The Hindu Tantric World

An Overview

André Padoux

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780226424095, 9780226423937
• eBook ISBN: 9780226424125
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Indian & South Asian History

Tantra occupies a unique position in Western understandings of Hindu spirituality. Its carnal dimension has made its name instantly recognizable, but this popular fascination with sex has obscured its philosophical depth and ritual practices, to say nothing of its overall importance to Hinduism.
 
This book offers a clear, well-grounded overview of Tantra that offers substantial new insights for scholars and practitioners. André Padoux opens by detailing the history of Tantra, beginning with its origins, founding texts, and major beliefs. The second part of the book delves more deeply into key concepts relating to the tantric body, mysticism, sex, mantras, sacred geography, and iconography, while the final part considers the practice of Tantra today, both in India and in the West. The result is an authoritative account of Tantra's history and present place in the world.
 

Part I

The Hindu Tantric Domain

1

The Hindu Tantric Field: Terminology and Attempts at Defining a Tantric Domain

Et si j’affirme, je m’interroge encore.

JACQUES RIGAUD

The very nature, extent, and continuity in time of the Tantric phenomenon raise a problem. How can one explain the appearance and the gradual overall diffusion of practices and notions that, albeit diverse, have enough common traits to permit their being considered as forming a specific, recognizable, perhaps definable socioreligious phenomenon in the Indian religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, even Jainism) in India and in a large portion of Asia? How can it happen that, facing a particular notion and practice, we can say “This is Tantric”? When reading certain texts (but what kind of texts?), when observing certain ritual practices together with the notions that accompany them, how can we perceive enough characteristic elements for us to feel that what lie before us are aspects of a common phenomenon? Or are we mistaken? Do we perceive a global phenomenon where there are, in fact, merely similar elements—having, as one says, a family likeness—that cannot properly be considered as being aspects of a common phenomenon? A phenomenon born in India that has (notably with Mantrayāna Buddhism) overstepped the limits of the subcontinent and spread across almost the whole of Asia: central Asia (Tibet, Mongolia), Southeast Asia (Indochina, Indonesia—Bali down to our days), and even the Far East.

Considering there is here a common general phenomenon is perhaps a Western, “etic,” way of thinking. In effect, European scholars were the first to discover or to believe they had found in what they knew of Indian religions—Hinduism and Buddhism—traits that they called “Tantric” and that they first believed to be limited to a particular area. Then they discovered their wider presence, and finally, today, saw their pervasiveness, and even sometimes denied their specificity. Though questionable, this “etic” approach is not entirely unfounded, for in spite of the fact that the notion of Tantrism as an entity is Western and unknown in traditional India, Indian works called “Tantra” were being written for centuries, and the character of these texts, rites, or observances was recognized as “Tantric,” some texts being even recognized as a form of divine Revelation.

There is undoubtedly a “Tantric problem” that we must first tackle, namely that of the term Tantrism, or Tantra. How is the socioreligious domain that we shall see here to be named and defined? Now, to define is to determine, delineate, and to understand—to name in the religious field is fundamental, foundational even. Being French, I am tempted to quote here the French poet and thinker Paul Valéry, who said (half-jokingly), “Great gods were born from a word-play that is a kind of adultery.” One could also say about “Tantrism” what an American Indologist once said of karma: that it is more a problem than a notion—a notion and a fact. As we shall see, it is surely an important fact. But let us first look at what can be said on the subject.

The extension in time and space and the diversity of the Tantric presence make it difficult to define and delimit. Its textual basis, essentially but not entirely in Sanskrit, often arcane, is huge in extent. Moreover, these texts have, for the most part, been recently discovered (since the 1950s, mostly) and are still being explored and taken account of. Therefore, new elements may very well be found that will alter our view of the subject on some points. In addition, the Tantric side of Hinduism appeared some fifteen centuries ago and still survives, while having evidently evolved in the course of time. Can we really grasp it in the diversity of its historical dimension? And if so, how can we describe it properly? Also, Tantra was (and still is) approached from different angles and interpreted in different ways. It is a field where, in many cases, no final point of view can honestly be offered. All I can do, therefore, and what is attempted here, is to give a general overview as I perceive it now—to strive toward the truth, hoping to find it while not being sure of being able to do so.

What’s in a Word?

First, how are we to name the domain we explore here? Tantra? Tantrism? Tantricism? Tantrisme is currently used in French, Tantrismo in Italian and Spanish, and Tantrismus in German. Tantrism or Tantricism is less frequent in English, where one usually uses Tantra. The term as such, however, is not important. The importance is in what it means or designates for those who use it. In the original French version of this book, the term tantrisme was discussed at length, for its current use was the main reason for the idea that there existed not a Tantric aspect of Hinduism but a particular Indian socioreligious entity—a “Tantric” section of Hinduism, distinct from mainstream Hinduism—or, at least, the idea that one could study the Tantric field as different from other current forms of Hinduism. Of course, such a misconception needed to be disproved.1 I will not do this here because Tantra is the usual English term for the Tantric domain. However, the fact remains that for centuries in India, there have been, and there still are, elements that are Tantric and others that are not—a duality some Indians were evidently not unaware of, which we will consider here.2

We may note first, concerning other terms that reflect a Western approach to Asian cultures, that applying the label “Hinduism” to the infinite diversity of beliefs, cults, and practices of the socioreligious world that developed in India over the course of centuries on a Vedic basis is also foreign to India. Like Tantricism, the word Hinduism denotes an Indian reality as seen from outside—by the Muslim conquerors and the Arab travelers (Ibn Batuta, notably), rather than by those who succeeded them in India. As there is no global Sanskrit term for the Tantric phenomenon, there was also no Sanskrit term meaning Hindu before the presence of Islam, and this term emerged perhaps in the fifteenth or sixteenth century.3 The word Hinduism only appears in the nineteenth century with the British. Having noted the “etic” character of the terms Hindu and (still more) Hinduism, we must also note that Indians were not unaware of the common traits of the brahmanical/Hindu traditions. If the upholders of the different Hindu systems abundantly condemned their opponents’ doctrines, they were nevertheless conscious of their common fund or traits and of their being different from “others.” There are, dating from the sixth to the sixteenth century, a few hierarchically classified Indian Sanskrit descriptions of these systems, distinguishing them as those of believers (astikas) and different from those of unbelievers (nāstikas), such as Buddhists or Jains.4

In contrast with these European or Indian globalizing approaches, some Western Indologists have recently tried to deconstruct the global vision of Hinduism, considering it as an ensemble of related religions rather than one religion with different aspects. Some also stress the fact that these religions are to be studied and understood by applying their own categories rather than our own.5 Western conceptions also explain that Hindu nationalists recently coined the word hindutva as a name for what they consider as the original nature of an Indian Hindu motherland.

But we must now first see, briefly, when and how the Tantric aspects of Hinduism were discovered and interpreted by Europeans, then how they were seen in ancient India.

A list of Tantras was published for the first time in volume five of the Asiatick Researches, the “Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Bengal,” founded in 1784 by Sir William Jones. The first texts that were studied were probably those read by H. H. Wilson, who wrote a Sketch of the Religious Sects of the Hindoos in volume seventeen of the Asiatick Researches, published in 1832. However, he does not call the practices he describes Tantric. He calls them the practices of “vàmis or vàmàcharis . . . the left-hand worshippers of the Goddess,” whom, he said, “are very numerous among the Shaivas,” such rites being “derived from an independent series of works known by the collective name of tantras.” Wilson also notes that “the worshipper of Shakti, the power or energy of the divine nature in action, are exceedingly numerous amongst all classes of Hindoos.” These statements show a good and unprejudiced grasp of the facts, with a realization of the widespread nature of Śākta (therefore Tantric) practices. A few years later, the French scholar Eugène Burnouf, in his Introduction à l’étude du bouddhisme indien (1844), devoted a whole section to Tantras (Buddhist Tantras, of course), noting their relationship with Śaivism—what he called “the ridiculous and obscene practices of the Shaivas.” These first scholars to note the presence of the Tantric phenomenon mentioned only the practices and not the notions that accompanied them (or sometimes were at their origin). They were not, in their time, in a position to realize its nature and extent—still less its pervasiveness.

Half a century later, the first to do this was the pioneer of Tantric studies, the British judge Sir John Woodroffe (1868–1936), alias Arthur Avalon, who wrote in the preface to Principles of Tantra (1913): “Mediaeval Hinduism (to use a convenient if somewhat vague term) was, as its successor, modern Indian orthodoxy is, largely Tantric. The Tantra was then, as it is now, the great Mantra and Sadhana Shāstra (Scripture), and the main, where not the sole, source of some of the most fundamental concepts still prevalent as regards worship, images, initiation, yoga, the supremacy of the guru and so forth.”

The style of this passage is that of another time. But to have realized the problematic nature of the notion of Hinduism and the pervasiveness of the Tantric phenomenon a century ago is remarkable. Sir John Woodroffe’s role in the development of Tantric studies must not be undervalued. He was the first to proclaim the importance of the Tantric world and to publish studies on some of its aspects as well as a number of texts, using either his name or the pseudonym Arthur Avalon. The Tantrik Texts series of books he edited was the first of its kind. It is still in print (as are his other works), some of its volumes remaining useful. Tantric studies have enormously progressed since his time—in the last twenty years especially, as we shall see—and although Avalon/Woodroffe appears as an icon of another epoch, one must not fail to remember the importance of his role.6

On the nature of what is Tantric, an overall and global statement is all the more difficult to give because—as will be shown in this book—if the Tantric phenomenon was limited and therefore definable to begin with, over the course of centuries it took on (quite early perhaps) a twofold aspect. On the one hand, there were (and there are to this day) initiatory traditions or transmissions whose (sometimes transgressive) practices and doctrines were properly Tantric, assumed and lived as such. On the other hand, there existed—to a different extent and intensity and in different forms throughout the Hindu world—a number of Tantric practices and notions in addition to the former traditions ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Note on the Pronunciation and Transcription of Sanskrit
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• PART I  The Hindu Tantric Domain
• PART II  The Tantric World
• PART III  Tantra Today
• Notes
• Glossary
• Bibliographical References
• Index