Global Tantra: Religion, Science, and Nationalism in Colonial Modernity (Introduction) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Encountering the Other: Tantra in the Cross-cultural Context
2011
This article focuses on the cultural appropriation of Tantra in India and the West. The term ‘Tantra’ evokes one sentiment in contemporary India, the birthplace of Tantra, and a widely divergent meaning in the West. In these contrasting understandings of Tantra as the black magic or as sex, the sacred of some has been turned into an object for appropriation and commodification for others. This shift relies on identifying Tantra as the ‘other’, in relation to what the mainstream culture defines itself as the ‘self’. Due to secretive nature of Tantric tradition since the classical times, Tantra has never found its own voice, and with the mainstream culture claiming the power over truth, marginal voices repressed within the rubric of Tantra have never been heard. The emergence of religious consumerism has assisted in peeling off this secretive Tantric body, bringing the heart of sacred practices from India to the consumers in the West.
Exploring the Changing Connotation and Unfolding the Historiography of Tantra
2019
Tantra is represented as one of the most mysterious and demonized forms of scared space in Indic religious traditions. This received understanding is often synonymized with words like dark and evil edges of sacred spaces. Tantra has developed as a fascinating theme for exploration in the writings of both Indian and Western scholars. This fascination can be said to have augmented as ‘Tantra’ itself have undergone through a phase of shift and transformation in respect of its meaning and historiography. Meaning of the word ‘Tantra’ had transformed, which gave away different versions with each phase. In the initial phase, it meant knowledge of the objective world, whereas recent phase represents it as an esoteric sect. Likewise, the historiography of Tantra also had transformed from claiming it to be an inevitable part of Vedic tradition to viewing it as a separate entity from it which had an individualistic domain of its own. Both Western and Indian scholars have contributed to enrich ...
2023
This book explores the cross- and trans-cultural dialectic between Tantra and intersecting ‘magical’ and ‘shamanic’ practices associated with vernacular religions across Monsoon Asia. With a chronological frame going from the mediaeval Indic period up to the present, a wide geographical framework, and through the dialogue between various disciplines, it presents a coherent enquiry shedding light on practices and practitioners that have been frequently alienated in the elitist discourse of mainstream Indic religions and equally over- looked by modern scholarship. The book addresses three desiderata in the field of Tantric Studies: it fills a gap in the historical modelling of Tantra; it extends the geographical parameters of Tantra to the vast, yet culturally interlinked, socio-geographical construct of Monsoon Asia; it explores Tantra as an interface between the Sanskritic elite and the folk, the vernacular, the magical, and the shamanic, thereby revisiting the intellectual and historically fallacious divide between cosmopolitan Sanskritic and vernacular local. The book offers a highly innovative contribution to the field of Tantric Studies and, more generally, South and Southeast Asian religions, by breaking traditional disciplinary boundaries. Its variety of disciplinary approaches makes it attractive to both the textual/ diachronic and ethnographic/synchronic dimensions. It will be of interest to specialist and non-specialist academic readers, including scholars and students of South Asian religions, mainly Hinduism and Buddhism, Tantric traditions, and Southeast Asian religions, as well as Asian and global folk religion, shamanism, and magic.
The term 'tantra' is derived from the root TAN and first means 'a weaver's loom'. It then refers to an extended treatise on some subject. It is only during the British Raj that "a distinct set of texts called the 'Tantras' emerges as a clearly defined and relatively unified body of Indian literature." 1 As regards its subject matter, 'Tantra' has proved to be indefinable. 2 More importantly, 'Tantrism' 3 , which is a term invented in the West, becomes a threat to the social mores and political practice of the Raj. 4 This menacing aspect continues despite the attempts of Sir John Woodroffe, called the 'father' of modern tantra, to sanitise the term. 5 Kashmir One thousand years ago Kashmir experienced a gold age. Many schools of thought both Buddhist and Hindu developed in the beauty of the surrounding mountains. Of the Hindu schools perhaps the most famous is Kashmir Shaivism and of its many teachers the most famous is Abhinavagupta.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History, 2023
Tantra is historically one of the most important but also most o en misunderstood, understudied, and poorly defined currents within the Hindu and Buddhist traditions of South Asia. Widely dismissed by European Orientalist scholars and Christian missionaries as a degenerate form of black magic and debauchery, Tantra has been embraced by contemporary popular and New Age audiences as a liberated path of sensual pleasure and sexual freedom. While it has been defined in many di erent ways by modern scholars, Tantra has played a central but o en ambivalent role in South Asian religious, social, and political history. In the 21st century, Tantra remains an important though o en misunderstood religious presence, both in the few surviving Tantric lineages of South Asia and in the various popular forms of tantra-mantra (in India) and "Neo-Tantra" (in Europe, England, and North America).
Journal of the American Oriental Society, 2003
Tantra is an Asian body of beliefs and practices that seeks to channel the divine energy that grounds the universe, in creative and liberating ways. The subsequent chapters reflect the wide geographical and temporal scope of Tantra by examining thirty-six texts from China, India, Japan, Nepal, and Tibet, ranging from the seventh century to the present day, and representing the full range of Tantric experience-Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, and even Islamic. Each text has been chosen and translated, often for the first time, by an international expert in the field who also provides detailed background material. Students of Asian religions and general readers alike will find the book rich and informative. The book includes plays, transcribed interviews, poetry, parodies, inscriptions, instructional texts, scriptures, philosophical conjectures, dreams, and astronomical speculations, each text illustrating one of the diverse traditions and practices of Tantra. Thus, the nineteenth-century Indian Buddhist Garland of Gems, a series of songs, warns against the illusion of appearance by referring to bees, yogurt, and the fire of Malaya Mountain; while fourteenth-century Chinese Buddhist manuscripts detail how to prosper through the Seven Stars of the Northern Dipper by burning incense, making offerings to scriptures, and chanting incantations. In a transcribed conversation, a modern Hindu priest in Bengal candidly explains how he serves the black goddess Kali and feeds temple skulls lentils, wine, or rice. A seventeenth-century Nepalese Hindu praise-poem hammered into the golden doors to the temple of the Goddess Taleju lists a king's faults and begs her forgiveness and grace. An introduction accompanies each text, identifying its period and genre, discussing the history and influence of the work, and identifying points of particular interest or difficulty. vi PRINCETON READINGS IN RELIGIONS The range of works represented here is remarkable, spanning the continent of Asia and the traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Islam over more than a millennium. With the publication of this volume, the long disparaged and neglected Tantric traditions of Asia receive the attention they so rightly deserve. This is a groundbreaking work.
Tantra, Magic, and Vernacular Religions in Monsoon Asia: Texts, Practices, and Practitioners from th
Asian Affairs, 2023
The contributors provide nuanced insights into Tantra’s practices and beliefs in Monsoon Asia through meticulous analyses of texts, fieldwork, and historical contexts. This volume significantly contributes to Tantric studies by adopting a chronological approach, from the medieval Indic period to the present, covering several geographic areas and drawing on fields including anthropology, religious studies, history, and philology. Tantra, a practice focused on results, is often associated with black magic due to its outcome-oriented nature. It encompasses both altruistic and karmically expensive practices, depending on whether the focus is on the divine or a narrow goal. Overall, Tantra, Magic, and Vernacular Religions in Monsoon Asia is a valuable resource for scholars and students studying religion. It will appeal to those interested in the psychology of religion, South Asian religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Southeast Asian religions.