Tantra, Magic, and Vernacular Religions

in Monsoon Asia

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 over-
looked 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.

Andrea Acri is tenured Assistant Professor in Tantric Studies at the École Pratique des
Hautes Études (EPHE, PSL University) in Paris, France. His publications include the
monograph Dharma Pātañjala (2011), as well as various edited volumes, including
Esoteric Buddhism in Mediaeval Maritime Asia (2016). His main research and teaching
interests are Śaiva and Buddhist Tantric traditions, Indian philosophy, Yoga studies,
Sanskrit and Old Javanese philology, and the comparative religious history of South and
Southeast Asia from the premodern to the contemporary period, with special emphasis on
connected histories and intra-Asian maritime transfers.

Paolo E. Rosati received his PhD in Asian and African Studies from ‘Sapienza’ University
of Rome, Italy. He has published a double special issue on Tantra for Religions of South
Asia (14/1–2) in 2020, and several contributions on the yoni cult at Kāmākhyā. His current
research focuses on magic, memory, and cultural identity in postcolonial Tantric
contexts.
Routledge Studies in Tantric Traditions
Series Editor: Professor Gavin Flood
University of Stirling

The Routledge Studies in Tantric Traditions series is a major new monograph

series which has been established to publish scholarship on South, East and
Southeast Asian tantric traditions. The series aims to promote the serious study
of both Hindu and Buddhist tantric traditions through the publication of anthro-
pological and textual studies and will not be limited to any one method. Indeed,
the series would hope to promote the view that anthropological studies can be
informed by texts and textual studies informed by anthropology. The series will
therefore publish contemporary ethnographies from different regions, philologi-
cal studies, philosophical studies, and historical studies of different periods
which contribute to the academic endeavour to understand the role of tantric
texts and their meaning in particular cultural contexts. In this way, the series will
hope to establish what the continuities and divergencies are between Buddhist
and Hindu tantric traditions and between different regions. The series will be a
major contribution to the fields of Indology, Sinology, History of Religions, and
Anthropology.

Tantric Buddhist Practice in India

Vilāsavajra’s Commentary on the Mañjuśrī-nāmasaṃgīti
Anthony Tribe

The Rādhā Tantra

A Critical Edition and Annotated Translation
Måns Broo

An Indian Tantric Tradition and its Modern Global Revival

Contemporary Nondual Śaivism
D.E. Osto

Tantra, Magic, and Vernacular Religions in Monsoon Asia

Texts, Practices, and Practitioners from the Margins
Edited by Andrea Acri and Paolo E. Rosati

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/

Routledge-Studies-in-Tantric-Traditions/book-series/RSTT
Tantra, Magic, and Vernacular
Religions in Monsoon Asia
Texts, Practices, and Practitioners from the
Margins

Edited by Andrea Acri and

Paolo E. Rosati
First published 2023
by Routledge
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Names: Acri, Andrea, 1981- editor. | Rosati, Paolo E., editor.
Title: Tantra, magic, and vernacular religions in monsoon Asia : texts,
practices, and practitioners from the margins / edited by Andrea Acri,
Paolo E. Rosati.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2023. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022015546 (print) | LCCN 2022015547 (ebook) | ISBN
9781032251288 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032251370 (paperback) | ISBN
9781003281740 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Tantrism--Asia. | Tantrism--Asia--Customs and practices.
Classification: LCC BL1283.84 .T365 2022 (print) | LCC BL1283.84 (ebook)
| DDC 294.5/514--dc23/eng20220820
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ISBN: 978-1-032-25128-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-25137-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-28174-0 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003281740
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Contents

List of figures vii

List of contributors viii
Acknowledgement xi

Introduction 1
ANDREA ACRI

1 More pre-Tantric sources of Tantrism: Skulls and skull-cups 12

RONALD M. DAVIDSON

2 Charnel ground items, śmāśānikas, and the question of the magical

substratum of the early Tantras 40
ALEKSANDRA WENTA AND ANDREA ACRI

3 Shamans and Bhūta Tāntrikas: A shared genealogy? 60

MICHAEL SLOUBER

4 Female Gaṇeśa or independent deity?: Tracing the

background of the elephant-faced goddess in mediaeval
Śaiva Tantric traditions 78
CHIARA POLICARDI

5 Crossing the boundaries of sex, blood, and magic in

the Tantric cult of Kāmākhyā 98
PAOLO E. ROSATI

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 116
MONIKA HIRMER
vi Contents
7 Narrative folklore of Khyāḥ from Tantra to popular beliefs:
Supernatural experiences at the margins among
Newar communities in the Kathmandu Valley 137
FABIO ARMAND

8 Magical Tantra in Bengal, Bali, and Java: From

piśāca tāntrikas to balians and dukuns 154
JUNE McDANIEL

9 Tantrism and the weretiger lore of Burma, Thailand,

and Cambodia 173
FRANCESCO BRIGHENTI

Bibliography 191
Index 212
Figures

3.1 Proposed homeland of proto-Tungusic in 4th-century context 63

3.2 Iron nails, spikes, and rings for protection from spirits
(Kathmandu, Ghantakarna holiday 2006) 73
4.1 Yoginī n° 38, elephant-faced, Hirapur yoginī temple, Odisha,
second half of the 9th century 85
4.2 Vināyakī with other mātṛs or yoginīs, from Rikhiyan, Banda
district, Uttar Pradesh, ca. 10th century 88
4.3 Possibly elephant-faced goddess with a donkey vāhana,
Dandan Oiliq, Buddhist temple CD4, eastern corridor 89
4.4 Yoginī named Śrī Aiṅginī in the inscription, No. 41,
elephant-faced, Bheraghat yoginī temple, near Jabalpur,
Madhya Pradesh, last decades of 10th century 91
4.5 Elephant-faced yoginī with wine cup, sculpture repurposed
in a wall outside the Bhairava shrine, Harṣa temple complex,
Harshagiri, near Sikar, Rajasthan, ca. 9th–10th century 92
4.6 Elephant-faced yoginī from Hinglajgadh, on the border
between Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, middle of
10th century. Now in Birla Museum at Bhopal 93
6.1 Śrīcakra 125
6.2 Identity between the Śrīcakra and Devī 131
6.3 Divinized body 133
7.1 Nāsaḥdyaḥ temple in Sāno Khokana: A copperplate
representing kālo Khyāḥ and Kawancha offering pūjā to the
main deity (left). By lifting the copperplate, a painted canvas,
representing seto Khyāḥ and Kawancha in the same attitude,
appears (right) 142
7.2 Khyāḥ and Kawancha dancing in front of Palaňchowk
Bhagāwatī (Lagan Ṭol, Kathmandu) 148
Contributors

Fabio Armand is Associate Professor of Ethnolinguistics and Anthropology at

the Sciences and Humanities Confluence Research Center (EA1598) of the
Lyon Catholic University. He holds a Joint PhD in Linguistics (University
Grenoble-Alps) and in Psychology, Anthropology, and Educational Sciences
(University of Turin). He carries out research on experience- centred narrative
heritage in faraway alpine environments, from French-speaking Alps to
Nepalese Himalayas, especially among Hindu Bahun-Chhetri high castes and
Tibeto-Burman ethnic groups (Newar and Eastern Gurung). He contributed to
the development of a neurocognitive anthropological model, BRAINCUBUS,
which aims to bridge field folkloristics and cognitive neuroscience. By taking
into account the relationships between the neurocognitive systems of human
brains as ontology engines and their inspirations from the cultural environ-
ments, he examines the cerebral origins of imaginary ontologies, as well as the
neural basis of shamanism(s).
Francesco Brighenti, PhD (history), Utkal University, Bhubaneswar, India, is an
independent scholar based in Venice, Italy. His research interests include
Hindu myths, rituals, and iconography (with focus on Śakti cult), South Asian
pre-/proto-history and archaeology, comparative linguistics, and cultural
anthropology (with focus on tribal cultures of Monsoon Asia).
Ronald M. Davidson is Professor of Religious Studies at Fairfield University. He
received his degrees in psychology, Sanskrit, and Buddhist studies at the
University of California, Berkeley, working with Padmanabh Jaini, Frits Staal,
Barend van Nooten, Lewis Lancaster, and Michel Strickmann. Additionally, he
worked with Tibetan intellectuals, especially Ngor Thartse Khanpo (Hiroshi
Sonami), for 17 years on Tibetan documents and rituals. His books include
Indian Esoteric Buddhism: A Social History of the Tantric Movement (2002)
and Tibetan Renaissance: Tantric Buddhism in the Rebirth of Tibetan Culture
(2005). His current work is on dhāraṇī literature in Indian Buddhism, already
published in a series of studies, and on pre-Tantric elements of Indian religion
that contributed to the formation of Tantrism. He is completing a translation of
the *Mūlamantra, the earliest Indian Buddhist pre-Tantric work that brings
together elements that eventually will become inscribed in Tantric Buddhism,
 Contributors ix
and is also working on the earliest Tantric Buddhist documents, many of which
are only in Chinese or Tibetan translations.
Monika Hirmer has recently defended her PhD thesis at SOAS, University of
London, in religions and philosophies. Her research focuses on a contempo-
rary South Indian Śrīvidyā tradition, for which she conducted extensive
anthropological fieldwork in 2014, 2017, and 2019. Trained as an anthropolo-
gist at the University of Hyderabad, India, from where she obtained an MPhil
in anthropology of religions, and at SOAS, United Kingdom, from where she
obtained an MA in South Asian area studies, Monika’s research lies at the
intersection of anthropology and philosophy, to which she applies a decolonial
perspective. She has been a teaching assistant at SOAS for ‘The Margins
of  Philosophy: Postcolonial, Gender and Queer Epistemologies’ and is
co-founder of the multilingual open access publishing platform Decolonial
Subversions.
June McDaniel is Professor Emerita in History of Religions in the Department
of Religious Studies at the College of Charleston. Her PhD was from the
University of Chicago, and her MTS was from Emory University. Her research
areas include mysticism, religions of India, psychology of religion, and ritual
studies. She did several years of field research in West Bengal, funded by
Fulbright and the American Institute of Indian Studies, which focused on reli-
gious experience and modern Shaktism. Her books include Lost Ecstasy (2018)
and Offering Flowers, Feeding Skulls (2004), among others. Her current work
draws comparisons between Bengali and Balinese Hinduism, and examines
religious emotion in different traditions.
Chiara Policardi is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Milan, with a
research project called ‘Of Deities and Animals. The Rise of Therianthropic
Deities in Gupta India’. After graduating in classics from the University of
Milan, she completed her PhD in Indology at Sapienza University of Rome
in 2017, under the direction of Raffaele Torella. In her dissertation, she dealt
with yoginīs of mediaeval Śaiva traditions, investigating, in particular, the
peculiar therianthropic representation of these figures, which usually com-
bines an animal face with a feminine body. She has recently published the
monograph Divino, femminile, animale. Yoginī teriantropiche nell’India
antica e medioevale (2020). Her main research interests concern Hindu femi-
nine deities and the important and multifaceted role of animals in Hindu
culture, which finds a particular expression in composite animal-human
deities.
Michael Slouber researches the religious and medical traditions of early mediae-
val India and teaches South Asian humanities and the study of religion at
Western Washington University. He is the author of Early Tantric Medicine
(2017) and the editor of A Garland of Forgotten Goddesses (2021). He earned
graduate degrees in South Asian languages and literature at the University of
California at Berkeley under the supervision of Robert and Sally Goldman,
x Contributors
Alexander von Rospatt, and Somadeva Vasudeva, and at Universität Hamburg
in Germany under Harunaga Isaacson. He won the DK Award for the best dis-
sertation on Sanskrit 2012–2014 and is an honorary fellow of the International
Association of Sanskrit Studies.
Aleksandra Wenta (University of Florence, Italy) holds an MPhil and a PhD
from the University of Oxford, and a Vidyāvaridhi (PhD) degree from Banaras
Hindu University. She was Assistant Professor at Nalanda University (2016–
2020) and a postdoctoral fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study
(2012–2014). She researches the history, literature, and ritual of Tantric
Buddhism and Śaivism in mediaeval India, as well as religion in premodern
Tibet. She authored several scholarly articles and book chapters concerning
Tantric practices and Tibetan Buddhism and co-edited with Purushottama
Bilimoria the volume Emotions in Indian Thought-Systems (Routledge, 2015,
reprint 2018, 2020).
Acknowledgement

This volume is the fruit of a collaboration between the editors, which was kick-
started by discussions and exchanges that took place during a series of forums
FIND ‘Transcultural Encounters’ held at the Labyrinth in Zagarolo between 2017
and 2021. This collaboration culminated in a panel at the conference of the
European Association for the Study of Religions (EASR) held in Pisa in 2021, in
which several of the contributors to this volume participated. We are grateful to
all the people involved in those events who contributed to creating an intellectual
and human atmosphere that was most conducive to fruitful scholarly exchanges.
We thank in particular Adrián Navigante, director of Research and Intellectual
Dialogue at FIND, for his support and for providing the intellectual stimuli that
contributed to the breeding of the intellectual agenda shaping this volume.
Andrea Acri would like to thank the Section des Sciences Religieuses of the
École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE, PSL University, Paris) and the Groupe
de Recherches en Études Indiennes (GREI, EA2120, Paris) for providing funding
to cover the publication costs.
Paolo E. Rosati would like to thank the Società Italiana di Storia delle Religioni
and the EASR, both of which supported the organization of thematic panels on
Tantra during the EASR annual conferences in Bern (2018) and Tartu (2019),
which helped him to refine his research focus on the intersection between Tantra
and magic.
Finally, we would like to thank Prof. Gavin Flood, editor of the Routledge
Studies in Tantric Traditions Series, for strongly and effectively supporting this
project, and Dorothea Schaefter, senior editor at Routledge, for making the publi-
cation of this volume possible despite the economic downturn and the many other
challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Introduction
Andrea Acri

Framing the intersection between Tantra, magic, and vernacular

religions in Monsoon Asia
Tantra (used here as a synonym of ‘Tantrism’) is a complex, heterogeneous, and
protean socio-religious phenomenon. The very definition of Tantra and its status
as a clearly identifiable discourse, in spite of the existence of such emic terms as
tantra and tāntrika, is a matter of controversy. Some scholars would restrict
Tantra to texts and artefacts associated with initiation lineages within specific
(and as a norm, esoteric) soteriological systems across sectarian domains of Indic
religions; others, applying a broader perspective, would understand the phenom-
enon as transcending the boundaries of the belief systems and rituals produced
within textually and historically established initiatory traditions so as to encom-
pass multifarious manifestations of the cultural, artistic, and political lives of
many societies of the wider Indic or ‘Indianized’ World.
While the enigmatic origins of Tantra are still debated, textual and art histori-
cal evidence suggests that Tantric traditions identifiable as such arose in the
Indian subcontinent from the middle of the 1st millennium CE. From ca. the 7th
to the 13th century and beyond, Tantric orientations of major religious traditions
of ‘Hinduism’ (especially Śaivism and Śāktism) and Buddhism (especially the
Sanskrit-dominated Mahāyāna current, but also the Pali-dominated tradition
that became a major force in mainland Southeast Asia from the 12th century
onwards) virtually coincided with mainstream religiosity and ritual practice
over much of Asia. Transcending the constructed boundaries of the region we
now call ‘South Asia’, Tantra spread over the large swathe of territory referred
to as Monsoon Asia1 and continues to this very day to play a central role in the
religious and ritual life of many ‘peripheral’ areas of the former Indic World,
such as Nepal, Tibet, and Bali. Taking on a local garb according to the socio-
cultural and geographical contexts in which it developed, Tantra has played a
significant role—albeit often in a subliminal manner—in shaping the shared
history and collective identity of a geographically vast and culturally diversified
region encompassing the continental and maritime space of the southeastern
quadrant of Asia.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003281740-1
2 Andrea Acri
Admittedly, it seems reductive to pin down Tantra exclusively to specific and
distinct textual corpora, lineages, or schools, for Tantric traditions have left a
mark on many cultural phenomena in lay milieus, even in contexts that are far
removed from those from which they originated. These Tantric orientations,
which were not in each and every instance esoteric, secret, or initiatory, may
include, for example, self-divinization, ritual violence, transgressive devotional
practices, the use of mantras and magical formulas (for both this-worldly and
other-worldly purposes), healing, sorcery, possession and exorcism, and different
genres of sacred performance.2 Thus, by applying a polythetic approach, one may
argue that some of the distinctive features of what we may call ‘elite Tantra’
penetrated—through some sort of trickle-down effect—the extended social fab-
ric; conversely, many popular or vernacular cults and practices may have influ-
enced high-cultural/textual manifestations of Tantra. The word ‘vernacular’ is
used in this volume as an indicator of non-Sanskritic, non-elite, ‘local’ milieus
but also of ‘lived’ forms of religion, which are in some respects the expression of
less institutionalized practices and practitioners. The vernacular problematizes
and complicates the divide between ‘folk’ and ‘elite’, being the outcome of a
dynamic process of interaction between different milieus and practitioners.
Scholarly work carried out in the past three decades or so has rightly empha-
sized the Sanskritic continuum that contributed to shaping many socio-cultural
contexts in the Indic World—for instance, the cultural and geographical forma-
tion called ‘Sanskrit Cosmopolis’ by Pollock (2006). Highlighting the enor-
mous importance of Tantra for the religious and cultural history of the Indian
subcontinent and beyond, and its alliance with the political elites of the societ-
ies across the geographical area that is largely coextensive to that of the Sanskrit
Cosmopolis, Sanderson (2009) has called the crucial period from the 7th to the
12th century the ‘Śaiva Age’. Thus, Tantra has been mainly studied as a top-
down, elite-driven phenomenon that is very much part of the Sanskritic (and/or
Brahmanical) intellectual and textual tradition, and which was shaped by the
same dynamics that governed them. And yet, Tantra confronts us with the para-
dox that, from the moment it burst into the Indic religious cosmos, its ritual
system has emerged as a source of incommensurable yet dangerous power,
which often was consciously formulated in violation and subversion of main-
stream norms, Brahmanical or otherwise. Indeed, Tantra can be associated not
only with the religious and political elites that sponsored it, thereby facilitating
its spread, but also with marginal ethnic groups and social milieus, as well as
with lay communities at large, who resorted to ritual agents (both institutional-
ized and non-institutionalized) to fulfil their worldly needs. Nowadays emically
associated in many South and Southeast Asian contexts with low-caste agents,
indigenous communities, and black magic, Tantra highlights a stratification of
liminal and transgressive practices within the overarching context of main-
stream Hindu or Buddhist religious ideology and praxis, as well as a tension
between the ‘margins’ and the ‘centre(s)’. It is clear that Tantra had, throughout
much of its history and its wide spectrum of different strands, a complex rela-
tionship with Brahmanism, at times ‘alternative and incompatible’ and at times
‘dependent and complementary’ (Shin 2018: 33).
 Introduction 3
A controversial aspect of Tantra is that many of its streams are characterized by
ideas and practices that are either not found in Vedic religiosity or that overlap
with non-Vedic, ‘shamanic’, ‘folk’, ‘indigenous’, or ‘vernacular’ traditions of
healing and communion with spirits, including ritual trance and possession, exor-
cism, theriocephalic (as well as wrathful and bloodthirsty) deities and spirits, as
well as the concept of iron as a spirit-repelling magical substance (Slouber,
Chapter 3 of this volume). While these elements are especially evident in what
Slouber calls the little-studied, yet prolific, ‘underbelly of the Tantras’—namely,
‘texts on magic, exorcism, snakebite, and a fascinating array of deities orthodox
Brahmanical Hinduism would have considered beyond the pale’ (ibid.), they are
also attested in other genres of Tantric scriptures, as well as many textual and
non-textual manifestations of Brahmanical culture. This fact does not necessarily
demonstrate that they are Brahmanical, for their prevalence does not tell us much
about their origin; rather, they may very well have been appropriated by
Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Jainism from different streams over a relatively
long period. Although it is often difficult to establish the direction of influences
and borrowings, there is evidence of appropriation, repackaging, and codification
of elements of vernacular practices by Tantric traditions rather than uniquely the
other way around.3
Furthermore, on the basis of textual evidence, one could hypothesize that the
spirit-cults referred to by scholars as (early) Indian ‘popular religion(s)’, which
predate our earliest available evidence of Tantric traditions and indigenous reli-
gions, are to be located in a shared background or matrix.4 Many of such ideas
and practices show tantalizing similarities with those that have been—generally,
and vaguely—labelled as ‘shamanic’, ‘tribal’, or ‘indigenous’ religions of non-
Indo-Aryan language speaking ethnic groups of the Indian subcontinent and
beyond, thus suggesting multiple levels of entanglement through processes of
negotiation, assimilation, and mutual transformation between institutionalized
religions and less institutionalized vernacular or ‘indigenous’ traditions. Quotation
marks are in order when mentioning the ‘indigenous’ since this category has too
often been uncritically invoked to represent a counterpart of (inherently cosmo-
politan) high cultures, such as Sanskritic, Sinitic, or Islamicate. Just like ‘folk’
religion, the expression carries negative overtones, having been often attributed
to the religiosity of isolated groups untouched by ‘civilization’ (Mullen 2000:
127). However, many (relatively isolated) small-scale societies in Monsoon Asia,
just like their cosmopolitan counterparts, were already the outcome of circulatory
dynamics, whereby local developments took place against the background of
translocal exchanges. In other words, ‘the “local” was already, at least in part,
“cosmopolitan”’ (Acri 2017: 18).
This problem begs for the no less controversial question of the origins, i.e.
the possibly pre-Tantric genealogy of such elements, in particular imitative
behaviours associated with wild animals, spirit possession, the use of bones
and skulls, etc. A debate has been, somewhat slowly, unfolding as to whether
Tantra owes to non-Sanskritic, non-Brahmanical, and non-Indo-Aryan cul-
tural influxes that occurred following the gradual adoption by Indo-Aryan
migrants of cultural and religious elements of the pre-existing inhabitants of
4 Andrea Acri
the Indian subcontinent (the heterogenetic paradigm) or is rather to be
regarded as a more or less linear historical development of Vedic and post-
Vedic religiosity and Indo-Aryan magico-ritual praxis that stems from within
the Brahmanical fold (the orthogenetic paradigm).5 A squarely orthogenetic
definition of Tantra has been espoused by Gavin Flood (2006: 14), among
others, who states that ‘there is no evidence for a non-Aryan substratum for
Tantrism, which must be understood as a predominantly Brahmanical,
Sanskritic tradition with its roots in the Veda’. On the other hand, Urban
(1999: 126) asserts that the history of Tantrism is impossible to write because
of poverty of data at present and that ‘the most we can say is that, although
Dravidian or pre-Aryan origins may be possible, tantric traditions have clear
relations to the Vedic tradition as well’. Along similar lines, White (2000a: 18)
elaborates a synthesis between an orthogenetic and heterogenetic approach, con-
textualizing the historical origin of Tantra as ‘an orthogenic development out
of prior mainstream (but not necessarily elite) traditions, that nonetheless also
drew on both foreign (adstratal) and popular (substratal) sources’. In his recent
comparative discussion of sorcery across Eurasia, White (2021: 83) argues
that to investigate the demonology that forms the ‘foundation upon which all
of the magnificent tantric systems and pantheons that Hindu Tantra specialists
study are grounded’, substratal (e.g. Vedic and Āyurvedic, as well as ‘popular’
yakṣa and nāga cults), adstratal (e.g. Iranian, Chinese, European), and even
superstratal (e.g. Indo-European) traditions have to be taken into account,
especially when dealing with the issue of origins and influences.
Besides acknowledging the intellectual parameters of this problem, many lead-
ing scholars of Tantra—with some notable exceptions—have tended to steer clear
of undertaking a systematic investigation of the issue of origins.6 This is under-
standable, given the perceived lack of evidence going back to the period before
the earliest extant written sources. Yet, to write histories of Tantric traditions on
the basis of textual sources alone does not eliminate the problem that these
sources arguably reflected the views of a small (literate) fraction of the total
population of their time, which is thus reduced to a passive recipient of ideas
elaborated by the Brahmanical minority, and is de facto denied agency by assum-
ing that their arguably distinct religious culture had no influence on the elite
stream (Davidson 2017; Slouber, Chapter 3 in this volume). Furthermore, one has
to acknowledge the difficulty of bridging the divide between eminently prescrip-
tive texts and underlying social realities, even when trying to reconstruct the latter
in the light of the former or, more dangerously, vice versa (for example, when
trying to understand ancient sources in the light of modern practices).
Against the background of these (perhaps unsurmountable) theoretical and
disciplinary challenges, this volume reflects a preliminary attempt to fulfil
urgent desiderata in the field of Tantric studies. The first desideratum is the gap
in the historical modelling of Tantra—namely, an absence of a sophisticated treat-
ment of prior behaviours, practices, and attitudes that contributed to its historical
formation but were not part of Tantric lineages and did not engage many of the
signature elements of mature Tantra (on which see Davidson 2017 and Chapters 1
and 2 of this volume).
 Introduction 5
The second desideratum is the interface between the Sanskritic elite and the
‘folk’, the ‘magical’, the ‘shamanic’—all contested terms and concepts,7 which
cannot nonetheless be either ignored, dismissed as non-existent figments of the
distorting lenses of modern scholarship, or replaced by the broad category of
‘vernacular’. Since traces of these phenomena can be found, often intertwined
with Tantric elements, in ritual practices, myths, folk and oral traditions, festivals,
as well as visual and performative ritual arts across Monsoon Asia,8 there is a
need to revisit the intellectual and historically fallacious divide between ‘cosmo-
politan Sanskritic’ and ‘vernacular local’. This divide has not only contributed to
generating and immortalizing such constructed notions of aboriginality as the
ādivāsis in India and the pribumis in Malaysia (both of which, perhaps not coin-
cidentally, are modern Sanskritic neologisms), but has also obscured the continu-
ities and shared historical genealogies of the various strands of what Urban (2003:
275) calls a powerful and widespread ‘non-Sanskritic, lower-class, and nonintel-
lectual […] current of nonelite Tantric practice—what we may call low-brow,
folk, or vernacular Tantra—that has probably always proliferated on the danger-
ous margins of mainstream Hindu and Buddhist traditions’. Attempting to link
together seemingly disconnected actors, geographies, and discourses, one could
comparatively study such disparate instantiations of living Tantric (or Tantra-
influenced) vernacular traditions as the Bauls and Sahajiyās of Bengal, the
Tantric-shamanic healers of Nepal and the Western Himalayas and their posses-
sion cults, the South Asian Aghorīs, the Balian sorcerers of Bali, and the Weikjās
of Myanmar, as being historically related to, or influenced by, translocal Tantric
discourses and bodies of textual as well as non-textual knowledge and practices.
This comparative investigation of categories that have too often been perceived as
distinct—namely, Tantra (conceived of as inherently high-cultural, Sanskritic,
and cosmopolitan) and vernacular religions (conceived of as inherently low-
cultural, local, and embedded)—recognizes that, as noted by Shin (2018: 30),
Tantric traditions ‘have never been a singular or static … but multiple, diachronic
and dynamic processes which have proceeded in many different directions
according to sects, localities and periods’, and were characterized by a typically
‘creole’ element. This approach may allow us to precisely describe local trajecto-
ries and specificities and, at the same time, transcend the uniquely localist
approach from which these agents have often been studied. In so doing, it will lay
the foundations for future studies elaborating a common framework of under-
standing for phenomena that have overlapping traits, shared social milieus, and
perhaps even common historical roots, and thereby achieve a truly global appre-
ciation of Tantra.
The third desideratum, which forms a corollary to the previous two, is the
extension of the geographical parameters of Tantra, inasmuch as it constitutes
an eminently translocal and cross-cultural phenomenon, to outside of the
boundaries of the Indian subcontinent. While regions that have been regarded
as historically, ethnically, and linguistically ‘marginal’ with respect to the
Sanskritic/Brahmanical world order, such as Madhya Pradesh and Odisha,
Assam, Tamil Nadu, and Nepal, have been also perceived as either cradles or
strongholds of Tantra, regions like mainland and insular Southeast Asia have
6 Andrea Acri
too often been glossed over in wider-ranging studies on Tantra, or regarded as
passive peripheries at best.9 Therefore, attempting to transcend the constructed
boundaries of both nation-states and post-World War II area studies paradigm,
the volume takes as its geographical theatre the vast yet historically interlinked
socio-geographical construct of Monsoon Asia, a large part of which coincides
with the transnational, semi-coherent cultural formation referred to as the
‘Indic World’.
With a chronological frame going from the mediaeval Indic period up to the
present, a wide geographical framework, and through the dialogue between the
various disciplines of philology, ethnography, art history, and religious stud-
ies, the collective body of work included in the volume intends to make an
innovative contribution to the field of Tantric studies by presenting a coherent
enquiry on the cross- and trans-cultural dialectic between Tantra and various
intersecting phenomena associated with vernacular religions across history
and geography. In so doing, it sheds light on practices and practitioners that
have been frequently alienated in the ‘orthodox’ or ‘elitist’ discourse of main-
stream Indic religions and equally overlooked by modern scholarship. (In this
sense, the ‘margins’ invoked in the subtitle of this volume are to be intended
in terms of social agents and milieus, geographical regions, and knowledge
and practice).

Summaries of the chapters

The first three chapters set the tone for the intellectual agenda of the volume by
investigating textual and historical evidence that brings a fresh perspective to our
current appreciation of the origin and development of Tantric traditions in the
Indian subcontinent, in particular by unpacking the relationship between Tantric
texts and social milieus that were illiterate or whose records were not transmitted
through the enduring institutions eventually emerging in the early mediaeval
period. Chapter 1, ‘More Pre-Tantric Sources of Tantrism: Skulls and Skull-Cups’,
by Ronald M. Davidson continues the author’s previous line of exploration
(Davidson 2017) investigating the debt Tantric traditions owe to magical groups
operating outside of Tantric lineages. For instance, Tantra is often identified with
the use or ingestion of polluted materials, whether the employment of bones in
various manners, the ingestion of sacraments (samaya), or the wearing of distinc-
tive garments. Some scholars have argued that ritualized statements about these
materials are specifically posed to contradict the admonitions in the Dharmaśāstras
for psychological or spiritual purposes, while others have maintained that they
have come from one tradition and were borrowed by the others. However, evidence
exists for earlier precedent in the use of polluted or inauspicious materials in North
India that has seldom been factored into discussions of sectarian lineage formation
in the early mediaeval era. Against this background, the chapter discusses the ori-
gins of the employment of a skull (kapāla) in Tantric traditions, especially that of
the ‘skull bearers’ or Kāpālikas. It presents the received understanding, examines
its complications, and presents evidence not so far considered. The basic argument
is that the use of skull-cups and bones for both religious and non-religious
 Introduction 7
purposes is much more widely spread than appreciated and for some of its early
history was intimately connected with the (possibly pre-Tantric) worship of the
piśāca demons in India, from whom Śaivas and others appear to have appropriated
that behaviour.
Chapter 2, ‘Charnel Ground Items, Śmāśānikas, and the Question of the
Magical Substratum of the Early Tantras’, by Aleksandra Wenta and Andrea Acri
builds on, and complements, the analysis outlined in the previous chapter by
exploring further attestations of ‘skull-magic’ in the early Tantras. Scholars have
usually traced these elements back to the marginal milieus of Śaiva Kāpālika
ascetics, who were known for their antinomian rituals that heavily relied upon
objects procured from the cremation ground, and who were stereotypically por-
trayed through their five-insignia attire (pañcamudrā); however, the chapter
argues that in the description of the ‘wrathful magic rituals’ (abhicāra) attested in
the early Śaiva and Buddhist Tantras, we find depictions of a different type of
‘wild’ practitioner that does not entirely conform to the type of Kāpālika ascetic
but rather points to a more archaic, pre-Tantric magical substratum dealing with
exorcism of demons and skull-magic that could have been subsequently inte-
grated into the textual corpora of Tantric traditions. The authors’ underlying
hypothesis is that the manipulation of skulls, corpses, and animal parts for magi-
cal purposes, known in non-Tantric texts as śmāśānikakarmas, may point to a
group of cremation ground specialists already in existence prior to the historical
emergence and textual codification of Tantric traditions.
Chapter 3, ‘Shamans and Bhūta Tāntrikas: A Shared Genealogy?’, by Michael
Slouber investigates the question as to whether a relationship might exist between
the beliefs and practices of the Bhūta Tantra specialist (bhūtatāntrika) and the
‘shamans’ of India’s tribal communities who have long specialized in similar
ritual practices, such as healing of illnesses perceived to be caused by spirits.
Such healing is often accomplished through ‘trance work’ and possession, in
which the trained practitioner enters altered states of consciousness at will and
communicates with a spirit being. The chapter first evaluates the major points of
debate in the long-contested etymology of the word ‘shaman’, touches on sha-
manism in prehistory, and engages with debates in anthropology and religious
studies about the appropriateness of applying the term ‘shaman’ to non-Siberian
religious specialists. It then presents present recent scholarship on the origins of
Tantric traditions in India that has tended to emphasize the influence of figures
from non-elite communities, including numerous tribal groups in the Indian sub-
continent and Monsoon Asia more broadly. Finally, it presents initial findings on
the probable influence of shamanic traditions of India’s tribal peoples on the
Bhūta Tantras.
The next three chapters move forward through the chronological span of our
scholarly investigation by accompanying us, so to speak, from the premodern to
the modern and contemporary periods. In doing so, they focus on regional expres-
sions of Tantric traditions in the Indian subcontinent (Central-Eastern India,
Assam, and South India, respectively) to unravel the problem of the interplay
between text-based Tantric lore and vernacular cults and practices, as well as the
category of ‘magic’. Chapter 4, ‘Female Gaṇeśa or Independent Deity? Tracing
8 Andrea Acri
the Background of the Elephant-Faced Goddess in Mediaeval Śaiva Tantric
Traditions’, by Chiara Policardi investigates the Indian elephant-faced female
deity known as Vināyakī, Gaṇeśvarī, Gajānanā, and numerous other epithets.
Although she is usually uncritically identified with Gaṇeśa’s female form, this
little-studied figure very early on appears as an independent, if minor, divinity in
her own right. Particularly significant appear to be the connections with the god-
dess Jyeṣṭhā or Alakṣmī, who, in some texts, is described as elephant-faced and
as riding a donkey, and who traditionally represents misfortune and disease. After
the 8th century, the elephant-faced goddess sometimes features as one of the
Eight Mothers and is often included in groups of yoginīs in both Vidyāpīṭha
(7th–8th century) and Kaula (post-10th century) scriptures. The yoginīs’ panthe-
ons of these textual traditions find correspondence, to some extent, in various
extant pre-11th-century yoginī temples, such as Hirapur in Odisha and Bheraghat
in Madhya Pradesh. Furthermore, various sculptural collections of yoginīs also
include such a figure. Through an analysis of the relevant textual and icono-
graphic evidence, the author sheds light on the genesis of this elephant-faced
female figure and on its role and significance in the thought-world of mediaeval
Śaiva Tantric traditions, providing insights into the process that led to the inter-
pretation of the figure as the female form of Gaṇeśa and highlighting dynamics of
interrelation between Tantric traditions and marginal, non-Tantric traditions and
regional cults.
Chapter 5, ‘Crossing the Boundaries of Sex, Blood, and Magic in the Tantric
Cult of Kāmākhyā’ by Paolo E. Rosati explores the connection between Tantra
and the magic tradition of Nīlācala in Assam in order to explain the encounter
between Brahmanism and magic. The chapter first discusses the doctrinal, ritual,
and mythical background of the cult of the Goddess Kāmākhyā, whose roots go
back to the esoteric sexual path of Kaula Tantra praxis. Having traced the history
to this path, which around the 10th century switched from blood sacrifice to a
mystic-erotic ritual centred on the yonipūjā (worship of the vulva), homologizing
blood offerings and erotic rituals focusing on the human body as a source of sex-
ual fluids necessary to obtain such supernatural accomplishments (siddhi), the
chapter then examines the concept of siddhi as a ‘magical power’ that can be
acquired only by those belonging to the kula (clan), the only ones who know the
yoni’s secret (the restricted transmission of siddhis over kula’s generations being
a complement to the ideology of blood sacrifice). Finally, it considers the inter-
section of indigenous traditions and Brahmanical ritual praxis in Assam as the
source of the peculiar cult of the yoni of Kāmākhyā. From this discussion, Assamese
Tantra emerges as a religious phenomenon that crosses socio-cultural boundaries
and encompasses apparently irreconcilable categories.
Chapter 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’, by Monika Hirmer tries to depart from the
positivistic existential outlook cast by Western scholarship on the ‘magical’ ritu-
als carried out by South Indian practitioners of the Goddess Śrīvidyā to cultivate
oneness with the goddess Tripurasundarī. Hirmer explores the ontological coor-
dinates that accommodate this oneness cogently and unambiguously, and
 Introduction 9
proposes a radical re-evaluation of the concept of ‘beingness’ as conceived by a
modern scientific framework, revealing an emic understanding where bodies
expanding into subtle realms and actions partaking in cosmic designs respond to
ontological coordinates informed by transcendence. The ontological dislocation
she advocates, where identities and practices deviating from a positivistic frame-
work need no longer be confined to the domain of ‘magic’ but can be appreciated
in their ontological primacy and epistemic legitimacy, invites novel modes of
approaching the Śrīvidyā tradition and Tantric traditions generally.
The last three chapters of the volume continue the enquiry along the lines
developed in Chapters 4 to 6 by extending the geographical focus to the outlying
regions of the Indian subcontinent, more specifically Nepal and insular and
mainland Southeast Asia, and by focusing on the disciplinary perspective of
ethnography of contemporary societies. Chapter 7, ‘Narrative Folklore of Khyāḥ
from Tantra to Popular Beliefs: Supernatural Experiences at the Margins among
Newar Communities in the Kathmandu Valley’ by Fabio Armand reveals the rich
narrative folklore of the Khyāk, a supernatural being that haunts the imaginaries
of the Newars, a Tibeto-Burman ethnic group living in the Kathmandu Valley in
Nepal. The author strolls on the trails of this supernatural being in order to access
a complex belief system that provides a framework for understanding some
Tantric ritual practices pertaining to both Hindu and Buddhist traditions. He
presents two different dimensions of Newar culture through which both etic and
emic observers can comprehend the nature of Khyāḥs: a Tantric dimension,
where these beings are direct emanations of the energy produced by the female
goddesses known as Aṣṭamātṛkās and the dimension of popular beliefs, which
view these beings as born from the divine union between Nāsaḥdyaḥ, the god of
music and dance, and a human girl. Providing a morphology of the Khyāḥs from
a taxonomic perspective on the basis of ethnographic work and discussing the
divine origins of this being through an analysis of narratives, Armand examines
an important pre-pubertal feminine initiation, the bārhā tayegu (nep. gufā
basne), where the Khyāk becomes a symbolic deflowering agent. Focusing on
the dynamics of the ritual and its possible failures, the discussion highlights a
borderline situation: if a girl dies during the ceremony, her ātman will turn into
one of the forms of Khyāk and will continue haunting the house where she
passed away. These circumstances introduce a Tantric-shamanic perspective
concerning the categorization of the various forms of Khyāk and the specific
rituals to pacify them.
Chapter 8, ‘Magical Tantra in Bengal, Bali, and Java: From Piśāca Tāntrikas
to Balians and Dukuns’ by June McDaniel investigates how magical Tantra is
understood in three distinct Asian regions, mainly in the light of ethnographic
data drawn from interviews with practitioners. Having introduced the term
‘magic’ and its disputed use in scholarship, McDaniel examines the processes
of magical transformation, the emic understanding of the supernatural, and the
roles of deity, gender, and ritual empowerment in the traditions forming the
subject of the chapter. She shows how magical practices can be incorporated
into both ‘elite’ and ‘folk’ Tantric systems in both India and Indonesia, and that
magical concepts can cross Muslim and Hindu lines more easily than many
10 Andrea Acri
other forms of ritual by escaping the critical view of theologians from both
traditions. By presenting some Asian models and their understandings of magi-
cal practice and ritual, McDaniel’s study brings new material to the study of
sorcery and magic, which has often focused upon the Western magical tradi-
tion, and also highlights the potential of comparative study of the hitherto
little-documented traditions of Tantric magic in contemporary South and
Southeast Asia.
The final chapter, ‘Tantrism and the Weretiger Lore of Burma, Thailand, and
Cambodia’ by Francesco Brighenti explores traditional beliefs about weretigers
as physical shapeshifters found among, on the one hand, Austroasiatic-speaking
tribal groups inhabiting the Shan Plateau, the Upper Laotian highlands, and the
Annamite Cordillera, as well as Tibeto-Burman-speaking ethnic groups of
northern Myanmar, and, on the other, the Theravāda Buddhist societies settled
in the river valleys and alluvial plains of Myanmar, Thailand, and Cambodia,
where similar weretiger beliefs form a little-studied aspect of the prevalent
magical lore. Noting that oral traditions regarding human-to-tiger transforma-
tion in the last three countries have clear links with Tantric black magic, pos-
sibly as a result of the early prevalence of Mahāyāna-cum-Tantric Buddhism
(and, as far as the Khmer Empire is concerned, of Tantric Śaivism too) in those
countries during the mediaeval period, and their later continuation as ‘Tantric
Theravāda’ complexes, Brighenti assesses the interplay of indigenous
(Austroasiatic, Tibeto-Burman, Tai) and South Asia-derived (Tantric) cultural
traditions that shaped the weretiger lore of lowland mainland Southeast Asian
societies.

Notes
1 Monsoon Asia encompasses South Asia, Southeast Asia, and much of East Asia as its
cores and includes the greater Himalayan region, Central Asia, and Japan as its edges.
For a (re)conceptualization of this region, see the introduction in Acri, Blench, and
Landmann (2017), and Acri (forthcoming).
2 To give an idea of the cross-cultural potential of the application of a broader definition
of ‘Tantra’ to disparate socio-cultural contexts across place and time, we may cite the
list of seven features individuated by Crosby (on the basis of earlier studies by François
Bizot) to define the Pali-dominated Buddhist tradition of modern Thailand and
Myanmar as ‘Tantric Theravāda’—viz., (1) ritual creation of a Buddha within one’s
own body; (2) the use of sacred language for the identification of microcosm and
macrocosm; (3) sacred language as the creative principle (or the arising of the Dhamma
from the Pali syllabary); (4) a system of analogic substitution/homologization; (5) ‘[e]
soteric interpretations of words, objects and myths that otherwise have a standard
exoteric meaning or purpose in Theravāda Buddhism’; (6) necessity of initiation; and
(7) the application of the six previously outlined methods to pursue mundane and
supramundane goals (Crosby 2013: 141–142). Cf. also the application by Stephen
(2005: 85–93) of 18 distinguishing features of Indian Tantra elaborated by Teun
Goudriaan to premodern and modern Balinese religion.
3 See Davidson 2002 and, on the relationship between the deities and ritual syntax of the
Bhūta Tantras and Gāruḍa Tantras and shamanic traditions of Austroasiatic communi-
ties in the Indian subcontinent, Chapter 3 by Slouber in this volume; on the profound
influence exerted by Bhūta Tantras and Gāruḍa Tantras on Āyurvedic medicine, see
 Introduction 11
Slouber 2016; on the transformation of the Gāruḍatantric goddess Tvaritā into the
royal goddess of Nepal, see Slouber 2021. For an argument in favour of the appropria-
tion of autochthonous goddesses by Brahmanism, see Shin 2011. For the appropriation
of demonological elements (either substratal or astratal), see White 2021. On the issue
of possession and practices broadly referable to a shamanic typology in the Marāṭhī
cultural area, see Rigopoulos 1999.
4 For instance, many Buddhist Jātakas mention, often in a negative light, non-Buddhist
offerings of meat, fish, blood, and alcohol to tree spirits (yakkhas) possessing those
who interact with them, which are remindful of the offerings to fierce deities found in
later Tantric texts (see Cowell 1896, Jātakas 50, 113, 347; DeCaroli 2004: 24–25).
Orthodox Brahmanical sources perceive tree shrines (caityavṛkṣa) devoted to the cult
of spirit-deities in a similarly negative light, prescribing expiatory atonement for
Brahmins who enter in contact with them (along with funeral pyres and a caṇḍāla: see
Baudhāyana Dharmasūtra 1.5.9.5). For a discussion of a ‘magical substratum’ or
matrix shared by Sanskrit texts across genres and time-periods, see Chapter 2 by
Wenta and Acri in this volume.
5 For a discussion of the two paradigms, see Acri (2017).
6 The exceptions being Davidson (2002), Samuel (2008, 2011), Parpola (2015), Acri
(2017), White (2021) (emphasizing circulatory dynamics but not steering entirely clear
of the issue of origin), among others. For a (often cherry-picking and over-simplifying)
critique of the ‘tribal hypothesis’ elaborated by Davidson, and a programmatic dis-
missal of the very possibility of looking for the origins of Tantra, see Wedemeyer
(2013).
7 For recent critiques of the categories of magic and shamanism, respectively, see Otto
(2013) and Pharo (2011). More discussions of these terms and their histories and ref-
erents may be found in Chapters 2, 3, 6, and 8 of this volume. On shamanism and
Tantra in the Himalayas, see Müller-Ebeling, Rätsch, and Shahi (2002).
8 For a survey and discussion (including previous literature) on the overlap between
spirit-possession/-mediumship and Tantric traditions in the masked dances of South
India, Odisha, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Tibet, and Bali, see Samuel (2008: 315–322).
9 For an approach aiming at correcting this imbalance, see Acri (2016) and Acri and
Sharrock (2022).