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Patton E. Burchett
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This paper aims to illuminate the phenomenon of mantras and to critique the category of magic through an examination of mantra as magical language. Mantras have often been referred to as magic formulas or spells, yet one searches the scholarly literature in vain for a worthy explanation of precisely why mantra should or should not be considered magical. This essay addresses this lack, (a) explaining how mantras conflict with modern Western understandings of language has led scholars to conceive of mantra as magic and (b) showing just what is at stake in such characterizations. This examination of mantra will demonstrate how magic and related terms have consistently been used not so much to describe as to marginalize and de-authorize that to which they refer. While the issue is partly about flawed terms and categories, the question of mantra as magic ultimately leads to an unsettling confrontation with the limits of our own modern rationalist perspective.
A PERSISTENT THEME IN ACADEMIC DESCRIPTIONS OF MAGIC is the claim that the power of magic is based in words. More specifically, scholars have often argued that magic derives primarily from a belief in the inherent efficacy of mere words and an identification, often taken as mistaken, of signs with the things and the
Patton E. Burchett, Columbia University, Department of Religion, 80 Claremont Ave, New York, NY 10027, USA. E-mail: pb2257@columbia.edu. I am greatly indebted to Robert Campany, Rachel McDermott, Gary Tubb, Bernard Faure, and John Stratton Hawley for their valuable comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this essay. Journal of the American Academy of Religion, December 2008, Vol. 76, No. 4, pp. 807843 doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfn089 The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the American Academy of Religion. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
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qualities and powers of the things to which they refer. In the Hindu tradition, mantras are verbal formulas whose sounds, when properly vocalized, are believed to possess an innate powerthe power of the deity with which they are identifiedto affect reality. Does this make mantra a form of magic? Scholarly discourse has traditionally discussed magic as a phenomenon defined in opposition to religion.1 The dichotomy of magic and religion has typically been articulated in the following ways: (a) magic is considered heterodox, illicit, and, often, immoral, while religion is orthodox and socially approved; (b) magic is private and oriented to individual desires while religion is public, community-focused, and social-service-oriented; (c) magic is pragmatic and concerned with worldly needs while religion is transcendent and addressed to the big questions of existence; and (d) magic utilizes control, coercion, and manipulation (viewing the human being as the source of power) while religion utilizes invocation, supplication, and submission (viewing the divine as the source of power). Recent scholarship has criticized each of the features of this traditional dichotomy and shown that in practice religion and magic often blur into one another to the point of being indistinguishable. Furthermore, the work of scholars such as Dale Martin (2004) has demonstrated how the meaning and usage of terms such as magic and superstition is not static, but often changes significantly over time due to historical shifts in social and political contexts and corresponding differences in the ideology and cosmology of the dominant social authority.2 Perhaps the only consistently accepted characteristic of magic to emerge from recent scholarly writing is that the word magic is almost always used as a term of opprobrium, to marginalize and condemn individuals or groups whose religious practices [are], by the
1 Science is, of course, the other key concept/category commonly contrasted with both religion and magic. Classic works articulating the fundamental distinctions, even oppositions, between religion, magic, and science include: E. B. Tylors Religion in Primitive Culture (1871); James Frazers The Golden Bough (1890); Marcel Mausss A General Theory of Magic (1902); Bronislaw Malinowskis Magic, Science and Religion (1925); E. E. Evans-Pritchards Theories of Primitive Religion (1965), and Keith Thomass Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971). A more recent attempt to carefully contrast magic, religion, and science is Rodney Starks Reconceptualizing Religion, Magic, and Science in Review of Religious Research 43:2 (December 2001). Two excellent sources which review the key ideas and authors in the history of the religion/magic debate are Stanley Tambiahs Magic, Science, Religion, and the Scope of Rationality (1990) and Murray Wax and Rosalie Waxs dated but still useful essay The Notion of Magic (1963). 2 Martin (2004) traces the changing understandings of the notion of superstition and the very different beliefs and practices the term served to critique and marginalize over eight centuries, from classical Greece (fourth century BCE) to the Christianized Roman Empire (fourth century CE).
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standards of the accusers, abnormal, (Johnston 2004: 51). Throughout history, these accusersbe they kings, priests, or scholarshave often been those in positions of power, who have used the term magic as a rhetorical weapon to de-authorize that which was not in accord with their own beliefs, models, or economic and political interests.3 Consequently, scholars have debated whether the category of magic is so biased and inaccurate that it should be abandoned altogether.4 Jonathan Z. Smith (2004) writes, I see little merit in continuing the use of the substantive term magic in second-order, theoretical, academic discourse. We have better and more precise scholarly taxa for each of the phenomena commonly denotated by magic which, among other benefits, create more useful categories for comparison (218).5 But other scholars disagree with Smith; H. S. Versnel, for example, admits that magic and religion are two opposites on the extreme ends of a spectrum, and tend to lose their distinctive force as one approaches the middle ground of this spectrum. However, he argues that This does notimply that we need to abandon altogether the use of these terms. On the contrary, it should provoke our interest and encourage us to document and explain the conditions and the circumstances that foster the blurring of the boundaries (1991a: 93). In this essay, I intend to consider both of these perspectives in examining the phenomena of Hindu mantras within the context of academic discussions of magic, and more specifically, magical language. We will see that the traditional understanding of the term magic is, as J. Z. Smith suggests, actually of little or no use in describing and explaining mantras. But by demonstrating how and why mantras do not fit the category of magicin other words, as Versnel suggests, by
See, e.g., Geertz (1975): 75. In fact, as early as 1952 A. R. Radcliffe-Brown was challenging the utility of the terms magic and religion; however, he was more concerned with lack of agreement and accuracy regarding what they meant (1952: 138). Notable attempts to question the common distinction between religion and magic also came from anthropologists in the 1960s and 1970s; however, these critiques did not seem to make any significant impact on the field. See especially Murray Wax and Rosalie Wax, The Notion of Magic (1963); Dorothy Hammond, Magic: A Problem in Semantics (1970); and Hildred Geertz, Anthropology of Religion and Magic, I (1975). Only in Geertzs piece is there the clear awareness, which has been further elaborated in recent studies, that the term magic is one deeply implicated in power, one used to marginalize and de-authorize that to which it refers. 5 Along the same lines, D. F. Pocock writes, If categorical distinctions of the Western mind are found upon examination to impose distinctions upon (and so falsify) the intellectual universes of other cultures then they must be discarded or, as I have put it, dissolved. I believe magic to be one such category See Pococks Foreword to Marcel Mauss [trans. Robert Brain], A General Theory of Magic [London, 1972].
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showing how and why mantras blur the boundaries of this category we will come to understand them more deeply and precisely.6 In what follows, I argue that the predominance in the West of what is perceived to be a modern, scientific, rational understanding of the relationship between language, the divine, and the world can skewand has in fact skeweddominant understandings of mantra such that it emerges as being a magical phenomenon. My central intention in this essay is three-fold: (1) to shed some light on the nature and function of mantras, with particular emphasis on the mantras of Hindu Tantra; (2) to demonstrate how and why mantras should not be considered forms of magic, thereby critiquing the category of magic itself; and (3) to illustrate the biases and question the limits of the scientific-rational perspective that informs most scholarship in the human sciences.7
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in the potency of words. He wrote that magical language is based on the creative metaphor of magic, or the belief that the repetitive statement of certain words is believed to produce the reality stated (1965: 238). For Malinowski, this sort of verbal magic is clearly irrational in nature, for its essence is a statement which is untrue, which stands in direct opposition to the context of reality (235). More recently, Thomas Greene (1997) has argued that in attributing such substance and energy to words, magic threatens the axioms of conventional disjunctive linguistics and, for this reason, polemics against witchcraft and magic often involve affirmations of the artificiality and inertness of language. Brian Vickers elaborates on this perceived gap between disjunctive (modern/scientific/rational) and conjunctive (magical) understandings of language: In the scientific traditiona clear distinction is made between words and things and between literal and metaphorical language. The occult tradition does not recognize this distinction: words are treated as if they are equivalent to things and can be substituted for them. Manipulate the one and you manipulate the other (Greene 1997: 25758). According to Randall Styers (2004), the work of Vickersthe above statement includedis a chief example of how modern scholars have used the concept of magic (and the occult) as a foil, an oppositionary tool with which to more clearly define and advocate modern rational conceptions of identity, science, religion, and social order (15462). As a key part of this project, modern scholars of magic have repeatedly affirmed the view that language is inert and powerless. Styers explains the implications of this dismissal of the magical power of words:
First, [the scholarly disavowal of the magical power of words] configures a sharp and impermeable boundary between nature and culture, a natural world subject to nonhuman causality and the artificial, transitory world of human language, meaning, desire, and value.Further, in this scheme language is seen as functioning only as a medium of passive representation, a neutral, transparentand powerlessreflection of natural processes (processes that are fundamentally more real than language). Mere mimesis, mere representation, bare significationthe construction of meaning and assertion of desire are portrayed as lacking all causal efficacy.The potency of representationeither in serving to constitute the phenomena represented or in exerting other causal effects is aggressively disclaimed. (221)
of language as a thing inscribed in the fabric of the world were dissolved in the functioning of representation; all language had value only as discourse (43).
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Styers argument is well taken, but we must recognize that not all recent scholarship has viewed magical language as inert and irrational. Speechact theory, developed by J. L. Austin (1962) and his student John Searle, has been very influential in drawing attention to the active nature of language, claiming that the most fruitful way to approach linguistic phenomena is to see them as actions; that is, rule-governed behavior of intelligent agents for the achievement of certain ends (Taber 1989: 145).9 Austin (1975) identifies certain kinds of statements as performative utterances, or words that, when spoken, themselves constitute the performance of some action (for example, I now pronounce you man and wife, or I christen this ship the Moby Dick). A number of scholars have applied speechact theory to various forms of sacred and magical language, including mantras, in order to better understand their performative nature.10 In an important article entitled The Magical Power of Words, Stanley Tambiah (1968) goes further, arguing for the rationality of magical language. He emphatically rejects the claim that magical language involves a confused and irrational belief that words have direct relationships with and effects on the things to which they refer. Critiquing the interpretations of Malinowki, he re-analyzes Trobriand magic and states that Trobriand magical language is intelligible language, not mumbo-jumbo shot through with mystical ideas not amenable to rational examination. It is not qualitatively different from ordinary language, but is a heightened use of it. The same laws of association that apply to ordinary language apply to magical language (188). Similarly, in a section on Sinhalese mantra, Tambiah notes that while magical language may often be unintelligible even to its users, this does not make it nonsensical or irrational, for [mantras] literal intelligibility to humans is not the critical factor in understanding their logic (1778). If a practitioner believes that the structure and content of a mantra make it capable of communicating with the gods or effecting change in the world, then the use of that mantra, regardless of its semantic intelligibility, is entirely sensible. Whether or not they are actually rational or irrational, inert or performative, mantras have often been described and long been understood
9 Taber (1989) goes on to explain that To ask, therefore, whether a particular linguistic event is a speech act is tantamount to asking whether anyone means anything by it; that is, whether it was produced with an intention to bring about some reaction or response in reader or hearer, to establish awareness of some state of affairs, or even to bring a state of affairs into existence (145). 10 For applications of speechact theories to mantra, see the essays by Harvey Alper, Ellison Banks Findly, and John Taber in Alpers edited volume Mantra (1989b).
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as forms of magic. Before we can determine why this is the case and whether or not it is justified, we must get a better sense of just what mantras are.
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The original mantras of Hinduism are the verses of the four Vedas. As Agehananda Bharati (1965) has noted, The use of mantra as a Vedic verseany passage in the samhit portion, that isis the oldest and hence most hallowed in India. When a Brahmin speaks of a mantra without any qualification of the term, he always means a Vedic passage (103). Regarding the origin of Vedic mantras, the Mmms school of philosophy posited that the sound produced in pronouncing a word is actually the sonic representative of some aspect of the eternal cosmic order. The mantras of the Vedas, therefore, are not words coined by humans. They are the sounds or vibrations of the eternal principles of the cosmic order itself (Coward and Goa 2004: 35). In this view, mantras are uncreated and eternal, elements of the fabric of the universe preceding even the gods. Not only Vedic mantras, but the sacred sounds of all mantras, are, in Jan Gondas words, not products of discursive thought, human wisdom or poetic fantasy, but flash-lights of the eternal truth, seen by those eminent men who have come into supersensuous contact with the Unseen (247). Gonda, in a classic and highly-esteemed article, defines the mantra as:
word(s) believed to be of superhuman origin, received, fashioned and spoken by the inspired seers, poets and reciters in order to evoke divine power(s) and especially conceived as a means of creating, conveying, concentrating and realizing intentional and efficient thought, and of coming into touch or identifying oneself with the essence of the divinity which is present in the mantra. (1963: 255)
As this definition indicates, mantra is especially conceived of as a means for connecting oneself with the essence of divinity present in the mantra; however, once this connection is made, the way in which the power of mantra is utilized varies widely. As a general rule, mantras are spoken, not written.13 Their efficaciousnessregardless of whether they are spoken aloud, whispered, or mentally (silently) repeatedis believed to lie in their sound-vibrations.
tradition that are used by magicians who claim to have had the mantras revealed to them directly by a god during a dream or meditative state and who readily share the mantras with others. Thus, while these mantras are used as such, they do not conform to many of the standard features of mantra. For an instance of this type of mantra collected during his fieldwork researching the magicians of Banaras, see Glucklich (1997). 13 Anyone familiar with mantras in Hinduism and Buddhism knows that many mantras are, in fact, written; however, most traditional textual authorities stress that they should not be (and are deadened when) written and all understand the basic nature of mantra to be its spoken-ness, its sound.
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As Andr Padoux (1989) states, Mantra is sound (abda) or word (vc); it is never, at least in its nature, written (297). Not only this, if the mantra is to be effective, its constituent sounds must be recited properly, with correct pronunciation and in accordance with fixed and strict rules regarding pace, rhythm, and intonation.14 In addition to properly reciting the mantra, a practitioner must be in the proper mental state in order for his/her mantra to work. The mind must be calm, pure, and steady (without fatigue), as well as (and this is most crucial) intensely concentrated on the mantra and the deity associated with it. Ultimately, it is the union of the practitioners consciousness with the mantramore accurately, with the pure consciousness of the divinity manifested in the mantrathat makes a mantra efficacious.15 Another fundamental feature of mantras, especially Tantric mantras, is that they should be passed down from guru to disciple in the course of a ritual initiation.16 It is the enlightened consciousness of the guru (having merged with the pure consciousness of the divine) that is believed to empower the mantra and make it efficacious. As Bharati remarks, [A] syllable or a collection of syllables constituting a mantra is no mantra at all, because a mantra is something imparted personally by a guru to a disciple (106) in a prescribed initiation ritual. Gudrun Bhnemann (1991) adds that, A mantra heard accidentally or taken from a book is not only believed to be useless, but also harmful to the practitioner (293). Furthermore, mantras are often treated with secrecy, for once ritually acquired from ones master, a mantra is thought to lose its power if revealed to a non-initiate. Not all mantras are suitable for all people, thus the guru must determine the appropriate mantra for each disciple.17 The characteristics of mantra listed above generally hold true; however, they are most accurate in the South Asian and Hindu contexts.
14 We should note here Bharatis comment that The instructions on correct pronunciation or intonation pertain only to the ritualistic use of mantra (1965: 122). In other words, proper recitation is not so important in the more spontaneous, daily use of mantras in non-ritual settings in India. 15 See Gonda (1963: 276). 16 However, sometimes the guru is taken in an abstract sense. For example, in the Kashmiri aiva tradition, the guru initiating a disciple may be a human guru or it may be iva himself. Muller-Ortega (1989) writes that there are occurrences of a kind of spontaneous initiation by the inner guru of the Heart [iva] who may appear to the sdhaka in a vision or a dream and initiate him into the use of the appropriate mantra (164). 17 According to the Kulrnavatantra (c. 10001400), this is often done by comparing the syllables of the mantra with those of the individuals name through the use of six rather elaborate diagrams. Bhnemann describes this procedure in detail (1991: 2937).
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For instance, while mantras in East Asian Buddhism generally also share these features, one finds far more exceptions to the rules that mantras are spoken (not written) and private/secret, not public.18 Western scholarship on mantra has focused to a great extent on the redemptive use of mantras. While the use of a mantra for spiritual liberation is, according to tradition, indeed its central and most authentic purpose, it is important to understand that in practice most mantras are used for far more mundane purposes. As Padoux (1989) comments, [I]nteresting, fundamental even, as the redemptive aspect of mantras may be, we should not forget that only a minority of mantras are redemptive (308). All over India ordinary people chant mantras each day to sanctify routine acts such as bathing, preparing and eating meals, activities at work, etc. Bathers in the Ganges River recite mantras to the sun at dawn each morning; healers chant mantras to cure illness; a worker may mutter a mantra as he lifts a heavy load; others may speak mantras in order to attain success in business or love, to protect themselves from evil spirits and enemies, or to ensure conception or safe childbirth.19 While some of these mantras are utilized in rather informal settings, mantra usage often occurs in a more formal ritual context and may involve elaborate preparations and the consideration of a number of factors designed to make the mantra effective. The Mantramahodadhi (Great Ocean of Mantras), a sixteenthcentury mantra manual attributed to Mahdhara that has enjoyed great popularity in all areas of India up to the present day,20 provides some examples of common purposes that mantras are used for and the accompanying ritual actions and considerations involved. Chapter 13 of this text (hereafter referred to as the MMD) describes the use of mantra in ritual practices to the monkey god Hanumn and states that the mantra becomes effective only after the practitioner purifies it through a great number of repetitions, concentrates his/her thoughts on Hanumn (especially his outward features), and performs various offerings and acts of worship ( pj).21 Once the mantra has been perfected in this way, the MMD states that it can be usedwith various numbers
18 See, for instance, Lopez (1990). In this article, Lopez demonstrates how the widely repeated Buddhist mantra concluding the Heart Stra is not spoken but read (or at least taken) from a written text, is not passed down from master to disciple, and is not part of an initiation ritual or meditation practice. 19 Glucklich (2005) notes that healing (of humans, animals, and even machinery) is the most common area of magical concern in India and that the single most pervasive fear that magical practices address is failure to conceive and/or safely give birth to a child. 20 See Buhnemann (2000: 447). 21 See Goudriaan (1978: 8490).
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of recitations and under different specified conditionsfor different purposes such as: to destroy poison; to protect oneself from enemies and rulers; to heal sickness, fever, and wounds; to make one invulnerable in battle; to make enemies quarrel amongst themselves; to render a person ones slave; to ward off calamities; and even to kill enemies. Chapter 25, the final chapter of the MMD, deals with an infamous set of rites known as the Six Acts (sat karmni). These six rites are (1) appeasement (anti)the curing of illness (the only one of the six rites not considered abhicra, or black magic); (2) subjugation (vaya)bringing a person under ones control (esp. seduction of a woman); (3) immobilization (stambha)stopping/obstructing an activity; (4) enmity (dvesa)creating dissension or dislike between two people; (5) eradication (uccta)depriving a person of an object or removing them from a location; and (6) liquidation (mrana)taking a persons life. In practicing any one of these rites, one must have knowledge of nineteen different items which affect the efficaciousness of the rite. These include: the color of the specific goddess presiding over the rite (flowers of this color must be offered prior to the rite), the time of day during which one should perform the rite and the proper direction one should face, the appropriate days of the lunar month and of the week that the rite should be performed on, the proper posture one should sit in and type of animal hide one should sit on for the rite, the specific ritual hand gestures (mudrs) corresponding to the rite, the material and number of beads of the rosary proper to the rite, and the appropriate closing word for the mantra connected with the rite. At the end of this chapter, the text states that the Six Acts are desireoriented rites for those who are attached to sense objects, that they can only obtain limited results, and that it is far preferable for the practitioner to worship deities without any desire for personal gain and to strive for spiritual liberation.22 In addition to the uses of mantra specified above, we have already noted that mantras are popularly used to heal disease, ensure conception and safe delivery of children, and achieve desires for success in business and love. All of these are worldly goals which seem to confirm Padouxs statement that Mantras, in India, are clearly used much more often to gain powers or to produce effects than for redemptive purposes (1989: 310). Clearly, mantra matches several common characterizations of magic in that it is typically employed to achieve concrete, mostly individual
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goals,is characterized by the attention paid to the technical side of the manipulation, precision of formula and modus operandi, and (especially in reference to the MMDs Six Acts) may involve the immoral, anti-social, [and] deviant (Versnel 1991b: 17879). Does all of this mean that we should identify mantras as primarily a form of magic?
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performance of one ritual only (381). From the Hindu perspective, the mantrawhen used properlyenables one to come into touch with the power of divinity, but the purpose for which one uses this potent mantric connection with the divine is entirely an individual matter. Ideally, the mantra is used selflessly and redemptively, but this is not alwaysor even usuallythe case. The essential point is that even a mantra which is (a) performed to satisfy worldly individual desires, (b) used in private, and (c) considered illicit, cannot be termed magical as opposed to religious, for the very distinction is false. As mentioned earlier, many practices identified as religious, including certain rituals and prayers of Western monotheistic faiths, are performed privately and for mundane individual desires. Whether such practices are considered licit or illicit depends more on the viewpoint of the dominant social authority than on any particular characteristic of the actual practices. These considerations make it impossible to classify mantra as either magic or religion because the categories themselves are faulty. Nevertheless, the fact remains that mantras have long been conceived of and labeled as magic or as spells in deliberate contrast to both religious language and ordinary speech (i.e., that in accord with the principles of modern rationalist linguistics). As Donald Lopez (1990) notes, it is indeed the case that in the study of Asian religions in the west from the last century until the present, the term mantra is commonly translated as spell (361).23 In particular, the mantras of the Tantric tradition have been seen as magic or as spells. For instance, while the Sanskritist M. Monier-Williams described the Vedic mantra as a prayer or invocation, he referred to the Tantric mantra as a mere collection of magical letters and sounds and a spell (1891: 197).24 Let us now, then, turn our attention more specifically to the mantras of Hindu Tantra. This brief examination of Tantric mantras and sonic theology will prepare the way for an inquiry into the
23 As if this words popular associations with the realm of magic and witchcraft were not clear enough, the dictionary definition of spell is a word or formula believed to have magic power [italics mine]. Defining a mantra as a spell is, then, essentially no different than defining it as a form of magical language. See entry for spell in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Interestingly, this same dictionary includes magic spell among its definitions for mantra. 24 Monier-Williams (1891) also writes that A Mantra, as most persons know, is properly a divinely inspired Vedic text, but with the ktas [i.e., the Tntrikas], and indeed with the great mass of the Hinds in the present day, it loses this character and becomes a mere spell or charm (197).
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historical and cultural reasons why, despite the clear inaccuracy of the terms, mantras have so persistently been characterized in the West as magic and as spells.
Due to the vital role of mantras within the tradition, Hindu Tantra25 is often referred to as mantrastra, the science of mantras. Tantric mantras differ from Vedic mantras in several key ways. In Vedic times, mantras were used in the context of ritual sacrifices in which their primary role was to actualize and make explicit the correspondences believed to exist between powerful divine forces and various objects in the human world. In the ritual context of the sacrifice, these homologies with the divineonce actualized by the chanting of various mantrascould be controlled to the benefit of the ritual performers.26 In contrast, in Tantric ritual a single mantra is concentrated on and repeated numerous times to realize the identity of the practitioner and the divine. The Tantric seed (bja) mantra, then, does not actualize a link (bandhu) between the world and the divine, but itself represents the essence of the divine. In fact, as Mircea Eliade (1969) writes, these Tantric mantras are (or at least, if correctly recited, can become) the objects they represent (215).27 While the Vedic mantra is a component necessary to the proper performance of a larger ritual action which is the means to an end (i.e., worldly prosperity) outside of the ritual setting, the Tantric mantra is both the means and the end, the goal of the [Tantric] ritual being realized when the consciousness of
25 Some scholars have asserted that the phenomenon of Tantra does not exist, but is an invented category of Western scholars. The body of religious practice referred to as Tantra is certainly not easy to define and this paper does not purport to address these difficulties. For arguably the best discussion of the origins, genealogy, and usages of the term Tantra, see Urban (2003). For a briefer overview of the issues involved in discussing Tantra, I refer the reader to White (2000). As far as this paper is concerned, Whites general working definition of Tantra will suffice: Tantra is that Asian body of beliefs and practices which, working from the principle that the universe we experience is nothing other than the concrete manifestation of the divine energy of the godhead that creates and maintains that universe, seeks to ritually appropriate and channel that energy, within the human microcosm, in creative and emancipatory ways (2000: 9). 26 While in early Vedic religion the gods played a crucial role in granting the wishes of their supplicants for health, prosperity, power, and pleasure, with the passage of time, Vedic brahmins came to believe that it was the ritual itself, the causal efficacy of the properly executed sacrifice independent of the god(s) in whose honor it was performedthat produced the desired results. 27 We should remember here that modern scholars have long considered this conviction of a direct relation between symbol and referent to be the defining feature of what they have labeled magical language.
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the worshipper blends with the thought-power represented by the mantra (Wheelock 1989: 119).28 The bja mantra is the characteristic Tantric mantra. Bja-mantras are semantically meaningless monosyllabic sounds, many of which correspond to particular deities. Common examples include: om, phat, hrm, krm (Kl), ram (Agni), rm (Laksm), gam (Ganea), dum aim (Sarasvati). These bjas are considered sonic manifes (Durg), and tation, seeds, of fundamental cosmic powers and constitute the most essential and potent element in the mantras of which they are a component part.29 David Gordon White argues that the important place of bja mantras in Tantric traditions is actually due to a semanticization and sublimation of the vital role played by sexual fluids in the earliest forms of Tantra (2003: 21957). He claims that the language of mantras, particularly seed mantras, made it possible to discuss and practice in abstract, asexual terms, what was and remains, at bottom, a sexual body of practice. In making this argument, he provides evidence that the consumption of female sexual fluids (which were believed to contain in essential form the creative power of akti, the Goddess), often in conjunction with the sexual fluids of the male guru (the seed of none other than iva himself ), in early Kaula initiation rituals was the basis for the initiates transformation from an ignorant, inert being ( pau) in spiritual bondage to a virile hero or perfected being (siddha) and a member of the clan.30 According to White, as Tantra develops, we see the complete sublimation of the sexual drop (bindu) or seed into a seed mantra, along with the relegation of the role of the feminine to merely the akti (creative power) of the male guru. The physical fluid manifestations of the divinein the form of the sexual emissions of enlightened gurus and divinized female consortsbecome transformed in thought and practice into acoustic, phonetic manifestations of the divine, in the form of mantras. White writes, In the context of these semanticized renderings, it is mantras that render ones practice
28 Wheelock (1989) also argues that Vedic mantras tend to be more semantically meaningful articulating clear desires, praises, etc.while Tantric mantras are often vocalizations of seemingly absurd and nonsensical sounds. While most scholars generally agree with Wheelock, Frits Staal firmly disagrees with his distinctions between Vedic and Tantric mantras. Staal argues, for instance, that Vedic mantras are also ends in themselves and are in their nature no more linguistic or semantically meaningful than Tantric mantras (1989: 5960). 29 See Gonda (1963: 28) and Wheelock (1989: 103). For an excellent and much more detailed discussion of Tantric bja mantras, see Bharati (1965: 11950). 30 On why and how the sexual fluids came to be viewed as having such transformative power, see White (2003: 6793).
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effective, containing in their very sound structure a mystic gnosis, that in a gnoseological system, is liberating. In every Tantric tradition, mantras are phonematic embodiments of deities and their energies, such that to know the mantra, and to be able to pronounce and wield it correctly, becomes the sine qua non of Tantric practice (2003: 24243). Whites work demonstrates that the origin and role of bja mantras in Tantric ritual is, in part, to be found in early Tantric sexual practices. However, in connecting mantras to sexual fluids, his argument at times borders on reductionism.31 Most significantly, White does not fully take into account the vital role of traditional Indian conceptions of vc, the Word, in Tantric mantra practice. These notions date back to the Vedic period and developed into prominent theories of language such as that articulated in Bhartrharis Vkyapadya (c. 350500 CE)a text predating what most scholars believe to be the origins of Tantric movementswhich heavily influenced Tantric cosmology and understandings of language. To understand the context of Tantric mantra practice it is essential to understand the concept of vc. Gerald Larson remarks that:
Already in the Rig Veda (for example, X.125), but especially in the Brhmanas, [various] female creative forces appear to be gradually broughttogether in one unifying conception of Vk or speechVk is the personified female principle of energy, the sovereign queen, the great sustaining priniciple (RV. X.125).In the Brhmanas, Vk is the consort of Prajpati [the personified masculine element of ultimate reality], and by their sacred union all things are created. Vk is the mother of all mantras. Brahman or Prajpati creates by means of Vk, that is, by means of an act of speaking. (1974: 47)
Vk (vc) is akti, the feminine power of the divine to convey meaning and thus to create the manifest world. Vc, or akti, is the active component, the energy, of the pure consciousness that is ultimate reality. According to the Grammarian school, represented most notably by the great philosopher Bhartrhari (c. fourth to fifth century CE), mantras are the diverse manifestations of the one unitary Brahman, the undifferentiated pure consciousness. Ultimate reality is represented as word-consciousness or abda-brahman, from which the whole universe
31 To be fair, the purpose of Whites argument is not to make any definitive claims about mantra. He is only indirectly concerned with mantras in so far as they are relevant to his larger project of identifying the original sexual practices and context of Tantra.
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proceeds in the form of sound (abda) and the objects (artha) denoted by sounds or words (Gonda 1963: 27374). In this system, language and consciousness are inextricably intertwined: words (mantras), meanings, and consciousness are eternally connected and necessarily synonymous.32 The crucial point here is that mantras (as emissions of vc) are an aspect of, and are ultimately inseparable from, the pure consciousness of the divine. Nevertheless, as components of the manifest world, mantras represent much cruder forms of this divine energy that are in some sense not identical with it. To explain this paradoxhow the mantra both is and is not equivalent to the supreme Wordwe must look at understandings of the process by which the Absolute manifests itself in the world. Bhartrhari described the unfolding of the Word and world in four stages: (1) Par Vcthe supreme Word, the unmanifest divine33; (2) Payantthe initial desire within pure, undifferentiated, divine consciousness to see manifestation and the first direct, super-sensuous seeing of the world/Word (the divine blueprint for creation and language);34 (3) Madhyamthe intermediate level in which differentiation has begun, but objects/words are not fully manifest; and (4) Vaikharthe corporeal level of objects and articulated sounds (as perceived by the senses), to include mantras.35 As Guy Beck (1993) has pointed out, whatever objections they may have had to Bhartrharis philosophy, in practice nearly every Hindu sectarian tradition adopted this theory of the linguistic/sonic articulation of the Absolute in levels in order to explain the vital link between mantra and spiritual liberation (2067). Implicit in Bhartrharis theory is the understanding that the Divines self-manifestation in language and form not only reveals the pure consciousness of the Absolute, but simultaneously conceals it. The purity, absolute freedom, and uninhibited power of the divine gradually diminish and are obscured as the divine manifests itself in the gross forms of the world. In terms of language, the manifestation of the supreme Word ends in the fragmented, conventional level of everyday expression. Conventional words and language disguise and limit the
See Coward and Goa (2004: 37). There is some debate over whether Bhartrhri implied this first and highest level (Par) or whether it was added on by later commentators and philosophers. 34 Gonda (1963) describes payant as the stage in which the word and the concept for which it stands lie inseparable as a potency like the seed of a tree before sprouting (273, n. 1). 35 For more detailed information on this elaborate theory of four-fold divine self-manifestation, see Padoux (1990: 166222).
33 32
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true nature of reality and are thus largely the source of human spiritual bondage. Muller-Ortega (1989) states that, By inviting us to see and identify only small portions and artificially isolated pieces of the total reality, language creates the very condition of error, of incomplete perception, that binds us in ignorance and suffering (172). However, the mantra, a uniquely pure utilization of the human capacity for speech uninhibited by the normal constraints of language, allows us to transcend ordinary language, to reverse the process of creation and return to the source of the supreme Word, the Divine. That is the grand claim, but how does this process work? From the perspective of the Tantric tradition, how does the mantra function as a vehicle of liberation? To answer this question, we will look to the influential Tantric traditions of the Pcartra36 and Kashmiri aivism.37 In the ancient Vaisnava tradition of the Pcartra the power of mantra (mantraakti) is the expression or embodiment of gods saving grace (anugrahamrti) (Gupta 1989: 224). For the Pcartra, one attains salvation by surrendering fully to God and actively serving Him (Visnu/Vsudeva), a process that is facilitated by meditating with devo tion on his mantras. These mantras are considered sonic forms of Visnu/Vsudevas salvific grace created for the benefit of devotees, to make the Divine available to them in an approachable form. By meditating on various mantras, the devotee identifies him/herself with the corresponding levels of God, realizing progressively more subtle levels
36 Beck (1993) explains that [I]t is the Pcartra tradition that provides the most authoritative foundation for Vaisnavism in IndiaAll the Vaisnava schools recognize the authority of the Pcartra. Indeed, the unique value of the Pcartra literature, in terms of its breadth and scope for the study of Vaisnavism, has already been established by H. Daniel Smith: The injunctions found in this Pcartra literatureaccount for and give textual authority for the bulk of the activities undertaken in temples, in public and in the home by most Visnu-worshippers today (173). 37 Kashmiri aivism, or Trika aivism, refers to the nondualistic form of aivism born in mid-ninth century Kashmir which developed and flourished there through the thirteenth century and found its primary exponents in Abhinavagupta and his disciple Ksemaraja. While Kashmiri aivism does not speak to the entire Tantric or aiva tradition, it serves as an especially informative topic of study, for, as Alexis Sanderson (1995) has written, Kashmiri aiva sources encompass all the major strata of tantric aivism at the most vigorous and articulate phase of their development (16). Furthermore, Kashmiri aiva perspectives were not of merely local importance, but actually became the standard of tantric orthodoxy in southern India from the eleventh century and were widely disseminated from this base during the centuries of Kashmirs decline from its position as a major center of brahminical learning (16). Though aivism in Kashmir declined significantly under Muslim rule beginning in the fourteenth century,38 Kashmiri aiva doctrine and liturgical prescription became the standard in the Tamil-speaking south, where Tantric communities, through their many and outstanding contributions to tantric literature, guaranteed it a pan-Indian influence down to modern times (1988: 663).
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of consciousness until ultimately reaching the direct experience of the divine presence (23133). From the perspective of the nondualistic Kashmiri aiva tradition, each human being is fundamentally deluded because he is a linguistic creature and mantric utterance is the one form of speaking that [allows] a human being to overcome the evils of linguisticality, because in its very utterance it [discloses] the roots of language itself (Alper 1989a: 275). According to Abhinavagupta, the brilliant eleventh-century formulator of the Kashmiri aiva system, the mantra does this by harnessing the coagulated vibration of individual consciousness (which he refers to as the heart) and causing it to pulsate faster, to expand and contract more expansively until it reaches the frequency of universal iva-consciousness.38 The mantra is considered empowered only insofar as it possesses Vc/akti, understood by Abhinavagupta as vimarathe creative, pulsating, and self-aware consciousness of iva. Furthermore, the mantra is not intrinsically effective, but proves efficacious only insofar as the practitioner is able to take hold of its divine energy by realizing the vimara of his own consciousness and thereby merging it with the pure iva-consciousness of the mantra. In the end, the proper utterance of the mantra is itself a realization of that divine consciousness which the mantra refers to and embodies. The uttering of the mantra is called uccra, a term that does not necessarily refer to the pronunciation of a sound, but to the fusion of the cosmic phonic energy of Vc with the vital energy or breath of the human being (Padoux 1990: 399). Thus, another more yogic way to conceive the functioning of the mantra is to say that a practitioners one-pointed concentration on and uttering (uccra) of the mantra, even when done internally (silently), constitutes a creative awakening and movement of the vital breath ( prna), often symbolized as kundalinthe vibratory, liberating energy the divine in the universe of and in the microcosm of the human beingwhose ascension in the practitioners subtle body ultimately results in attainment of pure consciousness.39
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See Muller-Ortega (1989: 1734). Many traditions of Tantra advocate various breathing practices and the use of mantras to cause the kundalinrepresented as a serpent sleeping coiled around the mldhra cakra at the in base of spine the ignorant personto awaken and unfold, rising up the susumn nd (the central energy channel of the subtle body) until it reaches the uppermost cakra at the crown of the head, the brahmarandhra, at which the practitioner arrives at the blissful nondual state of pure consciousness. These cakras, as centers along the central channel of the subtle body, are typically knots of congealed energy (obstructing the passage of pure spiritual energy) which through various practices can be loosened and activated to become whirling, vibratory wheels which the kundalin
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While small differences abound in the sonic theology of the various Hindu sects and traditions, the key theoretical features of mantras and cosmic sound outlined above are generally representative of the dominant traditional Hindu understandings of the relationship between language, divinity, and reality.40 Needless to say, these Indian notions about mantra contrast significantly with modern rationalist perspectives on language dominant in the West. How, then, have scholars of the modern West rationalized mantra?
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glossalia much more than ordinary language (7580). He says that mantras give access to a pre-linguistic state of mind and exert a hypnotic influence that signals a breaking away from the tyranny of language and a return to the biological domain of the body (84). Another key assertion made by Staal is that the structure of mantras corresponds to musical structure and that mantras distinguish themselves from language especially by their musicality (65). For Staal, the meaning of ritually used mantras does not lie in their languagebut in the sounds, with their themes and variations, repetitions, inversions, interpolations, and the particular distribution of their elements (58).43 The musical character of mantras has been noted by other scholars as well. Glucklich (1997) writes that, Even meaningful mantras are musical, using rhythms, repetitions, inversions, and other devices. The musical quality, the aesthetic temporal pattern, of mantras induces in participants a [unique] state of mind and such musical patterns and prolonged singsong alter the awareness of the practitioner (210). Studies on music have shown that certain sounds and rhythms, like those uttered in many mantras, can bring about significant changes in brain waves.44 In addition to its musical rhythms and sonic vibrations, the power a mantra exerts on the consciousness of its utterer certainly owes something to the fact that the mantra is usually repeated over an extended period of time. As Robert Yelle (2003) remarks, The most obvious fact about mantras is that they are repeated many, even countless times (1112). In general, within the Tantric tradition it is believed that the more repetitions, the more powerful a mantra becomes. In fact, in mantra manuals such as the Mantramahodadhi (MMD), it is always the case that the more difficult the task to be accomplished and the more challenging the goal desired, the more times one is instructed to recite the mantra.45 As Eliade (1969) has remarked, All indefinite repetition leads to the destruction of language; in some mystical traditions, this destruction appears to be the condition for further experiences (216).
43 According to G. U. Thite, the idea that the musicality of mantras is part of their efficaciousness reaches back to the Vedic period. He explains that in the Vedas, music is considered a power substance by means of which one can control natural phenomenon and perform miraculous deeds. Interestingly, he invokes the troubled magic/religion dichotomy, referring to the power of music in the Vedas as magico-religious, because sometimes it can work independentlywithout the gods or even upon them(manipulative = magical) while other times its power requires the help of the gods (supplicative = religious). See Thite, Music in the Vedas (1997), 6263. 44 See, for instance: Judith Becker (1994), Music and Trance, Leonardo Music Journal 4: 4151. 45 See Goudriaan (1978: 8490).
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In the concentrated and extended repetition of a mantra, the mind becomes mesmerized by the mantras patterned sound-vibrations and transcends any mental connection (bondage) to the discursive realm of ordinary language. In his Explaining Mantras (2003), Robert Yelle articulates the important insight, largely unrecognized or unexplored by earlier scholars of mantra, that mantras contain formal featurespoetic devices in their internal structurewhich are self-consciously constructed to imitate different aspects of cosmic processes of creation and dissolution.46 He states:
These devices include alliteration, especially of the bjas and other rhythmic, apparently nonsensical vocables; reduplicated or repeated words, including imperatives; the repetition of similar phrases with the progressive addition of intensifiers; and the exhaustive enumeration of synonyms, some portion of the Sanskrit alphabet, or the phonetic shape of the mantras, often in the form of palindromes [ phrases that read the same forwards and backwards]. (2003: 13)
Yelle disagrees with Staals claim that mantra is not language and asserts instead that mantras effective use of these stylistic devices indicates that it is actually a heightened and intensified use of language. He argues that the poetic devices mentioned above (especially palindromes) are used by the tradition to convert mantras into mimetic diagrams of the general cycle of evolution and involution of the cosmos, the process of sexual union and reproduction, the cycle of in- and outbreaths, and the act of speech, which traces a path from inside the body to the outside world (and back again) (23). In this waythe employment of poetic devices to form mantras imitating macro- and micro-cosmic processesthe Tantric tradition creates and exploits the appearance of a natural connection between signifier and signified and
46 Yelle explains that Although Tantric mantras, like the spells of other cultures, must be repeated in precisely correct form in order to be effective, little attention has been paid to this form. This has naturally precluded any serious consideration of the contribution of the form of mantras to their function. One reason for this omission is the opinion of some, especially earlier scholars that mantras are meaningless hocus pocus. Even some within the Sanskrit tradition, including Kautsa in Vedic times and the fifth century Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu, argued for the meaninglessness of mantras. In modern Bengal as well, the phrase mantra-tantra (or tantra-mantra) is frequently used in the pejorative or dismissive sense of mumbo jumbo. Such views for many years discouraged the careful examination of mantras: if they are merely gibberish, then there is no need to inquire further into their meaning and function (2003: 17).
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thus creates the dream of a natural language capable of directly influencing reality (68, 100).47 In the end, it is unimportant whether we agree with Yelle that mantra is language par excellence or with Staal that mantra is not language at all. Regardless of whether they are defined as language or not, from the viewpoint of modern Western scholars, mantras seem to work because they utilize musical sounds and rhythms, poetic devices, and extended repetition to transcend the constraints of ordinary language and discursive consciousness and to thereby produce the illusion of a natural language. From within the Hindu Tantric tradition, that mantras characteristically break away from (or transcend) the restrictions of language and dualistic rational thought is indeed part of their effective power, but more importantly, their alinguistic movement illustrates their ultimate identity with the freedom and creative energy of the supreme Word and the vibratory, pure consciousness from which it originates. This perceived identity with the divine means that, from within the tradition, mantra is not merely the illusion of a natural language, but authentically is a natural language. Returning at last to the larger context of our investigation of mantrasthe scholarly discourse on magicthe question we must ask is this: What is the difference, if any, between describing mantra as a natural language, as we have in the preceding pages, and describing it as a magical language? As we will see, unlike magical, the term natural does not form the other pole of a problematic binary with the term religious and its use does not possess the same history of prejudice embodied in the term magic. Nevertheless, in what follows I argue that our biases against things magical run quite a bit deeper than a simple change in terminology can solve. To address these issues more fully we must return to a discussion of magic, this time with special reference to Hinduism and in the context of fundamental differences between modern Western and traditional South Asian worldviews.
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religion is supplicative and submissive, relying on the divine as the source of power. The prevalence of this particular distinctionmanipulative versus supplicativeis likely due to the fact that this was the fundamental point stressed by those men who first sought to clearly separate magic and religion: namely, the sixteenth- and seventh-century theologians of the Protestant Reformation. As Keith Thomas and Stanley Tambiah have each pointed out, it was Protestant theologians who first hammered out the distinction between religious acts as primarily intercessionary in character, and magical acts as being coercive rituals ambitiously attempting to manipulate the divineFor these [men] then there was a fundamental distinction between prayer and spell, the former belonging to true religion, the latter to false religion (Tambiah 1990: 19).48 Protestant Reformers thus emphasized that genuine supernatural power lay not in words or in men, but only in the one God who cannot be coerced by rituals or mechanically manipulated by spells. Attacking Catholic modes of ritual, they sought to eliminate the idea that the rituals of the Church had about them a mechanical efficacy, and to abandon the effort to endow physical objects with supernatural qualities by special formulae of consecration and exorcism. (Thomas 1971: 76). As part of this demarcation of magic from religion, both seventh-century Reformation and eighteenth-century Enlightenment thinkers stressed the irrationality of magic while defining religion as a rational system of beliefs in an all-powerful Divine. Tambiah (1990) posits that this emphasis on religion as a system of beliefs, and the distinction between prayer and spellwas a Protestant legacy which was automatically taken over by later Victorian theorists like Tylor and Frazer, and given a universal significance as both historical and analytical categories useful in tracing the intellectual development of mankind from savagery to civilization (19).49 The contemporary concept of magic, then, as a category opposed to religion (and science), is a notion with a clear history, a conception contingent on attitudes and modes of thinking developed in the West
48 Thomas (1975) notes that the Protestant Reformers declared that magic was not simply a false religionthe way the term had been used in the pastbut was a different sort of activity altogether; one characterized first and foremost by being manipulative in character (96). Also see Thomas (1971), 61. 49 If it was especially Tylor and Frazer who took Reformation and Enlightenment notions of magic as manipulative, coercive, and irrational and established them as universal academic categories, then it was especially Mauss, Durkheim and Malinowski (among other late-nineteenth/ early-twentieth century sociologists and anthropologists) who further established magic as characteristically individual and technical in nature and oriented primarily towards immediate and practical aims. All of these characterizations of magic were essential in carving out the new modern spheres of religion and science.
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during the Reformation and Enlightenment. Hildred Geertz (1975) hits the nail on the head when she writes:
What the Reformation and Enlightenment added up to in the endto simplify outrageouslywas the climb in intellectual status of a conception of the nature of religion which stressed the central necessity of a coherent doctrine and the emptiness of ritual. At the same time, in other circles, there was an increase in the market value of a view of the pursuit of knowledge which was empiricist and experimental. The result was an across-the-board downgrading of alternative views of religion and knowledge. The concept of magicis a direct descendant of these controversies, as a term for some of these downgraded alternatives. (76)
Mantras certainly seem to have been placed in this category of downgraded alternatives to modern Western views of language and religion. Conceived as spells and magical formulas, as they are so often translated, mantras are by implication irrational attempts to manipulate the Divine, in contrast to the supplicative prayers of authentic religion. In fact, however, the Tantric mantra seeks neither to coerce nor to supplicate a divinity. As we have seen, in properly uttering a mantra one neither forces a deity into action nor does one humbly plead for divine assistance; rather, one accesses the power of the divine that is inherently present in the sounds of the mantra and in the corresponding vibrations of the practitioners own consciousness. Both the notions of coercion and supplication require a separation between humans, language, and the divine that simply does not exist in the practice of Tantric Hindu mantra. Thus we see that this common distinction between magic and religion as manipulative versus supplicative is particularly revealing of the biases of the post-Reformation, postEnlightenment modern Western worldview, a perspective which has great difficulty understanding common Indian conceptions expressive of the conviction that humans and the divine interact intimately in the ordinary sensory experience of the world. As Glucklich puts it:
What is perceived by humans in this world corresponds to elements of the divine order, creating a bond, a correspondence that is sense-based and lies at the root of the homological rationality that one sees in much of Indias traditional thinkingThe principle underlying this way of sorting out the world is not an expression of magical thinking, but rather a privileging of sensory experience as the index of Gods creative energy, and a recognition of its potential to further ones interests. (2005: 5590)
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By and large, then, Indians have traditionally perceived the world as a vast system of sympathetic vibrations and interconnections infused with the divine, a divine that pervades the world and can be accessed via the senses.50 This worldview assumes a continuity between the divine and mundane realms and often refuses to differentiate between religious and pragmatic concerns. In India, the practices most closely associated with spiritual liberationconcentration, austerities, self-control, mantrarecitation, etc.are also conducive to worldly enjoyment: long life, health, power, children, and wealth (Glucklich 2005: 5590). The worldview just described simply does not fit the modern rationalist perspective of most Westerners.51 We can see this in the fact that, since the beginning of modern Indology, Hinduism has been described as a religion saturated with magic and superstition.52 Under the influence of post-Reformation and post-Enlightenment ideas about rationality and the nature of religion, modern scholars have tended to view Hindu devotional (bhakti) forms with slightly more understanding (when not simply labeled idol worship), but Vedic and Tantric forms of Hinduism, with their focus on homologies and monistic identities between worldly and divine, have often been characterized as magical. Monier-Williams, for instance, wrote that bhakti, which he identified with Vaisnavism, notwithstanding the gross polytheistic superstitions and hideous idolatry to which it gives rise, is the only Hind system worthy of being called a religion (1891: 96) and stated furthermore
50 For an attempt, from the perspective of psychology and differences in child/ego development, to explain why Indians so often perceive the world in this wayin contrast to most Westerners see Sudhir Kakars Shamans, Mystics and Doctors: A Psychological Inquiry into India and its Healing Traditions (1982) and The Inner World: A Psychoanalytic Study of Childhood and Society in India (1978). 51 It is important to note that discussions of worldview can easily slide into misleading statements of homogeneity and overly broad generalizations about cultures. Thus I should be clear that the Indian worldview I have described (in which the presence and power of the divine is infused within the sensory world in a vast fabric of interconnections accessible in everyday life) is not universal in India, but is oneeven if the predominant oneof many in India, including alternate perspectives that see the sensory world as illusory and unreal or as a physical creation essentially separate from the purity of the divine. Similarly, to characterize the worldview of the West (and especially Western scholars) as modern, scientific, and rationalist is a generalization that does not always hold true, though few would argue that this is not the dominant worldview of contemporary Western culture. Finally, it is crucial to note that many Indians todaywhether due to colonial influence, globalization, westernized education, or Indias own post-independence efforts to be a modern nationpossess the same modern rationalist (science-based) worldview that I here describe as western. Among these modern Indians, the terms mantra and tantra are often viewed with doubt and suspicion. As Yelle remarks, In modern Bengalthe phrase mantratantra (or tantra-mantra) is frequently used in the pejorative or dismissive sense of mumbo jumbo (Yelle 2003: 17). 52 See Glucklich (2005: 5587).
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that bhakti alone [among Hindu religious forms] possesses the essential elements of a genuine religion. For there can be no true religion without personal devotion to a personal God (1882: 2956).53 When it came to Tantra, however, Monier-Williams had an entirely different opinion. It was he who first used the term Tantrism as a singular, monolithic class (Urban 2003: 51), remarking disparagingly that Tantrism is Hinduism arrived at its last and worst stage of medieval development (1890: 123) and asserting that the Tantras are generally mere manuals of mysticism, magic, and superstition of the worst and most silly kind (1890: 129).54 Here bhakti, with its more familiar, Protestant-like, devotional approach, is defined as religion, while Tantra, with its unfamiliar and un-approved perspectives and practicesespecially that of mantra is labeled as magic and superstition.55 Undoubtedly, such descriptions not only served to justify Britains civilizing colonial mission in India, but also constituted a part of the careful demarcation of the modern spheres of religion, magic, and science. As Styers (2004) has aptly demonstrated, Magic has offered scholars and social theorists a foil for modern notions of religion and science and, more broadly, a foil for modernity itself (9). Scholarly characterizations of magic have assisted in creating a disenchanted
53 As scholars such as Krishna Sharma (1987) have shown, influential late-nineteenth and earlytwentieth century Western scholars like Monier-Williams, H. H. Wilson, Albrecht Weber, Franz Lorinser, and George Grierson drew on native Christianand especially Protestantconceptions of religion as monotheistic, personal, and emotion/faith-oriented to identify bhakti first with Krsna-worship and later with the larger category of Vaisnavism. In the process, they characterized this bhakti religion as a kind of reformed Hinduism reformed from earlier less worthy (i.e., forms of Hinduism), an Indian instance of Christian-like monotheistic devotion to a personal God. Grierson (18511941) was particularly important in producing the first integrated historical account of bhaktithe monotheistic faith of Indiawhich he termed Bhgavatism and characterized as a revolution, a monotheistic Vaisnava religion of emotion for the poor and language of the masses. despised social classes, and a gospel preached in the 54 He adds that most [Tantras] are mere hand-books for the use of practisers of a kind of witchcraft, which to Europeans appears so ineffably absurd that the possibility of any persons believing in it seems in itself almost incredible. Whole Tantras teach nothing but what may be called the science of employing unmeaning sounds [i.e. mantras] for acquiring magical power (1890: 130). Monier-Williams was hardly the only early Indologist to make such comments. For instance, Mitchell and Muir refer to Tantra as magic, while also describing it as the fullest development of sorcery in India. See Mitchell and Muir (1891: 5354). 55 Such notions about Tantra are not limited to Western Orientalists and, in fact, seem to have made their way into much of the mass populace of contemporary India. Hugh Urban comments that In most vernacular languages [in India] today, the term tantra is typically associated with a whole range of intense associations, usually relating to the darker realms of the magical, the immoral (sometimes the illegal), and the occult (2003: 38). Urbans excellent book is, to date, probably the best available for understanding changing Indian attitudes toward Tantra during and since colonial rule, but more work needs to be done on precisely how and why Indian conceptions of Tantra have become what they are today, particularly in regard to the relationships between Indian nationalist rhetoric, Tantra, and the notion of a pan-Indian bhakti movement.
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world that functions fully according to rational scientific laws and in which religion is cordoned off as transcendent and otherworldly. Clearly, a worldview in which the divine is infused within and pervades the world, and in which mysterious (and often scientifically unverifiable) interconnections abound in all aspects of life, is nonsensical and even threatening to the modern Western worldview from which the dominant scholarly conceptions of magic have come.
Downloaded from jaar.oxfordjournals.org at University of Toronto Library on September 2, 2010
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disapproval, or lack of understanding; it does not marginalize mantras into a separate sphere in opposition to the approved and authorized realm of religious language. Nonetheless, while I advocate the use of natural language as a better alternative, unfortunately, whether or not we avoid the use of the terms magic and magical to describe mantraor any other phenomenaa larger problem persists. No matter how sensitive the terminology we employ, in the end the biases of our perspective still expose themselves. Yelles argument that mantras present the illusion of a natural language makes it clear that, in his judgment, mantras do not actually function in the way the tradition believes they do. Whats in a name, then? That which we call magical, by any other name would be just as irrational. In a sense, to think otherwise would be to grant language the very magical power that modern rationality has long refused it. So while natural language is, for all the reasons I have cited, a more appropriate descriptive term for mantra than magical language, if this natural language is deemed an illusion and a dream, is it not still negatively stigmatized as being opposed to all that science and modern rationalism stand for? This brings us to the core of the problem: as objective or culturally neutral as we may try to be, by and large, we simply do not believe the traditions claims about mantra; they do not fit the criteria of empirical rationalism. As Alper states outright: Most of us who study mantras criticallyhistorians, philosophers, Sanskritiststake the Enlightenment consensus for granted. We do not believe in magic (3). What magic means here is not so much something in opposition to religion as something in opposition to the modern rational perspective, most especially that of science. Modern science tends to completely separate the world of material causality from that of subjectivity and desire. Born in the Enlightenment, the master discourse of this modern science is Cartesian epistemology, whose posit of subject and object as two quite separate entities drains the subject of nature and the object of culture. They face each other as antagonists; nature is constructed as Other, devoid of any of the presumed qualities of the subject, especially agency (Aronowitz 2000: 714). Those practices and perspectives labeled as magical stress the interconnections between man and universe, subject and object, and encourage an active and mimetic yielding into the Other. For Glucklich (2005), in fact, the defining feature of the magical is a recognition, based on sensory perception and performed symbolically, that life is constituted by interrelated phenomenathat are both meaningful and controllable when properly understood
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(5591). In contrast, in modern science, these multitudinous affinities between existents are suppressed by the single relation between the subject who bestows meaning and the meaningless object (Horkheimer and Adorno 1972: 10). Horkheimer and Adorno point out that, Like science, magic pursues aims, but seeks to achieve them by mimesisnot by progressively distancing itself from the object [italics mine] (11). It is especially in this vital mimetic dimension of magic that we can see the great value of perspectives and practices too often marginalized by modern rationalism. As Michael Taussig (1993) explains, The wonder of mimesis lies in the copy drawing on the character and power of the original, to the point whereby the representation may even assume that character and that power. Taussig considers the mimetic faculty an essential human ability to copy, imitate, make models, explore difference, yield into and become the Other (xiii). Earlier we saw Robert Yelles emphasis on the mimetic character of mantras, how the formal features of mantra are self-consciously designed to imitate cosmic processes. In more ways than one, the practice of mantra is mimetic in nature, involving a yielding into the Other, a mirroring of the subject (the practitioner) in the object (in this case, the divine signified in sound) via the potency of creative imitation and representation. Taussig writes that mimesis involves a copying or imitation and a palpable, sensuous, connection between the very body of the perceiver and the perceived (21). While he stresses the visual image, mantric practice shows us that mimesis is sonic as well. In this context, the mantra is a creative representation and, when uttered, a sonic copy of a cosmic/divine original. Furthermore, the perception of this copy unites the utterer with the uttered. In other words, to utter the mantra is to mimic the cosmos/divine in sound, and to perceive the mantras sound vibrations is to make sensuous contact with that divine via the tactility of the ears and mind. This is the magic of mantric mimesis. Yet as we have seen, in the modern rationalist view, the magic of mimesisthe very real potency of representation, the power of active yielding into (as opposed to progressive distancing away from) the Other, and the causal efficacy of constructing meaning and asserting desire and intentionis firmly disclaimed. Magic, then, represents that which opposes the Enlightenment consensus, which eschews the instrumental rationality that characterizes science, capitalism, and modernity, in general, in favor of an emphasis on the mysteriously interconnected nature of reality and interrelations among all phenomena. This is both magics biggest weakness and its greatest strength, for while at times it certainly may be wrong or unverifiable in the empirical sense, its mimetic
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logic provides a vitally necessary alternative to the scientific-rationalist perspective, one that emphasizes our connections with the world around us and incorporates, illuminates, and appreciates dimensions of reality and human experience to which the modern perspective is blind.57
CONCLUSIONS
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We have seen how the modern rationalist worldview dominant among Western scholars and laypeople can tend to distort understandings of mantras by mislabeling them as spells or instances of magical language. Our investigation has shown that the terms magic and magical lack any productive value as scholarly terms of description and should generally be avoided. They are not only inaccurate, but tend to marginalize the magical phenomenon into an illegitimate realm falsely contrasted with that of the religious and the rational, and also have a history of being used as rhetorical weapons in the interests of power. Nevertheless, our terms and categories are always provisional (lest we ourselves come to believe in something akin to a natural language) and this essay has, in part, sought to demonstrate the very productivity of such faulty terminology, the instrumental value of even problematic scholarly categories, especially when one demonstrates just how and why they do not fit the phenomena they are applied to. Here I follow Jacques Derrida (1978), who suggests a strategy of
conserving all these old concepts within the domain of empirical discovery while here and there denouncing their limits, treating them as tools which can still be used. No longer is any truth value attributed to them; there is a readiness to abandon them, if necessary, should other instruments appear more useful. In the meantime, their relative efficacy is exploited, and they are employed to destroy the old machinery to which they belong and of which they themselves are pieces. This is how the language of the social sciences criticizes itself. (284)
And criticize itself it should. For if the term magic has been used by scholars to carve out and protect the modern notions of religion and science, and to de-authorize the value of certain non-Western practices and viewpoints, then I hope this examination of mantra as magical language helps us in destroying the old machinery, challenges us to
57 See Michael Pollans The Omnivores Dilemma (2006: 1478) for a fascinating example of the limits of the modern rationalist perspective in regard to agriculture and approaches to the natural environment.
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look beyond modern rationalist perspectives, and reminds us to be constantly aware of the inaccurate and prejudicial categories that can so easily emerge in the study of foreign cultures. It may be impossible to free ourselves of the modern rationalist perspective we have inherited from Western culture and history; and we likely would not even wish it. Yet a heightened awareness of how this perspective informs our research and opinionshow it tends to marginalize alternative views, how it ignores and overlooks important dimensions of reality, and how it subtly contributes to the domination and exploitation of nature and our fellow human beingssuch an awareness, coupled with genuine attempts to re-value terms like magic and magical, can only be a step in the right direction.
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