The Body's Divinization As A Root Metaphor In Tantra
Both representation and lived experience are needed to comprehend the body in tantra.
It serves as a model for the hierarchical cosmos and methods of mapping the self on the one hand, and as a means of experiencing a world organized by literature and tradition on the other.
The body's divinization is a key element of tantric civilization in both depiction and experience.
- This divinization of the body is a process in which the body is supposed to transform into the text and works on many levels.
- At the level of individual practice, the practitioner's body becomes divine via text-specific ritual building (as I demonstrate with particular examples).
- The king's body becomes divine in the political world via ceremonial building, which is similar to the divinization of the god in the temple.
- The deity's body is represented by the temple, which is the counterpart of the palace.
- The monarch is to the body politic and palace as the god is to the temple, which itself reflects divinity and universe.
- The body becomes divine in possession at a popular, typically low-caste, level (avesa).
Indeed, ownership is the unifying theme of the tantric body, and that it is connected to language, particularly performative speech.
However, the word 'possession' has negative connotations in English, and we could argue that divinization is a more appropriate term to describe a process that happens at many cultural levels, with varying functions.
The divinization of the body is a necessary ritual step in the existential realization of that truth for the practitioner seeking liberation.
- For the king, the divinization of the body is political empowerment by the deity and the legitimization of his regime.
- Divinization enlivens the temple and its deities.
- Divinization enlivens the low-caste.
- Divinization is possession, which can be an empowerment and bestowing.
The conflict between 'institutionalized Tantra' and 'transgressive Tantra' (roughly corresponding to priestly and shamanic forms) complicates these divination procedures.
- Much of the material in the Bhairava and Tantras of the Southern transmission has focused on those texts that exceed the orthodox revelation of the Veda and whose practices violate orthodox dharma, especially in the emphasis on sexuality in worship and the brutality of its deities.
- However, institutionalized Tantra soon incorporates this violence and sensuality, especially where political power is involved.
- Tantrism does become orthodox as a result of governmental sponsorship as well as Brahmanical absorption.
- Sacred violence and sexuality become cultural motifs expressed in literature and art, and included in high tantric ritual, as a result of institutionalization.
- The temple is very significant in this area.
- Many Tantras, particularly the Saiva Siddhanta Tantras and Upagamas, include extensive sections on temple construction, icon placement, and temple worship.
- There are other writings dedicated particularly to tantric temple building, such as the MayamataTM, Diptagama 11 and Silpaprakdsa 11; and certain Tantras, such as the Ajitagama and Rauravottaragama, contain substantial portions dedicated to temple construction and icon placement.
- These writings detailed various temple designs and prescribed which deities should be put, including which deities should be placed on the temple façade (din murti).
As a result, we seek to expand the boundaries by looking at the body's role as the internalization of text in terms of polity, temple art, and popular religion, especially ownership.
- I want to use two interconnected lines of reasoning to demonstrate that when tantric rituals are injected into the pre-existing framework of monarchy, the king becomes the tantric Brahman's counterpart, and that this must be understood in terms of the tantric revelation model of text internalization.
- The monarch is subjected to the process of bodily divinization.
- The importance of the body as an indicator of tradition-specific subjectivity, as well as the priority of revelation and its internalization in any understanding of tantric civilization, must be drawn from this.
- Clearly, macro-cultural forces such as economic constraints, trade, and caste play a role in the formation "imperial formation" in the medieval period, but what's important here is that sovereignty is mediated through revelation, via the internalization and en-textualisation structure.
