Tantric Mantras

Studies on Mantrasastra

Andre Padoux

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9781138948167
  9780415423861
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136707568
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Providing a systematic and complete overview of the highest scholarly quality on Tantric mantras in Hinduism, this book presents a summary on the nature of Tantric mantras, their phonetic aspect, structure and classifications. Additionally, it explains the metaphysical-theological nature of Tantric mantras and gives an introduction to their beliefs and practices. In individual chapters, Andre Padoux discusses the extraction and examination of mantras, certain characteristics such as their "perfect nature" and their imperfections, and he describes certain mantrics practices.

For the first time, Andre Padoux' work on Tantric mantras is made accessible to an English-speaking readership. This book will be of great interest to scholars of Religious Studies, Theology, Indology, South Asian Studies, and Asian Religion.

1 Introduction

The medium is the message.

(Marshall McLuhan)

donner un sens plus pur aux mots de la tribu.

(Stéphane Mallarmé)

Why study Tantric mantras? One may well ask. Why Tantra? Why mantras? The answer is that Tantra, the Tantric phenomenon, is not, as was first believed, a limited and bizarre form of Hinduism (or Buddhism) but a fundamental aspect of the Indian religious world. It has pervaded the near totality of Hinduism (and of part of Mahayāna Buddhism) since, perhaps, the fifth or sixth centuries: religion, ritual, theology and metaphysics, iconography and temple building, even the structure of the state, in India and in part of Asia, would not have been the same without Tantra. The first ‘non-human’, purely verbal, theoretically eternal, self-proclaimed revelation of the Veda, the śruti (‘what was heard’, the Vedic revelation being oral), which goes from the Veda to the Upaniṣads and so forth, and is followed by Veda-based texts (the smr̥ti), has in some respect always had the pride of place: it forms the basic orthodox socio-religious teaching of Hindu society. Another, scriptural, revelation, that of the Tantras (texts deemed to have been revealed by deities), came later on and progressively pervaded most of the Hindu world. It did not so much reject the other revelation as depreciate it, considering it to be of merely social value and unable to offer the same access to liberation or other rewards as the esoteric Tantric teaching.¹ And it progressively permeated and often transformed the orthodox Hindu world. One may say without exaggeration that since at least a thousand years Hinduism has been very largely Tantric or ‘tantricised’, not Vedic. The Tantric revelation cannot therefore be treated as secondary. Even though many of its texts, scriptures and exegetical works are arcane and obscure, the presence of the notions and practices it brought forth, together with its vision of the world, is to be felt everywhere in Hinduism – possibly also because most of these notions and practices have deep roots in the Indian soil.

As for mantras, they play, as we shall see, an essential role in Tantra. There is no possible study or understanding of the Tantric phenomenon without an examination and understanding of the peculiar ritual use of forms of speech that are mantras. Studying them is therefore entirely justified. But before taking up the subject of particular mantric practices, some precision on Tantric mantras in general, and an attempt at defining their nature and role as they appear in Tantric texts, is appropriate. Over the course of time, the Sanskrit term mantra was used for different sorts of verbal or phonic ritual utterances. (I use ‘utterances’ here because mantras are by nature oral, aural – not written.²) The earliest mantras are the Vedic hymns, poems or chants. They differ greatly from Tantric (and even Pauranic) ones – even though some are occasionally used in Tantric rites (in those of the Pāñcarātra mainly). But are also to be found in the Vedic ritual meaningless syllables, the stobhas, which are akin to Tantric mantras; among these is OṂ, an utterance of paramount importance in Tantric practice and theologico-metaphysical speculations. The sort of mantras developed in śrauta texts (that is, those based on the Vedic revelation, the śruti) or those used in later Veda-based texts, the smr̥ti (those of the smārta or paurāṇic form of Hinduism), are also used in Tantric Hinduism.³ Tantric mantras deserve a special study because, however important ritual formulas may have been in Vedism and in later Veda-based Hinduism, the role there of mantras was never as great as in Tantric Hinduism, where they came to pervade all types of religious or ritual action and gave birth to an enormous mass of literature concerning their nature and uses and extolling their power – an ensemble usually called mantraśāstra, the science or doctrine of mantras. The term is not of very ancient origin, but is a current and convenient one. It is an important one, too, since it sometimes came to be taken as synonymous with tantraśāstra, also a modern term, often used to refer to the Tantric ensemble of works and doctrines: a ‘rapprochement’ which is one more proof of the fundamental place of mantras in the Tantric domain. The importance of these formulas in the Tantric world is also shown by the fact that an early form of Śaivism was named mantramarga, and that a traditional division of Śaiva tantras is between those of the mantrapīṭha and those of the vidyāpīṭha (vidyās being female mantras, whereas a mantra is that of a male deity⁴). In fact, all Tantric texts deal either entirely or in part with mantras, a literature whose first elements date probably from the fifth or sixth century AD, and which went on for centuries and is still productive today. Tantric mantras are also to be found in a number of non-Tantric texts, in several Purāṇas, for instance, and even in some treatises of dharmaśāstra, that is, works concerning the laws, rules of conduct and customary observances of the Hindus.

Mantras also play an important role in Buddhism, the Tantric form of which is often called mantrayāna. Mantras as used in the Buddhist context in India, Tibet, South East Asia and the Far East are a vast and very interesting subject, very well worth careful and comprehensive study. We will, however, not deal with it here, where only the Hindu aspect of the Tantric phenomenon is considered.

A characteristic feature of Hindu Tantric mantras, which differentiates them from non-Tantric ones, is the prevailing use of non-linguistic elements, that is, syllables or group of syllables devoid of meaning but deemed to be imbued with supernatural power and efficacy. These are usually added at the beginning of the mantra (after the initial OṂ, which, except – though not always – in the case of bīja/bījamantras, is always there) or before the final ritual exclamation (the jāti⁵) of the mantra. A mantra may also be a sound sequence entirely made up of one or several such syllables; for example, the case of SAUḤ, the mantra of Parā, the supreme Goddess of the Trika, or the Navātmamantra HSKṢMLRVYŪṂ, or the fifteen-syllable mantra of the goddess Tripurasundarī, which, in its more usual form, runs HA SA KA LA HRĪṂ HA SA KA HA LA HRĪṂ SA KA LA HRĪṂ. The whole Sanskrit alphabet, as well as each of its constituent phonemes, either in the ‘normal’ traditional order (the varṇasamāmnāya, called in that case śabdarāśi or mātr̥kā), or in the nādiphānta order of the Mālinī,⁶ are also considered and used as mantras.⁷

The presence of such syllables as constituent parts of mantras can be explained in many ways. But it has also been theoretically grounded in the idea that all syllables being Sanskrit phonemes are forms of vāc, the Word, the primordial cosmic power, extolled in the Veda in Sanskrit. They are therefore all imbued with the infinite power of vāc, which in the Veda was identified with the brahman: brahma vai vāc (Aitareyabrāhmaṇa 4.21,1), ‘as much as brahman spreads out, as large is the Word’ (R̥gveda 10.114,8), a notion that has survived in Tantric traditions. In Tantric texts, Sanskrit phonemes are often called mātr̥kā, a term translated as ‘little mothers’. But these are presided over by, and are discrete forms of, the Mātr̥kā, the divine Mother in her aspect as vāc, the supreme power governing the world, hence their force and efficacy.⁸ However, the power of mantras is not confined in any one of these phonemes: it pervades the whole formula. A traditional Tantric saying is mantrāḥ varṇātmakāḥ sarve, varṇāḥ sarve śivātmakāḥ, ‘All mantras are made of [Sanskrit] phonemes, the nature of all phonemes is that of Śiva.’ This principle does not prevent speculation on the particular functions and forms of efficacy of certain parts of the mantra, as we shall see later. One may add here that, contrary to the notion we have just seen that mantras are born from the Sanskrit phonemes, several tantras consider the bīja OṂ or bindu (the sonic dot, Ṃ) as the source of the alphabet (and hence of the mantras and of the cosmos).⁹

Curiously, considering the absolute privilege of Sanskrit in mantras – which are Sanskrit ritual formulas¹⁰ – one finds in some Tantric works the notion that inarticulate sounds, or ungrammatical Sanskrit, or Prākrit syllables (whether used in mantras or otherwise) may be considered nearer to the Absolute than Sanskrit phonemes because they are farther from the norm of articulate rule-governed speech, a speech that can be used for mundane, inferior, purposes, which is not the case of mantras since these are linguistic utterances, but not speech. This view was put forward by Maheśvarānanda (a Krama author of the twelfth century) in the commentary of his Mahārthamañjarī. The notion was upheld earlier by Abhinavagupta, the great Tāntrika master of Kaśmir (fl. c.975–1025), who wrote in the Parātrīśikavivaraṇa – PTV – ‘The supreme Lord himself has explained that an unmanifest sound is generally somewhat like a mantra’ (p. 189).¹¹ He also said that the power of mantras rests essentially on the unutterable and inaudible ‘parts’ (kalās) of the subtle phonic vibration that follow the bindu in the uccāra¹² of OṂ (or of other bījas ending with Ṃ) and through which the subtle sound, the nāda, of the mantra progressively dissolves into the absolute. Such statements may seem to contradict the privileged role of sanskrit phonemes in mantras; but all phonemes, whether Sanskrit or not, are deemed to be born from the primordial Word whose original, highest, aspect is voiceless, a voiceless Word pregnant with all the possibilities of speech, but silent. Silence, in fact, was always held in India to be superior to uttered word or audible sound, a notion that goes back to vedism: in the Brāhmaṇas, the anirukta, the indistinct speech, was related to the Limitless and its power. The superiority of the unuttered over the uttered is an ancient and pervading notion in Indian thought. This extolling of silence explains the traditionally acknowledged superiority of the inaudible, secret (upāṃśu), and still more of the silent, mental (mānasa) mantra enunciation or repetition (japa) over the audible ‘voiced’ (vācika) one.¹³

But the very nature of mantras, and not merely their utterance, is often proclaimed, extolled even, as being not only mental but also spiritual, immaterial both in their essence and in their modus operandi. This appears in the saying quoted on p. 3, but also, for instance, in a traditional semantic analysis (nirvacana) of the term mantra often quoted in Tantric texts. The Sanskrit term mantra, accordingly, is said to be made up of the verbal root MAN (to think) and the suffix tra (used to make words denoting instruments or objects); a mantra would thus be an instrument of thought – not of ordinary discursive thought, of course, but of an intense, effective, non-discursive one.¹⁴ A traditional analysis of the term more often found in Tantric texts relates, however, the suffix tra to the root TRAI (to save or protect), an explanation which understands therefore mantras as forms of protective or salvific thought. The two interpretations of mantra coalesce somehow in the oft-quoted formula: mananaṃ sarvaveditvaṃ trāṇaṃ saṃsārasagarāt/mananatrāṅadharmatvān mantra ity abhidhīyate (‘A mantra is so-called because it is in the nature of thought and protection, thought being omniscience, and protection [the release] from the ocean of transmigration’). This would not apply to all mantras, for many are mere ritual formulas: powerful, effective, aimed at specific ends, but not specifically protective or salvific. It is, however, valid insofar as it expresses an important aspect of the nature of mantras: their efficacy being symbolic is mental, whilst the power they are believed to possess is deemed to be of an extra-mundane origin, and is always – if sometimes indirectly – transcendentally oriented.

Mantras in general, but especially in the Tantric domain, have different forms or aspects: they are considered as existing and acting on different planes, and are put to various uses, both transcendental and wordly. They thus appear to us as having – and they do have – an ambiguous nature. This, however, appears all the more because of the diversity of mantraśāstra, which includes texts and speculations of different traditions or schools, extending over fifteen centuries; a variety which we tend to ignore, taking as a homogeneous body of doctrine what is in fact a conglomerate of often very differing views. This point is to be clearly underlined: there is in India no systematic non-contradictory theoretical or practical view of Tantric mantras. A synthetic presentation of the subject such as this one cannot therefore be more than an overview of differen...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The extraction and examination of mantras: Mantroddhāra and mantravicāra
• 3. Japa
• 4. Nyāsa: The ritual placing of mantras
• 5. A Hindu rosary ritual: (Jayākhyasaṃhitā, chapter 14)
• 6. On the defects and the perfecting of mantras: Mantradoṣa and mantrasaṃskāra
• 7. Mantric practices and the nature of mantric utterance
• 8. Body and mantra: Mantras in the human body
• 9. The oral and the written: Mantra and mantraśāstra
• Notes
• Index of Sanskrit terms
• Authors and works cited