Transformations in the art of love: Kamakala practices in hindu Tantric and Kaula traditions

History of Religions

Volumn 38, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 172-198

  White, David Gordon ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 34547844907     PISSN: 00182710     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/463532     Document Type: Article

References (77)

1. See Alexis Sanderson, "Meaning in Tantric Ritual," in Essais sur le rituel, vol. 3, Col-loque du Centenaire de la Section des Sciences Religieuses de 1'EcoIe Pratique des Hautes Etudes, ed. Anne-Marie Blondeau and Kristofer Schipper (Louvain and Paris: Peeters, 1995), p. 79. It may be that these developments were contemporaneous with one another, with the division between Tantra and Kaula operating on a regional level (the Kaula being based in the central Vindhya belt, with Tantra being concentrated in the north and south), rather than over time. I thank Matthew Kapstein for this insight.
2. Alexis Sanderson, "Śaivism and the Tantric Tradition," in The World's Religions, ed. Stewart Sutherland et al. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1988), pp. 669-79.
3. This picture is somewhat clouded by sectarian terminology: the postreformation Krama becomes the Krama Kaula; and the postreformation Trika, the Trika Kaula. The third "tantric" Kaula clan was that of the Kaula cult of Kubjikā; a new and highly semanticized form of Tantra called itself the Śrividyā Kaula.
4. Summarized in the aphorism "privately a Sākta, outwardly a Śaiva, among people a Vais-nava; bearing various outward appearances, the Kaulas spread over the earth" (Yonitantra 4. 20, in J. A. Schoterman, ed. and introduction, The Yonitantra [Delhi: Manohar, 1980]).
5. For a brief history, see Alexis Sanderson, "Śaivism: Trika Śaivism," and "Śaivism: Śaivism in Kashmir," both in The Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Mircea Eliade (New York: Macmillan, 1986), 13:15-17.
6. Sanderson, "Meaning in Tantric Ritual," p. 46.
7. Kāma-kalā-vilāsa by Punyānanda-nātha with the Commentary of Natanānda-nātha, 3d ed. , trans, with commentary by Arthur Avalon [Sir John Woodroffe] (Madras: Ganesh & Co. , 1961), p. 20
8. the French translation is by André Padoux in Le coeur de la Yoginī, "Yogimhrdaya" avec le commentaire "Dipikā " d'Amrtānanda, Publications de l'lnstitut de Civilisation Indienne, fascicle 63 (Paris: DeBoccard, 1994), p. 111.
9. Tantraloka (TĀ) 29. 124b-125a (in The Tantraloka of Abhinavagupta with the Commentary of Jayaratha, ed. R. C. Dwivedi and Navajivan Rastogi, 8 vols. [Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1987]; this is a reedition of the 1918-38 12-volume edition): tan-mukhya-cakram-uktam maheśinā yoginīvaktram// tatraiva sampradāyas-tasmāt-sarnprāpyate jn̄ā-nam//. For a brief discussion, see Alexis Sanderson, "Purity and Power among the Brahmins of Kashmir," in The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History, ed. Michael Carrithers, Steven Collins, and Steven Lukes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 201-2 and notes.
10. Sanderson, "Meaning in Tantric Ritual," p. 47. Semanticization is a term that was suggested to me by Sanderson in a letter dated July 6, 1992.
11. TĀ 3. 146a-I48a, with the commentary of Jayaratha.
12. KKV, p. 20. See Natānanda-nātha's commentary on verse 50 (Avalon, trans. , p. 89): "Having in this manner described [and] explained the stages of the unfolding of the [Śri-]Cakra [Cakra-krama], which is but a manifestation of Kāmakalā [Kāma-kalā- vilāsana-rūpa]⋯" Simultaneously, the kāmakalā-syllab\e (aksara) generates the Śrīcakra on an acoustic register (Yoginihrdaya 1. 24, with the commentary of Amrtānanda, in Padoux, trans. , pp. 121-22).
13. Douglas Renfrew Brooks, Auspicious Wisdom: The Texts and Traditions of Śrīvidyā Śākta Tantrism in South India (Albany, N. Y. : SUNY Press, 1992), p. 50.
14. Commentary of Amrtananda on YH 1. 55 (Yoginīhrdayam with Commentaries Dipikā of Amrtānanda and Setubandha of Bhāskararaya, ed. Gopinath Kaviraja [Varanasi: Sam-purnanand Sanskrit Vishvavidyalaya, 1979]). My translations from this text rely in no small part on the French translation of Padoux, Coeur de la Yoginī. This passage is found in Padoux, trans. , p. 153.
15. KKV 6-1; YH 1. 24; 2. 21; 3. 163, with the commentary of Amrtānanda. See Gandharxa Tantra 30. 48-64
16. Śaktisahgama Tantra 1. 3. 77-79, 87-95
17. Jn̄ānārnava Tantra 10. 8
18. Para-śurāma Kalpa Sutra 5. 16, with the commentary of Rāmeśvara; and Vāmakeśvara Tantra 166.
19. Sanjukta Gupta, Dirk Jan Hoens, and Teun Goudriaan, Hindu Tantrism (Leiden: Brill, 1979), pp. 95-96. Compare Padoux, trans. , p. 387, n. 404, who identifies this as a Brahmī grapheme.
20. I generated this by using Adobe Photoshop 2. 0. This diagram is based on Padoux's rendition in Coeur de la Yoginī, p. 202, n. 99.
21. KKV, verse 25a, with the commentary of Natānanda-natha, in Avalon, trans. , p. 50: "In this way the united Kāma and Kalā (kāmakalātmakā) are the (three) letters whose own form is the three Bindus. " Commentary: "By Kāma is meant Parama-śiva who is pure Illumination and is the first letter which is A, and Kalā signifies Vimarśa the last of letters (Ha). See S. K. Ramachandra Rao, Śri Cakra, Sri Garib Dass Oriental Series, no. 87 (Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, 1989), p. 65.
22. This movement, from the one to the two, also reflects Hindu medical notions concerning lactation in pregnant women: when a woman has conceived, her uterine blood (which has only one channel of egress from the body) is transformed into breast milk (which has two points of egress): Caraka Sarhhitā 6. 15. 17; Mātrkabheda Tantra 2. 5-6.
23. Its name is reflected as well in discussion of the Śrīcakra (Yoginīhrdaya 1. 54, with the commentary of Amrtānanda, in Padoux, trans. , p. 150), in which "the container is Kāmeśvara ["Our Lord of Love"]: That which he receives is the supreme effulgence named Kāmeśvarī ["Our Lady of Love"]. "
24. Yogīmhrdaya 1. 10-11, with the commentary of Amrtānanda (in Padoux, trans. , pp. 109-11).
25. Padoux, trans. , Yogināhrdaya (n. 7 above), p. 202, n. 99. For a parallel discussion, also from the Śrīvidyá tradition, see Douglas Renfrew Brooks, The Secret of the Three Cities: An Introduction to Hindu Śākta Tantrism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 176-77 (in which Brooks reproduces verse 11 of the Tripurā Upanisad with the commentary of Bhāskararaya).
26. Both members of this Sanskrit compound have their English cognates: sphurad is the cognate of pho-sphoresc-ing, and ūrmi of welling or swell. The term sphuradūrmi is found in YH 1. 55.
27. Padoux, English introduction to Yoginīhrdaya, p. 15. I have emended Padoux's prose to render a more literalist reading of certain Sanskrit terms.
28. Brooks, The Secret of the Three Cities, p. 82, referring to Tripurā Upanisad 11-12, with the commentary of Bhāskarāraya.
29. Agehananda Bharati, The Tantric Tradition (New York: Samuel Weiser, 1975), p. 89.
30. YH 3. 156-58, on the four Yoginīs of the Sarvasiddhimaya cakra (in Padoux, trans. , p. 367)
31. André Padoux, Vāc: The Concept of the Word in Selected Hindu Tantras, trans. Jacques Gontier (Albany, N. Y. : SUNY Press, 1990), p. 322
32. citing Parātrimśikāvivarana, ed. M. K. Sastri (Srinagar: Research Department, 1918), pp. 121, 151, and 155.
33. TĀ 3. 146a-148a.
34. ata eva visargo 'yamavyaktahakalātmakah / kā matattvamitiśrimatkulaguhvara ucyate // tattadaksaramavyaktakā ntakanthe vyavasthitam / dhvanirūpamaniccham tu dhyānadhā- ranavarjitam // tatra cittam samādhāya vaśayedyugapajjagat //.
35. See Jayaratha's commentary, 2:503.
36. ́Silpa Prakasa: Medieval Orissan Sanskrit Text on Temple Architecture by Rāmacandra Kulācāra, trans, and annotated by Alice Boner and Sadasiva Rath Sarma (Leiden: Brill, 1966), p. vii.
37. ŚP 1. 99.
38. I generated this using Adobe Photoshop 2. 0. This diagram is based on Boner and Sarma's rendering in Śilpa Prakāśa, p. 104.
39. "When the Śakti, this all-excelling great Queen changes into the form of the [Śri]cakra, then the limbs of her body change into her āvarana devatās" (KKV, verse 36, in Avalon, trans. , p. 70).
40. This is a temple whose roof consists of a garland of spires (vimānikās).
41. The jāngha is a "pilaster-like projecting wall-element between two chamfers, reaching from the pan̄cakarma to the upper bandhanā" (Boner and Sarma, trans. , p. 147).
42. ŚP 2. 432.
43. ŚP 2. 498-505.
44. ŚP 2. 526. Compare KJn̄N 14. 94 (Kaulajn̄ā nanirnaya and Some Minor Texts of the School of Matsyendra, ed. P. C. Bagchi [Calcutta: Metropolitan, 1935]). See n. 60 below.
45. ŚP 2. 535, 538-39. Devangana Desai (The Religious Imagery of Khajuraho [Mumbai: Franco-Indian Research Pvt. Ltd. , 1996], p. 196) has suggested that the famous erotic menage à quatre sculpted into the jāngha of the ca. 1000 c. E. Kandariyā Mahādeva temple at Khajuraho is just such a love scene, as well as a case of "architectural punning. " Figure 3 is reproduced from her image of the same (p. 195) with the ŚP kāmakalā superimposed on it.
46. Boner and Sarma, trans. , p. xix.
47. Donaldson, p. 157.
48. Not to be identified with menstrual blood: it is either endocrinal fluid (Miranda Shaw's terminology), cataminal fluid (in Donaldson's terminology; see Donaldson, p. 156), or post-partum Iochial discharge (facsimile communication from Wolfgang JSchle, Denville, N. J. , August 17, 1997).
49. See Donaldson; and Ajit Mookerjee, Kālī: The Feminine Force (New York: Destiny Books, 1988), pp. 30, 42.
50. For example, in Kubjikāmata 23. 133-44 (in Kubjikāmata Tantra, Kulālikāmnaya Version, ed. Teun Goudriaan and Jan A. Schoterman [Leiden: Brill, 1988]). For discussion, see Dorothea Heilijgers-Seelen, The System of Five Cakras in the Kubjikāmatatantra 14-15 (Leiden: Brill, 1996).
51. KJn̄N 16. 10ab: pañcasrotātmakam caiva gopitam siddhigocaram//.
52. Teun Goudriaan and Sanjukta Gupta, Hindu Tantric and Sākta Literature (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1981), pp. 10, 16.
53. Sadyojāta, Vāmadeva, Aghora, Tatpurusa, and Iśāna. For a discussion, see Mark S. G. Dyczkowski, The Canon of the Śaivāgama and the Kubjikā Tantras of the Western Kaula Tradition (Albany, N. Y. , SUNY Press, 1988), pp. 123-25.
54. David Lorenzen, Kāpālikas and Kālamukhas: Two Lost Śaiva Sects (Delhi: Thomson, 1972), pp. 68, 89, 91
55. This notion is broached in the Kāma Sūtra of Vatsyāyana: "The fall of the semen of the man takes place only at the end of coition, while the semen of the woman falls continually" (Kāma Shāstra: Quintessence of India's Classics on Sex, no editor [Delhi: Kayenkay Agencies, 1971], p. 14)
56. In spite of popular traditions to the contrary, the Kāma Sūtra likely dates from the tenth century c. E. (personal communication from Kenneth Zysk, New York, April 1997).
57. See TĀ 29. 126, 229
58. Hathayoga Pradīpikā 3. 100, 102
59. Śiva Saṁhitā 4. 1-5
60. Lillian Silbum, Kundalini, Energy of the Depths, trans. Jacques Gontier (Albany, N. Y. : SUNY, 1988), pp. 189-92
61. and E. Valentine Daniel, Fluid Signs: Being a Person in the Tamil Way (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 163-72.
62. KJn̄N 18. 22c
63. TĀ 29. 125b (vaktrādvaktrastham). For other references, see David Gordon White, The Alchemical Body: Siddha Traditions in Medieval India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), pp. 255-56.
64. Gavin Flood, Body and Cosmology in Kashmir Saivism (San Francisco: Mellen Research University Press, 1993), pp. 283-301.
65. Donaldson (n. 55 above), p. 150 and passim. Kumāri-pūja occurred during the maiden's menses; see Ramendra Nath Nandi, Religious Institutions and Cults in the Deccan (C. A. D. 600-A. D. 1000) (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1973), p. 125.
66. Donaldson, p. 156, n. 7.
67. Miranda Shaw (Passionate Enlightenment: Women in Tantric Buddhism [Princeton, N. J. : Princeton University Press, 1994], pp. 140-78, esp. 154-58, 176, and notes) provides detailed discussion of parallel practices, involving Yoginīs/Dūtīs in Buddhist Tantra. Shaw, however, imputes greater agency and intentionality to these female figures than I find in the Hindu material.
68. AtharvaVeda 11. 5. 3; Śatapatha Brāhmana 11. 5. 4. 12.
69. Paul Mus, Barabudur, 2 vols. (Hanoi: Imprimerie d'Extrême Orient, 1935), 1:12.
70. White, The Alchemical Body, pp. 310-13.
71. Mālatl-Mādhava, act 5, verse 2, in Bhavabhūti's Malatl-Mādhava with the Commentary of Jagaddhara, ed. and trans. M. R. Kale, reprint of 3d ed. (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1983), pp. 95-96.
72. Among the hundreds of references to this in the medieval literature, the KJn̄N(11. 18) states: "By whatever means, one should always devour one's object of extraction [ākrstim]. One should honor the horde of yoginls with food and [sexual] pleasure. "
73. An early account is found in KJn̄N 18. 22: carukam bhaksayet prājñah samayahine na dāpayet / vaktrādvaktram viśesena siddhibhāgyah samānyathā//.
74. Parallel practices from the Buddhist "Highest Yoga Tantra" tradition of the Hevajra Tantra and other sources are described in detail in Stephari Beyer, The Buddhist Experience: Sources and Interpretations (Encino, Calif. , 1974), pp. 140-53
75. David Snellgrove, Indo-Tibetan Buddhism (Boston: Shambhala, 1987), 1:256-64
76. and Per Kværne, "On the Concept of Sahaja in Indian Buddhist Tantric Literature," Temenos 11 (1975): 88-135.
77. Vidya Dehejia, Yoginī Cult and Temples: A Tantric Tradition (Delhi: National Museum, 1986), p. 63.