Michael Slouber's Early Tantric Medicine is a welcome contribution to Tantric studies. The author provides a critical introduction to his critically edited and translated chapters (chapters 1–7, 30–31, and 35, with accompanying Devanāgarī text) of the Kriyākālaguṇottara, a previously untranslated Gāruḍa Tantric text located within the larger tradition of Mantramārga Śaivism. According to Slouber, the Gāruḍa Tantras, largely composed between the sixth and ninth centuries CE, enjoyed “a remarkable influence on the Puranas, later Ayurveda, and the Tantric traditions of Buddhism and Jainism” (p. 56). In this regard, the text is of great historical interest to the Indological community. That said, “the wider intellectual world” (p. 128) is right to question why Slouber chose to work on these particular chapters of the Kriyākālaguṇottara.
Slouber makes a case for the significance of the Kriyākālaguṇottara by situating his project at the intersection of postcolonial theory, South Asian studies, religious studies, and, in effect, medical anthropology and history. Postcolonialism's criticism of textual studies notwithstanding, he argues that these translations are necessary because “much work on South Asian medicine has relied on theoretical approaches that did not lend themselves to an accurate portrayal of religious elements, whereas Religious Studies scholars have been hesitant to take on the difficulties of working with unedited and technical sources” (p. 129). In other words, the former work misrepresents the phenomenon, while the latter community is apparently too reluctant to shoulder such an ostensibly daunting task. “At the very least,” Slouber writes, “I hope this book will have convinced its audience that the line between religion and medicine is often not as clear as we would like, and that religious healing is a rational, if precarious, way for the faithful to deal with acute disease” (p. 131). As an Indologist and religious studies scholar interested in the role religion plays in managing infectious disease, I cannot wholly agree with Slouber's assessment. To be sure, the role of religion in healing and medicine is widely attested in the relevant literature. As for religious healing being rational, yet precarious, I agree: it is rational to choose such therapies in the absence of more efficacious ones.
The chapters of the Kriyākālaguṇottara of interest to Slouber address envenomation. Significantly, and especially with respect to Tantric efficacy, the nature of envenomation is not always clear. Slouber notes that on some occasions the snakebite is just that, an actual snakebite; however, on other occasions, “snakebite” is a euphemism for being stuck in the world of saṃsāra, or for being separated from the deity, as one finds in the bhakti traditions (p. 58). Accordingly, the efficacy of Tantric medicine, if such is one's interest—it is certainly mine—may rest with the particular problem at hand.
Slouber notes that there are two primary procedures in Tantric medicine, the material and the psychological. The former involves the ingestion of material substances, such as herbs. The latter involves the recitation of mantras and vidyās—esoteric, linguistic formulae—as well as the visualization of various goddesses adorned with snakes. Slouber focuses on the latter procedure. However, if reciting mantras and visualizing goddesses has any physical effect, it is surely due to the placebo effect. In fact, he himself asks, perhaps rhetorically, “to what extent is it reasonable to expect symbol-based healing techniques to ‘work’ for an acute case of snakebite envenomation” (p. 4)? The Indologist Robert Yelle, to whom Slouber often appeals, apparently would answer: “mantras … [are] a complex, but misguided attempt to use language to influence reality” (p. 5). Slouber seems uneasy with such an apparently cavalier dismissal.
Slouber argues for a contextually rational Tantric medicine. He suggests, “by opening a space for considering early Tantric medicine on its own terms, glimpsing a radically alternative view of health and power becomes possible” (p. 2). He notes that these Tantric texts give us the opportunity “to reach a close understanding of a fundamentally different worldview” (p. 129). While such emphases on radical alterity are seemingly de rigueur in area studies, I remain unconvinced. The cognitive and evolutionary psychological turn in religious studies and anthropology alone problematizes such theoretically driven perceptions. What is more, the very substance of the Gāruḍa Tantras suggests the same: regardless of place and time, snakebite envenomation is something to be countered. What is unquestionably different, however, is the efficacy of traditional as opposed to modern interventions. Perhaps implicitly recognizing this, Slouber is quick to note, “The progress of medicine in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century British empire, for example, and the current medical leadership of the United States, are tied up with the economic conditions of geopolitical dominance” (p. 4). The genetic fallacy notwithstanding, the point of such an observation appears apologetic. Elsewhere, he suggests, deploying the tu quoque fallacy, “Before singling out traditional medicine for condemnation, one should remember that the culture of modern biomedicine has its own deplorable aspects, such as the extremely high cost of healthcare in the United States” (p. 11). While historical-material conditions of production undoubtedly influence human behaviors and beliefs, they do not necessarily compromise the claims to objective, measurable efficacy, the only measure by which one should judge the value of medical claims.
Slouber concludes Early Tantric Medicine with a telling eye to the future. There is no doubt that more texts with esoteric mantras and vidyās are waiting to be discovered. That said, he calls for research on the material procedures of Tantric medicine: “One promising project for future research … [is] a concordance of the herbal ingredients and remedies used in Gāruḍa Tantras and Ayurvedic texts” (p. 131). He notes that one plant mentioned in the Tantric literature, the palāśa, has already been identified as Butea monosperma, an effective antivenom for viper bites. This is indeed a worthy avenue of scholarly pursuit; as for esoteric formulae, “the future prospects of mantras for snakebite are another matter” (p. 131).
Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now demonstrates empirically and irrefutably that modern reason and science have led to an exponential increase in human health and flourishing across the globe.Footnote 1 Accordingly, translations of medieval Tantric mantras and vidyās will surely continue to provide nuance to our understanding of human communities in the past; their role in curing physical illness is, however, rightly relegated to the dustbin of medical history.
