Tantra

• 1. Introduction

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  Tantra began as a word for a loom. In the Rigveda, the hymn numbered 10.71 uses it for the warp, the stretched threads on which cloth is built. Centuries later the same word named a family of esoteric traditions in Hinduism and Buddhism. These traditions grew on the Indian subcontinent and travelled across Asia. They left behind mantras, sacred diagrams, temple designs and a vast body of scripture. They also left a puzzle. Scholars still cannot agree on one definition, and some argue that the label was never used by the people it describes.

  This documentary asks how a weaver's term came to carry so much. It asks who first practiced these methods, and in what places. It asks why outsiders pictured something so different from what the texts describe. And it asks why a movement once backed by kings and great universities faded from view in so many regions.

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• 2. The Weaver's Word

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  Around the fifth century BCE, the grammarian Pāṇini tried to pin down tantra with a single example, the word svatantra. He said it means independent, and described such a person as his own warp, his own cloth and his own weaver. Patanjali, a later grammarian, accepted that explanation and returned to it in eighteen places. For Patanjali, tantra meant what is principal or main, so a svatantra is someone who is his own master. He also gave a wider meaning: structural rules and standard procedures that apply across many elements in a field.

  Section 10.7.42 of the Atharvaveda still uses the word for a loom. The Brahmanas lean toward a different sense, the essence or main part of something. After about 500 BCE, Buddhists, Hindus and Jains all treated tantra as a bibliographic category, much as they treated sutra, which means a sewing together. The two labels could even describe the same book. The Buddhist Vairocanābhisaṃbodhi is called both a tantra and a sutra.

  Philosophers of the Mimamsa school defined the term with a homely image. An action completed once that helps many people, like one lamp set among many priests, is tantra. An action that helps only through repetition, like massaging with oil, is called Āvāpa. A medieval text, the Kāmikā-tantra, offers wordplay instead. It splits the word into tan, meaning to elaborate, and tra, meaning to liberate, since such a text elaborates deep matters of reality and mantra and brings liberation.

  By about 300 CE, Īśvarakṛṣṇa, author of the Sānkhya Kārikā, was calling Sankhya itself a tantra, meaning a doctrine. By the time of Abhinavagupta's Tantrāloka, around the year 1000, the word named a system built from sixty-four monistic āgamas rooted in Kashmir Shaivism. The philosopher Bhaskararaya, who lived between 1690 and 1785, would later use it for a whole canon of thought and practice.

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• 3. A Western Invention

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  No Asian language contains the word tantrism. The scholar André Padoux points out that it is a Western notion, and that practitioners, called Tantrikas, never used it for themselves. Nineteenth-century Indologists coined it. They knew little of India and saw this practice as an odd minority current set against a supposedly mainstream tradition. Scholars compare it to Sufism, another label of Orientalist origin. Ron Barrett goes further and says the idea of tantra as secret, esoteric ritual is itself a colonial-era European invention.

  Robert Brown calls tantrism a label coined by Westerners for a system they scarcely understood. In his view it is "not coherent" but a pile of practices from many sources, varying within groups, across regions and over time. A follower is free to mix tantric and non-tantric elements. Teun Goudriaan, reviewing Hindu Tantrism in 1981, offered a working description instead. He called it a methodical quest to realize the divine within one's own body, joining masculine and feminine, spirit and matter, toward a state of non-duality. In 2016, David Gray replied that no single trait is shared by every tantric tradition.

  Definitions multiply. Padoux reviewed two, one from practitioners and one from outside observers, and rejected both. David Lorenzen separates a narrow definition, limited to elite traditions rooted in the Sanskrit Tantras, Samhitas and Agamas, from a broad one that also takes in yoga and Shaktism.

  The United States met tantra through Pierre Bernard, an occultist and businessman who lived from 1875 to 1955. He is widely credited with introducing its ideas and practices to Americans, and with creating a misleading link to sex. Scholars call the later popular sexualization Neo-Tantra. Richard Payne notes that popular culture's fixation produced the label "yoga of ecstasy." Specialists stress the opposite picture: sexual practice in tantric traditions is rare, restricted to initiated adepts, and serves as a means of transcendence rather than a goal.

  Anthropologists have written little about living tantric communities, partly because modern writers built an image of Tantra as occult and secret. Some scholars now try to dismantle that myth of secrecy. Meanwhile, most Hindus today understand little about a tradition that shaped their puja, their temples and their iconography.

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• 4. Rituals of the Body

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  A tantric practitioner begins by dissolving the body, symbolically, as a form of purification. Then comes the construction of a divine body through mantra. The texts call this process sādhana, and it opens with initiation, known as dīkṣā. Despite the differences in deities and mantras from one tradition to the next, the sequence stays recognizable. Inner worship, called dhyāna, uses visualization. Outer worship, called pūjā, uses hand gestures called mudrā, chanted mantras and sacred diagrams called yantras and maṇḍalas.

  The body itself is treated as divine, holding the order of the cosmos. It reflects a polarity between a male deity and his consort, the feminine energy. Often these are Shiva and his Shakti, who appears as the goddess Kuṇḍalinī. Their union stands for liberation. The texts also promise siddhi, supernatural accomplishments, and bhoga, the bliss of higher realms. Both are read as the movement of Kuṇḍalinī through the body. Possession, called āveśa, and the practice of exorcism are also part of the subject matter.

  Georg Feuerstein's catalogue of what the Tantras cover is wide. It includes the creation and history of the world, the names and functions of male and female deities, magic and divination, and a mapping of the subtle body. It also includes techniques of mental purification and the nature of enlightenment. Sexual rituals are acknowledged, but the texts stress a disciplined bond between guru and disciple.

  One difference from orthodox paths concerns daily life. Orthodox Buddhist, Hindu and Jain teaching holds that a householder's life is driven by desire and blocks liberation, so it urges renunciation. Robert Brown describes tantric traditions as holding that "both enlightenment and worldly success" are achievable, and that "this world need not be shunned to achieve enlightenment." Even this contrast is debatable. The Bhagavad Gita, in verses 2.48-53, says "Yoga is skill in the performance of actions."

  The commentator Kulluka Bhatta, writing on the Manava Dharmasastra, sorted sacred texts into two kinds, the Vedic and the Tantric. Padoux observes that in practice Hindus and Buddhists never kept to such a division, and borrowed ideas freely from every source available.

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• 5. Searching for Roots

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  The Keśin hymn of the Rigveda, numbered 10.136, describes a wild loner who carries fire and poison within himself. Karel Werner reads him as a pioneer of yoga, a figure lost in thought whose path follows the mysterious wind. David Lorenzen hears something closer to Tantra, with sages in ecstatic altered states who can fly on the wind. The hymn does not settle the debate.

  The two oldest Upanishads, the Brihadaranyaka and the Chandogya, describe nadis, channels through which the Self and body connect. Neither mentions tantric practice. The Shvetashvatara Upanishad describes breath control that became standard in yoga, yet no tantric practice appears in it. The Taittiriya Upanishad discusses a central channel in the body. None of these sources describes deliberately moving the vital breaths through yoga. Lorenzen sees these ideas diversifying into the mystical anatomy of nadis and chakras, while Mircea Eliade considers yoga and Tantra to be separate lines of development.

  Geoffrey Samuel points to tapas, a kind of inner heat that ascetics built up in the Brahmanas and Srauta texts. It was said to grant magical feats and visions. Late Vedic texts also treat sexual intercourse as symbolically equal to sacrifice, a theme found in the Jaiminiya Brahmana. David Gordon White finds offerings to the goddesses Rākā, Sinīvālī and Kuhū that resemble a later tantric rite. Frederick Smith adds a caution. Tantra has traditionally been attributed to the Atharvaveda, but he calls that an attribution of respect, not of history.

  Buddhism offers its own forerunners. Early texts and some Mahayana sutras contain protective chants, and Mahayana versions are called dhāraṇīs. Nature spirits called Yakṣas guarded and protected, and Kubera is said to have given the sangha protection spells in the Āṭānāṭiya Sutta. Female yakṣiṇīs appear in the carvings at Sanchi and Bharhut. Chapter 26 of the Lotus Sutra shows a group of rākṣasīs swearing to protect the sutra and teaching it dhāraṇīs.

  The central Buddhist tantric act of visualizing deities appears in older texts such as the Pratyutpanna Samādhi. The Golden Light Sutra, dated to the fifth century at the latest, describes a bodhisattva's vision of a jeweled building. Four lotus seats face four directions, with four Buddhas upon them, which Samuel sees as a proto-mandala. In Gandhara, in modern Pakistan, artworks from about the 1st century CE show monks holding skulls. The matching legend tells of monks who tap a skull and foretell the former owner's rebirth.

  A separate line of evidence concerns the goddess. The Mahabharata, the Harivamsa and the Devi Mahatmya all mention the demon-killing Mahishamardini, identified with Durga-Parvati. An inscription dated to 423-424 CE records a temple for terrifying deities called the mothers. Lorenzen calls the nearby Gangadhar inscription "somewhat dubious" evidence. For him, the first convincing proof of Tantric texts is the seventh-century Kadambari of Banabhatta.

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• 6. Charnel Ground Ascetics

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  The Pasupatas, a Shaiva ascetic group, practiced a spirituality built on shocking and disreputable behavior. They danced, sang and smeared themselves with ashes, habits that later turn up in tantric settings. Another group, the Kapalikas or skull men, are often credited with early tantric practice and a link to Bhairava. They haunted cremation grounds and carried human skulls. Beyond that, little is known, because primary sources are scarce.

  Hāla's Gatha-saptasati, composed by the 5th century, tells of a woman called a Kapalika whose lover dies. After his cremation she gathers the ashes and smears them on her body. The sixth-century writer Varāhamihira mentions Kapalikas too. These early references are brief and incomplete, and scholars disagree on whether Shaiva Hinduism or Vajrayana Buddhism influenced the other.

  Gavin Flood thinks the pioneers were ascetics at cremation grounds, possibly from just above the lowest castes and outside Brahmanical tradition. They may have imitated deities such as Kali and Bhairava, inviting the god to enter them and then reversing the roles to control its power. Low-caste communities near the cremation places would have supported them. Samuel stresses a shift between the fifth and eighth centuries, in which fierce goddesses took over leading roles once held by yaksa deities.

  Scholars quarrel about who borrowed from whom. Alexis Sanderson argues that tantric practice began in a Shaiva setting and Buddhists adopted it, citing passages and lists of sacred sites that Vajrayana texts seem to copy from the Shaiva Vidyapitha literature. Ronald Davidson answers that the dates of those texts are uncertain. He thinks the sites were frequented by both groups. Evidence of borrowing is strong in the Hevajra and Cakrasamvara tantras, and the Cakrasamvara and its commentaries show Buddhists reworking the text to remove Shaiva deities and add Buddhist terminology.

  These sacred sites, called pithas, hosted rites on both sides. Samuel lists deliberately transgressive acts: night gatherings in charnel grounds, eating human flesh, ornaments, bowls and instruments made from human bone, and intercourse seated on corpses. Animal sacrifice to goddesses such as Kamakhya was practiced as well, and at Kamakhya Pitha it continues widely among Shaktas. Initiation into the clan, or kula, involved consuming sexual fluids produced in ritual between the guru and his consort.

  Over time the extreme outer elements gave way to inner yoga based on a subtle body. In this system energies such as prana, kundalini and shakti flow through channels called nadis. The yogi moves them to clear knots, called granthi, and drives them into the central channel, known as avadhuti or sushumna. Samuel suspects Chinese Daoist practice may have influenced these methods. One of the earliest hints of sexual yoga is in the Mahāyānasūtrālamkāra of Asanga, from about the 5th century. David Snellgrove reads its phrase about a reversal of intercourse as possibly meaning withholding ejaculation. Substantial evidence appears only in the seventh and eighth centuries, linked to figures such as Tirumūlar, Gorakhnath, Virupa and Naropa. Jacob Dalton finds it first in Buddhist Mahayoga tantras such as the Guhyagarbha and Guhyasamaja.

  The Brahma Yamala sorts tantric currents into three: dakshina, madhyama and vama. They correspond to the three gunas, with dakshina being pure, madhyama mixed and vama impure. Dakshinachara names the sects that avoid heterodox practice. Buddhist tantras divide too. The earlier outer tantras reflect Mahayana theory, deity visualization and ritual purity, without transgression. Between the eighth and tenth centuries, the later unsurpassed yoga tantras added fierce deities, kula initiations and sexual yoga. Samuel believes these practices did not begin inside the monasteries, but among traveling siddhas outside them.

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• 7. The Tantric Age

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  Gavin Flood once wrote that "Tantrism has been so pervasive that all of Hinduism after the eleventh century, perhaps with the exception of the vedic Srauta tradition, is influenced by it." The span from the 8th to the 14th century is sometimes called the Tantric Age. By the 10th century, the main elements of practice had matured in Shaiva and Buddhist circles. Many texts had been written, especially in Kashmir, Nepal and Bengal, and some had been translated into regional languages such as Tamil. Tantra also reached Tibet, Indonesia and China.

  Kashmir was a key center. Alexis Sanderson describes medieval Shaiva Tantra there as divided between the dualistic Shaiva Siddhanta and non-dualist Shakta lineages such as the Trika, Krama and Kaula. The non-dualists accepted sexual and transgressive practice, while the dualists mostly rejected it. Shaiva tantra succeeded in part by forging ties with kings who valued the power of fierce deities like the warrior goddess Durga. In royal rituals led by Shaiva royal gurus, a king was symbolically married to tantric deities and became the earthly representative of Shiva. Kashmir's rulers adopted it, as did the Somavamshis of Odisha, the Kalachuris and the Chandelas of Jejakabhukti. The Cambodian Khmer Empire also offered state support. Samuel notes that despite the many goddesses, these traditions remained mostly male-directed and male-controlled.

  Buddhist Tantra, meanwhile, entered the Mahayana mainstream and was studied at the great universities of Nalanda and Vikramashila. From there it travelled to Tibet, China, Korea and Japan. The Pala Dynasty, which ruled from the 8th to the 12th century, funded those centers and built tantric temples and monasteries such as Somapura Mahavihara and Odantapuri. The Palas also kept good relations with the Tibetan Empire and with Srivijaya. Mahasiddhas spread their teachings through songs of realization, such as those collected in the Charyapada, passed orally through lineages and translated over time. According to Samuel, the transgressive and sexual rites were actually performed in India from the eighth to tenth century, whereas later Tibetan monasteries treated them symbolically or through visualization.

  In the 10th and 11th centuries, Shaiva and Buddhist tantra turned more philosophical and liberation-oriented. Outer, transgressive rites gave way to inner yoga aimed at insight, which also left the movement less open to attack. In Shaivism, the Kashmiri master Abhinavagupta led this change, and the Sri Vidya tradition followed, sometimes called high tantra. David White says Abhinavagupta turned radically antinomian practice into a kind of meditative asceticism aimed at realizing a transcendent subjectivity.

  Buddhists tamed tantra by bringing it into the monastic scholastic framework. Abhayakaragupta wrote commentaries, and the Bengali teacher Atisha wrote the Bodhipathapradīpa, placing tantra at the summit of a graduated Mahayana path. A student should first practice non-tantric Mahayana. That model shaped schools such as the Gelug, and in Tibet tantra was seen as suitable only for a small elite. The Kalachakra, from about the 11th century, still teaches sexual yoga. Yet it warns teachers not to introduce impure substances to beginners, and it advises tantrikas to follow the outward customs of their country.

  Another legacy came from codifying tantric yogic techniques. James Mallinson identifies the 11th-century Buddhist Amṛtasiddhi, attributed to the mahasiddha Virupa, as the original source text for Hatha Yoga. Later Shaiva yogic traditions such as the Naths adopted it and quoted it in their own writings.

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• 8. Rivals and Survivors

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  Not every tradition took the same path. Within Hinduism, the Pañcarātra Agama is the main Vaishnava tantric current. It avoided the transgressive and sexual elements that Shaivas and Buddhists embraced, and it produced texts such as the Lakshmi tantra, though most others are lost. It does not call itself tantric, and most Vaishnava temples in South India follow its rites. Bengal's Sahajiyā tradition, flourishing from the 16th through the 19th century, taught that each person embodies the divine couple Kṛṣṇa and Rādhā. Smaller currents included a tantric tradition of Surya, the sun god. The Jains developed their own tantric corpus around rituals of yakshas and yakshinis, mainly for protection. Complete Jain manuscripts have not survived, but the thinker Hemacandra, who lived from about 1089 to 1172, discusses meditations on chakras.

  The Śaiva Siddhānta, the earliest Shaiva Tantra school, relies on public rituals performed by priests. Some of its texts, like the Niśvāsatattvasaṃhitā, date to the fifth century. South Indian Shaiva temples generally follow its rites. The Mantrapīṭha tradition, by contrast, worships Svacchanda Bhairava and promotes the skull observance, with a skull staff and worship in cremation grounds. The Aghoris are a contemporary group of Kapalika ascetics. The Nāth or Kānphaṭa tradition, whose name means split-ear, emerged in the 12th or 13th century and wrote Haṭhayoga texts. In Nepal, the Sarvamnaya system teaches that Shiva, with five faces, passes secret teachings to the goddess through five emanations.

  Opposition was real. Kumarila Bhatta wrote that one should have no contact with tantrikas nor speak to them. Orthodox Vedic traditions rejected the Tantras, while some tantrikas ranked the Tantras above the Vedas. Umapati offered a gentler view: "The Veda is the cow, the true Agama its milk." The Sankaravijaya biography shows the philosopher Shankara of the 9th century defeating tantric practitioners, though it is far from certain that he campaigned against them. The 14th-century Mādhavācārya cited Abhinavagupta but never named Tantra as a separate practice. Pandurang Vaman Kane guessed it was considered scandalous. Padoux suggests instead that tantra was so pervasive by the 13th century that nobody saw it as distinct.

  From the 15th century, popular Bhakti movements overshadowed Hindu tantra. Samuel proposes that their emphasis on emotional submission to a saviour-deity suited non-Muslim groups under Muslim rule. Tantra endured among Shaiva ascetics, the Naths of Rajasthan, the Sri Vidya tradition of South India and the Bengali Bauls.

  Buddhism suffered setbacks too. In Burma, King Anawratha, who ruled from 1044 to 1077, is said to have disbanded the tantric Ari monks. In Sri Lanka, the large Abhayagiri Monastery, where Vajrayana appears to have flourished in the 8th century, was forced to convert to the orthodox Mahāvihāra sect under Parakramabahu I, who ruled from 1153 to 1186. Tibetan Buddhism took tantra from the 8th century and kept it. The Newar Buddhists of the Kathmandu Valley are the only Buddhist tantric tradition still maintaining a canon of Sanskrit texts. Chinese Esoteric Buddhism gained influence in the Tang dynasty with the arrival of the masters Vajrabodhi and Amoghavajra in Chang'an.

  In the 19th and 20th centuries, Hindu modernism recast yoga away from its tantric roots. Middle-class India viewed tantra's sexual and magical practices negatively, and Swami Vivekananda worked to rebuild yoga around a selective Vedantic reading of Patañjali's Yogasutra. The effort largely succeeded. As Samuel notes, many modern Western practitioners of yoga for health and relaxation know little about its original role as preparation for the internal sexual practices of the Nath tradition.

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