Full Description
This book explores the cross- and trans-cultural dialectic between Tantra and intersecting 'magical' and 'shamanic' practices associated with vernacular religions across Monsoon Asia. With a chronological frame going from the mediaeval Indic period up to the present, a wide geographical framework, and through the dialogue between various disciplines, it presents a coherent enquiry shedding light on practices and practitioners that have been frequently alienated in the elitist discourse of mainstream Indic religions and equally overlooked by modern scholarship.
The book addresses three desiderata in the field of Tantric Studies: it fills a gap in the historical modelling of Tantra; it extends the geographical parameters of Tantra to the vast, yet culturally interlinked, socio-geographical construct of Monsoon Asia; it explores Tantra as an interface between the Sanskritic elite and the folk, the vernacular, the magical, and the shamanic, thereby revisiting the intellectual and historically fallacious divide between cosmopolitan Sanskritic and vernacular local.
The book offers a highly innovative contribution to the field of Tantric Studies and, more generally, South and Southeast Asian religions, by breaking traditional disciplinary boundaries. Its variety of disciplinary approaches makes it attractive to both the textual/diachronic and ethnographic/synchronic dimensions. It will be of interest to specialist and non-specialist academic readers, including scholars and students of South Asian religions, mainly Hinduism and Buddhism, Tantric traditions, and Southeast Asian religions, as well as Asian and global folk religion, shamanism, and magic.
Contents
Acknowledgement; Introduction; 1. More Pre-Tantric Sources of Tantrism: Skulls and Skull-Cups; 2. Charnel Ground Items, Śmāśānikas, and the Question of the Magical Substratum of the Early Tantras; 3. Shamans and Bhūta Tāntrikas: A Shared Genealogy?; 4. Female Gaṇeśa or Independent Deity? Tracing the Background of the Elephant-faced Goddess in Mediaeval Śaiva Tantric Traditions; 5. Crossing the Boundaries of Sex, Blood, and Magic in the Tantric Cult of Kāmākhyā; 6. 'Let us Now Invoke the Three Celestial Lights of Fire, Sun and Moon into Ourselves': Magic or Everyday Practice? Revising Existentiality for an Emic Understanding of Śrīvidyā; 7. Narrative Folklore of Khyāḥ from Tantra to Popular Beliefs: Supernatural Experiences at the Margins among Newar Communities in the Kathmandu Valley; 8. Magical Tantra in Bengal, Bali, and Java: From Piśāca Tāntrikas to Balians and Dukuns; 9. Tantrism and the Weretiger Lore of Burma, Thailand, and Cambodia
