Table Of ContentT (‘woven together’ in Sanskrit) is the Hindu-based religion
which originated , years ago, when the great erotic temples
were built. In the West it is now best known for the inspiration of
tantric yoga, and its associated ritualistic forms of sex. But is Tantra
just about esoteric sexual practice or does it amount to something
more? This lively and original book contributes to a more complete
understanding of Tantra’s mysteries by discussing the idea of the
body in Hindu tantric thought and practice in India.
The author argues that within Tantra the body is a vehicle for
the spirituality that is fundamental to people’s lives. The tantric
body cannot be understood outside the traditions and texts that give
it form. Through practice (ritual, yoga and ‘reading’) the body is
formed into a pattern determined by tradition, and the practitioner
thereby moulds his or her life into the shape of the tradition. While
there is a great range of tantric bodies – from ascetics living in cre-
mation grounds, to low-caste people possessed by tantric deities, to
sophisticated high-caste Brahmans expounding the ascetic philosophy
of Tantra – all share certain common assumptions and processes.
Flood argues that while there is a divergence at different social levels
and in different levels of tantric metaphysical claims, these levels
are united by a process which the author calls ‘entextualisation of
the body’. The body becomes the text through the tradition being
inscribed on it. This general claim is tested against specific ritual
and doctrinal examples, and the tantric traditions are linked to wider
social and political forces.
The Tantric Body is a fascinating study that makes an important
contribution to the study of South Asian religion, and will have
strong appeal to students of South Asian societies and cultures as
well as to those of comparative philosophy.
G F is Professor of Religion at the University of Stirling
and Academic Director of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies.
He is the author of An Introduction to Hinduism () and general
editor of The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism ().
The Tantric Body
The Secret Tradition of Hindu Religion
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Copyright © Gavin Flood
The right of Gavin Flood to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act,
Frontispiece: Cakra man (Wellcome Ms β).
With kind permission of the Wellcome Trust.
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Contents
Preface ix
PART I Theory, Text and History
Introduction: The Body as Text
Tantra, Tradition and the Body
Reading Strategies: Text
Reading Strategies: Body
Experience and Asceticism
The Argument of the Book
The Vedic Body
The Political and Social Context
Legal Discourse
Political Discourse
The Highest Good
The Tantric Revelation
The Validity of Tantric Revelation
The P®ñcar®tra Revelation
The ˆaiva Revelation
Text and Tradition
The Tantric Theology of Revelation
Revelation and Doctrine
Tantric Civilisation
The Divinisation of the Body as Root Metaphor
Tantric Polity
The Tantric Temple
Tantra and Erotic Sculpture
Possession
PART II The Body as Text
The P®ñcar®tra
Emanationist Cosmology
The Purification of the Body
The Bh‚ta˜uddhi in the Tantric Revelation
The Divinisation of the Body
Inner Worship
External Worship
ˆaiva Siddh®nta
S´aiva Siddh®nta Doctrine
The Tattva Hierarchy
The Six Paths
The Ritual Process: Initiation
The Ritual Process: Daily Rites
The Ritual Process: Behaviour
Ecstatic Tantra
Absolute Subjectivity and Indexicality
The Circle of Deities in the Body
Kundalin¬ and the Cakras
..
Two Ritual Systems
The Tantric Imagination
Vision
Gesture and Utterance
Icon
Indexicality
Reading
Epilogue
Appendix: The Jay®khya-samhit®
.
Abbreviations and Sources
Notes
Suggested Further Reading
Index
Preface
T represents the application of a general theoretical
framework to a body of tantric texts that I have been reading,
on and off, for a number of years. That theoretical framework
develops the theme of the relationship between subjectivity and text.
More precisely, the book offers a description and analysis of the idea
that subjectivity is textually mediated within a corpus of tantric texts
composed in the medieval period. To give an account of this textually
mediated subjectivity is also to give an account of the tantric body.
A tradition-specific understanding of self and body is constructed,
as it were, through the text. The book therefore does not claim to
be a work of Indology as such but draws on Indology to present a
particular reading of a range of textual material. This is a reading
of the body as represented within those texts, along with a tradition-
specific subjectivity that the body entails, and a discussion of the
implications of that reading in the context of a broader, historical
understanding. The specificity of the claim is that in the Hindu
tantric traditions focused primarily on the deities Vi◊nu and ˆiva in
.
the early medieval period, the practitioner becomes divine through
the internalisation of the text, through the inscription of the body
by the text, and learns to inhabit a tradition specific subjectivity. The
text is mapped on to the body. The range of texts I discuss is from
the Vai◊nava and ˆaiva tantric traditions, namely the P®ñcar®tra, the
.
Description:Is tantra just about exotic sexual practice or does it amount to something more? This lively and original book contributes to a more complete understanding of tantra. It argues that within the different Hindu traditions, it is ritual and ascetic practice which fully explains corporeality. Without mi
