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    A Review of Gāru A Medicine - A History of Snakebite and Religious Healing in South Asia

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    A Review of Gāru A Medicine - A History of Snakebite and Religious Healing in South Asia

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    A Review of Gāruḍa Medicine- A History of Snakebite and Religious Healing in South Asia

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    A Review of Gāruḍa Medicine- A History of Snakebite and Religious Healing in South Asia

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    A Review of Gāru A Medicine - A History of Snakebite and Religious Healing in South Asia

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    A Review of Gāruḍa Medicine- A History of Snakebite and Religious Healing in South Asia

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    Snakebite &
    Religious Healing
    in South Asia
    SCIENCE STUDIES

    SOUTH ASIA

    November 27, 2012 - 3 comments

    A review of Grua Medicine: A


    History of Snakebite and Religious
    Healing in South Asia, by M ichael
    James Slouber.
    In his dissertation, Michael Slouber
    introduces the reader to a branch of
    aiva tantric literature called the Grua
    Tantras, works associated with the deity
    Garua (the Lord of Birds and natural
    enemy of snakes and poison) that are
    primarily concerned with the cure of
    snakebite and poisoning through the use
    of mantras and herbal or mineral
    remedies, but that also touch on broader
    medical and religious matters.
    The dissertation is divided into two parts.
    The first part provides a general
    introduction to Grua Tantras and the
    themes presented in them, as well as a
    discussion of how their contents are
    positioned within the aiva corpus of
    works and how they relate to other
    schools of thought. The second part
    consists of an edition and translation of
    chapters 1- 7, 30 and 34 of the
    Kriyklaguottara, a previously
    unpublished Sanskrit text that preserves
    archaic material from the Grua Tantras
    and that probably dates to before the
    eleventh century.
    Part One, Chapter 1 introduces and
    contextualizes Grua medicine, the
    method of treating envenomation and
    poisoning with mantra systems and herbal
    or mineral cures expounded in the
    Gruda Tantras. Sloubers focus is on the
    treatment of snakebite with mantras, an
    aspect of Indian medicine that has not
    received much scholarly attention in the

    past despite it being a popular and


    widespread practice. Slouber cogently
    argues that the scholarly bias against
    practices such as mantras and ritualized
    medicine has resulted in an inaccurate
    understanding of Indian medicine. The
    second chapter gives an extensive survey
    of primary textual sources in Sanskrit,
    Pali, and Prakrit that relate to or
    incorporate elements of Grua
    medicine, tentatively establishing the
    relations of influence between the texts.
    The impressively wide range of sources
    include Vedic texts, the Epics, Ayurvedic
    treatises, Puras, aiva Tantras and
    aiva compendia, Pcartra Tantras
    and other Vaiava texts, Jain and
    Buddhist sources. In Chapter 3, Slouber
    delineates Grua mantra systems,
    describing and analyzing selected
    mantras and their use in some detail.
    Emphasizing the cultural importance of
    mantras as well as the coherent inner
    logic of their use, Slouber advocates a
    more detailed study and serious
    consideration of mantras.
    Chapter 4 examines the role of snakebite
    goddesses in the GruaTantras and
    their incorporation into the later kta
    traditions of the ninth to twelfth centuries.
    There is also a discussion of the use of
    vidys, i.e., sonic spells understood as
    the embodiment of the goddess and as
    the female equivalent of mantras. In
    Chapter 5, Slouber explores Garuas
    non-sectarian identity as an independent
    deity in aiva, kta, Buddhist, and Jain
    traditions and discusses why Garua is
    today mostly associated with Vaiavism.
    He also describes in some detail how the
    visualization of Garuas specific qualities
    is used by the practitioner, the Gruika,
    to bring about possession and cure
    snakebite. The sixth chapter concludes
    Part One, summarizing the findings of the
    previous chapters and suggesting
    directions for further research.
    As mentioned, Part Two contains the
    edition and translation of chapters 1- 7,
    30 and 34 of the Kriyklaguottara. The
    edition is based on three of six available
    manuscripts of the Kriyklaguottara,
    the three others being directly dependent
    on the prior three, as Slouber proceeds to
    explain in detail. Slouber has chosen
    Devangar fonts for the edition, which
    makes the text more accessible to Indian
    scholars. The clear and concise
    translation concludes Part Two.
    The study of Tantric traditions and
    literature, long a neglected area in
    scholarship, is now emerging as one of
    the key, if also specialist, areas of South

    Asian studies (see Dominic Goodall and


    Harunaga Isaacson, Tantric Traditions,
    in Jessica Frazier (ed.), The Continuum
    Companion to Hindu Studies. London:
    Continuum, 2011, pp. 122-137). Many of
    the previously unavailable Tantric source
    materials are gradually being made
    available through the archiving
    (cataloguing, microfilming and digitization)
    of important manuscript collections, and a
    small number of editions and translations
    of seminal Tantric scriptures have been
    published in recent years. However, the
    corpus of Tantric literature is vast, and
    while solid inroads have been made in the
    history of Tantric thought, much more
    remains to be discovered. Sloubers
    dissertation can be seen as part of a
    larger project of understanding Tantra,
    specifically aiva Tantra and its influence
    on South Asian culture, providing us with
    another piece of the puzzle, as it were.
    Key to this understanding is the
    examination of a central aspect of Tantric
    thought, namely the meaning and use of
    mantras (and vidys) to which Slouber
    dedicates a great deal of attention. As
    Slouber points out, this is an area that
    has been more or less purposely
    overlooked or ignored in studies on Indian
    medicine and that certainly deserves
    more attention. His edition and translation
    of parts of the Kriyklaguottara provide
    a much-welcomed glimpse into Grua
    literature and into snakebite medicine.
    This dissertation substantially adds to our
    understanding of Tantric thought and
    practice, and vitally complements our still
    incomplete picture of Indian medicine.
    Dr Dagmar Wujastyk
    University Research Priority Program Asia
    and Europe
    Zurich University
    [email protected]
    Primary Sources
    The author made use of a great number
    of primary source texts (in Sanskrit, Pali
    and Prakrit), many of which are available
    in print editions or as e-texts. However, a
    number of texts Slouber has consulted
    are only available in manuscript form. The
    manuscripts in question are archived at
    the National Archives Kathmandu (NAK) in
    Nepal. Several were digitized or
    microfilmed as part of the Nepal German
    Manuscript Preservation Project (NGMPP,
    now the Nepal German Manuscript
    Cataloguing Project).
    Dissertation Information
    University of California, Berkeley. 2012.
    331pp. Primary Advisors: Robert P.

    Goldman and Alexander von Rospatt.

    Image: Manuscript leaf of the


    Tvaritamulasutra in the Kaiser Library in
    Kathmandu, and wood-carving of Garuda
    bought in Bhaktapur, Nepal. Photo taken
    and created by Michael Slouber.
    More

    Tags: 2012 Dissertation, Alexander von


    Rospatt, Robert Goldman, UC Berkeley
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