvith and xvuth centuries The characteristic and aesthetic differences with their northern counterparts in, say, Khajuraho or Konarak are quite marked and they are as follows 1 Composition with single couple 1s few and far between 2 More than a single couple, sometimes three or four pairs appear in the composition actively engaged or in the process of engaging themselves 1n the act of coupling In a number of examples more male-folk are present than the actual number of women-folk or vce versa In some other cases more than one man are engaged in different matthuna postures witha single lady while the other ladies simply stand and stare or at times assist 3 The couples are invariably always in the erotic posture and graceful, playful, attenuated, while the elegantly standing figures of the ‘North’ are extremely rare m South Indian temples R P Chanda, Indo-Aryan Races, 81 PC Bagchi, Studies in the Tantras, 456 Banguya Sahitya Parishad Patrika, 36, 15 souFurther Notes on Esoteric Practices 29 4 The integrity of composition and space-division, the techni- cal manipulation and surface-treatment and the aesthetic maturity of the ‘North’ with regard to ‘form’ and ‘content’ are lacking in these panels The following are the temples where examples abound 1 ‘The Hall of Thousand Columns’— Sriranganatha Temple- Srirangam — xvi/xvu th century 2 Minaks: Temple — Madurai —xvu th century 3 Padmanabhasvimi Temple — Trivandrum — Kerala — perhaps xvith century, not certain These sculptures, judged in the background of the Tantric treatise, Kamakhydtantra, instead of showing any vulgarity exhibits before us the extreme and the most difficult form of renunciation Wine, meat, fish and parched ludney beans, when taken together, provoke passion in human body, and the Tantric form of maithuna, in which the seeds will not flow, under such condition, only show the extreme form of self restraint Such a sadhaka 1s called vira or hero, and the whole process 1s called vira-sadhana ‘As such form of sddkand 1s not possible for ordinary man it has not been recommended in some of the Tantras Thus the system of paficamakara sadhana 1s conspicuous by its absence im the Saradanlaka which has been regarded as one of the earhest Tantras Agehananda Bharati observes “It must be said that some Hindu tantras do not mention the paficamakdra at all, others hint at them in an opaque manner, whereas at least one important fanfra (the Kalwzldsa) 1s dire- ctly antagonistic towards left-handed rites culminating m the five Ms, and xt has been said in other places that non-tantric Hindu sources deny any merit to the sddhan@ mvolving any of the five ingredients, but especially wine and woman ’® 8 Agehananda Bharat, /e, 2674 SAKTA PITHAS There have been some speculations regarding the ongin of the Sakta pothas DC Sircas mamtauns that the pithas are nothing but the transformation of the early yomt-kundas, yont of the Great Mother, and linga of the god Mahadeva being taken as the sym- bols of creation? This theorv 1s, to say the least, based on speculations without anv historical bass It has been pointed out that ‘the Tirtha yatrd section in the Vanaparvan of the Afaha- bharata, which 1s probably earlier than the rise of the Guptas in the fourth century ap, refers at least to thee Sakta holy places associated with the Yon: and Stana of Sakti These are the Yomkundas at the Bhimasthana near the Paficanada (Punjab) and on the hill or mountain peak called Udyatpaivata, and the Stanakunda on the peak known as Gaurisikhara (cf Afahabharata IN, 82, 83-85, IIT, 84, 93-95 and 151-53) The name of the 1 DG Swear, The Sukta Pithas, 7f It 1s really difficult to understand why of all the Sakta places mentioned in the Vahabharcta DC Sircar selected the yonskundas of Bhimasthana and the s.anakunda on the perk of Gaurhhata, when he himself points out that there are other pliecs of pilgrimage, designat ed Matr urtha or Devi tirtha apparently named after the Mothe Goddes’ Of course, as a reason he states that it 1s unknown whether they were associat ed with any of the limbs of the goddess (The Salta Pithas 9) If by the turm bitha he means the placcs associated with the different limbs of the Dewi, then how can he maintain the tradition rbout the four pithas mentioned by him m the same conncction or of the theory that this philosophical concept of the Catuspitha was either the cause or the effect of the early recognition of four holy places as Pitas (1b, 11) as my later discussions will show It sho tld be noted further that the term pike 1s not always taken to be the shrine containing the limb of the Great Mother, for according to Amarakosa (2 6 138), at as defined as an asana or seat, evidently denoting the place where the goddess residesSakta Pithas 31 Gaurisikhara (literally, the peak of Gauri, a fom of the mother goddess) probably connects the peak with the Himalayas The Mahabharata seems to locate both the Gaurisikhara and Udyat- parvata in eastern India, the latter probably in the Gaya region Their exact location 1s not beyond doubt, although 1t 1s tempt- ing to identify the Gaurisikhara with the peak of that name placed by the Pifhamirnaya in the Kamaripa country in the Gauhati region of Assam The Bhimasthana (lterally, the resort of Bhima, a form of the mother-goddess) was situated on the Karamar not far from Shahbazgarhi in the Peshawar District of the North Western Frontier Province ** The yonikundas of Bhimasthana on the Paficanada and on the Udyatparvata are not mcluded in the traditional list of the 51 prthas, while the Stanakunda on Gaurisikhara, variouslv located near KAmariipa or other places of eastern India, 18 also conspi- cuous by its absence in the same hst The pifha of Kamakhya is no doubt called yontptha, while Jalandhara may be taken to represent the stanapitha inasmuch as according to the tradiuonal, lst, the stana of the Devi feli here, but Odiyana and Pirnagin, two other earliest pithas (infia), can never be associated with the stana or the yon: of the Great Mother D C Surcar further asserts that the conception of caluspitha as found in the Hevayra- tantra and the Kal:kd Purana, ‘may bave been associated with a conception of the Sahayayana school of the Buddhists, according to which one can rise to eternal bliss from sexual pleasure A Sahajayana text entitled Catusprthatantra and its commentaries (one of which was copied in 1145 av,cf H P Sastn, Cat Palm leaf and Selected Paper Manuscripts belonging to the Durbar Library, Nepal IL, p vin) speak of the fou: Pithasas Atmapitha, Parapitha, Yogapitha and Guhyapitha and deal with the various kinds of Vajrasattva’s intercourse with the Yoginis, such as Prajfiaparamita and others This philosophical concept ot the Catuspitha was either the cause or the effect of the early recogmi- tion of four holy places as pithas ’’ The emphasis on sex and sexual pleasure as given by DG Sircar has got an absolutely afferent meaning in the Tantra, as it has already been shown 2 The Sakta Pithas 8-9 3 Ibid, 132 Reflections on the Tantras Further, the Hevajratantra (c 690 AD) which gives an account of the four pithas, and the Kulyzkamata enumerating five, are olde: than the Sahajayana school of the Buddhists The Hindus never maintain that the p2thas are the result of stana and yont worship Contiarily, the pzthas are associated with other parts of the body of the Devi as well The yon: worship might have been prevalent among the people of the pre-historic Indus valley where Marshall discovered ring- stones and interpreted them to be yom: and objects of worship The Hindu Tantrikas, however, never worship the yoni except- ing at the tume of cindcdra s@dhana@ and the yon stone at Kama- khya, and so one fails to undeistand how yon: worship led to the rise of the pithas Every scholar, who has dealt with the subject of prtha, main- tams that there were originally four pzthas and the number began to multply till it became 51 or 108‘ In the Tantric treatise Mataséra, which evidently quotes an earher tradition, im view of the fact that the number of the pithas are always on the increase and never in the process of decline, three prthas are mentioned, Odiyana, Jala and Pirna, the second to the south ofthe first and third to the north of the second’ Thus the three original pithas were in the north-western part of India, and of these Jala or Jalandhara only can be assomated with the stana 4 B Bhattacharya, Hevayratantra, ‘Most of the early tantras, both the Buddhist and the Hindu, refer to four pitas’ Agehananda Bharat, le 88 The list 1s somewhat altered though the number remains the same in the Kaltka Purana (64, 43-5) The most interesting account of the pifhas 1s farmshed by Agchananda Bharat, /¢, 85 The Pranatosanttantra divides the pifhas into three groups, sddhapithas, pithas associated unth a particular limb of the Great Mother and other pithas in which we find practically a list of the dewsthanas of different pantheon According to the traditional list, 1e, the pithas of the second group are 50, though sometime a single name 1s splitted into two and thus the hist becomes 51 5 Durbar Library Catalogue, 1 ixvin, 222, no 1512 It 1s really curious that this Tantra has not attracted the attention of carher scholars The account runs as follows Sr Odiyanamaham vande kaultkayRapravarttaham, mayajalamidam diwyam duamatram sarvasiddhdam taddaksinagatafcatva Jalaprtham namamyaham, tayottaragatam dizyam mantratantraprasiddhsdam ckamatragataficawa $r-Pirnapitham namamyakam, ardkamatraparam siiksmam svariipam sarvasiddhidam (incorrect Sanskrit)Sakta Pithas 33 of the Great Mother This seems to show the unsoundness of the theory maintained by D © Sircar In Hevayratantra the number became four—Oddiyana, Jalandhara, Pirnagiri and Kamarapa, three on the west, and one 1n the east, in Assam They may be located as follows 1 Oddiyana — Swat valley im north-western India (It 1s difficult to accept the view that 1t was in Dacca, Bang- ladesh) 2 Jalandhara — the pitha, located in the Jalandhar District of the Punjab 3 Kamaripa —the Kamakhyé pitha on the Nilaparvata mn the Gauhati District of Assam 4 Parnagiri— exact identification uncertain The three pithas of Oddiyana, Jalandhaia and Kamantipa are situated ‘on the high roads leading to countries outside India— Sastri thinks that the writer of the Matasara has confounded Jala with Matanga But there 1s absolutelvno reason for this supposition Sastri was working evidently under the impression that Pirna should be located in Eastern India, but the evidence of Matasara goes against such a theory Jala in the account 1s clearly Jalandhara, as the direction with reference to Oddiyana indicates D C Sircar points out that number 3 had a mystic significance with many ancient peoples of the world, and so in a later work like Anandarnava we have reference to three pifhas, viz , Kamaripa, Jalandhara or Jalandhara and Pirnabhipura or Parnagin, (The Sakta Pithas, 17fn 2) from which he infers that there was also ‘a tradition about three pithas’ ‘which might not have been as old evidently as the account of the four pithas’ If we follow this argument then of course our assigning of the Matasara account to an early date falls through It should however be noted that in the above description of Anadamava we have clearly an account of pranayama and the three pifhas are supposed to be associated with the three petals supposed to be the cakra at the lowest level (Des Cat Sans Mss, R ASB, vim, 213) We find again the mention of three pithas, Jalan- dhara, Parnagir: and Oddiyana im connection with the nyasa of the goddess Srividya (Tantrasara, 272) It 1s certainly not an ordinary enumeration Here the name of Kamarapa 1s absent, though we find it in the Anadamaca In the Kularnavatantra (89), on the other hand, we find the following lines makamudram nabhomudram Uddryanam Jalandharam millabandhaiica yo vetts sa guruh paramo matah Here we find again how two of the earher pifhas are associated with the mudra, but no one will infer from it that the onginal numbers of the pzfhas were two only On the other hand in the Matasara we meet with no figurative description, but actual statement of geographical location showing that the tradition quoted in 1t must be regarded as an earher one34 Reflections on the Tantras Uddiyana situated im the valley of the Swat miver, casily accessible fiom the Upper valley of the Indus, has been the meeting place of the people of different ongin It as situated on the high road that connects the Upper Valley of the Indus with Balkh, Samarcand, etc , on the one hand, and the Pamir, Khotan, Kashgar etc , on the other by the valley of the Gilgit Jalandhara 1s situated on another highway that connects Tibet with India through the Shipki pass, and Kamariipa his to a great extent been the centre of activities of foreign peoples who have been commg down from the Northein and North-eastern hulls since very ancient tme It 1s probably not without significance that Bhaskaravarman who was the hing of KSmariipa told a Chinese envoy to India that his forefathers had come to India from the country of Mahacina and requested hum to send a Sanskrit translation of Tao te-hing, the sacred text of Taoism, and a portrait of Lao-tzu,its fovnder In ancient tume a land route connected Assam with Western and Southern Chima through the Patka: hills and Upper Burma, and this 1oute was generally followed by the invaders and immigrants from the North-East ’¢ The above observations seem to indicate that the pithas developed in India at the mitial stage under foreign influence ‘The course of ancient Indian history shows that foreign clements primaiily worked in the field of rehgion m India ccntring round Buddhism It should be noted that one of the carhest Mahayana texts (the Hevayratantra), 1efirs to the pethas, and the Kubykamata which also was inspited by traditions of the west (infra), refers to them If we remember the fact that after the death of the Buddha vatious stipas were built on the different remnants of Imus mortal] coil, we can at once realise wherefrom the idea of the pzthas came into the field of Hindu religion In the Devistotra of the Mahabharata, which has been assigned by eminent authorities to the age of the Kusanas when India bad intimate relationship with the trans-Himalayan region, the Devi is described as one ‘who dwellest continually near the caityas and the mountam ridges’ (Famvu-hafaha caitvesu mtyam 6 PC Bagchi, Studies in the Tantras, 48-9Sakta Pithas 35 sannihatalaye) 7 It shows how Saktaism came into intimate contact with Buddhism and this naturally led to the borrowing of other Buddhistic ideas by the Saktas in the days followng the Kusana supremacy D OC Suircar points out that accord- ang to certam later Puranas and Tantras (Devbhagavata, vin, ch 30 Kahka Purana, ch 18, etc), Siva became inconsolable at the death of his beloved wife Sati, and after the destruction of Daksa’s sacrifice he wandered over the earth dancing madly with Sati’s dead body on hs shoulder (or, head) ‘The gods now became anaious to free Siva from his infatuation and conspired to deprive him of his wife’s dead body Thereapon Brahma, Visnu and Sani entered the dead body by yoga and disposed of it gradually The places where pieces of Sati’s dead body fell are said to have become Pithas,1¢, holy seats o1 resorts of the mother-goddess, in all of which she 1s 1epresent- ed to be constantly living in some form together with Bhairava, 1e a form of her husband Siva’ According toa modified version of this story, 1t was Visnu who, while following Siva, cut Sati’s dead body on $iva’s shoulder or head piece by piece The story of the association of particular limbs of the mother- goddess with the Sikta frthas, which may have some relation with the Tantric ritual called Pithanydsa, belongs, as already pointed out, to the latest stage in the development of an ancient tale But the story may have some connection with Buddhist legends regarding the worship of Baddha’s bodily relics and the construction of Stipas nm order to enshrine them (cf Select Inscriptions, I, pp 84, 102, 120 etc) as well as with those concerning the various manifestations of Buddha in the Jambudvipa * The Hevajratantra enumerates four prthas The number four became a somewhat traditional one, for we find the same num- ber in the Kaka Purana, though, the hstis a little different, Odra, ‘seat of the goddess Katyayani and the god Jagannatha, Falasaila, seat of the goddess Candi and the god Mahadeva, ‘Pima or Pirnasaila, seat of the goddess Pirnesvari and the god Mahanatha, and Kémaripa, seat of the deities Kamesvari and 7 Muir, Onginal Sanskrit Texts, w, 368 8 D C Sucar, The Sakta Prthas, 6-736 Reflections on the Tantras Kamesvara® In the above hst we may note two pecularities first, an attempt has been made to identify Vaisnava god and goddess with Siva and Saku with reference to Odra or Ortssa where Vimala is identified with Katyayani and the Vaisnava god Jagannatha with Siva, secondly, all the Sakta pithas have got a Siva sanctuary The earhest reference to a Sakta ptha having a Saiva sanctuary 1s to be found im an inscription of the later Gupta age informing us that one Isvara, the wife of a petty ruler i Jalandhara, constructed a temple of S1va in memory of her husband 1° The Kalika Purana, however, thus locates the four pithas — Odra, in the west, 74lafala, 1n the north, Parna or Pirnafaila in the south, and Kamaripa in the east The Buddhist work ‘Sadhanamala ormts the name of Jalandhara and mentons Sriha tt or Sirhatta in its place Another text mentions the additional name of Matanga Matanga 1s in Srigaila, famous as the centre of Sakta worship in Bhavabhiiti’s Mdlatmadhavam There 1s however a Matanga pitha mentioned 1n the Nelatantra which 1s identified with modern Matangasrama at Bakraur on the Phalgu, opposite Bodh-Gaya in Bihar * If the Matanga pitha be located in Srisaila, it will raise an anteresting issue which 1s explained by Stddhapaiicdfikd, wnwhich the scene of the work 1s on the Mahendracala usually identified with Eastern Ghats and Siva 1s given the epithet of S(£)abaram mram%® The Sabaras area Proto-Australoid tribe inhabiting the eastern coast and here we have a definite evidence of how aboniginals, possibly with their rehgious practices, were being inducted into the Tantric fold and a shrine of their local goddess came to be considered a pitha 9 Kaltka Purana, 64 p 43-5 10 Ep Ind 1, 12, Bhandarkar, no 1790 11 Sadkanamala, 453, 455 12 D G Surear, The Sakta Pithas, 91 13 Durbar Library Catalogue, 1, 57, Ixxx Srimanmakendracale ramye khafuata? Sikhare sthitam sarvvajfiam sa (Ja) varam vram Stam paramakaranam Khajafa 1s evidently a misreading for khaftanga On the scals of the copper plate grants of the Pallavas the banner of the dynasty 1s called khajuangadhuayaSakta Prthas 37 While by this process of absorption and assimilation the number of pzthas began increasing, we meet with at least fifteen devisthanas or places of mother goddess worship in the Adya- stotra of the Brahmaydmala’* As the hst 1s an teresting one 1t 1s enumerated below Devamohini in Simhala Suras4 in Manidvipa Bhadrakahka in Lanka Rameévari in Setuvandha Vimala in Purusottama Viraya in Odradesa Kamakhya in Nilaparvata Kahka in Vangadesa Mahesvari in Ayodhya 10 Annapina in Varanasi 11 Gayesvari in Gayaksetra 12. Bhadrakali in Kuruksetra 13. Katyayani in Vraja 14 Mahamaya in Dvaraka 15 Mahesvari in Mathura The above devsthdnas, not many of them ptthas, are described after statmg how the goddess 1s known by various names in Vaikuntha, Amaravati, Patala etc , all lying in the imagination of the sadhaha Some pecularities, however, are to be noted an the above account nine of the above fifteen names should COVA ONH 14 RM _ Chatterjee, Vividha tantra-samgraha or Tantra-kalpadruma, Prakirna-amsa, 48 Om hrm Brahman: brahmaloke ca vatkunthe Sarvamangala Indrani amaravatyamambtka varunalaye yamalaye Kalariipa kuverabhavane Subha Mahanandagnikone ca vayauyam Mrgavahint nairrtyam Raktadanta ca avfanyam Siladharim patale Vaisnavritpa sumhale Devamohint Surasa mamdvipe lankayam Bhadrakaltka Ramesoars setuvandhe Vimala purusottame Verarya audradege ca Kamakhya mlaparvate Kaltka vangadese ca ayodhyayam Mahesoan varanosyamannapitrna gayaksetre GayeSvart (Gayasur: >) kurukgetre Bhadrakals vrae Katyayant para doarakayam Mahamaya mathurayam Mahefvare38 Reflections on the Tantras be located in Eastern India, of the four earher pzthas, three- Oddayana, Jalandhara and Pirnagin, are conspicuous by then absence m this account, again, while in the earlier account Katyayani is associated with Jagannatha — Purusottama, in the present one we find her in Vraja, several pithas are located mn predommantly Vaisnava areas ike Vraja, Mathura, Dvaraka, Ayodhya and Kuruksetra In the Mss of Kubykd preserved im the Asiatic Society, Calcutta, and noted by DC Sircar, there is a list of forty-two pithas extending from Hingula in Beluchistan to Vimala ot Puri which 1s called Vimalaksetra (Orissa) in the east, and from Nepal in the north to Simhala in the south'® The lst, how- ever, appears to have been haphazardly compiled It refers to the pitha of Mampura which, if identified with the modern state of that name, would of course be, the extreme eastern limit of the putha-ksetras Similarly, Badari o: the present Badarkasrama, 1s mentioned as a prtha, but no mention is made of Kedara which 1s mentioned in the Nilatantra This seems to indicate that the list of forty-two pithas, as inserted in it, may be a spurious one The number of the pithas gradually went on increasing tll ut became fifty in Tantrasdra and fiftv-one in the Préna- tosanitantra © There 1s also a tradition about 108 pithas, 108 being a sacred number with the Hindus of all sects These 108 places were, however, not fithas in the strict sense containing the parts of the body of the wife of Siva, but simply the places where mother worship of any kind prevailed This stands in contrast to the description of 51 pithas each embodying such a part The bigger account embraces the whole of India and even beyond, from Hingula ot Hinglaja in Baluchistan to Manipur and Tripura in the east and from the Lake Manasa in Tibet to Lanka or Srilanka (Ceylon) in the extreme south The Sammohatantra refers to the $Akta pithas like self-evolved Hinglaya (Svayambhuve Hingulaye) as well as other pithas like Vidyaprtha, Sawa pitha, Varsnava pitha, Saura pitha and Ganapatr 15 DC Sircar, le, 19 16 Ibid, 208, Pranatosam, 234Sakta Pithas 39 or Ganesa pitha 17 The statement 1s no doubt interesting But here the term pitha may refer to either the seats of worship or the ways of Tantric practice In any case, the account shows how different gods and goddesses of the Hindu pantheon were gradually being brought under the Tantric system of worship Three Saiva pithas, four Vaisnava pithas, two Saura prthas and five Ganapatya prthas have been referred to in the account 8 Let us now try to make a zonal division of the pithas Accord- ing to the ancient Indian conception India was divided into five distinct zones which 1s very explicitly indicated in the Kanya- mimamsa of Rayasekhara 1 Vardnasyah paratah pirvadesah—.ie, the eastern country les to the east of Varanasi or Benares 2 Mahsmatyah paratah daksindpatha—.1e, the southern country hes to the south of Mahismati identified with Mandhata on the nver Narmada 3 Devasabhapah paratah pascaddesah—i e , the western division lies to the west of Dewas (Devasabha) in Madhya Pradesh 4 Prthadakat paratah uttardépathah —1e, the uttarapatha or northern division hes to the other side of Prthidaha or Pehowa near Thaneswar in the Haryana The fifth division 1s not mentioned but by implication xt 1s clear that 1t denoted the present U P with a slice of Haryana ¥ This 1s however by no means a scientific division either from the ethnological or from the linguistic point of view As already pointed out, BS Guha has divided the Indian population into six groups which have been sub-divided into four hnguistic divisions © It 1s however difficult to make any clear-cut picture of the Indian sub-continent according to eithe: of the accounts, because the ethnological elements often overlap each other in a 17 Suayambhuve Hingulaje prtham saktimayam matam Other pifhas referred to are, Candta, Svayambhuva, Cina, Bauddha and Vaidika 18 Saw. truadhameva ca caturridham Varsnave syat Saure dowadham ar tam Ganabe paivadha pithamanyo’ps prfhavistaram (PC Bagchi, Studies 11 the Tantras, 97) 19 Kazyamumamsa, ch xv 20 The Vedic 4ge, 14540 Reflections on the Tantras parucular state and this seems to be true also in case of the linguistic classification So we turn toH Risley’s scheme as found in the Census Report for 1901 and also im the Imperial Gazetieer, 1, 292 He has divided Indian population into seven physical types with distinct zones** — 1 The Dravidian type in the larger section of the peninsula which hes to the south of the United Provinces (Uttar Pradesh) and east of about longitude 76°E 2 The Indo-Aryan type in Kashmir, the Punjab from the Indus to about the longitude of Ambala (76°46E ) and Rayputana (Rajasthan) 3 The Twko-Iraman type in the NW Fronter Province, Baluchistan, and those districts of the Punjab and Sind which he west of the Indus 4 The Scytho-Diavidian type im Sind east of the Indus, Gujarat and the western section of the peninsula as far as about longitude 76°E , that 1s to say, the (former) Bombay Presidency or Western India generally 5 The Aryo-Dravidian or Hindustam typein the plain of the Ganges from about longitude 76°30E to 87°E, that as to say, in the eastern fringe of the Punjab, in the United Provinces (Uttar Pradesh), and in Bihar 6 The Mongoloid type nm Burma, Assam (former), and the sub-Himalayan tract which includes Bhutan, Nepal and the fringe of the United Provinces (Uttar Pradesh), the Punjab, and Kashmir 7 The Mongolo-Dravidian or Bengali tvpe m Bengal (W Bengal and Bangladesh) and Orissa Besides the above seven divisions there are aboriginals in the Santal Parganas, the Chotanagpur Division, the Mahadeo Hills of the Madhya Pradesh and the northein districts of Tamil Nadu and the Eastern Ghat region to the north of it, who speak Austric language and may be classed under the Proto- Australoid tribe mentioned by B S Guha Let us now see under which divisions the pithas fall Thus Oddiyana in the Swat valley would come under the Turko- Iraman region while Jalandhara and Pirnagir: lying to the 21 Cambridge History of India, 1, Delha, 1955, 361Sakta Pithas 41 north of st in the Indo-Aryan region Kamariipa, on the other hand, falls in the Mongoloid area Thus the earhest puthas developed in the region outside Madhyadesa, identical with the Aryavarta of the Baudhayana and Vasistha Dharmasitras and the Mahabhagya of Patafiyal, regarded as the citadel of orthodox culture # This would show that the concept of pitha was genc- rally heterodox im character and this also shows that the earher Tantras referring to them were of heterodox nature The wnter of the Tantras soon realised that they cannot thrive on the sub-continental soil unless they make a compro- muse with orthodoxy Thus Ktranatantra, copied in 924 AD in ‘older than the oldest Newam characters’ speaks of OM, (re- maiming in the throat of Siva, and said to be the God himself) the Veda, the Supreme Brahman Agam, 0M 1s said to be the root of syllabic mantras and when it becomes articulate it be- comes vdk or specch or logus ** The Prapajicasdratantra, composed before 11th century, maintains that an ideal guru 1s supposed to be Vedavedangandyaddiwedita uditagamah, winle an ideal disciple as one who 1s adhitavedam™ Similarly, in the JAdnadipkd, a work devoted to the worship of Tupurasundari, reverence 1s made to Vaidikadargana The Tantra 1s divided in thirty-six patalas, and opens with a talk between Brahma and Narayana or Mah&-Visnu, gods of the orthodox pantheon, whose worship as also recommended, and alist of Visnu-avaidras are given as follows Matsya, Kirma, Varaha, Nrsimha, Kubja, Turama (Rama Dasarathi, Balarama and Paiasurama), Krsna and Kalki * It clearly presupposes, though in a httle modified form, the account of the avatdras given in the Narayaniya sectionof the Mahabharata * The Saradatilakatantra praises Narayana and fur- 22 Baudhayana Dharmasittra, 1129, Vasistha Dharmasutra, 18, Maha- bhasya, 1 410 23 Durbar Library Catalogue, xxvi, 99 24 © Prapaiicasaratantra, xan, 25 25 Durbar Library Catalogue, xx, 60 26 In the Narayamiya section of the Mahabharata we have the following account of the ten avataras ‘Appearing in the forms of a swan, a tortoise, a fish, O foremost of twice born ones, I shall then appear as a boar, then as’ man-hon, then as a dwarf, then as Rama of Bhrgu’s race, then as Rama, the son of Dasaratha, then as Krsna the scion of the SAtvata race and lastly as Kalla’ (Mbh, xn 340 100)42 Reflections on the Tantras nishes us with a hist of the different samskéras mentioned in the brahmanical smrt: works garbhddhana, pumsavana, simantonnayana, Jatakarman, naémakarana, upanishramana, annaprdgana, cauda, or cidakarana, upanayana, mahéndmya-mahdvrata, 1¢, Brahmacénn, upanisada, godénodvahakau and mrta *7 Inthe Nepal Durba: Library there aie two texts dealing with Gopala-Krsna The first one 1s Gopdladhyanardjah, dealing with meditation of Gopala and the second Kramadipihd ‘written for the benefit of all the four castes in all the four stages of hfe’, and giving the process of wotshippmg Krsna * The Brakmasamhué, a Vaisnava Tantra, asserts that the god Visnu-Narayana 1s satisfied by yajfia and stava according to the Vedas (Yajfiarred tusyate devo Vedoktarrvaé mahastavarh) °° If Vedok- tath be connected with yayitath then we have to assume that am the Vaisnava Tantras Vedic yaylas had a place, while if connected with stavazh, the case becomes otherwise A question may naturally arise—why im such a treatise there are sections on praséda-karanam and pratimalaksanam? This possibly comes from the PAficaratra school which emphasized upon ‘abhigamana — going to temples with abject devotion, upddana —carrying or gathering different objects of worship, ¢yd— worship, svddhydya — muttering of the eight syllable mantra (Om namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya) , and practice of yoga, as lead- In the same section of the Epic, there are, however, accounts which give the numbers of avataras as six or four This shows that this theory was still am its fluid stage and as in the later works gentially the number is given as ten, twelve or eighteen, among which we find the mention of the Buddha even, at may be assumed that the theory was not a fixed one and the devotees of Vasudeva or the Pancaratras had no particular notion about the subject (Chattopadhyaya, Sects, 56-7) It has becn held that 4n the domain of myth and legend, a number of Austric notions and tales appear to have survived in the myths of the Purinas and of the popular Hinduism The legends of the creation of the world from an egg, of the Avataras or incarna- tions of Vishnu, eg, that of the tortoise incarnation and many more, which do not form part of the Aryan or Indo European inheritance in Hinduism, and do not seem to have come from the Dravidian world either, can reasonably be expected to have been derived from the ustuc or Proto-Australoid world’ (Vedte Ags, 101) 27° FAOS, xxm, 1902, 676 28 Durbar Library Catalogue, 3, lxxvi, 84, 1, Xx1V 29° Thad, u, 76Sakta Prthas 43 ing to salvation ® Evidently, out ofthe above elements arose the different Tantric mjunctions It may be noted im this con- nection that we have actually a Tantric text m Newari charac- ter, entitled Devdmrtapaficaratram, dealing with consecration of Visnu images and Visnu temples and other topics centring Vasnu Such a rapproachment had begun earher, for in the Brahma- yamala, referred to by Abhinavagupta, who flourished, accord- ing toK C Pandey, in the tenth century, we find that the vyayastavardya was first spoken by Siva to his consort and then Pippaladamuni brought it down from heaven to earth * The sage Pippalada 1s said to be the propounder ofa sakha of the Atharvaveda 33 The process thus begun reached its culmimation in_ the Tantrasdra by Krsnananda Agamavagisa, who flourished im the sixteenth century He upholds the orthodox caste hierarchy — ‘A Sidra must not be mutiated in a mantra beginning with pranava or Om or almamantra, gurumantra, ajapamantra o1 a mantra having the word svaha The Varahitantra enyoins that a siidra can only take up the mantra of Gopala, Mahesvara, mother goddess (wife of Mahesa), Siirya and Ganesa and nothing else **4 30 Chattopadhyaya, Sects, 67 31 Durbar Labrary Catalogue, 1, Ixxvi, 84 and 106 32 Ibid cf, Vamakesoaratantra, u, xx 33 The first significant attempt to bring the Tantras to the orthodox line was possibly made by the Prapaitcasaratantra wherein we find the meaning, significance etc, of Gayair: (xxix), diksa and mantra, (the conclusion being that ‘guru, devata and mantra should be realised as bemg one and the same’ (v & v1)) methods of worsmp of different deities like Devi, Tripura, Milaprakrt, Sei or Laksm, Trikita, Durga, Bhuvanesvar, Candra, Maha- ganesa, Kamadeva or Manmatha and Krsna (ixff) Chs xix-xxv deal with worship of Visnu Narayana, then we have various forms of the worship of Siva In this work reference ts made to japa with aksamala or fingers At the same time in ch xx Mahdvisnu speaks of magical mites relating to stambhana, vaSkarana etc In the discourses between Ridhi and Manmatha (xvim) we get some interesting details which help us m understanding the maithuna aspect of sadhana im xts proper perspective This shows an attempt of the writer to bring a new process in Tantra 34 pranavadyo na datavyo mantrah Sudraya sarvatha, ‘atmamantro gurormantro mantrascajapasamyfakah svahabranavasamyuktam Siidre mantram dadadd:yah $adro marayamapnott brakmano yatadkogatun44 Reflections on the Tantras The account debars the Sadras from a large number of mantras embodied in the same work Here 1t closely follows the ortho~ dox view that OM, Gayatri and Laksmi mantras should not be given to a fadra or a woman ‘This seems to indicate that the Tantra, though more hbeial than the orthodox works came ultimately in the hne of the latter Further it 1s laid down that the muttering of the Vedic g4yatr: purifies one of all sins Another significant link with the orthodox culture 1s provid- ed by the following account ‘Madhyadesa — Kuruksetra — Natahonkanasambhavah Antarved: — Pratsthdna Avantydsca guruttamah Madhyadesa Aryavartah Gaudah Saluah SurdScawa Magadhah Keralastatha Kofalasca Dasamasca guravah sapta madhyamah Karnaja— Narmadarastra — Kacchatirodbhavastatha Kalndasca Kadambasca Kambojascadhamaé matah English translation ‘Gurus livmg mm Madhyadesa imcluding Kuruksetra (the region between the Sarasvati and Drsadvati in Haryana), Nata-Konkana (?), Antarvedi (the region lying between the Ganges and the Jamuna), Pratisthana (Allahabad region) and Avanti (Malwa Nimar) are the best ones Madhyadefa 1s the Aryavarta “Gurus of Gauda (Bengal), Salva (an West Punjab), Sura (Western Vindhya region), Magadha (Patna and Gaya), Kerala, Kosala (evidently South Kosala, the present Raipur region of Maharashtra), Dasarna (Vadis4 or Bhilsa region) — of these seven lands are of the middle order ‘Gurus of Karnata (portion of Kanarese speaking area), Narmadarastra (some place on the nver Narmada), Kaccha- tira (Cutch), Kalinda (possibly the Siwahk range region where the Jamuna takesits mse), Kalamba (?) and Kamboja (the region extending from West Kashmur to Eastern Afghanistan and nsesamaha Varahye Gopalasya manurdeyo Makefasya ca padaye taipainyascap. Siryasya Ganefasya manustatha esam diksadhikar? svadanyatha papabhag bhavet 35 prayasetttantu ayutasavstryapah sarvatra darfanat Sankhah — daSasakasryajapena sarvakalmasanasinSakta Prthas 45 beyond the Pamir in the north) — these are of the worst order °3¢ This brings to the forefront two interesting facts, first, the Madhyadesa or Aryavarta which was the citadel of brahmani- cal orthodoxy was considered to be the best centre of Tantnc culture,®7 secondly, Tantric teachers hved beyond the Pamir in Central Asia, showing indirectly that Tantrism flourished even outside the borders of India proper With the above change in the attitude of the Tantric scholars we find that many of the fzthas came to be located in the ortho- dox region Thus, the Prénatosanitantra locates six pithas m the Madhyadesa Of course the largest shares taken by Bengal which accounts for sixteen pithas This 1s in quite keeping with the fact of Bengal being the largest centre of Sakta worship when the Prdanatosant was composed In contrast to sex pithas in the Madhyadega, the work speaks of four in the Himalayan region (Kaémira, Mithila, Lake Manasa, Nepala), three in Assam (Silahatta, Kamakhya, Jayanti, possibly Jayantrya Hill), two in the Punjab (Jvalamukhi and Jalandhara), three in Bihar (Baidyanatha, Sonanada and Magadha), two in Andhra (Godavari, Sri-parvata), and one each m Maharashtra (Jana- sthana), Guyarat, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Orissa (Virajaksetra an Pur1), Tripura and twoin Madhyapradesh (Bhairava-parvata in Avant, Ramagir), while one Hingula 1s located in Balu- chistan and another Sarkara, 1e, Sukkur m Karachi It 1s really curious that the hst omits Piirnagir: Either it was not 36 P C Bagchi, however, observes that ‘Kamboja does not seem to be the ancient country of the Kamboja —Gandhara group It may be the country of the people called Kam-po-tsa mentioned in the Tibetan sources and located in Assam These people seem to have been the predecessors of the modern Koch’ (Stud es in the Tantras, 18 fn) Is Kihnda a mistake for Pulinda > 37 ‘This list was certamnly drawn up at a time when the authonity of the orthodox Agamas was a little undermined by a rise of the heterodox schools But it sull shows the old tendency according to which the acaryas of North Indian origin were given the first place’ (Studies tn the Tantras, 18)46 Reflections on the Tantras known to the writer of Pranatosant or it disappeared under Mushm occupation The hst differs materially from the account of the Devi-sthanas given in the Adyastotra, because we find mn it no mention of Mathura, Annaptirna in Varanasi, Devamohuni in Simhala etc Of the fifty two pathas again several are called siddha-prthas Thus quoting the 7th patala of the Kuby:kdtantra, the Pranatosant states — ‘§riyatam savadhdnena srddhapitham patwrate, yasmin sadhanamatrena sarvasiddhtsvaro bhavet Mayavat: Madhupur: Kas: Goraksakannz, Hingulé ca mahdpitham tatha Félandharam punah Foalamukhi mahdpitham prtham Nagarasambhavam, Ramagirirmahajntham tatha Godavari prye Nepalam Karnasutrafica Mahékarnam tathé priye Ayodhya ca Kuruksetram Simhanddam manoramam Manipuram HrstkeSam Praydgafica tapovanam Badait ca mahdpitham Ambiké ardhanilakam Trent ca mahdprtham Gangasdgarasangamam Nankelafica Viraja Uddtyanam mahesvar Kamala Vimalé cawa tatha Mahismati purr Varah. Tripura cawa Vagmat: Nilavahini Govardhanam Vindhyagirih Kamariipam Kalau juge Ghantakarno Hayagrwo Madhavasca suretvart, Kstragramam Bardyanatham janryadvamalocane *8 Thus Uddiyana (Oddiyana), though described as a stddha- pitha, 1s not mentioned in the hist of fifty-one prthas We have also mm the same work an account of one hundred and eight pithas The accounts show agai how by the process of com promise and assimilation different devt-places came to be regard- ed as seats of pithadevts We may note some such cases Thus the pitha of Jayanti was clearly a place of tribal goddess-wor- ship As regards Kanyd$rama, 1t may be noted that the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (c 60-80 AD) states— ‘Beyond this (Balita=modern Varkkallai, 8 42” N, 76 43’E) there 1s another place called Comar, at which are the Cape of Comar: anda harbor, hither come those men who wish to consecrate them- 38 Pranatosam, 234Sakta Prthas 47 selves for the rest of their lives, and bathe and dwell in celibacy and women also do the same, for 1t 1s told that a goddess once dwelt here and bathed 8° In this account of the Periplus we hhave evidently a reference to the cult of a goddess in the Pandya country which was later on transformed into a pitha In 108 list we find that Devaki, mothe: of Krsna (Méddhavt Mathurayaica Devaki Yadavesvart) has been regarded as a éakt1, while Yasoda, Vrnda and Radha, associated with Vraja-Gokula, origmally Vaisnava deities, are sumlarly transformed into Sakta dems This process worked at the root of multiplying the num- ber of pithas, which from original three or four ultimately be- came thousand and eight Kamariipa 1s described as the best of the pithas where Madhava-Krsna 1s called UmA4nanda-bhairava Kamaripais said to conta nine prfhas, but actually in the slokas we find the names of six vidyas The names of Maha- nayas like Kali and Tara are conspicuous bv their absence, though in the Mahdcindcdérakrama and Brahmaydmala, Vasistha as represented as performing the worship of the goddess Tara according to cidcdra im the Nilaparvata o. Kamakhya P CG Bagchi’s work shows again the mention of four pithas,—mantra- pha, vidydpitha, mudrajatha and mandala pitha * Of these the vzdyaprtha may signify the original four pifhas and their later developments (supra) Mantrapitha, mudrapitha and mandalapitha seem to refer to the different kinds of rituals, showing that the term pztha did not always signify places suppos- edto enshrine the different parts of the body of the Great Mother, as already stated (supra) 39 The Periplus of the Lrythraean Sea, ed Schoff, 46 40. etant nava prthans Samsanti Varabhatravah 41 tatra Sribhawran dev tatra na Ksetradevata pracandacanchka tatra Matangt Tripuramoka Bagala Kamala tatra Bhuoanest sadhurunt 42 P C Bagchi, Studies in the Tantras, 1115 ON SOME TANTRIC CONCEPTS rT Kadi, Hid:, Khad The Tantric zone 1s divided into two regions according to the adi, and hdd: methods of worship followed in them The meaning of the termsis not very clear Agehananda Bharat. maintains “The commonly accepted, though by no means undisputed, orthodox idea 1s that Add: mantras and their use as part of a ritualistic method are aimed at securing worldly or magical success, had: mantras on the other hand are said to help to- wards the supreme achievement of nirvana or its Hindu equ- valents I think that something like this accounts for the fact that Bhota, Cina, Mahacina are listed in Add: areas, and not in the had: area enumeration The regions beyond the mountain stand for magic and szddht whose pursuits are always viewed to an extent as heretical Some of the Add: regions listed in the text ‘cannot be identified’, so Bagchi avers, some of them, however, seem to be adjacent to Tibetan sol but are still cis- Himalayan — thus ‘Bahlika’ which must be Balkh, ‘Dyorjala’ which might well be a predecessor of ‘Darjeeling’ which name asderived exther from Tibetan Dore-glin ‘thunderbolt (vajra-) reguon’, or from Sanskrit duryayalinga, ‘the invincible Siva "1 Astime rolled on, kad: and hadi ideas became somewhat mixed up and m the hist of the countries included 1n these groups, we find how both the practices were followed in and 1 Agebananda Bharat, /¢, 701On some Tantric Concepts 49 outside India? An analysis of the lst shows that among the non-Indian countries following kddimata we find mention of Bhota, Cina, Mahacina, Nepala and Hina The hid: mode of practice prevalent outside India included Nepila, Hina, Parsvakika (Parasyaka ®) Thus while Bhota, Cina, Mahacina followed only the kad: mode, Nepala and Hina followed both, but Parsvakika followed only the had: mode According to some Tantras, kéd: denoted the followers of Kali and hdd: the followers of Tripurasundari * Avalon maintains that kad: mode was prevalent m Bengal and Addin Kashmir and Kerala But the list of countries belongmg to the two modes as mentioned in. the Sammohatant;a includes Vanga, Kerala and Kasmira under both the modes In the Nepal Catalogue, 11,71, mention 1s made of another mode of worship called ‘had: and it 1s stated that this denoted the worship of any goddess other than Kali and Tripurasundari. II Kranta According to another tradition the Tantras are divided into three groups varying with the three regions known as afvakranta, rathakranta, and visnukranta, though it 1s somewhat difficult to determine what the exact derivative meanings of these terms are In any case, according to the Sakt:mangalatantra, a late work, the region extending from the Vindhva to Chittagong 1s known as visnukranta, the region from the Vindhya to the Cape Comonn (Kanyakumanka) 1s efvakranta, while the region from. the Vindhya to China 1s rathakraénta* Thus itis clear that the 2 PG Bagchi, Studves in the Tantras, 47 3 U_ Das draws our attention to another mode called Aahad: He quotes the following evidence of the Kalikhanda Kadyam hadyam makesant kadyam Kalimatam bhavet, hadyam Sritripurakhvam hahakhyam Tan-umatam (Bharatiya Saktisadhana, 1, 463) But as in the Sammohatantra, an early Tantric text, mention 1s made of only kad: and hadi, kahad: appears to be a later development of the conception 4 In the—kranta accounts Agehananda Bharati warns us not to take ‘the rehgious geography’ of India im it. face value He observes that such a50 Reflections on the Tantras scheme 1s based on the Vindhya as the cardinal pot It shows further that the horizon of Tantrism extended beyond India. P C Bagchi has drawn our attention to the fact that in China there are hundred pnncipal Tantras and seven minor Tantras. It 1s curious, however, that the above three divisions do not include South East Asia where Tantusm had been prevalent in the 8th century The four Tantric texts referred to in the Sdok- Kak Thom record were ‘of North Indian origin’ May we notinfer then that the tradition of aSvakranta etc. originated before the introduction of Tantzism in South-East Asia, though they are found in texts of later days, which evidently incorpo- rate earler traditions? Or, has the tradition got any other significance 7 Il Amnaya, Dakinr, Sahin According to Tantric tradition, the Tantras are classified in five amndya divisions In Apte’s Dictionary the following mean- geographical notion 1s ‘sufficiently broad so as to include whatever region was not really accessible to the compilers, or what they knew from pious hearsay ‘More possible reasons for the scarcity of topographical reference or for the lack of geographical accuracy in such references can be readily adduced and subsumed Caste Hindus lose their caste when they cross the northern mountains just as when they cross the ocean, places that cannot be inspected are not described with any claim to precision, escorts of Buddhist mussionaries who returned from Tibet told wild tales about that inaccesuble country, with impumity, Tibetans who came to study at Nalanda or Vikramasilé might have done the same’ (/¢, 61-2) 5 P C Bagchi, Studs an the Tantras, Lif 6 Agehananda Bharati thinks, following P C Bagch, that asvakranta comprises the region from the Vindhya mountains (in Central India) to Mahacina including Nepal, and Rathakran‘a from the Vindhya to the great ocean including Cambodia and Java’ (!¢, 61) Here evidently the tradition of the Maha siddhasaratantra regarding asvekranta has becn followed, showing that the writers of the Tantras had conflicting notions regarding the scheme In any case, the original division appears to have started with India as the cardinal point reminding us of the famous Devistotra in the Great Epic where the Mother Goddess or the Sakti 1s described as ‘having her perpetual abode an the Vindhyas’ The confusion in the Mahasiddhasaratantra 1s evident when it extends Visnukranta from the river Karatoya to Java, which over- laps 1ts own description about Visnukranta extending from the Vindhya to Cattala of ChittagongOn Some Tantric Concepts 51 ings of the term @mndya are given (1) sacred tradition, hence the Veda etc taken collectively, (2) traditional usage, family or national customs, (3) received doctrine, (4) advice and ins- truction So the statement of the Kulyeké that 1t belongs to the pascimamnaya may indicate that the doctrine was received from the west Our contention 1s supported by the opening lines of the text which is said to have been dictated by Siva to Parvati on the Mount Meru or Pamir It further contains the command of Siva to Sakti to go to Bharatavarsa which mdicates thatit came fiom outside 1e, the Pamur region to this country The general notion that the Kuly:kamata refers to Kali worship in Bengal seems to be wrong As Agehananda Bharati points out, ‘the goddess Kubpka 1s the tutelary deity of the low-caste potters, who are therefore said to belong to the Kubyikamnaya or the Kubyika tradition, the goddess 1s also worshipped by the Bhiityas of Almora and has many small shrines in the Nepalese and Indian ¢era:’? The Pamur 1s to the west of such regions According to the Tantric tradition the d@mndya divisions sigm- fy the duections to which Siva turned his face while uttermg the Tantras to the Great Goddess, and thus there 1s uttara, daksina, piirva, pascima and iirddhoa— amnayas * It may be argued 7 Agehananda Bharau, Ic, 66 8 That the term amnaya clearly refers 10 direction will be clear from the fact that an earher Tantra like Kulamava refers to only four amnayas, parva, daksina, pascema and utara (ch 3, 18) The number of amnayas later went on imcreasing and different significance came to be attached to each amnaya In fact, in the Kularnava itself such interpretations already appear pirvamnayah srstirupah sthitiriipasca daksinah samharah patcimo dev' uttaro’nugraho bhavet mantrayogam wduh pitroam bhaktsyogaiica daksinam pasamam karmayogafica jhanayogam tathottaram Our contention that the term amnaya originally meant direction seems to be supported by the opening lines of the Kuby:kamata which runs as follows Om namo mahabhawravaya nityoditaftadanandam sarvayftam sarvasamsth tam Kamar upaparam devam Snnatham pranamamyaham meruprsthe sukhasinam bhavravam vgatamayam ganakopssamakirnam yogibhth parwarttam prampatya Mahadevam dam vacanamavrastt (Incorrect Sanskrit, Durbar Ligne getatogue, 1, TS)52 Reflections on the Tantras that if the term dmndya be equated with a particular duection, then what would be the significance of the expression arddhva- mndéya? In fact, there are some Tantras which claim to have directly come down from the heaven above and these may be taken as belonging to the arddkvdmndya gioup Thus a fippani on the Vamakesvaratantra, dealing with the worship of ‘Tripurasundari states that 1t was directly brought down to eatth and so itis not a work of the Nathas,® which evidently means the Tantric teachers If the above interpretation be accepted then we have to admit that the earliest inspiration for writing the Tantras, here the Kubjika, came from the western o: the north-western region Ithas already been noted that the Gangdha: Stone inscrip- tion of the year 480 v =423-4 Ab shows the earhest use of the word dakint, and also shows how the Sakta cult was giadu- ally tending towards Tantrism in the age of the Guptas The epigraph records that ‘a certam Maywiahshaka, a minister ot Visvavarman, built a temple of Visnu, — also a temple of the divine mothers — and also a large drinking well’ L 1 35-6 of the inscription has been translated by Fleet as follows ‘Also, for the sake of rehgious merit, the councillor of the kang caused tobe built ths very termble abode (and) filled full of female ghouls ( ¢ahin1) of the divine Mothers, who utter loud and tremendous shoutsin joy, (and) who stu up the very oceans with the mighty winds nsing ftom the magic rites of then religions "2° As already stated the Meru orginally denotcd the Pamn though later on the idea became a confus.d one As the Auljrha 1s an carly Tantra and as 1t claims to belong to the pascima amnaya, and ‘Iso as it records the coramand of Siva sitting on the Meru to the Mother Goddess to go to Bharatacarva gaccha toam Bharate zarse'dla-haraya sareatah indicating that the idea conuing the Tantra came from the western duection Later on when the real signihcance of amnava was forgotten its number began to increase Thus as Siva 1s supposed to have five mouths che amnayas gradually became five Later on again it rose up to st (Pranatovant 63-4) The confusion might have begun earlier (cf Kulamava) 9 Sastrr, Durbar Lebrary Catalogu, 11, xin 10 J F Fleet, Corpus, m1, 78On Some Tantric Concepts 53 Ifwe analyse the above account we find that (a) there weie divine Mothers more than one, (b) that these divine Mothers were accompamed by female ghouls or dakinv, and (c) that this mother worship was associated with magic rites, fanira The word dakinz has led to some discussions among scholars PC Bagchi suggested that ‘witches distantly connected with the Dags (the people of Dagistan) and Sakas were probably referred to in the Tantras as Dakinis and Sakinis respectively. Evidences are not wanting to prove that women still have a great role in the spiritual hfe of the people of this zone (Wes- tern Tibet) as well as that of Central Asia and Mongoha ’# S B Dasgupta accepted this interpretation and pointed out that the word dika was used in Tibet in the sense ofa wise man, while dakint 1s its femmine torm™ J N Banerjea 1s not prepared to accept this interpretation He maitains ‘the suggestions are unacceptable on account of this early epigra- phic evidence (noted above) The inscription particularly emphasises the shouting propensity of the Mothers and their attendants, and the word daka and dakim may be of purely Indian origin The suggestion may be supported by the interest- ing word ghoshin: (ghosha and daka mean the same thing) occurring in the Atharvaveda to denote the female attendants of the terrific god Rudra J N Banerjea’s attempt to derive the word dakin: from déka can hardly be accepted, for I have not met with the word in the Sanskrit dictionaries The word daka, on the other hand, came from the word dakint and thus signified loud sounds Itis difficult todiscard P C Bagchi’s view summary in this fashion The terms dakim, sakin, lakini, rakint etc belong to a group and they appear to have special meaning ™ In the Hevaratantra it 1s exphaatly stated, 11 PC Bageh, Studwes in the Tantras, 51f 12 An Introduction to Tantric Buddhism, 13 13 Puranic and Tantric Religion, 128 14 The terms like dakin: etc seem to mean goblin of diverse sorts dakins sarpavadana vittaja yvalanaprabha Aamandalam karttrkafica dharayant. varaprada ulukavadana devi rakint milasannibha, Khadgakhetakasamyukta sarvalankarabhisita54 Reflections on the Tantras dakin tu tatha lama ‘This lama 1s not the commonly known Tibetan word Bla-ma, meaning scholar, but something different They in fact constitute a group of female Tantic adepts who have their special practices and they are hike the ‘goddess or the queen of the warring weapons 715 Itmay be noted in this connection that the Kubs:hdmata fears that one day the Magas may be equal to the brahmanas 1¢ The Magas or the Magi were the priests of the Medians and lakint Srikapaladhya pasankusadhara sati patalipuspasankdsa sarvabharanabh ustta Kahin hayavaktra ca mankvasadréaprabha trimukin-mundasamyukta siddida sarvasobhana Sakinf tvaiyanaprakhya margarasya susobhana kulSafica tatha dandam dharayanti S($)uctsmeta hakint rksavadana milaniradasannbha kapalasitahasta ca khetakarrupasoblata (Kularaaca, ch 10 70) If we compare the above description with the following account in chapter vu of Santiparoa in the Great Epic, which may be assigned to 3:d-4th centu- nes AD,1¢, 1 the Scytho-Kusina age, we may possibly infer that the ea came from the extra-Himalayan region and hence the connection of dakini with the Dag witches of Dagistan and sakim: with the Saka witches of Sakastana, as P C Bagchi avers, seems to be justified The account of the Epic runs thus ‘Asvatthama had been worshipping Siva- Mahadeva First, he uttered. a hymn in honour of the god and then was on the point of offering his own self as a sacrifice to the deity, when a golden chariot descended from the heaven in which there were a blazing fire and creaturcs of various sorts having burning mouths and eyes, many fect and arms, with faces of bears gers, crows etc Some of these creatures were drinkers of blood and fat, while some were of very short stature and some very hgh’ 15 The above observations sccm to indicate that the word dakin: etc did not come originally from Tibet It evidently went to Tibet and India from a common source In the Rudrayamala also we find a similar idea which however might have come fiom Tibet Thus it 1s stated — Yuvatr yogamirata sa devt Dakim mata (Patala 28), Again — Kahinya astasaktinam nyasahhuryatattah param (Patala 62) The above statements clearly show that by the time when the Rudrayamala was composed dakini, hakint etc were regarded as faktis or goddesses in the Tantne pantheon When the yamala was composed India had already established intumate relationship with Tibet 16 Infra, 55On Some Tantric Concepts 55. they came to India in the train of the Scythian hordes of Central Asia!’ The Geography of Ptolemy shows that they penetrated to the south and there established a colony of their own ‘In like manner the parts under Mount Bettigo are occupied by the Brakhmanoi Mago1 as far as the Bata: with this city Brakhme 128° 19°18” The term Bettigo 1s identical with Tamil Podiga:, Sk Malaya mountain in Karnataka or Mysore R P Chanda has discussed at length the question of Magian influence on Indian culture * Here we may note a tradition that the goddess Ugratara or Nilasarasvati was born to the west of the Meru in a lake called Cola P C Bagchi suggests that Cola may be connected with the common word for lake Kul, Kol, which 1s found with names of so many lakes to the west and north of T’1en shan 1 e , in the pure Mongolian zone ’2° The worship of Tara, as a Buddhist goddess, was prevalent in Mongoha where she 1s hnown as Dara®! and evidently these Buddhistic ideas along with the conception of Sahinis and dakints came through the Magas in the train of the Scythians, though their use took some time to deep roots on the Indian soil and hence the first use of the word dak: is found in an inscription of the Gupta period Iv Sadhaka In the Kubjekdtantra we meet with the term haula which, accord- ing tothe Tantric literature, means the highest type of the sadhakas Such sadhakas are like Siva and they have no rules to 17 Supra 18 Geography of Ptolemy Classrcal Accounts of India ed R CG Majumdar, 375 19 RP Chanda, The Indo Aryan Races, 82-5 20 BN Sealan his Vatsnavism and Chnishamty, 48f, identifies Meru with Pamir But in this account there seems to be confusion with the Tantric wniters regarding the location of the place and 1t may mean with them any peak on the western side of Tibet or Mahacina or Bhota 21 © Elhot, Hindiasm and Buddiesm, m, 401fn56 Reflections on the Tantras observe inasmuch as they will make no difference between clay and sandalpaste, son and enemy, cremation ground and house In other words, such a worshippe: will have to reduce himself to a stage when he will find evervthing in himself and himself im God, that 1s, here we find a philosophical enunciation of a type of momsm The following divisions will make an interest- ing study showing how different modes of Tantric culture had been in vogue 1. Daksina or 1ight-hand mode — In this mode the worship simply centres round the Mother Goddess or the Devi 2 Vama or the left-hand mude —It 1s recommended that during the day time the worshipper should observe extreme renunciation but at night worship the Goddess with various esoteric practices. 3 Kaula mode — This 1s the highest ofall the modes, but it is opposed to the Vedas and other smarta practices, and sadhakas following this mode are called viras or heroes (supra) The Sammohatantra, however, divides the different sects into three classes — dizya, kaula and vdma, evidently according to the modes of sadhana followed by the worshipper °* Diya seems to sigmify the kaulas of the highest order All the three followed left hand practices or the esoteric system as defined in the Tantras It 1s further stated in the Tantras that the sa@dhakas are divid- ed into four groups according to the following geographical order 1 the Kerala group prevalent m countries from Anga to Malava, 2 the Kasmra group trom Madra to Nepala, 3 the Gaudagioup from Silahattain Bangladesh to Saindhava, 4 the Vlasa group in all countries The geographical terms used here are misleading showing eather that the writer of the Tantra was not properly acquainted with the topography of Bhaiatavarsa, or as the Tantrics them- selves claim, they want to describe everything in their own 22 PC Bagchs, Studies in the Tantras, 99On Some Tantric Concepts 57 secret language We may take the case of the Kerala sect Angas the present Bhagalpur region im eastern Bihar, while the country of Malava was located in Madhya Pradesh Thus the region extending from Anga to Malava was far away from Kerala proper Again, the area of the Kerala sect extending trom Bhagalpur to Madhyapradesh overlaps the Gauda area from Silahatta, Sylhet, to Saindhava There is some overlapping between the areas of the Gaudas and the Kasmira sect, as well *? 23 dod6 BIJA, MANTRA AND GAYATRI The Tantric worshippers are enjoined to muttei the mantra, a spell ox formula, sometimes prefixed with a monosyllabic bya. In case of the brahmins and the hermits the formula 1s preceded by the word OM, supposed to be formed of three distinct sounds, 4, U and M Géyatrz, on the other hand, is described in Apte’s Dictionary as ‘the name of a vury sacred verse repeated by every Brahmana at his Sandhyd (morning and evening devotions) and on other occasions also Great sins even ate said to be expiated by a pious repetition of this verse ” The whole theory 1s based on the Sabdiha philosophy and the sphotavada S$ Radhakrishnan observes ‘The fact of meaning is explained by the grammanians on the theory of the Sphota According to it, any single letter, ¢, 0, w, or all the letters, “cow’’, cannot produce the know- ledge of a thing corresponding to the word, since each letter perishes as soon as it 1s produced Even ifthe last letter 1s aided by the impressions left by the preceding ones, a number of letters cannot explain the cogmtion of a thing There must be something over and above the letters by which the knowledge 1s produced, and that 1s the spkota, or the essence of sound revealed by letter word o1 sentence This sound- essence produces the cognition of the thing A single letter, unless it is a complete word, cannot signify anything The advocates of padasphota argue that only a pada, or a word, can signify a meaning, while those of vahyasphota hold that only a vakya, or a sentence, can signify a complete meaning According to the latter, a sentence 1s the beginning of speech, while words are parts of sentences, and letters parts of words.Bya, Mantra and Gayatri 59 Sphota, or sound-essence, 1» said to be etrenal and self existent, bearing a permanent relation to the thing signified byt Letters, words and sentences manifest, but do not produce, the eternal meanings The Natyayikas hold that whatever 1s significant 1s a word, and we become cognisant of its signification when we hear the last letter of the word On hearing the last letter ‘“‘w’?, we recollect the previous ones, c, 0, and grasp the whole word by the mind, and we cognise the object by means of the conventional association between the word and the object 7+ The Tantras, in fact, make a synthesis between padasphota and vakyasphota, while the two sphotas are to be preceded by the Vedic word par excellence OM denoting the Hindu trinity, the god of creation, the god of preservation and the god of destruc- tion ruling over the whole universe As tradition forbids the use of word OM in case of non-brahmins, the latter can use a mantra like Aim Sarasvatya: namah, while a brahmin should mutter Om Aim Sarasvatya: namah J Sinha draws our attention to the fact that ‘the Mahabharata distinguishes between the supreme (Para) Brahman and Sabdabrahman, and declares that the former can be known through the latter But Bhartrhar: identifies them with each other, and maintains that Sabdabrahman creates Aum, then the Vedas, and then the world All empnical objects are modifications of the root sound Aum The world 1s a modification of the Vedas, which are created by Sabdabrahma All objects are rooted in sounds and identical with them *% 1 Radhakrishnan, Indian Phulosophy, 11, 106 2 J Smha, A History of Indian Phulosophy, 1, 864 The author of the Pranatosanitantra has given different interpretations of Sphofavada according to different schools of thought but ulumately he comes to the conclusion that sabdarthardpanéstasya Sabdabrahmatvamavadhariiam (12) So the Tantne writers do not come to a different conclusion as has been supposed by several modern writers, though in some of the Tantras we find such classifications as para vak, pasyanti vak, madkyama vak and vatkhari vak Bhaskara Raya 1s a champion of such classification, though to a student of history they are mere gymnastic in intellectualism and nothing more, for they are not strictly accepted by the later writers as the above quotation fiom the Pranatosazi- tantra will showReflections on the Tantras Though the Tantric mantras have thus a sound philosophical basis and an o:thodox sanction behind it, the Tantras neverthe- less maintain that a mantra lying in the pages of a manuscript or a book has after all no power behindit It must be taken from a preceptor or guru, who will initiate his disciple after making it a hving force I have heard an imteresting story centrmg round Krsnananda Agamavagisa, a great Tantric, living in the sixteenth century, from a Sanskrit scholar of Bengal Krsnananda once muttered a mantra in the presence of his son and told the latter that if any one pronounced such a mantra on a fruit, the latter could neve: be cut down The son in Joy went to the house of a neighbour, requested him to bring a fruit and when it was brought he muttered the mantra on it and claimed that it could not be cut to pieces In order to test the efficacy of the mantra, the neighbour at once brought a knife and cut the object into several pieces There was a Joud laughte: and noise which attracted Krsnmananda to the place He requested the neighbour to brimg another fruit, uttered the same mantra and no one could cut it by kmite Everyone was surprised The son came back and asked his father about the mystery smrounding the whole affair The Tantric master explamed that what the son had pronounced were meie words, but the mantra pronounced by the master himself was a hving force, and so it brought the desned result It 1s difficult to determine how far the story 1s an authentic one Butit shows at any rate the popula: Tantric belief that when a mantra has no foice behind it, it 1s nothing but several words put together, and that forceful mantras can be given only by an adept guru or preceptor to a fit disciple In the Rudraydmala we find a long account of the persons who are fit to be preceptors o: disciples The list 1s based on the general conception of ethics with particular injunctions Some of the special injunctions are rather interesting Thus it 1s stated that a husband cannot inimate his wife excepting when the husband knows a siddhamantra, 1e , a mantra having a force behind it Similarly, a father cannot imttiate his son, or a brother his brother A similar injunction 1s also found in the Yogimtantra On the other hand, it 1senjoined in the Tantras that one can take initiation from his mother It 1s clear, thatBya, Mantra and Gayatri 61 such treatises were composed under the influence of the Sakta doctrine The Tantrasdra, whrch tries to bring the Tantric doctrines into the orthodox line (16th century), furnishes us with some interesting details regarding diks@ or mitiation® Thus we are informed that — 1 A Vaisnavaora Saiva should take imitation or diksa from a Vaisnava or a Saiva guru respectively, but one whether a Vaisnava, a Sarva or a Sakta may mutiate a Sakta disciple 2 A householder should take initiation fiom a guru who 1s also a householder and a yati from a yati ‘The second statement that there were Tantric householder gurus with their families — the respect to be shown to the family members of the guru 1s mentioned elsewhere — shows that Tantr- asm pervaded all the stages of human hfe and it 1s wrong to believe that the doctrine was confined solely to the ascetics who followed semi-magical and other nasty practices Such householders lived in societies dominated by orthodoxy and a few of the Tantric practices dubbed as nasty and obscene could not have been practised by them Such practices were resorted to by a small particular group and these are not wholly nasty (supra) The adjective stry2ta given to these gurus shows cleatly that the so-called five Ms have a special significance The following injunctions may be noted here a) A guru and a Sisya should live together for one year, watch the conduct of each other and then decide the desirabihty of initiation b) A boy, an old, lame or slim person should not be made a guru 3 Tantrasara, 1 49 52 udasino hyudasinam vanastho vanavasinah yatnaiica yatth prokto grhasthanam gururgrin varsnave varsavo grahyah Sawe Sawastatha punah Saktrke tritayam vrdyaddiksasvamt na samSayah gururapt grhasthe eva Kulamave Sarvasastrarthavetta ca grhastho gururucyate tatha ca kalpe —kalatraputravan wipro dayaluh sarvasammatah dasve putre’rimtre ca grhastho destko bhavet62 Reflections on the Tantras c) We have a long list of persons, who, though otherwise qualified cannot be made a guru The hst includes those mentally, physically or morally backward and cannot stand test in the background of ordmary ethics a) Itas emphasized that the guru should not be thought of as an ordinary person Hes the deity or god in human form If Siva 1s angry the guru can save, but when the guru s angry there 1s no agency that can save a man Sore of the qualities of the \sya or disciple as enumerated in the Tantrasdéra are very interesting Thus it 1s stated that a fisya should be of quiet nature, modest, of pure soul, devoted, meritouous, efficient, of good character, saintly, devoted to guuetc This seems to indicate a general catalogue of the qualifications of an idealman The demeiits enumerated, on the other hand include miserliness, poverty, tbsence of dcdra or ordained practices, finding fault wath othirs, ilhteracy, pride, disease, lust etc 4 As the Tantras make a harmony of the harma of the Vedas, the jana of the Upanisads and the bhakti of the Puranas and the Great Epic, 1t was evidently necessary for a disciple to be versed in all the three aspects of Hindu sddhané and thus it was required that a sadhaha should be of an ideal aptitude It is further stated that while it was necessarv for adisciple of the brahmana caste to live with the guiu for onc year, a hsatriva was enjomed to live so for two, vaisya for three and sidra for four yeats ‘This clearly shows that the Tantias, though otherwise maintaming a very liberal atutudc, operated in the background of the fourfold caste syst'm, indicating thereby once again that the Tantiic doctune had been working among the houscholdurs of the orthodox society In fact, the Kuldmnava declares that a hauseholder versed in all the sa@stras mav be a good guru Here dstra wiers to Tantra sastras, for it is maintained in the Tardmadipa that god can be propitiated oaly at worshipped afte: the dgama fashion, and not in other methods, for the Vedas were fruitful in the satya age, smrtis in the treta, Puranas in the dvdpara, while in the Aalzyuga the agama methods only are feuitfyl, because in this age the brahmanas are unholy and 4° Tantrasare, 1 26-33Bya, Mantra and Gayatri 63 follow the avocations of the siidras and therefore cannot follow the Vedic myunctions in details ® On an auspicious day indicated by the almanac tallymg with the horoscope of the disciple, the guru should imitiate the for- mer The Tantra states that on the day just before the initia- tion the Szgya should observe fast, le on bed of kufa g.ass and utter the mantra of namo jaya trinetraya or other mantras as direct- ed by the guru Ifat mght the saya seesim dream objects like elephant etc (a lst of such objects is given in Tantrasdra), it as to be believed that the initiation will ultimately lead to success The injunction of observing fast etc 1s meant for purify- ing tne body and mind, but it 1s really difficult to understand what the significance of the dreams can be, especially if we judge the same fiom the point of view of modern psychologists hke Sigmund Freud and others Here evidently some aborigi- nal beliefs have crept into the system or we are not 1n a posi- tuon to unravel the mystery of the Tantric injunctions ® In case of the mantras also the Tantras prescribe several dis- tinct groups First of all, itis to be decided which mantra 1s suitable for a person and which not and for this the Tantras have put forth several tables in the background of which a mantra is to beso judged There are six such diagramis in the Tanfrasdra, but the most interesting 1s the one known as kul@kulacakra It works in the background of the conception of five different ele- ‘ments, atr, fire, earth, water and ether The guru 1s to judge which element 1s stronger 1n the person of the disciple and the mantra accordingly should be given to him Thus if one has the pre- ponderance of water element he may be given a mantra of the earthly group, for water and earth are considered to be friendly, 5 Ibid, 1 38-40 The statement of the Kulamnava that a householder, versed in all the Sastras, 1, the Tantras, canbe a good guru, shows that the Tantric form of worship was followed by the householders from a very early ume 6 swapne Subhasubham drstam prechet pratah Ssum guruh kanyam chatram ratham dipam prasadam kamalam nadim kuijaram vrsabham malam samudram phaninam drumam parvatam turagam medhyamamamamsam surasavam evamadint sarvan: drstva siddhimavapnuat (Tantrasara, 1 6-7)64 Reflections on the Tantras but if initiated in a vdyumantra, he will face much harm, for water and air elements are considered to be of immuical character This kulakulacehra appears to be first hinted at in the Ruda- yamala which though starting on a scientific basis nevertheless sinks into superstition when stating that water and earth ele- ments are friendly, but inimical to air because we know that water and fire are inimical, but water and an elements are rather friendly The Tantra sinks into further unscientific level when it prescribes that a mantra 1s to be judged as belong- ing to a particular element when its first letter tales with the one in the following chart ar fire earth water ether aa ai ud ri VT! e ar ° au am k kh g gh n c ch J gh a t th a dh Rn t th d dh n P ph b bha m y r 1 v s s ks 1 s h The method of the Rudrayamala did not appeal to the later writers and so they invented different diagrams for different deities or groups of deities, but neveitheless they also work on the basis of the first letter of the deity’s name and the first letter of the name of the disciple In other words, it uso works on the theory of sphotavada? 7 Another such cahra is a diagram divided into twelve houses of the zodiac and the different alphabets are arranged anti-clockwise and 1s known as rasiechra Another such diagram 15 nahsatracakra in which the letters are arranged in twenty seven houses according to the numbcrs of the stars in our solar system and cach house again 1s named after a particular gana Here we can clearly detect the influence of che Indian astronomical scence which, as Kirfel has ponted out, 1s as old as the ume of the Veday ‘There uc three more diagrams divided into several houses, but it's difficult to detcrnune their significance In any case, the diagram presented by the Rudrayamala, the kulakulacakram, appears to be on somewhat reasonable ground and this, as we shall see later on, explains in myority of the exscs, the significance of the monosyllabic byasBya, Mantra and Gayatri 65 The Tantras thus group the different Indian alphabets under the above five headings and enjoin that if the first lette. of the name of the disciple talhes with the first letter of the name of the god or goddess in a particular group, the mantra of that deity can be taken For example, d,b,J, etc fallin the categny ofearth and if the first letter of the name of the disciple falls within this category or any other category in harmony with it, he can take the mantra ofa deity having the name of the first letter in this group Thus a man with the name of Jaya (earth category) can take the name of the maitra of the goddess Laksmi It 1s difficult to determine on what basis such dia- grams were formed or how the first letter of a person’s name can have any harmonising (or anti)-relationship with the name of a particula: deity To understand it we should discuss the whole thing from the Tantric pomt of view which main- tains that in this world everything including the name ofa person is pre-arranged and pre-ordained and the sound parti- culatly, on which both the name of a person and the mantra are based, has a special meaning to it based on the philosophv of sphotavada As SN Das Gupta has observed ‘The Tantra assumes that the movement which has produced the world shows itself or 1s represeated in us in miniature in the product- 10n of the sound The process of the production of the sound is. the epitome of the notion as it were of the cosmic process of creation The same process which underlies the cosmic creation manifests itself in us in every case of the production of sound, so that the genesis of sound 1s not to be taken as umaginary but a real symbol of thecreative process The Mimamsahas regarded sabda and artha as mere inanimate or acetana So there was the eternality without any notion, but the Tantra asserted that it 1s the spit or intelligence which realises itselfas the sabda and artha, mind and matter *$ The Tantras assert that any mantra which the guru considers suitable for his disciple when uttcred according to the proper scheme generates an energy which ultimately leads sddhaka to his goal We may accept it 01 reject it as nonsense, as JN Farquhar has done in the following words ‘The vast mayonty 8 Asutosh Moohheryee Volumes, 1, 26366 Reflections on the Tantras ofthese mantras are nonserse syllables such as Hrmg, Hung, ‘Tha, Aing, Hum, Phat, sparks fiom the blazing furnace of aboni- ginal superstition whence the system arose, or ftom the equally superstitious stores laid up in the Atharvaveda °° What Farquhar saysis neither the Hindu view nor the full view on the subject The mono-syllabic sounds hike fring etc arc not mantras by themselves They are called yas and are added either: at the beginning or at the end or at both the sides of the mantra Thus for Durga we have the mantra, hring Durgdyai namah,1c hring salutation to Durgi Its believed, rightlv o: wrongly, that when such byas are added to a mantra it becomes more power- ful There aie again mantras without any such yas, eg, namak Stvaya 01 jayo yayo Nrsimhah, ‘salutation to Siva’, ‘victory to god Nrsunha’ These are certainly not nonsensical words o1 sparks from the blazing furnace of aboriginal superstition They ate in elegant and chaste Sinsknt and are on par with the prayer for- mula of any civihsed people, barring of course the theists, who may laugh at such things Further, Farquhat’s contention that such mono-syllables have connection with the .itharvaveda has no basis, for sounds like fring occur for the first time in the Brahmana hterature of the post-Samhita period Even an atheist hke Kautilya, who maintains that material well-being alone 1s supreme and relegates spimtualism down to material welfare, does not fully dismiss the usc of mantra in his work 1° If there be any value in the reading of the Bibk etc , we must attach value to the muttering of mantras hike namah Swaya by a devotee Indeed devotion and faith are the prime necessitics in the life of a S.ya and they come indirectly from the Yoga system™a which pervades the whole of Tantrism The Yoga system pres- cribes different methods for sitting on meditation, modcs for bringing the breath under control generating thereby a special power in the nervous system and muttering the mantras after 9 JN Farquhar, Religius Literature of India, 201 10 4rthafastra, trans Shama Sastri, 144 6 10a The Yoga system begins with the faith that a particular posture and meditation with the control of breath will ulumatcly lead to supreme goal The devotee must stut with this faith and should not reject at as nonsense and superstitionBya, Mantra and Gayatri 67 fixing the mind on a particular object, beit at the image of a deitv or a diagram supposed to represent the deity itself The amage or the diagram is so long necessary as the mind of the devotee is not brought under control After that begins his mental sddhand The fisya can mutter the mantra ether through the different parts of the fingers, about which special rules are laid down, or with the help of rosaries which can be made of rudraksa, parts of conchshells, lotus-seeds, pearls, crystal, jewels, gold, coral, stlver or roots of kufa trees Extreme Tantrics prepare rosaries of mahasankha which however are forbidden to be used by the householder Mauttering of the mantra on different rosaries are for different purposes Thus lotus-seed rosary leads ult:mately to the destruction of enemy, coral rosary for gaining wealth, rosaries made of jewels or silver lead to success while that of kusa seeds makes man free of sin Again there are special rosar- 1es meant for different deities Thus a Vaisnava should use the rosary of tulst, one worshipping Ganesa should use that ofivory, while in case of Tripurasundari rudraksa or red sandal-wood MahdaSankha rosary, made of the bone of human fore-head, 1s used for worshipping the goddess Tara As already stated, it should never be used by a householder In ordinary cases, a householder, 1f he 1s not a follower of Visnu or Ganapati, can use rosaries of lotus seed, rudrdksa or bhadraksa¥) Rudraksa occupies a special position with the worshippers of Siva and 11 The Tantrasara observes in this connection padmaksarroviuta mala Satrunam nasint mata kuSagranthimay mala sarvapapaprazasint putraywaphala klpta kurute putrasampadam nirmita raupyamanbharyapamalepsitaprada pravalarnhtta mala prayacchedvxpulam dhanam Bharravwrdyayantu Varahitantre— suvamamanibhirmalam sphatikim Sankhantrmetam pravalaireva va kuryat putraywam wvaryayet padmaksaiicawa rudraksam bhadraksafica visesatah inpuramantrajapadau tu raktacandanabyadibhih prasasta tatha ca tanire —raktacandanamala tu bhogamoksaprada bhavet tatha, Vaisnave tulasmala gayadantawrganesvare Tnipuraya jape fasta rudraksat raktacandanath ‘Mundamalavam — mahasankhamayt mala Nilasarasvate vidhau68 Reflections on the Tantras Sakti Thus one wearing a single rudr@hsa on any part of his body 1s credited with gaining great merit and ulumately goes to the heaven of Siva Similar injunctions ate laid down regarding the dsanas or seats on which the japa has to be performed Thus it 1s stated in the Gautamyatantra, tatha mrdvadsane mantri patdjinakuSottara itr, 1e, asddhaka should sit on a husa dsana heeping on it shin, ie, deer skin in case of ordinary householder and tiger skin in case of sanyasins putting over it again a soft piece of cloth It is beheyv- ed that one who sits on such a sert attains mental concentra- tion very easily Similar injunctions of different vaneties are to be found in different places It 19 difficult to determine how far such rules are bascd on tational proccss, though such m- junctions appear to be based on the rules of the Yoga-sistra Rules laid down regarding the placc of amtiition are very iteresting Thus according to the yimala, one necd not bother about the time of imtiation if it takes place m the pwnatutha, Kuruksetra, the four prthas, Prayaga, Srigin and Kasi MeahaSarkhastu tantre — nrlalatasthiKhandena recta japamalihe mahaSankhamayt mala Tararidyayape pry Karnanetrantarasthasth: mahasankhah prakirhtah (pp 34 95 12 The Tantrasera gives a long hist about the diffrent asunas Hamsamahesvare — hamvalam fomatam kausam daravam karma sadhanum etesamasamam ‘uddham carmayanam sureSart Tommt cara radastnastada sar am sinasyate lomarparfanamatrina siddhahanth prayavate Kamyartham hamealaReana Sresthata raktakam, alam Argnapine panasiddhirmoksah $2 tsaghracar mane Augasane mantraxiddhirnatra arya ticaraze dharanyam dubkhasambh dturdaurbhagyam dariasan vamgasam daridrak syat pasure tyadhaprdanam traasare sasohanch pallace ctttastbhramah sapadhsanatapohanim vastrasanam harots he ata eva tastrasanam kevalamera wtruddham castrasanam —rogaleramityade~ vacanena witstaga phalayanakateat, cetaprnal usottaramts bhavatadt acana ca Tatha ca Gautamye—tatha mrd.asane mantre patywnakusottara tte Login frdaye — nadiksuto vifeyyatn Argnasarayme grhi ised patiranasthasca brakmacart ca blaksukah Agamakalpadrume — mesauyaghragayostrarksoraga — toacastu sapbarmasu pratyeham hatdsanant (pp 356) ef Agehananda Bharau, Jc, 249Bya, Mantra and Gayatrt 69 (a) It has already been shown that Kuruksetra 1s an smpor- tant seat of orthodox culture and the gurus of this place are con- sidered to be of the highest authority The present myunction shows once more the sanctity attached to this place by the Tantrics We may compare the expression punyaksetre Kuruksetre with dharmaksetre Kuruksetre occurring in the Bhagavadgita (b) The reference to four pithas 1s teresting These are Oddnyana (Swat Valley) , Jalandhara, Pirnagir: and Kamaripa, 1e, Kamakhyain Assam At piesent we have fiftyone Pithas, but the four(or three) prthas mentioned above form the nucleus out of which these fifty-one centres arose The mention of these four prthas in the Tantrasdra shows that these four have some special sanctity attached to them 7* (c) Prayaga,ie, the place where the confluence of the Ganges and the Jamuna takes place It formed the eastern boundary of the Aryavarta o1 the Aryandom™ and is regarded as avery sacred place by the o:thodox society (d) Srigir:— Its identification 1s not clear It may mean either mount Kailasa in Tibet or Srisaila which contams the potirlanga of Mallikaryunain the Andhra country 13 Supra, notes on catuspitha, of Agehananda Bharatr’s observation, Ic, 90, which seems to mdicate that there were only three origmal pithas (cf Matasara account noted above), also Tantrasara, 30 Bharati observes ‘It does not become directly clear from the texts why the fourpithas (Oddiyana, Snhatta, Parnagim, Jalandhara) were almost unanimously accepted as the most outstanding im all tantric tradition, Buddhist and Hindu alike I would hazard the guess that the high esteem for these four places might have something to do with the mythological eminence of the sites a pitha, by mythological definition, 1s a site where a hmb of the goddess fell to earth when her body was being chopped up by the gods (after the Daksa episode), at these four pithas, however (though unfortunately not only at these four), the magically most potent limbs of Sati descended her pudenda, her nipples, and her tongue’ A Bharati did not note the Matasara account which m- directly seems to inchcate that there wa. not only a reshuffling of the pithas, but possibly of the limbs of the Great Mother associated with each of them I admut, of course, that I cannot adduce any direct evidence on this point, but the circumstantial evidences lead to such a conclusion 14 The eastern boundary of Aryandom, according to early writers, was Kalakavana, usually identified with Allahabad or Prayaga (vide, supra, p 41), contra, Bhandarkar, ABORI, xu70 Reflections on the Tantras (e) Kasi—1s an important centre of Saivismand 1s looked upon as the tartha par excellence by the Hindus Among the places where the initiation 1s forbidden are Gaya, Bhaskaraksetra, Virayatirtha, Candraparvata, Cattala, Matanga and Kanyasrama 1 Gaya isin Bihar and 1s considered sacred by the Hindus on account of the presence of preta-Sil@ where Sraddhas are per- formed It 1s also the place where Lord Buddha performed his austerities 2 Bhasharaksetra — possibly Konarak m Ouissa 3 VirajAksetra — Pun in Onssa One really fails to understand why the above three places, considered so sacied, are ostracized in the Tantras Is it due to the fact that traditionally the urétyas who mhabited Magadha are looked down upon here, for it 1s sated in the Gautamuyatantra that while peiforming yapa, a sddhaka should not sce a vratya 35 That may account for the condemnation of Gaya But what about Orusa? In the early Dharmasastras Orissa o: Kalinga along with Anga, Vanga and Magadha are desciibed as umpure countries © Have we here a remnant of that tradition? 4 Candraparvata — Candranath 5 Cattala — Chittagong 6 Kanyasrama — Some scholars have identified it with Kamaripa But this viewhardly scems to b: contcct, inasmuch as we have just seen that Kamariipa is onc of the four prthas where diksdis 1ecommcended Kanydstama seems to be Cape Comorn lying to the extreme south of India From the above discussions it will be seen that the Tantric holy places excepting two were situated in North India, if we are permitted tu identify Srisaila, with Sitgiur Kerala 1s suppos- ed to be an important centre of Tantusm where Visnu rs 1e- garded as the supreme god, while Kashmu in North India 1s a stronghold of Tantric Saivism 17 The exclusion of both these 15 na wihset patitem vratyam pisunam devanindakam (p 4+) 16 Baudhayana Dharmasutra 1 1 32 3 17 Kashmura as a stronghold of Tantric Sanism, see, J C_ Chatterjee, Kashmia Sawismand KC Pandey, Abhinaragupta, while in the Saktisangama- tantra, Tarakhanda, 1 94, we meet with the expression Bauddhasea Kerala,Bya, Mantra and Gayatri 7 places from the above hist is rather puzzling There 1s of course the broad statement grahane ca mahdturthe ndst. kdlasya muirnayah, 1e, during the period of echpse and in great tirthas one need not consider about the question of time for getting initiation 74 The expression mahdtirtha 1s rather all-embracing and it was clearly inserted im the Yogintiantra when it was found that Tantrism was gradually extending its horizon throughout the length and breadth ot India The Tantras lay special stress on the question of time of initiation and for this 1t appears that the texts have laid greatest emphasis on astronomy Astronomy also plays an important part in Vedic sacrifices and it is not unhkely that the Tantras here are incorporating some of the older Vedic traditions in backgiound of ther own pattern Some concessions are however made during the period of Sakt: worship when it is stated that no calculation of tt: or other astrological aspects are necessary if the muitiatio1 takes place during the time of the bodhana of goddess Durga This shows that here Tantra 1s putting special emphasis on the Sakta cult and such observations have led scholars to maintain the misconception that Tantrism 1s practi- cally identical with Saktaism Simular concession 1s prescribed on the dav of Asokastami and Ramanavami but these two days are parts of the period of worship of the goddess Durga So the statement, tatrdp: §Gradt Durga yatra devi grhe grhe, tatradtksa prakartavya masaksadin na sodhayet 8 * * * Tantric doctrines are based on the maxim fariramadyam khalie dharmasadhanam, which forms the essence of Yoga philosophy as well The Yoga system of Patafijah unfolds before us the secret connection between préna (breath) and manas (mind) and the ye ca vira-varsnavasambhavah, which seems to indicate that the Keralas were followers of Vira-Visnu or Mahavisnu im the vamacara fashion Some take Viravaisnavasambhavah as a separate class But such an interpretation 1s negativated by the fact that in 1 92 we have the line Avacit Ganesarudresu Visnusaurasvayambhuve, vamacaravardike’p bhatrava vamatatparah So by the term Visnu hee the separate existence of the Viravaisnava class is clearly mean- angles It should be regarded as an adjective of Kerala 17a Tantrasara, 30 18 Ibd,72 Reflections on the Tantras fact that through dharand and dhyana the manas, controlled by a process of nervous discipline, leads to samadhx The Tantras also prescribe a similar method Body thus is to be prepared and sanctified first so that 1t can be the seat of sddhan@ For this the Tantias have drawn upa regular routine for the sddhahas Ris- ing early m the morning the sadhaka has to case himself and then take a bath that would produce a soothing effect on the nerves The sddhand practically begins from this stage when he has to follow dificrent modes and mutter mantras for the pur- pose Thencomes his actual worship Here by means of diffe- rent mantras he has to sanctify the different parts of his body, his seat, the objects of his worship etc These are primarily meant to produce an effect on the mind that the sadhaka 1s pure and without any blemish and his body has become fit for the abode of the deity ‘Then comes dhdrand,1e, fixmg of the mind on some part of his own body or any outward object, 1t mav be animage or a jantraie a diagiam, a legacy of the Vedas This diagram, which may appear to us to be a mystical one, may be drawn on the earth at the time of worship o: may be engraved on metals The yentra varies according to the different object of worship but in any case, it is regarded as the scat or the body of the devaté This yantra o1 image 1s necessary only for the fixing of the mind and when the mind is thus brought under control the sadhaka himself will thik that he has been transformed into the deity, 1¢, so’ham which 1s the summum bonum of Hindu sadhana IL The ongin of bys, mantra and gayati can be traced to the Vedic works Thus the byas of the mono-syllabic sound first appear in the Satabatha Bidhmana when we find the story that once Visnu had been resung his head on the end of a bow and the god sent ants to gnaw the bow stung The result was that the string snapped and sprang forth upwards, ‘the head of ‘Visnu became severed from the body and the head fill with the sound of gion and on filling it becamx the yonder Sun’! In 19 Satapatha Brahmana, as quoted by H C Raychaudhuri, EHVS, 16Bya, Mantra and Gayatri 73 the Tantras ghrnzis one of the byas of the Sun god For every deity we have thus a bia which 1s added at the beginning of the manira containing the name of the god with salutations pre- ceded by the Vedic word par' excellence OM Thus we have the mantra Om ghrn Sirydya namah Some time the form as reversed and theterm namah 1s placed just after the bya and then follows the name of the deity As regards the gayatri mantras, we find ther first appearance an the Maitrdyani Samhita of the Black Yayurveda,2° wherein we meet with the gayatrs of Visnu, Siva etc There the Siva gdyairt 1s as follows Tatpurusdya vidmahe Mahaievdya dhumaht Tanno Rudrah pracodyat, ‘We know about Purusa, let us think about Mahadeva May Rudra strmulate this in us * We find exactly the same gdyatr: mantra in the Tantrasdra In case of other deities, especially different forms of the Mother Goddess, the Tantras modified the form with the name of the paiticular deity to be worshipped and allowed it to be muttered by the éiidras even, while the Vaisnava gayains are forbidden im their case It may be noted im this connection that the Ktranatantra, which was copied m 924 aD, refers to mantras in vernaculars ** Even today we find snake-charmers etc who do not belong to the upper class, using such vernacular mantras im Bengal and other states This shows how side by side Sanskrit and vernacular mantras were developing under Tantric influence Sabarasvami, in his Bhasya, discusses the mantras from the Mimamsa pomt of view Thus he observes ‘Mantras are employedin accordance with the :mdicative potency (lmga) of the component words This potency of the mantras points sometimes to what 1s directly expressed by the 20° Mattrayans Samhita, n 91 21 Durbar Library Catalogue, u, xxvi, 99 It may be noted in this con- nection that while the Vedie gayatrt 1s prescribed for brahmanas only, the Gayatritantra, a very orthodox work attributed to Sri Sankara, enjoins that the Tantnc gayatris can be muttered by the sfidras as well vina havirna kastham katham vahmh pradspyate, tantrajenawa gayatrya Siidro'ps prayapenmanum (1 82)74 Reflections on the Tantras words, and sometimes to what is only directly 1mphed by them, the former being regarded as the primary meaning, and the latter the secondary meaning Hence in regard to the actual use of a mantra, there arises a doubt as to whether it should be used in accordance with its primary or its secondary meaning ’# Such an argument hardly we find in the Tantras, where a mantra, 1f taken from a competent guru, 1s always supposed to have a potency behind it In any case, from the above discussions it 1s clear that of bya, mantra and gayatri, the last was the earliest one to appear in the field of Hindu sédhana, for the Yajurveda 1s supposed to have been composed about the end of the first millenium 3G The earhest germ of bya, on the other hana, (sic) gk can be traced in the Satapatha Brahmana of c 800 wc Agehananda Bharat: points out that the bya hrim comes from the Vedic period, for in the érutis the word fri connotes modesty, bash- fulness etc extolling the femmine virtue Thus it can be used with reference to any female deity or ‘extended to a male god when his image 1s to be conjured up together with his female counterpart, Sakti or Prajfid or some other female attendant ’5 Itis thus apparent that as regards the gdyatr: and the bya, the Tantras derive their materials from the Vedic sources with their own modifications There have been some speculations regarding the process of the formation of the byus 1 that the vast number of monosvllabic bias are formed by the first letters of the names of the respective deities, eg , gam for Ganesa, dum for Durga, frm for Sri or Laksmi etc 2 that the Virudta maintains that the deities do not like to be prayed by their actual names and hence this may 22 Sabarabhasya, trans Ganganath Jha, Baroda, 1973, 382 23 Agchananda Bharati, !¢, 115, 1t may be noted however in this connec- tion that the letter A belongs to the dominion of ether or uyom or Sinya which pervades the whole universe Thus on the theory that any deity may be re~ garded as pervading the whole universe or uyom, the bya krim can be used with reference to any god or goddess Thus hke the mantra frm Durgayat namah, we can also mutter mantras hke hrim Siwdya namah, hrm Siirydya namah tc ‘The followers of saint Ramakrishna has vented for this reason the mantra like krim Ramakrsndya namahBya, Mantra and Gayatri 75 explain for the inner meaning of the byamantra by which a particular desty 1s denoted None of the above theories however, and no theones at all, can denote the process of the actual formation of the bias Can they in any way be connected with the conception of five ele- ments 1n nature and the different letters arranged under each element as given in the kuldkulacakra of the Rudrayémala noted before ? Thus aim 1s called the Sarasvati bya as well as Gurubya, because Sarasvati 1s called Vahmikanta and the guru acts hke fire or tga im protecting his disciple, while we find in the cakra that the letter a: falls under the group agn: or fire Simularly, Siva 1s generally extolled or accosted as vyom Hara Hara Mahadeva Vyom denotes the region of ether or dkdfa and so its bya 1s haum, h falling under akdfa or etheral group One has to face difficulties with regard to Kali and Kama, the former, the Adyasakt. and the second Kamadeva or Cupid, both supposed to pervade in air, and so different byas with k falling under the air group had to be formed — krim for Kali and klim forKama Byas lke ksraum for Nrsimha, ram for Rama etc having fiery nature eg, killing the demons, fall under aga or fire group It cannot be claimed that by this method all and every bya can be explained, but it explains at least a vast number of them Thus him 1s called kircabya, the word kérca meamng head (Apte) and it falls under the ether or ak@fa group which hes at the head of all worldly things Itis not possible to explain the exact connotation of the three bias, hum (varma or warrior), phat (astra) and em (yom) Are they simple onoma- topoeic sounds, for hum comes from humkara, a sound produced dunng the time of battle o: fight, phat im Hindi means burst or explode, as Agehananda Bharati points out 1t to be In any case, em cannot be explained Some of the byas are given below HAUM — Swa KRIM — Kali SRIM — Mahilaksmi STRIM — Tara DOM — Durga AIM — Sarasvati76 Reflections on the Tantras GAM — Ganesa KLIM — Krsna or Kamadeva GHRIM — Sirya MAM — Manasa GAM — Ganga RAM — Rama SIM — Sita BRAUM — Brahma RAM — Radhika SAM — Sasthi MAM = — Markandeya In the above hist, the bya sirim 1s interesting Elbot has shown that Tara is the only female goddess worshipped m India, the Mongohan world and even in the Tsarist Russia ** In India she has got another name Parnasavar?* denoting the goddess of the Australoid region and hence the bya strim is the most suitable one for such a deity This shows that besides the initial letter of the name of the deity, some of the byas have a wider connotation, which cannot be covered by the Kulékulacakra of the Rudrayamala Below 1s given a hist of gayatris based on the model of Siva and Visnu gdyatrt of the Black Yayurveda The Tantraséra enjoins that while a brahmana should pronounce OM, a Sidra or a female should pronounce AUM{ before pronouncing the mantra— DURGA — Nardyanyar vidmahe, Durgdyat dhimaht Tanno Gaurt pracodayat JAGADDHATRI—Mahadevyat v:dmahe, Durgdyar dhtmaht Tanno devi pracodayat SARASVATI — Vagdeuyar vidmahe, Kamarajaya dhimaht Tanno devt pracodayat 24 See Eliot, Hinduism and Buddhism, mx 383, 401fn 25 The term Parnasabari is an attempt to connect the goddess with the Vindhya region, for the Sabaras had their stronghold there, as already stated ‘This seems to indicate that the goddess of the Vindhya region had an impor- tant part not only in determining divisions hke — Ardntd, noted above, but also in interpreting the various gods and goddesses, for the different interpre- tations of the term Parnasaban, Getty, Gods of Northern Buddhism, 119f, where Paranasabari 1s described as an attendant of the goddess TaraBya, Mantra and Gayatrt 17 ANNAPURNA—Bhagavatya: vidmahe, Mahesvaryat dhimaht. Tanno’ nnapitrne(a?) pracodayat GANESA—Tatpurusaya udmahe, Vakratundaya dhimaht Tanno Dant: pracodayat SIVA—Tatpurusdya vidmahe, Mahadevaya dima Tanno Rudrak pracodayat GOPALA—K7sndya vidmahe, Damodaraya dhimaht Tanno Visnuh pracodayat RAMA—DéSarathdya uidmahe, Sttdvallabhaya dhimaht Tanno Ramah pracodayat SORYA—Adityaya vidmahe, Martandaya ditmaht Tannah Stryak pracodayat It 1s not possible to treat the history of the mantras nm a regular order When however we find that a sadhaka 1s enjoined to mutter the mantra ten times on the finger, or hundred and eight, thousand and eight times on fingers or on particular beads, we may possibly detect on the mantras a muxture of Aryan and Dravidian cultures, for 1t has been pointed out that tenor its multiples belong to the Aryan cadre and eight to the Dravidian * When in the post-Vedic age the supremacy of the brahmana priests was gradually dechning under the pressure of the heterodox sects denying the authority of the Vedas, they had to make a compromuse with the Dravidians and the Austra- loids The Santals and the Mundas have their own mystic formulae and as we find in the Tantras many un-Aryan ele- ments, simpler mantras had to be evolved and a lst of such mantras can be found in the Mantramahdrnava or Mantramuktdvalt. When the brahmanas entered into the Tantric fold, they added to the mantras their own mystic syllable OM and to maintain further the mystic character they added the byas The direct name could not be dispensed with, for, that would make the whole process unintelligible to the non-brabmin folk Thus we have side by side mantras like namah Sivaya, Omhaum namah Srvaya or Om krim aum namah Siwaya, all referring to the one and same deity — the Siva The Tantras make a distinction between Anavt dksa, Varnamay: diksd and Kramadsksa®— the different processes 26 The Vedic Age, 164 27° trundha sa bhaveddtksa prathama dnavi pard radia sa bhavedditsa Prati (Pranatosaei, 118) [Contd ]78 Reflections on the Tantras by which a mantra can be muttered after it 1s taken from the guru In conclusion, a few words may be stated about the purafca- rana system or making a mantra living According to the Kankdlamalinitantra there are various ways for adding such potency Thus it 1s stated that on the day of astami, caturdas or navam. or 1n a lonely place or on an dsana made of human bones, one should mutter the mantra from sunrise to sunset After finish- ang the process the sadhaka will worship the guru and pay him daksin& The other process is a simpler one On any day the mantra should be uttered twelve thousand times The methods of purascarana are different and should be done after the reading of samkalpavakya The process of giving potency to the mantra can also be done im a sacred place, or on the bank of the Ganges or any other sacred river or on the occasion of solar or lunar echpse * Echpses have always created awe in the minds of For an account of the vartamay: dilsd see Saradattlaka, as quoted in Prépa~ tosam Kramad:ksé 1s mentioned in Kamékhyatantra and 1s regarded as the best form of diksa There are other kinds of diksds as well, Tantrasira, 628 Of these, however, the three diksas, anavs, varnamay: and krama, appear to be more important than the others For apav diksa, varramay: diksé and hramadksé see also Pranatosag:, where a detailed account of the three 1s given, (142-3) In the Tantras there 1s hardly any scientific or histoncal account regarding the clear meaning of the byas There are of course several philosophical speculations and they have been collected in the work Bhdratya Saktx Sadhana by U Das Its not unhkely that the byas are nothing but the gradual deve- lopment of the sound OM held so sacred in the Vedas In any case, they can be explained, as already stated, to a large extent, with reference to the 4ulakulacakra of the Brahmayamala noted above, but at the root of it we can possibly trace the muluplying theory of sphofavtda Lhe Kiranatantra states expheitly that 0. 1s said to be the root of syllabic mantras and when it becomes articulate 1 becomes vak or speech or logos (Durbar Labrary Catalogue, 1 xxv1) 28 For various early rules regarding purafcarana vide Kulérnavatantra, 15 Here we find no mention of the river Ganges, though there 1s mention ‘of punyaksetram naditiram guhaparvatamastakam tirthapradefah sindhiindm sangamah ‘pavanam vanam As, however, Ganges or Gangais regarded as the most sacred of nvers, purascarana on its banks is preferred The Tantrasare, on the other hand, recommends dyetyad: rahugraste dwakare nuldkare etc , 58 This seems to be a later idea-Bya, Mantra and Gayatri 79 the ancient behevers, especially the abongmals *® Thus in the _purascarana process we find different ethnic culture-elements of ‘India mixed up together 29 For echpses and the primitive, ERE, xu, 63, Gonds, vi, 312, Todas, x, 369, Malanesians, vm, 3607 Appenpix I ON DIAGRAMS AND IMAGES The yantras or diagrams possessing occult significance and power play a veryimportant role in Tantric mtuals They are of two kinds, one for wearing on the neck, arm or lock of hair as an amulet and the other, taken as identical with the deity, for the purpose of worship Such yantras are often engraved on metal plates, bhirya leaves etc and held in high reverence by all sects, the Saktas, Saivas, Vaisnavas etc Thus the second part of the Nrsemhapdrvatdpanya gives ‘directions for the mak- ing, by means of the royal mantra of Nrsimha, and three other famous Vaisnava mantras, of a diagram, yantra, which worn on the neck, the arm, or ina lock of hair, will prove a potent amulet J N Farquhar thinks that as the Nrsimhatapaniya Upanusads were ‘expounded by Gaudapada about ap 750 or a httle later, they cannot be dated later than the seventh cen- tury ‘This seems to indicate that the use of the yantras was inherited by the followers of the Tantric pantheons from thei predecessors Inthe Nepal Durbar Library there 1s a text, which may not be very old, Mantrarahasya-Nardyaniyam which. deals with the yantras The Tantrasdéra records a large number of yantras for wearing as well as for worshp * The assumption that the Tantric yantras have triangles re- presenting the yont 1s not necessarily correct The yantras come from the Vedic diagram which may be of various shapes according to the rules of sacrifice We may note here that the Tantric yantra of goddess like Vagisvari, a female deity, con- tains no triangle There 1s no triangle even in the méatrhd-yantra which shows that the triangle does not always represent the 1 Durbar Library Catalogue, u, 135On Diagrams and Images 81 yons symbol, eg, we may consider here the yantras of Bhuvanegvari, Navadurga and some other female goddesses. On the other hand, there 1s triangle in the yantra of Rama and of Siva, all male gods, while the yantra of Mrtvufyava, another name of Siva, contains no such figure In support of the theory that the triangles in the yantras re- prenet the yont, Debiprasad Chattopadhvaya maintains that the sddhaka should always think that he has been transformed into a woman while performing his piyd and thus the so-called ‘yon: symbols in the diagram help him in his meditation ® The theory 1s based on a wrong assumption masmuch as at the bottom of the Tantric sddhand we really find the doctrine of so’ham There is nothing of fertibty cult or sex worship m the yantra as Chattopadhyaya thinks N K Brahma pounts out ‘The Tantrika worshipper identifies himself in meditation with the Deity he worships and places before himself the fully blossomed condition represented by the Deity as the ideal to be realsed The Pauranika worshipper, on the other hand, can never think of the identity between himself and his Deity, and always bears in mind the immense difference bet- ween theinfinitude of God and the finiteness of man Here we observe that the Tantra accepts the Absolute Monism of the Upanisads and regards the identity between the Jiva and Siva, the individual and the Absolute, as the supreme ideal, although this ideal is to be reahsed through updsand The synthesis between the Upanisads and the Puranas, which the Tantra sought to bring about by accepting the philo- sophy of the former and the practical method of the latter, eminently suited the requirements of the people for whom it was intended While recognising the difference between the individual and the Absolute, the worshipper and the worship- ped, the difference which common people could in no way forget and which was emphasised by the Bhakti cult, the 2 D Chattopadhyaya, Lokayate, 300ff Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya treats with the Tantras under the impression that they are concerned only with Sakta doctrines As already pointed out, Saktaism and Tantrism are not identical (supra) Had he taken even a cursory look at the Tantra- sara or some such works he would have been convinced that by this method all the gods of the Brahmanic pantheon can be worshipped82 Reflections on the Tantras Tantras mamtained that the attainment of the summum bonum consisted in overcoming that difference by unfolding the latent absokuteness of man ’? The yantra or the mage 1s nothing but means for aiding dhyana or japa Tt should be regarded however as the first step for the sadhaka Thusit has been stated ‘There 1s such a thing as pratekopasan@ or symbol worship This 1s an aid to worship The symbolic 1s not the maginary Slowly we get beyond the symbol to the obyect symbolised Until we reach the Highest, we gam rewards great or small, according to our aims and objects Samkara observes that on account of our imperfections we connect the Ommupresent Lord with limited abodes ‘Image worship is the first, domg japa and chanting mantras 1s the mddle, meditation or mental ‘worship 1s superior, reflection on one’s own true nature is the highest of all’ (Tantrasdra) Image worship 1s a means to reahsation When we gain our ends, the means fall away "4 In the Bhagavadgita we also find a similar account where worship with flower, water, leaves etc 1s the first step towards worship of the supreme being, while kavalyayfidna or the ulti- mate knowledge of the reabty 3s the final goal It 1s difficult to determine exactly when the worship of images was introduced into the Hindu pantheon There 1s a passage in the Rgveda which however runs to the following effect Ka tmam dagabhirmamendram krinati dhenubhth, yada vrtrani yamghanadathainam me punaradadat (Reveda, wv 24 10) ‘Who will buy this Indra for ten cows! When he has slain his foes, he may give him back to me” Further, it 1s pomted out, the Rgveda, 1212 states — Indradgni sumbhut& narah (men decorate Indra and Agn:), 1v 58 3 states— catoari Srnga trayo asya padad due Sirse sapta hastdsa asya (he has four horns, three feet, two heads and seven hands) Such pas- sages are interpreted to show the existence of mage worship in 3. NK Brahma, Philosophy of Hindu Sadhana, 278-9 4 § Radhaknshnan, Indian Philosophy, 1, 174On Diagrams and Images 83 the Rgvedic age If this view be accepted then it may be re- garded as the first step towards sectarianism | Macdonell, how- ever, maintains the opposite view in interpreting the passages In the Bhdgavata Purana’ we find references to eight differ- ent types of images— images made of stone, wood, metal, sand, jewel and those which are in picture or plastered or conceived im mind Sarlé darumayr lauht lepya lekhya ca sarkata Manomayi manmayi pratimastavidha smrta We know that the Bhdgavata Purana was composed in South India, while the system of worship with flowers etc , according to sociologists, comes from the Dravidian or Austric sources Thus the most popular form of bhaktt religion in the Hindu pantheon 1s of un-Aryan ongin and this Dravidian-Austric ele- ment ultimately had 1ts way into Tantrism. In the Pratisthasdrasamgraha, a ‘Tantric text preserved in the Nepal Durbar Library, we find rules regarding the consecration of umages which have further been elucidated in the later Tantric teats The injunction runs to theeffect that the umage should correspond to the dhydnamantras, otherwise the image would be a faulty one Theearhest Tantric text refernng to the image worship 1s possibly the Brahmayamala, 5 Bhagavata Purana, x1 7228 TANTRAS AND MAGIC ‘The magic rites in the Tantras hinge on the behef of saving oneself from the bad influence of natural and super-natural elements For this purpose the sa@dkaka has to appease the planets and the gods guarding the ten directions These may be considered as the supernatural influences In the natural sphere also there may be wicked persons, beasts and other ele- ments that may try to inflict harm to the worshipper, and they also have to be controlled Its generally believed that the supernatural elements may be kept under control or they may be transformed into benefi- cial agents by means of worship Such a notion 1s as old as the time of the Vedas wherein Rudra, the terrible god doing injury to mankind, 1s transformed into Siva (tvam Stvandmo’st) doing good to the worshipper ! On similar grounds the Tantras recommend the worship of the planets whose benevolent and malevolent aspects are already hinted at in the Vedic hitera- ture ® Accordingly, in the Grahayamala we find a detailed mantra of the different planets for their appeasement, while the Varada- tantra prescribes gift to grahkavipras for their satisfaction The same work contains kavaca of the planets asking each of them to protect a particular part ofthe body from headto feet It 1s interesting to note that the grahavipras generally belong to the Sakadvipiya brahmana class, who are none other than the Maga brahmanas coming to Indiain the train of the Sakas* The Rudraydmala instructs that when one 1s in danger he should per- form the furascarana of the planets The account runs thus 1 Satarudnya htany of the Vajasaney: Samhita, Mur, OST, 1v, 268 2 Vedic Index 243 3 SupraTantras and Magic 85 vigune tu grahe devi vyadhi-Satru-nrpardane, rastropaplavane ghore ayuso nasa agate jatidhvamse kulocchede sarvanasa upasthite, dhanaputradikame ca kuryadgrahapurasknyam dagoktavarsasamkhyena sahasrena japena tu, puragcaranamuddistam sarvesam vvomacarinam dasaméam juhuyadvahnau trimadhvaktasamidvaraih kalpokta:rgandhakakarpiramusritenodakena ca, tarpayeddevatam devi taddasAméakramena tu abhisificet taddagamsam karpirvasitawjalaih, taddasamsakramenaiva kuryadbrahmanabhojanam Adyante mahati piya daksina vibhavavadh Though the language of the above passage 1s not very clear, the purport seems to be that when oneis faced with disease, enemy, anger of the king, revolution, a feeling that his death 1s coming near or that his caste or hneage isin danger, he should perform the purafcarana of the planets Contrarily, he can perform the same act with the aim of getting wealth, son etc The process of purascarana 1s as follows one should per- form japa thousand times the period assigned to the planet (An example will make it clear The period of the Sun extends for six years, as enjomed in the Hindu astrological books, so the Japa of the Sun-mantra should be performed s1x-thousand umes.) Then heshould perform fire-sacrifice with log-pieces prescribed for the planet, one-tenth time the former number. (eg, six hundred times in case of the Sun), one tenth part of it (eg, sixty times) he should offer water mixed with camphor and the prescribed scents to the presiding deity of the planet — this 1s known as farpana Then he should sprinkle camphor water one- tenth tume of it (e g, six times), last of all he should feed the brahmanas and satisfy them with gifts * The Sadhusamkalimtantra, a work of early medieval age, again prescribes kavacas for each of the nme planets which should be read on the day named after the planetse g , Somakavaca on Monday etc , or they may be written on a piece of bhiizja-patra, buch leaf, with prescribed ink in case of each planet, and after due worship of the goddess of the planet and the planet stself, 4 Brakmayamala, as quoted in Prapatosagt, 127