Netra-Tantra

David Gordon White 165

imperial masters. I would go so far to say that there would have been an elective affinity between demonological lore and the mobile groups who carried it, a prime example being the battlefield sorcerers whose magical devices and counter-devices were considered to be choice weapons in battle.

(iv)Concerning substratal traditions, I think it is time to rectify an error of appreciation on the part of Hindu Tantra scholars who have followed tantras´@stra categories in drawing a sharp distinction between the Vedic and the Tantric in India. While such a distinction may hold for the Rqg Veda, it certainly does not hold for the Atharva, and it should be recalled here that numerous sources, from the ManusmPti (2.32) to the Arthas´@stra (1.9.9; 4.3.11, 37, 40) and Kath@sarits@gara (6.8.193b), define the royal purohit@—who, in addition to being a royal preceptor was also a master of magical warfare—as an expert schooled in the AV.

(v)In many respects, local ‘village’ traditions have been more faithful to the Vedas than have the cosmopolitan bhakti traditions of India’s elites. A strik-

ing number of village practices can be traced back to Vedic rites, not only Atharvan, but also from the Rqg Veda and its ancillary literature (Biardeau 1989; Nagano and Ikari 1993; White 2009b). With respect to Vedic norms, the so-called ‘mainstream’ is deviant in comparison to the worship without devotion of the masses. As an aside, against the neo-Hindus who would claim that India’s greatest contribution to world religions has been Hindu spirituality, I would argue that they are only correct inasmuch as Indic demonology is a form of spirituality. But in that case, the original form of Hindu spirituality would have been a spirituality of ‘Spirit Beings’.

(vi)I chose the title for this article as a nod to Sheldon Pollock’s massive tome on the Sanskrit cosmopolis (Pollock 2006), which argues that Sanskrit became the lingua franca or koine´ of much of South and Inner Asia only after it was freed from its imposed strictures as an exclusively hieratic language by non-Hindu rulers who were simply looking for a common language through which they, their vassals, neighbours, enemies, priests, and subjects could understand one another. I would argue here that the language of demon- ology—which is less a language of words than of gestures and speech acts without semantic content (i.e. spells)—was also one that lent itself to cosmopolitanism. An example is a circa sixth-century Parthian-language Manichean magical text, probably written in the Balkh region. In addition to reproducing a number of the yakXa names and towns found in the MVS, this work also speaks of driving ‘demons, yakXas, peris, drujs, r@kXasas, idols of darkness and spirits of evil’ to a far place (Henning 1947: 47–51). It is very easy to imagine soldiers, merchants, monks, and priests swapping amulets and formulas at Silk Road halting points and monasteries (including those of the Turfan Basin where so many demonological manuscripts have been found). On a broader scale, the demonology that became a commodity along ancient and medieval trade and invasion routes was itself a translocal tradition, as great in its range

166 Netra Tantra

and depth as the various Tantric traditions for which it constituted but a part of a whole. If, then, one limits one’s view of Tantra to Indian philosophical schools or sects, textual canons, or authorised pantheons, one does so at the cost of missing a far larger picture.

´

In his remarkable 2004 article ‘Religion and the State: Saiva Officiants in the Territory of the King’s Brahmanical Chaplain’, Alexis Sanderson made a number of points that are directly relevant to the themes I have been treating here. Sanderson’s principal argument is that, with the advent of Tantra in South Asia, the traditional purohit@ versed in Atharvanic magic and lore came to be superseded by a new figure, often called the r@jaguru, whose ‘protective, therapeutic, and aggressive rites for the benefit of the monarch and the kingdom’ were grounded in the Tantras of the mantram@rga (Sanderson 2004: 233). Sanderson’s principal non-scriptural data source for his reconstruction of the role of Tantric specialists in medieval royal courts is a 1052 CE Khmer inscription that refers to the ritual by means of which Jayavarman II founded the great Khmer Empire in the early ninth century. The text that Sanderson identifies as the source of this body of adstratal Southeast Asian Tantric tradition is none other than the nineteenth chapter of the Netra Tantra (Sanderson 2004: 246–70.).

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Notes

1I will return to the meaning of this term later in this study: in the present context, I translate the term according to its classical Sanskrit meaning of ‘trickery, fraud, deceit’.

2duXb@ stra puruXo v@th@snatv@ cch@y@: prap@tayet/ b@l@n@: bh+patan@: ca tatpatnan@: tapasvin@m// ch@y@cchidre>a bh+t@s´ca m@taro balavattar@$ dPXbip@ta: prakurvanti. Brunner (1974: 175, n.1) rightly emends sn@tv@ in the text to its opposite: asn@tv@.

3Here, I have emended the lacunary reading found in Shastri (1939: 171) (gr@m@ . . . dhiXbh@ya sth@pita$) to read ‘gr@m@nta: dhiX>yo sth@pita$’. These are therapeutic measures: for apotropaic measures against these forms of aggression, see NT 19.207–211.

4ebhi$ karmabhiranyais´c@s´ubhai$ p+rvakais´ceha kPtai[$] . . . chidreXveteXvadharmadv@reXu j@tah@ri>a sajjate . . . striya: garbhi>a: dPXbv@ dur@tmano ‘nvakXate na c@sy@$ s´@ntikarma kriyate tad@ ‘sy@ j@tah@ri>a sajjate//. The same data is reiterated in similar language at vv. 63–66.

5tacchidre>a t@npravis´ya l+t@vy@dhirb@dh@magh@t (Durgasankara ke Sastri 1932: 155). The full text reads: [O]wing to the curse of the very virtuous mother of LakXar@ja the king of Kaccha, it [the disease] was handed down to all the descendents of M+lar@ja and in consequence of this transmission, it came to pass that [when Hemacandra briefly replaced M+lar@ja’s descendent Kum@rap@la, thereby becoming M+lar@ja’ successor], the disease of leprosy penetrated into the sage by that opening (tacchidre>a)’ (Tawny 1899: 150).

6Here I use Sax’s (2009) transliteration of these Garhwali cognates of the Sanskrit ch@y@, chidra, and chalam.

7Sax (2009: 85). Numerous other examples may be cited from modern ethnographies, such as Nabokov’s (2000: 74) discussion of possession of young women by peys in Tamilnadu. Tantric manuscripts held in private collections in Garhwal, and dating back to the eleventh to twelfth centuries, consistently describe chhals as demonic afflictions arising from fear: email communication from Garhwal University historian Dinesh Prasad Saklani, 12 October 2010.

8The NT (19.175) appears to make the same sort of identification, speaking of hi:sakas (in this case demonic beings and not sorcerers) who, ‘fond of tribute offerings (balik@ma), gathering together in a windy space [or the place of wind in the body: v@tasth@nam), arise as ‘wind-born’ [demons]’. The same is said of phlegm-born and bile-born beings (19.176).

9Confusingly, Sax (2009: 88) uses Masan here in the plural, but it is clear that he is referring to the chhals.

10Internal evidence from the MVS supports this range: its ‘catalogue of YakXas’ contains references to toponyms spread across much of KGB, including Gandhara, Bactria, Kashmir, eastern Iran, the valleys of the Indus, Swat, and Oxus rivers, and China (Le´vi 1915: 19–139).

11Hoernle (1893–1912, codex 6, folio 1, verso, line 6): yakXagrah@to r@kXasagrah@to

pretagrah@to pis´@cagrah@to bh+tagrah@ta$ kumbh@>nagrah@ta$ p+tanagrah@to

. . . ch@y@grah@to.

David Gordon White 171

12Hoernle (1893–1912, codex 6, folio 2, recto, line 1): kPty@-karma>a-ka$khordo- kira>a-veb@na-ciccaka-preXaka-durbhukta-dus´chardita-dus´ch@y@-duXpre . . . My translation is based on that Hoernle translation (quoted in Dietz 1997: 88); Hoernle, however, simply translates duXch@y@ as ‘bad appearance’.

13Sanderson (2004: 290, n. 149) defines a yantra as follows: ‘a Mantra-inscribed diagram written in various colours and with various inks on cloth, birchbark, the hides of various animals and the like, wrapped up and then employed in various ways (by being worn as an amulet, by being burned in a cremation ground, and so on) for purposes such as warding off ills, harming and enemy, of forcing a person to submit to the user’s will’.

14paraprayukt@s´ca kPty@kh@khord@yasteX@: . . . nas´yanti/ s´atrun@s´@ya strakalev-

arapraves´it@ vet@la kPty@, mPty+cc@ban@dikPt yantra: khakhorda$: KXemar@ja ad NT 18.1a–4a. One of KXemar@ja’s sources may have been Var@hamihira’s sixth-century BPhatsa:hit@, which defines kPty@ and vet@la in similar ways to

those found here	(Turstig 1985: 75). Another	tradition, found in the
Tantrasadbh@va and	MPgendratantra, rather identifies	´
		vet@las as Saiva practitioners

who have been reborn in demonic bodies as karmic punishment for illicit sexual activities (Vasudeva 2012: 292–3).

15yath@ sidhyanti s@dhak@$/ paraprayukt@ nas´yanti kPty@kh@khord@ya$/ pratyan˙gir@ prayoge>a hanti duXb@nyanekas´a$//.

16kuhak@nati yantrakPty@dani y@ni ripava$ kariXyanti, teX@meX@ uktena vidhin@ p+jiteti arth@t ya: prati kuhak@di kPta: tena pratyan˙gir@ bhavediti duXprayukt@- stravat rip+>@meva svapakXan@s´ina sy@t.

17pratyan˙giratva: bh+t@didamanaprayuktasyamantrasya prayokt@ra: prati viruddhak@ritvam.

18This is the asiloma-pratisar@ (Asiloma’s protective spell) fragment, in Waldschmidt (1965–2008: no. 4, p. 272, quoted in Dietz 1997: 88). It should be noted that in these Buddhist sources, kPtya is declined as a masculine, rather than a feminine (kPty@) as in Hindu works.

19Burrow (1935: 781) notes that ‘no example is given of the akXara -rd- in the account of the KharoXbhi alphabet. It would naturally be quite uncommon, and possibly is intended here and has been confused in the transliteration with –rn-’.

20On the basis of philology and mythology, both the Avesta and the Vedas are datable to ca. 1500–1000 BCE. The Avesta as we know it was not compiled until the Sassanian period, and its earliest (lacunary) manuscripts date from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (Forrest 2011: 18).