Abstract
This article examines continuities between the Hindu Tantric tradition of Tripurasundarī, which later came to be known as Śrīvidyā, and the antecedent tradition of Nityās. A prominent role of Kāmadeva (the god of love) as the consort of the principal goddess in the antecedent tradition of Nityās provides important clues for later development of the worship of Tripurasundarī. Continuities between the worship of Tripurā and the Nityā tradition include a triangle at the heart of the Śrīcakra (the principal ritual diagram), names of subordinate goddesses that clearly demonstrate a historical connection with Kāmadeva, and elements of iconography of the principal goddess modeled after visualizations of the god of love. Practices in the antecedent Nityā tradition, outlined in the Nityākaula Tantra, and the early tradition of Tripurasundarī in the Vāmakeśvarīmata were meant exclusively for a male audience, a stance that was revised in the later Śrīvidyā. Furthermore, propitiation of Tripurasundarī in the ritual sections of the Vāmakeśvarīmata served primarily to satisfy desire by means of rituals of attraction (ākarṣaṇa) and subjugation (vaśīkaraṇa). Although Kāmadeva was no longer propitiated in the Vāmakeśvarīmata, his prominent role in the ritual system of the antecedent tradition illuminates features that remained at the core of the worship of Tripurasundarī for more than a millennium.
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Lawrence McCrea, Alexis Sanderson, and Somadeva Vasudeva, with whom I read these texts over the years, for their kind suggestions and thoughtful advice. I am also indebted to anonymous reviewers for their comments, which were exceptionally helpful for revising this article. Their questions and suggestions helped me refine my conceptualization, reorganize the structure of the article, and improve it in numerous other ways. I have also received suggestions on a much earlier iteration of this research from James Mallinson, James Benson, and Antonia Ruppel, to whom I am grateful.
Note on Textual Emendations
I have recorded emendations by listing the revised reading first, followed by a lemma sign “]”, and by “corr.” to refer to a simple correction, “em.” to refer to an emendation, and “conj.” to refer to conjecture. If the emendation is mine, it is followed only by a colon; if it has been suggested by someone else, the last name of the person is included before the colon. Finally, I include the original reading, followed by “Cod.” if it occurs in a manuscript and “Ed.” if it occurs in a printed edition. I have used round brackets in the transliteration to indicate a conjecture in place of missing text in the manuscript, the latter recorded in the transcription of the original as “+”. I used square brackets to supply a word not present in the original, but necessary to properly render the meaning in English.
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Golovkova, A.A. The Forgotten Consort: The Goddess and Kāmadeva in the Early Worship of Tripurasundarī. Hindu Studies 24, 87–106 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11407-020-09272-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11407-020-09272-6