A Dictionary of Technical Terms from Hindu Tantric Literature.

White, David Gordon

Tantrikabhidanakosa, vol. I: A Dictionary of Technical Terms from Hindu Tantric Literature. Edited by HELENE BRUNNER, GERARD OBERHAMMER, and ANDRE PADOUX. Beitrage zur Kultur- und Geistesgeschichte Asiens, no. 35. Vienna: VERLAG DER OSTERREICHISCHEN AKADEMIE DER WIS-SENSCHAFTEN, 2000. Pp. 260. [euro] 41.93.

Tantrikabhidanakosa, vol. II: A Dictionary of Technical Terms from Hindu Tantric Literature. Edited by HELENE BRUNNER, GERARD OBERHAMMER, and ANDRE PADOUX. Beitrage zur Kultur- und Geistesgeschichte Asiens, no. 44. Vienna: VERLAG DER OSTERREICHISCHEN AKADEMIE DER WISSENSCHAFTEN, 2004. Pp. 305. [euro] 55.40.

Nearly without exception, the pioneers of the textual study of Hindu tantra have been European scholars. These, the first two volumes of what is projected to be a five-volume encyclopedic dictionary of terms from Hindu tantric scriptures, are the work of a number of those pioneers, together with certain of their students and other collaborators. The editors of these two volumes formed the original core of a Franco-Austrian research team, which began a series of annual meetings in 1994; however, over the years, several other European tantra specialist were brought into the lexicographical project. In addition to the principal editors (Andre Padoux [Paris], the late Helene Brunner [Paris], and Gerhard Oberhammer [Vienna]), Teun Goudriaan (Utrecht), Raffaele Torella (Rome), Sylvia Raghunathan Stark (Vienna), Marion Rastelli (Vienna), Marzenna Czerniak-Drozdzowicz (Crakow), Gavin Flood (Oxford), Alexis Sanderson (Oxford), Gerard Colas (Paris), Christian Bouy (Paris), Dominic Goodall (Pondicherry), Judit Torzsok (Lille), Somadeva Vasudeva (Oxford), and Harunaga Isaacson (Hamburg) also contributed entries to one or both of the two volumes.

As its title indicates, this is a dictionary of technical terms found in the Sanskrit-language textual traditions of Hindu tantra. The present volumes comprise the vowels (vol. 1) and consonants ka through da (vol. 2) of the Sanskrit alphabet, for a total of approximately 1200 out of a projected 3000 entries for the entire five volumes (the publication of vol. 3 is projected for 2009). As is to be expected in a specialized dictionary on this subject, this is predominantly a vocabulary of ritual procedures, doctrinal and metaphysical categories, the nomenclature of deities, pantheons, and worship paraphernalia, and the language of tantric encoding and encryption. Each entry is introduced by a transliterated Sanskrit term in its root form, with an indication of its grammatical category and gender. Then follow a sign designating the term's appurtenance to specifically Sakta-Saiva [[DELTA]] or Vaisnava [*] traditions, or both [o]; a brief translation of the term into French, English, and German; and a list of synonyms. The greater portion of most entries is comprised of an explanatory commentary on the meaning and usage of the term, with special attention to its ritual context. This commentary is often supplemented by selected textual references to the term (in chronological order, when possible), and in some cases by one or more textual citations, in the original Sanskrit and in translation. These commentaries are written in French, English, or German, depending on the language of expression of the contributors. For the present two volumes, the preponderance of entries is in French, written by Andre Padoux and Helene Brunner. When appropriate, supplementary references to secondary literature, as well as cross-references to other terms in the dictionary, are appended to the entries.

The outlines of the dictionary are clearly presented in the editors' comprehensive introduction to volume one. The great bulk of the entries are drawn from revealed scriptures of Hindu tantra: the Saivagamas, Sakta-Saiva Tantras (especially the "Bhairava Tantras" [1: 25]), and Pancaratra Samhitas. In addition the contributors have also brought into the dictionary's purview the literature of tantrasastra (ritual manuals, treatises on religious arts and techniques, collections of hymns and praises of the gods, compilations of excerpted passages from various tantras, treatises on mantrasastra), works of fiction, and works on hatha yoga. Puranas containing significant data on tantric deities, such as the Agni, Kalika, Devibhagavata, and Garuda, as well as the so-called "Sakta," "Yoga," and "Saiva" Upanisads from the canon of the 108 Upanisads, are also mined for lexicographical data. Notably absent from the dictionary are the bulk of the Nath Siddha canon, the entire Hindu alchemical tradition, as well as works on medicine (demonology in particular), the hard sciences, and architecture; however, the editors give their reasons for these omissions (1: 31, 36).

Of course, these choices of which texts to include and which to exclude are necessarily undergirded by the editors' and contributors' presuppositions concerning the nature of Hindu tantra itself, and the historical period during which the texts most emblematic of tantra, so defined, were produced. As concerns the latter question, works dating from between the seventh and fifteenth centuries are privileged in the dictionary, because "the most important works date from this period, in which the Tantric landscape was well defined and its actors learned and motivated" (1: 33). The former and far more difficult question is addressed by Andre Padoux in eleven closely argued introductory pages to volume one (pp. 11-22). Opening his discussion with the rhetorical question "What are the criteria of 'tantricity'?" Padoux leads his reader into the issues of emic versus etic definitions of tantra. However, because this is a dictionary that takes its data from Sanskrit-language texts, his account of the emic is limited to the ritual specialists who controlled those texts, i.e., "brahmins whose Vedic orthodoxy was, at least outwardly, impeccable," for whom tantra was often viewed as "an initiatic and esoteric superstructure, a special teaching (visesasastra) placed atop an exoteric 'Vedic' foundation" (p. 14). While many may find Padoux's focus--on the brahmin, rather than the king, as the tantric actor par excellence--to be misplaced or too narrow, it is an appropriate one for an introduction to a lexicon of the prescriptive language of tantric ritual. The historical data of much of medieval tantric practice, found in royal inscriptions, temple sculpture and architecture, and non-scriptural textual sources, lie outside the purview of these volumes, the bulk of whose entries are drawn from tantras whose stated goal is liberation from suffering existence rather than power in the world (p. 28). In spite of this brahmanical emphasis, these volumes do not make systematic use of the philosophical vocabulary of the works of tantrasastra, with the exception of the monumental Tantraloka of Abhinavagupta (p. 30).

The balance of the introduction further develops the broad lines of tantric theory and practice. The worship of non-Vedic divinities (using non-Vedic mantras); tantric initiation into a deity and gurudisciple lineage; the parallel goals of liberation and supernatural powers; the proliferation of rites of astonishing complexity; the centrality of the feminine in tantric theory and practice; the structure of tantric pantheons; tantric cosmogony and metaphysical categories; the close relationship between tantric ritual and "mainstream" temple worship: all of these essential elements of Hindu tantra are presented clearly and succinctly. This general introduction is complemented by an overview and genealogy of the principal sectarian and textual traditions of medieval Hindu tantra (p. 23), which follows the lines of Alexis Sanderson's 1988 classic chapter, "Saivism and the Tantric Traditions" (in The World's Religions, ed. Stewart R. Sutherland et al. [London: Routledge]).

While it was the stated policy of the editors in volume one (p. 32) to limit their sources to published editions, a change of editorial policy is announced in volume two (p. 9), to the effect that unpublished manuscripts of tantric works will also be referenced in the dictionary. In light of the rapidly expanding pool of readily accessible on-line manuscript libraries containing tantric works (listed on the home page of the Indology website: http://indology.info/etexts), in addition to the vast microfilmed holdings of the Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project in Kathmandu and Hamburg, this decision is a very sensible one. This expanded focus is reflected in the supplementary bibliography to volume two, in which over a third of the references are to manuscript sources. Combined, the bibliographies of the two volumes--which, in addition to an exhaustive list of tantras and ancillary tantric literature, also provide references to most of the best scholarly work on Hindu tantra--run for a total of some forty-seven pages.

This is a work of stunning erudition, an ideal complement to the growing number of descriptive introductions to Hindu tantra that have appeared over the past thirty years. To give but a single example of the depth and scope of the dictionary, I refer to the entry "kala" (2: 68-73), for which ten different usages are given, eight from Sakta-Saiva traditions and two from Pancaratra sources. This single entry, which was co-authored by four of the dictionary's contributors, cross-references fifty-two other entries, contains sixty-six text citations, and Sanskrit quotations from ten sources (with either a translation or a paraphrase). Not included in this entry are definitions or usages of the term from outside the stated limits of the dictionary, either from earlier, peripheral, or later sources. These limits do not, however, constitute a Procrustean bed for scholars consulting the dictionary, because the editors have conceived this as an open-ended forum for scholarly exchange, through a "Corrigenda and Addenda" section appended to volumes two (pp. 295-305) and after.

This dictionary reminds one of other similar projects: Manfred Mayrhofer's Concise Etymological Sanskrit Dictionary (1956-1980) for its conciseness and trilingual translations; Hobogirin (1929-) for its range and scope (but without its excesses); and especially Macdonell and Keith's Vedic Index of Names and Subjects (1912), to which this dictionary is vastly superior. These volumes are an essential resource for any serious scholar of Hindu tantra, and if any specialized dictionary was ever a "page-turner," this is it.

DAVID GORDON WHITE

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA