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    The Cult of Vetala and Tantric Fantasy

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    Kalpa235
    The document discusses the intellectual climate of medieval India that gave rise to Tantrism. Tantrism emerged as a new synthesis that shifted away from asceticism to one that combined asceticism and worldly enjoyment. This paradoxical approach to spirituality was shared by both Hindu and Buddhist philosophies of the time, such as the idea of "beyond-dualism" in Hindu scriptures and the teachings of Madhyamaka Buddhism. The author argues this paradoxical thinking was central to the paradigm shift in medieval Indian thought that influenced the development of Tantrism.

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    The Cult of Vetala and Tantric Fantasy

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    Kalpa235
    196 views2 pages
    The document discusses the intellectual climate of medieval India that gave rise to Tantrism. Tantrism emerged as a new synthesis that shifted away from asceticism to one that combined asceticism and worldly enjoyment. This paradoxical approach to spirituality was shared by both Hindu and Buddhist philosophies of the time, such as the idea of "beyond-dualism" in Hindu scriptures and the teachings of Madhyamaka Buddhism. The author argues this paradoxical thinking was central to the paradigm shift in medieval Indian thought that influenced the development of Tantrism.

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    Saiva Tantricism

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    THE CULT OF VETALA AND TANTRIC FANTASY

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    The document discusses the intellectual climate of medieval India that gave rise to Tantrism. Tantrism emerged as a new synthesis that shifted away from asceticism to one that combined asceticism and worldly enjoyment. This paradoxical approach to spirituality was shared by both Hindu and Buddhist philosophies of the time, such as the idea of "beyond-dualism" in Hindu scriptures and the teachings of Madhyamaka Buddhism. The author argues this paradoxical thinking was central to the paradigm shift in medieval Indian thought that influenced the development of Tantrism.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    196 views2 pages

    The Cult of Vetala and Tantric Fantasy

    Uploaded by

    Kalpa235
    The document discusses the intellectual climate of medieval India that gave rise to Tantrism. Tantrism emerged as a new synthesis that shifted away from asceticism to one that combined asceticism and worldly enjoyment. This paradoxical approach to spirituality was shared by both Hindu and Buddhist philosophies of the time, such as the idea of "beyond-dualism" in Hindu scriptures and the teachings of Madhyamaka Buddhism. The author argues this paradoxical thinking was central to the paradigm shift in medieval Indian thought that influenced the development of Tantrism.

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    of 2

    THE CULT OF VETĀLA AND TANTRIC FANTASY∗

    Po-chi Huang

    Vetāla: (A kind of spirit, ghost, ghoul, vampire, or zombie, residing in


    a corpse. In Chinese: ದ՝೒, ದৡ೒, ದ‫ڽ‬ৡ೒; or transliteration in
    Chinese characters: ḛॲᢅ, ಮࢧᢅ, ܲ‫ڍ‬᷇೒, ḛ‫ڍ‬๝.)

    New Intellectual Milieu and Tantra

    Before investigating the cult of Vetāla as a Tantric ritual, we should


    explore the intellectual climate of medieval India. Tantrism, as the
    new Zeitgeist in medieval India, offers a glimpse on a new synthesis
    of religious thinking as well as a new definition of pouvoir. Tantrism
    shifted away from tapas (ascetic austerity) to śakti (Tantric power). Its
    emergence represents a remarkable religious transformation in India,
    also reflecting Pan-Asian intellectual concerns.1
    From the perspective of its two main contributors-the Hindu and
    Buddhist Tantras,2 this Zeitgeist shows a dramatic reversal of early

    ∗ I would like to thank Dr. Lilian Handlin for her useful comments and editorial
    suggestions.
    1
    David White, “Tantra in Practice: Mapping a Tradition,” in David White ed., Tantra
    in Practice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 7: “Tantra has persisted
    and often thrived throughout Asian history since the middle of the first millennium
    of the common era. Its practitioners have lived in India, China, Japan, Tibet, Bhutan,
    Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Korea, and Mongolia as well as in the ‘Greater India’ of medieval
    Southeast Asia: Cambodia, Burma and Indonesia. No form of medieval Hinduism,
    Buddhism, of Jainism . . . has been without a Tantric component . . . In Hindu India,
    the Pañcarātra . . . GauḍīyaVaiṣnava, Sahajiyā, Kāpālika, Śaiva Siddhānta, Siddha Kaula,
    Yoginī Kaula . . . Śrīvidyā . . . and Tamil Nāyan̠ār and Ālv̠ ār traditions . . . have all been
    Tantric or heavily colored by Tantra.”
    2
    For Tantric Buddhism in Tibet and East Asia, see David L. Snellgrove, Indo-Tibetan
    Buddhism: Indian Buddhist and Their Tibetan Successors vol. 1 (Boston: Shambhala,
    1987), and Michel Strickmann, Mantras et Mandarins: Le bouddhisme tantrique en Chine
    (Paris: Gallimard, 1996) respectively; for a general introduction to Hindu Tantrism,
    see Teun Goudriaan and Sanjukta Gupta, Hindu Tantric and Śākta Literature (Wies-
    baden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1984); for a concise survey of Śaivism, see A. Sanderson,
    “Śaivism and the Tantric Traditions,” in Stewart Sutherland, L. Houlden, P. Clarke and
    F. Hardy eds., The World’s Religions (Boston, Mass.: G. K. Hall, 1988), pp. 660–704. The
    relationship between Buddhist and Hindu (especially Śaiva) Tantras is an intriguing
    212 po-chi huang

    Śramaṇ ism. This new religious adventure combined two initially


    irreconcilable entities: asceticism and worldly enjoyment. A Tāntrika
    (Tantric practitioner) needed to overcome dualistic opposition to gain
    spiritual realization. But this union of two originally irreconcilable con-
    ditions for a higher quest was not unique to Tantrism—the paradox is
    found in Buddhist Mādhyamika philosophy too:
    The truth of the highest meaning takes its reality only through being
    projected onto the screen (samvṛti) of conventional truth. Recognition
    of the strictly contextual or pragmatic significance of the thoughts and
    objects that populate our mental and material world renders meaning-
    less any search for a transcendental ground behind these phenomena.
    But paradoxically, by stripping away the tendency to reify the screen of
    everyday affairs, this same recognition simultaneously lays bare the intrin-
    sic nature of all things, which is their “suchness” (tathatā), their quality
    of being just as they are in reciprocal dependence. What is immediately
    given in everyday experience is indeed all that there is, for the inherently
    interdependent nature of the components of this experience is the truth
    of the highest meaning; both the means to the goal (mārga; upāya) and
    the goal itself (nirvāṇ a).3
    I regard this paradoxical thinking as central to medieval India’s para-
    digmatic intellectual climate because this persuasion mode is shared
    by the Hindu side. The idea of beyond-dualism (parādvaya) articu-
    lated in Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad parallels medieval Buddhism.4 Indeed,

    question. Sanderson suggests that Buddhist siddhi literature like Yoginī Tantras have
    drawn heavily from Śaiva Kāpālika scriptures. (A. Sanderson, “Vajrayāna: Origin and
    Function,” in Dhammakaya Foundation ed., Buddhism into the Year 2000: International
    Conference Proceedings (Bangkok and Los Angeles: Dhammakaya Foundation, 1994,
    pp. 87–102) One the other hand, Davidson argues: “Buddhist-Kāpālika connection
    is more complex than a simple process of religious imitation and textual appropria-
    tion . . . the influence was apparently mutual . . . Thus the influence was both sustained and
    reciprocal, even in those places where Buddhist and Kāpālika siddhas were in extreme
    antagonism.” (Ronald Davidson, Indian Esoteric Buddhism: A History of the Tantric
    Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), p. 218.) Looking from the
    perspective of similar historical development, Strickmann contends: “Je suis convaincu
    que les āgama śivaïsme médiéval et les tantra du bouddhisme médiéval représentent
    simplement différentes versions, différentes rédactions d’une seule et même chose.”
    (Strickmann, Mantras et Mandarins: Le bouddhisme tantrique en Chine, p. 24.) This
    intricate problem remains to be untangled.
    3
    C. Huntington, The Emptiness of Emptiness: An Introduction to Early Indian
    Mādhyamika (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989), pp. 39–40.
    4
    According to Lehren von Richard Hauschild ed., Die Śvetāśvatara-Upaniṣad; eine
    kritische Ausgabe mit einer Übersetzung und einer Übersicht über ihre Lehren (Leipzig:
    Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft, 1927), p. 74, the date of Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad
    is around 100 B.C.E.–100 A.D.

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