The Path of Power: Impurity, Kingship and Sacrifice in Assamese Tantra

The Path of PowersImpurity, Kingship, andSacrifice in Assamese TaettraHugh B. Urban

Infamous throughout both Indian and western literature as a land of blackmagic, violent ritual, and tribal superstition, the region of Assam in north-east India has long been imagined to be the heartland of the secret andlicentious practice of Tantra. Yet, despite their infamous reputation, theTantric traditions of Assam have seldom been explored in any serious wayby modern scholarship but have instead typically been dismissed as a thinveneer of Brahminical Hinduism over a substratum of indigenous tribalreligion. This article suggests a fresh approach to the study of AssameseTantra by looking at the deep relations among Tantric ritual, politicalpower, and kingship in ancient Assam. Using insights from Michel Fou-cault and Georges Bataille, this article argues that much of Assamese Tantracenters around the unleashing and harnessing of power {iakti) in all itsforms—social, political, and spiritual alike. Above all, Tantric ritual involvesa systematic transgression of the normal laws of purity in order to releasethe dangerous power that lies bound up with impurity and violence. Assuch, Tantra was naturally very attractive to many of Assam's kings, en-meshed as they were within the dangerous, often impure world of state-craft, military struggle, and the inevitable violence of political power.

You are the Primordial Supreme Saktt, you are all power. It is by yourpower that we are powerful.

—Mahdmrvdna Tantra 5.1

1 HE LAND OF Assam, the remote and hilly northeast corner of Indiaon the border of China and Bhutan, has long held a place of mysterious

Hugh B. Urban is Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Studies at The Ohio StateUniversity, Columbus, OH 43210.Journal of the American Academy of Religion December 2001, Vol 69, No 4, pp. 777-816© 2001 The American Academy of Religion

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fascination and tantalizing allure in both the eastern and western imagi-nations. Famed as a realm of treacherous jungle and strange tribal ritual,Assam has for centuries been portrayed in Indian literature and in Euro-pean accounts as a savage, untamed country—"a land of magic and witch-craft," where non-Hindu superstitions have never been entirely stampedout (Kakati: 1). Above all, Assam is infamous as the heartland of Tantra—a highly esoteric tradition, which has long held a place of profound am-bivalence, fear, and embarrassment for both Indian and western observ-ers. "Assam," as the early orientalist H. H. Wilson puts it, "seems to havebeen the source from which the Tantric corruption of the religion of theVedas and Puranas proceeded" (lxi; cf. Eliade: 202). Even today, the greatTantric temple of Kamakhya outside modern Guwahati is infamous for itsregular animal sacrifices, its floors steeped in goat and buffalo blood, andthe many red-dad, matted-haired Tantric devotees who gather around thetemple walls.1

But strangely, despite the aura of exoticism and allure that surroundsit, the Tantric tradition of Assam remains generally unexplored in mod-ern scholarship. The few authors who have described Assamese Tantrahave typically dismissed it as "magic and witchcraft," blood sacrifice, andindulgence in wine and sex (Gait 1963: 1, 59). Even more recent scholarsattribute the gradual political decline of medieval Assam to the demoral-izing influence of the Tantrics: "Society was moth-eaten from within....The land was infested with teachers of Vamacara Tantra with their phi-losophy of sex and plate. Amongst religious rites the most spectacular werebloody sacrifices . . . to deafening drums, night vigils in virgin worship andlewd dances of temple women" (Kakati: 79). Most commonly, AssameseTantra has been rather simply explained as the result of the adulteration oftraditional Brahminical Hinduism by the primitive superstitions of Assam'stribal peoples. As Edward Gait has described it, Tantra in Assam is largelya thin veneer of Hinduism over a deeper, never fully Hinduized substra-tum of human sacrifice and orgiastic practices (1963: 58; cf. Beane: 45;Goswami: 35).

In what follows, I will argue for a more nuanced understanding ofTantra in Assam by exploring the intimate relations among power, ritual,and kingship as they have been played out in Assamese history. Most

1 A variety of scholars have speculated that Assam is, if not the original homeland of Tantra, atleast its most vibrant heartland' "The Tantric country par excellence is Kamarupa, Assam" (Eliade:202, see Goswami- 55ff.), "$aktism was the predominant form of Hinduism in this part of India,where it is believed . . to have had its origin" (Gait 1963 58). I conducted field research at theKamakhya Temple and other sites in Assam, 1999-2000, and found it to be one of the few areas inIndia today where Tantric practice is still quite lively. In future studies, I plan to explore livingTantric practice as it is continued today at Kamakhya and in rural Assam.

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importantly, I will focus on the central category of sakti, as it operates inall domains of experience—sakti as "power" in every sense of the term,spiritual, social, and political alike. The primary text I will examine hereis the Kdlikd Purdna (KP), one of the most important Upapurdnas andto this day the foremost authority on rites such as Durga and Kali Pujathroughout North India.2 By analyzing the KP and placing it concretelyin its historical and political context, I will argue that Tantra in Assamcenters around the release and harnessing of power—the dangerous, awe-some power that lies on the margins of the physical and social universe.On the religious level, Tantra harnesses the dangerous power of the God-dess—Sakti or Kamakhya (see figure 1)—the terrible, violent female whoalone can conquer the forces of impurity in the universe. On the socialand geographic level, it harnesses the dangerous power of tribal peopleson the margins of Hindu India. On the ritual level, it harnesses the powerof violent practices like sacrifice, specifically the beheading of animalsconsidered impure by traditional Vedic standards. And on the politicallevel, it harnesses the dangerous power of kingship—the power of rule,warfare, and the necessary violence that comes with the office of the king.

In my analysis of Assamese Tantra I will employ, but also criticallymodify, some of the insights of Michel Foucault and Georges Bataille—and specifically their analyses of power and transgression. As Foucaultsuggests, power is not simply a centralized, hierarchical force that ema-nates from the top of the social order; rather, power is a diffuse and shift-ing network of relations, emanating from all points in the social order, inwhich all agents participate. As Foucault points out, however, power isnot a matter of simple domination; in fact, it is always entangled in a dia-lectical relationship with resistance and struggle. There is always the po-tential of transgression—the overstepping of social boundaries and ethi-cal norms—in a temporary but ecstatic moment of liberation (Bataille1986; Foucault 1999). Unfortunately, as many critics point out, Foucault'smodel of power leaves many lingering, unanswered questions (McNay:105). Among others, this concept of power as an omnipresent, decentral-ized, shifting network does not account very well for the many ways inwhich power does in fact become centralized in particular institutions—

2 The existing manuscripts of the KP include—among others—the following: the printed Venkates'-vara Bombay edition (1891) with ninety-three chapters, the Bengal edition by Panchanan Tarkaratna(1977) with ninety chapters, the Calcutta edition by Hnsikesh Shastn (1910) with ninety-one chap-ters, and the Guwahati edition by B N. Shastn (1972) with ninety chapters. For the purposes of thisarticle I will use pnmanly Shastn's edition There also are a few translations of the KP—Shastn's ratherloose complete translation (1991), van Koon's better but only fragmentary translation of KP 54-69(1972), and a few scattered partial translations by early onentalists For a good discussion of the avail-able manuscnpts, see Shastn (27ff.) and van Koou (36-37)

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F I ~ . 1 . I he klother Chtldess K5makhvi (contemporaw popular poster from Guwahati, Assam).

for example, in kingship and sacral power, in the cult of nobility and the mystifying construction of authority.

Much of Assamese Tantra, I will argue, centers around the optimiza- tion and harnessing ofpower, on all levels--cosmic, physical, social, and political. Tantric ritual is based on nothing less than the svstematic, ritualized act of rrarqqression, a deliberate violation of normal social laws


through the manipulation of impure substances. And its aim is to unleashthe awesome power—iakti, embodied in the fearsome, violent GoddessKamakhya—that lies bound up within the universe and to optimize thepower of those individuals who are willing to risk the dangers of impu-rity. Hence, it is not difficult to see why the dark Goddess and her Tantricworship would have been attractive to Assam's kings, enmeshed as theywere within the dangerous, impure world of politics, warfare, and theinevitable violence of statecraft.

After a brief theoretical discussion of the concept of power in HinduTantra, I will look at the political history of the Kdlikd Pur ana and the riseof Kamakhya during the Pala dynasty. I will examine the use of transgres-sion and impurity in Tantric ritual—above all, in the ritual of sacrifice—as a means of unleashing and harnessing power. Finally, I will explore therelations between power and politics by looking at the uses of Tantric ritualin the service of kingship in ancient Assam. To conclude, I will suggestthat this discussion of Assamese Tantra has much larger implications forSouth Asian studies as a whole, helping us to reimagine the category ofTantra and the relations between political and spiritual power.

THE OMNIPRESENCE OF POWER: THE CONCEPTOF SAKTI IN HINDU TANTRA

Sakti is the root of every finite existence. The worlds are her manifesta-tion. She supports them and one day they will be reabsorbed into her . . . .She is the Mother of all the gods.

—Tantratattva (Woodroffe 1960, 2: 355)

The omnipresence of power: not because it has the privilege of consoli-dating everything under its invincible unity, but because it is producedfrom one moment to the next, at every point . . . . Power is everywhere;not because it embraces everything but because it comes from everywhere.

—Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality (1980a: 92-93)

Since the first publication of the works of the eccentric English highcourt judge and secret Tantrika, John Woodroffe (1974, 1978), it has be-come common to designate the Tantra as the "Way of Power"—the spiri-tual path that centers around the Goddess Sakti, power or force in all hervarious forms. For early orientalist scholars and missionary authors, Tantrawas typically defined in the most derogatory terms as a dangerous cult ofpower in its grossest form—a tradition steeped in black magic and aimedat control over the occult forces of the universe (see Wilson: lxi). More re-cent authors, conversely, have often gone to the opposite extreme by cele-


brating Tantra as a much needed affirmation of power—in the sense offemale power, sexuality, and the human body (Eliade: 259; Rawson: 10).3One of the most enthusiastic advocates of this popular view is Miranda Shawin her recent work on Tantric Buddhism. According to Shaw, Tantra opensa path of liberation for women, who, "with their exuberant air of passionand freedom, communicate a sense of mastery and spiritual power" (3).

Yet surprisingly few scholars, from Woodroffe's time to our own, havethought seriously about what s'akti really means as a theoretical, as a reli-gious, and, more importantly, as a social and political category. One of thefew recent attempts to deal with the role of power and politics in the studyof Tantra is the work of Charles Orzech on Chinese esoteric Buddhism.As Orzech rightly argues, power in Tantra is simultaneously a religiousand a political phenomenon, as intimately tied to matters of kingship andstate formation as it is to individual spiritual realization. Even in this oth-erwise fine study, however, the concept of power remains theoreticallyunderdeveloped, relying on rather outdated models and making littleinquiry into the more recent discussions of power in religion and culture(Orzech: 5ff.; cf. White: 25-36).4

As described in the Hindu Tantric texts, sakti is the power or energythat saturates the entire cosmos and all that is in it, radiating from the onechangeless Being into the manifold, changing forms of the phenomenaluniverse. As the Kdmakalavildsa describes her, "She the primordial Saktiis supreme, whose nature is unoriginated joy, eternal, utterly incompa-rable, the seed of all that moves or is motionless" (Rawson: 198). Derivedfrom root iak, to be able, s'akti is most basically the ability to do, the ca-pacity to act, in the widest sense of the verb. It is the creative power inher-ent in every particle of the cosmos, erupting continuously in the ongoingcreation and destruction of the universe at every moment. According tomost Tantric cosmologies, the universe unfolds out of the divine love play

3 As Rawson enthusiastically proclaims, "In complete contrast to the strenuous 'No1' that offi-cial Brahmin tradition said to the world, Tantra says an emphatic . . 'Yes!' . . instead of suppress-ing pleasure, vision and ecstasy, they should be cultivated and used" (10) I have recently exam-ined the construction of Tantrism in the western imagination (Urban 1999).

4 As Orzech argues, "Religious experience—transcendence—is articulated in and through theworld, and it involves power in the broadest sense of that term" (5). Yet, when it comes to discuss-ing power, Orzech falls back on the—I think rather outdated and inadequate—models of earlyphenomenologists like Eliade and van der Leeuw (Orzech: 5n). Similarly, at the 1999 meeting ofthe American Academy of Religions, there was a very interesting panel on the topic, "The Socialand Political Dimensions of Tantra and Tantric Studies." Yet, even here, there was surprisingly littletheoretical discussion of the category of "power" or any major interpretive frameworks for mak-ing sense of it Perhaps the best paper in this regard was by Ronald M Davidson, "The PoliticalDimension of Indian Esoteric Buddhism." A recent and more promising approach, however, issuggested by David Gordon White in his recent edited volume, which discusses some of the con-nections among Tantra, politics, and kingship in medieval India (25-36)


between the supreme male and female principles—Siva, the passive malewho rests in the radiance (prakdsa) of pure Consciousness, and Sakti, theactive female who manifests his light in the reflection {vimarfo) that radi-ates it outward into the manifold forms of the universe (Gupta et al.: 55).As the dynamic energy in every particle of creation, sakti is also the en-ergy within the human body and, above all, in the creative union betweenmale and female in the act of procreation: "To the Sakta the thrill of unionwith his sakti is a reflection of the infinite Siva-Sakti bliss in which alluniverses are born. . . . At every moment, creation, as rejuvanescent mo-lecular activity, is going on as Sakti Brahmanl. At every moment there ismolecular death . . . the work of RudranI Sakti" (Woodroffe 1978: 38).

Not only is sakti inherent in the cosmos, but it is also the power thatflows through the social and political organism, structured by the logic ofsocial relations. As Louis Dumont suggests, the traditional Hindu castesystem is based on an intricate logic of relative purity and impurity, whichplaces the Brahman as the most pure at the top of the social hierarchy(33ff.). Power in this system is the province of the king or Ksatriya and somust be subordinated to the logic of purity and the hierarchical superi-ority of the Brahman. Yet since the time of the Vedas there has always beenan uneasy tension between purity and power, between the (theoretically)superior status of the Brahman and the (often practically) superior strengthof the king, which always threatens to break its bounds and reassert itself(Dumont: 70f.).5 So, too, as Heinrich Zimmer points out, the universalpower that flows through the social organism also lies in a constant un-easy tension with the laws of purity that structure Hindu society, alwaysthreatening to shatter its bounds and release the iakti that pervades allthings: "How much lies blocked up in every man by the social order! Forthe vital force (shakti) in each of us would overflow all measure were it tofulfill its nature, which is totality" (14). It is precisely this awesome, over-flowing power that the Tantrika seeks to unleash in the course of his ritualpractice (Brooks 1992: 149f.; Sanderson: 200f.).

The concept of sakti—as an all-pervading energy that flows throughevery aspect of both the cosmic order and the social order—would notappear to fit very easily into most traditional western understandings of"power." It is a kind of power that breaks down usual western dichoto-mies such as politics and religion, the worldly and transcendent dimen-sions of experience. Therefore, in order to make better sense of the role

5 On the complex symbiosis between the Brahman and the Ksatriya and between spiritual au-thority and political power, see Heesterman 1985 and Dumont: 77f • "The brahmana had a rela-tionship of reciprocity with the ksatriya embodying political power The sacrificial ritual was anexchange in which . . . the priests were the recipients of gifts and fees and the ksatriya was the re-cipient of . . status and legitimacy" (Thapar: 312).


of Sakti in Assamese Tantra, I would suggest that we adapt some insightsfrom Foucault and his influential work on power—something that, ratherremarkably, has only just begun to be employed by scholars of religion(Strenski: 345ff.). Working against the grain of most past western mod-els, Foucault argues that power is never simply a repressive, negative forceor centralized authority imposed from the top down in a social forma-tion. On the contrary, power is a far more diffuse and decentralized phe-nomenon, which emanates not from any single source but from 1,000scattered points in the social fabric: "Power is everywhere . . . because itcomes from everywhere" (Foucault 1980a: 93). Thus, it is a positive ratherthan negative force, an intricate field of relations in which all members ofthe social order participate. Foucault writes, "By power I do not mean'Power' as a group of institutions that ensure the subservience of the citi-zens of a given state" (1980a: 92); rather, power is "something which cir-culates. . . . It is never . . . appropriated as a commodity or piece of wealth.Power is employed through a net-like organization.... [individuals . . .are always in the position of simultaneously undergoing and exercisingthis power" (1980b: 98).

What this means, then, is that power is never simply a force of domi-nation exercised by the strong at the top of the social formation on theweak at the bottom; rather, "power comes from below," emanating fromthe ruled as well as from the ruling classes. More important, power is al-ways intrinsically bound up with resistance or acts of subversion andstruggle against the dominant orders; power and resistance, the forceexercised by the strong and the struggle mounted by the weak, form asymbiotic relationship in every social order: "Where there is power thereis resistance. . . . [P]ower relationships . . . depend on a multiplicity ofpoints of resistance: these play the role of adversary, target, support orhandle in power relations" (Foucault 1980a: 96).

These strategies of power and resistance operate above all on thehuman body, the primary locus of this contestation and struggle. Sub-jected to a variety of social practices and disciplinary technologies, the bodyis a "political field," the most immediate object upon which the power ofthe dominant ideology is exercised and inscribed: "Historical forces actupon and through the human body.. . . As the center of the struggle fordomination, the body is both shaped and reshaped by the different war-ring forces acting upon it" (McNay: 90). Sexuality, Foucault suggests, isperhaps the most effective instrument in the strategic exercise of power;not a simple biological given, sexuality is rather a cultural construction,which is constructed, regulated, and disciplined in a variety of ways inorder to regulate the social body (1980a: 155). Yet, simultaneously, thesexual body is also the most important means by which the dominant


order can be renegotiated, resisted, or subverted. Because every knot inthe web of power is a possible point of inversion and resistance, individualsalways bear the potential to use their bodies in order to gain new free-dom within the social order: "The sexual body is . . . not only the primarytarget of the techniques of disciplinary power, but also is the point wherethese techniques are resisted and thwarted" (McNay: 102).

One of the most important knots in the fabric of power and resistanceis the act of transgression—the deliberate violation of the limits placedon bodily desires, which temporarily shatters the boundaries of socialnorms and institutional structures. Following the lead of Georges Bataille,Foucault identifies transgression as a critical moment of release in thenetwork of power; it is a temporary breaking of limits, which sparks a briefflash or burst of power: "Transgression contains nothing negative butaffirms limited being—affirms the limitlessness into which it leaps as itopens this zone to existence for the first time" (1999: 61). But transgres-sion, as Bataille observes, is not simple hedonism or unrestrained sexuallicense; rather, its power lies in the "play" {lejeu) between taboo and trans-gression, sanctity and sacrilege, through which one systematically con-structs and then oversteps all laws. Perhaps nowhere is this more appar-ent than in the case of eroticism. Not a matter of simple nudity, eroticismarises in the dialectic of veiling and revealing, clothing and striptease,between the creation of taboos and the exhilarating experience of over-stepping them. So, too, in ecstatic mystical experience or religious rites(such as blood sacrifices, carnivals, etc.) one must first create an aura ofpurity and sanctity before one can defile it with violence, transgression,or the overturning of law. "The prohibition is there to be violated" (Bataille1986: 64), for it is the experience of overstepping limits that brings theblissful sense of communion with the Other: "Taboos... are not only thereto be obeyed. . . . It is always a temptation to knock down a barrier. . . .Fear invests [the forbidden act] with an aura of excitement. 'There isnothing,' writes de Sade, 'that can set bounds to licentiousness. . . . Thebest way of multiplying one's desires is to try to limit them'" (1986: 48).

Many of these insights into the operations of power and transgressionhave clear implications for our understanding of Tantra. Like Foucault'smore nuanced model of power, the concept of iakti in Hindu Tantra issomething much more than a top-down force of oppression; it is, instead,a shifting network or chain of relations, emanating from all parts of thecosmos and the social organism; it is a productive and positive, not anegative and oppressive force; and it is focused above all on the humanbody and sexuality. Most importantly, as we will see below, Tantric prac-tice centers around ritualized acts of transgression—systematic violationsof social boundaries and taboos. For "it is only by a reversal of values, an


upsetting of the status quo," that the Tantric can unleash the vital sourceof power that oversteps all dualities and "breaks the division between sa-cred and profane" (Brooks 1990: 70; Sanderson: 200-204). Through ritu-alized transgressive acts—such as consumption of meat and wine or sexualintercourse in violation of caste laws—the Tantrika hopes to unleash anawesome source of suprasocial and suprahuman power (Urban 1995).

Nonetheless, despite the many valuable uses of Foucault's model ofpower, it does seem to leave many lingering problems. A variety of criticshave pointed out weaknesses in Foucault's work: for example, despite hisinsistence on the interdependence of power and resistance, Foucault'smodel tends to be overly top-heavy, leaving little apparent room for anymeaningful resistance; it tends to erase the role of the individual humanagent amid an all-encompassing, totalizing network of power; and it giveslittle attention to women or the unique place of female sexuality in thenetwork of power (see McNay: 105-108). However, perhaps the mostbasic problem with the Foucauldian notion of power is simply its vague-ness, generality, and lack of differentiation. As many Marxist critics haveargued, "A multiplicity of divergent phenomena are subsumed under atotalizing and undifferentiated notion of power. . . . [P]ower is general-ized to such an extent that it loses any analytic force" (McNay: 105; cf.Habermas: 287). Hence Foucault's concept of power tends to seem likean omnipresent, all-encompassing, and yet strangely impersonal force,one that acts mysteriously without any human agents to exercise it: "poweris intentionality without a subject... as if he were talking about . . . ac-tion without agency" (Hoy: 10-11; cf. Taylor: 91-92). As such, Foucault'sshifting, pluralistic, and decentered model of power does not very wellexplain the many ways in which power does in fact become centered inparticular social hierarchies, institutional structures, and political for-mations (Poulantzas: 68).

As I hope to show in the case of Assam, Tantric ritual was often de-ployed in the service of kings in order to channel the flow of power andto optimize the status of an elite at the top of the political hierarchy. Whileit may be true that iakti is a pervasive energy that saturates the universeand emanates from every point in the social organism, it is no less truethat iakti can be manipulated by those few who know how to unleash thatdangerous power.

THE POWER AT THE MARGINS: VEDIC AND TRIBALELEMENTS IN ASSAMESE TANTRA

The land of Kamarupa had a reputation for magic, sorcery and divina-tion and according to a report of a Tibetan author of the seventeenth


century, there are so many witches and various kinds of demons... thateven a person who has fully mastered the Tantras can hardly stay there.

—K. R. van Kooij, Worship of the Goddessaccording to the Kdlikdpurdna (35)

Since at least the tenth century the great temple of Kamakhya in Assamhas been counted as one of the oldest and most auspicious of the iaktapithas—the "places of power" in the Hindu sacred geography, where thevarious parts of the Goddess's body are supposed to lie (see figure 2).Though the list of pithas varies from four to 108 (usually fixed at fifty-one), Kamakhya is almost universally accepted as one of the most holypower centers of the Sakta tradition (Sircar: 13-28).6 According to a well-known myth found in various retellings in the Brahmanas and epics, Sivahad married Sati, the daughter of Daksa.7 After being insulted by his son-in-law, however, Daksa decided to hold a massive sacrificial ritual, invit-ing all the gods, sages, and kings of the threefold universe but intention-ally excluding Siva. His daughter Sati was so humiliated by this snub toher husband that she decided to commit suicide—a ritual act of sati—bythrowing herself upon the sacrificial pyre, thereby making herself theironic victim of the sacrifice. When Siva arrived on the scene and foundhis wife dead, he lost all control and in his fury destroyed the entire sac-rifice. Becoming "Maharudra, the god of destruction, millions of ghosts,demons came out of his beauty and began a wild dance The yajfia waspostponed and then came wholesale massacre" (Sarma: 10). In his rageSiva made Daksa himself the victim of his own sacrifice by beheading himand then replacing his head with the head of a goat—the original sacrifi-cial victim (O'Flaherty 1988: 118). In sum, what we have in this myth isthe story of a sacrifice gone awry, an interrupted ritual that turns into adangerous inverted sacrifice spun horribly out of control. After destroy-ing the sacrifice and beheading Daksa, the distraught Siva then carried thebody of his dead wife upon his shoulders. The sight of this was so hor-rible, however, that Visnu decided to intervene by dismembering Satl'sbody, slicing off each of her body parts one by one with his flying discus;

6 The number and location of pithas vary dramatically from one list to the next. The oldest list isthe Hevajra Tantra (1.7.12), which identifies four holy centers: Jalandhara, Uddiyana, Purnagiri(an unknown location in the South), and Kamarupa. The KP contains two lists—one that followsthis list of four and one that adds three more in other parts of Assam. Later lists gradually add morepithas, from ten to eighteen, until finally, later texts like the Pithamrnaya (seventeenth century)have fifty-one. Lists of 108 pithas begin to appear in the eighteenth century, placing most of thesites in the northeast (Beane: 199ff.; Sircar: 13-28).

7 The story appears, among other places, in Gopatha Brdhmana (2.1.2), Satapatha Brdhmana(1 7.4.1-4), and the Mahabharata (12.274 36-59). For a good summary of the story, see O'Flaherty1988: 118f.

788 Jorrrtml of the Americnn Acndern), of Religron

Fig. 2. The KBrnfikhv3 Temple near Guwahati, Assarn.

each of the fallen hody parts in turn became one of the various pithas or sacred sites that enshrines the body of the Goddess (KP: 16, 18). In this ironic inversion of the sacrifice, Sati is not only a sacrificial victim thrown into the ritual fire, she is also ritually dismembered by the divine priest. As neane points out (205), Sati's sacrifice is a kind of twisted mirror of the sacrifice of the Primordial Person, Purusa, which appears in the fa- mous creation myth of the Rg V d c l (X.90). Hut whilc Purusa's original sacrifice is a creative act-which forms the various parts of the universe from his severed bodv-Sari's is a des trz~t ive or nearly apocalyptic act- which threatens to destroy the entire universe.

Long considered to be the "orisinal place of Tantrism" (Goswami: 49), the holy site of K2m9khyS Temple is believed to be the place where the Goddess's yoni or sexual organ fell. Known in ancient times as PAgivotisa, the land of eastern lights, and in medieval times as KSmarGpa, the "form of desire," Assam appears in the oldest known list of four pi?/lcls that we find in the H e ~ n j r r ~ T m t r o of the eishth century (Sircar: 13-16). And it remains to this day one of the liveliest and most vibrant of the few remainins centers of living Tantric practice. The K5mSkhy5 Temple, situated on the top of Nilacala hill overlookins the Rrahmaputra Rix~er, can be dated to per-

Urban. The Path of Power 789

haps the tenth century, though its importance as a sacred site is probablymuch older. The temple was destroyed and rebuilt many times over the cen-turies, and the present temple is a product of the sixteenth century, when itwas rebuilt by Naranarayana, king of Koch Bihar (Kakati: 33).

The historical origins of the Goddess Kamakhya and her worship arelong lost in shrouds of obscurity. According to the KP, her worship beganduring the reign of the mythical King Naraka, who is said to have foundedthe Kamarupa dynasty and established the worship of the Goddess(Shastri: 55f.). Most of the past scholarship has attempted to trace theorigins of Kamakhya back to some kind of primordial, pre-AryanAssamese past and usually to the various tribal groups of the northeasthill country on the margins of central India. Both Indian and Europeanauthors have generally assumed the presence of some archaic ancestralMother Goddess worshiped by matriarchal tribes like the Khasis or Garos(Beane: 45; Goswami: 35). Usually these are identified with a rather am-biguous group of peoples known as kiratas. In early Sanskrit Puranas theterm kirata is used to refer to the mixed peoples of the hills of eastern India;in later texts, however, the term's meaning is widened to refer to any non-Hindu hill tribe on the margins of central India (Goswami: 36). The hilltribes have long held a place of horror and fascination in both the Hinduand the scholarly imaginations, identified with bizarre superstition andsavage practices. Thus, the Yogini Tantra—a product of sixteenth-centuryAssam—characterizes the local Assamese religion as being of kirata ori-gin, which lacks any form of asceticism and enjoins "the free use of wine,meat and sex" (2.9.9). Indeed, many scholars have tried to trace the ori-gins of Tantra—particularly in its most transgressive left-handed {vdma-cdra) forms—to the pre-Aryan tribal traditions (Kakati: 45—46).

Above all, the tribal groups of Assam have been notorious for theiralleged practice of human sacrifice. According to the earliest records, thesacrifice of human victims was in use among hill tribes such as the Koches,Kacharis, Chutiyas, Tipperas, Nagas, Manipuris, and Jaintias, who are saidto have worshiped goddess figures using rites that bear some resemblanceto those described in the KP (Beane: 59; Gait 1898: 59-60). The Nagas,for example, were long famed as headhunters who offered human sacri-fice to ensure good harvests; likewise, the Chutiyas are reported to havecontinued human sacrifices as late as 1836, when they were finally stoppedby the British authorities (Kakati: 62-63).

Since the first orientalist scholarship in the nineteenth century, mostscholars have explained the rise of Assamese Tantra as the simple overlay ofa veneer of Brahminical Hinduism onto this indigenous, tribal substratumwith all its violent sacrificial rituals and sexual license. The result, accordingto this common narrative, is a kind of syncretic, adulterated Hinduism, which


thinly masks a host of pre- Aryan primitive superstitions and aboriginal rites(Gait 1963). Even more recent scholars like Beane argue for the existence ofa kind of primordial, pre-Aryan archetypal Mother Goddess and other"'primitive,' aboriginal and archaic elements that have managed to 'survive'into later phases of Indian history" (Beane: 45,60). My own interpretation,however, is rather different. What seems more plausible, I think, is that theTantric tradition represents a complex and ongoing negotiation between theindigenous tribal communities of Assam and the Sanskritic, BrahminicalHinduism coming from North India. Above all, it represents a negotiationbetween Assam's kings—many of whom came from non-Hindu indigenouscommunities—and the Brahman priests whom they patronized.

The Goddess Kamakhya lies at the center of this complex set of nego-tiations. She is herself a rich mixture of traditions, both Hindu and non-Hindu. Within the Kamakhya Temple itself, the Goddess has no iconicform but is represented solely by a single stone yoni, the abstract symbolof female creative power. The KP, however, gives a more detailed descrip-tion of her various manifestations—in some appearing beautiful, loving,and maternal (her ianta state) and in others appearing horrific, terrify-ing, and bloody (her ugra state). In her most popular form, commonlydepicted in modern devotional art, she is the Goddess of sexual desire[kama), who engages in love play with Siva, bearing a yellow garland andstanding on a red lotus. Yet in her terrible mode she assumes a horrificand violent form like Kali, taking up a sword and standing on a nakedwhite corpse, with her eyes rolling and hair disheveled (van Kooij: 32-33). Very often she appears mounted on a lion, assuming a form muchlike the traditional image of Durga as slayer of the buffalo demon, bear-ing the sword, ax, discus, conch, bow, and other weapons typically asso-ciated with Durga in her martial form (KP: 60.55).

It seems clear that Kamakhya is related to a variety of older indigenousgoddesses of Assam, subsuming within herself different facets of localdeities known under various names like Kesai Khati, Savarl, and so on(Sircar: 15; van Kooij: 33). Yet, at the same time, she is also identified withmainstream Hindu goddesses like Durga, Kali, and the universal conceptof Sakti. As Kakati suggests, it is likely that the myth of Satl and the distri-bution of the Goddess's body to a range of local holy sites was an attemptto subsume a variety of local goddesses into the unifying image of one greatGoddess: "All independent deities began to be identified with her as hermanifestations.. . . The concept of the Mother Goddess assumed a cos-mic perspective and all unconnected local numina were affiliated to her"(64). It is even more likely that this assimilation of many local goddessesinto one great Mother was also part of the attempt by Assam's kings toassimilate a variety of local communities into a larger political formation


under a single ruling power: "This cult of Kamakhya belonged to matri-archal tribes like the Khasis and Garos. To win their allegiance . . . royalpatronage was extended to the local cult of Kamakhya" (Kakati: 16).

Probably the single most important text in the history of early Assam—and a key document in this complex negotiation between Hindu and in-digenous traditions—is the Kalika Purana. A large Sanskrit treatise in someninety chapters devoted to the mythology and worship of the Goddess, theKP is generally considered the most important of the eighteen Upapuranas,as well as "the greatest contribution to the Tantrik literature" in Assam(Choudhury: 372). While most scholars would agree that the KP is clearlya product of Assam, there is some disagreement as to its precise date. Somedate it as early as the eighth century, and others, as late as the fourteenth,while a few have even suggested that there may be two distinct strata withinthe KP corpus from two separate historical periods.8

The majority of authors, however, seem to agree that the final text isprobably a product of the late eleventh or twelfth century and was com-posed during the Pala dynasty, either under Ratnapala or, more likely, underhis great-great-grandson, Dharmapala (Barua: 163).9 The Pala dynasty suc-ceeded the Salastambhas in the ninth century, when Brahmapala was ap-pointed to the throne by the sonless King Tyagasirigha. Tracing his descentfrom the mythical King Naraka, Brahma took the title Pala in imitation ofthe Palas of Bengal. The last important ruler of the dynasty was Dharmapala,who was probably the most important for the development of religious lifein early Assam. According to the Khonamukhi inscription, he was "the lordof the earth girded by the ocean. In the battle field, decorated with flower-like petals, struck from the heads of elephants, killed by the blows of hissword, that king alone remained victorious" (Choudhury: 241; see alsoBarua: 125). However, Dharmapala was even more renowned as a greatsupporter of religion and learning who encouraged commerce as well asthe arts and education. Known as a generous patron of Brahmans, ritual,and sacred texts, he rebuilt the great temple at Kamakhya and revitalizedthe worship of the Goddess in Assam: "With Dharmapala's ascension thekingdom regained her lost prestige. Being peaceful at home and warlikeabroad, Dharmapala not only established a reign of virtue within the king-

8 For a good discussion of the various attempts to date the KP, see Shastn 27ff and van Kooij. 1-37.Raghavan dates the KP to the seventh-eighth century, while Shastn (66-67) opts for the ninth. R. C.Hazra argues that there are two distinct strata within the KP—an early one dating to the sixth century,composed in Bengal, and a later explicitly Tantnc one from eleventh-century Assam (1941' 1-12;1958-63).

9 Dharmapala's exact dates are not certain Choudhury gives probable dates as 1095-1120 (241);others place him somewhat earlier For the view that the KP was composed during the reign ofDharmapala, see Sharma, Barua 163, and Chattopadhyay. 20If.

792 journal of the American Academy of Religion

dom but extended the bounds of Kamarupa by conquering the lost posses-sions in North Bengal and . . . the south west" (Choudhury: 241).

While it is still unclear precisely when the KP was composed or whichof Assam's rulers might have been its patron, it is not difficult to see whykings like the Palas would have supported the composition of such a text;it is a text that brings together both traditional Brahminical rites drawnfrom the Vedas and indigenous practices drawn from the hill peoplesof Assam. The brand of Tantra found in the KPis by no means a simpleoverlay of Brahminical Hinduism onto archaic tribal traditions; rather,it is the result of a complex negotiation between Sanskrit-educatedBrahmans and their royal patrons. It is at once an attempt to legitimateAssam's kings by providing them with Brahminical ritual authority andto subsume Assam's indigenous traditions under a more encompass-ing royal system of power. Tantric practice, I will argue, involves a richmixture of Vedic paradigms with local indigenous traditions, combin-ing the most sophisticated Sanskritic rites with the most bloody localrituals, all centering around the Goddess and her all-consumingpower.

THE POWER OF THE IMPURE: SACRIFICIAL VIOLENCEAND SEXUAL TRANSGRESSION

Transgression opens onto a scintillating and constantly affirmed world....without the serpentine "no" that bites into fruits and lodges contradictionsat their core. It is the solar inversion of the satanic denial. It was originallylinked to the divine . . . it opens the pace where the divine functions.

—Michel Foucault, "A Preface to Transgression" (1999: 62)

The danger risked by boundary transgression is power. The vulnerablemargins which threaten order represent powers in the cosmos Ritualwhich can harness these is harnessing power indeed.

—Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (190)

Perhaps the primary reason that Tantra occupies such an ambivalentand troubling status in the eyes of most western scholarship is that muchof Tantric ritual centers around deliberate and systematic acts of trans-gression. The Tantrika is the one who is brave enough to handle the dan-gerous power of impurity—for example, by consuming substances thatare normally prohibited by mainstream Hindu culture, like beef, fish, andwine, or by performing acts considered polluting and defiling, such ashaving sexual intercourse in violation of class and caste. Indeed, we mightsay that much of Tantric practice is concerned with an explicit violation


of the laws and categories of the conventional Hindu universe. As BrianK. Smith (1994) has shown, the cosmos imagined in the Vedas is one ofelaborate classifications—an intricate web of correspondences and ho-mologies that categorizes the entire universe into distinct, hierarchicalclasses, which are in turn correlated with the classes of the social hierar-chy. Tantric ritual, conversely, involves the systematic transgression ofthose same classes and categories. By daring to risk the dangers of bound-ary transgression and the overstepping of socially defined categories, theTantrika asserts his own suprahuman, suprasocial power beyond all theconventional laws that bind ordinary human beings.

The KP follows many Tantric texts by making a distinction between right-handed and left-handed (vamabhava and daksinabhava) practice: the formeris the orthodox behavior of the Brahman who pays honors to sages, gods,ancestors, men, and demons by means of the five great sacrifices; but thelatter is the path of power in its raw form, which systematically employs thosesubstances considered most defiling in the eyes of Hindu society. Vamabhavaworship centers around the Goddess, conceived not in her benevolent,maternal form but in her most terrifying, destructive forms such as Smas'anaBhairavi, Ugratara, or Camunda—goddesses so awful that they "should onlybe worshipped by the left-hand method" (KP: 74.125; see figure 3). TheTantrika in turn identifies himself with the most terrible form of Siva, de-structive Bhairava, as he partakes of wine, meat, and sexual relations (seefigure 4): "For the sake of eating meat, drinking wine and enjoying inter-course with women to the heart's content I will assume great Bhairava's form.[Bhairava] should always be worshipped in the left hand method" (KP.74.204-205).

The aim of this transgression is not a simple matter of anarchistichedonism; rather, as Bataille suggests, true transgression is rooted in afundamental symbiosis with taboo and all the laws of purity that bindhuman beings in the social order (1986: 29ff.). One must first carefullyconstruct and even exaggerate the laws of purity before one can then ex-plicitly violate them; for it is precisely this dialectic of purity and impu-rity, law and violation, that unleashes the most intense suprahuman power(Brooks 1992: 149f.). The ritual thus functions as a kind of spiritual rub-ber band, which is stretched as tightly as possible and then released, inorder to propel the Tantrika into ecstasy. As Sanderson explains this dia-lectic in the case of Kashmir Saivism, "The conscientiousness . . . of pu-rity was expelled from Tantrism . . . as an ignorant self bondage.... Theinhibition which preserved the path of purity and barred the path of powerwas . . . obliterated through a violent, duality-devouring expansion ofconsciousness... beyond the confines of orthodox control... by gratifi-cation with wine, meat and caste-free intercourse" (198-199).

Fig. 3. The Goddess (Zmun&i, from the KamakhyS Temple.

In contrast to many Sanskrit Tantras, however, the KPpavs compara- tively little attention to transgressive rites like wine drinkins o r sexual intercourse and far more attention to the rite of animal sacrifice (see 6s - ilre 5). Indeed, blood sacrifice is praised as the root of all existence and the vivifiing principle of human life: "The gods are pleased hv sacrifices; everything is founded upon the sacrifice; by sacrifice the earth is ilphelcl" (KP 31.71. The ritual of sacrifice i ~ a j i l n or hnli-rlarln), of course, dates at

796 Journal of the American Academy o f Religion

Fis. 5. Sacrificial stake inside the K;lrn;lkhG Temple.


fice tout court . . . on a par with its normal practice as we find it to thepresent day in India. . . . Usually the victim is immolated by cutting offthe head. This was originally the case in the Vedic sacrifice... but the Vedictexts explicitly reject this procedure. Instead they prescribe that the vic-tim be killed by suffocation outside the enclosure" (1985: 87).

The later Vedic tradition, Heesterman argues, made a systematic effortto rationalize, marginalize, and ultimately excise the impure aspects of thesacrifice. In place of a violent beheading the later Brahminical ritual centersaround an unbloody, highly sanitized system of ritual rules: "Abstractionenabled the ritualists... to do away with the reality of death. Death has beenrationalized away" (Heesterman 1985: 46). Ultimately, this process of ra-tionalization would culminate in the complete interiorization of the sacri-fice that we find in the Upanisads: the external rite of animal slaughter hasnow been replaced by the symbolic sacrifice of yoga, mediation, and theoffering of the breath into the fire of the Self (Eliade: 111-113; Heesterman1993: 215).

Yet, despite this ongoing rationalization of the sacrifice, the problemsof violence, bloodshed, and impurity would persist throughout the longhistory of Indian religions. As Smith suggests, the persistent theme ofsacrifice "transmigrated throughout the history of post-Vedic discourse"and "plays a crucial role in the self-definition of Hindu religious institu-tions" (1989: 71). And with it myths of beheading and the underlying fearsof sacrificial violence recur throughout the later tradition. They reappear,for example, in the Mahabharata—in which the battle itself becomes amassive sacrifice that grows violently out of control (Hiltebeitel 1976)—and they also survive in a range of popular traditions throughout ruralIndia, where rituals of animal beheading continue to this day. In the "non-Aryan folk religion . . . bloody rites were quite regular and . . . becamemore and more important as the Vedic sacrifices fell into decay" (vanKooij: 21). For, as Shulman comments on this persistent theme of sacri-fice, impurity, and power, "in a religion that ultimately asserts the divinenature of terrestrial existence, power—however dark its workings, how-ever terrible its effects—never loses its sacred character" (29).

This survival of the ancient themes of sacrifice and power is nowheremore apparent than in the case of Tantric ritual, in which the sacrificereappears both in symbolic and in literal forms. Indeed, we might say thatat almost precisely the same time that blood sacrifice begins to decline inthe mainstream Brahminical tradition, in the face of Buddhist and Jaincriticisms and the growing ideal of ahirnsa (Heesterman 1985), it beginsto reappear in the more marginal and esoteric Tantric tradition. Sacrifice,in other words, seems to have gone "underground" and then to have re-surfaced in the secret ritual—the kula-ydga or antarydga—of the Tantras


(Sanderson: 200ff.; Urban 1995). It survived above all on the margins ofIndia, in the more remote, less accessible, and never entirely "Hinduized"regions like Assam (Goswami: 57).

At the same time, however, the older Vedic ritual forms are often com-bined with a variety of local, indigenous ritual practices. As Alf Hiltebeitel(1991) has shown in the case of South Indian worship of the Goddess,local village traditions often ironically preserve many seemingly elite, high-class Vedic and Brahminical elements—including many complex detailsof the sacrificial ritual.11 In the case of Assamese Tantra we find what ap-pear to be traditional ritual procedures adapted from the Vedas and Brah-manas intertwined with very un-Vedic practices, many of which seem tobe drawn from indigenous Assamese practices. This is not, however, amere superficial overlay of a Hindu veneer upon a darker aboriginal sub-stratum; rather, it is a far more intricate dialectical exchange between thetwo.

One of the sharpest differences between the Vedic and Tantric ritu-als, for example, lies in their specific choice of victims. The Vedas andBrahmanas are quite clear about the importance of the proper choice ofthe victim and the distinction between those considered pure or domes-tic and those considered impure and wild. According to the SB the puredomestic animals, which alone are fit for the sacrifice, are human beings,horses, bulls, rams, and he-goats (6.2.1.1-3; cf. Malamoud: 41 f.). Theanimals that are absolutely impure, polluting, and unfit for sacrifice, con-versely, are the wild, dangerous jungle animals like lions, tigers, boars,buffaloes, elephants, and apes (Smith 1994: 248f.). In the SB we are givenfive impure, wild beasts that serve as the inverse counterparts to the puredomestic five. Thus, we find a series of binary oppositions:Domestic (pure) Wild (impure)man barbarian of the junglehorse gaura of the jungle (a kind of buffalo)bull wild gavaya (a species of ox or wild buffalo [ mahisa7.])ram wild camelhe-goat (SB: 6.2.1.1-3) wild iarabha (see SB: 7.5.2.32)12

" As Hiltebeitel comments on the South Indian DraupadI cult, "These durable features of whatis ostensibly the ritual of a 'folk' or 'popular' cult are precisely the ones that take us beyond folktraditions.. to the classical and Vedic ritual systems Where DraupadI cult introduces its greatestinnovations into the Mahdbharata story . . the rituals draw their inspiration from the cult of the

. Vedic sacrifice" (1991 3-6)12 According to Monier Wilhams's Sanskrit—English Dictionary, a gaura is a kind of buffalo, often

classed with the gavaya, a gavaya is a species of ox. The [arabha may have originally been a kind ofgoat or deer, though in later Hinduism it becomes an eight-legged mythic animal (Smith 1994:279n).


The Brahmanas are also quite clear about all the dangers one faces if oneis foolish enough to violate the proper order of the universe by offeringone of these wild and impure animals as a sacrifice: father and son will beset at odds, roads will run apart, beasts and criminals will terrorize thecountryside, and so forth (Smith 1994: 250).13

When we turn to the sacrifice described in Tantric texts like the KP,however, we find that much of this classical Vedic paradigm is turnedcompletely on its head. The most desirable victims in the Tantric sacri-fice are not the pure domestic victims of the Vedic ritual but, rather, themost dangerous and wild victims designated as impure in the orthodoxtexts. The list of animals given in the KP is made up largely of wild crea-tures, some of them in fact quite bizarre and inappropriate from the stand-point of a Vedic ritual performance: "Birds, tortoises and alligators; he-goats, boars; the buffalo, the lizard, the iosa, and the nine kinds of deer,the yak, the spotted antelope, the hare and the lion; fishes; and the bloodof one's own body are regarded as oblations" (55.3-6). As Kakati observes,it seems likely that this rather motley list is drawn less from traditionalVedic ritual prescriptions than from a wide array of local Assamese tradi-tions and "the various animals sacrificed by diverse tribal groups" (65).

To this day in Assam, Bengal, and many parts of South India the pre-ferred victim for animal sacrifice is the buffalo or mahisa—an animal thatis explicitly identified as wild, impure, and unfit by the Brahminical texts(Biardeau; Hiltebeitel 1991). Though the he-goat is probably the mostcommon victim, the buffalo holds the place of honor at large-scale cele-brations like Durga and Kali Puja. He assumes a place of central impor-tance in the KP, which describes his immolation and offering in greatdetail: "One should offer a buffalo to the goddess Bhairavl or to the godBhairava. He should worship the victim with this mantra: 'You bear en-mity to the horse and you carry the goddess Candika. You bring me pros-perity and harm to my enemies, O Buffalo. You are the mount of Yama,O you of imperishable, exquisite form! Grant me long life, wealth andfame; salutation to you, O buffalo!'" (67.57-59).

As Biardeau observes, it is extremely significant that the worship ofthe Goddess should center around the sacrifice of the specifically non-Vedic and impure buffalo. In complete contrast to the pure, domesticVedic victim—who is an embodiment of the original divine sacrifice ofthe primordial person, Purusa—the buffalo is an explicitly impure, wild,

13 The SB notes, "If [the priest) were to perform the sacrifice with the jungle animals, father andson would separate, the roads would run apart, the borders of two villages would be far distant,and ravenous beasts, man-tigers, thieves, murderers and robbers would arise in the jungles"(13.2 4.1—4, Smith 1994 250)


savage animal that embodies the powers of darkness, evil, and the oppo-sition to the divine order: "The buffalo . . . is a savage beast... a strangerto human society and the sacrificial world. . . . The Vedic literature . . .does not count it among the permitted animals offered in sacrifice. But itis apt, by this fact, to play the role of the principle that is antithetical tothe Goddess, the incarnation of total evil" (Biardeau and Malamoud: 146-147; cf. Biardeau: 97). Hence, it is only fitting that the impure buffaloshould be offered to the Goddess in her darkest, most violent forms, suchas Kali and Kamakhya. As Biardeau suggests, the Goddess assumes theimpure and polluting tasks that are considered beneath the pure, transcen-dent male deity—tasks such as slaying demons and handling the bloodshedthat is part of life in this suffering world of samsdra: "The Goddess—whocalls the battle the sacrifice of battle—fears neither . . . impurity nor vio-lence The violence of the goddess . . . becomes transformed in her ritualinto blood sacrifice. . . . The low tasks are left to the Goddess so that thepurity of the god may be maintained, and Tantrism . . . glorifies her" (98).

Rather significantly, in the South Indian village sacrifices that Biardeaudescribes the slaughter of the wild, impure buffalo is always performedby the lowest, most impure classes—the untouchables who alone canhandle such defiling pollution and who alone can carry the carcass to theoutskirts of the village where it is then abandoned. In the Tantric ritual,conversely, it is primarily high-class men who perform the sacrifice—Brahmans and Ksatriyas, who actively seek and exploit this ritual impu-rity. For the Tantrika's aim is not to drive away impurity but, rather, toembrace it head-on, to "take the buffalo by the horns," as it were, in orderto experience the exhilarating release of power that comes with the trans-gression of taboos. The Tantrika is the one who dares to enter into therealm of the Goddess in her most terrifying forms, with all the danger ofimpurity and taboo. As Sanderson observes, the Tantrika's aim is to "un-leash the feminine, thereby unleash her power," as he enters into relationswith "dangerous female forces which populate the domain of excludedpossibilities that hem about the path of purity" (202).

In addition to its specific choice of impure, wild, and non-Vedic vic-tims, the Tantric sacrifice also diverges markedly from the traditionalBrahminical ritual in at least one other critical aspect—namely, in the wayin which the beast is killed and the specific uses of the parts of its body. Inthe traditional Vedic sacrifice, as we have seen above, the victim is to bekilled with as little violence and bloodshed as possible. As Heestermanargues, the Brahminical sacrifice gradually sought to eliminate as muchof the impurity and bloodshed from the ritual as possible, replacing a vio-lent beheading with a rationalized, sanitized, "nonviolent" act of stran-gling the victim outside the sacred enclosure (1985: 87-88).


When we turn to the Tantric sacrifice, on the other hand, we find thatthe head of the victim not only is discussed but in fact becomes the verycenter and pivot of the entire proceedings. The crucial act of the ritual isthe beheading of the victim with a sword, which is first worshiped in themost explicit terms as the terrible, thirsty drinker of blood:

Having sprinkled the oblation, he should worship the sword [as follows]:"You are Candika's tongue, you lead to the world of the gods." . . . [Heshould contemplate it] as being dark Siva, who has the nature of Kalaratrl,terrible, with bloody eyes and adorned with a garland of blood, wearinga garment of blood, having a noose in his hand, a householder who drinksblood and eats a lump of raw meat Having seized the purified sword,he should immolate the most excellent oblation. (KP: 55.13-18)

The central act of the ritual, then, is the presentation of the severed head.A burning lamp is placed on its crown, and it is offered, together with thefresh blood of the victim, to the Goddess, for whom it is transformed intothe sweetest nectar:

Having carefully purified the blood of the oblation with water, salt, goodfruits, honey, perfumes and flowers [he should offer it, saying], "Om aimhrim Mm, O Kaus'ikI, I am offering you the blood." He should put theblood and the head, with a lamp lit upon it, in the proper place....

The blood, purified by mantras, always becomes nectar. The goddessSiva eats its head and flesh The adept should never offer raw flesh inworship except the head smeared with blood, for that becomes ambro-sia. (KP: 55.19-20, 67.20-21)Throughout the Indian religious imagination, of course, the head has

a central place in a complex web of symbolic meanings and cultural sig-nificance. As Brenda Beck observes, the head is often associated with sexualpower and the creative but dangerous potency of sexual fluids. In manyIndian yogic traditions, the primary aim is to sublimate and redirect theflow of semen up to the top of the head; and in many popular traditions,the hair is associated with the ambivalent power of both menstruation andsexual intercourse: "Given this diverse information about the head as thelocation of sexual force [and] pollution . . . it is not surprising that thebeheading of animals is a major sacrificial act at the goddess' festival"(Beck: 131-132). In the South Indian bhakti traditions that Beck exam-ines, the sacrificial beheading is a key symbol of the devotee's humilityand submission: it is the sacrifice of one's own pride and lower animalnature to the Goddess (132). In the Sakta Tantric traditions, however, thesignificance of the beheading is quite different. Here the aim is not to elimi-nate the dangerous forces of sexuality and the body; on the contrary, it isto unleash them as a tremendous source of power. The Tantrika does notbow down in selfless humility before the Goddess but, rather, draws on


her awesome strength in the hope that "the entire world will come underhis power" {KP: 58.17-18). Indeed, if he performs this ritual correctly, "aking or a prince or women or yaksas or raksasas or the four classes of de-mons, all will come into his power" (KP: 58.22-24).

In sum, what we find in the sacrificial ritual described in the KP isneither a simple mishmash of Vedic and non-Vedic elements nor a su-perficial overlay of tribal elements onto an orthodox Hindu structure.Rather, it is a complex reworking of traditional ritual themes, combinedwith selected elements of local ritual traditions, centering around the basicdialectic of transgression and taboo. Indeed, we might say that the sacri-ficial ritual of the .KP is based on a series of structural inversions of the Vedicparadigm, which carefully juxtaposes categories of purity and impurityin order to shatter the duality between them and release the liberatingpower of the Goddess. As we can see in table 1, the ritual involves a num-ber of deliberate violations of Vedic practice: a wild, impure animal issubstituted for a domestic, pure one; the victim is beheaded in a bloodymanner inside the ritual enclosure instead of strangled outside the pre-cincts; the severed head becomes the central focus of the ritual act; andthe deity to whom it is offered is not the transcendent male god but, rather,the Goddess in her most violent forms, the Goddess who handles impu-rity and combats the forces of evil.

The final aim of all this systematic transgression is the release of power—the power that lies locked up in the social organism, bound by laws ofpurity and caste, and capable of propelling the Tantrika into a suprahumanrealm beyond all social boundaries. Like many Tantric texts, the KP goesinto some detail about the various supernatural powers—siddhis or yogicattainments—gained through these esoteric rites. For the one who knowsthese secrets, all desires will be fulfilled, and one will gain the ability todefy all natural laws—the ability to find hidden treasure, to move miracu-lously where one pleases, and to defeat all enemies:

Table 1. Vedic and Tantric Sacrifices

Vedic Sacrifice Tantric Sacrifice

Victim Domestic animal Wild animalStatus of victim Pure ImpureMeans of killing Unbloody strangling outside Bloody beheading inside

the ritual enclosure the ritual enclosureRole of the head Head ignored Offering of head and blood

Deity Pure male deity Goddess, handler of impurity


This is a very great secret; it leads to success in everything; everyone whoonce hears this.. . will obtain all the objects of his wishes and Siva's shapein the afterlife He will obtain the result of all sacrifices, without doubt.. . . All the siddhis such as the power to see buried treasure, the power ofdiving under the earth, the power to move anywhere undiscovered, thepower to transmute metals into gold, success in battle, the power to makeone's enemy flee the country, will be his. (KP: 56.52-57)

Most previous scholars of the Tantras have tended to downplay, discredit,or ignore the role of these kinds of occult powers, typically dismissing themas inferior and even dangerous distractions from the true path of spiri-tual liberation. As Mircea Eliade argues, the true aim of Tantric yoga issupposed to be liberation from this world of duality and the attainmentof timeless immortality; thus, any practices that seek temporal power orworldly attainments must be "later degenerations" or "symbolic confu-sions" (296f.). Even more recent authors such as Brooks suggest that "thesevarious . . . accomplishments (siddhi), including the power to acquire anyworldly desire, are usually considered... secondary accretions on the pathto liberation" (1990: 92; cf. Gupta et al: 159f). I would argue, however,that these sorts of occults powers cannot be dismissed so easily. Ratherthan mere accretions, they are an integral part of Sakta Tantra and a criti-cal element in Tantra's very this-worldly notion of power. Tantric prac-tice does not simply liberate the sddhaka (adept) into an otherworldly stateof bliss; rather, it infuses him with a mastery over the temporal world andthe categories of the social order (Urban 1995).

THE IMPURITY OF POWER:KINGSHIP, VIOLENCE, AND POWER

By offering sacrifices one achieves liberation; by offering sacrifices onereaches heaven; by offering sacrifices a king defeats enemy kings.

—Kdlikd Purana (67.5-6)

The king must be purified immediately when judging lawsuits, perform-ing sacrifice and invading the enemy kingdom.

—Kdlikd Purana (85.75-76)

Power, in the Tantric traditions of Assam, is by no means a purelyspiritual or transcendent affair; rather, it is also a political kind of power,the power that flows through the social organism and the state as well asthrough the physical body and the cosmos. Sakti is also something that isintimately tied to kingship, military strength, and governance as well asto the inevitable impurity that comes with the violent power of the king.

Urban-The Path of Power 805

As Orzech notes, the Tantras "were among the most important vehiclesfor the spread of Indian political and religious ideas throughout East,Central and Southeast Asia" (8; cf. White: 25-30). For it is Tantra, morethan perhaps any other form of South Asian religion, that unites the spiri-tual and the material, otherworldly transcendence and this-worldly power,in such an intimate and potent way.

Thus we find that in addition to matters of esoteric ritual and bodilypractice a large portion of the KP is devoted to the seemingly secularmatters of statecraft, politics, and military strategy (84-85): like the Artha-s'dstra, it provides detailed directions for economic affairs such as agri-culture, forts, commerce, farms, and taxes as well as the ideal of a just king(84.56-81). Above all, the king should be a good patron of the Brahmans,carefully listening to their teaching and funding their ritual performances:"You should first serve your elders, the brahmans, who are seniors inknowledge, wisdom and austerity, who are well paid and free of jealousy.The king should always hear the rules of the Vedas and Sastras narratedby them, and whatever wisdom they speak he should follow by action"(KP: 84.16-17). Here we can see that the KP is likely the result of a com-plex negotiation between the Sanskrit-trained Brahmans who composedthe text and the Assamese kings whose patronage they were hoping tosolicit.

Following the ancient Indian social model, which dates back at leastas far as the Vedas, the KP imagines the kingdom as an alloform of thehuman body, a symbolic parallel to it. In the well-known myth of Rg VedaX.90, mentioned above, the entire universe is born out of the sacrifice anddismemberment of the Primordial Purusa, who is ritually divided up intothe various parts of both the cosmic and the social hierarchies. Purusa'sbody forms the paradigm for the cosmic hierarchy of heaven, atmosphere,and earth as well as for the hierarchy of the social classes: the Brahmansbecome the head; the Ksatriyas, the torso; the Vais'yas, the legs; and theSudras, the feet of the body politic. Similarly, the ideal kingdom of theKP is conceived on the analogy of a human corpus with its seven limbs:"The king, the ministers, the kingdom, friends, the treasury and the fort—these seven are said to be the limbs [anga] of the state" (84.60). As B. K.Sarkar comments, "This conception is not merely structural or anatomi-cal but also physiological.... It embodies an attempt to classify politicalphenomena in their logical entirety" (Choudhury: 230). And just as theproper maintenance of the Vedic universe is said to depend on the regu-lar performance of rituals, so too the proper order of the sociopoliticaluniverse relies on the king's generous patronage of sacrifice. In otherwords, just as the Vedic sacrifice regenerates and reunifies the cosmic bodyof the first sacrificial victim, Purusa, so too the sacrifice performed by the


king is necessary for the ongoing unity and vitality of the body politic.Indeed, he would risk famine, death, and disaster if the sacrifice were notperformed (KP: 85.12-13): "By [performing] these sacrifices, by offeringgifts, one becomes a king in this world. . . . By performing sacrifices . . .[your enemy] kings are slain, and you will become king, without doubt"{KP: 84.79-81).

Thus, many of the rites described in the KP are specifically designedto ensure the prosperity of the kingdom and the conquest of enemies. Forexample, during the autumnal worship of Durga, the king should pre-pare a horse sacrifice that will determine his success in war (KP: 85.19ff.).In other rites, an earthen image of the enemy is fashioned, magically in-fused with the enemy's spirit, and then ritually beheaded (KP: 85.56-61).Above all, the dangerous power of the sacrifice can be harnessed by theking and turned against his enemies in battle. Whereas the Vedic sacri-fice had centered around the offering of a pure victim, identified with thedivine offering of Purusa, the Tantric sacrifice centers around an impure,demonic victim—here a goat or, better yet, a buffalo—identified with theevil and danger of a hostile king:

A king may offer an oblation for his enemies. First the sword is conse-crated, and the buffalo or goat is consecrated with the name of the en-emy. He should bind [the animal] with a cord on its mouth while recit-ing the mantra three times. Having severed its head, he should offer it tothe Goddess with great effort. Whenever enemies become strong, manysacrifices should be offered. At such times, he should sever the head andoffer it for the destruction of his enemies. And he should infuse the soulof the enemy into this animal. With this slaughter, the life of the enemy,having fallen into danger, is also slain. First [he should say], "O Candika,of horrid form, devour my enemy, so and so! . . . This enemy of mine,who has done evil, is himself in the form of this animal. Destroy him, OMahamarl, devour, devour him! spheng, spherigF' With this mantra, aflower should be placed on the head [of the victim]. Then he should offerthe blood. (KP: 67.145-152)

Here we can see all the themes discussed above brought into play specifi-cally in the quest for political and martial power. The ritual explicitlymanipulates the transgressive forces of impurity, bloodshed, and the sev-ered head in order to unleash the violent power of the Goddess in her mostterrible form, now turned against an enemy in battle.

However, the supreme sacrifice that can be offered by a king is no lessthan that of a human being. Human sacrifice receives a good deal of at-tention in this text, as the most perfect offering and the most awesomesource of power: "When a human being is sacrificed . . . the goddess re-


mains pleased for 1000 years and when three are sacrificed, for 100,000years" (KP: 67.18). Many scholars have suggested that human sacrifice hasdeep roots in the political history of Assam, closely tied to the cult of power,warfare, and royalty: "The sacrificial cults had royal patronage, and sacri-fices were demanded of the most loyal officials.... [T]he occasion tendedto coincide with calamities such as war or for obtaining wealth" (Beane:59; cf. Gait 1898: 62).

The practice of human sacrifice, I would argue, is another example ofthe rich intermingling of traditional Vedic traditions with local, tribalpractices of Assam. Human sacrifice is clearly mentioned in the Vedas andBrahmanas, and the human being is even listed as the first and best of theanimals fit for sacrifice. Yet at the same time, paradoxically, consump-tion of human flesh is explicitly considered taboo throughout the sameliterature (Smith 1994: 251).14 As Heesterman argues, the sacrifice of ahuman being is part of the same basic conflict at the heart of the sacri-fice—the problem of violence and impurity at the center of a ritual that issupposed to be life-giving and pure. Eventually, human sacrifice, likeanimal sacrifice in general, would be eliminated in the mainstream Hindutradition, as the sacrifice was increasingly domesticated and the violentelements were gradually replaced by a logical system of ritual procedures(Heesterman 1993: 31ff.).

Yet, interestingly enough, human sacrifices were to continue through-out many non-Vedic indigenous traditions, particularly in the remote hillyregions like Assam. As we have seen, the hill tribes of Assam such as theNagas, Chutiyas, and Jaintias have long been infamous for the practice ofhead-hunting and human sacrifice, which continued among many com-munities until the British colonial era (Beane: 87-88; Gait 1898: 59).15

Hence, the rite of human sacrifice in the KP is probably the complex re-sult of an interaction between Vedic and tribal traditions, through whichVedic paradigms that were later rejected by the mainstream tradition werereappropriated and reworked within a more accommodating indigenousframework.

14 Smith writes, "The Vedic system is ambiguous on the question of human victims . . [I Insofaras sacrificial victims are edible, the explicit rules against eating human flesh would seem to pre-clude human sacrifice. On the other hand, insofar as humans are among the five sacrificial paius,they were eminently sacrifkable" (1994: 278n; cf. Lincoln- 183-184).

15 Gait writes, "The Chutiyas . worshipped forms of Kali. . . . The favorite form in which theyworshipped this deity was that of Kesai Khati, 'the eater of raw flesh,' to whom human sacrificeswere offered . . Human sacrifices were also offered by the Tipperas, Kachans, Koches, laintiasand other Assam tribes" (1963: 42).


In any case, the text makes it clear that human sacrifice is an extremelypowerful, potentially dangerous or polluting act—in fact, a Brahman can-not offer a human victim without risk of losing his Brahman status. If hewere to do so, "he would go to hell; he would live a short life in this worldand be deprived of happiness" (KP: 67.48-50). Members of the Ksatriyaclass may offer human sacrifice—but only with the permission of the king,who alone can sanction the most awesome offering of a human victim.Above all, in times of political turmoil, such as anarchy or war, it is theking alone who may perform the purusamedha: "Princes, ministers, coun-selors and sauptikas, etc. may offer human sacrifice for the sake of attain-ing prosperity and power. If one offers a human being without the per-mission of the king, he commits a great sin. In the event of anarchy orwar, human sacrifice can be offered at will, but no one but the royal per-son may ever do so" (KP: 67.116-117). This particular ritual is, more-over, surrounded with an aura of fear and danger. It must be performedin the cremation ground, the dwelling place of Siva in his terrible formof Bhairava, and, as the locus of human remnants and the ashen left-overs of bodies, a place of utmost impurity in the Hindu imagination: "Ifa human being is sacrificed in the pitha [of the Goddess], it should be of-fered in the cremation ground.. . . The cremation ground represents me[Siva] and is called Bhairava" (KP: 67.69-70).

The human victim, however, is described in terms that draw explic-itly on the classical ritual of the Vedas and Brahmanas. Indeed, the victimappears to be a representation of the primordial sacrificial victim, Purusa,who was slain and dismembered into the various parts of the cosmos atthe beginning of time. In the consecration of the victim, all the gods andaspects of the cosmos are ritually identified with the various parts of thebody, infusing the sacrifice with the powers of the universe and, in a sense,reconstructing the original cosmic victim, Purusa, as he was at the begin-ning of time. Thus, one should worship Brahma in the cavity of the skull,the earth in the nostrils, the sky in the ears, water on the tongue, Visnu inthe mouth, the moon on the forehead, and Indra on the cheek, declaring,"O most auspicious one, you are the supreme embodiment of all the gods!"(KP: 67.76-81). Still more importantly, the king also identifies himself withthe victim, who is offered in his place in order to insure the protection ofhis kingdom and his wealth:

Save me! Save my sons, livestock and friends; preserve my kingdom,ministers and fourfold army. Save me, having given up [your own] life,for your death is inevitable....

Having died, with copious streams of blood flowing from the arter-ies of your neck and smearing your limbs, let you cherish yourself; foryour death is inevitable....


The one thus worshipped is my own self; let him be the abode of theguardians of the four quarters. Then he is possessed by Brahma and allthe other gods. (KP: 67.81-87)

What we have here, then, is a complex series of homologies that sym-bolically bind the body of the victim, first, with the body of the cosmos orthe cosmic Man; second, with the body politic of the kingdom; and fi-nally, with the body of the king himself. And just as, in the Vedic sacri-fice, the universe is reintegrated through the performance of the ritual andthe reconstruction of the cosmic Man, so too in this sacrifice the king-dom and the body politic are rejuvenated and preserved through the offer-ing of this now divinized being. As in the case of other animal sacrifices, thefocal point of the human sacrifice is the dangerous, frightening power thatlies in the severed head. Indeed, the sacrificer must carefully observe justhow and where the severed head falls, for the KP provides a long list of thevarious good and bad omens associated with its direction, the sound that itemits, and how the blood flows out, along with their portents for the futureof the kingdom (67.123ff.). Ultimately, it is by standing in all-night vigilholding the severed head as the supreme gift to the Goddess that one achievesthe highest fruit of the sacrifice: "The adept should hold the head in his lefthand and the vessel of blood in his right, and stay awake all night. Then hebecomes a king in this world, and after death he reaches my [Siva's] abodeand becomes Lord of hosts" (KP: 67.171-172).

Much of the efficacy of rituals like the human sacrifice performedby a king, I would argue, centers precisely around their explicit use ofimpurity and the dangerous power that such transgressive acts unleash.The king himself is a complex figure often associated with impurity. Forthe king is one who is forced by his own dharma to deal with the im-purity of violence and bloodshed: he must wage war, render harsh judg-ments, and punish criminals. As early as the Laws of Manu and theMahabhdrata, the king is conceived as a deeply ambivalent character whowields a dangerous and frightening power: "Instead of being exalted asa benign protector, he is 'the eater' of the people who devours every-thing. . . . The king is put on par with a butcher who keeps a hundredthousand slaughterhouses" (Heesterman 1985: 109). Likewise, the KPtells us that "the power of the king is like the hot rays of the sun; if thereis any pride, it should be abandoned like a diseased body" (84.40). Thatis also why the king needs the Brahmans whom he patronizes to purifyhim from the effects of the evil acts that he must inevitably perform. TheKP makes this association with impurity and the need for purificationquite explicit: "Kings become impure when it is required to deliver judg-ment, perform rites of sacrifice and invade the enemy kingdom" (Shastri:1325; see also KP: 85.75).


For the early Brahminical tradition, the sacrifice serves as the expia-tion for the inevitable impurity that comes with the office of the king: it isthe "good violence" that expiates the "bad violence" of warfare and blood-shed: "The guilt of the warrior or the evil of the sacrifker was easily re-moved by the priest in Vedic times" (O'Flaherty 1976: 146). As Heester-man argues, however, the Brahminical tradition would gradually seek toeliminate as much impurity and violence from the ritual as possible—ul-timately even excluding the impure king from the sacrificial arena: "Theelimination of conflict... resulted in the internal contradiction of Vedicritualism. This has already come out in the fact that the ksatriya—the kingwho . . . is the ideal sacrificer—is . . . excluded from the agnihotra.... Theksatriya perpetrates many impure acts, he kills and plunders" (1985: 91).Yet the paradox of the king and his necessary violence would always re-main. Despite the Brahmans' efforts to purify the transcendent world ofritual, the practical world of statecraft, warfare, and the impurities ofpolitical life could not be so easily rationalized away: "The king's orderremained the order of conflict and violence" (Heesterman 1985: 6).

For the later Sakta Tantric tradition, however, the sacrifice seems tofunction quite differently. Indeed, I would argue that the Tantric sacri-fice actually seizes on, exaggerates, and exploits the transgressive natureof ritual violence, precisely in order to unleash its dangerous, awesomepower. Tantric ritual turns to the dark and furious energy of the God-dess in her most terrifying forms—as Kali, Camunda, and Candika—to let loose their violent power. As Biardeau suggests, the Goddess inher aggressive, militant forms is the supreme symbol of a kind of neces-sary violence; she is the one who deals in bloodshed, battle, and impu-rity in order to preserve the cosmic order: "When we pass from bhaktito Saktism . . . she becomes the preeminent divinity, the Sakti who issuperior to Siva, and this reversal of the hierarchy is accompanied . . .by a reversal of dharma: what was prohibited becomes permitted, theimpure becomes pure.. . . [S]he is closer to earthly values . . . but she isalso more apt to make use of the violence without which the earth couldnot live" (95). We might also say here that the Goddess represents theviolence without which the kingdom and the political order could notbe maintained.

The key difference in the case of Tantra, however, is its particular useof this violence and impurity. The Tantric traditions make no attempt torationalize this violent impurity, but instead they tend to exaggerate andexploit it as a tremendous source of power. The one who knows how toharness this violent power can become a master of this world, a hero inpolitics, statecraft, and war. The KP makes this abundantly clear, oftenmaking an explicit appeal to the desires of the royal classes: "He who per-


forms this [sacrifice] enjoys all the pleasures of this world and after deathremains in the abode of the goddess for three kalpas and then becomes asovereign king on earth" (67.168). Ultimately, the king who performs theserites will achieve success in everything—not only "all the objects of hiswishes and Siva's shape in the afterlife" but also supreme success in battleover his enemies and virtual invincibility against any foe: "He has thepower to subdue gods, kings, women and others. . . . He lives a long life,becomes prosperous, endowed with wealth and grain; he becomes . . .invincible to enemies" (KP: 74.54-56). Furthermore, "That hero, like me[Siva], enters into battles. The weapons of the enemies become like grassupon a fire. . . . The Tiger among Men becomes strong and virile" (KP:74.68-69).

CONCLUSIONS: "EMBODIED TANTRA"—REIMAGININGTANTRA IN CONTEMPORARY DISCOURSE

She is the supreme Sakti within the body.—Yogini Tantra (6)

What we find in Assamese Tantric traditions like that of the KP wouldseem to be something far more interesting, much richer, and more com-plex than either a transposition of Vedic language onto a pre-Aryan tribalsubstratum or a "survival" of some "primitive, aboriginal" source. Instead,I have tried to show that such traditions represent an intricate dialectic be-tween classical Vedic ritual paradigms and indigenous traditions, whichresulted in a sophisticated reworking of many Brahminical forms in responseto the interests of a specific social, historical, and political context in an-cient Assam. Above all, Tantric rituals like the consumption of forbiddensubstances or the offering of blood sacrifice hinge around the crucial dia-lectic of transgression, in Foucault's and Bataille's term: their aim is not toeradicate impurity but, rather, to channel and harness it in order to unleashthe tremendous power that flows throughout the entire cosmic and socialorganism. Unlike Foucault's concept of power, however, iakti is somethingthat does not simply circulate through an all-pervasive, shifting network ofpower and resistance, without apparent agency, individuality, or intention-ality. On the contrary, sakti can be actively appropriated and manipulatedby specific social agents, turned into a new means of asserting or reinforc-ing their own status in a given social and political hierarchy.

Finally, I would also hope that this article might have larger implica-tions for our understanding of Tantra as a category of Indian religionsand for our understanding of the relations between power and religionin South Asian traditions as a whole. What I have argued for here is a new


and I would hope more fruitful approach to the study of Tantric tradi-tions, which focuses above all on the most concrete social, political, andhistorical contexts in which these traditions are rooted. As Jeffrey Kripalhas observed in his study of Sri Ramakrsna, much of the past scholarshipon Tantra has tended to focus largely on very abstract, highly intellectualSanskrit texts, with little attention to the more problematic nature ofTantra in the lives of real human beings, "in its lived compromises andcontradictions" (28; cf. Urban 2001).16 What we need instead is to redis-cover a more embodied sort of Tantra, one that is intimately entwined withthe messy ambiguities of living practice, historical circumstance, socialstructure, and political struggle. As power, iakti circulates throughout allcosmic and social organisms; yet, as the Tantras repeatedly remind us, sheis rooted above all "in the flesh."

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The Path of Power: Impurity, Kingship and Sacrifice in Assamese Tantra

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