A GODDESS FOR THE SECOND MILLENNIUM: TRANSGRESSION AND

TRANSFORMATION IN THE HINDU TANTRIC WORSHIP OF TRIPURASUNDARĪ

A Dissertation

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School

of Cornell University

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

by

Anna A. Golovkova

[August 2017]
© 2017 Anna A. Golovkova
 A GODDESS FOR THE SECOND MILLENNIUM: TRANSGRESSION AND

TRANSFORMATION IN THE HINDU TANTRIC WORSHIP OF TRIPURASUNDARĪ

Anna A. Golovkova, M.A., M.St.

Cornell University 2017

In religious and secular spaces, rituals structure time and place, distinguish the special from

the mundane, and shape individual and communal identities. But what makes rituals endure?

Why do some ritual systems vanish, while others thrive? And what allows traditions to adapt to

cultural change? Reading tantras and commentaries “against the grain,” as products of historical

actors, I have traced the early history of the cult of Tripurasundarī to answer these questions,

highlighting innovation and continuity in ritual practice and doctrine.

Analyzing the earliest texts relevant to the worship of Tripurasundarī, I find four distinct

stages in its early development: the Nityā Cult, the classical or mature cult, the Kashmirian

reinterpretation, and the south Indian exegesis. In the Nityā cult, the principal Goddess was

surrounded by an unelaborated retinue of subordinate goddesses with Kāmadeva, the god of

love, as her consort. The Vāmakeśvarīmata described the ritual configuration of the classical

cult, including an addition of a vast retinue of subordinate goddesses within the Śrīcakra, the

principal ritual diagram of this tradition. The classical cult also added a new system of tantric

(non-Vedic) mantras and mudrās (ritual gestures) and Tripurasundarī became associated with

Śiva. In the Yoginīhṛdaya, yogic and meditative practices were grafted onto the existing ritual

and mantric system.

Thirteenth-century exegetes further adapted this tradition to its new environments by

reinterpreting it in light of Śaiva non-dualism and Pratyabhijñā philosophy in Kashmir. In south

%i
India, the exotericization and Vedāntization brought the cult of Tripurasundarī into the heart of

Hindu temple worship, while the devotional (bhakti) practice of chanting carried its most

treasured hymns to the forefront of private religious life.

Four factors contributed to this success: the non-threatening and pleasing nature of

Tripurasundarī and her associations with love magic; the visually stunning Śrīcakra and the

complementary mantra system, both viewed as exceedingly powerful; the tremendous range of

practices from external ritual to yogic visualizations built upon a rich foundation of ritual and

mantra system; and, finally, a history of creative and skillful exegesis, repeatedly adapting this

tradition to its changing environments.

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 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Anna A. (Anya) Golovkova received her B.A. in Linguistics and International Communication at

Moscow State Linguistics University. Upon graduation, she worked as a translator and a

publishing manager in the Creative Services Department of a major investment bank. She

completed her M.A. in Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University

and a M.St. with distinction at the Oriental Institute at Oxford University, Linacre College.

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To my teachers with gratitude

%iv
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This study would not be possible without my teachers. I am thankful to Prof. Somadeva

Vasudeva for his encouragement, his invariably delightful choice of texts, and the marvelous,

inspiring, and simply odd bits of verse he brought to class for unprepared reading. I am indebted

to Prof. Alexis Sanderson for suggesting that we read the Vāmakeśvarīmata, for pointing me in

the direction that eventually led to this study, and for his subsequent comments. I was fortunate

to read with Professor Sanderson at Oxford University in 2009–2010 with the support of the

Clarendon Fund and in 2013–2014 with the funding from Cornell University Sage Fellowship

and Einaudi Center International Travel Grant Award. Professor Sanderson’s colossal

contribution to systematizing the study of tantric texts has allowed this generation of scholars to

pursue research in new directions and will continue to be felt for many decades.

I am particularly grateful to my Ph.D. advisor, Prof. Larry McCrea for teaching me to be

dream big, to be ambitious in scope, and for training me to read as a historian of religion and

intellectual historian. I owe my sincere thanks to Prof. Rachel McDermott for her kind presence

in my academic life, which has taught me much about mentorship. I am grateful to Prof. Jane-

Marie Law for asking difficult questions and for her invariably practical advice. My friends

Elizabeth Shedd, Kasia Tolwinski, Andrea Mendoza, Tyran Grillo, Ifan Wu, and Xinwei Xu,

thank you for being there. I cannot say how much your support has meant to me.

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH iii

LIST OF TABLES viii

PREFACE ix

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION 1

Methods and Scope 1

Four Stages in the Early Worship of Tripurasundarī 7

Chronology 13

Classification 17

CHAPTER 2

THE ANTECEDENT NITYĀ CULT 19

CHAPTER 3

THE CLASSICAL CULT OF TRIPURASUNDARĪ IN THE VĀMAKEŚVARĪMATA 38

CHAPTER 4

THE YOGINĪHṚDAYA 66

CHAPTER 5

RENEWAL THROUGH ELABORATION 80

Vāmakeśvarīmata 1.1 — the Mirror of Vivaraṇa 85

Pratyabhijñā Themes in the Vāmakeśvarīmatavivaraṇa 99

Previous Commentaries on the Vāmakeśvarīmata in Vāmakeśvarīmatavivaraṇa 107

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CHAPTER 6

READING IN THE “FRINGES” AND READING “AGAINST THE GRAIN” 121

CONCLUSION 144

APPENDIX A

Classification of Śaiva doctrines 147

APPENDIX B

Classifications of the Kaula systems 148

APPENDIX C

The Structure of the Vāmakeśvarīmata 150

APPENDIX D

The Deities of the Vāmakeśvarīmata 154

APPENDIX E

Selected Framing Verses to Jayaratha’s Tantrālokaviveka and Vāmakeśvarīmatavivaraṇa 164

APPENDIX F

Opening Verses to Śivānanda’s Ṛjuvimarśinī 170

APPENDIX G

Opening Verses to Vidyānanda’s Artharatnāvalī 173

REFERENCES 175

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 LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. Three Stages of Emanation 45

Table 2. The Alphabet Goddesses 49

%viii
 PREFACE

In early January of 2007, at the invitation of a Telugu-speaking south Indian female guru,

Amma Sri Karunamayi, I attended a Lalitāsahasranāma Mahāyajña in Hyderabad. This massive

celebration dedicated to the goddess Lalitā Mahātripurasundarī took place over five days. Priests

performed yajñas, in which oblations were offered into the fire, and thousands of devotees,

mostly women, chanted from memory a hymn consisting of one thousand names of Lalitā, a

popular Purāṇic form of Tripurasundarī (Tripurā).1 I learned that many devotees, particularly

women, in south India chant stotras (hymns of praise) dedicated to Tripurasundarī daily. Among

them are the Lalitāsahasranāma (One Thousand Names of Lalitā) from the Lalitopākhyāna

section of the Brahmāṇḍa Purāṇa, which was at the fore of the Hyderabad festivities, the

Saundaryalaharī (The Wave of Beauty), ascribed by tradition to Śaṅkara, the most famous

philosopher of Advaita Vedānta, and the Khaḍgamālā (A Sword-Garland), a hymn consisting of

names of a vast retinue of Tripurā’s subordinate goddesses. Both in the homes of devotees and in

temples, these stotras are chanted and used for a simple arcana (worship, in which offerings of

vermillion kumkum powder, flowers, or rice are made with each name of the Goddess) or for a

more elaborate pūjā (worship). One might even hear names of Tripurasundarī blaring from

loudspeakers as Goddess temples stir to life at dawn or after the heat of the afternoon sun

subsides.

1%Tripurasundarī translates as the “beauty of the three cities.” The shorter form, Tripurā, can be translated as “one
belonging to the three cities.” Although various interpretations have been offered to explain what the three cities in
the Goddess’s names refer to (e.g., the three worlds, cakras), I have not come across early textual sources that would
reliably shed light on the origin of this epithet. The cult of Tripurasundarī draws extensively on Trika (see, e.g.,
Sanderson 1990), so the number three in her name may relate to her triadic nature inherited from that tradition.
Lalitā, a popular name for this goddess means “the playful one,” while Rājarājeśvarī, a common name for the same
Goddess, can be translated as “the ruler of the kings of kings.”

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 Later that year, I began my M.A. at Columbia University in New York City with an intention

of studying Sanskrit. As the writing sample for my application, I submitted a paper on the

Lalitāsahasranāma stotra. Preparing to write my Master’s thesis, I read Douglas Renfrew

Brooks’ Auspicious Wisdom2 and Madhu Khanna’s Ph.D. thesis on three short works in verse by

Śivānanda,3 the only available monograph-length works of secondary literature on this tradition.

Both greatly expanded my understanding of encounters with the contemporary tradition in India

and generally did not conflict with them. Brooks’ work investigated contemporary practice of

Śrīvidyā and examined Śrīvidyā’s literary tradition retrospectively, emphasizing texts and

authors considered important by contemporary practitioners. Śrīvidyā is a fairly recent name for

the later Vedāntized tradition,4 therefore in this dissertation I avoid anachronistically applying it

to the early cult of Tripurasundarī. Khanna’s thesis discussed three short works by Śivānanda, the

symbolism of the Śrīcakra (the principal ritual diagram of this tradition), and the Śrīcakra ritual

with insights from contemporary and fairly recent materials, e.g., illustrations based on Rajastani

drawings and bronzes from the 1800s and contemporary photographs of ritual implements and

illustrations of mudrās (ritual gestures).

At Columbia, I also began to read work by Alexis Sanderson on tantra, but I was puzzled by

the contrast between his descriptions of the worship of Tripurasundarī based on earlier Sanskrit

texts with what I observed with my own eyes in temples and homes of devotees. The gap

2% Brooks 1992.
3% Subhagodaya, Subhagodayavāsanā, and Saubhāgyahṛdayastotra in Khanna 1986.
4% Śrīvidyā is a Sanskrit compound, in which śrī is an honorific, a polite way to address a deity or a respected elder.
Śrī also has the meaning of saubhāgya, that is, “good fortune, success, happiness, beauty, charm ” (Padoux 1994: 5).
Vidyā means knowledge, but also, in this context, refers to specifically tantric (or non-Vedic) mantras, condensed
ritual formulas used to invoke female deities. I will use the term vidyā in this meaning throughout the dissertation.

%x
between the cult of “love magic,”5 which emphasized rituals to attract a desired partner, referred

to by Sanderson in his broader work on tantric traditions, and the contemporary tradition of

respected Hindu gurus and middle-class professionals and housewives seemed vast. Even the

illustration of the bare-breasted goddess in “Śaivism and Tantric Traditions”6 differed drastically

from the many contemporary representations I have photographed and collected, in which

Tripurasundarī was always meticulously and modestly dressed.

While studying Sanskrit in the AIIS summer Sanskrit program and traveling in India, I

visited several premodern Goddess temples called the śakti pīṭhas (the seats of the Goddess). I

learned that in the major south Indian Śākta temples of Śṛṅgerī, Kāñcīpuram, Śrīśailam, Madurai,

and the lesser known temples of Akhilāṇḍeśvarī in Tiruchirappalli in Tamil Nadu and of

Mūkāmbikā near Mangalore in Karnataka, Tripurasundarī was seen as the esoteric essence of the

local goddesses. Many ultra-orthodox brahmin leaders of these temples and the monastic

institutions associated with them, the Śaṅkara maṭhas, were Śrīvidyā gurus and initiates. As

Smārtas, orthodox Hindu brahmins, they viewed as their legacy śruti and smṛti, texts prescribing

basic rites, duties, and beliefs of Hindu society. Yet they also worshipped Tripurasundarī, whose

ritual used tantric, not Vedic mantras, whose early tantras and exegesis had no connection to the

Vedic corpus, and whose earliest worship began as a cult of love magic, with the majority of

rituals aimed at attracting a desired partner. How did this tantric tradition come to be so deeply

imbedded in everyday contemporary Hindu religious experience? Why did the cult of

5%I follow Alexis Sanderson, e.g., 1988, 2009 and André Padoux, e.g., 2013, in using the term “love magic” to refer
to a ritual system in which rites of amorous attraction predominated. Although “magic” in religious studies is a
contested term, I use “love magic” here following an accepted use in tantric studies (see e.g., Hatley 2016,
Mallinson 2013, Vasudeva 2011, and others), to refer to rites for ākarṣaṇa (attraction) and vaśīkaraṇa (subjugation).
6% Sanderson 1988: 688.

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Tripurasundarī and its later form of Śrīvidyā flourish, when others, such as Trika and Krama in

Kashmir, faded as ritual traditions and became sources of exegetical inspiration7? These are some

of the questions with which I began this research and which I continue to ask as I move beyond

the earliest sources of this tradition.

7% Sanderson 2007: 433.

%xii
 CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Methods and Scope

In this dissertation, I investigate the earliest sources pertaining to the worship of

Tripurasundarī (tenth to fourteenth centuries CE) to historicize key transformations in ritual

practice and philosophical interpretation. Beginning with the oldest texts, I move forward in

time, tracing changes in practices, shifts in vocabulary, and divergences in the way practices and

soteriology were explained. Instead of presupposing a forward unity or looking back

retrospectively from the perspective of the contemporary tradition, I investigate texts

individually as well as comparatively, reading them against other texts. Tracking how ritual

details, philosophical positions, and the use of terminology changed over time through a large

archive of texts, I read my sources against philosophical treatises of relevant systems, such as

Kashmirian non-dual Śaivism and Pratyabhijñā. While focusing on innovation, I also pay

particular attention to continuities, intertextuality, and common themes. Furthermore, instead of

reading commentaries merely as interpretive aids to understanding the tantras, I study them as

historical documents in their own right, products of real people from specific times and places

with their own goals and aspirations, which differed substantially between individual authors and

redactors.

My methodology for historicizing texts draws on several theoretical approaches that have

been used by historians working on classical and early modern European thought as well as those

who study Sanskrit textual traditions, in particular, methodologies that utilize textual sources for

writing history. Among these are methods of contextualist intellectual history applied by the

%1
Cambridge School to the study of European political thought, in particular Skinner’s focus on

authorial intention and Pocock’s study of texts in context.

Quentin Skinner, a historian of early modern European political thought, has written

extensively on historical methods that rely on a meaningful interpretation of texts. Unlike social

historians who often seem to reduce all ideological context to economic realities and social

institutions, Skinner was more interested in linguistic contexts, an approach valuable for

historians of religion in South Asia. Scholars of Sanskrit intellectual traditions often complain

about the scarcity of data and a lack of reliable historical information. Although these sentiments

are founded on very real challenges, one way in which I aimed to counteract it in this study was

by reading the texts themselves to recover authorial intentions and the rich multi-layered

contexts in the greater sphere of relevant texts.

Jayaratha’s commentary on the Vāmakeśvarīmata, for example, drew on venerated Śaiva and

Śākta-Śaiva tantras, a rich scholarly tradition of non-dual Śaivism, and a vibrant commentarial

discourse within the cult of the Goddess Tripurasundarī. Reading Jayaratha, my goal was not to

use the commentary simply to understand the meaning of the tantra he commented on, but to go

beyond the dimension of meaning to what Skinner’s called “the dimension of linguistic action,”

asking questions about agency and intentionality.8 Why did Jayaratha chose the texts that he

cited? What work did his citations do beyond explicating the mūla (root text)? These were some

of the questions that guided my study of his commentary.

Another author whose work was helpful for me methodologically, was J. G. A. Pocock, a

historian of political thought, who advocated interpreting texts in context and suggested treating

8% Skinner 2002: 2–3.

%2
thoughts and ideas as historical phenomena in their own right. In his Politics, Language, and

Time, Pocock criticized what he called “the study of classical texts or of perennial problems.”9

He drew an all too familiar picture of a “non-historic practitioner,” who looked for relevance of

the author’s statements and appropriated them to his present, without sensitivity to the historical

context. The issues of imposed coherence and reductionism discussed by Pocock continue to be

relevant for historians and the scholars of South Asia. Richard King in his “Orientalism and

Religion,” published in 1999, remarked that the academic study of South Asian religions,

influenced by scientific rationalism and secularism and biased toward a progressive view of

history, has often distorted and reduced that which it claims to investigate and explain.10 King

wrote about Orientalist scholars reducing the range and diversity of Indian religious traditions

into a more or less unified “Hinduism” with Advaita Vedānta at its core and dismissing the

polytheistic ritualism of the actual practice as a corruption of the truth of the Vedas and the

Upaniṣads. My study looks at tremendous diversity within just one Hindu tantric tradition,

studying its early corpus of texts over time. The cult of Tripurasundarī and the later Śrīvidyā all

too often have been described as a single monolithic tradition. But as we will see, even texts

from the early stages of development record considerably different practices and doctrinal

orientation, with many aspects changing over time and space. Each chapter of this dissertation

discusses a different step in the early development of worship of the Goddess Tripurasundarī,

documenting transformation and continuity of the ritual system and its doctrinal interpretation

over time and in the very different environments of Kashmir and south-India.

9% Ibid: 11.
% 10 King 1999: 42–43.

%3
 Pocock’s methodological approach to the history of political thought has been productively

applied to writing about history of intellectual life in premodern South Asia. In The Teleology of

Poetics in Medieval Kashmir (2008), Lawrence McCrea employed Kuhn’s conceptualization of

the pattern of historical development as well as Pocock’s application of Kuhn’s analysis to the

investigation of the theoretical transformation in the ninth-century Sanskrit literary theory in

Kashmir. In particular, McCrea’s investigation of Ānandavardhana’s application of a Mīmāṃsā

interpretive paradigm within the realm of Alaṅkāraśāstra was a productive model for my analysis

of reinterpretation of the cult of Tripurasundarī in light of Kashmirian Śaivism.

Another major theoretical approach important for my work is Reinhart Koselleck’s

conceptual history, which focused on the invention of concepts and their development over time,

the former being particularly relevant here. Building upon ideas introduced by Saussure and the

structuralists, Koselleck suggested investigating historical concepts as synchronic events and

diachronic structures that change over time and space. The distinctive kind of historical

temporality in modernity emphasized by Koselleck can be usefully compared with the idea of all

knowledge being eternal and unchangeable in Sanskrit religious thought. Sheldon Pollock

described the typical ideological stance in Sanskrit knowledge systems as one in which

“knowledge of every variety … is fixed in its dimensions … [and] does not change or grow, but

is frozen.”11 With knowledge seen as fixed, ‘‘there can be no conception of progress,’’12 which

makes historical study of South Asian religious traditions particularly challenging. A further

difficulty in working with Sanskrit textual sources lies in the fact that authors tended to present

11
% Pollock 1985: 515.
% 12 Ibid.

%4
innovation, to use Pollock’s words, as “renovation and recovery,”13 a clarification, perhaps, but

never an addition or a revision.

Similarly, the difficulty in a historical study of tantric texts is that traditionally tantras were

understood as universal and eternal, a direct revelation presented in the form of a teaching within

a framing dialogue (usually between Bhairava and the goddess in the case of Hindu tantras).

Without a named human author as an intermediary, tantras were by design free from specifics,

such as chronological or geographic details. And since the teachings they presented were

considered divinely revealed, eternal, and unchanging, innovation in both tantras and

commentaries was routinely framed as elaboration. Thus to read tantras and their commentaries

as historical documents in their own right, one must “read against the grain,”14 providing a

reinterpretation and a new reading of existing testimonies.

As I will demonstrate in this study, the texts themselves provide rich intellectual and

historical contexts, which can be recovered. A rich source of such contexts is what Cezary

Galewicz called the “fringes” of texts,15 or supplementary material which surrounds the main

body of the text16 and is often overlooked. In this dissertation, I pay particular attention to

introductory and closing verses of commentaries. Despite their formulaic format, these verses

contain valuable factual and expressive content, which I examine in some detail, particularly in

the last two chapters of this study.

% 13 Ibid.
14
% The idea of “reading against the grain” was suggested by Koselleck in The Practice of Conceptual History:
Timing History, Spacing Concepts, 2002: 71.
15
% Galewicz 2009: 24 and 28.
% 16
Translation studies favors the term “paratexts” to describe such added elements that frame the main text, although
the term is usually used in the context of printed matter.

%5
 Writing for me is not only an intellectual endeavor, but also a creative process. In continuing

to refine my writing style, I found Daniel Gold’s Aesthetics and Analysis in Writing on Religion:

Modern Fascinations particularly helpful. Gold posits a way of looking at academic writing on

religion as a craft, which is not unlike art.17 For him the best interpretive writers are intent on

accurately representing the subject of their inquiry, but are also concerned with their own unique

way of presenting their findings.18 While I would not call my writing truly interpretive in this

way, using textual historical work to narrate, reflect, and interpret, here and there I have allowed

my own individual perspective to become apparent. Examples of this include a discovery

narrative in the Preface and sharing the impressions that Jayaratha’s writing makes on me as an

individual, such as his startling lyricism in the closing verses on the Tantrālokaviveka. However,

my usual approach is to allow the texts to speak for themselves, highlighting their imagery or

originality of expression through citations.

The textual contours of the cult of the Goddess Tripurasundarī, which later came to be known

as Śrīvidyā, have been broadly outlined by previous scholars. A number of its major scriptural

texts were identified by Goudriaan in his brief digest of Hindu tantric literature in Sanskrit

(1981), while Sanderson, in a few pages and footnotes among his vast body of work, located the

early tantras and commentaries of this tradition and the antecedent cult within the broader

context of Śaiva Tantrism (1990, 2007, 2009). However, only a handful of texts from the cult of

Tripurasundarī/Śrīvidyā have been studied, described, or translated (Khanna 1986, Brooks 1992,

and Padoux 1994 and 2013). And an investigation of a significant corpus of texts in their

17
% Gold 2003: 1.
% 18 Ibid.

%6
chronological, geographical, and linguistic specificity has not been attempted to date. Without

such an analysis, our understanding of the development of this tantric tradition is limited by the

still too prevalent tendency to view texts, authors, and ideas, as if they existed in some timeless

realm of abstraction, and to interpret tantric texts by retroactively imposing contemporary

perspectives on them. By giving new voice to Sanskrit tantras and commentaries, which are

rarely treated as religio-historical documents in their own right, my project contributes to a

nuanced theorization of tantric and Hindu traditions and a better understanding of how they adapt

to cultural change.

Four Stages in the Early Worship of Tripurasundarī

Analyzing the earliest texts relevant to the worship of Tripurasundarī, I identified four

distinct stages in its early historical development.

I. The Nityā Cult

In the Nityā cult, antecedent to the cult of Tripurasundarī, the principal Goddess Kāmeśvarī

was surrounded by an unelaborated, compared to the later tradition, retinue of subordinate Nityā

(literally, eternal) goddesses and her consort was Kāmadeva, the god of love. My textual sources

for this stage of development include three tantras: the Nityākaula, the only extant text from

within the antecedent tradition, and two texts describing variants of the Nityā cult: the

Ciñciṇīmatasārasamuccaya and the Siddhakhaṇḍa of the Manthānabhairavatantra.19 Alexis

Sanderson in his work on the broader Śaiva tradition identified and briefly outlined these

sources.20 This study examines the Nityā cult for the first time in detail. Rituals described in the

19
% I am grateful to Alexis Sanderson, Somadeva Vasudeva, and Kengo Harimoto for making scans of the manuscripts
available to me.
% 20 Sanderson: 2009, 47–48.

%7
tantras of this period aimed at specific mundane goals, such as amorous attraction of desired

partners, becoming handsome and eloquent, overcoming death, obtaining immortality, and

bringing back the lost youth. The Nityā cult also promised a host of other benefits common for

tantric traditions: curing poisoning, producing subjugation, pacification, paralysis, suffering, and

fever, ruining, overthrowing, and killing one’s enemies. I discuss the Nityā cult in chapter 2 of

this dissertation, highlighting continuities with the next stage of development, the classical cult

of Tripurasundarī.

II. The Classical/Mature Cult

In the second stage of development, the classical or the mature cult, Kāmadeva was replaced

by Śiva as the consort of the principal goddess, Tripurasundarī. Kāmeśvarī of the Nityā cult was

preserved in the classical cult as one of the Nityā goddesses. She is also worshipped as one of the

three goddesses closest to Tripurā, located in the corners of the innermost triangle of the

Śrīcakra, the new ritual diagram of this system. In the classical cult, a simple configuration of the

Nityā cult was greatly enlarged to include a vast retinue of subordinate goddesses, organized

within the nine levels of the Śrīcakra. The Śrīcakra is a uniquely complex and visually stunning

ritual diagram, which consists of a bindu (dot) surrounded by nine intersecting triangles, two

circles of eight and sixteen petals, and a rectangular enclosure, modeled on a medieval fortress.

The unique visual structure of the Śrīcakra, which was used as a ritual aid and, in later texts, such

as the Yoginīhṛdaya, for contemplative visualization practices, contributed to the growing

popularity of this tradition.

In addition to a new ritual configuration, the classical cult of Tripurā also added a new

system of tantric, i.e., non-Vedic, mantras (ritual formulas) and mudrās (ritual gestures). The

%8
previously unstudied classical cult is preserved in the Vāmakeśvarīmata tantra21 and in the

Rasamahodadhi, which Jayaratha, a thirteenth-century commentator from Kashmir, quoted as

āgama (i.e., scripture). Although the second text is no longer extant, fourteen citations were

preserved in Jayaratha’s commentary on the Vāmakeśvarīmata. Several of these citations are of

significant length; most discuss technical procedures, such as the construction of the Śrīcakra and

the extraction of mantras.22 As in the Nityā cult, rituals in the classical cult, which were

documented in the Vāmakeśvarīmata, comprised prayogas (rites for specific worldly aims). In

addition to rituals aimed at attracting all types of human, divine, and semi-divine women, as well

as practices for control, subjugation, etc., the Vāmakeśvarīmata also included practices for

eloquence and wisdom, destruction of the ego, the power to cure snake bites and poisons, and

control over ghosts, ghouls, and goblins. I discuss continuities of the classical worship of Tripurā

with the antecedent Nityā cult in chapter 2 of this dissertation. In chapter 3, I focus on

innovations in the mature cult, while expanding upon additional continuities with the antecedent

cult. I refer to the Rasamahodadhi in chapter 5 on Jayaratha’s commentary.

III. Kashmirian Reinterpretation

In the third stage of early development, the worship of Tripurasundarī was reinterpreted in

light of the broader tantric Śaivism. To discuss this period, I analyze the Yoginīhṛdaya tantra,

21
% Louise M. Finn’s 1986 translation of this tantra with Jayaratha’s commentary is available. However the
translation should be consulted with caution, particularly with regards to the commentary.
22
% Mantras are usually given in these tantras in an encoded way. In order to extract (i.e. decode) a mantra, one must
use the correct prastāra (a geometrical figure giving the order of letters) that was used for the encoding of a mantra
in a specific text. The Nityākaula uses a prastāra, although I have not been able to find one to match the text.
Alternatively, a mantra may be encoded by means of words commonly associated with specific letters. In the
Vāmakeśvarīmata, a word for “fire” usually stands for ra, Madana (i.e. Kāmadeva) means ka, etc. All three
commentators on the Vāmakeśvarīmata extract the mantras. For an example, see Jayaratha VM 1.93–101, 70–72).

%9
which was likely redacted after the mid-eleventh century)23 in chapter 4 of this dissertation and

the thirteenth-century commentary on the Vāmakeśvarīmata by Kashmirian Jayaratha in chapter

5. Innovations in the Yoginīhṛdaya included radically new meditative and yogic practices with

salvific goals and philosophical interpretations based on non-dual Śaivism and Pratyabhijñā

philosophy. I discuss a similar reinterpretation of the existing ritual tradition through the lens of

broader Śaiva exegesis in Jayaratha’s commentary, which recast the worship of Tripurasundarī as

an esoteric teaching worthy of the foremost place in non-dual Śaivism.

Since all knowledge was broadly accepted in Sanskrit religious thought as eternal and

unchangeable, innovation in the Yoginīhṛdaya could not be acknowledged as such and the

redactor(s) presented their text as an extension of the dialogue between Śiva and the Goddess in

the earlier Vāmakeśvarīmata, not as a radically new development. While the Yoginīhṛdaya and

the Vāmakeśvarīmata are traditionally grouped together as two parts of the whole, there is

nothing in the earlier Vāmakeśvarīmata that could directly account for the new practices and

interpretations in the Yoginīhṛdaya.

While I used original Sanskrit texts for my analysis, an excellent translation of the

Yoginīhṛdaya tantra with fourteenth-century Amṛtānanda’s commentary by André Padoux is

available in French and the mūla with Padoux’s analysis of the commentary was recently

translated into English with Roger-Orphé Jeanty.24 Padoux translated the tantra and interpreted

its practices with the help of and in light of the commentary, while my analysis had a different

goal: to evaluate new developments, treating both the primary text and its commentary as

23
% For discussion of the date of the Yoginīhṛdaya, see Golovkova 2010: 19–20.
% 24 See Padoux: 1994, Padoux and Jeanty: 2013.

%10
separate historical documents. While Padoux relies on the commentary in his translation of the

root tantra, I treat Yoginīhṛdaya and Amṛtānanda’s work as products of different historical actors,

with their own goals and aspirations. Studying the Yoginīhṛdaya as a separate historical

document and comparing it against the earlier tradition, I pay particular attention to the newness

of the yogic meditative practices laid out over the existing scheme of the Śrīcakra ritual as well

as the entirely novel conception of the worship of Tripurasundarī, construed in this text within

the broader tantric Śaivism.

I discuss a similar project of reinterpreting the worship of Tripurasundarī in light of

Kashmirian Śaiva philosophy in chapter 5, where I provide a detailed analysis of Jayaratha’s

commentary on the Vāmakeśvarīmata. Again, I highlight here Jayaratha’s own ideas that he

brings to the analysis of the root tantra to update this foundational text in light of non-dual Śaiva

exegesis. Jayaratha uses citations from venerated Śaiva tantras and prominent thinkers who

preceded him (Utpaladeva, Abhinavagupta, and Kṣemarāja) to elevate the classical tradition to

the foremost place within thirteenth-century Kashmirian Śaivism. Jayaratha also provides an

assessment of previous commentaries on the Vāmakeśvarīmata to correct what he sees as

misinterpretation and to update the ritual system of the root text to the thirteenth-century ritual

practice within his own guru-lineage.

IV. South Indian Reinterpretation

During the last stage of development that I outline in this dissertation, the worship of

Tripurasundarī was disseminated across the Indian subcontinent from Kashmir to south India.

This stage also marked the beginning of the process of reinterpretation of the earlier tantras in

light of the Vedic and Upaniṣadic corpus, suggesting an early use of the Vedas as a source of

%11
authority and legitimation. In chapter 6, I discuss the earliest examples of such reinterpretation,

which eventually led to the adoption of a Vedāntized form of worship of Tripurasundarī by the

pillars of institutional Hindu orthodoxy in south Indian Śaṅkara maṭhas. These early examples

include two thirteenth-century commentaries on the Vāmakeśvarīmata by Śivānanda and

Vidyānanda, which I read against Jayaratha’s commentary. Both south Indian commentaries have

abundant examples of reinterpretation presented as elaboration. Śivānanda’s commentary is

particularly curious from the point of view of adapting the tantric Kaula cult of Tripurasundarī to

its south Indian Smārta milieu by interpreting it in light of the Vedic corpus. Both Śivānanda and

Vidyānanda’s explanations often ventured far from the original text, given their temporal

distance of at least two centuries. Although I will not provide an in-depth analysis of south

Indian commentaries in this dissertation, I plan to do so in my revision of this material for

publication, in which I will also discuss Amṛtānanda’s commentary on the Yoginīhṛdaya and

other south Indian texts relevant to this project.

My study examines an archive of Sanskrit scriptures and commentaries, previously

unstudied, understudied, or studied separately as individual texts, placing them in large-scale

intellectual and literary contexts. My research maps a regionally-embodied history of an

influential trans-regional Śākta tradition, engaging with and complicating the dichotomies that

have dominated the recent study of tantra: philosophical texts vs. ritual practice, texts vs. living

traditions, tantra vs. devotion. Instead of black-and-white dichotomies, I consider the

development of the worship of Tripurasundarī as continuously evolving within the context of

ongoing tensions between tantric and Vedic, orthodox and heterodox, and esoteric and

mainstream.

%12
Chronology

The antecedent Nityā cult is older than the cult of the Goddess Kubjikā25 and at least some of

the Kālīkula texts, the latter describing the worship of goddess Kālī/Kālasaṃkarṣaṇī. The

Ciñciṇīmatasārasamuccaya of the Kubjikā cult records a variant of the Nityā cult and designates

it as the Southern transmission26 of the Kaula systems. The Kubjikāmata with the earliest extant

manuscript dated at 1037/8 CE,27 refers to the deities and a mantra of the Nityā cult.28 The fourth

Ṣaṭka of the Jayadrathayāmala, one of the largest surviving tantric scriptures, which was quoted

by Abhinavagupta (fl. c. 975–1025),29 included a visualization of Nityākālī.30 Abhinavagupta

himself knew of the cult of the Nityās and referred to it in the Tantrāloka and

Parātriṃśikāvivaraṇa.31 This evidence places the cult of the Nityās as prior to the early eleventh

century at the very latest and likely earlier than that.

25
% Mark Dyczkowski has argued that the cult of Tripurasundarī inherited several important features from the cult of
the goddess Kubjikā (e.g., 2009: v. 1, p. 2, 242). It is certain that the Nityā cult and the later cult of Tripurasundarī
were closely connected with their Kaula sister-tradition of Kubjikā and often drew on it. For example, the later hymn
Saundaryalaharī is clearly indebted to the cult of Kubjikā. As I show in the next two chapters, some of the
prominent features of the mature cult of Tripurasundarī were undoubtedly borrowed from the antecedent Nityā cult.
26
%E.g., punar anyaṃ pravakṣyāmi dakṣiṇaṃ gharam uttamam || CMSS 101 ab ||
And I will tell you of another excellent transmission of the southern order.

And also on 20r1: dakṣiṇaṃ gharamāmnāyaṃ kathayāmi tava priye || 146 ||

I will tell you the teaching of the Southern order, O dear, from which all Nityās arise.

27
% Sanderson 2002: 1–2.
% 28 Sanderson 2010: 47–48.
29
% For the discussion of Abhinavagupta’s date see Sanderson 2007: 411.
30
% The description in the Jayadrathayāmala, probably based on the Nityā cult, includes epithets which would not be
out of place in Tripurā’s visualizations in the texts of the classical tradition, while also adding a terrifying flavor,
appropriate to Kālī: dhyāyet trikoṇamadhyasthāṃ lākṣāruṇasamaprabhām | sukṛśām ekavadanāṃ
netratretāgnisaṇnibhām | pāśāṅkuśadharāṃ raudrāṃ śaracāpakarodyatām | (Ṣaṭka 4, the Nityākālīvidhipaṭala,
11c–12 cited in Sanderson 2010: 48, footnote 97).
% 31
nityātantravidaḥ kṛṣṇaṃ kārtikāc caramaṃ dinam || TĀ 28.123
kulasya nityācakrasya pūrṇatvaṃ yatra tanmatam | TĀ 124 ab
yathā śrīnityātantreṣu aikārātmakamohanabījaprādhānyahetuḥ | PTV (Gnoli, 1985: 238).

%13
 The two later tantras included in this study, the Vāmakeśvarīmata and the Yoginīhṛdaya, are

the earliest extant texts of the mature cult of Tripurasundarī, which superseded the Nityā cult.

The earlier of the two, the Vāmakeśvarīmata, likely dates to early eleventh century at the latest.

It seems that the text was known to Abhinavagupta, who cited from the Vāmakeśvarīmata twice

in Parātriṃśikāvivaraṇa.32 The vocabulary and metaphysics of the Vāmakeśvarīmata are quite

different from the Yoginīhṛdaya and suggest that the text was redacted before the time of

Abhinavagupta and Kṣemarāja. The Yoginīhṛdaya was likely redacted after the mid-eleventh

century, when Abhinavagupta and Kṣemarāja flourished. The Vāmakeśvarīmata and the

Yoginīhṛdaya are traditionally considered to be parts of one text. The dialogue between the

Goddess and Bhairava in the very beginning of the Yoginīhṛdaya begins by establishing the

continuity with the Vāmakeśvarīmata.

devadeva mahādeva paripūrṇaprathāmaya |

vāmakeśvaratantre 'sminn ajñātārthās tv anekaśaḥ || YH 1.1 ||

tāṃs tān arthān aśeṣeṇa vaktum arhasi bhairava | YH 1.2 ab |33

O God of Gods, the great God, who is filled with complete expansion (of knowledge). In the

Vāmakeśvaratantra there are many points that are unknown. O Bhairava, please speak about

all these subjects without remainder.

However, the inclusion in the Yoginīhṛdaya of non-dualist Pratyabhijñā concepts and

terminology, which were completely absent in the Vāmakeśvarīmata, suggests that the

32
% See Abhinavagupta’s Parātriṃśikāvivaraṇa on pages 229–230 of the Kashmir Series of Texts and Studies edition.
The citations are not identified there, but Jaidev Singh identifies them in his edition/translation on page 82. The first
is a variant of VM 4.86 ab, and the second is VM 1.83. I am grateful to Professor McCrea for bringing these quotes
to my attention.
% 33 YH: 4 and 6. I use page numbering from the 2011 reprint of the 1988 edition by Dviveda.

%14
Vāmakeśvarīmata and the Yoginīhṛdaya were products of two very different environments.34 In

fact, the Yoginīhṛdaya marks an important transition in the history of the worship of

Tripurasundarī (see chapter 4). In addition, the only extant commentary on both texts is the

eighteenth-century Setubandha by Bhāskararāya, which raises the question of whether these two

tantras were considered to be distinct until fairly recently.

Alexis Sanderson comprehensively considered the dates of the early commentators on the

Vāmakeśvarīmata and the Yoginīhṛdaya with the evidence that is currently available.35 He dated

Jayaratha to c. 1225–1275, based on the autobiographical verses at the end of Jayaratha’s

commentary on Tantrāloka.36 Sanderson also suggested approximately the same period for

Śivānanda, based in part on the guru lineage given in his commentary on the Vāmakeśvarīmata,

the Ṛjuvimarśinī.37 And from Vidyānanda’s commentary on the same tantra, the Artharatnāvalī,

Sanderson estimated Vidyānanda’s date to be very close to Śivānanda’s.38 Śivānanda’s account of

the lineage is also confirmed by Amṛtānanda, the author of the commentary on the Yoginīhṛdaya

(the Yoginīhṛdayadīpikā).39 It is likely that Amṛtānanda was also the author of a poetic treatise,

the Alaṃkārasaṃgraha, dated by Sanderson to mid-fourteenth century.

% 34
The later provenance of the Yoginīhṛdaya has been suggested by Goudriaan (1981: 59) and Sanderson (2014: 65,
67–68) and my reading of the two texts thoroughly supports this.
% 35 Sanderson 2007: 412–416.
% 36 Ibid: 418–419 and 2014: 31–32.
37
% Sanderson 2007: 416, footnote 620.
38
% “... he may have been a near contemporary of Śivānanda, since his account of his lineage ends with Vāsudeva,
disciple of Ratnadeva (YTGM, 223, ll. 20–21) and Śivānanda adds himself as Vāsudeva's disciple (YTGM, 224, ll.
1–3)” (Sanderson 2007: 414, footnote 610.)
% 39 Ibid: 416, footnote 620.

%15
 The key figure for establishing the dates of Śivānanda and Vidyānanda is Dīpakācārya, also

referred to as Dīpakanātha, a venerable figure in the tradition, to whom the

Tripurasundarīdaṇḍaka, a hymn to the Goddess, is attributed.40 Śivānanda describes

Dīpakācārya as bhojadevadṛṣṭacamatkāraḥ (“one whose miracles were witnessed by

Bhojadeva”) and, therefore, if we trust this account, a contemporary of Bhojadeva, the Paramāra

king of Dhārā, who ruled from c. 1018 to 1060 CE.41 Śivānanda named Dīpakācārya as the last

in the line of the siddha gurus. The first human guru, Jiṣṇudeva, the author of the

Saṃketapaddhati, according to Śivānanda, was Dīpakācārya’s son and disciple.42 Dīpakācārya

was also venerated by Jayaratha,43 who named him as the first author of commentaries on the

Vāmakeśvarīmata:

ā śrīdīpakanāthato hy agaṇitair adyāpi vṛttiḥ kṛtā44

Commentaries have been produced by countless [commentators] beginning from

Śrīdīpakanātha to this day...

% 40 Ibid: 416, footnote 621.

% 41 Ibid: 416. On Bhojadeva, see Sanderson 2012–2013: 14, 16, and 37.
42
% NṢA: 223. I use abbreviation VM for the 1945 edition of the Vāmakeśvarīmata with commentary by Rājānaka
Jayaratha, edited by Shastri, which is the base edition I have used when citing the root text of this tantra. My
primary focus in this study is to analyze the historical development of this tradition, rather than to provide a close
philological study of the root text, therefore as a rule I do not cite variants recorded in either of the editions or
different readings found within the two printed editions, unless they are to make a specific point about what different
readings might mean. When I specifically comment on south Indian commentaries, I use NṢA for the 1968 edition
of the Nityāṣoḍaśikārṇava with commentaries by Śivānanda and Vidyānanda, edited by Dviveda. Where an
abbreviation (NṢA or VM) is followed directly by a colon, a page number follows (as in NṢA: 223). Otherwise, the
numbers stand for chapter and verse number, separated by a period (e.g., VM 1.167 ab).
43
% jayanti... pūrve śrīdīpakācāryapramukhā (em. Sanderson: śrīdīpikācāryapramukhā KSTS Ed.) guravo mama ||
(VM: 1.) || (Glory to my former [lineage] gurus, beginning with respected Dīpakācārya). I use abbreviation VM for
the 1945 edition of the Vāmakeśvarīmata with commentary by Rājānaka Jayaratha, edited by Shastri.
% 44 ā śrīdīpakanāthato (corr. Sanderson: āśrīdīpakanāthato Ed.) hy agaṇitair adyāpi vṛttiḥ kṛtā (VM: 115).

%16
Classification

The Nityā cult was associated with the southern transmission (dakṣināmnāya) or the southern

order (dakṣinagharāmnāya) among the Kaula systems. This system of classification of the Kaula

traditions, given in the Ciñciṇīmatasārasamuccaya, included Kālīkula/Krama as the teaching of

the northern order (uttaragharāmnāya), a system related to Trika as that of the eastern order

(pūrvagharāmnāya), and the Kubjikā cult as the tradition of the western order

(paścimagharāmnāya)45 (see Appendix B).

The classical cult of Tripurasundarī was the latest tantric Kaula tradition to emerge46 (see

Appendix A). What particularly sets it apart from the Vidyāpīṭha is the prevalence of the imagery

of love magic preserved from the antecedent Nityā cult, which is unlike the Vidyāpīṭha’s

Kāpālika imagery of the cremation grounds, inherited from the earlier Atimārga traditions.47 The

mature tradition saw itself as transcending the four Kaula teachings associated with the cardinal

directions and the four principal Pīṭhas of the Goddess48 (see VM 1.12, p. 37). A later

classification that elevated the cult of Tripurasundarī as the tradition of the zenith (ūrdhvāmnāya)

was included in the Parātantra, a syncretic scripture probably produced in the Kathmandu

valley49 and in a synoptic text of the Vāḍavānalīya, quoted in the Puraścaryārṇava. Both

Parātantra and Vāḍavānalīya50 provided an artificial schema of six transmissions, which

% 45 Sanderson 2009: 48–49.

% 46 Sanderson 1988: 689.
% 47 For Kāpālika imagery in Mantramārga, see Sanderson 1988: 669–75.
48
% Sanderson 2010: 46–47.
49
% Sanderson 2004: 368.
% 50
See Sanderson Sanderson 2012–2013: 64–67. I am grateful to Professor Sanderson for providing me with these
sources via email correspondence on May 17, 2010.

%17
preserved the goddesses associated with Krama as the northern tradition and the cult of Kubjikā

as the western tradition, replaced the goddesses of Trika which had become obsolete as a ritual

system with Pūṛṇeśī in the eastern tradition, and the Nityā goddesses with Niśeśī in the southern

tradition. The Nityā cult, which had occupied the southern direction in the previous

classification, had been supplanted by the mature system of Tripurasundarī worship. But the

mature cult occupied the transcendent, upper tradition of the zenith (not the southern direction of

the Nityā cult). In addition, the Buddhist Vajrayoginī, etc. was added as the tradition of the

nadir51 (see Appendix B). The goddesses Pūṛṇeśī and Niśeśī have been artificially constructed to

fill in the gaps in this classification and, unlike Kālasaṃkarṣiṇī and Kubjikā, are not well-known

or attested outside of this context.52 A similar schema in also presented in the later liturgical

tradition of the cult of Tripurasundarī in the worship of the Āmnāyas (āmnāyapūjā).53 There the

goddesses Unmanī and Bhoginī, unknown outside of this context, fill in the vacant slots of the

eastern and southern traditions, and the ūrdhvāmnaya position is assigned to the system of the

Kulārṇavatantra based on the Prāsādamantra.54

% 51 Ibid: 6.
52
% Sanderson 2004: 368 and email correspondence on May 17, 2010: 6.
53
% Karapātrasvāmī, Śrīmahātripurasundarīvarivasyā (Ed. Paṭṭābhirāma Śāstrī, Calcutta, 1962, 237–261). I am
grateful to Professor Sanderson for providing me with this reference in his correspondence on May 17, 2010, 7.
% 54 Ibid.

%18
 CHAPTER 2

THE ANTECEDENT NITYĀ CULT

The cult of Tripurasundarī emerged from the Nityā cult, in which Nityā (lit. eternal)

goddesses served as subordinate deities to the primary Goddess, usually named Kāmeśvarī. The

Nityā cult flourished prior to the early eleventh century at the very latest (see chapter 1,

Chronology). The consort of the primary Goddess in the Nityā cult was Kāmadeva (the god of

love), not Śiva, as in the classical tradition of Tripurasundarī. Alexis Sanderson outlined the main

features of the Nityā cult based on three extant tantras: the Nityākaula, the only extant text from

within the antecedent tradition, the Ciñciṇīmatasārasamuccaya of the Kubjikā cult, and the

Siddhakhaṇḍa of the eclectic Manthānabhairavatantra.55 This dissertation contains the first in-

depth study of this material, which places the Nityā cult within the context of development of the

cult of Tripurasundarī.

In this chapter, I discuss major features of the Nityā cult that were preserved and developed

in the classical cult, providing passages from unpublished manuscripts with translations.56 I

argue that the rites of amorous attraction, which occupy a prominent place in the ritual of the

antecedent cult, formed the backdrop against which the mature cult of Tripurasundarī developed.

Comparing the Nityākaula and the Vāmakeśvarīmata, I have identified a number of similarities,

which strongly suggest a continuity between the Nityā cult and the mature cult of Tripurasundarī.

I demonstrate that references to love, desire, and attraction have been preserved in the later

tradition in the names of the subordinate goddesses connected with Kāmadeva and kāma (love,

55
% Sanderson, 2009, 47–49.
% All
56 translations here and elsewhere in this study are mine, unless noted otherwise.

%19
desire), in the sensual descriptions of the physical beauty of Tripurasundarī, and in the

predominance of red imagery, red being the color that is usually vested with amorous

connotations in the context of tantric ritual. Although the Vāmakeśvarīmata describes a very

different ritual tradition with new mantras and a greatly expanded system of subordinate

goddesses in the Śrīcakra, parallel passages in these two texts demonstrate a close connection

between the antecedent Nityā cult and the mature cult of Tripurasundarī and suggest that the

redactors57 of the Vāmakeśvarīmata were almost certainly familiar with the Nityākaula.

The Nityākaula is the only tantra dedicated to the Nityā cult in its entirety. Its single

Nepalese manuscript is, unfortunately, badly damaged and incomplete, but preserves a marvelous

amount of detail about this Kaula cult. The Ciñciṇīmatasārasamuccaya, a syncretistic text

belonging to the cult of the goddess Kubjikā, is preserved in a number of manuscripts from

Nepal.58 The ritual system it describes in the section on the Nityā cult is similar to that of the

Nityākaula. The text also contains detailed descriptions of Kāmeśvarī, the principal goddess in

that section of the text, her retinue, and her emanation from a triangle of pīṭhas (seats of the

Goddess). The Ciñciṇīmatasārasamuccaya also includes an early classification of the Kaula

doctrines, discussed in chapter 1, which describes the Nityā cult as the southern transmission.

The Siddhakhaṇḍa of the Manthānabhairavatantra describes a different variant of the Nityā cult.

Later tantras, the Vāmakeśvarīmata and the Yoginīhṛdaya, discussed in Chapters 3 and 4 of

this dissertation, as well as most of the tantras on the worship of Tripurā that postdate them,

57
% I use plural “redactors” to refer to the anonymous author or authors of tantras of the cult of Tripurasundarī, though
of course each text may have been composed by one person only.
% 58
Four manuscripts of CMSS are located in the National Archives at Kathmandu (1/767, 1/199, 1/1560, and 1/245)
and there may be others listed in the private collections (Dyczkowski 1988: 175, footnote 93).

%20
were written in predominantly standard Sanskrit (with some occasional exceptions59). The

Nityākaula, on the other hand, was composed in the aiśa register of Sanskrit and did not follow

the standard Pāṇinian rules of grammar. A number of my citations with emendations in the rest of

this chapter record aiśa forms. Many of these include non-standard case endings, which I

generally corrected for ease in understanding of the root text. The word aiśa, a secondary

derivational form from īśa (lord, Śiva), means divine, or, more specifically, belonging to Śiva.

Aiśa Sanskrit was used in some of the scriptural texts framed as divinely revealed, rather than

those composed by named human authors, in particular, the earliest surviving Śaiva scriptures,

belonging to Atimārga and the early Mantramārga.60 Aiśa Sanskrit was largely abandoned in the

classical cult of Tripurasundarī and the later Vedāntized Śrīvidyā, which followed it, which were

written in grammatical and, at times, even elegant Sanskrit.

The retinue of the main goddess in all three texts pertaining to the Nityā cult included her

consort, Kāmadeva, and a varying number of subordinate Nityā goddesses. In the Nityākaula, the

main goddess, who is not named in the surviving folios of the manuscript, is accompanied by

Kāmadeva and a retinue of eleven Nityās. One of the names of Nityās in the Nityākaula is

missing due to damage to the manuscript. However, these verses closely follow those in the

Ciñciṇīmatasārasamuccaya. I.e., in the Nityākaula:

hṛllekhā kledinī nandā kṣobhanī madanāturā ||

nirañjanā (rāgavatī tathānyā ma)(2v1)61danāvatī ||

59
% E.g., verse 4.43 in the Vāmakeśvarīmata is described by its first commentator, the thirteenth-century Jayaratha, as
aiśaḥ pāṭhaḥ, “divine speech” VM: 113.
60
% See Appendix A.
% 61
I record the location in the manuscript following the convention of “folio number, verso or recto, and line
number.” Thus 2v1 means folio 2 verso line 1.

%21
 khekalā drāvaṇī caiva tathā vegavatī varā ||
ekādaśaitā devyas te madano dvādaśaḥ smṛtaḥ || NK 2r7 ||

(rāgavatī tathānyā ma)danāvatī ] conj.62 Sanderson (lacunae filled in from the list in the
Ciñciṇīmatasārasamuccaya) : +++
drāvaṇī ] corr. Sanderson : drāvanī Cod.
dvādaśaḥ ] corr. : dvādaśa Cod.

Hṛllekhā (Heart-furrow or mark), Kledinī (Moistening), Nandā (Delight), Kṣobhanī

(Agitator), Madanāturā (Love-sick), Nirañjanā (Spotless), Rāgavatī (Impassioned),

Madanāvatī (Passionate), Khekalā (Art of Flying), Drāvaṇī (Liquifying), and the best

Vegavatī (Swift) also. These are eleven goddesses and Madana is known as the twelfth.

Most names of the Nityās, as the translation above demonstrates, highlight their close

connection with love and passion. Other names, e.g., Khekalā and Vegavatī are reminiscent of

the cult of yoginīs (flying, shapeshifting female deities whose powers were sought by sādhakas63

in visionary encounters).64

Here is the list of the Nityā goddesses in the Ciñciṇīmatasārasamuccaya:

h(ṛ)llekhā kledanī nandā kṣobhayet madanāturā |

nirañjanā (rā)gavatī tathā(19r1)nyā madanāvatī || CMSS 123 ||

62
% I have recorded emendations by listing the proposed reading first, followed by a lemma sign “]”, and by “corr.” to
refer to a simple correction, “em.” – to an emendation, and “conj.” – to conjecture. If the emendation is mine, it is
followed only by a colon; if it has been suggested by someone else, the last name of the person is included before
the colon. Finally, I include the original reading, followed by “Cod.,” if it occurs in a manuscript and “Ed.” – in a
printed edition. I have used round brackets in the transliteration and the translation to indicate a conjecture in place
of missing text in the manuscript, the latter is recorded in the transcription of the original as “+”. I did not mark
conjecture in the translation, if it supplied only a missing ending or syllable, which did not produce an alternative
interpretation. I also used square brackets in the translation to supply a word not present in the original, but
necessary to properly render the meaning in English.
63
% Sādhaka in a broader Śaiva tantric context means “a seeker of rewards,” as Alexis Sanderson wrote in, e.g., 1995:
24. Sādhakas were a different group from those who were seekers of liberation only and were also assured liberation
in addition to an attainment of siddhis (special powers). The cult of Tripurasundarī did not make the distinction
between mumukṣu (seeker of liberation) and bubhukṣu (seeker of rewards), at least during the time period that I am
examining in this dissertation (nor to my knowledge afterwards), so I am using the term sādhaka in a more general
sense of a “ritualist” or “practitioner.”
% 64 On the cult of Yoginīs, see e.g., Hatley 2012 and 2013.

%22
 khekhalā drāvaṇī caiva tathā vegāvatī smṛtā |
ekādaśaitā devyas tu madano dvādaśa sṃrtā || CMSS 124 ||

nandā ] em. : dandā65 Cod.

madanāturā ] em. : madanātunā Cod.
(rā)gavatī conj. Sanderson : …gavatī Cod.
drāvaṇī ] corr. Sanderson : drāvanī Cod.

The Siddhakhaṇḍa of the Manthānabhairavatantra preserves a variant of the Nityā cult, in

which the main goddess is propitiated with her consort and a retinue of nine Nityās. The

subordinate goddesses in this text are named Kulavidyā (Knowledge of the Kula), Vajreśvarī

(Goddess of the Thunderbolt), Tvaritā (Swift), Kurukullā,66 Lalitā (Playful),67 Bheruṇḍā

(Terrible), Nīlapatākā (Blue Flag), Maṅgalā (Auspicious), and Vyomavyāpinī (Pervader of the

Sky).68

In the classical cult, the retinue of the Nityā goddesses was extended to fifteen,

corresponding to the number of syllables in the main mantra of the mature tradition, with

(Mahā)tripurasundarī as the sixteenth. The sixteen Nityā deities of the later tradition came to be

associated with phases of the moon. In the Vāmakeśvarīmata, which preserved the ritual system

of the mature cult, the list of sixteen Nityā goddesses included Mahātripurasundarī (the Great

Beauty of the Three Cities), Kāmeśvarī (the Goddess of Desire), Bhagamālinī (Garlanded with

bhagas), Nityaklinnā (Always Moist), Bheruṇḍā (Terrible), Vahnivāsinī (Fire-Dweller),

% 65 I emended Dandā to Nandā following CMSS 133 and a parallel list in Nityākaula.
66
% The etymology of Kurukullā is not clear, but it may be a derivative of kurukulyā, descendant of the Kuru race, or a
vernacular name of a local goddess. Worship of Kurukullā survives in some contemporary Śrīvidyā lineages. In
Tibetan Buddhism she became associated with Tārā and retained her connection with love magic. Tibetan Buddhist
iconography of Kurukullā portrays her similarly to Kāmadeva in NK 5.39–41, holding a flower bow and standing in
the shooting posture (pratyālīḍhāsanasthitā).
67
% Lalitā was preserved in Śrīvidyā as a common designation for the principal Goddess.
% 68 Sanskrit list is from Sanderson 2009: 48 fn. 15.

%23
Mahāvidyeśvarī (the Ruler of Great vidyā), Dūtī (Messenger), Tvaritā (Swift), Kulasundarī (one

who is the beauty of kula), Nityā, Nīlapatākā (Endowed with a Blue Banner), Vijayā

(Victorious), Sarvamaṅgalā (All-auspicious), Jvālāmāli (Flame-garlanded), and Vicitrā

(Multicolored). This list built on the older lists of the Nityās in the antecedent cult, replacing

some and adding others.

In the Nityākaula the names of the Nityās were clearly associated with love magic. In the

mature tradition, some of the names obviously retained this connection with rites of amorous

attraction (Kāmeśvarī, Bhagamālinī, Nityaklinnā), but other names are reminiscent of the

ferocious Mantramārga goddesses of cremation grounds (Bheruṇḍā), Kulamārga (Kulasundarī),

the Purāṇas (Dūtī, Vijayā), and yet another few names are obscure. Earlier Śākta traditions

abounded in groups of goddesses, which were extremely fluid. It was not uncommon for new

groups to absorb older ones or for some of the goddesses from such a group to be elevated to a

higher position. We notice this fluidity in the three texts of the antecedent cult that have come

down to us. While the Nityākaula and the Ciñciṇīmatasārasamuccaya contained the same group

of Nityās, that was not the case in the Manthānabhairavatantra. But the configuration of deities

in the ritual system of the mature cult, with its eight groups of subordinate goddesses in the

Śrīcakra, remained precisely the same from the Vāmakeśvarīmata to the Yoginīhṛdaya and until

the present time. I believe this unusual stability is due to the complexity of the Śrīcakra and its

unique visual appeal, which also greatly contributed to the popularity of the cult of

Tripurasundarī and the later Śrīvidyā.

What is particularly remarkable about the texts of the Nityā cult for a historian of religion, is

that they preserve a ritual system in which the main Goddess’s consort is Kāmadeva and not

%24
Śiva, as in the mature tradition. It is not surprising that Tripurasundarī, who is described in the

later tradition as the supreme Goddess, often referred to as Rājarājeśvarī (the Ruler of Kings),

came to be aligned with Śiva, a major Hindu deity perceived as exceedingly powerful and widely

worshiped. However, the fact that in the earliest cult the principal goddess was associated with

Kāmadeva is significant and suggestive of the importance of the connection with love magic.

Downplayed and all but forgotten, this link has remained at the core of Tripurasundarī’s worship

for more than a millennium. And even though Kāmadeva is no longer propitiated as

Tripurasundarī’s consort in contemporary practice, and the attraction of a desired partner has

long ceased to be the focal point of this tradition, we cannot fully understand its ritual system or

its range of goals and aspirations without understanding its early provenance in love magic.

A propensity for imagery in the red part of the spectrum and symbolism connected with love

magic is one of the striking similarities between the Nityākaula, which describes the Nityā cult,

and the Vāmakeśvarīmata, the first tantra of the mature cult of Tripurasundarī. The use of a

particular color is certainly not unusual in descriptions of Hindu deities. The goddess Sarasvatī is

portrayed wearing white, the color of purity, while Lakṣmī is typically associated with pink and

gold, signifying prosperity. Śiva is associated with white, the color of ashes in the cremation

grounds. In later iconography, he is portrayed as blue-skinned, stemming from his sobriquet

nīlakaṇṭha (a blue-throated one), an epithet based on the myth in which Śiva drank the poison

churned up from the primordial ocean during the extraction of the nectar of immortality.

Furthermore, the use of the color red itself is certainly not unique to the descriptions of

Tripurasundarī. Durga, the demon-slaying goddess of the Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa, is often portrayed

wearing red garments. However, it seems that descriptions of no other deities contain such an

%25
overwhelming preference for a particular color, nor a sheer number and variety of images

associated with it.

The connection of Tripurasundarī with the color red has its origin in the visualizations of

Kāmadeva. Compare, for example, the verses from the visualization of Kāmadeva in the

Īśānaśivagurudevapaddhati, Kriyāpāda with the visualization of the Goddess in the Nityākaula

and the Vāmakeśvarīmata:

raktaṃ raktāmbaradharaṃ yuvānaṃ mṛṣṭakuṇḍalam || ĪŚGP KP 22.32 ||69

[Kāmadeva,] red, wearing red garments, youthful, with bright earrings…

+ + + + + + + (2r6)rāṃ raktapuṣpavirājitāṃ || NK ||
raktāṅgāṃ rāgajananīṃ rañjayantīm idaṃ jagat || NK ||

… (2v8) indragopakasaṃkāśā… || NK ||

raktāṅgāṃ rāgajananīṃ ] em. Sanderson : raktāṅgarāgajananīṃ Cod.

… [The Goddess] resplendent with red flowers, having a red body, [she is] the mother of

desire, filling (lit. reddening) this world with passion, … radiant like a red firefly.

tataḥ padmanibhāṃ devīṃ bālārkakiraṇāruṇām |

japākusumasaṅkāśāṃ dāḍimīkusumopamām || VM 1.113 ||

padmarāgapratīkāśāṃ kuṅkumodakasaṃnibhām | VM 1.114 ab |

tāṃravidrumabimbābharaktoṣṭhīm amṛtopamām || VM 1.119 ab ||

raktotpalasamākārasukumārakarāmbujām || VM 1.121 ab ||70

Then, the Goddess, resembling a lotus, reddish as the rays of the young sun, like a China

Rose, similar to a pomegranate flower, shining like a ruby, like saffron water… whose red

69
% I am grateful to Professor Sanderson for providing me with the text of visualization from
Īśānaśivagurudevapaddhati, Kriyāpāda (ĪŚGP, v. 3. 222).
% 70 VM: 60–61.

%26
 lips resemble copper, coral, and the bimba fruit, who is like nectar, … whose lotus hands are

tender like the red lotus flowers…

A visualization of the physical form of the Goddess later in the Nityākaula, is quite similar to

that of the classical tradition, even using the same epithet, “shining like a

ruby” (padmarāgapratīkāśā), as in the VM 1.114 ab cited above. In the section of the Nityākaula

that describes visualization of the Goddess for prayogas (rituals for mundane aims), she is to be

meditated upon as auspicious (śubhāṃ), red (raktāṃ), wearing red garments (raktāmbarām), and

holding the goad, noose, bow, and arrows of flowers in her four hands (pā(śāṅ)kuśadharāṃ…

puṣpacāpodyatāṃ… puṣpabāṇadharā… caturhastopaśobhitāṃ) (NK 5.38–39). She is mounted

on a sun-charriot (ārūḍhā ādityarūpe rathe), endowed with four lions of dharma (righteousness),

knowledge, etc. [power], and dispassion (dharmajñānādivairāgyaṃ), with Madana, who holds a

flower bow (puṣpacāpaśaravyagrā) and is standing in the shooting posture

(pratyālīḍhāsanasthitā)71 as the charioteer (NK 5.39–41). The Goddess shines like a ruby

(padmarāgapratīkāśā) and resembles a glittering lightning (taḍittaralasaṃnibhā) (NK 5.43).

The association of Tripurasundarī with desire and passion is not only suggested, but also

explicitly expressed in remarkably sensual and erotic descriptions of the physical beauty of the

Goddess in the Vāmakeśvarīmata:

muktāhāralatopetasamunnatapayodharām |
trivalīvalanāyuktamadhyadeśasuśobhitām || VM 1.122 ||

lāvaṇyasaridāvartākāranābhivibhūṣitām |
anargharatnaghaṭitakāñcīyuktanitambinīm || VM 1.123 ||

71
% Although the endings in this half-verse are feminine, I think the last two epithets still refer to Madana, because no
feminine subject has been named after the previous line, which introduced Madana. Furthermore, the Goddess had
already been described holding the goad, noose, bow, and arrows of flowers just above (NK 5.38 cd – 39 ab).
Gender and number of noun endings in the Nityākaula are frequently ungrammatical.

%27
 nitambabimbadviradaromarājyaparāṅkuśām |
kadalīlalitastambhasukumārorum īśvarīm || VM 1.124 ||

lāvaṇyakadalītulyajaṅghāyugalamaṇḍitām |
namadbrahmaśiroratnanirghṛṣṭacaraṇāmbujām || VM 1.125 ||

mahāmṛgamadoddāmakuṅkumāruṇavigrahām |
sarvaśṛṅgāraveśāḍhyāṃ sarvālaṅkārabhūṣitām || VM 1.129 ||72

trivalīvalanāyukta° ] em. Benson : trivalībalanāyukta° Ed.

lāvaṇya° ] em. Dviveda : lāvaṇaya° Ed.
°āvartākāra° ] em. : °āvatākāra° Ed.

[The Goddess, endowed with] high breasts decorated with strings of pearls, adorned with a

waist with three undulating folds73 and a navel resembling a whirlpool in the river of beauty,

with [large and beautiful] hips endowed with a girdle made from priceless jewels, possessed

of another goad which is the line of hair for the elephant of the orbs of her buttocks, with

thighs that are delicate like lovely plantain trunks, adorned by a pair of calves which are

equal to plantains in their beauty, with her lotus feet scraped by the crest jewels of the

bowing down Brahma … with her body red like vermilion, unrestrained, passionate, like an

elephant, endowed with every variety of seductive garb, [and] decorated with all the

ornaments.

In the section of the Ciñciṇīmatasārasamuccaya describing the cult of the Nityās, the main

goddess is referred to as Kāmeśvarī, the goddess of desire, whose consort is Kāmadeva. She is

described as full of the radiance of hundreds of newly risen suns, e.g., reddish (bālārka-

satatejāḍhya-74) and brilliant [like] millions of bolts of lightning (vidyutkoṭisamaprabhā, both on

72
% VM: 61–62.
73
% Translation by Alexis Sanderson.
% 74 Compare to bālārkakiraṇāruṇām above in VM 1.113.

%28
18r3). The association of the principal Goddess with the reddish color of the early morning sun

finds parallels in descriptions of Tripurā as one of three transmissions of the goddess Kubjikā.75

The triadic nature of Kubjikā is reflected in this system of three transmissions, associated with

the three junctures (sandhyā) of the day.76 According to the Siddhakhaṇḍa of the

Manthānabhairavatantra, the first transmission of the goddess to emerge at dawn is Tripurā,

who is reddish in color.77

Red color is less prevalent in the section from the Ciñciṇīmatasārasamuccaya, but the

connection with love and desire is strongly expressed. E.g., Kāmeśvarī’s form as a young girl

(bālarūpā, kaumārī, CMSS 108) arises streaming with sexual (lit. seminal) fluids (śukravāhinī),

from the drenched birth-maṇḍala (drāvitam janmamaṇḍalam, CMSS 105). The sage who

worships Kāmeśvarī (CMSS 113–117) is rejuvenated and filling with vitality by the fusion of

sexual fluids resulting from the union of Rudra and Rudrāṇī, granting the divine fruit of desire

(CMSS 118). However, the Goddess in the Ciñciṇīmatasārasamuccaya is also a spiritual being,

and sensuality in descriptions of Kāmeśvarī is intertwined with the sublime, just as in the later

descriptions of Tripurasundarī in the Vāmakeśvarīmata. In the description of the descent

(avatāra) of the Goddess in the Ciñciṇīmatasārasamuccaya, “she arises in the center of the three

pīṭhas, as the embodiment of ultimate reality” (tripīṭhodbhavamadhyasthā satsvabhāvānurupiṇī

102), surrounded by her powers, with Kāmadeva and the Nityās arranged in a hexagram around

the triangle.78 She is worshipped by yoginīs and siddhas (CMSS 108), embodies the ultimate

% 75 Dyczkowski 2009: 146–148.

76
% Ibid: 145.
77
% Ibid: 146.
% 78 CMSS 102, 111, 147, etc.

%29
reality (satsvabhāvasvarupiṇī, CMSS 102), and devours kula, which is the manifest universe

(kulabhakṣiṇī, CMSS 104).79 This image of the primordial Goddess in the middle of a triangle,80

symbolizing the yoni (female sexual organ), continues to be important in the mature tradition

(see Chapters 3 and 4). From the bindu (dot) of undifferentiated awareness in the middle of the

Śrīcakra, the principal ritual diagram of the classical cult, as a result of the union of Śiva and

Śakti arises the first triangle, marking the first stage of manifestation and the first cakra of

subordinate goddesses in the ritual configuration of the classical cult. The shape expands, adding

a total of nine intersecting triangles, which form the nine cakras of the Śrīcakra.

In the Nityākaula, the lavish red imagery of erotic magic is extended from descriptions of the

Goddess to that of the ritualist. The prescriptions for the ritualist are remarkably similar in the

Nityākaula and the Vāmakeśvarīmata, strongly suggesting that the classical cult of

Tripurasundarī drew on the material from the Nityākaula or a similar text. Both tantras prescribe

that the ritualist must be dressed in red clothing, adorned with red ornaments, and perfumed with

incense and fragrance, while making red offerings to the Goddess. Having installed

Tripurasundarī in his own body through nyāsa,81 the ritualist must envision himself as the

Goddess, down to her physical attributes, in order to propitiate her. The comparison of parallels

marked in bold in the passages below, strongly suggests intertextual borrowing.

raktāmbaradharo mantrī raktamālyānulepanaḥ || NK 3.6 cd ||

kajjalāñjitanetras tu pādau vā ra(ktarañjitau) ||

79
% Compare to jagadgrasanarūpiṇī, the embodiment of the swallowing of the world in VM 4.10.
80
% The same triangle is described in Kumārikākhaṇḍa 42–43ab with Uḍḍiyāṇa, Jālandhara, and Pūrṇapīṭha in the
corners and Kāmarūpa in the front, i.e., in the middle of the triangle (Dyczkowski: v. 1 p. 1, 290–291).
% 81
Nyāsa is a tantric preparatory ritual, which uses mantras, visualization, and touch to divinize the body of the
ritualist.

%30
 (pāśāṅ)kuśadharo maunī dhanuḥśarakaro ’thavā || NK 3.7 ||

tāmbūlapūritamukho dhūpāmodasudhūpitaḥ || NK 3.8 ab ||

°anulepanaḥ ] em. : °anulepanam Cod.

raktarañjitau ] conj. Sanderson82 : ra++ Cod.
(pāśāṅ)kuśadharo ] conj. Sanderson : ++kuśadharo Cod.
dhanuḥ° ] em. Sanderson : dhanu° Cod.

… the mantrin (one who recites the mantras), clad in red clothing, [wearing] garlands of red

[flowers] and smeared with red unguent, whose eyes are smeared with collyrium and whose

feet (are tinted red), bearing the (noose) [and] the goad, or with the bow and the arrows in his

hands, observing silence, whose mouth is full of betel and spices, who is thoroughly

perfumed with fragrance of incense…

kuṅkumāruṇadehas tu vastrāruṇavibhūṣitaḥ |
tāmbūlapūritamukho dhūpāmodasugandhitaḥ || VM 1.103 ||

karpūrakṣodadigdhāṅgo raktābharaṇamaṇḍitaḥ |
raktapuṣpāvṛto maunī raktagandhānulepanaḥ || VM 1.104 ||83

…[the ritualist,] whose body is red with saffron and adorned with red garments, whose

mouth is full of betel and spices, who is thoroughly perfumed with fragrance of incense,

82
% Alexis Sanderson proposed the following explanation for this emendation: “The red substance is evidently
alaktaka (Aiśa laktaka) ‘lac juice’. This fact taken together with the fact that vā is inapposite to the point that I take
it be an error lead me to propose the following emendation: pādau laktakarañjitau or pādālaktakarañjitaḥ. The latter
is preferable as Sanskrit because it fits the sentence syntax and though the compound is somewhat disordered—the
correct word order would be alaktakarañjitapādaḥ—such reordering is not rare in Aiśa compositions (as in
vastrāruṇavibhūṣitaḥ in VM 1.103). However, the quarter-verse pādau laktakarañjitau is seen in descriptions of the
Mantrin/Sādhaka/Vratin in Picumata 21.86 valayābharaṇaṃ divyaṃ pādau nūpurabhūṣitau | keyūrakaṭisūtrañ ca
pādau laktakarañjitau || 21.26: mudrikām aṅguliś caiva pādau laktakarañjitau |kapālaṃ dakṣiṇe haste
khaṭvāṅgam vāmato nyaset; and 56.95: bhasmasnāto ’thavā mantrī raktacandanacarcitaḥ | lalāṭe tilakaṃ kṛtvā
pādau laktakarañjitau; and Niśisaṃcāra f. 7v: *cūḍakābharaṇair (em. : cūḍakābharane Cod.) yukto
mudrāpañcaka*bhūṣitaḥ (corr. : bhūṣitaṃ) |nūpurābharaṇair yuktau pādau laktakarañjitau. It seems that the
redactor may have simply inserted a convenient pāda-formula here, disregarding the requirement of the syntax. This
is a common phenomenon in Aiśa and Mahāyānist compositions. The point, of course, is that in this way he takes on
the appearance of a woman.”
% 83 VM: 55.

%31
 whose body is smeared with camphor powder, beautified by red ornaments, surrounded with

red flowers, and smeared with red fragrances, who is observing silence…

Both the Nityākaula and the Vāmakeśvarīmata give significant attention to the magical

means for attracting the desired partner, including not only human women, but also the female

inhabitants of the heaven and the underworld. The two texts provide similar lists of divine and

semi-divine women that the adept is expected to attract through performance of rituals described

in these tantras. Compare, e.g., Nityākaula 3.14–16 ab and Vāmakeśvarīmata 2.12 cd–14.

vratamudrāsamāyuktaḥ sādhakaḥ siddhibhāg bhavet |

devakanyā tathā nāgī gāndharvī yakṣakanyakā || NK 3.14 ||

(7v1) vidyadharīm apsarasaṃ tathā mānuṣayoṣitaḥ |

sapta ṣaṭ pañca catvāris tridvi-ekaguṇaṃ priye || NK 3.15 ||

vratamantraprabhāvena māsataḥ kiṅkarī bhavet | NK 3.16 ab |

°samāyuktaḥ sādhakaḥ ] em. : °samāyuktaṃ sādhakaṃ Cod.

vidyadharīm apsarasaṃ ] em. Sanderson84 : vidyādharīśvarī
māsataḥ ] em. McCrea : māsata Cod.

Engaged in vratas (observances) and mudrās (ritual gestures), the ritualist will achieve the

success of the rite. Maiden of the god, Nāga woman, gāndharva woman, yakṣa maiden, even

the foremost of vidyādharas, and likewise human women — [having performed the

observance for] seven, six, five, four, three, two [months], or one [month], O beloved, by the

84
% Alexis Sanderson proposed two possibilities for this reading: “As the text stands, I see no way of understanding
why the process should be said to take 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 months, or 1 month. The author no doubt intended the duration
to be determined by the status of the female to be subjected to the sādhaka’s will, from devakanyās down to human
women. The problem is that there are seven durations but only six types of female. Combining this observation with
the oddity of the expression vidyādharīśvarī I suspect that the seventh (the sixth in the order) is hiding in śvarī. I
propose vidyādhary asurī caiva. Cf. Compare VM 2.13c–14. One might alternatively propose vidyadharīm
apsarasaṃ. This too would fit the metre (as a bha-vipulā prior pāda) and the hierarchy, but is less close to the
transmitted reading.” I chose the second reading by analogy with the parallel passage in the Vāmakeśvarīmata.

%32
 power of the vratas and mantras, [she] would become [his] slave after one month [etc.,

according to the list above].

adṛṣṭāyās tu saṃyojya nāma cakrasya madhyagam || VM 2.12 cd ||

viracya yonimudrāṃ tu tām ākarṣayati kṣaṇāt |

yakṣiṇīṃ cātha gandharvīṃ kinnarīṃ vāsureśvarīm || VM 2.13 ||

siddhakanyāṃ nāgakanyāṃ devakanyāṃ ca khecarīm |

vidyādharīm apsarasam ṛṣikanyām athorvaśīm || VM 2.14 ||85

saṃyojya ] em. Sanderson : saṃyojyaṃ Ed.

And having affixed the name of the one who is unseen in the middle of the cakra and having

formed the yonimudrā, he will immediately attract a yakṣa woman, a gandharva woman, a

kinnara woman, or a goddess, a siddha maiden, a nāga maiden, maiden of a god, a khecara

woman, a vidyādhara woman, an apsaras, a daughter of a sage, or an urvaśī.

These examples of the close similarity of ideas, imagery, and even specific vocabulary in the

Nityākaula and the Vāmakeśvarīmata demonstrate a strong continuity between the antecedent

Nityā cult and the mature cult of Tripurasundarī. While later on the focus has shifted away from

the magical rites of attraction, the mature tradition continued to preserve some aspects of the

earlier cult connected with kāma. I will discuss other continuities in the next chapter on the

Vāmakeśvarīmata and chapter 4 on the Yoginīhṛdaya.

In the time between the composition of the Nityākaula and the Vāmakeśvarīmata, Kāmadeva

ceased to be seen as the Goddess’s consort. It is likely that as the relationship between Śiva and

Śakti was becoming the dominant paradigm in the tantric traditions, the cult of Tripurasundarī,

having gained in popularity and status, updated its source material by aligning its principal

% 85 VM: 79–80.

%33
Goddess with a more prestigious consort. As the worship of Tripurasundarī came to be accepted

by the broader strata of society, it is only fitting that the role of the consort of the Goddess would

shift from Kāmadeva to the powerful and widely venerated Śiva.

Although the god of love does not function as the Goddess’s consort in the mature tradition, I

found that later texts continue to refer to kāma and Kāmadeva. For example, kāma occupies the

most prominent role in the three-fold system of tattvas (categories of existence) in the

Vāmakeśvarīmata, which I will discuss in the next chapter. Given the cult’s early provenance in

love magic, it is not surprising that the majority of sādhanas in the Vāmakeśvarīmata are

connected with kāma (desire). These include mantra repetition (japa), rites involving ritual

diagrams (yantras), ritual offerings into a consecrated fire (homa), and other practices performed

for the purposes of amorous attraction. In addition to a conspicuous preference for sādhanas

related to kāma, amorous attraction is also particularly stressed in the section detailing the

expected benefits of worship. The Vāmakeśvarīmata promises in no uncertain terms that as a

result of the prescribed worship the adept will become irresistible to women, e.g.

yatrānena vidhānena sādhakena prapūjyate |

deśe vā nagare grāme jagatkṣobhaḥ prajāyate || VM 2.1 ||

jvalatkāmāgnisantāpapratāpottaptamānasāḥ |
pipīlikāsthinyāyena dūrād āyānti yoṣitaḥ || VM 2.2 ||

mantrasaṃmūḍhahṛdayāḥ sphurajjaghanamaṇḍalāḥ |
taddarśanān mahādevi jāyante sarvayoṣitaḥ || VM 2.3 ||86

Wherever the worship is properly performed by the sādhaka – in the country, in the city, or in

the village – there arises agitation among the people. Women come from afar like ants

% 86 VM: 78.

%34
 [penetrating into] the bones,87 with their minds inflamed, pained and afflicted by the blazing

fire of desire. On seeing him, O great Goddess, all the women have the orbs of their buttocks

quivering, their minds confused, and their hearts infatuated, bewildered by the mantras.

Furthermore, the noose, the goad, the bow, and the arrows, weapons distinctive for

Tripurasundarī throughout the history of this tradition, are drawn from the iconography of the

four-armed Kāmadeva, as can be seen, e.g., in the visualization of the god of love in

Īśānaśivagurudevapaddhati, Kriyāpāda, which I briefly cited earlier in the discussion of the

color red.

raktaṃ raktāmbaradharaṃ yuvānaṃ mṛṣṭakuṇḍalam |

hārakeyūrakaṭakamaulikuṇḍalanūpuraiḥ || ĪŚGP KP 22.32 ||

anyaiś ca divyābharaṇair mālyair gandhaiś ca bhūṣitam |

puṣpacāpaṃ śarāṃś cātha dadhataṃ pāśam aṅkuśam || ĪŚGP KP 22.33 ||

evaṃ dhyātvārcayet kāmam … | ĪŚGP KP 22.35 a |88

puṣpacāpaṃ śarāṃś ] em. Sanderson : puṣpacāpaśarāṃś Cod.

Red, wearing red garments, youthful, with bright earrings, decorated with a pearl necklace,

bracelets on upper arms and wrists, a diadem, rings and toe rings, and decorated with other

divine ornaments, garlands, and fragrances, carrying a flower bow, arrows, a noose and a

goad… having visualized [him] in this way, [the adept] should worship Kāma…

87
% According to Professor Sanderson.
% 88 ĪŚGP, v. 3. 222.

%35
 These four weapons became the standard attributes of Tripurasundarī both in textual

descriptions and visual representations.89 In the Vāmakeśvarīmata, they are explicitly referred to

as the weapons of Kāma, even though Kāmadeva no longer appears as Tripurasundarī’s consort

in this text, e.g.:

cakramadhye catuṣkaṃ tu krameṇa paripūjayet || VM 1.159 cd ||

kāmabāṇān maheśāni dhanus tatpāśam eva ca |

jambhamohavaśastambhapadaiḥ sahitam aṅkuśam || VM 1.160 ||90

In the middle of the cakra [surrounding the central triangle, in the four cardinal directions],

one should worship the four in order: the arrows of Kāma, the bow, his (Kāma’s) noose, the

goad, together with the words for crushing, deluding, controlling, [and] paralyzing, O great

Goddess.

The connections with love magic remained so deeply engrained in the ritual system of the

mature cult of Tripurasundarī, that they continued to be felt even after Kāmadeva ceased to be

the Goddess’s consort. The explosion of red, the color of eros, in figurative language, references

to Kāmadeva embedded in the names of the subordinate goddesses, which I will discuss in more

detail in the next chapter, and the promise of success in love continued to link the texts of the

mature cult with the early rites of amorous attraction, described in the Nityākaula. And even after

Śiva became Tripurasundarī’s consort, it was Kāma’s noose, goad, bow of sugarcane, and flower-

arrows that remained in the hands of the Goddess, not Śiva’s triśūla (trident). I believe that this

89
% E.g., the goad, noose, bow, and arrows are prominently mentioned in the very beginning of the Lalitāsahasranāma
(rāgasvarūpapāśāḍhyā krodhākārāṅkuśojjvalā | manorūpekṣukodaṇḍā pañcatanmātrasāyakā, names 8–11) as well
as in the visualization that usually accompanies it: sindūrāruṇavigrahāṃ trinayanāṃ māṇikyamaulisphurat |
tārānāyakaśekharāṃ smitamukhīm āpīnavakṣoruhām | pāṇibhyāṃ alipūrṇaratnacaṣakaṃ raktotpalaṃ bibhratīṃ |
saumyāṃ ratnaghaṭastharaktacaraṇāṃ dhyāyet parāmaṃbikām ||
The visualization also highlights the frequent use of red color in descriptions of the Goddess in the later tradition.
% 90 VM: 70.

%36
profound connection of the cult of Tripurasundarī with love magic contributed to the popularity

of this tradition, particularly in south-India in the later centuries. Ferocious goddesses with their

imagery of cremation grounds continued to be a strong presence in Śākta traditions over the

succeeding centuries. But a very different background of the cult of Tripurasundarī, combined

with an impressive and visually stunning ritual system, which I will discuss in the next chapter,

presented a desirable and popular alternative.

%37
 CHAPTER 3

THE CLASSICAL CULT OF TRIPURASUNDARĪ IN THE VĀMAKEŚVARĪMATA

The ritual system of the classical cult of Tripurasundarī is preserved in the Vāmakeśvarīmata,

the earliest extant text of this tradition. The Vāmakeśvarīmata incorporated the subordinate

deities of the antecedent Nityā cult as part of a much larger ritual system, in which

Tripurasundarī was surrounded by a host of goddesses, each assigned to a particular location

within the nine levels of the Śrīcakra (see Appendix D). The Vāmakeśvarīmata does not refer to

the Śrīcakra as such, but I will use this later designation, which first appeared in the

Yoginīhṛdaya, for convenience. In the Nityākaula, the principal Goddess stood in a triangle of the

fire-maṇḍala, surrounded by a hexagram, which, in turn, was occupied by her retinue of

Kāmadeva and eleven Nityās. Similarly, in the description of the antecedent Nityā cult in the

Ciñciṇīmatasārasamuccaya, the principal Goddess, Kāmeśvarī, emerged from the center of a

triangle made-up of the śakti-pīṭhas, surrounded by her powers, with Kāmadeva and the Nityās

arranged in a hexagram around the central triangle.91 In the mature cult, Tripurasundarī stands

alone surrounded by a much larger retinue of subordinate goddesses in the bindu (dot) located in

the middle of the very same triangle, which is now positioned as the innermost sub-cakra within

the total of nine sub-cakras of the Śrīcakra. The Śrīcakra, the principal ritual diagram of the

mature cult is formed by nine intersecting triangles, two rings of lotuses, and the enclosure of the

Śrīcakra with four doors.

In addition to the vastly expanded ritual configuration, the classical cult also included a new

system of mantras, culminating in the fifteen-syllabled root (mūla) mantra. In the later history of

% 91 E.g., CMSS 102, 111, 147.

%38
the classical tradition, two slight variations of the mantra were practiced in what came to be

known as kādi and hādi sampradāyas, named so for the first syllable of the mūla mantra. The

Vāmakeśvarīmata appears to precede this distinction. Its principal mantra92 begins with ka, but

slightly differs from the kādi version preserved by the contemporary tradition, though their total

number of syllables is the same.

Although in the Vāmakeśvarīmata the primary Goddess stands alone, unaccompanied by her

consort, in the mature tradition she is clearly associated with Śiva. And it is their dynamic union

that gives birth to all of creation, reflected in the emanation of the Śrīcakra and the mūla mantra.

Although Kāmadeva is no longer Tripurasundarī’s consort in the classical cult, practices

associated with kāma (love, desire) still occupied a predominant place in the Vāmakeśvarīmata,

as I discussed in the previous chapter. Following the antecedent tradition, the Vāmakeśvarīmata

also gave attention to other practices connected with mundane results, as I will discuss here. In

this chapter, I will also highlight innovations in the mature cult, as expressed in the

Vāmakeśvarīmata.

In the Vāmakeśvarīmata, Tripurasundarī, whose very name suggests her three-fold nature, is

characterized by various sets of three. This is not a completely new development. Already in the

Nityākaula, the Goddess was described as having three forms: “with thought,” “with and without

thought,” and “beyond thought” (NK 5.35). This is similar to the more familiar descriptions of

deities as saguṇa, with attributes, and nirguṇa, beyond attributes, but here an intermediate stage

is added. For her form to be visualized “with thought” (given as saṃcintya and once as

saṃcittaḥ), NK gives a detailed physical description of her attributes as well as those of her

% 92 ka e ī la hrīṃ ha ka ha la hrīṃ ha sa ka la hrīṃ (VM 1.93–101, 70–72).

%39
entourage, chariot, etc. (NK 5.38–39), which I cited and translated in the previous chapter of this

dissertation. Her second form for the “with and without thought” (cintyācintya) meditation is

described in that text as shaped like kuṇḍala (coil), i.e., kuṇḍalinī (NK 5.45). And her last form is

beyond thought (niścintya) (NK 5.45c–47). In the Ciñciṇīmatasārasamuccaya, Kāmeśvarī arises

in the middle of a triangle (e.g., CMSS 102, 111, 147), representing the three-fold nature of the

Goddess and the yoni (female sexual organ). Ciñciṇīmatasārasamuccaya states that the triangle

has three pīṭhas in its corners: Jālandhara, Pūrṇapīṭha, and Uḍḍiyāṇa. Kāmarūpa is the fourth

pīṭha located in the middle of the triangle, which is the abode (dhāma) and maṇḍala of

Kāmeśvarī (CMSS 102–104). And the very same pīṭhas is where the Goddess is said to abide in

VM 1.12:

kāmapūrṇajakārākhyaśrīpīṭhāntarnivāsinīm |
caturājñākośabhūtāṃ naumi śrītripurām aham || VM 1.12 ||93

I worship Śrītripurā, residing in Kāmarūpa, Jālandhara, Pūrṇapīṭha, and Uḍḍiyāṇa (śrīpīṭha),

who is the treasure-house of the four commands (ājñās, i.e., teachings).

The triadic nature is mentioned again later in the Ciñciṇīmatasārasamuccaya, emerging from the

sprout (aṅkura) of undifferentiated consciousness as the three-fold (trividhaṃ) Kledanī, who

encompasses Śakti, Śiva, and Rudra (CMSS 132). We will see that this imagery of the sprout is

also preserved in VM 4.9 and in YH 1.37. Bhagamālinī, one of the powers of the principal

Goddess in the Ciñciṇīmatasārasamuccaya is similarly three-fold (CMSS 145). And Paraśakti is

described at the very end of the section on Nityās in this text as having three natural states (viṣa,

kāma, and nirañjanā, CMSS 147), terms that were later applied to the Goddess in the

% 93 VM: 15.

%40
Vāmakeśvarīmata (with the paraphrase of nirañjanā to mokṣa), as we will see later in this

chapter.

In the Vāmakeśvarīmata, the three-fold nature of the Goddess, which had already been

expressed in the Nityā cult, is broadly developed and embellished upon. Triad is one of the most

common structures in the Vāmakeśvarīmata. The main mantra (mūlavidyā) of the Goddess is

threefold, consisting of fifteen syllables divided into three stages of emanation. The stages are

the same for the condensed three-syllabled form of the vidyā. They are:

1. vāgbhava,

2. kāmarāja, and

3. śakti.94

Vāgbhava is mentioned in the CMSS (144) as one of the powers of the Goddess, but without

reference to kāmarāja or śakti. However, all three are referred to as syllables of Tripurābhairavī

in the Yogakhaṇḍa of the Manthānabhairava.95 The condensed form of the vidyā in the

Vāmakeśvarīmata, which corresponds to the three stages of emanation, is likewise threefold and

consists of three bījas (seed syllables).96 These correspond to three stages of emanation (creation,

preservation, and dissolution), and to icchā, jñāna, and kriyā śaktis (the potentialities of creative

impulse/desire, knowledge, and activity).

In addition to using such various sets of three, the Vāmakeśvarīmata occasionally refers to

the fourth, transcendent aspect of the Goddess. In the Vāmakeśvarīmata, Tripurasundarī is

94
% See verses 1.93–101 (VM: 70–72) on the extraction and the stages of emanation of the root vidyā.
95
% Dyczkowski 2009: v. 3, p. 1, 179.
% 96
Bīja mantras are the so-called seed-syllable mantras, said to contain energy in a condensed form. They consist of
one syllable ending with an anusvāra.

%41
described as the primal, transcendent Goddess, whose subtle (sūkṣma) form is the causal latent

state of all creation.

tripurā paramā śaktir ādyā jātāditaḥ priye |

sthūlasūkṣmavibhāgena trailokyotpattimātṛkā || VM 4.4 ||

The supreme śakti is Tripurā, O dear one, first-born from the primal one. She is the Mother

who is the origin of the three worlds, with [their] gross and subtle constituents.

The text goes on to reflect on the supreme nature of this primal śakti.

paro97 hi śaktirahitaḥ śaktaḥ kartuṃ na kiṃcana |

śaktas tu parameśāni śaktyā yukto yadā bhavet || VM 4.6 ||98

Indeed, devoid of śakti, the Supreme Lord would not be able to accomplish anything, but

when he is united with śakti — he is capable, O Supreme Goddess.

This transcendent primal Goddess, emerging from her latent state, manifests the universe in

three stages of emanation.

kavalīkṛtaniḥśeṣabījādyāṅkuratāṃ gatā |
vāmā śikhā tato jyeṣṭhā śṛṅgāṭākāratāṃ gatā || VM 4.9 ||

raudrī tu parameśāni jagadgrasanarūpiṇī |

evaṃ sā paramā śaktir ekaiva parameśvarī || VM 4.10 ||99

The primal [one], Vāmā, has become the sprout of the seed in which all is swallowed up.

[As] Jyeṣṭhā [she is] the flame, and as Raudrī100 [she is] the triangle,101 the embodiment of

% 97 Para here is used in the meaning of parameśa, according to Professor Sanderson.

% 98 VM:101.
99
% VM:103–104.
100
% According to Professor Sanderson, these three goddesses are equated with the three parts of the emanation of the
first letter of the alphabet, which is the source of all manifestation in this phonemic mysticism. This section can also
read as the description of the writing of letter ‘a’ in the Siddhamātṛkā script.
% 101
Śṛṅgāṭa, meaning triangle, is derived from the word denoting water nuts, common in Kashmir (botanical name
— Trapa Bispinosa, common name — Singhara nut) which have a roughly triangular shape.

%42
 the swallowing of the world. Thus, she indeed is the only supreme śakti, the supreme

Goddess.

The primal Goddess (ādyā) is unmanifest, but contains the seeds of everything to be

manifested. Once she reaches manifestation, the three stages of sṛṣṭi, sthiti, and saṃhāra are

presided over by her three aspects: Vāmā, who emits, literally spews forth the Universe, Jyeṣṭhā,

the stabilizer, and Raudrī, the destroyer. And later in the text, Tripurasundarī is described as not

only embodied in the three śaktis of creation, sustaining, and dissolution, but also in the forms of

Brahmā, Viṣṇu, and Rudra, who are traditionally associated with these roles.

tripurā trividhā devī brahmaviṣṇvīśarūpiṇī |

jñānaśaktiḥ kriyāśaktir icchāśaktyātmikā priye || VM 4.11 ||102

She is the threefold Tripurā, the Goddess in the form of Brahmā, Viṣṇu, and Rudra; her

nature is jñāna, kriyā, and icchā śaktis, O beloved!

Later on in the same section of the fourth paṭala in the Vāmakeśvarīmata, the redactors

correlated the stages of emanation (vāgbhavā, kāmarājā, and śakti) with icchā, jñāna, and kriyā

śaktis.

vāgīśvarī jñānaśaktir vāgbhavā mokṣarūpiṇī |

kāmarājā kāmakalā kāmarūpā kriyātmikā103 || VM 4.17 ||

śaktibījā parā śaktir icchaiva viṣarūpiṇī |

evaṃ devī tryakṣarā tu mahātripurasundarī || VM 4.18 ||104

102
% VM: 104.
103
% Professor Sanderson brought to my attention a variant cited in the edition, which uses locative case endings
instead of nominative feminine ones: vāgbhave for vāgbhavā, kāmarāje for kāmarājā, śaktibīje for śaktibījā. The
same reading with the locative endings is accepted in the south Indian edition. I am using the more awkward reading
of the KSTS edition, because the variant with the locative endings may have been a later correction. Regardless of
which reading I use, the correlation between śaktis, tattvas, and aspects of the Goddess remains the same and does
not impact my argument.
% 104 VM: 107–108.

%43
 [She is] Vāgīśvarī (the goddess of speech), the jñāna śakti, the vāgbhava, whose nature is

liberation; [she is] kāmarāja, Kāmakalā, her form is desire, [and] her nature is kriyā; she is

the śakti syllable, the supreme śakti, who is precisely icchā and whose form is viṣa,105 and

thus the great Tripurasundarī is the Goddess of three syllables.

The fact that the word śakti is used in different meanings in the Vāmakeśvarīmata is

confusing, so I will parse these meanings here. As is common in Śākta traditions, the redactors of

the Vāmakeśvarīmata use the word śakti to denote generic feminine energy, the potentiality that

allows Śiva to act, which is referred to as parā or paramā śakti, or simply śakti (as in VM 4.6 c,

4.10 c, and 4.18 a above). Using the word śakti to describe three types of such potentiality, icchā,

jñāna, and kriyā (as in VM 4.11, 17, and 18) is also common. However, using this word (as in

śakti-bījā in VM 4.18 a above) to name the third stage of emanation of the vidyā, which

symbolizes the greater process of creation, is idiosyncratic for the Vāmakeśvarīmata. Correlation

between the latter three (stages of emanation and śaktis) is also made with what

Vāmakeśvarīmata calls tattvas (kāma, viṣa, and mokṣa) and three different aspects of the

Goddess (Vāgīśvarī, Kāmakalā, Parā Śakti). Lastly, I should clarify that the use of the word

tattva in the Vāmakeśvarīmata is different from the usual thirty-six categories used in Śaivism,

which were not mentioned in this text. The three tattvas of the Vāmakeśvarīmata (kāma, viṣa,

and mokṣa) were correlated with the three-fold nature of Tripurā, and her vidyā, etc. E.g.,

… seyam avyaktā tripurā vyaktim āgatā |

tattvatrayavinirdiṣṭā varṇaśaktitrayātmikā || VM 4.16 ||106

105
% One of the three tattvas in the Vāmakeśvarīmata, the term viṣa, which normally means “poison,” is used here in
the meaning of the domain of knowledge related to poisons.
% 106 VM: 107.

%44
 Tripurā is unmanifest, having become manifest, possessing three tattvas and consisting of

three syllables (in the condensed form of the mantra) and śaktis.

sarvam eva tvayā proktaṃ tripurājñānam uttamam |

kāmatattvaṃ viṣajñānaṃ mokṣatattvaṃ trayaṃ tathā || VM 5.1 ||107

You have told me everything about the supreme knowledge of Tripurā and the triad of

kāmatattva, the knowledge of viṣa, and mokṣatattva.

The three tattvas in the Vāmakeśvarīmata are akin to domains of knowledge. Kāmatattva is

related to knowledge of love magic and rites of attraction and viṣa encompasses knowledge of

cures from poisons and effects of supernatural creatures. The tattva called mokṣa refers to speech

and knowledge. Although the term mokṣatattva was used in the Vāmakeśvarīmata, the redactors

of this text did not include any practices for liberation. Soteriological practices did not appear

within the cult of Tripurasundarī until the composition of the Yoginīhṛdaya.

I have summarized the three stages of emanation with corresponding śaktis, tattvas, and

aspects of the Goddess referred to in the verses discussed above, in Table 1 below.

Table 1. Three Stages of Emanation

Stage of
Vidyā Śakti Tattva Aspect
emanation

aim;
vāgbhava jñāna mokṣa Vāgīśvarī
ka e ī la hrīṃ

hrīṃ; Kāmakalā
kāmarāja kriyā kāma
ha ka ha la hrīṃ =Kāmeśvarī

sauḥ;
śakti icchā viṣa Parā Śakti
ha sa ka la hrīṃ

% 107 VM: 129.

%45
 I will now discuss how these three stages of emanation were envisioned as a manifestation of

the universe, the vidyā, the Śrīcakra, and different aspects of the Goddess in the

Vāmakeśvarīmata. Whenever possible, I will highlight parallels with the antecedent and the later

classical cult. I will discuss these three aspects in the same order in which they were given in the

Vāmakeśvarīmata: beginning with vāgbhava, followed by kāmarāja, and concluding this chapter

with the third aspect designated as śakti. However, since I already discussed features of the

Vāmakeśvarīmata connected with kāma in the previous chapter, I will not spend as much space

on this aspect here. I will only highlight how kāma is expressed in the names of subordinate

goddesses in the new system of the Śrīcakra in the Vāmakeśvarīmata.

The vāgbhava stage of emanation is associated with speech. The Goddess in this stage of

emanation is white, pure, and blemishless.108 In the later classical tradition, this aspect of the

Goddess was described in the form of Bālā109 Tripurasundarī, a form that is still worshipped as a

girl Goddess in the contemporary tradition. The association of the Goddess with the power of

speech is highlighted in the very first verses of the Vāmakeśvarīmata. In fact, it is this aspect and

her cosmic, transcendent nature which are most prominent in the invocation. She is described as

Mātṛkā (the Mother-of-Speech, the transcendental source of sounds) and Siddhamātṛkā (the

mother energy embodied in the North-Indian post-Gupta alphabet of that name). Knowledge of

even one of her letters is said to grant the sādhaka equality with Gods. She is embodied in the

eight vargas (groups of sounds) which are distributed in the eight substrata in the microcosm of

the human body and associated with eight siddhis, beginning with aṇimā (minuteness). And she

108
% See Sanderson 1988: 673 and 1990: 32–36.
% 109 See Sanderson 2014: 35.

%46
is also em She resides in all the principal seats of the Goddess and transcends the four Kaula

āmnāyas, including the southern transmission (dakṣināmnāya), also called the tradition of the

southern order (dakṣinagharāmnāya), a direction associated with the antecedent Nityā cult (see

Appendix B).

gaṇeśagrahanakṣatrayoginīrāśirūpiṇīm |
devīṃ mantramayīṃ naumi mātṛkāṃ pīṭharūpiṇīm || VM 1.1 ||

praṇamāmi mahādevīṃ mātṛkāṃ parameśvarīm |

kālahallohalollolakalanāśamakāriṇīm || VM 1.2 ||

yadakṣaraikamātre’pi saṃsiddhe spardhate naraḥ |

ravitārkṣyendukandarpaśaṅkarānalaviṣṇubhiḥ || VM 1.3 ||

yadakṣaraśaśijyotsnāmaṇḍitaṃ bhuvanatrayam |
vande sarveśvarīṃ devīṃ mahāśrīsiddhamātṛkām || VM 1.4 ||
…
akacādiṭatonnaddhapayaśākṣaravargiṇīm |
jyeṣṭhāṅgabāhuhṛtpṛṣṭhakaṭipādanivāsinīm || VM 1.7 ||

tām ikārākṣaroddhārasārādhārāṃ110 parāparām |

praṇamāmi mahādevīṃ paramānandarūpiṇīm || VM 1.8 ||
…
vande tām aham akṣayyakṣakārākṣararūpiṇīm |
devīṃ kulakalollolaprollasantīṃ paraulijām || VM 1.10 ||

vargānukramayogena yasyā mātraṣṭakaṃ sthitam |

vande tām aṣṭavargotthamahāsiddhyaṣṭakeśvarīm || VM 1.11 ||

kāmapūrṇajakārākhyaśrīpīṭhāntarnivāsinīm |
caturājñākośabhūtāṃ naumi śrītripurām aham || VM 1.12 ||111

110
% īkāra° in NṢA.
% 111 VM: 1–15.

%47
 I praise the Goddess, who has the form of Gaṇeśas,112 the planets, the nakṣatras (asterisms),

the rāśis (signs of the zodiac), embodied as mantras, the Mother-of-Speech, who has the form

of the pīṭhas (seats of the Goddess). I bow to the great Goddess, the Mātṛkā, the supreme

ruler who brings about the cessation of the rushing waves of the force of time.113 If one

masters even a single letter of her, he will rival the sun, Garuḍa, the moon, Kāmadeva, Śiva,

fire, [and] Viṣṇu. I honor the Goddess, the moonlight of whose letters adorns the three

worlds, who is the great venerable Siddhamātṛkā, the ruler of all… I bow to the Great

Goddess who possesses the groups of sounds “a,” “ka,” “ca,” “ṭa,” “ta,” “pa,” “ya,” “śa,”

residing in the head, arms, heart, back, hips, [and] feet, whose highest substratum is in the

extraction of the syllable ‘i,’ who is both transcendent and immanent,114 [and] the

embodiment of the highest bliss... I honor that Goddess, who has the form of the undecaying

“kṣa” sound, who shines forth in the waves which are the constitutive powers of totality, who

arises from the highest transmission of knowledge.115 I praise the one who presides over the

eight great siddhis which arise from the eight vargas, whose eight Mothers are established

through the association with her sequence of vargas. I praise the venerable Tripurā, who is

the treasure-house of the four teachings (āmnāyas), the one who resides within Kāma[rūpa],

Pūrṇa[giri], that which is named by the letter “ja” [Jālandhara], [and] the Śrīpīṭha

(Oḍḍiyāna).

% 112
For multiple interpretations of the word gaṇeśa(s) in the first compound of VM 1.1, see chapter 5 and 6 of this
dissertation.
113
% Translation of verse 1.2 cd by Professor Sanderson.
114
% Translation by Professor Sanderson.
% 115 Translation of verse 1.10 cd by Professor Sanderson.

%48
 The vāc aspect is further expressed through the eight alphabet goddesses, associated with the

groups of sounds in the Sanskrit alphabet (vargas). The names of these goddesses, called yogīnīs,

and the vargas associated with them are summarized in Table 2 below.

Table 2. The Alphabet Goddesses

Name Varga Bīja

Vaśinī a rbluṃ

Kāmeśvarī ka klhrīṃ

Modinī ca nvlīṃ

Vimalā ṭa ylūṃ

Aruṇā ta jmrīṃ

Jayinī pa hslvyūṃ

Sarveśvarī ya jhmryūṃ

Kaulinī śa kṣṃrīṃ

Several names of the goddesses to be worshipped on other levels of the Śrīcakra were also

connected with the vāc aspect, e.g., the goddess who embodies all the mantras (sarvamantramayī

devī) in the fourth cakra, one who is all-knowing (sarvajñā), and the goddess who is filled with

all the knowledge (sarvajñānamayī devī) in the sixth cakra, etc.

The fourth chapter of the text provides instructions for the ritual practice of the supreme

Goddess in her aspect of Vāgīśvarī with the vāgbhava syllable.

dhavalāmbarasaṃvīto dhavalāmbaramadhyagaḥ || VM 4.21 ||

pūjayed dhavalaiḥ puṣpair brahmacaryarato naraḥ |

dhavalair eva naivedyair dadhikṣīraudanādibhiḥ || VM 4.22 ||

%49
 saṃkalpadhavalair vāpi yathākāmaṃ yathā labhet |
saṃpūjya parameśāni dhyāyed vāgīśvarīṃ parām || VM 4.23 ||

bījarūpām ullasantīṃ cidānandaprabodhinīm |

brahmagranthiṃ vinirbhidya jihvāgre dīparūpiṇīm || VM 4.24 ||116

Clothed in white garments in the midst of white cloth, observing celibacy, one should

worship her with white flowers, white food offerings, such as curd, milk, and boiled rice,

etc., or with offerings visualized as white,117 according to [his] desire, or as he can obtain. O

Supreme Goddess, having performed the worship, he should visualize Vāgīśvarī, who is

transcendent, blazing up in the form of the [vāgbhava] bīja awakening the bliss of

consciousness, [and] having pierced the Brahma knot,118 shining like a lamp on the tip of

[his] tongue.

Verses 4.25 through 4.33 give a protracted description of how even ignorant dull-witted

mindless individuals who can become as eloquent as the Lord of Speech himself through the

worship of the supreme Goddess in this aspect. An extensive list of disciplines that can be

mastered through the sādhana with the vāgbhava syllable is given, including (I paraphrase) the

doctrines of the six philosophical systems, meanings of words and sentences, poetics,

composition of classical poetry,

knowledge of scriptures and various sciences, magical procedures, painting and crafts, mastery

of eloquent speech and sophisticated grammar, knowledge of all languages, scripts and the

116
% VM: 109.
117
% Translation by Professor Sanderson.
118
% Brahmagranthi (the Brahma knot), which Jayaratha locates between the ādhāras (lit. supports) of vahni and viṣa,
is the first of three knots (the other two being Viṣṇu and Rudra) that kuṇḍalinī pierces on its way upward through the
cakras. Although the system of ādhāras, also referred to as cakras (lit. wheels) or padmas (lit. lotuses) has
undergone changes in this tradition, the three knots have been preserved in the later texts. See, e.g.,
Lalitāsahasranāma 100 (brahmagranthivibhedinī, one who pierces the Brahma knot).

%50
language of birds, weaponry, and, finally, knowledge of all speech and omniscience.119 This

passage suggests another profile of a potential initiate this tantra aimed to attract, in addition to a

love-starved bachelor unable to find female company — a courtier who may have felt he needed

magical assistance in improving his eloquence and courtly graces, so that he could move up in

the hierarchy, leaving his opponents behind.

Although kāma aspect was more in the foreground in the Nityā cult, as I discussed in the

previous chapter, the aspect of the Goddess associated with speech had also been developed in

the Nityā cult. Modeled on Trika’s Parā,120 Nityā Devī in the NK was visualized as white, with a

face like a full moon (NK 4.13), adorned with a book and a rosary, and residing in the middle of

the kadamba grove (NK 4.14). Procedures that included jāpa of her mantra were said to grant

various boons to the sādhaka, while robbing his adversaries of the very same qualities and more.

Here are some examples of benefits the NK promised in this section:

… māsād vācāṃ patir bhavet || NK 4.16 cd ||

… he will become the lord of speech after a month.

119
% cintayen naṣṭahṛdayo grāmyo mūrkho ’tipātakī |
śaṭho’pi yaḥ pādam ekaṃ suspaṣṭaṃ vaktum akṣamaḥ || VM 4.25 ||
jaḍo mūko’pi durmedhā gataprajño’pi naṣṭadhīḥ |
so’pi saṃjāyate vāgmī vācaspatir ivāparaḥ || VM 4.26 ||
satpaṇḍitaghaṭāṭopajetā’pratihataprabhaḥ |
ṣaṭtarkapadavākyārthaśabdālaṅkārasāravit || VM 4.27 ||
vātorddhūtasamudrormimālātulyair upanyaset |
sukumāratarasphārarītyalaṅkārapūrvakaiḥ || VM 4.28 ||
padagumphair mahākāvyakartā deveśi jāyate |
vedavedāntasiddhāntavedāṅgajñānapāragaḥ || VM 4.29 ||
jyotiḥśāstretihāsādimīmāṃsāsmṛtivākyavit |
purāṇarasavādādigāruḍānekamantravit || VM 4.30 ||
pātālaśāstravijñānabhūtatantrārthatattvavit |
vicitracitrakarmādiśilpānekavicakṣaṇaḥ || VM 4.31 ||
mahāvyākaraṇodāraśabdasaṃskṛtasarvagīḥ |
sarvabhāṣārutajñānasamastalipikarmavit || VM 4.32 ||
nānāśastrārthaśilpādivedavedāṅgaviśrutaḥ |
sarvavāṅmayavettā ca sarvajño devi jāyate || VM 4.33 || (VM: 109–111.)
% 120 For description of Trika’s Parā, see Sanderson 1988: 673 and 1990: 32–36.

%51
 sarvavāṅmayavettāsau śa/ga? + + + + + + (9r2)vat |
kāvyakartā mahādevi lakṣajāpād bhaven naraḥ || NK 4.17 ||

A man [who completes] a jāpa of 100,000 [repetitions of mantra] will know all that consists

of speech… and will become a poet, O great Goddess.

The wording of NK 4.16 above is similar to VM 4.26 cited earlier (so’pi saṃjāyate vāgmī

vācaspatir ivāparaḥ), while NK 4.17 finds a close parallel in the following verses from the same

passage as VM 4.26:

sukumāratara-sphāra-rīty-alaṅkārapūrvakaiḥ || VM 4.28 cd ||

padagumphair mahākāvyakartā deveśi jāyate || VM 4.29 ab ||121

He becomes the author of epic poetry with arrangements of words that use styles and figures
whose expressive power is delicate in the highest degree,122 O ruler of the gods.

sarvavāṅmayavettā ca sarvajño devi jāyat || VM 4.33 cd ||123

… he will know all adthat consists of speech and will be omniscient…

The second stage of the threefold emanation of Tripurasundarī, Kāmarāja, which is

associated with love, desire, attraction, etc. has been given the most prominence in this tantra. I

have cited a number of examples from the Vāmakeśvarīmata providing a variety of magical

means for attracting a desired partner in the previous chapter. I have also discussed the

assimilation of the Nityā goddesses into the mature cult, including the analysis of their names,

and a number of other continuities, including similarities in the appearance of the principal

Goddess and the sādhaka, which borrowed from visualizations of Kāmadeva, and the

proliferation of red imagery preserved from the antecedent cult of love magic. I will now discuss

121
% VM: 110.
122
% Translation by Professor Sanderson.
% 123 VM: 111.

%52
how the connection with kāma was expressed in the names of other subordinate goddesses within

the new ritual system of the Śrīcakra in the Vāmakeśvarīmata.

The Vāmakeśvarīmata gives little explanation of the functions of subordinate goddesses,

organized in eight groups around Tripurasundarī, the latter located in the bindu (dot) in the

middle of the Śrīcakra. However, their names are suggestive and many of them are connected

with kāma. The later part of the first chapter (verses VM 1.132–168), which outlines the worship

of the Śrīcakra, lists names and locations of the deities to be propitiated in all the nine levels of

this ritual configuration. All the goddesses in the two rings of petals, located outside of the

intersecting triangles of the Śrīcakra (i.e., the second and third levels from the outside in, in the

order of dissolution) have clear associations with love magic. This is also true for

Tripurasundarī’s weapons invoked outside of the innermost triangle and the bindu (eighth and

ninth levels). In addition, some of the deities in the forth and fifth levels are also clearly linked to

the kāma aspect in the nature of the Goddess.

In particular, verses VM 1.138–143 name the deities of attraction (ākarṣa) located in the

sixteen outer petals within the second level of the Śrīcakra. Their names evoke all types of

attraction — physical, mental, verbal, attraction of the senses, attraction of the mind and

memory, etc.

kāmākarṣaṇarūpā ca buddhyākarṣasvarūpiṇī |
ahaṅkārākarṣiṇī ca śabdākarṣasvarūpiṇī || VM 1.138 ||

sparśākarṣaṇarūpā ca rūpākarṣaṇakāriṇī |
rasākarṣakarī devī gandhākarṣakarī tathā || VM 1.139 ||

cittākarṣaṇarūpā ca dhairyākarṣasvarūpiṇī |
smṛtyākarṣaṇarūpā ca nāmākarṣaṇakāriṇī || VM 1.140 ||

%53
 bījākarṣaṇarūpānyā ātmākarṣasvarūpiṇī |
amṛtasyākarṣaṇī ca śarīrākarṣaṇī parā || VM 1.141 ||124

One who is the attraction of desire, One who is the embodiment of the attraction of buddhi

(wisdom), One who attracts the ego, One who embodies the verbal attraction, One who is the

attraction of touch, One who produces the attraction of form, One who creates the attraction

of taste, and One who attracts by smell, One whose nature is the attraction of the mind, One

who is the embodiment of the attraction through constancy, One who attracts through

memory, and One who produces the attraction of name, One who attracts by the bījas (seed

syllables), One whose very nature is the attraction of the self, One who is the attraction of

nectar, and the highest One who is the bodily attraction.

In the inner eight petals of the third level of the Śrīcakra, the names of all the eight deities are

connected with Kāmadeva. The first name is the flower of Anaṅga,125 next is his ornament, his

stirring, excellence, and furrow (or mark) follow. The list is concluded with a goddess who

abides in Anaṅga, his goad, and his garland. Compare the last name (Anaṅgalekhā) with

Hṛllekhā, which was the name of one of the Nityās in the Nityākaula and the

Ciñciṇīmatasārasamuccaya.

anaṅgakusumāṃ pūrve dakṣiṇe ’naṅgamaṅgalām |

paścime ’naṅgamathanām uttare madanottarām || VM 1.143 ||

anaṅgalekhām āgneye nairṛte ’naṅgavāsinīm |

anaṅgāṅkuśāṃ vāyavya īśāne ’naṅgamālinīm || VM 1.144 ||126

124
% VM 64–65.
125
% This epithet of the god of love, which literally means “limbless,” is based on the popular legend of his destruction
through the wrath of Śiva, burning Kāmadeva to ashes with the fiery glance of his third eye, to restore him later in
an incorporeal (i.e., limbless) form at the request of the goddess. The story is retold in numerous Purāṇas, including
the Lalitopākyāna section of Brahmāṇḍa Purāṇa and in poetry, e.g., Kalidāsa’s Kumārasaṃbhava.
% 126 VM 65–66.

%54
 She who is the flower of Anaṅga in the east, who is the ornament of Anaṅga in the south,

who is the stirring of Anaṅga in the west, who is the excellence of Madana in the north,127

who is the furrow (i.e., mark) of Anaṅga in Agni’s [direction, in the southeast], who abides in

Anaṅga in [the direction of] of Nrṛti [in the southwest], who is the goad of Anaṅga in Vayu’s

[direction, in the northwest], who is the garland of Anaṅga in Īśāna’s [direction, in the

northeast].

The list of the fourteen śakti goddesses worshipped in the fourteen spokes of the fourth cakra

(verses 1.145–148 ab) also includes some goddesses whose names are associated with love

magic, e.g., sarvākarṣakarī (one who attracts all), sarvāhlādakarī (one who delights all),

sarvarañjanaśaktiḥ (the śakti who pleases everyone), etc. The names of other subordinate

goddesses on this level establish their governance over siddhis which may have been particularly

attractive at the time of war (e.g., one who puts all to flight, one who produces paralysis). The list

becomes more grandiose toward the end of this set, including such names as sarvārthasādhakī

(one who accomplishes all aims), sarvāśāparipūrakī (one who fulfills all hopes),

sarvamantramayī devī (the goddess who encompasses all mantras), and sarvadvandvakṣayaṅkarī

(one who causes the dissolution of all dichotomies).

sarvasaṃkṣobhiṇī śaktiḥ sarvavidrāvaṇī tathā |

sarvākarṣakarī cānyā sarvāhlādakarī tathā || VM 1.145 ||

sarvasaṃmohanī śaktiḥ sarvastambhanarūpiṇī |

sarvajambhanarūpā tu sarvato vaśakāriṇī || VM 1.146 ||

sarvarañjanaśaktiś ca sarvonmādasvarūpiṇī |
sarvārthasādhakī śaktiḥ sarvāśāparipūrakī || VM 1.147 ||

% 127 According to Professor Sanderson, NṢA reading of madanāturām (Love-sick) is preferable.

%55
 sarvamantramayī devī sarvadvandvakṣayaṅkarī | VM 1.148 ab |128

The śakti who agitates all, who puts all to flight, the one who attracts all, and another who

delights everyone, the śakti who deludes all, who produces everyone’s paralysis, one whose

form crushes all, who controls all, the śakti who pleases everyone, one who is the

embodiment of all madness, the śakti who accomplishes all aims, one who fulfills all the

hopes, the goddess whose nature consists of all the mantras, [and] one who causes the

dissolution of all dichotomies.

Some of the names of the ten Kulakaulika Yoginīs in the fifth cakra (verses 1.149 cd –151)

are associated with various siddhis and benefits, while others evoke beauty and auspiciousness.

sarvasiddhipradā śaktiḥ sarvasaṃpatpradā tathā || VM 1.149 ||

sarvapriyaṅkarī cāpi sarvamaṅgalakāriṇī |

sarvakāmapradā devī sarvaduḥkhavimocinī || VM 1.150 ||

sarvamṛtyupraśamanī sarvavighnavināśinī |
sarvāṅgasundarī devī sarvasaubhāgyakāriṇī || VM 1.151 ||129

The śakti that bestows all siddhis and one who grants all accomplishment,

one who endears all and one who is the creator of all auspiciousness, the goddess who

produces all desires, who liberates from all suffering, one who produces the cessation of all

types of death, who destroys all obstacles, the goddess whose every limb is beautiful, one

who effects all types of attractiveness and good fortune.

128
% VM 66–67.
% 129 VM: 67.

%56
 Outside of the innermost triangle, the Goddess’s weapons are worshipped (verses 1.159–160,

see Appendix D, p. 75). The text explicitly refers to the arrows as the arrows of Kāma (verse

1.160 a, p. 75).

cakramadhye catuṣkaṃ tu krameṇa paripūjayet || VM 1.159 cd ||

kāmabāṇān maheśāni dhanus tatpāśam eva ca |

jambhamohavaśastambhapadaiḥ sahitam aṅkuśam || VM 1.160 ||130

In the middle of the cakra [surrounding the central triangle, in the four cardinal directions],

one should worship the four in order: the arrows of Kāma, the bow, his (Kāma’s) noose, the

goad, together with the words “crushing,” “deluding,” “controlling,” [and] “paralyzing,”131 O

great Goddess.

And, finally, in the innermost triangle, Kāmeśvarī, Vajreśī, and Bhagamālā, as well as

Tripurasundarī herself in the bindu are former Nityā goddesses of the antecedent cult, inherited

from it and placed in this most exalted position in the Śrīcakra.132

sarvamadhyatrikoṇe’pi pūjayen mūlavidyayā |

kevalākṣarabhedena samastavyastayeśvari || VM 1.161 ||

kāmeśvarīm agrakoṇe vajreśīṃ dakṣiṇe tathā |

vāme’pi bhagamālāṃ tu madhye tripurasundarīm || VM 1.162 ||133

And in the triangle which is in the middle of all, one should worship

with the root vidyā as a whole pertaining to all, and separately with their own syllables,

Kāmeśvarī in the forward triangle [the Western direction], Vajreśī in the Southern [right

% 130 VM 70.
131
% These actions correspond to the four weapons sequentially.
132
% See chapter 2 for correspondences with the lists of Nityā goddesses in the antecedent cult.
% 133 VM 70–71.

%57
 triangle], Bhagamālā in the left [Eastern triangle], and Tripurasundarī in the middle, O

Goddess.

It is clear that the Kāmarāja aspects of the Goddess drew extensively on the antecedent cult

of the Nityās. By incorporating names of goddesses associated with love magic and Kāmadeva

into the configuration of the Śrīcakra, these connections became permanently embedded in the

ritual system of the mature tradition.

The third stage of emanation is referred to in the Vāmakeśvarīmata as the śakti stage. It is

associated with icchā śakti and its tattva, which I understand here to mean the essential nature of

knowledge for this stage, is named viṣa. Viṣa is not a new term for the Vāmakeśvarīmata. In the

passage describing Paraśakti’s three powers (prabhavas) in the Ciñciṇīmatasārasamuccaya, it

was given together with kāma and nirañjanā (CMSS 147). In the Vāmakeśvarīmata, viṣa is used

for the first time in VM 1.167 (below) in the context of the kāmakalā visualization.

kāmādiviṣamokṣāṇām ālayaṃ paramaṃ dhruvam |

tad eva tattvapravaraṃ nijadehaṃ vicintayet || VM 1.167 ||134

[The syllable] is the supreme [and] unchangeable repository of kāma, etc., viṣa, [and] mokṣa.

Indeed, one should contemplate that very eminent tattva as one's own body.

I will first explain the meaning of the term viṣa based on my close reading of the relevant

verses of the Vāmakeśvarīmata and then show how early commentators of this text struggled

with interpreting this concept. In the common usage, viṣa of course means “poison.” In verse

1.54 destroying poisons is referred to as one of the benefits granted by the Śrīcakra. Similarly, in

verse 2.44 one of the benefits of the yantra sādhana is described as being able to counteract the

effects of poisons by merely a glance. However, as tattva in the Vāmakeśvarīmata, viṣa denotes

% 134 VM: 76.

%58
the quintessence of the śaktibīja stage of emanation, the same as mokṣa and kāma are for the

vāgbhava and kāmarāja stages. According to verse 1.167, confirmed by verse 4.18, it is the

essence of the first stage of emanation, which comes after the primordial Goddess exercises her

autonomy and manifests according to her desire. This threefold system is also maintained in the

fourth chapter, which details sādhanas utilizing all three parts of the mūlavidyā, associated with

three stages of emanation, individually. First, the text gives sādhanas for speech and eloquence

with the vāgbhava syllable, then kāma sādhanas and practices for attaining various siddhis with

the kāmajāja syllable, and, finally, viṣa sādhanas with the śaktibīja (verse 4.47). The latter aimed

at counteracting the effects of poisons and snake bites as well as gaining control over bhūtas

(ghosts), pretas (ghouls), and piśācas (goblins) (4.48–50). This section culminates with the

sādhana that uses the entire vidyā. Thus, as as a tattva, viṣa refers to knowledge of poisons,

snake bites, and control over supernatural beings. It is this suggested ability to counteract the

effects of poisons that characterizes the essential nature of benefits at this stage, just as the

benefits of eloquent speech and of amorous attractiveness are associated with the other two

stages. The order in which these practices are described in the fourth paṭala (i.e., vāgbhava,

kāma, and śakti) follows the order of emanation laid out in verses VM 4.17 and 4.18, which I

cited these earlier in this chapter when I introduced the threefold nature of the emanation of the

Goddess (see Table 1). Verse VM 1.167 changes the order to “kāma, etc., viṣa, [and] mokṣa,” but

despite this modification, the threefold structure is nevertheless maintained. Although articulated

in a cryptic and unsystematic manner, the scheme of the threefold emanation and its associated

tattvas, including viṣa, is an essential part of this tantra.

%59
 The meaning of the word viṣa in the text of the Vāmakeśvarīmata has been a cause of some

confusion for the commentators. The term viṣa is not explained clearly anywhere in the root text

and I think the meaning in which it was used in the Vāmakeśvarīmata was obscure for all three

commentators. One of the places where this confusion becomes obvious is in Śivānanda and

Vidyānanda’s commentaries on VM 1.167 ab (NṢA 1.187 ab).135 Dviveda, who edited of the

YTGM edition, which contains south Indian commentaries, opted for a reading that omits this

difficult word. His version reads kāmārthadharmamokṣāṇām, despite the occurrence of

kāmādiviṣa˚ in two of the manuscripts consulted by the editors. Another reading provided in the

critical apparatus of the YTGM edition is kāmādisukhamokṣāṇām. The change of viṣa to dharma

probably goes back to Śivānanda who records and glosses both readings. The first reading he

comments on is what must have been a much more familiar list of four puruṣārthas (aims of

man) (kāmādidharmamokṣāṇām). Śivānanda explains that the syllable ī, which is the very nature

of kāmakalā, is what grants the attainment of the four puruṣārthas, not the practice of mantra

repetition or the worship of the Śrīcakra.136 The second reading that Śivānanda quotes is

kāmādiviṣamokṣāṇām:

“kāmādiviṣamokṣāṇāṃ” iti pāṭhe kāmaḥ kāmabījam, ādir vāgbhavam, viṣamokṣaḥ

śaktibījam iti |137

135
% VM: 76, NṢA: 137–138. I am continuing to use abbreviation VM for the 1945 edition of the Vāmakeśvarīmata
with commentary by Rājānaka Jayaratha, edited by Shastri and NṢA for the 1968 edition of the Nityāṣoḍaśikārṇava
with commentaries by Śivānanda and Vidyānanda, edited by Dviveda. Where an abbreviation is followed directly by
a colon, a page number follows (as in VM: 76). Otherwise, the numbers stand for chapter and verse number,
separated by a period (e.g., VM 1.167 ab).
136
% “kāmārthadharmamokṣāṇām alayam” iti asya abhiprāya — svātmatayā bhāvitam kāmakalātmakam
īkārākṣaram eva puruṣārthacatuṣṭayasya sthānam, na tu vidyājapacakrārādhanādīni | kāmārthadharmamokṣāṇām
(NṢA: 137).
% 137 NṢA: 138.

%60
 In the reading kāmādiviṣamokṣāṇām, kāmaḥ is the kāmabīja (i.e., hrīṃ), [the word] ādi (i.e.,

first) stands for the vāgbhava syllable (i.e., aiṃ), and viṣamokṣaḥ stands for śaktibīja (sauḥ)

Śivānanda’s explanation contradicts VM 4.17 and 4.18 cited earlier, which pairs viṣa with

śaktibīja and mokṣa with vāgbhava. It is clear that Śivānanda did not know what to make of this

verse and struggled with its explanation. But instead of acknowledging that this knowledge has

been lost and was no longer available to him, he plunged right in, doing the best he could with an

obscure usage, but also providing an easier reading, which made much more sense to him from

his Vaidika perspective.

Vidyānanda also seems to find the meaning of viṣa obscure. Neither does he shy away from

making guesses. Like Śivānanda, in his commentary on NṢA 1.186138 Vidyānanda takes viṣa in

compound with mokṣa (viṣamokṣaḥ) within the larger compound in the verse, ending with

ālayaṃ (repository, abode, receptacle). First he glosses viṣaṃ as saṃsāra (i.e., mundane

existence, characterized by repeated succession of birth, life, death, and reincarnation), glossing

saṃsāra, in turn, as jananamaraṇādilakṣaṇa (characterized by births, deaths, etc.). For

Vidyānanda the sādhaka is released from saṃsāra by means of mokṣa.139 Thus viṣamokṣaḥ for

him means “liberation from poison [of saṃsāra].” However, not fully satisfied with this

explanation he provides two more, neither of which seem particularly convincing, connecting

each of them to the previous by means of conjunction athavā (or else). In the second, he explains

mokṣa as vimarśānandalakṣaṇaparāhaṃbhāvasthitir (“abiding in the state of the supreme self,

which is characterized by the bliss of referential awareness”). It is for reaching this goal of

138
% NṢA: 137–138.
% 139
“kāmādiviṣamokṣāṇām ālayam” iti | tad idam akṣaram uddhṛtam abhyas taṃ kāmakalākṣaraṃ kāmālayam |
“kāmam” iti saundaryādilakṣaṇaṃ tat sādhakāya sādhayati |“viṣamokṣaḥ” | viṣaṃ saṃsāro
jananamaraṇādilakṣaṇaḥ, tasmād enaṃ sādhakaṃ mocayati iti viṣamokṣālayam uccyate | (NṢA: 137–138.)

%61
mokṣa that a sādhaka performs his sādhana. Viṣa in this meaning refers to the obstacles that the

sādhaka encounters.140 His third gloss of viṣa is jalam, which he further explains as amṛtam

(nectar). Diving into his best and most comfortable Pratyabhijñā mode, Vidyānanda further

describes viṣa as the supreme ocean of nectar, splashing with the state of being unaffected by

dualities141 (lit. that in which [everything] tastes the same, sāmarasya) of the bliss of ānanda, in

which the sādhaka floats.142 And, finally, Vidyānanda concludes his explanation by proposing a

different reading, “kālādiviṣam,” (viṣa is kāla, etc.) which goes yet further away from the list of

tattvas.

Jayaratha does not go into detail regarding the meaning of viṣa, but he does mention that it is

one of three tattvas. E.g., in his commentary on VM 1.166 cd –167,143 Jayaratha explains that the

kāmakalā syllable shines forth in an uninterrupted way, even though in the form of three

tattvas.144 Furthermore, he interprets the word ādi in kāmādiviṣa as referring to minor siddhis

described in the second chapter.145 This explanation is supported by the structure of the tantra,

which lists minor siddhis immediately after the benefits of attraction (verses 2.31–79).

% 140
athavā vimarśānandalakṣaṇaparāhaṃbhāvasthitir mokṣaḥ | ta[m]smai sādhakāya sādhayati iti mokṣālayam |
tasya tadapekṣāyuktasya tad vighnarūpatayā kālāgnyādiśivāntatattvabhūmiṣu yo mahābhogaḥ sa evāsya viṣam
ucyate | vighnarūpeṇāgataṃ viṣarūpaṃ tad api sādhakāya prayacchati iti viṣālayam ucyate | (NṢA: 138.)
% 141 According to Professor Sanderson.
% 142
athavā viṣaṃ jalam, viṣam amṛtam iti viṣaśabdasyāmṛtaparyāyatvam asti | tadālayam amṛtālayam iti bhāvaḥ |
paramāmṛtasamudre prakāśānandasāmarasyalolībhūte enaṃ sādhakaṃ plāvayati iti yāvat | kālādiviṣamokṣāṇām
ālayam iti pāṭhāntaraṃ | tatraivaṃ yojanā - kāla-mokṣālayaṃ viṣamokṣālayaṃ cetyevamādi draṣṭavyam || (Ibid.)
143
% VM: 76.
144
% evam uktena prakāreṇa tritattvarūpātve’pi prādhānyāt kāmakalārūpam akṣaraṃ pravṛttav aviratena rūpeṇa
avabhāsamānam… (VM: 76.)
% 145
ādiśabdaś cātra dvitīyapaṭalādipratipādayiṣyamāṇakṣudrasiddhyādisaṃgrahaparatayā prakārārtha iti
vṛthāṭitaṃ vāgagocaratadarthānveṣaṇe… (Ibid.)

%62
 However, there is another meaning of viṣa that Jayaratha introduces in his commentary. It is a

yogic meaning not known to the Vāmakeśvarīmata, which serves as a good example of the

necessity to differentiate between the distinct meanings of the mūla and its commentaries. In this

meaning, viṣa refers to an energy center (ādhāra, cakra, and padma, depending on the source).

According to Jayaratha, it is located in the area of the reproductive organs, corresponding to the

later term svādhiṣṭhāna. This usage occurs in his commentary on VM 4.23–24, which describe

the visualization of Vāgīśvarī with the vāgbhava syllable. Here Jayaratha supplements his

commentary with quotes from the Netratantra and another source, unknown to me, to bring out

this meaning:

meḍhrasyādhaḥ kulo jñeyo madhye tu viṣasaṃjñakaḥ |

mūle tu śāktaḥ kathito bodhanādapravartakaḥ ||

agnisaṃjñas tataś ca …

vahner viṣasya madhye tu brahmagranthir udāhṛtaḥ |

sarvārthaśāstravettā ca kavir bhavati tadgataḥ ||146

Know that beneath the penis is kula and in the center is what is called viṣa, but at [its] root,

the śākta is said to reside, which activates the resonance of understanding, and beyond that is

what is called fire...

And what is between fire and viṣa is called Brahmagranthi. One who concentrates on that

becomes a poet and entirely conversant with [all] the śastras.

Following the two citations, Jayaratha’s commentary is as follows:

ityuktyā vahniviṣādhāradvayamadhyavartinaṃ janmādhāramūlāvasthitaṃ brahmagranthiṃ

śāktam ādhāraviśeṣaṃ viśeṣeṇa sāvaṣṭambhaṃ niḥśeṣeṇa na tu kiṃcittvena bhittvā
ullasantīṃ parāṃ madhyaśaktiṃ tattvād eva cidānandaprabodhinīṃ bodhanādapravartikāṃ
bījarūpāṃ vāgīśvarīṃ

% 146 VM: 109.

%63
 vāgīśvarī jñānaśaktir vāgbhave bījarūpiṇī |

ityuktyā jñānaśaktisphārasāroccaradvāgbhavāvibhinnasvarūpāṃ jihvāgre dīparūpiṇīṃ

tadvat jvalantīṃ dhyāyet tadekatānatayā anusandadhyād ityarthaḥ |147

The meaning of this, is that he should "meditate" on her, that is, he should concentrate on her

continuously, as a constant stream of cognition [visualizing her] as blazing up in the form of

the lamp on the tip of the tongue, her nature being not separate from the vāgbhava syllable,

which is flowing up, being uttered [internally] as the essence of the manifestation of the

jñānaśakti, in accordance with the statement:

[She is] Vāgīśvarī, the jñāna śakti, who is the embodiment of the bīja in the vāgbhava.

Vāgīśvarī in the form of the bīja is the one who activates the resonance of awareness, namely

one who awakens the bliss of consciousness, simply because she is that supreme power rising

through the central channel (parāṃ madhyaśaktiṃ, lit. “the supreme central power”), flashing

up, after having pierced totally, without a remnant, firmly, [and] not partly the

brahmagranthi, that specific ādhāra, which is the śākta [ādhāra], located at the base of the

center of generation, [and] found between the two ādhāras, called vahni and viṣa.

Śakti sadhanas are definitely in the minority in this text, compared to kāmarāja and

vāgbhava practices. It is also clear that they became even less important with the development of

the tradition after the Vāmakeśvarīmata, so that by the time when our south Indian commentators

flourished, the understanding of the sphere of viṣa tattva had already become obscure.

To sum up this chapter, my analysis demonstrates that at the early stage in the development

of the cult of Tripurasundarī, the Vāmakeśvarīmata incorporated love-magic material inherited

% 147 Ibid.

%64
from the Nityā cult, articulated a complex ritual system of the Śrīcakra, which became the most

characteristic and influential feature of the developed tradition, and set up a threefold structure of

sādhanas, corresponding to the threefold nature of the cult’s principal Goddess and the three

stages of her emanation. Kāma sādhanas vastly overshadowed all others in this text. Kāma-

related siddhis were also given the most emphasis among the desired results of worship. In

addition to the kāma aspect, the Vāgīśvarī aspect of the Goddess and her sādhanas related to

speech and eloquence were also well-developed. Although in the Vāmakeśvarīmata the tattva of

the vāgbhava stage was called mokṣa and the transcendent nature of the Goddess was fairly well

emphasized in descriptive and structurally important passages, the text did not provide sādhanas

for liberation, which reflected the nature of its ritualists at that time — sādhakas in search of

siddhis of attraction, courtly graces, and eloquence. Finally, practices connected with the śakti

stage of emanation in the Vāmakeśvarīmata included those aimed at counteracting poisons,

snake bites, and defense from supernatural beings.

In the history of classical tradition, practices for specific goals came and went, undergoing

changes in emphasis. In the later Yoginīhṛdaya, new meditative practices for yogic awareness

and liberation came to the fore and eclipsed those that aimed at mundane results. But the

underlying ritual system of the Śrīcakra, formulated in the Vāmakeśvarīmata, continued to serve

as a matrix for ritual and meditative practices, variously inflected depending on the goals of the

sādhaka, throughout the history of the tradition. Although the Vāmakeśvarīmata recorded an

early stage of the classical cult of Tripurasundarī, its ritual configuration of the Śrīcakra has been

preserved unchanged into the present time as the cornerstone of Śrīvidyā, providing a remarkable

stability to the ritual system of this tradition throughout the second millennium.

%65
 CHAPTER 4

THE YOGINĪHṚDAYA

The Yoginīhṛdaya, the second earliest extant scripture of the classical cult of Tripurasundarī,

marked the next major development in the early history of this tradition—the reinterpretation of

the mature cult in light of Kashmirian Śaivism and Pratyabhijñā philosophy. This development

meant a doctrinal reorientation on a major scale. For the first time in the history of this tradition,

Śaiva non-dualism was unequivocally articulated in its scriptures and commentaries.

The creative explosion in the non-dual Śaiva exegesis, which began toward the end of the

first millennium of the common era and continued into the first centuries of the second

millennium, is indebted in large part to the inspiration of the Kashmirian Abhinavagupta (fl. c.

975–1025 CE) and his student Kṣemarāja (fl. c. 1000–1050).148 Both Abhinavagupta and

Kṣemarāja wrote on Pratyabhijñā philosophy, continuing the legacy of Somānanda (c. 900–

950)149 and Utpaladeva (fl. c. 925–975).150 Abhinavagupta commented on Utpaladeva’s

Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā and its self-commentary, while Kṣemarāja summarized the doctrine of

this philosophical corpus in forty-one succinct and memorable verses of the Pratyabhijñāhṛdaya.

Abhinavagupta’s writing was the work of a brilliant intelligence, prodigious erudition, and

extravagant flights of fancy, dazzlingly executed. But it was the quieter genius of his student

Kṣemarāja that cemented the dominance of philosophical non-dualism in Śaiva tantra by

articulating these views succinctly, clearly, and with elegance and concision.

148
% For the discussion of the dates of Abhinavagupta and Kṣemarāja, see Sanderson 2007: 411.
149
% Sanderson 2007: 418.
% 150 Ibid. For a brief history of Pratyabhijñā, see Introduction in Torella 2002: i–xxvi. See also Ratié 2007 and 2009.

%66
 Among Abhinavagupta’s exegeses, of particular relevance to us is the Tantrāloka. In this

masterful text of monumental proportions, Abhinavagupta developed a style that reverberated

throughout the domain of Śaiva literature. As I discuss in the next chapter, Jayaratha frequently

turned to this text, which he had commented on, in his Vāmakeśvarīmatavivaraṇa. Among

Kṣemarāja’s exegetical work that has come down to us, of particular importance to the study of

reinterpretation of the cult of Tripurasundarī in light of non-dual exegesis are his commentaries

on the Netra and the Svacchanda tantras.151

The ideas of these giants of the Kashmirian commentarial tradition reshaped the landscape

of Śākta Śaiva exegesis. Their influence was felt in the centuries to come in the commentaries

produced not only in Kashmir, but also in south India and throughout the subcontinent.152 In

Abhinavagupta’s exegesis of Trika’s Mālinīvijayottara and what Alexis Sanderson described as

Kṣemarāja’s “extension” of this exegesis to the Svacchanda and the Netra tantras,153 these

authors succeeded in creating a method to approach a variety of scriptural texts. Both authors

reinterpreted their texts, infusing them with non-dualist Śaiva interpretations based on the

Krama-influenced Trika and Pratyabhijñā. Jayaratha’s commentary on the Vāmakeśvarīmata was

a similar undertaking—a creative non-dualist reinterpretation of a ritual text that was neither

dualistic nor non-dualistic in itself. As I discuss in the next chapter, Jayaratha backed up his

assertions by frequent citations from Śaiva tantras, Pratyabhijñā philosophical texts, and

commentaries of earlier exegetes, both from within the cult of Tripurasundarī and outside of it.

151
% Ibid: 48.
152
% Ibid: 56–57.
% 153 Sanderson 2007: 427.

%67
The redactors of the Yoginīhṛdaya attained a similar goal of reinterpretation by grafting these

new ideas onto the ritual framework of the cult of Tripurasundarī. The new structures of the

Yoginīhṛdaya rest on the existing system of the Śrīcakra ritual and the mūla mantra, which had

already been articulated in the Vāmakeśvarīmata.154 Upon this existing framework, the redactors

of the Yoginīhṛdaya constructed a new network of yogic practices, filling them with new

meanings. So what exactly did this transformation within the cult of Tripurasundarī entail? In the

remainder of this chapter, I will demonstrate how some of the fundamental principles of

Pratyabhijñā were assimilated by the cult of Tripurasundarī and creatively adapted in the

Yoginīhṛdaya. And in the next chapter, I will discuss a similar reinterpretation of the cult of

Tripurasundarī in Jayaratha’s Vāmakeśvarīmatavivaraṇa.

André Padoux explained the meaning of the term pratyabhijñā as follows:

The term pratyabhijñā is usually translated as “recognition.” The word has been explained as
knowledge (jñāna) of an object to which one turns back (prati) and which then faces (abhi)
the knower. It is the knowledge regained of the identity of the individual self and of the world
with the Supreme Source of all.

For this school, to quote Kṣemarāja, “it is the divine Consciousness alone, self-shining
absolute free will, that flashes forth in the form of the multitudinous universe.” It is the
unique cause, the inner reality and the substratum of cosmic manifestation, which it projects
as a shining forth (ābhāsa) on itself as on a screen… The world is insubstantial—though not
illusory, for it is, in its ultimate nature, of the same stuff as consciousness, from which it has
evolved and with which it remains merged.155

Let us compare Kṣemarāja’s description of cosmic manifestation in his Pratyabhijñāhṛdaya,

which Padoux refers to above, with its articulation in the Yoginīhṛdaya. The similarity of

154
% The Śrīcakra, which is a principal ritual diagram of this tradition, was laid out in the Vāmakeśvarīmata, but not
referred to as such. The Yoginīhṛdaya calls it by this name. But the fifteen-syllabled main mantra of this tradition
was not yet referred to in the Yoginīhṛdaya as Śrīvidyā. That designation, whether used to refer to the mantra or the
overall tradition is a later development.
% 155 Padoux: 1987.

%68
expression suggests that the redactors of the Yoginīhṛdaya were not only familiar with

Pratyabhijñā ideas,156 but also with the text of the Pratyabhijñāhṛdaya:

citiḥ svatantrā viśvasiddhihetuḥ || PH 1 ||

svecchayā svabhittau viśvam unmīlayati || PH 2 ||157

Consciousness is autonomous, being the cause of the functioning of the Universe.

According to her own free will, on herself as the screen, she manifests the Universe.

cidātmabhittau viśvasya prakāśāmarśane yadā |

karoti svecchayā pūrṇavicikīrṣāsamanvitā || YH 1.56 ||158

When [the supreme radiance] is endowed with desire to completely transform by her own

will, she creates manifestation and contemplation of the Universe on the screen of the self,

which is consciousness.

Then how can human beings recognize this supreme consciousness, manifested as the world,

according to Pratyabhijñā? And, once remembered, how can a permanent awareness of the

supreme be attained? Prior to the Yoginīhṛdaya, an adept of the cult of Tripurasundarī was

focused primarily on controlling the material world. Although visualizations of inner processes

were used in the antecedent Nityā cult, their aims were mundane, not otherworldly. In the

Ciñciṇīmatasārasamuccaya, a kuṇḍalinī form of the Goddess was mentioned, but it was not

articulated in any detail and no yogic practices were prescribed. The redactors of the

Vāmakeśvarīmata included a number of metaphysical verses on the emanation of the Goddess, as

I discussed in chapter 3. In particular, VM 4.12c–16a can be interpreted on several levels,

156
% For further evidence that the Yoginīhṛdaya is indebted to the Kashmirian Śākta Śaiva non-dualism, see Padoux
2013: 12–14 and Sanderson 2012–2013: 67–68, footnote 257.
157
% Kṣemarāja 2011: 46 and 51.
% 158 YH: 67.

%69
including the description of the awakening of the kuṇḍālinī śakti on the level of the microcosm.

But extended practices connected with consciousness and awareness (bhāvanās) did not find

expression in the worship of Tripurasundarī until the composition of the Yoginīhṛdaya. In

addition to its emphasis on consciousness and awareness, the Yoginīhṛdaya stressed the supreme

non-duality (paramādvaita) of the Goddess and the universe, as well as the Goddess, guru,

cakra, mantra, and the Self.

The Śrīcakra in the Yoginīhṛdaya was viewed not only as an external ritual diagram, but a

cosmic emanation linked with cognition and speech. While the earlier Vāmakeśvarīmata

presented the levels of the Śrīcakra and the subordinate goddesses in its exposition on the

external ritual, in the Yoginīhṛdaya they were contemplated in the ritualist’s own body. Within its

descriptions of meditation and visualization practices, the text provided a template of the cosmos

and a soteriological system, highlighting a correspondence between the macrocosm and the

microcosm (of the human body), and providing instructions for elaborate visualization

techniques (bhāvanās) in which their integrated awareness could be achieved. Following

Pratyabhijñā, the redactors of the Yoginīhṛdaya articulated the necessity of divine grace

(anugraha) to achieve samāveśa (a merging with divinity). And the aim of internal visionary

practices prescribed by the Yoginīhṛdaya was to experience the merging of the adept’s awareness

with the highest consciousness while still in the body (jīvanmukti). I will not spend time

discussing specific practices here. The reader can consult for this Padoux’s translation of

Yoginīhṛdaya, which is now available in English with Padoux’s explanations drawing on

Amṛtānanda’s commentary. I will, however, examine several characteristic excerpts from the

%70
Yoginīhṛdaya, to show how Pratyabhijñā concepts were adapted by the redactors of the

Yoginīhṛdaya.

Updating the cult of Tripurasundarī with Kashmirian Śaiva conceptions, the redactors of the

Yoginīhṛdaya articulated an expressly non-dual view of reality. E.g., the passage below from the

Mantrasaṃketa159 clearly expresses a belief in the oneness of the self with the supreme divinity,

the Śrīcakra, the principal vidyā, and the guru. E.g.,

nigarbho ’pi mahādevi śivagurvātmagocaraḥ || YH 2.48 cd ||

tatprakāraṃ ca deveśi diṅmātreṇa vadāmi te |

śivagurvātmanām aikyānusandhānāt tadātmakam || YH 2.49 ||

niṣkalatvaṃ śive buddhvā tadrūpatvaṃ guror api |

tannirīkṣaṇasāmarthyād ātmanaś ca śivātmatām || YH 2.50 ||

bhāvayed bhaktinamraḥ san śaṅkonmeṣākalaṅkitaḥ |

kaulikaṃ kathayiṣyāmi cakradevatayor api || YH 2.51 |

vidyāgurvātmanām aikyaṃ … | YH 2.52 a |160

And the inner meaning, O great Goddess, concerns Śiva, guru, and the self. O Ruler of the

Gods, I am merely indicating these types because of the synthesizing awareness of the unity

of Śiva, guru, and the self. Having comprehended the undividedness of Śiva and the fact that

the guru has the same form, having the capacity to see that, one should meditate on the self

having the nature of Śiva, bowed down in devotion and unblemished by the appearance of

doubt. And I will tell you the Kaulika [meaning] of the cakra and the deity and the oneness

of the vidyā, guru, and the self…

159
% The Yoginīhṛdaya is divided into three sections, or saṃketas, on cakra, mantra, and pujā. Saṃketa in Sanskrit
means “agreement, engagement, convention, or a short explanation.” Goudriaan (1981) translated it as the “Esoteric
Meaning” and Padoux (2013) as “Encounter in the…” (cakra, etc.).
% 160 YH: 152–155.

%71
 In the beginning of its third saṃketa on pūjā, the redactors of the Yoginīhṛdaya again stressed

the place of non-dual awareness in the worship of the Goddess and prescribed the means by

which an adept must cultivate it. In this passage, the state of non-duality was likened to ambrosia

emitted by guru’s feet.

tava nityoditā pūjā tribhir bhedair vyavasthitā |

parā cāpy aparā gauri tṛtīyā ca parāparā || YH 3.2 ||

prathamādvaitabhāvasthā sarvaprasaragocarā |
dvitīyā cakrapūjā ca sadā niṣpādyate mayā || YH 3.3 ||

evaṃ jñānamaye devi tṛtīyā tu parāparā161 |

uttamā sā parā jñeyā vidhānaṃ śṛṇu sāmpratam || YH 3.4 ||

mahāpadmavanāntasthe vāgbhave gurupādukām |

āpyāyitajagadrūpāṃ paramāmṛtavarṣiṇīm || YH 3.5 ||

sañcintya paramādvaitabhāvanāmṛtaghūrṇitaḥ|
daharāntarasaṃsarpannādālokanatatparaḥ || YH 3.6 ||

vikalparūpasaṃjalpavimukho ’ntarmukhaḥ sadā |

citkalollāsadalitasaṃkocas tv atisundaraḥ || YH 3.7 ||162

mahāpadmavanāntaḥsthe ] em. : Sanderson mahāpadmavanāntasthe Ed.

Your pūjā, eternally performed, is established with three divisions: transcendent and

immanent, and the third is mixed. The domain of the first is all activity in the state of non-

duality. The second one is the cakrapūjā, which is constantly performed by me [Bhairava].

And the third one, O Goddess, which is mixed, is when [the adept] is filled with knowledge.

Transcendent is known as the highest. Listen now to its method. Having visualized in the

161
% Padoux’s reading for tu parāparā in YH 3.4 is svaprathāmayī “[pūjā] consisting of spontaneous arising of
knowledge.” In this instance, I followed tu parāparā, which is also the wording Amṛtānanda refers to in the
commentary.
% 162 YH: 191–199.

%72
 Vāgbhava [stage of speech] within the forest of the great lotus, guru’s feet nourishing the

form of the world, and pouring forth supreme nectar, having meditated, he delights in the

ambrosia of the supreme state of non-duality. Absorbed in the contemplation of nāda (pure

sound), proceeding from within the heart, turning away from the chatter of thoughts, in the

form of vikalpa, always directed inward, exceedingly beautiful, his contraction burst by the

shining forth of the power of consciousness.

Various other triads were frequently used in the Yoginīhṛdaya. Another pattern that the

redactors of this text turned to quite often was three plus a transcendent fourth. E.g., the cosmic

consciousness was described in the Yoginīhṛdaya as four-fold, manifesting as Vāmā, Jyeṣṭhā,

Raudrī, and the supreme Goddess, Ambikā (YH 1.36–40). These goddesses are familiar to us

from the Vāmakeśvarīmata (e.g., VM 4.10 and 11, discussed in the previous chapter). A new

development in the Yoginīhṛdaya was equating the four goddesses with the four levels of speech,

paśyantī, madhyamā, vaikharī, and parā vāc, concepts inherited from the later Pratyabhijñā,

which drew on Bhartṛhari and the philosophy of the Sanskrit grammarians.163 Another innovation

in the Yoginīhṛdaya consisted of drawing a correspondence with yet another triad of utmost

importance for Pratyabhijñā — the cognizer, object of cognition, and cognition itself. For

example, this triad was used to describe the descent (avatāra) of the Śrīcakra and the

manifestation of the three goddesses from the undifferentiated consciousness of the bindu.

etaccakrāvatāraṃ tu kathayāmi tavānaghe |

yadā sā paramā śaktiḥ svecchayā viśvarūpiṇī || YH 1.9 ||

sphurattām ātmanaḥ paśyet tadā cakrasya sambhavaḥ |

163
% For the conceptions of speech of the Sanskrit Grammarians, see Bhartṛhari and Iyer 1965, Iyer 1969, and Coward
and Raja 1990.

%73
 śūnyākārād visargāntād bindoḥ praspandasaṃvidaḥ || YH 1.10 ||

prakāśaparamārthatvāt sphurattālaharīyutāt |
prasṛtaṃ viśvalaharīsthānaṃ mātṛtrayātmakam || YH 1.11 ||

baindavaṃ cakram etasya trirūpatvaṃ punar bhavet |

dharmādharmau tathātmāno mātṛmeyau tathā pramā || YH 1.12 ||164

And I [will] tell you, O faultless one, of the descent of this cakra. When this highest śakti in

the form of the universe, through her own free would perceive the vibration of [her] self, then

the cakra appears from the void of “a” ending in visarga, from the bindu, the consciousness

that is vibration, joined with the trembling wave of vibration because it is the real object of

the manifesting cognition, the Baindava cakra, the abode of the waves of the universe, which

has the nature of the three mothers, issued forth. And this [cakra] is of a three-fold nature of

dharma, adharma, and the self, and also of the cognizer, of the object of cognition, and of

cognition.

The description of the cosmic emanation of the Śrīcakra in the order of creation (from bindu

to the outer enclosure) is followed by instructions for a complex meditative procedure, in which

an adept mentally transposes parts of the Śrīcakra onto his yogic body (in the order of

dissolution, from the outer enclosure to the bindu). Yoginīhṛdaya prescribed visualizing the

Śrīcakra within the adept’s body by installing its nine subcakras in the padmas (lit. lotuses, i.e.,

subtle energy centers of this system, similar to the better-known system of cakras). The direction

of visualization was upwards, going from more gross to progressively more subtle energy

centers.

% 164 YH: 14–20.

%74
 The second stage of this bhāvanā followed the same process augmented with an even more

complex “aural” meditation, involving the bīja hrīṃ visualized at different degrees of subtlety.165

In this bhāvanā (verses 1.25–35),166 an aural meditation was added for the adept to cultivate an

awareness of progressively more subtle vibration of this syllable in each padma. At the end of

this set of verses (in 1.35),167 the adept is guided to reach the mahābindu, in which everything is

hidden in its potentiality, but before manifestation. The mahābindu, located at the very top of the

ladder of padmas, is beyond space and time and consists of pure undifferentiated bliss. From

there, the sādhaka visualized the self as the manifestation of Ambikā as the supreme word

(vāk).168

Descriptions of bhāvanās occupy a significant part of the first chapter in the Yoginīhṛdaya.

However, here, as well as throughout the rest of the text, detailed instructions for visualizations

are punctuated by metaphysics. Verses 1.36–49,169 which immediately follow the procedures for

the bhāvanās discussed above, describe the sequential manifestation of the universe as a cosmic

process developing along the pattern of the Śrīcakra, providing a larger context for the earlier

visualizations. Building upon the existing sets of correspondences, i.e., Vāmā, Jyeṣṭhā, Raudrī,

and Ambikā, mentioned earlier, and the four levels of speech (paśyantī, madhyamā, vaikharī, and

parā vāc), icchā, jñanā, and kriyā śaktis (for every stage except parā vāk), the four weapons of

% 165 For a detailed explanation, see Padoux 2013: 35–37.

% 166 YH: 23–48.
167
% YH: 47–48.
168
% Ibid.
% 169 YH: 48–58.

%75
the Goddess, and the four primary pīṭhas (seats of the Goddess) are now correlated with the

existing sets.

deśakālān avacchinnaṃ tadūrdhve paramaṃ mahat |

nisargasundaraṃ tat tu parānandavighūrṇitam || YH 1.35 ||

ātmanaḥ sphuraṇaṃ paśyed yadā sā paramā kalā |

ambikārūpam āpannā parā vāk samudīritā || YH 1.36 ||

bījabhāvasthitaṃ viśvaṃ sphuṭīkartuṃ yadonmukhī |

vāmā viśvasya vamanād aṅkuśākāratāṃ gatā || YH 1.37 ||

icchāśaktis tadā seyaṃ paśyantī vapuṣā sthitā |

jñānaśaktis tathā jyeṣṭhā madhyamā vāg udīritā || YH 1.38 ||

ṛjurekhāmayī viśvasthitau prathitavigrahā |

tatsaṃhṛtidaśāyāṃ tu baindavaṃ rūpam āsthitā || YH 1.39 ||

pratyāvṛttikrameṇaivaṃ śṛṅgāṭavapur ujjvalā |

kriyāśaktis tu raudrīyaṃ vaikharī viśvavigrahā || YH 1.40 ||

bhāsanād viśvarūpasya svarūpe bāhyato'pi ca |

etāś catastraḥ śaktyas tu kā pū jā o iti kramāt || YH 1.41 ||170

Above that [unmanī] is the supreme and great [mahābindu], which transcends space and

time, naturally beautiful and overflowing with supreme bliss. When that supreme kalā sees

the throbbing effulgence of the self, she assumes the aspect of Ambikā, which is called parā

vāk (supreme speech). When she looks up to manifest the entire universe, which abides in the

seed-state, she is Vāmā because she emits the world (vamanāt), having become the goad.

And she is Icchāśakti abiding in the form of Paśyantī. Likewise, as Jñānaśakti she is called

madhyamā vāg (the intermediate form of speech). When she sustains the world, her form

extends in a straight line. But in the stage of dissolution, she attains the form of the bindu.

% 170 YH: 47–51.

%76
 When she proceeds back, luminous, her body — a triangle, she is Kriyāśakti. As Raudrī she

is vaikharī (the articulated speech), embodied as the universe. Because she manifests the

Universe within herself and externally, these four śaktis are in sequence as kā pū jā o.171

The image of the sprout (aṅkura) of undifferentiated consciousness manifesting as a triad is

familiar to us from the Ciñciṇīmatasārasamuccaya of the antecedent cult (e.g., CMSS 132 and

also 102, 111, 147, see chapter 2) and from the VM 4.9–10, translated in the previous chapter 3

of this dissertation.

In the Yoginīhṛdaya, the goal of all of these visualizations and practices was to guide the

adept toward an intuitive spontaneous awareness of the supreme consciousness. As a result of

such awareness, the adept was meant to attain jīvanmukti, liberation while still in the body,

another crucial concept inherited from Pratyabhijñā. In the beginning of the saṃketas in the

Yoginīhṛdaya, two out of three named jīvanmukti as the highest goal. E.g., at the end of the first

saṃketa, following the exposition on Śrīcakra:

evam eṣa mahācakrasaṅketaḥ parameśvari |

kathitas tripurādevyā jīvanmuktipravartakaḥ || YH 1.86 ||172

In this way the mahācakrasaṅketaḥ (the great esoteric meaning of the cakra), which grants
jīvanmukti, has been told by Tripurādevī, O Parameśvari.

Similarly, in the beginning of the third saṃketa:

pūjāsaṅketam adhunā kathayāmi tavānaghe |

yasya prabodhamātreṇa jīvanmuktaḥ pramodate || YH 3.1 ||173

171
% Kāmarūpa (Assam), Pūrṇagiri (West-Central Deccan Plateau/Sahya mountains), Jālandhara (Kangra valley in the
Himalayas), and Oḍḍiyāna (Swat valley, west-north-west of Kashmir) (Sanderson 2007: 255, 299).
172
% YH: 91.
% 173 YH: 191.

%77
 I will tell you the pūjāsaṅketa, O faultless one.
Its (mere) knowledge delights the liberated in life (jivanmuktaḥ).

And as a result of the mantra practice in the second saṃketa, the adept was expected to

identify with Śiva, Lord of the cakra of heroes. By the cakra of heroes were meant the Kaula

adepts who have attained their highest goal. Thus, even though jīvanmukti was not mentioned

here directly, liberation was certainly implied in identification with Śiva, the Lord of all liberated

yogis.

mantrasaṅketakaṃ divyam adhunā kathyāmi te |

yadvettā tripurākāro vīracakreśvaro bhavet || YH 2.1 ||174

I will tell you now the divine mantrasaṅketa. He who knows that takes on the form of
Tripurā and becomes the Lord of the cakra of heroes.

The Yoginīhṛdaya revitalized the cult of the Goddess Tripurasundarī in a way that appealed to

its new, sophisticated, and philosophically-inclined audience. From a collection of prayogas,

practices aimed at manipulating the world of the ritualist on the mundane level, the cult adapted

to encompass a well-developed array of soteriological practices. The redactors of the

Yoginīhṛdaya greatly extended the breadth of available resources within the tradition. They

added yogic practices, visualizations, and aural meditations etc. based on the existing structure of

the Śrīcakra, which could now be mentally superimposed onto the yogic body of the practitioner.

In addition, the Yoginīhṛdaya reinterpreted existing metaphysics of the cult of Tripurasundarī by

enhancing them with Pratyabhijñā conceptions of cognition and ideas adapted from non-dual

Śaivism. The new array of practices and vastly enhanced metaphysics did not replace, but

enriched the existing ritual system. As a result, the cult of Tripurasundarī now boasted not only a

% 174 YH: 92.

%78
visually stunning and complex ritual configuration of the Śrīcakra, seen as uniquely powerful,

but also a tremendous range of yogic practices, enhanced with sophisticated doctrinal

conceptions.

The Yoginīhṛdaya marked a turning point in the course of the mature tradition. Thirteenth-

and fourteenth-century commentators on the Vāmakeśvarīmata and the Yoginīhṛdaya continued

to elevate this ritual tradition, establishing additional linkages and connections with the

Kashmirian non-dual exegetical tradition and, later on, with the Vedic and Upaniṣadic corpus.

From an obscure cult with humble origins in love magic, the cult of Tripurasundarī has

developed into a doctrinally and ritually sophisticated tradition with aspirations to a place of

grandeur in the hierarchy of tantric Śaiva systems.

%79
 CHAPTER 5

RENEWAL THROUGH ELABORATION

In this chapter, I discuss a thirteenth-century commentary by Kashmirian Rājānaka Jayaratha

on the Vāmakeśvarīmata, the earliest extant tantra on the worship of the Goddess

Tripurasundarī. I begin by reading in the “fringes,” places in the text that often get overlooked,

by analyzing Jayaratha’s introductory verses on the Vāmakeśvarīmata.175 I continue by analyzing

in detail Jayaratha’s comments on VM 1.1 as one of the most elaborate and detailed, but also a

characteristic section of his commentary. Here I pay particular attention to his use of citations

and what they could tell us about his hierarchy of texts. These citations also preserve valuable

information about texts that are no longer extant. I conclude by looking at Jayaratha’s passionate

engagement with previous commentaries on the Vāmakeśvarīmata. In the next chapter, I will

continue the task of reading on the “fringes,” investigating Jayaratha’s closing verses on the

Tantrāloka and proceeding to south Indian commentaries on the Vāmakeśvarīmata.

In introductory verses of the Vivaraṇa, Jayaratha’s persona is that of an unquestionable

authority, someone whose explanations are erudite and precise, but also a vicious critic of what

he sees as mistakes in the interpretation of ritual, who cannot bear any fuzzy thinking or loose

metaphors on the part of other commentators on the Vāmakeśvarīmata. Explication is one of the

key activities the author undertook in the Vivaraṇa, providing an explanation of the root text,

expanding cryptic passages, and glossing difficult terms. However, Jayaratha’s exegesis went

beyond explication of the original meaning. Jayaratha’s commentary reinterpreted the root text

by making it consistent with the non-dual Śaiva ideas and the ritual as it was practiced in his

% 175 See Appendix E for Jayaratha’s opening and closing verses.

%80
lineage in the thirteenth-century Kashmir, without ever making the changes explicit. Jayaratha’s

three opening verses at the beginning of his commentary, in addition to serving as a benediction,

point out some of the additional work that he meant for his commentary to accomplish.

Our commentator opens his Vāmakeśvarīmatavivaraṇa with a verse invoking the principal

Goddess, whose nine-fold nature is embodied in the Śrīcakra and the Cakreśvarīs, goddesses

who preside over each subcakra within the nine levels of the Śrīcakra. The verse asserts the

intimate connection of Cakreśvarīs with phonemes and their role in the manifestation of the

world and removal of impurities. The names of Cakreśvarīs as well as names for each subcakra

were not listed in the Vāmakeśvarīmata and appeared in the Yoginīhṛdaya for the first time. The

second maṅgala verse in anuṣṭubh pays obeisance to the gurus of Jayaratha’s ritual lineage,

whom he described as “abounding in the nectar of knowledge of the supreme non-duality.” And

the final, third, verse proclaims Jayaratha’s goal of illuminating the Vāmakeśvarīmata in order to

remove the ignorance resulting from falsehoods created by others.

svasvāmibhāvaparijṛmbhaṇasāracakracakreśvarīmayatayā navadhā svarūpam |

ābhāsayanty aghanude tripurāstu sarvasarvātmakatvakalanena nijākṣarāṇām || VM 1 ||

jayanti paramādvaitavijñānāmṛtanirbharāḥ |
pūrve śrīdīpakācāryapramukhā guravo mama || VM 2 ||

parakṛtakukalpanāmayatimirāndhyāpohanāya manāk |
śrīvāmakeśvarīmatam uddyotayituṃ mamodyamo ’dhyāyam || VM 3 ||176

dīpakācāryapramukhā em. Sanderson : dīpikācāryapramukhā Ed.

May Tripurā remove [our] impurities, manifesting her innate nature, which is ninefold,

because it contains the cakra and the Cakreśvarīs [goddesses presiding over each level of the

% 176 VM: 1.

%81
 Śrīcakra], which are the essence of the expansion of manifestation of the relation of master

and depenent by constructing her innate syllables so that each consists of all. Glory to all the

earlier gurus, led by Dīpakācārya, abounding in the nectar of discerning the supreme non-

duality. Today I undertake to illuminate Śrīvāmakeśvarīmata, in order to remove some of the

blindness of darkness, produced by false fabrications made by others.

Despite this seemingly formulaic form of appeal for benediction to Jayaratha’s personal deity

and his guru lineage for the undertaking of this commentary and the rather trite-sounding

metaphors, a harder look at these verses reveals valuable insights about the author’s ritual

tradition, his goals for this commentary, his method and statement of purpose, and a declaration

of eligibility to comment on this text as a student of his learned gurus. The first verse firmly

situates the text within the ritual tradition of the cult of Tripurasundarī, naming elements of its

ritual system, i.e., the principal Goddess and her retinue in the Śrīcakra. The second verse

mentions Jayaratha’s guru-lineage and its connection with Śaiva non-dualism, the latter serving

as the exegetical framework for Jayaratha’s commentary, where it goes beyond clarification of

ritual specifics. And the third verse indicates Jayaratha’s commitment to provide a detailed

discussion of incorrect interpretations by other commentators, which he carries out in significant

detail and with great passion, as we will see further in this chapter. In the

Vāmakeśvarīmatavivaraṇa, Jayaratha builds upon previous interpretations provided by teachers

in his lineage, whom he frequently cites, and reinterprets the Vāmakeśvarīmata, which is neither

explicitly dualistic nor non-dualistic and which takes limited interest in supra-mundane matters,

in light of the Śaiva non-dualism. Although written in the form of benediction, Jayaratha’s

opening verses to the Vāmakeśvarīmatavivaraṇa, served as a kind of map — a manifesto of

%82
purpose of what Jayaratha skillfully accomplished in his commentary: explicating ritual details,

declaration of eligibility, “recovery” of non-dualist Śaivism in the Vāmakeśvarīmata, which was

neither dualistic nor non-dualistic in itself, and correcting what he believed to be mistakes in

interpretation in the previous commentaries.

Jayaratha’s Vivaraṇa is a learned work of exegetical brilliancy, drawing upon venerated Śaiva

and Śākta-Śaiva tantras, a rich scholarly tradition of non-dual Śaivism, and a vibrant

commentarial discourse within the cult of the Goddess Tripurasundarī. While Rasamahodadhi, a

text by a known author elevated to the status of āgama, was the text that Jayaratha turned to most

often for backing up his views on the more technical matters and the established ritual practices

within his lineage, the Śaiva Svacchanda and the Trika’s Mālinīviyaya were used to situate the

text within the universe of Śaiva tantras. And passages of the commentary that infused the ritual

tradition of the Vāmakeśvarīmata with non-dual Śaiva exegesis most commonly drew on

Utpaladeva’s Īśvarapratyabhijñā and Abhinavagupta’s Tantrāloka.

Jayaratha frequently began his discussion of a verse from the root tantra in a more general

way by referring to Śaiva tantras and exegesis he considered authoritative. Most common among

these were the venerated Svacchandatantra (sixth–seventh centuries CE) and the Trika’s

Mālinīvijayottara (probably no later than the eight century CE). The Svacchandatantra was an

early text of the Bhairava corpus, which came to be known collectively as Mantrapīṭha, in which

Svacchandabhairava was worshiped together with his consort Aghoreśvarī.177 The worship of

Śiva with a consort was a new development from the dualist and more exoteric Śaiva Siddhānta

tantric tradition that took no interest in feminine divinity. And the Mālinīvijayottara, an

% 177 Sanderson 2012–13: 32, 39.

%83
important text for Kashmirian Śaivism, was one of the main tantras of Trika, a cult that taught an

assimilation of the power of a triad of goddesses. Abhinavagupta based three of his works on the

Mālinīvijayottara, reinterpreting its doctrine in line with his own non-dualism. And

Abhinavagupta’s Tantrāloka, on which Jayaratha also wrote a commentary, is one of the most

cited texts with known authors in the Vāmakeśvarīmatavivaraṇa. Jayaratha also cited other texts

from Kashmirian Śaiva exegesis and Pratyabhijñā philosophy, particularly Utpaladeva’s

Īśvarapratyabhijñā.

For clarification of ritual matters, Jayaratha usually turned to the Rasamahodadhi, other

verses from the Vāmakeśvarīmata, and occasionally to the Yoginīhṛdaya or a similar source178 to

supplement the ones he was commenting on. The Rasamahodadhi, a text on the worship of

Tripurasundarī, is attributed to Īśvaraśiva, the propagator of this tradition in Kashmir, according

to Jayaratha. In addition, to clarify technical points Jayaratha cited teachings of his guru and

paramaguru for this ritual tradition. In these instances, he frequently turned to alternative

interpretations by previous commentators, most of which he denounced. This criticism of other

commentaries on the Vāmakeśvarīmata provides a unique view into the ritual world of this

tradition in Kashmir. None of the older commentaries Jayaratha cited were known to or

acknowledged by south Indian exegetes, nor did they come down to the present time. Thus

Jayaratha’s citations provide the only source of information on these texts, evidencing a lively

commentarial tradition of the cult of Tripurasundarī, which existed prior to the thirteenth century

in Kashmir.

% 178 E.g., VM: 64 (YH 3.117 cd – 118 ab), VM: 136 (YH 2.15 cd – 16 ab).

%84
Vāmakeśvarīmata 1.1 — the Mirror of Vivaraṇa

The length of Jayaratha’s comments on the verses of the Vāmakeśvarīmata was unevenly

distributed. The commentator gave the first paṭala, which introduced and described

Tripurasundarī and laid out the configuration of deities in the Śrīcakra, more space then the

following four combined. And Jayaratha’s comments on the very first lines of the tantra

comprised one of the longest sections of commentary in his work. The beginning of the

commentary is a place to impress, so it is not surprising that VM 1.1 is the longest and most

carefully laid out among Jayaratha’s comments on a single verse. Therefore, I will take some

time to analyze this section here in detail, because it presents a characteristic example of

Jayaratha’s method and because its pattern of citations is characteristic for the rest of the

commentary.

Here, as elsewhere in the text, Jayaratha starts out with the most general manifesto-like

citations on the nature of the Goddess, establishing his scriptural and exegetical allegiances.

Then he proceeds to a more detailed and technical discussion, which includes detailed criticism

of previous commentaries on the Vāmakeśvarīmata. The first verse of the mūla praises the

Goddess venerated in this tantra as one who is intimately connected with mantras, the Alphabet

Goddess Mātṛkā, who embodies the śakti pīṭhas (seats of the Goddess), and, in a somewhat

cryptic style, the embodiment of Gaṇeśas and various celestial bodies:

gaṇeśagrahanakṣatrayoginīrāśirūpiṇīm |
devīṃ mantramayīṃ naumi mātṛkāṃ pīṭharūpiṇīm || VM 1.1 ||179

I praise the Goddess Mātṛkā, consisting of mantras, embodying the śakti pīṭhas [as well as]

Gaṇeśas, planets, asterisms, yoginīs, [and] the signs of the zodiac.

% 179 VM: 1.

%85
 As is common for many commentators who like to dazzle the reader from the start, Jayaratha

shows off his mastery, displaying an impressive array of texts at his command, most of which he

continues to draw upon throughout this work. He begins with quotations from the tantras. The

first one is pāda b from Svacchanda 11.199, stating that “there is no knowledge (vidyā) higher

than Mātṛkā (the alphabet Goddess).”180 Judit Törzsök in her article discussing the appearance of

the Goddess Mātṛkā in the early Śaiva tantras writes that the exegetes describe this goddess as

“the matrix or source (yoni), i.e., the source of all mantras, all śāstras, and in general, of

everything that is made of words” and also “paraphrase her name with synonyms for Mother,

mātṛ.”181 Jayaratha’s citation picks up on the mention of Mātṛkā in the mūla in a similar fashion.

And the word vidyā in this citation, which also has the meaning of mantra of a feminine deity,

echoes the description of the Goddess in VM 1.1 as “consisting of mantras” (mantramayīṃ).

Jayaratha’s brief comment on this quotation states that the Goddess as Mātṛkā is unknown to

paśus182 (those uninitiated humans, who, like cattle, are preoccupied with material existence),

mirroring Kṣemarāja’s comment on Svacchanda 1.31.183 Jayaratha’s second citation in this

passage is from the Mālinīvijaya 3.5.184 Jayaratha concludes this passage with quotations from

tantras by citing the description of Tripurasundarī in the beginning of the fourth chapter of the

Vāmakeśvarīmata itself. This passage eulogizes her unmanifested form and her eventual

emanation in three stages. This third citation (VM 4.4) describes Tripurā as the supreme Śakti,

% 180 SvT 11.199: na vidyā mātṛkāparā. VM: 1.

% 181 Törzsök 2009: 1.
182
% iti paśubhir ajñātasvarūpāṃ bhagavatīṃ mātṛkām VM: 1.
183
% Kṣemarāja on SvT 1.31: mātṛkāṃ paśūnām ajñātāṃ viśvamātaraṃ sarvamantratantrajananī.
% 184 yā sā śaktir jagaddhātuḥ kathitā samavāyinī | (MāVi 3.5 in VM: 1).

%86
the primordial Goddess, and the matrix for the origin of the three worlds, with their subtle and

gross subdivisions.185

So what is the purpose of including in the beginning of the commentary these fairly general

quotations from tantras? While the three citations above ostensibly expand on the meaninvg of

Mātṛkā and mantramayīṃ in the mūla, it seems that their primary role is to assert that the

Vāmakeśvarīmata must be understood in line with Śaiva tantras as understood by Kṣemarāja and

Abhinavagupta. Jayaratha, proceeding from the venerated Śaiva Svacchanda to Trika’s

Mālinīvijaya to the Vāmakeśvarīmata, sets out his scriptural hierarchy and affirms his affiliation

as a Śaiva Śākta, his double identity as a non-dual Śaiva exegete and an adept of the cult of

Tripurasundarī.

Having first drawn on citations from scriptures, Jayaratha turns next to the

Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā of Utpaladeva (fl. c. 925–975),186 the text which lent its name to the

Pratyabhijñā school. Īśvarapratyabhijñā is one of the most frequently cited exegetical texts in

Jayaratha’s commentary. The citation is introduced as written “by the guru” (gurubhir), the plural

number in Sanskrit serving as an honorific. Further in the text, Jayaratha refers to

Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā and Utpalasvotrāvalī187 as pronounced by the great guru

(mahāgurūdita), further highlighting the special significance of Utpaladeva’s work for

Jayaratha’s exegetical heritage.

185
% tripurā paramā śaktir ādyā jātāditaḥ priye |
sthūlasūkṣmavibhāgena trailokyotpattimātṛkā || VM 4.4 || (VM: 2.)
186
% Sanderson 2007: 418.
% 187 VM: 3 and 6.

%87
 citiḥ pratyavamarśātmā parā vāk svarasoditā |
svātantryam etan mukhyaṃ tad aiśvaryaṃ paramātmanaḥ ||

sā sphurattā mahāsattā deśakālāviśeṣiṇī |

saiṣā sāratayā proktā hṛdayaṃ parameṣṭhinaḥ || ĪP 1.5.13–14 ||188

Consciousness, having the nature of reflective awareness, is the Supreme Speech, which

arises freely. Its free will is foremost, the supremacy of the supreme self.

She is pulsation, the absolute being, undifferentiated by space and time. She is pronounced to

be the quintessence of the Supreme Lord, being his very heart.

With these two verses from Utpaladeva’s masterwork, Jayaratha deftly brings the

Pratyabhijñā world-view and terminology into his interpretation of a Tripurā tantra. On the

surface, the citation appears to expound upon mantramayīṃ mātṛkāṃ in VM 1.1, but its deeper

work is recasting the Goddess of the Vāmakeśvarīmata in quintessential Pratyabhijñā terms. The

Goddess here is described as parā vāk (the fourth transcendent level of the emanation of speech,

which Somadeva, Utpaladeva’s guru and the founder of the Pratyabhijñā school, added to the

three-fold system of the Grammarians). The Goddess is also the reflective awareness

(pratyavamarśātmā) and possesses her own free will (svātantryam). While the Vāmakeśvarīmata

itself is devoid of Pratyabhijñā ideas and terminology, Jayaratha’s exegesis follows in the

footsteps of Abhinavagupta and Kṣemarāja, consistently reinterpreting the mūla through the lens

of the Trika-influenced, Pratyabhijñā-dominated non-dualist Śaiva conceptions of his time.

Jayaratha completes this section of the commentary on the Vāmakeśvarīmata 1.1, which

establishes his doctrinal alliances and his eligibility to comment on this text, with two citations

% 188 VM: 3.

%88
pertaining to the connection of Śiva and Śakti. First he gives a quarter verse from an unknown

source, or perhaps a slight paraphrase of Bṛhadāranyaka189:

… ekākī na ramāmy aham |190

… alone I do not delight …

The idea of pairing is furthermore strengthened by the quotation from the Tantrāloka

3.100cd–101ab, which asserts the inseparability of Śiva and Śakti.

athāsyad ekarūpeṇa vapuṣā cen maheśvaraḥ || TĀ 3.100 ||

maheśvaratvaṃ saṃvittvaṃ tad atyakṣyad ghaṭādivat | TĀ 3.101 ab |191

And if Maheśvara were to assume a single bodily form, he would abandon his capacity for

sovereignty and consciousness like a pot [i.e., an inert object].

If we view Jayaratha’s commentary on VM 1.1 as a representation of his Śākta Śaiva

allegiances as well as a statement of his qualifications, it is significant to note that the first

among these two citations on divine union has been quoted by Jayaratha in his commentary on

1.86 of Abhinavagupta’s Tantrāloka.192 And it is followed by his citation from Tantrāloka itself,

another text by a named author that is most frequently quoted throughout his commentary. The

importance of Tantrāloka for non-dual Śaiva exegesis by the time of Jayaratha cannot be

overestimated and for Jayaratha to quote Tantrāloka is not only to establish his own affiliation as

a non-dual Śaiva, but to claim that the Vāmakeśvarīmata, which focuses on the worship of

Tripurasundarī, belongs to a broader Śaiva tradition. And the fact that Jayaratha himself had

% 189 ekākī na ramate; alone he does not delight (BṛĀ1.4.3, 1958: 185).
190
% VM: 2.
191
% VM: 2.
% 192 TĀV, v. 1. 108–110.

%89
already commented on this prodigious and authoritative text serves to establish his credentials as

a respected commentator, who is highly eligible to comment on the Vāmakeśvarīmata.193

Following this broad exposition on the nature of the Goddess, Jayaratha proceeds to the more

technical discussion to elucidate the meaning of the rest of the mūla verse. First, he glosses the

bahuvrīhi compound, which takes up pādas a and b of VM 1.1. “[I worship] her, who is the

embodiment of Gaṇeśas, planets, asterisms, yoginīs, and the signs of the

zodiac” (gaṇeśagrahanakṣatrayoginīrāśirūpiṇīm),194 by referring to the aphoristic sūtra text by

Naravāhanadatta, whose name he prefaces with an honorific śrīman. Naravāhanadatta’s citation

follows the order of the VM 1.1:

akacaṭatapayaśagaṇeśagrahādhīśanakṣatrarāśīśvarīyoginīvācyagarbhā195

She contains those who are referred to as lords who are the planets, [i.e.] Gaṇeśas, who are,

associated with the groups of phonemes, [beginning with] a, ka, ca, ṭa, ta, pa, ya, and śa, and

the yoginīs, who preside over asterisms and the signs of the zodiac.

According to this citation, Gaṇeśas (lords of the gaṇas) are the planets, since the latter rule

over the classes (gaṇas) of phonemes. Each gaṇa is represented in the compound with its first

phoneme, i.e., vowels (a), gutturals (ka), palatals (ca), retroflex (ṭa), dentals (ta), labials (pa),

semivowels (ya), and sibilants (śa). The yoginīs are said to rule asterisms and the signs of the

zodiac. And the Goddess encompasses both the lords of the gaṇas and the yoginīs.

193
% My conclusion that Jayaratha’s commentary on TĀ preceded VM stems from the fact that in the closing verses on
TĀV, which I discuss in the next chapter, the author does not mention his commentary on the VM. Since this set of
verses is highly detailed in listing accomplishments of Jayaratha and his patrilineal ancestors, I suggest that the VM
postdates the TĀV. Otherwise, Jayaratha, who includes other details pertaining to his family’s devotion to
Tripurasundarī, would certainly have mentioned it.
194
% VM: 1.
% 195 VM: 2.

%90
Naravāhanadatta is one of the few authors specifically mentioned here by name, perhaps

suggesting that Jayaratha did not expect his readers to be familiar with his work, but found him

important enough to include. Naravāhanadatta’s is also one of very few citations by the previous

commentators which Jayaratha mentions favorably. As I will show in this chapter, this positive

presentation is quite unlike Jayaratha’s customary modus operandi with regards to commentators

outside of his lineage, which is to criticize and ridicule.

The sources of the next two quotations in this passage are unknown to us. Both of them are in

verse and dive further into astrological manifestations of the Goddess. The first identifies the

association of each of the eight groups of phonemes, in order, with the six planets (the Sun,

Mars, Jupiter, Mercury, Venus, Saturn, and the moon’s light and dark side governing the last two

groups)196 and the second specifies that the Sun and the Moon each govern half of the twelve

constellations forming the signs of the zodiac.197 Jayaratha’s commentary summarizing this

subsection further glosses the asterisms (nakṣatras) as the lords of the gaṇas and the yoginīs as

the lunar days (tithis),198 an association prevalent in the cult of Tripurasundarī because of the

numerological significance of the fifteen lunar days in connection with the fifteen syllables of the

mūla mantra.

196
% arkārajīvabudhaśukraśanaiścarādyā vargāḥ krameṇa kathitā grahaṣaṭkayuktāḥ |
indor mukhasya ca sitāsitapakṣayogād hlādopatāpajanakau kathitau yaśau tu || VM: 2.
The [first six] groups [of phonemes] are said to be associated with the six planets in order, beginning with Sun,
Mars, Jupiter, Mercury, Venus, Saturn, while ya and śa [groups] are said to give pleasure and pain as they are
connected with the bright and dark sides of the moon.
197
% dvādaśamaṇḍalabhagaṇas tatrārdhe siṃhato ravir nāthaḥ |
karkaṭataḥ pratilomāc chaśī tathānye ’pi taddānāt || VM: 2.
There are twelve constellations [of the zodiac]; half of them, from Leo on, is governed by the Sun. And, from [the
Sun’s generosity] in the opposite direction, from Cancer, the moon [presides].
% 198 VM: 5.

%91
 Having explained that the Goddess is embodied in the movement of celestial bodies,

Jayaratha states that as such she manifests in time, quoting Īśvarapratyabhijñākārika 2.1.3. “time

is the movement of the sun, etc.” (kālaḥ sūryādisaṃcāraḥ…) 199 But in addition to being the

embodiment of time, Jayaratha, commenting on her “embodying the śakti pīṭhas” (seats of the

Goddess) (pīṭharūpiṇīm) in the mūla, states that she is also the embodiment of place.200 Here, the

commentator once again refers to Īśvarapratyabhijñā, which organizes divine manifestations

according to temporal and spatial successions:

mūrtivaicitryato deśakramam ābhāsayaty asau |

kriyāvaicitryanirbhāsāt kālakramam apīśvaraḥ || ĪP 2.1.5 ||201

The Lord causes the spatial succession to appear through the variety of forms and also the

temporal succession through the variety of actions.

The section of the commentary on VM 1.1, which serves as transition between ĪP 2.1.5,

mentioned above, and TĀ 6.34–36,202 which Jayaratha cites next, plunges deeply into

Pratyabhijñā philosophy. In his comments, Jayaratha makes abundant use of its distinctive

vocabulary, which I underlined in the quotation below for the reader’s convenience. In his

% 199 VM: 3.
200
% pīṭhas tu mātṛkā proktā … And Mātṛkā is said to be the seat. VM: 3.
201
% VM: 3.
202
% tatra kriyābhāsanaṃ yat so ’dhvā kālākhya ucyate |
varṇamantrapadābhikhyam atrāste ’dhvatrayaṃ sphuṭam || TĀ 6.34 ||
yas tu mūrtyavabhāsāṃśaḥ sa deśādhvā nirūpyate |
kalātattvapurābhikhyam antarbhūtam iha trayam || TĀ 6.35 ||
trikadvaye ’tra pratyekaṃ sthūlaṃ sūkṣmaṃ paraṃ vapuḥ |
yato ’sti tena sarvo ’yam adhvā ṣaḍvidha ucyate || TĀ 6.36 || (VM: 3.)
There is a manifestation of action there, which is called the path [of] time. The three-fold path, described as
[consisting of] of phonemes, mantras, and words is evident here. And the manifestation of form is described as the
path of space, within which are the three kalā, tattva, and worlds (bhuvana). Here in the two [sets] of three are the
corresponding gross, subtle, and the highest forms. Therefore, in entirety they are called the sixfold path.
Note that Jayaratha’s citation of Tantrāloka in the printed edition differs slightly from the KSTS edition. E.g., in
6.36b it reads kālākhya for kālāhva and in 6.35b it reads nirūpyate for nigadyate.

%92
explanation, Jayaratha elaborates upon the two-fold nature of manifestation through space and

time, as it was outlined in ĪP 2.1.5. He explains that manifestation also includes a threefold

division into the highest (para), subtle (sūkṣma), and gross (sthūla).

itidiśā mūrtivaicitryāvabhāsanena parasūkṣmasthūlatayā kalātattvabhuvanātmanā sphurantī

deśādhvānam avabhāsayati, kriyāvaicitryanirbhāsanena api varṇamantrapadātmanā
kālādhvānam apīti ṣaḍvidhādhvamayanikhilaviśvarūpatayā sphuratīti |203

According to this view, shining forth with the manifestation of the variety of forms, which

are the highest, subtle, and gross and have the nature of kalā, tattva, and bhuvana, she

projects the path of space. Shining forth with the manifestation of the variety of actions,

which have the nature of phoneme, mantra, and word, she projects the path of time. In this

way, she projects the form of the entire world, which consists of the six-fold path.

Following the citation of TĀ 6.34–36, Jayaratha delves further into the Trika-influenced non-

dual Śaivism. This section of the commentary is an excellent example of Jayaratha reading into

the mūla text Pratyabhijñā interpretations that the redactors of the Vāmakeśvarīmata undoubtedly

did not intend. I will show other examples of this tendency later in the chapter.

etadadhiṣṭhātṛtvena api iyam eva avabhāsate ity āha “mantramayīm” iti | mantraśabdena ca
atra sapta api śivādayaḥ sakalāntāḥ pramātāra upalakṣyante iti
nikhilarudrakṣetrajñādimayatayā api ābhāsamānām ityarthaḥ | tad evaṃ
pramātṛprameyādikṣobhamayatve ’pi apracyutaprācyasvarūpaiva iyam iti uktaṃ “devīm” iti
evam api parapramātrekarūpasvaprakāśa-parasaṃvid ātmanaiva dyotamānāṃ “naumi”
dehādimitapramātṛtāguṇībhāvena citpramātṛtayā samāviśāmīty arthaḥ |204

203
% VM: 4.
% 204 VM: 4.

%93
 Also he says “consisting of mantras”,205 since she manifests, having that authority. By the

word mantra here are implied seven cognizers from Śiva to sakala.206 And she manifests all

the Rudras and knowers of the field, etc. That is the meaning. She is called the “Goddess”

because her own form remains unshaken amidst the disturbances of cognizers (pramātṛ-) and

objects of cognition (prameya-, etc.) And “I bow” to that “shining” self, which is the supreme

consciousness (parasaṃvid), illuminating (i.e., manifesting) of her own accord (svaprakāśa-)

being one with the supreme cognizer (parapramātṛ); [“I bow” (“naumi”) means] I enter into

(samāviśāmi) by means of being a cognizer, which is consciousness (citpramātṛtayā), to

which delimited awareness, such as awareness at the level of the body, etc. is subordinate

(dehādimitapramātṛtāguṇībhāvena).

Having repainted the mūla verse using the palette of non-dual Pratyabhijñā and Trika,

Jayaratha proceeds to demolish rival interpretations at great length and with vicious enjoyment.

He is utterly disgusted with the unknown to us author of the next commentary he cites. In

particular, it is that commentator’s fanciful interpretation of the list in the mūla verse as referring

to the Śrīcakra, with the syllable ga in Gaṇeśas as referring to the inner triangle of the Śrīcakra,

that attracts his ire. Jayaratha himself interprets Gaṇeśas in the mūla in plural, referring to lords

of the planets, in agreement with Naravāhanadatta cited earlier. This final section of commentary

on VM 1.1 is a superb example of Jayaratha’s sarcasm and ridicule of what he sees as an

incorrect interpretation.

205
% Here and elsewhere I am using quotations to indicate words from the mūla (i.e., the root text, the
Vāmakeśvarīmata) being glossed.
% 206
The seven pramātṛs (cognizers) according to the Mālinīvijayottaratantra are 1. sakala 2. pralayākala 3.
vijñānākala 4. mantra 5. mantreśvara 6. mantramaheśvara 7. Śiva (Vasudeva 2004: 199).

%94
 iha prakṛtasya arthasya aviśrāntatāyām upakṣepyasya arthasya abhidhānam eva tāvan na
nyāyyaṃ, tatrāpi aśabdārthaṃ kaṣṭakalpanābalopanītam asaṅgataprāyaṃ ca tad iti kaṣṭāt
kaṣṭaṃ yat gaṇeśaśabdākhyāne gakārasya tāvat tṛtīyātmakasaṃkhyeyamātrābhidhāyitve
tritvalakṣaṇasaṃkhyābhidhānābhāvāt na tryarārthapratyāyakatvam | tatrāpi
svāmipadenaiva gatārthatvāt vyartham etad upādānam | eka evahi tryaralakṣaṇaś
cakrāvayavaḥ pratipādyo vartate | sa ca etāvataiva siddha iti kim etad upādānena |207

Here, the mention of implied meaning before the main meaning has been developed is not

proper. Moreover, it is an incorrect interpretation, forcibly introduced by tortured imaginings

and unconnected with the main meaning. And going from bad to worse, is considering ga in

the word “Gaṇeśa” here as having the nature of the third [cakra], since there is nothing

described here that can be considered to have a characteristic of a triad and no proof of the

meaning of three. Moreover, this is a useless statement, which makes no sense because of the

very mention of the word indicating the lord (i.e., īśa in gaṇeśa). The portion of the cakra

which is to be discussed, characterized by the three spokes is one. That much is correct, so

why does this need to be mentioned.

Jayaratha supports his criticism by a quotation from the Rasamahodadhi, a text that is no

longer available to us. The Rasamahodadhi, which Jayaratha quotes as āgama (scripture), clearly

belonged to the cult of Tripurasundarī and covered a lot of the same ground as the

Vāmakeśvarīmata. Although this citation consists of a single śloka, elsewhere Jayaratha quotes

significant sections from this text to back up the more technical portions of his commentary on

drawing the Śrīcakra and extracting the mantras. The śloka quoted here, which is repeated in a

much longer passage later in the commentary,208 describes the structure of the Śrīcakra. In the

first two pādas, it provides a list of all the subcakras in the order customarily referred to as the

207
% VM: 4–5.
% 208 VM: 33–34.

%95
order of creation (i.e., from inside out, beginning with the bindu), and in the second line — in the

order of dissolution, from outside in. Jayaratha uses this citation, to further discredit the

interpretation of the previous commentator, since the latter interpreted ga in Gaṇeśas as three,

equating it with the inner triangle, and the Rasamahodadhi refers to the inner triangle as one.209

Continuing to disparage, in a similarly pedantic way, the correspondence drawn by previous

commentator between the text of the VM 1.1 and the Śrīcakra, Jayaratha further asserts that

nothing in the verse can account for the two ten-spoked cakras,210 as well as the fourteenth-

spoked and the sixteen-spoked ones.211 Jayaratha quotes from the Mālinīvijaya212 to further

support his rejection of this interpretation. While this author himself is prone to reading things

% 209
tatraikam aṣṭakaṃ madhye dvidaśānte caturdaśa | caturdaśa daśadvandvam aṣṭāvekaṃ maheśvari || (VM: 4.)
In the middle there is one, eight, two tens, and fourteen, O Great Goddess, there is fourteen, two tens, eight, and one.
210
% atha svāmipadena madhyamātram ucyate varṇapadena tu tryaram iti cet, na ubhayathāpi madhyāvyatirekeṇaiva
asyārthasya svayaṃ siddheḥ | nāpi akṣapatitvena ekatara-daśārāvagama astasya dikpatitvavat daśatva-lakṣaṇa-
saṃkhyābhidhāyitvābhāvāt | mana eva daśānām api akṣāṇām ekaḥ patiḥ | (VM: 4.)
asyārthasya ] em: asyarthasya Ed.
Now, if the word “lord” [i.e., eṣa] here refers to only the middle [cakra] and the “syllable” [ga] to the three-spoked
one, both of them separately cannot successfully indicate the middle one. And neither of the ten-spoked cakras are
understood as being the lord of the senses because of the absence of anything referring to ten being mentioned, like
the lords of the directions. In fact, the mind is the only lord of the ten senses.
211
% buddhīndriyagaṇapatitā manasaḥ ity api bhavataiva uktam | gaṇapatitithir api saṃkhyeyasya abhidhāyikaiva, na
tu saṃkhyāyā iti na asyā api caturdaśāravācakatvam iti uktaprāyam | gaṇayor īśārṇatayā ity anenāpi
ṣoḍaśāradvayam ucyate | na ca atra etat vivakṣitam ekasyaiva ṣoḍaśārasya iṣṭeḥ | gaṇeśaśabdaś ca kena vyāpāreṇa
enam artham abhidhatte iti tāvat bahuvaktavyatvād āstāṃ |
tatrāpi saṃkhyeyam eva avagamayati, na saṃkhyām iti punar api prakṛtārthānupapattir eveti na sākṣāt
nikhilacakrāvayavapratipādanaṃ siddhyet | kiṃ ca gaṇeśā aṣṭau, grahāś ca aṣṭau, nakṣatrāṇi ca saptaviṃśatiḥ |
kathaṃ navacakrakalāḥ | (VM: 5.)
And even you, Sir, have said that the mind is the overlord of the groups of organs of senses and perception.
Moreover, the lunar day of Gaṇapati indicates what is to be enumerated, and not a number, and neither is there a
reference to the fourteen-spoked [cakra], according to the previous statements (uktaprāyam). And the lordship over
the groups [of letters] is said [to refer to] the two sets of sixteen. It does not signify the one sixteen-spoked [cakra],
which is sought here [since there is only one sixteen-spoked cakra within the Śrīcakra]. And how can the word
gaṇeśa indicate this meaning? Enough of this, there is so much [else] to be said. Moreover, what is to be counted is
to be understood, not the counting. And also this meaning cannot be proved; he should prove his assertion of the
subcakras of the entire cakra [referred to in verse 1.1], as it is not evident. And what of eight Gaṇeśas, eight planets,
and twenty-seven asterisms. How are there nine cakras?
212
% tat tridhā taijasāt tasmān mano ’kṣeśam ajāyata || MāVi 1.31 || (VM: 4.)
From that three-fold radiance the mind caused the lord of the senses to be born.
The passage from which quote is taken refers to the existence of Śiva as the highest experient in three phases and the
half-verse quoted discusses last distinct phase of Śiva, corresponding to Sadāśiva, as “partless and with
parts” (sakala-niṣkala) (Vasudeva, 2004, 11 and 153). I corrected the numbering of the verse in the VM edition
according to Vasudeva’s.

%96
into the mūla text (such as his consistent reinterpretation of it in light of Pratyabhijñā), he takes

strong objection to the vague and mysterious symbolism and the feeble numerology being read

into the text by the previous commentators.

At the end of the commentary on VM 1.1, Jayaratha gives two more citations, consisting of

one and three verses each. Both citations are in the āryā meter and were composed by a previous

commentator whom Jayaratha vehemently criticizes. The first citation, consisting of a single

śloka, lists ten siddhis (supernatural powers).213 In a brief comment on this verse, Jayaratha

points out that the previous commentator “endeavors (utsahante) to describe ten siddhis and

mudrās and eight vidyās,” probably hinting by his choice of the verb at his faulty numerology.214

But it is the second and longer citation, consisting of three verses, that is the target of particular

ridicule by Jayaratha. And who can blame him, with the citation being a disordered jumble of

213
% aṇimā laghimā mahimeśitvavaśitve prakāmatā bhuktiḥ | icchāmokṣarasāś cehoktāḥ siddhayas tantre || VM: 5.
And the siddhis in the tantra are stated here as aṇimā (minuteness, i.e., ability to take on a minute form), laghimā
(lightness), mahimā (greatness), īśitvā (supremacy, lordship), vaśitvā (subjugation), prakāmatā (attractiveness),
bhukti (enjoyment), icchā (desire), mokṣa (liberation), and rasa (sentiment, elixir).

Note that this list expands upon the traditional list consisting of eight siddhis. Eight siddhis are mentioned in the
Vāmakeśvarīmata itself in 5.15 (aṇimādyaṣṭasiddhīśo, the Lord of eight siddhis beginning with minuteness). While
Jayaratha refers to the list of eight (e.g., VM: 15, 64 referring to YH 3.118, 73, 74, 128), he supports the addition of
mokṣasiddhi (siddhi of liberation) and rasasiddhi (siddhi of sentiment, elixir), which he associates with the ninth
cakra (VM: 73).
% 214
ityādyuktyā daśa siddhīr mudrāś ca vidyāś ca aṣṭāv abhidhātum utsahante iti | (VM: 5.)
By the statement beginning with this, he [previous commentator] endeavors to be describe ten siddhis and mudrās
and eight vidyās.

%97
vague mysticism and numerology, containing lists of deities and attributes without so much as an

explanation of how they are connected with the nine cakras.215

In response to this citation, Jayaratha unleashes a volley of ridicule, equating the “worldly

greatness” (lokamahattayā) of such writers with “everyone’s thorn in the ear” (sarveṣāṃ

karṇakaṭukam), and “half-eaten leftovers” (ardhocchiṣṭaprāyam), i.e., something useless and

impure.216

Jayaratha’s lengthy commentary on VM 1.1, carefully laid out, brilliant, and pedantic, serves

as an excellent sample of his commentary. Here Jayaratha draws on the texts that continue to be

important to him throughout this work, beginning with venerated Śaiva tantras, proceeding to

Kashmirian Śaiva and Pratyābhijñā texts with known authors, and concluding with a technical

discussion, in which he cites the Rasamahodadhi and demolishes rival interpretations. I will now

look in depth at two particular themes that came to the fore in the analysis of Jayaratha’s

commentary on VM 1.1. First, I will discuss reinterpretation of the Vāmakeśvarīmata in light of

215
% svāmitayā varṇatayā nandyāditayākṣadikpatitvena |
gaṇapatitithirūpatayā vidyeśatayā kramākramataḥ ||
gaṇayor īśārṇatayā lokeśatayā tathā ca navacakryām |
śaśiguṇavasudaśadaśamanuvasupativasuvāg gaṇeśapadam ||
cakrakalāsu gaṇeśāś cakreṣu ca vācakā grahā navasu |
nakṣatrāṇi navasv api siddhiṣu mudrāsu vidyāsu || (VM: 5.)
The word gaṇeśa [signifies] the moon [i.e., one, the bindu], qualities (guṇas) [i.e., three, the inner triangle], Vasus
[i.e., eight-spoked cakra], ten- and ten(-spoked cakras), Manus [i.e., fourteen-spoked cakra], lords of the Vasus [i.e.,
twenty four petals (eight inner and sixteen outer)], Vasus [i.e., eight (four doors and four corners)], and speech [i.e.,
sixteen Nityās] by means of its lordship, colors, Nandi, etc., presiding over the organs of the senses and the the
directions, having the form of the the lunar day (titthi) of Gaṇapati [which is on the fourth lunar day], governance
over the vidyās [which are eight in the Vāmakeśvarīmata], in sequence and against the sequence, by presiding of
the two groups (gaṇas), by the governance over the worlds, there is a [correspondence to] the nine cakras. Gaṇeśas
are in the spokes of the cakra, the speakers, who are the planets are in the nine cakras. The asterisks are also among
the nine siddhis, mudrās, and vidyās.
216
% ityādyuktam iveti lokamahattayā saṃbhāvyamānānām evam ucyamānaṃ sarveṣāṃ karṇakaṭukam iva
pratibhāsata iti sthālīpulākanyāyena iyad eva āstām | evaṃ gaṇeśādigaṇanayā tricatvāriṃśatkoṇatvādivyākhyānam
ardhocchiṣṭaprāyam eveti kim anenāpi granthavistarakāriṇā prakṛtānupayoginā paryālocitena | (VM: 5.)
Just like this, from this passage on, the statements of those very ones who are being honored with greatness in the
world, are like a thorn in the ear for everyone. Reminded of the proverb of the bit of rice in the pot, [showing] this
much is sufficient. This explanation of forty-three spokes through counting of Gaṇeśas, etc. is like half-eaten
leftovers. What is the use of investigating the ramblings of the author of this voluminous composition, which are
irrelevant for the text under discussion?

%98
Pratyabhijñā. And after that, I will examine Jayaratha’s animated engagement with previous

commentaries on this text through his citations and his comments on them.

Pratyabhijñā Themes in the Vāmakeśvarīmatavivaraṇa

As I have begun to discuss in my analysis of Jayaratha’s commentary on VM 1.1, this

author’s interpretation is heavily indebted to non-dual Śaivism. Already in the maṅgala verses,

which I have discussed in the beginning of the chapter, Jayaratha demonstrates the preeminence

of non-dualism in the philosophical teachings within his lineage. There Jayaratha lauds teachers

who came before him, including Śrīdīpakācarya, as “abounding in the nectar of knowledge of the

supreme non-duality” (paramādvaitavijñānāmṛtanirbharāḥ).217

A series of searches reveal that while the text of Jayaratha’s commentary and, of course, his

citations from such texts as Īśvarapratyabhijñākārika and Tantrāloka abound in terms associated

with Pratyabhijñā, the mūla text of the Vāmakeśvarīmata does not utilize the same terminology.

Thus, we find such terms as pramātṛ/pramāṇa in the Vāmakeśvarīmatavivaraṇa twenty-nine

times, prameya — ten times, abhāsa — twenty-five, vimarśa, parāmarśa, and pratyavamarśa —

eighteen total, and svātantrya — fourteen. None of these terms appear in the mūla, with the

exception of the term pramāṇa used in VM 5.15 in the non-technical meaning of “number/

quantity” rather than “means of knowledge,” in which it is used in Pratyabhijñā and other

philosophical texts.

Although non-dual Śaiva ideas and terminology are simply not expressed in the

Vāmakeśvarīmata itself, Jayaratha brings them into his commentary from the very first pages.

% 217
jayanti paramādvaitavijñānāmṛtanirbharāḥ |
pūrve śrīdīpakācāryapramukhā guravo mama || VM 1.2 || (VM: 1.)

%99
In his section of the commentary on VM 1.1 cited earlier, Jayaratha interprets mantra in

“mantramayīm,” not as “ritual formula” (a reading that would be the most intuitive given the

subject-matter of the Vāmakeśvarīmata), but rather as indicating the “seven cognizers

(pramātara) from Śiva to sakala.”218 He describes the Goddess as one “whose own form remains

unshaken amidst the permutations of cognizers and objects of cognition” and as “the supreme

consciousness illuminating (i.e., manifesting) of her own accord being one with the supreme

cognizer.”219

This kind of creative re-interpretation of the root text through the lens of Śaiva non-dualism

is common throughout the more theoretical discursive sections of Jayaratha’s commentary, many

of which occur in the beginning of the first chapter. We find one of the examples in Jayaratha’s

interpretation of VM 1.2. The mūla verse, pays obeisance to the Supreme Goddess, who is

described poetically as one “who brings about tranquility amidst the impelling of the powerful

rolling waves of time.”

praṇamāmi mahādevīṃ mātṛkāṃ parameśvarīm |

kālahallohalollolakalanāśamakāriṇīm || VM 1.2 ||220

I bow to the supreme ruler, the great Goddess Mātṛkā, who brings about tranquility amidst

the impelling of the powerful rolling waves of time.

The mention of time in the mūla leads Jayaratha to a discussion that touches upon Śaiva

hierarchical conceptions of time, quoting three times in succession from the Svaccanda221 and

% 218 VM: 4.
219
% Ibid.
220
% VM: 6.
% 221 VM: 6.

%100
twice from the Īśvarapratyabhijñākārika.222 The section of Jayaratha’s comments after the first

quote from the Īśvarapratyabhijñā abounds in key Pratyabhijñā terms to reinterpret VM 1.2,

including (pra)matṛ(tā) (cognizer, state of being cognizer), (ā)bhāsa (manifestation), bhāta

(manifested, appearence), śūnya (void), anusandhāna (synthesis), parasaṃvid (supreme

consciousness), and svātantrya (possessing free will). I am continuing to underline Pratyabhijñā

terminology in my citations.

sarvatrābhāsabhedo’pi bhavet kālakramākaraḥ |

vicchinnabhāsaḥ śūnyāder mātur bhātasya no sakṛt || ĪP 2.1.6 ||223

And the distinctions of manifestation (ābhāsabhedo) would have the form of temporal

succession everywhere; the manifestations [for cognizers] from the void up are fragmented.

But not so for the cognizer (mātur)224 who shines on for ever.

ityādyuktayuktyā parimitaśūnyādipramātṛtāvilāpanena ityādy anusandhānabhājam

anugrāhyajanam akhaṇḍaparipūrṇaparasaṃvidātmani akālakalite pare dhāmni
viśrāmayantīm, ata eva mahādevīṃ mahattvena aparicchinnaparasaṃvidekaghanatayā
dyotamānām, ata eva parameśvarīm atidurghaṭakārisvātantryaśālinīṃ “mātṛkāṃ
praṇamāmi”iti vākyārthaḥ || 2 ||225

In connection with what was said above, with the dissolution of the state of being a cognizer

delimited from the void and up, from then on causing the group of people to be graced

[anugrāyajana], who are intent on synthesis, to come to rest in the supreme domain,

unimpeded by time and having a nature of completely full and undivided supreme

consciousness, hence she is the “great Goddess,” i.e., she shines forth by virtue of her

% 222 VM: 6–7.

223
% VM: 6.
224
% Mātur is the Genitive Singular of (pra)mātṛ (cognizer, which is of masculine gender), but also of mātṛ (mother,
which is feminine), which is rather convenient if one is conflating these two meanings, as Jayaratha is doing by
bringing in Pratyabhijñā understanding to the interpretation of the verses about the Goddess.
% 225 VM: 7.

%101
 magnitude, which is the state of being a single mass of undivided supreme consciousness,

thus to that Supreme Goddess, who, established in her own free will, creates what is

extremely difficult to accomplish, “I bow to [that] Alphabet Goddess,” that is the meaning of

the verse.

Jayaratha continues to reinterpret the mūla in light of Pratyabhijñā in his commentary on VM

1.4. The mūla verse reads as follows:

yadakṣaraśaśijyotsnāmaṇḍitaṃ bhuvanatrayam |
vande sarveśvarīṃ devīṃ mahāśrīsiddhamātṛkām || VM 1.4 ||226

I honor the Goddess, who is the ruler of all, the great venerable Siddhamātṛkā,227 by the

moonlight of whose letters the three worlds are adorned.

Jayaratha’s commentary on VM 1.4 is unusual because here he cites from sources that he

does not turn elsewhere in the text, viz. Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, Bhartṛhari’s Vākyapadīya,

and the Kāvyādarśa of Daṇḍin, the latter two indicating Jayaratha’s broad interest in language

and poetics. These are the only citations from the Upaniṣads and the Vākyapadīya in this

commentary. It is possible that he returns to Dandin later in the text, but I have not found other

citations from him and the editor did not attribute even this citation.

yacchrutiḥ
astam ita āditye yājñavalkya candre ’stam ite kiṃ jyotiḥ puruṣaḥ, vāgjyotir iti hovāca samrāṭ
| (Bṛ. U. 4.3.5)228

As it is said in the śruti,

O Yājñavalkya, when the sun has set and the moon has set, what light [does] a man [have]?

226
% VM: 9.
227
% Siddhamātṛkā is an abugida (alphasyllabary) Brahmi-based post-Gupta script, closely related to Śāradā.
% 228 VM: 9.

%102
 It is the light of Speech, O Lord, he said.

iti | pūrvācāryā api

saiṣā saṃsāriṇāṃ saṃjñā bahir antaś ca vartate |
yadutkrāntau visaṃjño ’yaṃ dṛśyate kāṣṭhakuḍyavat || (VP 1.128)229

And also, [by] the previous teacher [Bhartṛhari]:

She, who is the consciousness of tansmigrating [souls], exists inside and outside; when she

departs, [a person] appears unconscious, like a piece of wood.

idam andhaṃ tamaḥ kṛtsnaṃ jāyeta bhuvanatrayam |

yadi śabdāhvayaṃ jyotir āsaṃsāraṃ na dīpyate || KD 1.4 ||230

If the light, which is known as the word did not shine as long as the mundane world lasts,

these three worlds would become the blind black darkness.

These citations from the Upaniṣads, vyākaraṇa (philosophy of the grammarians), and

alaṅkāra śāstra (poetics) pick up on the theme of divinity as light and speech expressed in the

mūla (“the great venerable Siddhamātṛkā, by the moonlight of whose letters the three worlds are

adorned” yadakṣaraśaśijyotsnāmaṇḍitaṃ bhuvanatrayam… mahāśrīsiddhamātṛkām231)

and bring out the connection between light, speech, and consciousness, which are so meaningful

for Pratyabhijñā. And it is this connection that Jayaratha highlights.

iti ca | evam evaṃ vidhāṃ tāṃ mahatyā “sakṛdvibhāto ’yam ātmā” itidṛśā vidyudādivat
vicchidya vicchidya bhāsamānatvābhāvad ekarasatayā pravṛttayā aviratena rūpeṇa
avabhāsamānayā saṃvitsphuraṇalakṣaṇayā śriyā |232

% 229 VM: 10.

230
% VM: 10.
231
% VM: 9.
% 232 VM: 10.

%103
 And that is exactly how she is; by her greatness “the self is always illuminated.”233

According to this view, her light is not like a lightning, which comes in jolts, [but] has the

form of a radiance, which is like the pulsation of consciousness, shining forth with

unchangeable uninterrupted flow.

The section of the commentary cited above serves as a transition to Jayaratha’s citations from

Īśvarapratyabhijñākārika and Tantrāloka, the two texts that exemplify non-dual Śaivism to

which this commentator turns most frequently.

pramātari purāṇe tu sarvadābhātavigrahe |

kiṃ pramāṇaṃ navābhāsaḥ sarvapramitibhāgini || ĪP 2.3.16 ||234

And what new manifestation can be authoritative with regards to the ancient cognizer, who

has the form eternally shining forth and who partakes of all cognition.

Having cited Īśvarapratyabhijñā, Jayaratha connects this understanding of the supreme

cognizer as the highest consciousness with Siddhamātṛkā, which is how the Goddess is described

in the mūla:

ityādinayena apūrvārthaviṣayapramāṇāgocaratvād ādita eva svataḥ “siddhāṃ”

mahātripurasundaryādiśabdavyapadeśyāṃ “mātṛkāṃ” parāṃ śaktiṃ235

By the statement beginning with this, the supreme Śakti is “Mātṛkā,” known by the name

Mahātripurasundarī, etc., who is established a priori (siddhāṃ referring to Siddhamātṛkā in

the mūla), from the very beginning, because she is beyond the range of the senses, which

have only new things as their objects.

233
% “sakṛdvibhāto ’yam ātmā” is a common expression in Upāniṣadic, Vedantin and Pratyabhijñā sources.

234
% VM: 10.
% 235 VM: 10.

%104
 Jayaratha’s final section of commentary on this verse, which follows the citation from

Tantrāloka, completes his commentary on the nature of the Goddess in VM 1.4 in terms familiar

from non-dual Śaivism. Īśvarī, for him, is one who commands all “cognizers, cognitions, and

things to be cognized, etc.” and Devī’s divine play consists of taking on the roles of the

conscious subject at various stages of cognition:

ityādyuktyā “sarveṣāṃ” pramātṛpramāṇaprameyādīnām api jīvitādhāyitvād “īśvarīm,” ata

eva “devīṃ” tattatpramātrādirūpatayā krīḍanaśīlāṃ “vande” samāviśāmītyarthaḥ236

According to that statement, “of all” [in the mūla] refers to cognizers, cognitions, and things

to be cognized. Having constituted their existence, she is the “Ruler” (Īśvarī), therefore “I

worship” means “I entrust myself” to the “Goddess,” who engages in play by means of

taking on the form of various cognizers, etc.

The close connection of consciousness, speech, light, and manifestation, investigated in the

commentary on VM 1.4, is further developed in a dense section of the commentary on VM 1.6–

8, one of many discursive sections that reinvent the mūla as a philosophical teaching.

tāṃ prakrāntāṃ mātṛkāṃ bhagavatīṃ mahādevīṃ mahattvena samanantaroktanirūpitena

cittvena dyotamānāṃ cicchaktipradhānādivarṇātmikāṃ citaś ca “ānando brahmaṇo rūpam”
iti śruter ānandarūpatām antareṇa cittvam eva na syād ity āha ānandarūpiṇīm
ānandaśaktipradhānadvitīyavarṇasvarūpām, ityevaṃ cidānandayor lolībhāvena
sisṛkṣātmakaparāmarśodayād icchāśaktyātmana ikārākṣarasya tṛtīyabījasya uddhāreṇa
sārādhārāṃ sakalajagadullāsanaśālitayā utkṛṣṭādhārām, ata eva śaktidaśādhiśayitayā
parāparāṃ tadrūpāṃ paramaty arthaṃ praṇamāmi |237

adhiśayitayā conj. : śidhiyataya Ed.

“She” (tāṃ) is understood as the blessed “great Goddess” (mahādevīṃ) Mātṛkā, shining forth

with the majesty that is consciousness, as she was described just now, having the nature of

236
% VM: 10.
% 237 VM: 11.

%105
 the first letter (a), due to the predominance of the power of consciousness (cicchakti-). And

consciousness would not exist without having the form of bliss, since the scripture states that

“bliss is the form of brahman”; therefore [the text] says that she has the form of bliss, i.e she

has the form of the second vowel (ā) in which the power of bliss (ānanda) is predominant.

Therefore, with the wavering nature of consciousness and bliss, consisting of the power of

desire (icchāśakti), from the arising of reflection (parāmarśa), which is the desire to create,

she is the exalted “support,” beautifying by her radiance the entire world, the “support”

which is the essential part, by the extraction of the third seed syllable i. Therefore, I deeply

“bow to her,” who is supreme, whose form is like that, and who is both transcendent and

immanent, by resting in the state of śakti.

As we can see from this small sample of commentary, even the gloss of the simplest words,

such as “all” or “the Goddess,” allowed Jayaratha to weave in Pratyabhijñā philosophy where

surely nothing remotely similar had been meant by the redactors of the Vāmakeśvarīmata. What

was Jayaratha’s motivation? Was he aware of his drastic reinvention of this simple ritual text? Or

was the language of Pratyabhijñā so deeply familiar to him, that it was the most natural and

obvious form of expression, a translation to the language of his day, which made the original

comprehensible? The effect reminds me of a symphony for a full orchestra, picking up a simple

country tune, repeating it with more and more elaboration and careful orchestration, until the

tune, barely recognizable soars into silence. Or a graceful line drawing, transformed into an

ornate wall-hanging by an artful craftsman, the original lines barely visible beneath an explosion

of color and textures. We will probably never know for certain, but I believe that Jayaratha’s

creative reinterpretation was conscious. Updating this tantra with the elevated language of

%106
Pratyabhijñā non-dualism and creating rich and deeply layered levels of meaning for a simple

and unambitious original, Jayaratha made this text, foundational for his own ritual tradition,

worthy of the attention of any cultured Śaiva of his time.

Previous Commentaries on the Vāmakeśvarīmata in Vāmakeśvarīmatavivaraṇa

One of the most prominent themes in the Vāmakeśvarīmatavivaraṇa is Jayaratha’s continued

engagement with authors of previous commentaries on this text. I will give several examples of

his animated responses here, because they shed light on earlier commentaries that no longer exist

and give us a sense of the Kashmirian cult of Tripurasundarī in the thirteenth century. Jayaratha’s

reaction to the opinions of the other commentators, be it mockery or occasional expressions of

esteem, also give us an insight into the author’s personality and what was most important to him.

After Jayaratha’s extended commentary on VM 1.1, his next citation from an earlier

commentary comes in his comments on VM 1.3.

yadakṣaraikamātre’pi saṃsiddhe spardhate naraḥ |

ravitārkṣyendukandarpaśaṅkarānalaviṣṇubhiḥ || VM 1.3 ||238

Even when merely a single syllable of hers has been mastered, a man will rival the Sun,

Garuda, the Moon, Kāmadeva (the god of love), Śiva, fire, [and] Viṣṇu.

In his commentary on this verse, Jayaratha quotes verses from further in the

Vāmakeśvarīmata, which state that performance of various procedures detailed in this tantra will

make the ritualist equal to Garuda (VM 4.48),239 Kāmadeva (VM 4.38), Śiva (VM 4.50), fire

238
% VM: 7.
% 239 The reference in the edition to 4.45 is incorrect.

%107
(VM 3.46), Viṣṇu (VM 4.67), and Jupiter (VM 4.26).240 The author of the five verses quoted by

Jayaratha provides numerology associated with each of the divine personages listed in the mūla

verse, stating that this numerology corresponds to the subcakras of the Śrīcakra, thus asserting

that VM 1.3 contains a reference to the Śrīcakra in a coded form.241 Jayaratha explains his

rejection of this interpretation by the fact that the mūla verse refers to rituals using individual

syllables of the mūlavidyā, which are separate from the Śrīcakra ritual. Therefore, there is no

occasion to evoke the correspondences to the Śrīcakra ritual here.242 Given the obsession of this

240
% VM 4.48 on Garuda — śakti sādhana, VM 4.38 on Kāmadeva — kāmarāja sādhana, VM 4.50 on Śiva — śakti
sādhana, VM 3.46 on fire — the khecarī mudrā, VM 4.67 on Viṣṇu — visualization practices for the mūlavidyā in
its entirety, and VM 4.26 on Jupiter — vāgbhava sādhana. For more context, see Appendix C for the summary of
the Vāmakeśvarīmata, which includes verse numbers for reference.
241
% vaiśvānaro daśakalo daśakiraṇaśatānvito dineśānaḥ |
bhuvanāhlādakṛd indur daśajātiviṣakṣayo garuḍaḥ ||
madano’pi daśāvastho vidyāsthānānvito’pi vāgīśaḥ |
daśadiksvāmī śambhur daśadhā śatarudradhṛtadehaḥ ||
viṣṇur daśāvatāro vividhamahābhūtasṛṣṭikṛdvedhāḥ |
kamalajavākpatiyāmalam anuktam apyūhanīyam iha ||
daśadaśacaturdaśākṛtikalanācakratrayaṃ samārādhya |
dhāmagurukāraṇatayā trayaṃ trayaṃ siddham etad iha ||
piṇḍatritayātmaiva hi devī viśvasya yonitāṃ prāptā |
tasmād yonīnām api piṇḍagatāḥ siddhayaḥ proktāḥ || (VM: 8.)
The fire has ten parts, the sun is endowed with ten times one hundred rays, the moon delights the world, Garuda
destroys the ten kinds of poison. While Madana has ten states, the Lord of Speech (i.e., Jupiter) is endowed with
(fourteen) branches of knowledge, Śambhu (Śiva) is the Lord of ten directions, his body, which supports one
hundred Rudras, is tenfold. Viṣṇu has ten incarnations; the creator (Brahma) creates various mahābhūtas (gross
elements), the pair of “one born from the lotus” (i.e., Brahma) and the “Lord of Speech” (i.e., Jupiter) is not
mentioned, it is to be inferred here. Having propitiated the three-fold cakra, producing the ten, ten, and fourteen[-
fold] shapes; the three [and] three here are attained with the power of guru. And the Goddess, consisting of the three
bindus, becomes the source of the Universe, therefore the siddhis are known as being contained in the bindus of the
yonis.
242
% ata eva ca atra vākpatitvābhyūhanena nirnibandhanam ananuguṇatvaṃ na vācyaṃ, kin tu
akṣaramātrasaṃsiddhiphalapratipadane prakrāntasya kāṇḍakūṣmāṇḍanyāyena
cakratrayasamārādhanaphalābhidhānasya ko ’vasara iti vācyaṃ yato ’tra |
Moreover, it should not be said that inferring vākpati is not appropriate or not helpful here. However, why is this the
appropriate place to discuss the result of propitiating the triple cakra [i.e., the Śrīcakra] according to the root and
gourd rule, when only the fruit of the accomplishment in just one syllable is illustrated.
ityādyuktasya daśakalatvādeḥ piṇḍatrayātmadevīyonitāprāpteś ca asamañjasaṃ hetutvam iti sarvam idam
ālajālaprāyam iti kim ucyate mahātmanām |
The logic of the statements, mentioned above, pertaining to the ten-fold [cakra] etc. and understanding of the yoni of
the Goddess from her consisting of the three piṇḍas, is faulty. This is all just nonsense. Things these great souls say!

%108
unnamed author with Śrīcakra’s numerology and the fact that this section of cited verses is also

in āryā meter, this quotation is likely from the same work as the one reviled by Jayaratha earlier,

in his commentary on VM 1.1 (VM: 5). The order of this commentator’s verses reflects the order

of VM 1.3, confirming that this composition was an earlier commentary on the

Vāmakeśvarīmata. Commenting on another verse by this commentator (this one written in

anuṣṭubh),243 Jayaratha further accuses him of incongruity (ayauktikatvāt) and artificiality

(kṛtakatvam).244

While Jayaratha is full of acerbic sarcasm discussing the writing of this commentator, calling

him a “great soul” (mahātma), he accords greater respect to the next author he quotes.245 The

citation is clearly by a different author, since Jayaratha introduces it with this statement:

yac ca atra anyaiḥ246

And here is what others have said on this [VM 1.3].

243
% tatrāpi
tejo balaṃ prasādaś ca rūpaṃ jñānaṃ viśuddhatā |
parārtham udyamaś ceti sapta sarvottamā guṇāḥ || (VM: 9.)
And there also:
Radiance, strength, grace, form, knowledge, purity, and efforts on behalf of others - these are seven of the best
qualities.
244
% ityatra tathā prācuryābhāvād ayauktikatvāt ravyādikramasamāśrayaṇasadbhāvāc ca kṛtakatvam iva
saṃbhāvyate iti āstām etat | (VM: 9.)
Here also because of brevity, incongruity, and the dependence of the description on the order [of the list] beginning
with the Sun, there is an artificiality about [how the correspondences with the Śrīcakra] are brought together. Let’s
drop this subject!
245
% kālahallolasūtreṇa ravitārkṣyādisūtrataḥ |
ekākṣarā tryakṣarā ca dve vidye sūcite mayā || (VM: 9.)
By the statements “strung by the thread of the oscillation of strife” (kālahallola) and “the Sun, Garuḍa,
etc.” (ravitārkṣyādi), the one-syllabled and the three-syllabled vidyās [i.e., aim and aiṃ klīṃ sauḥ] were indicated by
me.
Note that I am not clear on the meaning of kālahallola out of context. It is probably connected with
kālahallohalollolakalanāśamakāriṇīm in VM 1.2, but some corruption may have crept in either here or in the mūla.
% 246 VM: 16.

%109
 Jayaratha compares this commentator to sage Viśvāmitra and refers to him as

“wretched” (tapasvin),247 although it is not clear whether this author was in fact a renunciant or if

this is only an allusion to Viśvāmitra’s legend. According to Jayaratha, this commentator’s fault

was seeing allusions to the mantras in the mūla verse where none existed. So just like

Viśvāmitra, described in the Bālakāṇḍa of the Valmiki’s Rāmāyaṇa to have created another set of

constellations in the southern direction so that King Triśaṅku could attain heaven in his physical

body (an endeavor that was not entirely successful, since Triśaṅku ended up hanging head down

in this celestial replica),248 this commentator created an illusory universe, consisting of words

and their referents (vācyavācakamayīṃ sṛṣṭiṃ).

ityādi jiṣṇūkurvat viśvāmitranyāyena navām eva vācyavācakamayīṃ sṛṣṭiṃ vidhāya

ravyādiśabdaiḥ krameṇa kakārahakārāv ekārakakāramakārā īkārahakārakakārā lakāro
rephaīkāraś cetyākṣiptā iti mukhyamantrasaṃketo’pi atra kaṭākṣita iti uktaṃ, tatra vayaṃ
niṣeddhuṃ vidhātuṃ vā na pragalbhāmahe iti kim abhidadhmaḥ; yad vā kim amuṣmai
tapasvine ruṣyate yat vārtikakāreṇa api evam eva pratipadaṃ mantroddhāraḥ kṛta iti alam
anālocyālocanena |249

From here on, on the analogy of Viśvāmitra when he was seeking victory [over Indra],

having created a new universe, consisting of the indicated and the indicator, cast with the

letters ka ha e ka ma and ī ha ka la ra ī, according to the sequence of sun, etc. and, it is said

that there is also an allusion to the principal mantra here, we do not dare to reject or accept

this. What shall we say? Shall we be displeased with the ascetic when this kind of extraction

of mantras is practiced at every step by the author of the commentary (vārtikakāra)? Enough

talking about what need not be discussed.

247
% According to Professor Sanderson, the term tapasvin here is pejorative, meaning “wretched, pitiable, unfortunate,
miserable.”
248
% The story of Viśvāmitra can be found in Vālmiki’s Rāmāyaṇa, Book One translated by Goldman, 2005: 297–311.
% 249 VM: 9.

%110
 A similar type of extraction of mantras as by “the ascetic,” was apparently practiced by the

author of another commentary (vārtikakāra).250 This author is mentioned two more times in the

Vivaraṇa. In the commentary on VM 1.7 cd,251 Jayaratha attributes a quote in āryā meter to

him,252 so it is possible that he is the same commentator as the one Jayaratha critiques in his

comments on VM 1.1 and VM 1.6.253 However, in this instance, Jayaratha agrees with this

citation and is quoting this author to support his own interpretation.254

In his commentary on VM 1.12, which describes Tripurā dwelling in the four seats of the

Goddess (pīṭhas) and as the treasure-house of the four teachings (caturājñākośabhūtāṃ),

elsewhere referred to as the āmnāyas, Jayaratha once again takes the occasion to criticize one of

his predecessor, who is reading the symbolism of the pūjā (ritual worship) of the eighth and ninth

cakras of the Śrīcakra into this verse. The meaning of the mūla verse is in fact quite clear:

250
% Ibid.
251
% jyeṣṭhāṅgabāhuhṛtpṛṣṭhakaṭipadanivāsinīm || VM 1.7 || (VM: 11)
… residing in the head, arms, chest, back, hips and buttocks.

252
% yat vārtikakāraḥ
bhrūmadhyabhālacūlā jyeṣṭhāṅgaṃ bāhumūlagaḥ kaṇṭhaḥ |
hṛddhṛdayaṃ tatpṛṣṭhe yasyāḥ sā proditā nābhiḥ ||
janmasthānaṃ ca kaṭir nyāsakramatas tathohakaḥ pādaḥ | (VM: 12.)
tathohakaḥ em. Sanderson : tathāhakaḥ Ed.
As the author of the commentary (vārtikakāra) says,
The “top limb,” i.e., head (jyeṣṭhāṅga) consists of the middle of the forehead, the brow, and the topknot, in the
middle of the “arms” (bāhu) is the throat, the “heart” (“hṛd” means hṛdayaṃ), her “back” (“pṛṣṭha”) indicates her
navel, the “hips” (“kaṭir”) indicate reproductive organs, and according to the order of nyāsa (installation of the deity
in the body by means of mantras accompanied with touch), and Ūhaka and the feet.
According to Professor Sanderson, who cites Jayaratha on 1.112, Ūhaka is the Rudra who presides over the feet.
253
% VM: 5, 8.
254
% jyeṣṭhāṅgaṃ śiras tena śikhālalāṭabhūmadhyātmakam avayavatrayam ākṣipyate, bāhubhyāṃ svamūlagataḥ
kaṇṭhaḥ, hṛcchabdasya āvṛttyā hṛtpṛṣṭhaśabdena nābhiḥ, kaṭyā ca janmādhāraḥ | (VM: 12.)
The “top limb” (jyeṣṭhāṅga) means “head;” by that the three points, consisting of the middle of the forehead, the
brow, and the topknot are indicated. By the two “arms,” the throat, which is in the middle of them. … the word
“heart” (“hṛd”) … by the “hips” the reproductive organs [are indicated].

%111
 kāmapūrṇajakārākhyaśrīpīṭhāntarnivāsinīm |
caturājñākośabhūtāṃ naumi śrītripurām aham || VM 1.12 ||255

I praise the venerable Tripurā, who resides within Kāma[rūpa], Pūrṇa[giri], named by the

letter “ja” [Jālandhara], [and] the Śrīpīṭha (Oḍḍiyāna), one who is the treasure-house of the

four teachings.

And it is these two meanings — the connection of the Goddess with the four principal seats

(pīṭhas) and the four teachings — that are the subject of Jayaratha’s interpretation, which he

reinforces with references to Tantrāloka 1.132 and a variant of Kubjikāmata 2.62 cd–63 ab.256

Jayaratha concludes his commentary on VM 1.12 with a scathing discussion of a previous

commentator’s symbolic interpretation of the verse, referring to it as “poor explanations by

others of each and every word, which are not based on the correct meaning of words, are forcibly

imposed tortured constructions, and are ungrammatical.”257 Jayaratha states that he cannot

possibly address every wrong interpretation [implying a profusion of them] and that his

disagreement, even when it is not explicitly stated, should be understood when his commentary

provides a different interpretation.

yac ca atra anyaiḥ pratipadaṃ kaṣṭakalpanābalopanītam aśabdārthaṃ vyākhyātam

apabhāṣitaṃ ca, tat sarvair alpaśrutair api svayam eva avagamyate iti upekṣitam iti
paramatam apratiṣiddham anumatam eva iti na vidvadbhir āśaṅkanīyaṃ yat tat pratipadam
anūdya dūṣyamāṇaṃ prakṛtānupayogitvāt granthavistaramātrādhānaphalam eveti asmābhir

255
% VM: 15.
256
% jñānabhraṃśāvasāne tu saṃjñābhedād varānane |
karāle tava santāno bhaviṣyati tavājñayā || (VM: 15.)
But when there is a decline or pause in the [transmission] of knowledge due to a rupture of consciousness, O One
with a Beautiful Face, O Dreadful One, there will be a continuation by your teaching.
% 257 VM: 15–16.

%112
 asthāne na abhiniviṣṭaṃ, kiṃtu tad viruddhābhidhānenaiva tat dūṣitaṃ bhavatīti mantavyam
iti alam atiprasaṅgena, prastutam eva abhidadhmaḥ ||258

prastutam evābhidadhmaḥ em. Sanderson : prastutamava abhidadhmaḥ Ed.

And those [are] poor explanations by others of each and every word, which are not based on

the correct meaning of words, are forcibly imposed tortured constructions, and are

ungrammatical. It is understood for themselves by all people, even of minuscule learning;

thus this is ignored by me. It should not be thought by smart people that the opinion of

another, even though it is not [explicitly] denied [here] is in fact approved. [Repeating] what

other people have said about each word and then refuting it would result in merely

prolonging the length of the text because it is not relevant to the matter at hand. But rather it

is to be taught that this [incorrect interpretation of previous commentators] is to be

considered false by stating what is contrary to it.

Several of Jayaratha’s remarks on VM 1.28cd–59, describing the construction of the Śrīcakra

(29–41) and the boons bestowed by its worship (42–59ab), give us plenty of opportunities to

examine Jayaratha’s preoccupation with correcting mistakes in the previous commentaries. It is

here that Jayaratha’s criticism of previous commentaries shifts from the critique of Śrīcakra

symbolism being read into the early verses of the Vāmakeśvarīmata where none existed to the

censure of a divergent understanding of technical issues. Thus, in his commentary on VM

1.29cd–1.30ab, which is part of a set of verses giving instructions for laying out the central part

of the Śrīcakra, Jayaratha mocks a passage by a previous commentator, who gives instructions

for drawing only a downward-facing triangle where both downward- and upward-facing

triangles are mentioned in the verse.

% 258 VM: 15–16.

%113
 anyaiḥ punaḥ śaktivahnyor bhedapratipipadayiṣayā yat

tribhiś chittvā tu paridhiṃ sakale caturaśrake |

tryaśraṃ kṣetraṃ prakurvīta sūtraiḥ prāgādisaṃsthitaiḥ ||

tryaśravat paścimāś āgrakoṇaṃ kṣetraṃ bhagākṛti |

iti saṃvāditaṃ, tadatra tathā na saṃgacchate yatas tu

tryaśrasiddhimātrapratipadanaparatvam eva sākṣāt lakṣyate | tad api haṭhaviheṭhanikayā
yadi aśabdārtham api ūrdhvādhomukhaṃ tryaśradvayaṃ vyākhyāyate, tad api tatra
siṣādhayiṣitaṃ vahniśaktivyapadeśyatvaṃ na siddhyet |259

Now others, wishing to explain the difference between the downward- and upward-facing

triangles [said]:

Having divided the boundary of the square into three [parts], having made a triangle with

threads in the east, etc. [i.e., starting with the upper portion of the triangle]. The space has the

form of a downward-facing triangle (bhāga) three-spoked, with the tip pointing westward

[i.e., downward].

But this statement does not harmonize here [with this verse], since it is clearly intended to

explain only the method for [drawing] a triangle. Moreover, if someone is forcing it to

interpret two triangles (upward- and downward-facing), even though it is contrary to the

meaning of the words, then he does not succeed in his wish that these should be designated as

“fires” and “powers,” respectively.

And in his lengthy commentary on VM 1.40 cd–41, which describes the drawing of the

Śrīcakra and its subcakras, Jayaratha mentions the vārtikakāra again, disagreeing with him in no

uncertain terms. In the first section of the commentary on these verses, Jayaratha describes the

the subcakras listed in the mūla text, gives their names and their association with creation,

% 259 VM: 19.

%114
maintenance, and destruction. Jayaratha then proceeds to denigrate a previous commentator who

must have had a different opinion on how the subcakras related to the three divine functions.

yat punar atra anye pāṭhādau vipratipadyante, tat yattatprāyam iti upekṣyam eva yataḥ
pāṭhabhedas tāvad atra sthitaḥ sa ca adhyetṛbhramopakalpita eva, na maulaḥ;
tatparigrahāparigrahau ca sādhutvāsādhutvanibandhanau, prakriyāgauravaparihāreṇa
prakṛtārthanirvāhanaipuṇyaṃ ca nāma sādhutvam anyat tu anyathā |260

The fact that others disagree about the reading of the text and other such matters here is

mostly trivial and should be overlooked; since the difference of reading here is postulated

through the reader’s error, and does not come from the source [i.e., as handed down through

the tradition]. Whether [the reading] should be accepted or not [is determined by] whether the

composition is excellent or not. Skill in rendering appropriate meanings while avoiding

cumbersome argumentation is excellence; that which is otherwise is not.

Jayaratha supports his criticism of this earlier commentator (vārtikakāra) with a passage

from an unknown source, on which his previous statement had been based,261 prior to launching

into this new burst of derision:

iti ca | tacca iha astīti kiṃ pralapyate bhavadbhir auttarādharya-svapāṭha-lābhādīti,

pratyuta bhavatām eva ayaṃ doṣo yad asmābhir yāvatā granthena cakraniṣpattis tadvyāptiś
cety ubhayaṃ vyākhyātaṃ, tāvataiva gurvyā prakriyayā bhavadbhiś cakraniṣpattimātram iti

260
% VM: 27.
261
% yad āhuḥ
pāṭhabhedo ’tra sādhur vā tad anyo vā na mūlataḥ |
kintv adhyetṛbhramāt tena tatpradarśanam ajñatā ||
iti,
athaikaḥ pustakābhyāse pāṭho grāhyo vicārya cet |
sādhur eva tu sa grāhyaḥ sādhūnām avigānataḥ || (VM: 27.)
As they say,
Here the difference in the reading is good, otherwise, it is not, because it does not come from the source, but derives
from the reader’s error. Therefore, teaching this is ignorance. Therefore, only one reading in the recitation of the text
is worthy of acceptance and worth commenting on; the good one is precisely one which is unanimously understood
by the good people.

%115
 | santi ca atra granthagauravaṃ pariharantaḥ pare sākṣiṇa iti alaṃ taccintayā api yad idam
eva atra pratisamādhānam iti |262

And here also. Why do you, Sirs, prattle on about the acceptance of your own confusing

readings? On the contrary, the defect, committed by you, Sirs, is that the text describes both

the drawing of the cakra and that which pervades it, but according to you — only the

drawing of the cakra, and with such cumbersome argumentation. And since others who here

avoid cumbersome interpretation are our witnesses [for this], enough with considering this;

this alone is a sufficient answer [to your objections].

Following the section in the mūla dedicated to the glory of the Śrīcakra and the various

siddhis and benefits granted through its worship (1.29–57 ab), the redactors of the

Vāmakeśvarīmata discuss the physical construction of the Śrīcakra. Verses VM 1.57 cd–58263 are

dedicated to drawing the outer sections of the yantra: two circles, consisting of eight and sixteen

petals, and the enclosure with the four doors, surrounding the inner portion. In his commentary

on these verses, after clarifying the terminology used in the mūla text, Jayaratha quotes a large

section from the Rasamahodadhi. This selection, which includes seventeen verses in the

anuṣṭubh meter, paints a detailed description of the drawing of the Śrīcakra with the help of

threads used to map out the outline, prior to constructing the yantra. After a brief explanation,

Jayaratha quotes a verse from what seems to be another source, which refers to the drawing of

the three major sections of the Śrīcakra mentioned in the Rasamahodadhi: the outer enclosure,

the two circles of petals, and the inner section in which the triangles are drawn, called the

pericarp. In his explanation here, Jayaratha clarifies how the three main sections are to be drawn

% 262 VM: 28.

% 263 VM: 32.

%116
and adds that it is necessary to make a division into twenty-four before drawing the perimeter, in

order for the explanation of the use of threads in the Rasamahodadhi to make sense. Then comes

the drawing of the lines within the pericarp itself, which form the main section of the Śrīcakra,

consisting of the upwards- and downwards-facing triangles. Here Jayaratha unleashes a volley of

scathing mockery on another commentator, Caryānandanātha, the “foremost of the

gurus” (gurupuṅgavasya), whose “ignorance in drawing the lines” (rekhākarmānabhijñatva-),

illuminated by “the power of whose insight was [made] pure by the instruction of

Caryānandanātha” (caryānandanāthopadeśaviṣadapratibhāvibhavaiḥ) is “exceedingly

laughable” (atīva hāsyāvahatāṃ).264

Jayaratha completes his explanation of the method laid out in the Rasamahodadhi by

supplying additional instructions that were not included there. Here he takes another opportunity

to criticize an opponent. According to Jayaratha, his predecessor’s method of laying out the

Śrīcakra is “not based on the text” (aśabdārtham) and “is not successful for drawing the

cakra” (cakraniṣpattau tāvat na sādhakaṃ), “but rather hinders by ruining everything, results in

confusion of the cakras and intersections [literally, vital points], and is to be

overlooked” (pratyuta cakrāṇāṃ sāṅkaryotpadanādinā marmāṇāṃ ca sarvatovighaṭanena

bādhakam iti upekṣyam).265

264
% evaṃ ca brahmasthāne binduṃ vinyasya tadanusāraṃ karṇikāpadmadvayārthaṃ bhramatrayavidhānaṃ, tadanu
caturaśravidhiḥ parataḥ karṇikāyāṃ sūtrais tricatvāriṃśattrikoṇaviracanam ityādivyakhyānaṃ
rekhākarmānabhijñatvapratipādanaphalam atīva hāsyāvahatāṃ gurupuṅgavasya prakāśayatīty alaṃ
caryānandanāthopadeśaviṣadapratibhāvibhavaiḥ saha saṃbhāsitena,
cakraniṣpattyupayogitāmātrapratipādanaparaṃ tu niyatasūtropādānam | (VM: 34–35.)

265
% VM: 35–36.

%117
 And at the conclusion of the section in the first chapter, which provides the main mantra for

this scripture (mūlavidyā) in its coded form (1.93cd–102ab), in his commentary on 1.101 cd–

1.102 ab (p. 53), Jayaratha sharply criticizes another opponent by the name of Allaṭa. Here

Jayaratha quotes several verses from Allaṭa, discussing an alternative extraction of the mantra

and Allaṭa’s view on how the mantra fits into the scheme of the transmission. Allaṭa

acknowledges that this extraction is different from those that are accepted within the tradition,

but asserts its importance.

iti caturanvayasantatibhedenāyaṃ samastavidyānām |

iha nigadita uddhāras tacchāsanaṃ gurumukhaprāpyam || 266

Here the extraction of all the vidyās is different from those taught in the four lineages and the

instruction should be obtained directly from the guru.

Jayaratha vehemently rejects this alternative extraction of the mantra, claiming that it was

made up by Allaṭa himself.267 Moreover, Jayaratha does not stop at merely rejecting Allaṭa’s

teaching. He passionately denounces the source of Allaṭa’s knowledge and authority and his

motives, accusing him of being interested only in the sale of mantras and acquisition of worldly

goods.

yato’dya yataḥ kutaścana asthānād anayena antataś cauryādinā api

āsāditakhaṇḍitapatrikāmātrāḥ sarva eva yathāsthitaṃ gurvādi parivartya,
tatra ājñām api svapitrādi ca gurutayā parikalpya śāstrārthānuṣṭhānaparāṅmukhā
mantravikrayamātratātparyā dhanasaṃgrahaṇaparāyaṇāḥ sakalaṃ lokaṃ viplāvayanto
dṛśyante |268

266
% VM: 54.
267
% iti vidyāntaraparikalpanaṃ ca śrīmatsvagurvanabhimatam api svotprekṣitaṃ kṛtvā (VM: 55).
% 268 VM: 55.

%118
 And now, having merely bits of ritual manuals, [obtained] who knows from whom,

unsuitably, imprudently (or unsystematically), and, in the lowest way, even by trickery,

having turned away from guru, etc., and the proper way of doing things, having fashioned

together authority in this matter with the father as the guru, avoiding ritual practices

according to the precepts of the śāstras, set on merely the sale of mantras, and intent on

gathering riches, they are seen flooding the whole world [with them].

This portrait of Allaṭa is a kind of caricature of a tāntrika, ignorant, corrupt, and greedy,

which became a stereotype, probably because it reflected a common reality. And as much as

Jayaratha mocked vague analogies with Śrīcakra being inserted into the root text, he was

disturbed by far the most by incorrect interpretations that had implications for improper ritual

practice. Erudite and elitist, Jayaratha had no patience to spare for those who obscured the proper

extraction of mantras and the drawing of the Śrīcakra.

Analysis of citations from previous commentators makes it clear that the Vāmakeśvarīmata

had been an established authoritative text in Kashmir for some time before Jayaratha, given the

extent of the commentarial debate it had produced by his time. A proliferation of various

interpretations suggests a popular tradition that was still defining itself, with a number of

competing lineages vying for control and influence. Jayaratha’s passionate engagement with

ritual details in the Vāmakeśvarīmata and his withering sarcasm aimed at other commentators

suggests that he was an initiate of the cult of Tripurasundarī with a deeply personal involvement

in this ritual tradition. And his denigration of other lineages and their incorrect (according to

Jayaratha) transmission of ritual specifics demonstrates the existence of a significant competitive

network of gurus and lineages within the cult of Tripurasundarī in Kashmir. This well-populated

%119
world of Kashmirian exegesis of the cult of Tripurasundarī was quite unlike the south Indian

tradition, captured in the commentaries by Śivānanda and Vidyānanda, which I will discuss in

the next chapter.

%120
 CHAPTER 6

READING IN THE “FRINGES” AND READING “AGAINST THE GRAIN”

In this chapter, I continue to read in the “fringes” of the early commentaries of the cult of

Tripurasundarī, investigating places in the texts that often get overlooked, but which can provide

the reader with valuable insights. I begin by analyzing Kashmirian Jayaratha’s closing verses on

the Vāmakeśvarīmata and Tantrāloka (see Appendix E), which conclude my exploration of the

Kashmirian exegesis in this dissertation. From Jayaratha, I proceed to south Indian commentaries

on the Vāmakeśvarīmata, opening up a new avenue of research I plan to pursue in my next

project. Here I examine titles, opening verses (see Appendix E), and other places in the texts

which are easy to miss but contain valuable information about these authors’ intentions and how

they saw their project. Aiming to see beyond the formulaic format, I investigate what insights —

informative or expressive — they reveal about their authors and the authors’ lineages, their views

on their work and their overarching goals. In this chapter, I also continue to “read against the

grain,” taking a close look at several passages in Śivānanda and Vidyānanda’s commentaries on

the Vāmakeśvarīmata. Here I concentrate on the first paṭala on pūjā and compare south Indian

commentaries to Jayaratha’s when relevant. In addition, I examine what different readings of the

mūla in the commentaries on the Vāmakeśvarīmata might reveal about their authors, using close

textual reading to examine authorial intentions of the early commentators on the cult of

Tripurasundarī. What changes appear intentional on the part of the commentator or the scribe and

what did these changes achieve? How do the commentators deal with scribal errors? Was the

grammar in the mūla polished to make it more Pāṇinian? Did a bland word substitute for a

phrase that was hard to understand or that a commentator may have wanted to downplay?

%121
 The closing verses of the Vāmakeśvarīmatavivaraṇa are brief, just like his opening verses to

this commentary, which I discussed in the beginning of the previous chapter. And just like the

opening verses, these too reflect a theme vital for Jayaratha in that text. Three out of four of them

chastise previous commentators.

uccityoccityaṃ niyataṃ kutaś cana kutaś cana |

yathāgurumukhaṃ kaiścid etad vyākṛtam alpakam || VM Closing 1 ||

sarvataḥkaṣṭaduḥśliṣṭamliṣṭaśabdārthavartmanā |
kena tāvan nimittena kair apy etad vivecitam || VM Closing 2 ||

pitṛpitāmahakalpitakalpanārasamahodadhimātrakadāśayā |
vivṛtam apy aparair na yathārthatāṃ śrutabahiṣkṛtabuddhitayā gatam || VM Closing 3 ||269

Some [commentators] here and there kept collecting insignificant interpretations from here

and there, limited to what has been said by their gurus. By whom and for what purpose has

this [text] been investigated, with confused word meanings and completely tortured

interpretations, poorly expressed? Resting on the Rasamahodadhi alone to dream up the

interpretations by [their] fathers and grandfathers, these explanations cannot be correct since

they go against the scriptures.

Correcting what he considered to be misinterpretations by previous commentators was in fact

such an important theme for Jayaratha that he returned to it again and again throughout the

Vāmakeśvarīmatavivaraṇa, as I demonstrated in the previous chapter. Jayaratha was annoyed by

vague symbolism, numerology, and reading in allusions to the Śrīcakra into verses that described

the Goddess. But what infuriated him the most were mistakes in the interpretation of ritual

(drawing of the yantras, extracting the mantras, etc.), his concern originating from a deeply

personal engagement with this ritual tradition.

% 269 VM: 140.

%122
 The final verse at the closing of Vāmakeśvarīmatavivaraṇa attributes the insights expressed

in the commentary to Jayaratha’s guru and with exaggeration common in such cases begs the

future wise readers for lenience.

śrīmadguruvarād evam avadhārya yathārthaḥ |

mayā jayarathenaivaṃ kiṃcid etat prapañcitam ||

tat kṣaṇasyāvadhātavyam atra sadbhir avajñayā |

avicāryaiva vaktavyo na doṣo na guṇaḥ punaḥ || VM Closing 4 ||270

Having been ascertained from the very best of gurus, true to the meaning, by me, Jayaratha,

some of this [text] has been explained at length. Therefore the wise should pay attention to it

for a moment, not treat it with contempt, nor speak about its defects and accomplishments

without deliberation.

But it is the two sets of Jayaratha’s closing verses on the Tantrāloka that provide the most

valuable insights into the author’s inner world. The first set of closing verses to the last (thirty-

seventh) chapter of the Tantrāloka discusses Jayaratha’s conception of his ideal audience.

yad acakathad amuṣmin śrīmadācāryavaryo

bahuparikaravṛndaṃ sarvaśāstroddhrtaṃ sat |

tadatulapariyatnenaikṣya saṃcintya sadbhir

hṛdayakamalakośe dhāryam āryaiḥ śivāya || TĀV 37.1 ||

yo ’dhītī nikhilāgameṣu padavid yo yogaśāstraśramī

yo vākyārthasamanvaye kṛtaratiḥ śrīpratyabhijñāmṛte |

yas tarkāntaraviśrutaśrutatayā dvaitādvayajñānavit

so ’smin syād adhikāravān kalakalaprāyaṃ pareṣāṃ vacaḥ || TĀV 37.2 ||271

270
% VM: 140–141.
% 271 TĀV, v. 12: 428.

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 What the best of ācaryas [Abhinavagupta] has said here, extracted from all the exegetical

works [and] a multitude of auxiliary works [e.g., in grammar, poetics, etc.], having been

examined and contemplated by the good [and] noble people with unequalled effort, should be

carried in the center of the lotus of the heart. That scholar, learned in all the āgamas, making

great efforts in yoga-śāstra, who knows grammar, who delights in construing the meanings

of sentences in the nectar of Pratyabhijñā, who has the knowledge of duality and non-duality

through being learned in the texts of all other philosophical systems, he possess eligibility [to

study] this [text]. What the others say is just babbling.

Jayaratha’s own encyclopedic knowledge, his ease of citing from a tremendous variety of

sources, and the gracefulness and precision of his commentarial style suggest that this

description was no mere exaggeration. While Jayaratha was certainly a brilliant polymath, an

author equally proficient in vast libraries of sources when commenting on a tantra of the cult of

Tripurasundarī (Vāmakeśvarīmatavivaraṇa), an exegetical text of tremendous complexity and

extraordinary stature in Śaiva non-dualism (Tantrālokaviveka), and even a text on poetic theory

(his Vimarṣinī on Ruyyaka’s Alaṅkārasarvasva), in each case he addressed an audience with

erudition and background knowledge comparable to his own.

Jayaratha closed his commentary on the Tantrāloka with a second set of verses, forty-seven

in number. They are written in the praśasti (panegyrical) style, polished, showy, and clever, but

not on the same level as the best kāvyā. Nevertheless, they are remarkable for their expression of

an intellectual, philosophical, and yet very personal world-view. The passage provides a fabulous

trove of facts, a boon for an historian of religion: details of Jayaratha’s patrilineal lineage, courtly

contributions of his ancestors and their achievements in scholarship and asceticism, and family

%124
and local legends which tally with Kalhana’s Rajatarangini. Alexis Sanderson has summarized

the information about Jayaratha’s lineage described in this set of verses as evidence of the date of

Jayaratha,272 so I will not discuss it here. But in addition to the wealth of factual information,

what is extraordinary in the closing verses of Tantrālokaviveka is their lyricism, otherwise

uncharacteristic for Jayaratha. Extraordinary erudite, a skillful śāstrī, dry, sarcastic, and pedantic

in turn in his commentary on the Vāmakeśvarīmata, here Jayaratha is almost sentimental, letting

his poetic disposition run over with uncommonly earnest love for Kashmir and its intellectual

world, a rhapsody for the scholarly world that has not quite passed, but even then seemed fragile.

Beginning with the first verse, the passage reads:

yaḥ kartuṃ viśvam etat prabhavati nikhilaṃ sarvavittvāt praṇetā

sarveṣāṃ āgamānām akhilabhavabhayocchedadāyī dayāluḥ |

tasyendrādyarcitāṅghrer gurur acalasutāvallabhasyāpi loke

sarvatrāmutra tāvattuhinagirir iti khyātimān parvatendraḥ || TĀV 37 II:1 ||273

He who has the power to create this whole world in its entirety, the creator, due to his

omniscience, of all the āgamas, the compassionate one who destroys the fear of rebirth,

whose feet are worshipped by the gods headed by Indra, the guru even of him who is the

beloved of the daughter of the mountain, is renowned as the snowy mountain (Himalaya)

everywhere in this world and as far as even the world beyond.

The verse is skillfully constructed to appear at first glance to be a eulogy of Śiva. However,

toward the end of pāda c, the focus suddenly shifts to the Himalaya, a natural feature of

Kashmir, personified and praised as superior even to Śiva. And the closing verses of

272
% Sanderson 2007: 621, footnote 416, 632–35, footnotes 418, 419.
% 273 TĀV, v. 12: 428–429.

%125
Tantrālokaviveka are Jayaratha’s elegy to Kashmir, giving one a measure of this land’s past glory

and of a tremendous pride on the part of the author. Jayaratha lauds the “realm of Śrī

Śāradā” (śrīśāradāmaṇḍalam, TĀV 37 II:1), an ancient seat of knowledge, known as Kashmir

(vidyāpīṭhe kāśmīranāmni, TĀV 37 II:2), praising its scholars, whose rivals are unable even to

contradict them (TĀV 37 II:2).274 He describes the Himālayan mountains and the land between

the rivers Madhumatī and Candrabhāgā (i.e., Kashmir) as “respected for every

knowledge,” (akhilavacasāṃ mānabhāvaṃ viditvā), and supported by the entirety of the

philosophical systems (nikhilaiḥ saṃśritaṃ darśanair at).275 Jayaratha identifies Kashmir

specifically, describing it as the abode of knowledge (vidyāpīṭhe kāśmīranāmni), where all

language is celebrated widely (prathīyaḥprathitanikhilavāg) and a seat of Śāradā pīṭhadevī, who

[consists] primarily of awareness (bodhapradhānā) and who impels (parikalitavatī) the real

nature of the essence of reflective awareness (yadvimarśātmatattvaṃ), which is the very soul

even of consciousness (bodhasya apy ātmabhūtaṃ).276

Thus Jayaratha accomplishes different aims in his closing verses of the

Vāmakeśvarīmatavivaraṇa and Tantrālokaviveka. In the first, he highlights one of most

important agendas in this text — to correct mistakes in ritual and mantra śāstra for the cult of the

Goddess Tripurasundarī. The closing verses of Tantrālokaviveka, by contrast, are Jayaratha’s

274
% yadvādinām uttaradiṅniveśād iva śrayanti prativādivācaḥ |
anuttaratvaṃ tadanuttararddhi śrīśāradāmaṇḍalam asti yatra || TĀV 37 II:2 || (vol. 12: 429.)
275
% jāmātrevāmṛtakarakalākḷptacūlāvacūlenādiṣṭaṃ drāg akhilavacasāṃ mānabhāvaṃ viditvā |
dadhre śailaḥ śritamadhumatīcandrabhāgāntarālaṃ saddeśatvācchirasi nikhilaiḥ saṃśritaṃ darśanair yat || TĀV
37 II:3 || (Volume 12: 429.)
276
% bodhasyāpy ātmabhūtaṃ parikalitavatī yadvimarśatmatattvaṃ
mukhyatvena stutātaḥ prabhavati vijayeśena pīṭheśvareṇa |
yuktā bodhapradhānā sthitanijamahasā śāradā pīṭhadevī
vidhyāpīṭhe prathīyaḥprathitanikhilavāg yatra kāśmīranāmni || TĀV 37 II:4 || (vol. 12: 429.)

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elegy to Kashmir, pouring out his love of that land and its scholarship, and his perception of

himself as a lone polymath on the precipice of history. This perception, sentimental as it might

seem, was sadly correct. Jayaratha was, in fact, the last great Kashmirian intellectual until the

sixteenth or seventeenth centuries.

While Jayaratha’s work marked an end of an era, his south Indian counterparts who

commented on the Vāmakeśvarīmata were at the beginning of a new one. In this new era, the

worship of Tripurasundarī was brought to the south of the subcontinent. A number of changes

resulted as this tradition was adapted to its new milieu. In comparison with Jayaratha’s active

engagement with other commentators, the earliest south Indian discussion of the cult of

Tripurasundarī demonstrated a lack of exegetical debate. Neither Śivānanda nor Vidyānanda cite

previous commentaries on the Vāmakeśvarīmata. But by Amṛtānanda’s time, south Indian

tradition acquired some of the richness and density, which it seemed to have lost in its initial

dissemination.

Both Śivānanda and Vidyānanda wrote long maṅgala verse passages to introduce themselves,

their commentaries, the text of Vāmakeśvarīmata, and their preceptorial lineages.277 It is worth

pointing out that Śivānanda called his commentary Ṛjuvimarśinī. Vimarśinī as the second part of

the compound is common for names of commentaries. Some that come immediately to mind in

this context are texts important for the Kashmirian Śaivism, i.e., Abhinavagupta’s

Īśvarapratyabhijñāvimarśinī and Īśvarapratyabhijñāvivrtivimarśinī,” and Kṣemarāja’s

Śivasūtravimarśinī. Īśvarapratyabhijñāvimarśinī was known to Śivānanda and cited by him in

this commentary. I think the choice is significant, not only because of the earlier precedents in

% 277 See Appendix F for Śivānanda’s and Appendix G for Vidyānanda’s opening and closing verses.

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Kashmirian exegesis, but also since vimarśinī, derived from vimarśa (reflective awareness), is an

important term for Pratyabhijñā. By the time of Śivānanda, Pratyabhijñā had become an

indispensable part of Śaiva exegesis in south India. His familiarity with Kashmirian Śaivism is

conspicuous in the very first maṅgala verses,278 which abound in Pratyabhijñā vocabulary and

concepts, e.g., bhāsana (manifestation), saṃvitti and cit (consciousness), śivādikṣitiparyantaḥ

ṣaṭtrimśattattv(āni) (thirty six tattvas beginning with Śiva and ending with Earth).279

sthitaṃ yatredam akhilam yanmayaṃ cāsya bhāsanam |

yataḥ samudayaś cāsya tatsaṃvittipadaṃ numaḥ || ṚV 1 ||

śivādikṣitiparyantaḥ ṣaṭtrimśattattvasaṃcayaḥ |
yasyormibudbudābhāsas taṃ seve cinmahodadhim || ṚV 2 ||280

That in which all this world, which consists of it abides, and whose manifestation consists of

it, from which it arises, that abode which is consciousness, we worship. I serve that great

ocean of consciousness, in whose waves, the accumulation of the thirty-six tattvas, from Śiva

to Earth are merely bubbles.

Let us also note the word ṛju in the title, which I find significant. Ṛju means “straight, proper,

upright,” which is most appropriate for the title of Śivānanda’s commentary. There is a self-

conscious “uprightness” about Śivānanda’s writing style. While Jayaratha elevated the cult of

Tripurasundarī to a place within the broader Śaiva tradition, Śivānanda downplayed its Kaulism

and “straightened” it. In his commentary, Śivānanda generously used citations from the Vedic

Saṃhitās, Brāhmaṇas, Āraṇyakas, Upaniṣads, and even from the Bhagavadgītā to support his

278
% See Appendix F for full text and translation.
279
% sthitaṃ yatraidam akhilam yanmayaṃ cāsya bhāsanam |
yataḥ samudayaś cāsya tatsaṃvittipadaṃ numaḥ || ṚV 1 ||
śivādikṣitiparyantaḥ ṣaṭtrimśattattvasaṃcayaḥ |
yasyormibudbudābhāsas taṃ seve cinmahodadhim || ṚV 2 || NṢA: 1.
% 280 NṢA: 1.

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reinterpretation of the Vāmakeśvarīmata as acceptable for an adept from a Vaidika background.

Although Śivānanda cited some tantras, as I will discuss briefly in this chapter, Vedic citations

were much more numerous in his commentary.

In his introductory verses, Śivānanda brings up a few other topics worth mentioning. Unlike

Jayaratha and Vidyānanda, who refer to their root text as the Vāmakeśvarīmata, Śivananda calls

it the Nityāṣoḍaśikārṇava (The Ocean of the Sixteen Nityās) and states that it as an essential part

of a larger text called the Vāmakeśvarīmata.281 It is not clear what exactly that larger text meant

for Śivānanda. It is possible that what he called the Vāmakeśvarīmata included the Yoginīhṛdaya,

but I have not yet found convincing evidence to support that hypothesis. However, I am still in

the early stages of work on south Indian commentaries and more evidence may come to light in

the future. Śivānanda also mentions the length of the text, i.e., four hundred verses (sūtraiś

catuśśatair yuktaḥ, ṚV 7). This length is also mentioned in Vidyānanda’s colophons at the end of

each chapter, which give the alternative name of the tantra (catuśśatī). This is almost exactly the

length of the text in the south Indian edition and slightly longer than Jayaratha’s mūla. In the

maṅgala verses, Śivānanda also correlates the five chapters of this tantra, which he refers to as

Nityāṣoḍaśikārṇava in colophons, to five types of ritual action discussed herein: pūjā, prayoga,

mudrā, vidyā, and japa.282

A few epithets in introductory verses 13 and 14 provide a good indication of what goals

Śivānanda set for his commentary. It was to be correct and proper (samyag) with language deep

281
% śrīvāmakeśvaraṃ nāma śāstraṃ tantra prakāśitam |
śivena saṃvidaṃ devīṃ lakṣyīkṛtya nijātmikām || ṚV 6 ||
madhye śāstrasya tasyāsti nityāṣoḍaśikārṇavaḥ |
sūtraiś catuśśatair yuktaḥ kaścid bhāgo rasāvahaḥ || ṚV 7 || NṢA: 2.
% 282
sa ca pañcapaṭalyātmā karmapañcakabhāsakaḥ |
pūjā prayogo mudrā ca vidyāvyāptir japastutiḥ || ṚV 8 || (NṢA: 3.)

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with scriptural quotations (gambhīrāgamabhāṣayā). For Śivānanda, āgama (scripture) meant

Vedic texts or what is called śruti, not Śaiva āgamas. This is clear from his consistent references

in his commentary to Vedic sources as śruti. It is also possible that verses 13 and 14 provided a

subtle criticism of the Kashmirian tradition.

tataḥ śivānandamuniḥ śiṣyair abhyarthito bhṛśam |

samyag vṛttividhānāya gambhīrāgamabhāṣayā || ṚV 13 ||

lopāmudrākramāyātasampradāyād ayaṃ punaḥ |

akarod āgamasyāsya vyākhyām ṛjuvimarśinīm || ṚV 14 ||283

Then Śivānanda muni, whose students fervently begged him for a commentary with language

deep in scriptural quotations to properly explain performing procedures. This commentary

from the tradition that follows the Lopāmudrā sequence [called] Ṛjuvimarśinī is a sweet and

exalted composition, stringing together one thousand three and five hundred more plus five

granthas.284

An important factual statement in ṚV 13 is that Śivānanda’s lineage belonged to Lopāmudrā

Sampradāya (lopāmudrākramāyātasampradāyād).285 This branch of the cult of Tripurasundarī

distinguished itself by its use of the so-called hādividyā, i.e., it extracted the fifteen-syllabled

mūlavidyā starting with ‘ha.’ As I mentioned earlier, the mūla of the Vāmakeśvarīmata extracted

its mūlavidyā starting with ‘ka,’286 although it was slightly different from what came to be known

as kādividyā later on. Yoginīhṛdaya uses hādividyā, but does not call it that, although

% 283 NṢA: 4.
284
% Grantha is a unit of 32 syllables, a south Indian term, which was usually used by scribes for payment.
285
% lopāmudrākramāyātasampradāyād ayaṃ punaḥ |
akarod āgamasyāsya vyākhyām ṛjuvimarśinīm || ṚV 14 || (Ibid.)
% 286 VM 1.93–101, see also Table 1.

%130
Amṛtānanda in his commentary on YH 2.33 did designate it by that name. Neither Yoginīhṛdaya

nor Amṛtānanda described the extraction of the vidyā.

Śivānanda concluded his introduction with a curious verse that played on the name of this

doctrine as Saubhagya sampradāya, i.e., auspicious, benign, and pleasant teaching, bestowing all

auspicious things.

saubhāgyaviṣayā vāṇī saumatyodayadāyinī |

saugatyāptir mahāpadyā sausthityaṃ labhatām asau || ṚV 16 ||287

May this great composition on the topic of auspiciousness, which grants wisdom and fitness

for the auspicious path (i.e., mokṣa), be well-regarded.

The syllable sau, with which each of the four pādas of the verse starts, is a play on

saubhagya. It also encodes the bīja mantra sauḥ, the third and final syllable of the condensed

form of mūlavidyā. This association of the cult of Tripurasundarī with auspiciousness is an

important theme for Śivānanda. His three short works in verse, Subhagodaya,

Subhagodayavāsanā, and Saubhāgyahṛdayastotra288 all contain a variant of this root in their

title. A later Śrīvidyā stotra called Triśatī takes this format to a new height and begins each of

three hundred names of Lalitā, contained within it, with a syllable of kādi pañcadaśākṣarī

(Śrīvidyā) mantra, using the same bīja to start each name of twenty, then the next bīja for the

next set of twenty, and so on through all the fifteen syllables. This stotra, together with the

Lalitāsahasranāma, is from a Lalitopākhyāna of Brahmāṇḍa Purāṇa, a later insertion into this

text. Both Vāmakeśvarīmata and the Yoginīhṛdaya refer to the Goddess and the Śrīcakra as

287
% NṢA: 1.
% 288 See Khanna 1986.

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auspicious,289 but I believe it was Śivānanda’s liberal use of saubhāgya, etc. and the play on the

mantra sauḥ that led to auspiciousness becoming so closely associated with this tradition in the

following centuries.

Unlike Śivānanda, Vidyananda appears to have been primarily interested in ritual. His work,

which he called ṭippaṇa (a gloss or comment), appears to have been a less ambitious project than

either Jayaratha or Śivānanda’s commentaries. Vidyānanda’s maṅgala verses also introduce his

gurus, Vaneśāṇa, Priyānanda, and Ratneśa (AR 1–5),290 who are mentioned again in his

commentary on “pāramparyeṇa” (by means of a lineage) in 4.19 ab.291 His lineage is the same as

Śivānanda’s, which the latter gives in the commentary on the same verses. In fact, they share the

same guru, Vāsudeva, disciple of Ratneśa, which makes the very different style of their

commentaries even more curious. Śivānanda’s account of the guru lineage begins with divine

and siddha gurus and ends with the human gurus (divyakrama, siddhakrama, and mānavakrama

respectively), the latter including himself, “Śivānandamahāyogī, the author of the

Ṛjuvimarśinī.”292 Alexis Sanderson used this passage to estimate the dates of Śivānanda and

Vidyānanda.293 Śivānanda’s account of the lineage is also confirmed by Amṛtānanda, the author

of the commentary on the Yoginīhṛdaya (the Yoginīhṛdayadīpikā).294

% 289
mahāsaubhāgyadāyakam VM 1.55, sarvasaubhāgyasundarīm VM 1.131, sarvāsaubhāgyadāyakam YH 1.83,
saubhāgyadāyake YH 3.142.
% 290 NṢA: 1–2.
% 291 NṢA: 223.
292
% Ṛjuvimarśinī (NṢA: 218–224). For the last group of gurus, beginning with Dīpakācārya and ending with
Śivānanda, see NṢA: 223–224.
293
% Sanderson 2007: 418–419 and 2014: 31–32. See chapter 1.
% 294 Sanderson 2007: 416, footnote 620.

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 In addition to Vedāntization, another new south Indian development is the appearance of

devotion in this tantric tradition and the expansion of the cult of Tripurasundarī into the stotra

genre. Bhakti is mentioned in the last of Vidyānanda’s introductory verses, which reads:

artharatnāvalīty eṣā khyāta ’stu bhuvanatraye |

bhuvaneśvari te bhaktyā kriyate ṭippaṇaṃ yataḥ || AR 11 ||295

Let it be known as Artharatnāvali in the three worlds, since this commentary is made with

devotion to you, O Bhuvaneśvari (Queen of the Worlds).

André Padoux called the Yoginīhṛdaya “mainly metaphysical and devotional,” in contrast to

Vāmakeśvarīmata, which he described as “a work of erotic magic and ritual.”296 However, to my

mind, neither the shift from external ritual to the predominance of internal yogic practices nor the

greater interest in metaphysics make the Yoginīhṛdaya a devotional text. Nor do I see enough

evidence to confirm a shift in attitude. The word “devotion” is used in the text once in a

compound “bowed in devotion” (bhaktinamraḥ) in YH 2.51. But that alone does not suggest a

devotional attitude and the context is quite similar to the prelude to ritual described in VM 1.132

and 133.297

While the Tripurasundarīdaṇḍaka, a hymn to Tripurasundarī, is attributed to Dīpakācārya, I

believe it was particularly in Śivānanda and Vidyānanda’s generation of south Indian exegetes

295
% NṢA: 4.
296
% Padoux 2013: 8.
297
% mahātripuramudrāṃ tu smṛtvāvāhanarūpayā |
vidyayāvāhya subhage namaskāraniyuktayā || VM 1.132 ||
pūrvoktayā sādhakendro mahātripurasundarīm |
cakramadhye tu saṃcintya tataḥ pūjanam ārabhet || VM 1.133 || (VM: 70–71.)
The best of practitioners, having contemplated Mahātripurasundarī in the midst of the cakra, as previously
described, having summoned her with the vidyā, which is an invocation, and having added namaskāra [gesture], O
charming one, he then should begin the worship.

%133
that the idea of bhakti seriously took root. It is Śivānanda who authored the first unambiguously

attributed devotional hymn to Tripurasundarī, the Saubhāgyahṛdayastotra. Another key stotra for

the early cult of Tripurasundarī is Puṇyānanda’s Kāmakalāvilāsa, which his disciple Amṛtānanda

frequently quoted in the commentary on the Yoginīhṛdaya.

Let us now consider what Śivānanda and Vidyānanda’s citations can tell us about these

authors. While Jayaratha began his commentary with citations from venerated Śaiva tantras,

non-dual Śaiva exegesis and Pratyabhijñā, Śivānanda’s citations reflect a very different set of

foundational texts he brings to this project. His first quotation is from śruti, firmly situating

himself in the Smārta Śaiva mainstream.

īśānaḥ sarvavidyānāṃ (Taitirīyāranyaka 10.47.1)298

Īśāna of all knowledge…

In pañcasrotas (the five streams of transmission in the Śaiva Āgamas), Īśāna was one of five

faces of Śiva: Sadyojāta, Vāmadeva, Aghora, Tatpuruṣa, and Īśāna. From the evocation of the

auspiciousness of this tradition and its mantras, to the reference to all the knowledge, belonging

to Īśānaḥ, Śivānanda moves on to expansively describe the Goddess as she is invoked in the first

twelve ślokas of the mūla. The style of Śivānanda’s interpretation of the nature of the Goddess

described in the maṅgala verses of the Vāmakeśvarīmata is common for his expressive passages,

which are quite different stylistically from those that gloss the text. In these, Śivānanda uses

exceedingly long compounds as large brushstrokes to paint a sweeping outline. The Goddess

here is speech, she is vowels and consonants, words, syllables, and everything that is to be

expressed, she is Mātṛka, the “Mother-of-Speech” (the mother energy of phonemes by contrast to

% 298 NṢA: 4.

%134
the phonemes themselves).299 She is also the very self of the supreme Śiva. She is Paraśakti,

indivisible and uninterrupted. She is mother to hundreds of thousands of mantras, the real non-

created self, and in Pratyābhijñā terms she is parāmarśa (reflective awareness) and bliss.300

Interestingly, for Śivānanda, she is also the distillation of all Vedic, tantric, and worldly

knowledge, the Itihāsas, the Purāṇas, and the philosophical systems.301 From the Śaiva

mainstream Śivānanda moves to the heart of Vaidika’s understanding of anything that is worth

knowing. And tantric knowledge inserted into this common Vaidika list of the branches of

knowledge seems quite out of place.

Śivānanda’s understanding of tantric knowledge as part of a larger system, which also

includes śruti and smṛti, is quite different from Jayaratha’s and even Vidyānanda’s commentary.

Jayaratha barely mentions any Vaidika literature, quoting only once from the Bṛhadāranyaka. His

primary interest is in Śaiva tantras and non-dual Śaiva exegesis, and, of course, in demolishing

rival commentators. Vidyānanda’s primary interest in this text is its ritual application. His

citations are sparse and he most frequently quotes Samkettapaddhati by Jiṣṇudeva, a text that

was also favored by Amṛtānanda in his commentary on the Yoginīhṛdaya. Most of the other

citations by Vidyānanda are from the tantras, including the Uttaraṣaṭka (Rudrayāmala),

Śrīmatottara of the cult of Kubjikā (Kubjikāmata Uttaratantra), and Jñānārṇava (a Śrīvidyā

tantra, which postdates the Vāmakeśvarīmata and the Yoginīhṛdaya). Vidyānanda’s entire

commentary on the first paṭala of the Vāmakeśvarīmata has only two Vaidika citations, including

299
% NṢA: 4–5.
300
% Ibid.
% 301 laukikavaidikatantrikaitihāsapurāṇadarśanasārabhūtāṃ (NṢA: 5).

%135
one from the Ṛgveda 1.23.8302 and another from Bṛhadāranyaka Upaniṣad.303 As we will see,

however, Śivānanda has three Vedic citations commenting on the first word alone.

Glossing the first word in the long compound of VM 1.1 ab in the first verse of the

Vāmakeśvarīmata, Śivānanda interprets Gaṇeśas, as the Rudras, beginning with Śrīkaṇṭha, the

foremost among the Vedic gods, who lead groups of other gods, such as the Maruts, the Adityas,

etc.304 As I explained in the previous chapter, Jayaratha followed an earlier commentator,

Naravāhanadatta, and interpreted Gaṇeśas as presiding deities of planets, since the latter rule

over classes (gaṇas) of phonemes. A lack of agreement between south Indian and Kashmirian

commentators here or in many other places in their commentaries, demonstrates the fluidity

within the tradition.

The meanings of a number of the verses in the Vāmakeśvarīmata have obviously become

obscure by the time of Śivānanda and Vidyānanda. On numerous occasions in his commentary,

Vidyānanda gave a whole string of possible explanations linked with athavā (or else), just as he

did in comments on NṢA 1.186, which I discussed in chapter 3. It seems quite likely that this

commentator simply did not know how to interpret the text in those instances. But in

commenting on the word “Gaṇeśas,” Vidyānanda’s interpretation was identical to Śivānanda’s:

“gaṇeśāḥ” śrīkaṇṭhādayo rūdrāḥ pañcaśatsaṃkyākāḥ |

Gaṇeśas are Rudras, beginning with Śrīkaṇṭha, fifty in number.305

% 302 NṢA: 6.
303
% NṢA: 139.
304
% NṢA: 6.
% 305 NṢA: 5.

%136
 To support his Vedic interpretation, Śivānanda quotes from the Taittirīya Āraṇyaka, Saṃhitā,

and Brahmana. In the same passage, he also cites Prapañcasāra, a text he quotes from often in

this commentary. Prapañcasāra was of the earliest digests on Mantraśāstra, a Śakti-oriented text,

which mentioned Śrīvidyā.306 In his 1981 summary of Śākta literature, Goudriaan described

Prapañcasāra as “a convincing case of the acceptance of tantric methods and speculations in

circles of learned Brahmans proficient in the classical style of Sanskrit.” It sounds like what the

Prapañcasāra managed to accomplish was remarkably similar to Śivānanda’s aims for his

commentary.

In addition to establishing himself as Vaidika, Śaiva, and Tantrika, Śivānanda goes on to

highlight his connections with non-dual Pratyābhijñā. He glosses mantramayīm in the mūla as

“uncreated self consisting of parāmarśa (reflective awareness)” and mātrkā as “the body of

Paramaśiva, whose nature is Anāhata Baṭṭāraka, the Supreme Speech (parāvāc), the cause of

manifestation of the thirty-six tattvas, and the supreme consciousness.”307 Śivānanda’s citations

in this section of commentary include the most famous texts of Śaiva non-dualism and

Pratyābhijñā. One such citations is verse 2 of Pratyābhijñāhṛdaya, a text that popularized

Pratyābhijñā and made its vocabulary a common lexicon for the non-dual tantric Śaivism.

Śivānanda refers to its author, Kṣemarāja, as abhiyukta, his highest designation of established

teachers, a term which he also uses for Śaṅkara and Kālidāsa later in the commentary. Here

Śivānanda also quotes from Parātriṃśikā, a Trika tantra that worshiped Parā, which

306
% Goudriaan 1981: 131.
% 307
mantramayīm akṛtrim āhaṃ parāmarśamayīm | mātṛkāṃ parāvāgātmanā
parābhaṭṭarikātmakaparamaśivasvarūpāṃ ṣaṭtriṃśattattvaprasaraṇahetubhūtāṃ parāṃ saṃvidam ity arthaḥ |
(NṢA: 9.)

%137
Abhinavagupta had commented on, Īśvarapratyābhijñākārika by Utpaladeva, Abhinavagupta’s

own Tantrāloka, and Spaṇḍakārikā by Vasgupta.

Finally, let us look at several variant readings in the two editions containing Kashmirian and

south Indian commentaries as well as those verses that are only found in south Indian texts, to

see what kind of insights they offer. Quite a few of the readings in the “south Indian”308 edition

by Dviveda contain corrections that aim to standardize grammar to Pāṇinian and to make the

mūla easier to understand. I will give just two examples of these here. E.g., VM 1.6 ab reads

yadekādaśam ādhārabījakoṇatrayodbhavam, while in the NṢA we find: yadekādaśam

ādhārabījaṃ koṇatrayodbhavam. In the latter version, the word ekādaśam (eleventh) is

modifying the compound ādhārabījaṃ (the seed, which is the ādhāra, i.e., cakra, lit. support),

while in the first (and probably original) version, it modifies the entire compound

ādhārabījakoṇatrayodbhavam (arising from the triangle, which is the seed and the ādhāra).309

Another example is NṢA 1.165 correcting sarvavidrāvaṇī in VM 1.145, which is probably the

original reading, with the more standard sarvavidrāviṇī.310 Here, it is only Śivānanda’s, but not

Vidyānanda’s commentary that supports this reading. These kinds of substitutions in the south

Indian edition are quite numerous and most of these readings are found either in both or in one or

the other commentary. Most often in the latter case the standardized version is found in

Śivānanda’s text.

308
% I am calling this edition “south Indian” for convenience, because it contains two south Indian commentaries. This
edition was actually published in Varanasi.
309
% NṢA: 18, VM: 11.
% 310 NṢA: 128, VM: 66.

%138
 More telling is when a new reading substantively changes the meaning of the original verse.

For example, NṢA 1.10 has parām śivām (supreme [and] auspicious) modifying devīṃ, instead

of paraulijām in VM:10.311 Paraulijām is an old tantric term meaning “transmission, flood of

knowledge”312 and this change of an obscure term to a clear but generic substitution robs the

verse of its specificity and texture. In this case, both of the south Indian commentators read

parām śivām and do not mention the other reading. Occasionally certain key words are inserted

by the south Indian commentators into the mūla to reflect the new environment for the cult of

Tripursundarī. In a move characteristic for Śivānanda’s Vedāntization project, sarvadevamayam

(consisting of all the deities, in the description of the Śrīcakra) in the Kashmirian edition was

replaced with sarvavedamayam (consisting of all the Vedas) in the south Indian edition and in the

body of Śivānanda’s commentary.313 Śivānanda also used this reading when commenting on

verse 1.9. Vidyānanda has a slightly different mūla for verses 47–50 and reads

sarvaṛddhipradaṃ (one that grants all growth).

Another example of a difference in the mūla is an addition to the south Indian edition of

verses, which were not given in the Kashmirian text. This is a common occurrence. While the

first paṭala in the south Indian edition contains 188 and 1/2 verses, the Kashmirian mūla has only

168. For example, the south Indian edition inserted two and a half verses on siddhis (supernatural

powers) to the mūla in its description of the first outer subcakra (the doors and the intermediate

directions of the enclosure) within the Śrīcakra. The insertion occurs just before VM 136–137,

corresponding to NṢA 156–157 ab.

311
% NṢA: 25, VM: 13.
312
% As Professor Sanderson explained to me.
% 313 NṢA: 74 (verse 1.49), VM: 31 (verse 1.49 also).

%139
 aṇimāṃ paścimadvāre laghimām api cottare || NṢA 1.153 ||

mahimāṃ pūrvadvāre tu īśitvākhyāṃ tu dakṣiṇē |

vaśitvākhyāṃ tu vāyavye prākāmyām īśadeśake || NṢA 1.154 ||

bhuktisiddhiṃ tathāgneye icchasiddhiṃ tu nairṛte |

adhas tāt prāptisiddhiṃ tu sarvakāmāṃ tadurdhvataḥ || NṢA 1.155 || 314

Aṇimā (minuteness) in the Western door, Laghimā (lightness) in the Northern one, Mahimā

(greatness) in the Eastern door, Īśitvā (superiority) in the Southern. One called Vaśitvā

(dominion) in the Vāyu’s [direction] (Northwest) and Prākāmyā (freedom of will) in Īśāna’s

direction (Northeast). Bhukti (enjoyment) in the Fire’s [direction] (Southeast) and likewise

Icchā (Wish) in Nirṛti’s (Southwest).

Verses VM 136–137, corresponding to NṢA 156–157 ab, which follow the insertion of verses

on siddhis, give locations of the eight mother goddesses (Brahmaṇī, Māheśvarī, Indrāṇī,

Kaumārī, Vaiṣṇavī, Vārāhī, Cāmuṇḍā, and Mahālakṣmī) in the first external subcakra. There are

slight variations in the names in the list given in south Indian edition.

In his commentary on VM 1.136–137, where the south Indian edition inserts additional

verses, Jayaratha refers to the standard number of eight siddhis starting with aṇimā (minuteness)

and ending with kāmāvasāyitva (dominion over desires) in the commentary. The south Indian

edition’s mūla reads sarvakāmā (all desires) for kāmāvasāyitvā (dominion over desires) and adds

bhukti (enjoyment) and icchā (wish, desire), bringing the total number of siddhis to ten. In the

commentary, Jayaratha explained that the siddhis were to be worshipped with the mudrās of

Tripurā and with the appropriate Cakreśvarī (ruler of each group of subordinate goddesses) in

every cakra. This is one of several places of divergent readings, where it seems that the south

% 314 NṢA: 125–126.

%140
Indian commentators were familiar with Jayaratha’s commentary, but the evidence is not

definitive. My impression from reading these commentaries is that Śivānanda knew Jayaratha’s

work and took it as a source of additional material without acknowledging it, but I cannot prove

this at the present time.

It is worth looking into Jayaratha commentary on VM 136–137 in more detail because it

shows just how careful Jayaratha was with his mūla. It also gives a good example of elaboration

presented as a recovery of the original meaning in his commentary. Jayaratha begins his

comments by acknowledging the abrupt switch from the first to second case in the mūla, which

is unusual for the Vāmakeśvarīmata. This switch seems to be caused by a simple scribal error.

Perhaps, the verses were borrowed from another text and not all the endings were corrected. But

Jayaratha cannot allow that a divinely revealed tantra may have a grammatical inconsistency, so

he acknowledges the issue, but gives it a rather unhelpful explanation:

prathamāntā pūjyeti saṃbandhanīyā, dvitīyāntāṃ pūjayed iti |315

Those referred to in the first case are “to be worshiped,” those in the second case [also].

The south Indian edition has a slightly different version of the mūla here, in which all the

endings have been corrected to the second case. As this and many other examples show, south

Indian commentators, particularly Śivānanda, were quite comfortable with rewriting the mūla

when it served their needs, while Jayaratha made every effort to explain his original as he found

it, even if it required some very awkward interpretations.

Another issue regarding presenting additional information that is not in the mūla arises when

Jayaratha uses the Yoginīhṛdaya or a similar text to supplement the Vāmakeśvarīmata. In the

% 315 VM: 64.

%141
commentary on the same verses, he quotes YH 3.117 cd – 118 ab, which gave the name of the

first subcakra within the Śrīcakra (trailokyamohana) and stated that this was the location of the

eight siddhis.316 In this same section of the commentary,317 Jayaratha also indicated with a quote

(tatrādibhede tripurā) that this and other divisions were governed by a Cakreśvarī with a name

beginning with Tripurā, i.e., Tripurā, Tripurīśvarī, Tripurasundarī, Tripuravāsinī, etc., see

Appendix D. However, since knowledge was understood as eternal and unchanging Jayaratha

could not be explicit in presenting this as additional information. Instead, Jayaratha provided the

following interpretation, lest he (or the text he was citing) be accused of “newness.”

ityādinā brāhmyādaya eva tatkāritvād aṇimāditvena vyapadiṣṭā iti na kaścid virodhaḥ | āsāṃ
cakreśvarītvena tatraiva318

There is no inconsistency, because Brāhmī, etc. are designated as aṇima, etc. because they

govern these [siddhis]. And they designated as Cakreśvarīs (goddesses presiding over each

subcakra) only there [in the Yoginīhṛdaya].

As we can see from these characteristic examples, exegesis played a vital role in providing a

mechanism for the cult of Tripurasundarī to adapt to its new environments. In Jayaratha’s case, it

was updating the Vāmakeśvarīmata to doctrinal and philosophical positions of Kashmirian non-

dualism. South Indian exegetes built on the existing foundation to adapt this ritual tradition to

Smārta Brahmanism. The most prominent new features that became important for future

Śrīvidyā, which we begin to see already in Śivānanda and Vidyānanda’s commentaries, are the

316
% tatra prakaṭayoginyaś cakre trailokyamohane |
aṇimādyā mahādevi siddhayo'ṣṭau vyavasthitāḥ || YH 3.118 (Ibid.)
317
% Ibid.
% 318 VM: 64.

%142
reinterpretation of this tantric ritual tradition through Vaidika knowledge systems and the

appearance of bhakti (devotion).

%143
 CONCLUSION

In this dissertation, I have investigated the early textual development of the cult of

Tripurasundarī, a popular trans-regional Hindu Goddess tradition, now known as Śrīvidyā.

Reading early tantras and commentaries “against the grain,” as products of historical actors

rather than as timeless truths or the recovery and elucidation of a putative original meaning, I

have traced the early history of this tradition by highlighting innovation and continuity in ritual

practice and doctrine. I have also discussed several shifts in the development of the early cult of

Tripurasundarī from its origins in the obscure cult of the Nityās to its dissemination across the

Indian subcontinent from Kashmir to south India.

In the antecedent Nityā cult, the Goddess was associated with Kāmadeva, the god of love,

and surrounded by an unelaborated retinue of Nityā Goddesses, compared to the later tradition.

The antecedent cult focused primarily on external ritual to effect mundane results, such as

amorous attraction, eloquence, and protection, etc. The classical cult preserved and developed

many of the features already in present in the Nityā cult. Among them were the triadic nature of

the Goddess and the deeply embedded connections to love magic. The language of the

Vāmakeśvarīmata, the earliest extant tantra of the classical tradition, was steeped in erotic

imagery. The memory of Kāmadeva as the Goddess’s consort in the antecedent cult became an

inseparable presence in the iconography and the ritual system of the mature tradition. The

triangle from which the primary Goddess emerged in the Nityā cult, was now placed in the center

of a new and complex ritual diagram of the Śrīcakra. The Vāmakeśvarīmata described this new

and visually stunning ritual configuration, which included ninety-seven subordinate Goddesses

arranged on nine levels. The Śrīcakra and its configuration of the subordinate deities has been

%144
preserved unchanged from at least early eleventh century into the present time, an extraordinary

example of ritual stability among the sweeping changes in metaphysics.

Following the Vāmakeśvarīmata, the Yoginīhṛdaya built a new system of meditative and

yogic practices upon the existing ritual and mantric structures of the mature tradition. The

redactors of the Yoginīhṛdaya revitalized the cult of Tripurasundarī with ideas steeped in

Pratyabhijñā philosophy and Śaiva non-dualism. Thirteenth- and fourteenth-century exegesis

adapted the doctrine of the cult of Tripurasundarī to its new environments. Kashmirian Jayaratha

reinterpreted this ritual tradition in light of Śaiva non-dualism and Pratyabhijñā philosophy, and

south Indian commentators, while fluent in the language of Pratyabhijñā, began to adapt the cult

of Tripurasundarī to south Indian Smārta Brahmanism.

As the cult of Tripurasundarī/Śrīvidyā gained in popularity and status, it became widely

influential within the realm of the Hindu religious mainstream. While the exotericization and

Vedāntization eventually brought the cult of Tripurasundarī into the heart of Hindu temple

worship, the devotional practice in time carried the most treasured hymns of this tradition to the

forefront of private religious life in south India. Śrīvidyā continues to occupy a significant place

in contemporary religious practice. Four factors contributed to the success of this tradition: first,

the non-threatening and pleasing nature of Tripurasundarī and her associations with love magic,

which presented a popular alternative to the ferocious goddesses; second, the visually stunning

Śrīcakra and the complementary mantra system, both of them viewed as exceedingly powerful;

third, the tremendous breadth of practices from external ritual to yogic visualizations built onto

the existing ritual and mantra system; and, finally, creative and skillful exegesis, which allowed

this tradition to adapt to its changing environments.

%145
 In my next project, I plan to examine a later corpus of texts, focusing on the systematic

purging of antinomian elements and the pervasive attempts of south Indian exegetes to reread the

tradition in the light of Advaita Vedānta philosophy. I will also investigate a new devotional shift,

which was already felt in Śivānanda and Vidyānanda’s time. I will analyze hymns composed by

known exegetes as well as a new corpus of devotional compositions attributed by this tradition to

some of the most venerated figures in Hindu thought. Most prominent among the latter is

Śaṅkara, an Advaita Vedānta philosopher, whose provenance in the eighth century CE

significantly predates the proliferation of the cult of Tripurasundarī/Śrīvidyā. The

Saundaryalaharī, a hymn to the Goddess, which draws on Śrīvidyā and a south Indian variant of

the cult of Kubjikā, is among such attributions to Śaṅkara by the later tradition.319 The

Lakṣmīdharī, a non-Kaula commentary on the Saundaryalaharī by Lakśmīdhara, is a further

example of the Smārta adaptation of the cult of Tripurā, which I would like to investigate as part

of this research. I look forward to studying the overlapping literary worlds of south Indian

commentators and the expansion of the cult of Tripurasundarī/Śrīvidyā into varied literary

domains in my post-dissertation project.

% 319 Sanderson 2002: 3.

%146
 APPENDIX A

Classification of Śaiva doctrines

Atimārga
Pāñcārthika Pāṣupatas – cult of Rudra;
Lākulas/Kālamukhas – cult of Bhairava;
Kāpālikas/Mahāvratins/Somasiddhāntins
– cult of Bhairava

Mantramārga
Siddhānta – cult of Sadāśiva;
Non-Siddhānta:
Mantrapīṭha – cult of Bhairava and Aghoreśvarī;
Vidyāpīṭha:
• Vāmasrotaḥ – cult of Tumburu and his four sisters;
• Yāmala – cult of Caṇḍā Kāpālinī and
Kapaleśvarabhairava;
%
• Kālīkula/Krama – cult of Kālasaṃkarṣaṇī/Kālī
• Trika – cult of Parā, Parāparā, and Aparā
Figure 1.

Kulamārga (cult of Kuleśvarī)

• Kālīkula/Krama – cult of Kālasaṃkarṣaṇī/Kālī
• Trika – cult of Parā, Parāparā, and Aparā
• Cult of the Kubjikā;
• Nityā Cult
• Śrīvidyā – cult of Tripurasundarī

(Source: Sanderson 2006 and 2008)

%147
 APPENDIX B

Classifications of the Kaula systems

1. Classification in the Ciñciṇīmatasārasamuccaya of the Kubjikā cult

Kālīkula, Krama –

the tradition of the

northern order

(uttaragharāmnāya)

Kubjikā – a system related to Trika

the tradition of the – the tradition of the

western order eastern order

(paścimagharāmnāya) (pūrvagharāmnāya)

Nityā cult –

the tradition of the

southern order

(dakṣinagharāmnāya)

Source: Sanderson 2009: 48–49 and 2010: 46–47.

%148
 2. Later Classification of the Kaula systems according to the Vāḍavānalīyatantra

Tripurasundarī, Kāmeśī,

Lalitā, Bālā, Tripurabhairavī –

the upper tradition

(ūrdhvāmnāya)

Kālasaṃkarṣiṇī, Guhyakālī,

Siddhilakṣmī, etc. –

the northern tradition

(uttarāmnāya)

Kubjikā, etc. – Pūrṇeśi, etc. –

the western tradition the eastern tradition

(paścimāmnāya) (pūrvāmnāya)

Niśeśī, etc. –

the southern tradition

(dakṣināmnāya)

Vajrayoginī, Nairṛteśvarī, etc.

– the lower tradition

(adharāmnāya/ūrdhvāmnāya)

Source: Vāḍavānalīya in Puraścaryārṇava, Ed. M. Jha. Delhi: Chaukhamba Sanskrit

Pratishthan, 1985.320

% 320
The relevant portion of the text was kindly provided by Professor Sanderson in an email correspondence on May
17, 2010.

%149
 APPENDIX C

The Structure of the Vāmakeśvarīmata

The Vāmakeśvarīmata consists of five chapters. The first chapter is the longest, consisting of

168 verses, using the count of the KSTS. This chapter is concerned with the configuration of

deities to be worshipped within the Śrīcakra (see Appendix D). The Goddess is first introduced

as a supreme Mātṛkā goddess in the invocatory verses (1.1–12).321 The teaching is presented in

the form of a conventional dialogue between Śiva and the Goddess. The Goddess details a list of

sixty-four tantras which have already been taught (1.14–21) and requests the teaching of the

names and the vidyās of the Nityā goddesses, the complete description of the Śrīcakra pūjās, and

the worship of each individual cakra (1.22cd–23). The names of the Nityā goddesses follow

(1.25–28), although their vidyās are not given, as had been requested in the epilogue. Then the

instructions for the drawing of the Śrīcakra are presented and the various siddhis and benefits

granted through its worship are described (1.29–57). Next in the chapter, the names of the

alphabet goddesses are given and their bījas are extracted (1.60–79 ab). Further, the

supplementary vidyās (vidyāṅgas) are extracted (1.79 cd–93 ab) and the mūlavidyā is presented

in a coded form (1.93 cd–101). This mūlavidyā of Tripurasundarī with a slight modifiction came

to be referred to in the mature classical tradition as the pañcadaśākṣarī or Śrīvidyā mantra. Then

follows the description of the sādhaka (1.101–106 ab) and the instructions on the preparation of

the ground and the drawing of the Śrīcakra (1.107 cd–108), as well as its worship with the

supplementary vidyās and the practice of nyāsa (1.109–112). A visualization of the Goddess,

including the description of her physical characteristics and a brief commentary on her grace and

% 321 All verse numbers according to the KSTS VM edition.

%150
her supreme nature follows (1.113–131). A large section of the chapter gives the names of the

subordinate goddesses in the nine levels of the Śrīcakra (1.132–162) (see Appendix D). The

chapter is concluded with the instructions for the order of worship (offerings, mudrās, the

kāmakalā visualization, and the conclusion of worship) (1.163–168).

The second chapter of seventy-nine verses begins with the description of benefits of amorous

nature attained through the worship of the Śrīcakra (2.1–3) and the japa of the mūlavidyā (2.4–

6). It provides several additional yantra sādhanas and methods for inscribing a yantra for

attraction (2.7–2.29), including subjection (2.11–14), and wearing it for protection and for the

attainment of various siddhis (2.31–79).

The third is a short chapter of twenty-eight verses providing instructions on how to produce

mudrās and describing their expected benefits. These are: sarvasaṃkṣobhakāriṇī (one who

agitates all), sarvavidrāviṇī (who puts all to flight), trailokyākarṣakāriṇī (who attracts the three

worlds), sarvāveśakarī (who possesses all), unmādinī (one who maddens), mahāṅkuśā (the great

goad), khecarī (the flying mudrā said to enable the sādhaka to have samaya, or to come together,

with śākinīs, ḍākinīs, and other yoginīs), bīja (the seed mudrā said to activate all siddhis), and the

yonimudrā. While all the mudrās described are meant to be used during worship, it is specified

that the khecarīmudrā can be used at any time.

The fourth chapter of seventy-one verses explains the sādhanas pertaining to the three stages

of emanation of the mūlavidyā (vāgbhava, kāmarāja, and śakti, or aiṃ hrīṃ sauḥ in the

contracted form of the vidyā). The first section of the chapter eulogizes Tripurasundarī,

describing the glory of her unmanifested aspect, and her eventual emanation in three stages in the

microcosm of the body (verses 4.2–18). The summary of benefits of the worship of Tripurā is

%151
given, including liberation, freedom from poverty and illness, and the removal of all obstacles

(4.19–20).

After the introduction, follow the descriptions of the specific sādhanas for each stage of

emanation and for the entire vidyā. The vāgbhava practice involves white offerings and includes

a visualization of the Goddess as the vāgbhava syllable, blazing on the tip of the tongue (4.21–

24). This sādhana is said to grant the benefits of eloquence and wisdom (4.25–33). The section

on kāmarāja (4.34–46) gives instructions for visualization practices (4.41 cd–43) with this vidyā

to destroy the ego (4.36), overcome Kāmadeva himself (4.38), and to attract all types of human,

divine, and semi-divine women (4.38–41). The śakti sādhana grants the power to cure snake

bites and poisons and the control over bhūtas (ghosts), pretas (ghouls), and piśācas (goblins)

(4.47–50). The last section of the chapter describes visualization sādhanas for the mūlavidyā in

its entirety and their benefits, including becoming the Lord of Speech and another Kāmadeva

(4.51–71).

The fifth chapter includes only thirty-three verses and discusses the mantra sādhana of

Tripurasundarī with regards to japa and homa, and the benefits of these methods. The first

section is dedicated to japa, providing information on the type of mālās (rosary beads) to be used

(verses 5.8–10), benefits expected to occur depending on the number of repetitions (5.11–17),

types of japa (5.17), and the auspicious places for japa to be performed (5.19–20). Once the

sādhaka completes his goal of mantra repetitions, he is instructed to perform a homa (verse 21).

The section on homa specifies the types of flowers to be offered (5.22), types of homakuṇḍas

(fire-pits) and the benefits said to accrue from their use (5.23cd–27ab), as well as the rewards to

be expected from the use of particular oblations (27 cd–33). With this section the

%152
Vāmakeśvarīmata ends. There is no conclusion of any sort; and the dialogue between Bhairava

and the Goddess, with which the tantra starts, is not revisited, which makes for a rather abrupt

ending.

%153
 APPENDIX D

The Deities of the Vāmakeśvarīmata

I. Sixteen Nityā Goddesses322

tatrādau prathamā nityā mahātripurasundarī || VM 1.25 cd ||

tataḥ kāmeśvarī nityā nityā ca bhagamālinī |

nityaklinnāpi hi tathā bheruṇḍā vahnivāsinī || VM 1.26 ||

mahāvidyeśvarī dūtī tvaritā kulasundarī |

nityā nīlapatākā ca vijayā sarvamaṅgalā || VM 1.27 ||

jvālāmāli vicitrā cety evaṃ nityās tu ṣoḍaśa |

First is the principal Nityā, Mahātripurasundarī. Then Kāmeśvarī (the goddess of desire),

Bhagamālinī (who is garlanded with bhagas), Nityaklinnā (always moist), Bheruṇḍā

(terrible, formidable), Vahnivāsinī (dwelling in the fire), Mahāvidyeśvarī (the ruler of

great vidyā), Dūtī (messenger), Tvaritā (one who is swift), Kulasundarī (one who is the

beauty of kula), Nityā, Nīlapatākā (one who is with a blue banner), Vijayā (the victorious

one), Sarvamaṅgalā (the all-auspicious one), Jvālāmāli (garlanded with flames), and

Vicitrā (charming, multicolored). These are the sixteen Nityās.

% 322 Although I would not usually translate proper names, I provided their literal translation here for purposes of
analysis.

%154
 II. The Deities of the Śrīcakra

In the following listing of the nine levels of the Śrīcakra ritual, I will first provide

the level of the cakra (proceeding in the direction of samhārakrama, from outside in),323

then the name of the cakra, the aspect of the supreme Goddess it is said to reflect (as

given in Jayaratha’s commentary drawing on the Yoginīhṛdaya), and, finally, relevant

verses (with their translation) providing the names of the goddesses included in each

level.

The First Cakra. Name: Trailokyamohana (one who deludes the three

worlds). Aspect: Tripurā. Eight mothers in the four doors and four corners of the

outer enclosure:

brahmāṇī paścimadvāre māheśvary api cottare |

pūrve caiva tathendrāṇī kaumārī dakṣiṇe tathā || VM 1.136 ||

vaiṣṇavy api ca vāyavye vārāhīm īśadiggatām |

cāmuṇḍāṃ devi cāgneye mahālakṣmīṃ tu nairṛte || VM 1.137 ||

Brahmāṇī in the western entrance and Māheśvarī in the north, Indrāṇī in the east, [and]

Kaumārī in the south; Vaiṣṇavī in Vāyu's [direction, i.e., in the northwest], Vārāhī in Iśa's

direction [i.e., in the northeast], Cāmuṇḍā in Agni's [direction, i.e., in the southeast],

Mahālakṣmī in Nirṛti's [direction, i.e., in the southwest].

% 323
For the graphical representation of the nine cakras, see Shima, Iwa, How to Inscribe the Śrīcakra and the Method
for the Extraction of the Vidyā: NṢA 1.1–119ab.

%155
 The Second Cakra. Name: Sarvāśāparipūraṇa (one who fulfills all hopes).

Aspect: Tripurīśvarī. Sixteen goddesses of attraction in the outer petals:

kāmākarṣaṇarūpā ca buddhyākarṣasvarūpiṇī |

ahaṅkārākarṣiṇī ca śabdākarṣasvarūpiṇī || VM 1.138 ||

sparśākarṣaṇarūpā ca rūpākarṣaṇakāriṇī |

rasākarṣakarī devī gandhākarṣakarī tathā || VM 1.139 ||

cittākarṣaṇarūpā ca dhairyākarṣasvarūpiṇī |

smṛtyākarṣaṇarūpā ca nāmākarṣaṇakāriṇī || VM 1.140 ||

bījākarṣaṇarūpānyā ātmākarṣasvarūpiṇī |

amṛtasyākarṣaṇī ca śarīrākarṣaṇī parā || VM 1.141 ||

One who is the attraction of desire, the embodiment of the attraction of buddhi (wisdom),

one who attracts ahaṅkāra (the ego), who embodies the verbal attraction, one who is the

attraction of touch, who produces the attraction of form, the goddess who creates the

attraction of taste, and who attracts by smell, one whose nature is the attraction of the

mind, who is the embodiment of the attraction through constancy, one who attracts

through memory, and who produces the attraction of name, another who attracts by the

bījas (seed syllables), whose very nature is the attraction of the self, one who is the

attraction of nectar, and the highest — one who is the bodily attraction.

%156
 The Third Cakra. Name: Sarvasaṃkṣobhakāraka (one who agitates all).

Aspect: Tripurasundarī. Eight goddesses in the inner petals:

anaṅgakusumāṃ pūrve dakṣiṇe’naṅgamaṅgalām |

paścime’naṅgamathanām uttare madanottarām || VM 1.143 ||

anaṅgalekhām āgneye nairṛte’naṅgavāsinīm |

anaṅgāṅkuśāṃ vāyavya īśāne’naṅgamālinīm || VM 1.144 ||

She who is the flower of Anaṅga in the east, who is the ornament of Anaṅga in the south,

who is the stirring of Anaṅga in the west, who is the excellence of Madana324 in the north,

who is the writing of Anaṅga in Agni's [direction, in the southeast], who abides in Anaṅga

in [the direction of] of Nrṛti [in the southwest], who is the goad of Anaṅga in Vayu's

[direction, in the northwest], who is the garland of Anaṅga in Īśāna's [direction, in the

northeast].

% 324 Epithet of Kāmadeva, also denotes passion, intoxication, and spring.

%157
 The Fourth Cakra. Name: Sarvasaubhāgyakāraka (the creator of all-around

auspiciousness). Aspect: Tripuravāsinī. Fourteen Śakti goddesses worshipped in the

outermost spokes created by the intersections of the nine triangles:

sarvasaṃkṣobhiṇī śaktiḥ sarvavidrāvaṇī tathā |

sarvākarṣakarī cānyā sarvāhlādakarī tathā || VM 1.145 ||

sarvasaṃmohanī śaktiḥ sarvastambhanarūpiṇī |

sarvajambhanarūpā tu sarvato vaśakāriṇī || VM 1.146 ||

sarvarañjanaśaktiśca sarvonmādasvarūpiṇī |

sarvārthasādhakī śaktiḥ sarvāśāparipūrakī || VM 1.147 ||

sarvamantramayī devī sarvadvandvakṣayaṅkarī | VM 1.148 ab |

The śakti who agitates all, who puts all to flight, the one who attracts all,

and another who delights everyone, the śakti who deludes all, who produces everyone’s

paralysis, one whose form crushes all, who controls all, the śakti who pleases everyone,

one who is the embodiment of all madness, the śakti who accomplishes all aims, one who

fulfills all the hopes, the goddess whose nature consists of all the mantras, [and] one who

causes the dissolution of all dichotomies.

%158
 The Fifth Cakra. Name: Sarvāthasādhaka (one who accomplishes all goals).

Aspect: Tripurāśrī. Ten Kulakaulika Yoginīs:

sarvasiddhipradā śaktiḥ sarvasaṃpatpradā tathā || VM 1.149 ||

sarvapriyaṅkarī cāpi sarvamaṅgalakāriṇī |

sarvakāmapradā devī sarvaduḥkhavimocinī || VM 1.150 ||

sarvamṛtyupraśamanī sarvavighnavināśinī |

sarvāṅgasundarī devī sarvasaubhāgyakāriṇī || VM 1.151 ||

The śakti that bestows all siddhis and one who grants all accomplishment,

one who endears all and one who is the creator of all auspiciousness, the goddess who

produces all desires, who liberates from all suffering, one who produces the cessation of

all types of death, who destroys all obstacles, the goddess whose every limb is beautiful,

one who effects all types of attractiveness and good fortune.

%159
 The Sixth Cakra. Name: Sarvarakṣākara (one who grants all types of

protection). Aspect: Tripuramālinī. Ten goddesses:

sarvajñā sarvaśaktiś ca sarvaiśvaryapradāyinī |

sarvajñānamayī devī sarvavyādhivināśinī || VM 1.153 ||

sarvādhārasvarūpā tu sarvapāpaharī tathā |

sarvānandamayī devī sarvarakṣāsvarūpiṇī || VM 1.154 ||

punar eva maheśāni sarvepsitaphalapradā |

She who is all knowing, who is the śakti of all, who bestows supremacy over all, the

goddess who is filled with all the knowledge, [and] who destroys all sickness, one whose

very form is the support of all, who removes all sins, the goddess who is filled with every

bliss, whose very form is the protection of all, [and] the one who bestows the fruit desired

by all.

%160
 The Seventh Cakra. Name: Sarvarogahara (one who removes all disease).

Aspect: Tripurā siddhi. Eight goddesses of the alphabet vargas:

avargaḥ prathamo devi vaśinī tatra devatā || VM 1.60 ||

tatparas tu kavargo yas tatra kāmeśvarī sthitā |

modinī tu cavargasthā ṭavarge vimalā tathā || VM 1.61 ||

aruṇā tu tavargasthā pavarge jayinī sthitā |

sarveśvarī yavarge tu śavarge kaulinīti ca || VM 1.62 ||

etā vargāṣṭake devi aṣṭāv evahi devatāḥ |

arcitāḥ puruṣasyāśu prakurvanti vaśaṃ jagat || VM 1.63 ||

The first is the “a” varga and Vaśinī is the deity there, Kāmeśvarī is established in the

“ka” varga which follows, Modinī resides in the “ca” varga, whereas Vimalā is in the “ṭa”

varga, Aruṇā resides in the “ta” varga, and Jayinī in the “pa” varga, Sarveśvarī is in the

“ya” varga,

and Kaulinī in the “śa” varga. These eight deities in the eight vargas, indeed, [when]

worshipped immediately make [everyone in] the world [subject to] that person's power.

%161
 The Subcakra outside of the innermost triangle (eighth level)

The weapons of the Goddess:

kāmabāṇān maheśāni dhanus tatpāśam eva ca |

jambhamohavaśastambhapadaiḥ sahitam aṅkuśam || VM 1.160 ||

O great Goddess, the arrows of Kāma, the bow, the noose, the goad

together with the words for crushing, deluding, controlling, [and] paralyzing [are to be

worshipped in this cakra].

%162
 The Eighth and Ninth Cakras (the innermost triangle and the bindu).

Sarvasiddhimaya (one who contains all the siddhis). Aspect: Tripurāmbikā. Three

goddesses in the innermost triangle.

Sarvānandamaya (one who contains all bliss). Mahātripurasundarī in the bindu

sarvamadhyatrikoṇe’pi pūjayen mūlavidyayā |

kevalākṣarabhedena samastavyastayeśvari || VM 1.161 ||

kāmeśvarīm agrakoṇe vajreśīṃ dakṣiṇe tathā |

vāme’pi bhagamālāṃ tu madhye tripurasundarīm || VM 1.162 ||

And in the triangle which is in the middle of all, one should worship

with the root vidyā as a whole pertaining to all, and separately with their own syllables,

Kāmeśvarī in the forward triangle [the Western direction], Vajreśī in the Southern [right

triangle], Bhagamālā in the left [Eastern triangle], and Tripurasundarī in the middle, O

Goddess.

%163
 APPENDIX E

Selected Framing Verses to Jayaratha’s

Tantrālokaviveka and the Vāmakeśvarīmatavivaraṇa

1. Opening verses from the Vāmakeśvarīmatavivaraṇa

svasvāmibhāvaparijṛmbhaṇasāracakracakreśvarīmayatayā navadhā svarūpam |

ābhāsayanty aghanude tripurās tu sarvasarvātmakatvakalanena nijākṣarāṇām || VM 1 ||

jayanti paramādvaitavijñānāmṛtanirbharāḥ |
pūrve śrīdīpakācāryapramukhā guravo mama || VM 2 ||

parakṛtakukalpanāmayatimirāndhyāpohanāya manāk |
śrīvāmakeśvarīmatam uddyotayituṃ mamodyamo ’dhyāyam || VM 3 ||

dīpakācāryapramukhā em. Sanderson : dīpikācāryapramukhā Ed.

May Tripurā remove [our] impurities, manifesting her innate nature, which is ninefold,

because it contains the cakra and the Cakreśvarīs [goddesses presiding over each level of the

Śrīcakra], which are the essence of the expansion of manifestation of the relation of master

and depenent by constructing her innate syllables so that each consists of all. Glory to all the

earlier gurus, led by Dīpakācārya, abounding in the nectar of discerning the supreme non-

duality. Today I undertake to illuminate Śrīvāmakeśvarīmata, in order to remove some of the

blindness of darkness, produced by false fabrications made by others.

2. Opening verses from the Tantrālokaviveka

yasmād eṣaṇavitkriyā yaduditā hy ānandacidbhūmayo

yasyaivoddhuraśaktivaibhavam idaṃ sarvaṃ yad evaṃ vidham |
taddhāma trikatattvam advayamayaṃ svātantryapūrṇaprathaṃ
citte stāc chivaśāsanāgamarahasyācchādanadhvaṃsi me || TĀV 1 ||

%164
That from which desire, knowledge, and action, with the stages of consciousness that is bliss

have arisen, of which there is the glory of unrestrained śakti, what the entire world is exactly

like, that realm is the real nature of Trika, consisting of non-duality, and with the full

manifestation of freedom, which destroys the concealment of the secret of the āgamas of the

doctrine of Śiva, may it abide in my mind.

dehe vimukta evāsmi śrīmatkalyāṇavāridheḥ |

yasya kāruṇyavipruḍbhiḥ sadguruṃ taṃ hṛdi śraye || TĀV 2 ||

mūrdhnyuttaṃsa iva kṣmāpaiḥ sarvair yasyānuśāsanam |

hṛdaye bhavasambhārakarkaśe 'py āśu śiśriye || TĀV 3 ||

I have indeed been liberated in the body due to “the ocean of

auspiciousness” [Kalyāṇavarman], with the specks of whose compassion I honor that

sadguru in my heart. And I immediately worshipped in my heart, which is dried out from the

burden of transmigration, his instruction, like a wreath of flowers [borne] by all the kings.

yātāyātāḥ sthitāḥ kecid ajñā matsariṇaḥ pare |

saṃdigdhāḥ ke ’pi kiṃ brūyāṃ śrotāro yadanāgatāḥ || TĀV 5 ||

tadanākarṇya gūḍhārthaṃ svādu svāśayakauśalam |

sākūtam uktam anyair yat tena dolāyate manaḥ || TĀV 6 ||

atra madvāg aśaktāpi yan niryantraṇam ullaset |

tat pārameśvaraṃ śrīmanmahānandavijṛmbhitam || TĀV 7 ||

Some remain wandering to and fro, others are ignorant [and] envious, some are confused.

Why would I speak to those listeners who have not attained this [teaching]? Not having heard

that sweet hidden meaning through their own intellect, [their] minds are caused to oscillate

by [the words] of others, stated emphatically. May my speech, even though it is incapable,

%165
illuminate here the freedom, which is the blessed manifestation of the glorious bliss of the

Supreme Lord.

3. Closing verses from the Vāmakeśvarīmatavivaraṇa

uccityoccityaṃ niyataṃ kutaś cana kutaś cana |

yathāgurumukhaṃ kaiścid etad vyākṛtam alpakam || Closing VM 1 ||

sarvataḥkaṣṭaduḥśliṣṭamliṣṭaśabdārthavartmanā |
kena tāvan nimittena kair apy etad vivecitam || Closing VM 2 ||

pitṛpitāmahakalpitakalpanārasamahodadhimātrakadāśayā |
vivṛtam apy aparair na yathārthatāṃ śrutabahiṣkṛtabuddhitayā gatam || Closing VM 3 ||

Some [commentators] here and there kept collecting insignificant interpretations, limited to

what has been said by their gurus. By whom and for what purpose has this [text] been

investigated, with word meanings closely clinging to incorrect interpretations and poorly

expressed? Resting on just a tiny bit of the Rasamahodadhi that was used to dream up the

interpretations by [their] fathers and grandfathers, these explanations make no sense and go

against the scriptures.

śrīmadguruvarād evam avadhārya yathārthaḥ |

mayā jayarathenaivaṃ kiṃcid etat prapañcitam ||

tatkṣaṇasyāvaghātavyamatra sadbhir avajñayā |

avicāryaiva vaktavyo na doṣo na guṇaḥ punaḥ || Closing VM 4 ||

Having been ascertained from the very best of gurus, true to the meaning, by me, Jayaratha,

some of this [text] has been explained at length. The wise should not just throw it away

immediately, nor treat it with contempt, or speak about its defects and accomplishments

without deliberation.

4. Closing verses from the Tantrālokaviveka, Chapter 37

%166
yadacakathad amuṣmin śrīmadācāryavaryo
bahuparikaravṛndaṃ sarvaśāstroddhrtaṃ sat |
tadatulapariyatnenaikṣya saṃcintya sadbhir
hṛdayakamalakośe dhāryam āryaiḥ śivāya || Closing TĀV 37:1 ||

yo ’dhītī nikhilāgameṣu padavidyo yogaśāstraśramī

yo vākyārthasamanvaye kṛtaratiḥ śrīpratyabhijñāmṛte |
yas tarkāntaraviśrutaśrutatayā dvaitādvayajñānavit
so ’smin syād adhikāravān kalakalaprāyaṃ pareṣāṃ vacaḥ || Closing TĀV 37:2 ||

What the best of ācaryas [Abhinavagupta] has said here, extracted from all the exegetical

works [and] a multitude of auxiliary works [e.g., in grammar, poetics, etc.], having been

examined and contemplated by the good [and] noble people with unequalled effort, should be

carried in the center of the lotus of the heart. That scholar, learned in all the āgamas, making

great efforts in yoga and śāstra, who knows lexicography, who delights in construing the

meanings of sentences in the nectar of Pratyabhijñā, who has the knowledge of duality and

non-duality through being learned in the texts of all the other philosophical systems, he

possess eligibility [to study] this [text]. What the others say is just babbling.

4. Closing verses from the Tantrālokaviveka

yaḥ kartuṃ viśvam etat prabhavati nikhilaṃ sarvavittvāt praṇetā

sarveṣāṃ āgamānām akhilabhavabhayocchedadāyī dayāluḥ |
tasyendrādyarcitāṅghrer gurur acalasutāvallabhasyāpi loke
sarvatrāmutra tāvat tuhinagirir iti khyātimān parvatendraḥ || Closing TĀV 1 ||

He who has the power to create this whole world in its entirety, the creator, due to his

omniscience, of all the āgamas, the compassionate one who destroys the fear of rebirth,

whose feet are worshipped by the gods headed by Indra, the guru even of himawan who is

the beloved of the daughter of the mountain, is renowned as the snowy mountain everywhere

in this world and as far as even the world beyond.

%167
yad vādinām uttaradiṅniveśād iva śrayanti prativādivācaḥ |
anuttaratvaṃ tad anuttararddhi śrīśāradāmaṇḍalam asti yatra || Closing TĀV 2 ||

Where rests the realm of Śrīśāradā, of unrivaled accomplishment for the speakers,

whose opponents as if from entering into the realm of answers/the Northern direction [attain]
non-answers/[inauspicious] Southern direction.

jāmātrevāmṛtakarakalākḷptacūlāvacūle-
nādiṣṭaṃ drāg akhilavacasāṃ mānabhāvaṃ viditvā |
dadhre śailaḥ śritamadhumatīcandrabhāgāntarālaṃ
saddeśatvāc chirasi nikhilaiḥ saṃśritaṃ darśanair yat || Closing TĀV 3 ||

The mountain praised by every knowledge, bore that place, on which rests the land between

the river Madhumatī and Candrabhāga, served by all the philosophical systems, on the head,

as if it had been pointed out as a good place by a son-in-law, whose crown has the topknot

decorated with the sliver of the moon.

bodhasyāpy ātmabhūtaṃ parikalitavatī yad vimarśātmatattvaṃ

mukhyatvena stutātaḥ prabhavati vijayeśena pīṭheśvareṇa |
yuktā bodhapradhānā sthitanijamahasā śāradā pīṭhadevī
vidhyāpīṭhe prathīyaḥprathitanikhilavāg yatra kāśmīranāmni || Closing TĀV 4 ||

In that abode of knowledge named Kashmir, all knowledge is celebrated widely, where

Śāradā, the goddess of the pīṭha, who is essentially consciousness by means of her own

innate stable knowledge prospers, praised by the victorious Lord of the pīṭha [Śiva] as having

the most importance, creating the tattva whose nature is reflective awareness, which is the

soul even of consciousness.

yan maireyaṃ kalayatitarāṃ kasya necchāspadatvaṃ

jñānātmatvaṃ prathayati paraṃ śāradā yac ca devī |
yac cādhatte paṭim aghaṭanāṃ satkriyāyāṃ vitastā
tad yatraitat trikam avikalaṃ popuṣīti praśastim || Closing TĀV 5 ||

%168
 Where the drink is so good — who would not want to have it, where the Goddess Śāradā

reveals the highest state of self, which is knowledge (jñānātmatvaṃ), and Vitastā (Jhelum

River) offers the accomplishment in the skillfulness in ritual action, that is the place where

these three faultless things (Trika) make the fame greatly flourish.

tathyābhikhyaṃ pravarapuram ity asti tasmin sadehaḥ

kartā yasya pravaranṛpatiḥ svābhidhāṅkeśvarāgrāt |
lekhādeśād gaṇavarasamāsāditāt prāptasiddhiḥ
śaivaṃ dhāmāmaragṛhaśirobhāgabhedād avāpa || Closing TĀV 6 ||

There is a famous [city] justly called Pravarapura (Śrīnagara), whose embodiment, king

Pravara [Pravarasena II], who was successful because of an encounter with the best of

gaṇas,325 built a Śaiva temple, shooting out from the peak of immortals’ dwelling

[Himālaya].

śrīsomānandapādaprabhṛtiguruvarādiṣṭasannītimārgo
labdhvā yatraiva samyak paṭimani ghaṭanāmīśvarādvaitavādaḥ |
kaśmīrebhyaḥ prasṛtya prakaṭaparimalo rañjayan sarvadeśān
dese ’nyasminn adṛaṣṭo ghusṛṇavisaravat sarvavandhyatvam āpi || Closing TĀV 7 ||

Where, having attained the development of true skillfulness, having spread out from Kashmir

the fragrance delighting all the lands, unknown anywhere else, like the diffusion of saffron,

the Śaiva doctrine of non-duality (Īśvarādvaitavādaḥ), whose path of true precepts was taught

by the finest gurus, beginning with the exalted Somānanda, was hallowed by all.

325 A rakśasa, who promised the king success if he built a city where he showed him a measuring line
(Kalahana, 3rd book, verses 336-349, summarised in M.A. Stein’s Kalhana's Rajatarangini: a chronicle
of the kings of Kasmir, Volume 2, p. 442).

%169
 APPENDIX F

Opening Verses to Śivānanda’s Ṛjuvimarśinī

sthitaṃ yatredam akhilam yanmayaṃ cāsya bhāsanam |

yataḥ samudayaś cāsya tatsaṃvittipadaṃ numaḥ || ṚV 1 ||

śivādikṣitiparyantaḥ ṣaṭtrimśattattvasaṃcayaḥ |
yasyormibudbudābhāsas taṃ seve cinmahodadhim || ṚV 2 ||

svātmānandamaheśānacaraṇāntenivāsinā |
śivānandena muninā rasyate traipuro rasaḥ || ṚV 3 ||

asamañjasatāṃ dṛṣṭvā vṛttīnām iha tattvataḥ |

vyākaromi manāk śrīmannityāṣoḍaśikārṇavam || ṚV 4 ||

sarvānugrāhakaṃ tantraṃ sarvopāyāvabhāsakam |

sarvādhikārasaṃsiddhyai bahvavātārayac chivaḥ || ṚV 5 ||

śrīvāmakeśvaraṃ nāma śāstraṃ tantra prakāśitam |

śivena saṃvidaṃ devīṃ lakṣyīkṛtya nijātmikām || ṚV 6 ||

madhye śāstrasya tasyāsti nityāṣoḍaśikārṇavaḥ |

sūtraiś catuśśatair yuktaḥ kaścid bhāgo rasāvahaḥ || ṚV 7 ||

sa ca pañcapaṭalyātmā karmapañcakabhāsakaḥ |
pūjā prayogo mudrā ca vidyāvyāptir japastutiḥ || ṚV 8 ||

avāntarabhidaḥ santi katicit tatra tatra ca |

pradhānakarmaśeṣatvān na tā gaṇyāḥ pṛthak tayā || ṚV 9 ||

adhītya cācāryamukhāc chāstraṃ vidyāpurassaram |

gurūṇāṃ nyavasat pārśve śivānandamahāmuniḥ || ṚV 10 ||

kālena mahatā so’yam gurubhiḥ karuṇotkaṭaiḥ |

sthāpito ’nugrahavidhau sābhiṣekaṃ sahābhidham || ṚV 11 ||

tataḥ sampādayāmāsa ṣiṣyān ācārabhūṣitān |

deṣakālaviśeṣajñān bhaktiratnamahodadhīn || ṚV 12 ||

tataḥ śivānandamuniḥ śiṣyair abhyarthito bhṛśam |

samyag vṛttividhānāya gambhīrāgamabhāṣayā || ṚV 13 ||

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 lopāmudrākramāyātasampradāyād ayaṃ punaḥ |
akarod āgamasyāsya vyākhyām ṛjuvimarśinīm || ṚV 14 ||

granthāḥ sahasraṃ triśataṃ pañcāśac caiva pañca ca |

madhurodārasandarbhā seyam ṛjuvimarśinī || ṚV 15 ||

saubhāgyaviṣayā vāṇī saumatyodayadāyinī |

saugatyāptir mahāpadyā sausthityaṃ labhatām asau || ṚV 16 ||

saugatyāptir mahāpadyā326 em. McCrea : saugatyāptimahāpadyā Ed.

That in which all this world, which consists of it abides, and of whom it is a manifestation,

from which it arises, that abode which is consciousness, we worship. I serve that great ocean

of consciousness, whose appearance is ripples of waves, rich in the thirty-six tattvas, from

Śiva to Earth. Śivānanda muni, dwelling near the feet of the great Lord Svātmānanda, has

savored the elixir of Tripurā. Having seen the incorrectness of other commentaries, I will

now accurately explain the Nityāṣoḍaśikārṇava. Śiva, having brought down innumerable

tantras into the world, compassionate to everyone, illuminating all the means for the

perfecting all kinds of eligibility, revealed a śāstra called the Vāmakeśvarīmata, having

elected the Goddess, who herself is consciousness and is his own self, its recipient. In the

middle of that śāstra, there is the essential part [rasāvahaḥ, lit. bringing juice] [called] the

Nityāṣoḍaśikārṇava (The Ocean of the Sixteen Nityās), which consists of four hundred

verses. It consists of five chapters, which illuminate five [ritual] actions, [including] pūjā,

prayoga, mudrā, accomplishment in vidyās, and praise by japa. Here and there [within these

devisions] there are other parts, which are not to be counted separately, because they are

subordinate to principal [ritual] actions. And having learned the śāstra from the mouth of the

% 326 This emendation of the edition is based on a manuscript variant.

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 Ācarya, preceeded by the vidyās, Śivānanda Muni, who lived by the side of the guru

[respectful plural], after a long time by his guru, possessing abundance of compassion, was

consecrated by abhiṣeka and the [initiation] name in the procedures for grace [i.e., allowed to

take on students and given authority to initiate]. Thereafter he produced students, who were

ornamented by proper conduct, knew appropriate time and place, and were great oceans,

[containing] jewels of devotion. Then Śivānanda muni, whose students fervently begged him

for a commentary with language deep in scriptural quotations to properly explain performing

procedures. This commentary from the tradition that follows the Lopāmudrā sequence

[called] Ṛjuvimarśinī is a sweet and exalted composition, stringing together one thousand

three and five hundred more plus five granthas.327 May this great composition on the topic of

auspiciousness, which grants wisdom and fitness for the auspicious path (i.e., mokṣa), be

well-regarded.

% 327 Grantha is a unit of 32 syllables, a south Indian term, which was usually used by scribes for payment.

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 APPENDIX G

Opening Verses to Vidyānanda’s Artharatnāvalī

śrīman mahāvaneśāṇapādapaṅkeruhadvayam |
yogīndramadhupavrātasevitaṃ sarvadā bhaje || AR 1 ||

priyānandam ahaṃ vande sadānandaprakāśakam |

prapannajanatāduḥkhadhvanta-viccheda-bhāskaram || AR 2 ||

sadānandaprakāśakam em. McCrea : sadānandaprakāśitam Ed.

ādhyaṃ mithunam ārabhya svagurvantaṃ krameṇa tu |

vande gurvaugham īśānyāḥ karuṇātaruṇīpriyam || AR 3 ||

yatpādāmbujasaṃbhūtaṃ rajo vimalayan manaḥ |

prasādaṃ tanute mahyaṃ taṃ ratneśaṃ guruṃ bhaje || AR 4 ||

yanmukhāmnāyam āsadhya vidyāsiddhir abhūn mama |

mahātripurasundaryās taṃ ratneśam guruṃ bhaje || AR 5 ||

śivaṃ kāmeśvarīṃ siddhān trividhān api dampatīn |

kaṅkālaprabhṛtīn vande gurūn kalyāṇarociṣaḥ || AR 6 ||

gaṇanātham ahaṃ vande viśvavandyaiḥ prapūjitam |

sarvavighnaughanāśārthaṃ sarvābhīṣṭaphalāptaye || AR 7 ||

vaṭukaṃ yoginīvṛndaṃ bhairavān amitaujasaḥ |

praṇamāmīṣṭasaṃpattisaṃpādanasamutsukān || AR 8 ||

mantramaṅḍalavarṇātmārūpiṇīṃ karūṇāparāṃ |
dhāmasaṃvitsvarūpāṃ tāṃ vande tripurasundarīṃ || AR 9 ||

sampradāyadvayajñena vimalasvātmaśambhunā |
kriyate ṭippaṇaṃ samyag vāmakeśvaraśāstragam || AR 10 ||

artharatnāvalīty eṣā khyāta ’stu bhuvanatraye |

bhuvaneśvari te bhaktyā kriyate ṭippaṇaṃ yataḥ || AR 11 ||

I always worship the lotus feet of the great Vaneśāṇa, which are waited on by the best of yogīs

[like] swarming bees. I worship Priyānanda, who reveals the true bliss, a sun piercing the

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darkness of misery for those who resort to him. I venerate in due order the Goddess’s torrent of

gurus, which begins from the primal couple and ends with my own guru, dear to the

compassionate young girl. I honor guru Ratneśa, the dust from whose lotus feet cleanses the

mind, and extends the grace to me. I worship guru Ratneśa, having attained the teaching from

whose mouth, I attained the perfection of knowledge (or vidyā, i.e., feminine mantra) of

Mahātripurasundarī. I praise auspicious radiant gurus beginning with Kaṅkāla Śiva, Kāmeśvarī,

and the threefold siddha couples. I praise the Lord of the Gaṇas, who is worshipped by those

who are lauded by everyone, for the sake of removal of floods of all obstacles and for obtaining

everything desired. I praise Vaṭuka, a host of yoginīs, and Bhairavas, whose glory is unmeasured,

eager to bestow [every] desired accomplishment. I worship Tripurasundarī, whose very form is

majesty and consciousness, who is intent on compassion, whose nature is the phonemes in the

maṇḍala of mantras. This gloss of the Vāmakeśvarīmata śāstra is made properly by Śiva, whose

soul is pure, who knows two sampradāyas. Let it be known as Artharatnāvali in the three worlds,

since this commentary is made with devotion to you, O Bhuvaneśvari (Queen of the Worlds).

%174
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