Yoga, bhoga, and ardhanariswara: individuality, wellbeing, and gender in Tantra

273 Pages·2018·2.358 MB·English

by  Saran, Prem

Yoga, Bhoga and Ardhanariswara
This book offers a social–scientific interpretation of the Hindu
and Buddhist traditions of Tantra dating back 15 centuries. It is
a self-reflexive study approached with an insider’s empathy and
the perspective of an Indologist, anthropologist, mystic and practi-
tioner of the cult.
The work includes a discussion of non-modern Indic themes:
mandala as a trope and its manifestations in South Asian regions
such as Nepal; yoga and Indic individuality; the concept of bhoga;
disciplined wellbeing; gender; and Indic axiology. Using personal
praxis to inform his research, the author examines three core
themes within Tantra—a ‘holonic’/mandalic individuality that con-
duces to mystical experience; a positive valorisation of pleasure
and play; and cultural attitudes of gender-mutuality and comple-
mentarity, as neatly encapsulated in the icon of Shiva as Ardhanar-
iswara. This analysis, as captured by the Tantric mandalas of deities
in intimate union, leads to his compelling metathesis that Tantra
serves as a permanent counterculture within the Indic civilisation.
This second edition, with a new Afterword, will greatly interest
those in anthropology, South Asian studies, religious studies, gender
studies, psychology and philosophy, as well as the general reader.
Prem Saran is a former member of the Indian Administrative Service
(1978–2012) and served in Assam. In 1981 he was initiated into a
traditional Tantric cult that his mentor, the Austrian-American scholar
Agehananda Bharati, was also initiated into. He has researched
Hindu and Buddhist Tantric traditions of South Asia at the Universi-
ties of Pennsylvania and of California at Santa Barbara. His MA thesis
at the University of Pennsylvania resulted in the well-received mon-
ograph, Tantra: Hedonism in Indian Culture (1994). This book is
based on his doctoral fieldwork in the traditional Indic ambience of
the Kathmandu Valley towns.
‘In this wonderfully imaginative and ludic study, Prem Saran pre-
scribes Tantra as a somaesthetic tonic for a disenchanted world.
Read it, and you will wake up re-enchanted.’
David Gordon White, author of Sinister Yogis and Kiss of the
Yogini: “Tantric Sex” in its South Asian Contexts
‘While there are many poor and misleading books written about
Tantra, Prem Saran’s is by far one of the best and most reliable.
Saran combines the personal, first-hand experience of a practising
insider with the scholarship and erudition of a trained academic.
His book is not only a masterful study of Tantric symbolism and
ritual, but it makes a powerful argument about the key role that
Tantra has played in South Asian history and culture.’
Hugh B. Urban, author of Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Politics and
Power in the Study of Religion and The Power of Tantra
‘Saran presents here a unique and precious offering: a work on T antra
that is at once personal and erudite, private and scholarly; and
encompassing Tantra’s Indic past, present and future as a counter-
cultural ethos and practice. Indeed, his book adds a balancing
perspective on Tantra that avoids both the sensational hedonism
of pop-culture appropriations and the puritanism of religious and
academic orthodoxies.’
Patricia Dold, Associate Professor of Religious Studies,
Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada
‘Prem Saran’s beautiful book is at once a historical and theological
description, a theoretical analysis, and a spiritual transmission of a
particular global vision of Tantra. Tantra here becomes a gift to the
world capable of re-enchanting a digitally exhausted modernity, a
ritual performance of divine erotic play aimed at aesthetic nondual
bliss, and an erotic counterculture and esoteric anatomy that, in
different but related forms, has flourished throughout Asia (and
now Europe and the Americas) for at least 15 centuries. There are
no borders and boundaries here. There are only bodies, all alike,
all different, all portals of mystical energies and states of cosmic
consciousness we have only begun to fathom and understand.’
Jeffrey J. Kripal, author of Secret Body: Erotic and Esoteric
Currents in the History of Religions
Yoga, Bhoga and Ardhanariswara
Individuality, Wellbeing and
Gender in Tantra
SECOND EDITION
WITH A NEW AFTERWORD
Prem Saran
Second edition published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
© 2008, 2018 Prem Saran
The right of Prem Saran to be identified as author of
this work has been asserted by him in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
First edition published in India by Routledge 2008
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-8153-8021-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-57170-9 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-70255-0 (ebk)
Typeset in Benguiat
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
To the memory of my late uncle
Dr M.N.V. Nair,
Sociologist and Founding Dean
of the
Indian Institute of Management Bangalore

Contents
Preface viii
Foreword by Jeffrey J. Kripal x
Chapter 1 Introduction: Three Non-modern
Indic Themes 1
Chapter 2 The Kathmandu Valley:
The Mandala as Indic Trope 43
Chapter 3 Yoga and Indic Individuality 67
Chapter 4 Bhoga and Disciplined Eudaemonism 135
Chapter 5 Ardhanariswara and Indic Gender 171
Chapter 6 Tantra as Counter-culture:
The Core Axiology of Indic Culture 209
Afterword to the Second Edition:
The Aesthetics of Tantra and the
Re-enchantment of the World 214
Bibliography 227
Index 246
Preface
T
his book owes much to the following persons. First, I must
thank my family—my parents Parameswar and Krishnamma Saran,
for constantly supporting me in my academic efforts; my wife
Geeta and daughter Tanya, for allowing themselves to be uprooted
from our settled life in Assam, for academic work—fi rst at the
University of Pennsylvania and then at the University of California
at Santa Barbara—that was supererogatory to my vocation as
an Indian civil servant; my sisters Priya and Preethy, and my
brothers-in-law Drs G. Narayana Pillay and P. Madhavan Nayar,
for generous help beyond the call of familial duty; my grandpar-
ents, N. Gopala Panikkar and Kamalakshi Amma, whose home in
the Alappuzha district of Kerala I always looked forward to visiting
during my summer holidays, as a schoolboy in Bombay; and my
Assamese father-in-law, the late Guna Kanta Saikia, who enjoyed a
well-deserved reputation as a successful and honest businessman
in North Lakhimpur.
Next, I am indebted for scholastic guidance to: the members of my
Ph.D Committee, namely Professors Mattison Mines, Elwin Hatch—
formerly on the editorial board of the University of California Press,
who generously predicted that my dissertation would be an ‘academic
bestseller’—and Donald Brown; to Professor Jeffrey Kripal, Chair
of Religious Studies and warmhearted friend, whose enthusiastic
review of my manuscript for Routledge launched the process of pub-
lishing this book, and who has then done me the honour of writing
its Foreword; Professor BNS Saraswati, formerly UNESCO Professor at
the Indira Gandhi Centre for the Arts in New Delhi, whose advice as
an Anthropologist I had sought before I began my Ph.D programme;
and to Dr RD Choudhury, friend and former Director-General of the
National Museum in New Delhi, who has always sincerely appreciated
my scholarly work over the last two decades.
Then, I am indebted for camaraderie on and around the en-
chanted UCSB campus to: my Anthropology cohort of Drs Patti
Taber, Wayne Allen, John Ziker, John Kantner, Garrett Menning
and Larry Sugiyama, as also Chris Wright, MA; Dr Shivakumar
Elambooranan, then a Ph.D student in Philosophy at UCSB—from
whom I learnt much about Wittgenstein and the Anglo-American
viii (cid:155) Yoga, Bhoga and Ardhanariswara Preface ¹ ix
brand of doing philosophy—during evening discussions over beer
in the student township of Isla Vista; Dr A. Meyyappan, roommate
during my dissertation–writing year, who had completed his Ph.D
in Electrical Engineering at UCSB some years previously, and is so
knowledgeable in non-technological areas too; and Ms Thea Howard,
who did graduate work in Anthropology with Jacques Maquet
at UCLA and has recently retired from the Physics Department at
UCSB, and who used to coordinate a Buddhist Sangha in the un-
forgetttable seaside town of Santa Barbara.
And last but defi nitely not least, I am grateful to: Mrs Dipali
Chaliha of Sivasagar, Assam for her motherly affection; Ms Namita
Gokhale, one of India’s best writers in English, for her friendship and
for recommending my work to Routledge; Dr Nilima Chitgopekar,
Professor of History at Jesus and Mary College of Delhi University,
for so kindly putting me in touch with Ms Omita Goyal, Publishing
Director at Routledge; Omita herself, for patiently waiting for my
fi nal manuscript; and her colleague Dr Nilanjan Sarkar for assisting
me with the cover picture; my diksha-guru the late Kulada Sharma
of the Kamkhya temple in Guwahati, and my para-guru the late
Agamananda Bhattacharya of the nearby Dipteshwari temple outside
Rangiya; the late Professor/Swami Agehananda Bharati—who
inspired my scholarly journey as mentor, friend and fellow-Tantrika,
and who helped me get scholarships to pursue my graduate studies
at Penn as well as UCSB; JP Prakash—my junior colleague in the
Assam cadre of the IAS—and his affectionate wife Anjana, for their
friendship in good times and bad; and my patient informants in the
magical Kathmandu Valley of Nepal, who hospitably received me in
their homes and whose syncretic Hindu-cum-Buddhist culture
I had marvelled at as being so charmingly free of aggressiveness,
during my fi eldwork year of 1993–94.
June 2008 Prem Saran, IAS
Guwahati, Assam