The transnational reinvention of Tantra as “sacred sexuality” in contemporary popular culture has engendered a somewhat anaemic response in scholarship. While Indologists undoubtedly recognize how little new age “tantric sex” has to do with the tantric traditions practised historically in Asia,Footnote ² we have provided inadequate corrective in the form of detailed studies on sexuality in traditional tantric practice systems.Footnote ³ The present article represents a small contribution in this direction, analysing the history and practice of a coital ritual known as “the sword's edge observance” (asidhārāvrata).

By the early second millennium in India, tantric sexual practices had developed considerable variety. Without aspiring to be comprehensive, this may be illustrated by the following examples drawn from tantric literature:

1. 1. First must be mentioned “love magic”: ritual technologies for winning the affection, or at least the submission, of a sexual partner. This is one of the major aims of rites for ākarṣaṇa (“attraction”) and vaśīkaraṇa (“subjugation”). What makes these tantric are the techniques for acquiring a lover: the sexual acts themselves may or may not be ritualized. Love magic is ancient, and certainly predates the tantras.Footnote ⁴ It is a key theme in the Śaiva cult of Tripurasundarī, as illustrated by the Vāmakeśvarīmata, one of its early scriptural sources.

2. 2. The targets of love magic may include non-human and supernatural beings. In the Śaiva tantra corpus, one of the earlier and more colourful examples is a rite in the Guhyasūtra of the Niśvāsatattvasaṃhitā by which one magically transforms a female goat or sheep (ajā) into a woman who “fulfils all of one's desires”.Footnote ⁵ A more typical example is that of yakṣiṇīsādhana, rites for mastering dryads (yakṣiṇī), who may provide erotic and other kinds of pleasure. Yakṣiṇīsādhana presumably has pre-tantric roots, and is described in a range of early Buddhist and Śaiva tantric texts, such as the Mañjuśriyamūlakalpa, Niśvāsatattvasaṃhitā and Brahmayāmala.Footnote ⁶

3. 3. A third, contrasting kind of tantric sexuality involves ritualized, orgasmic coitus wherein sexual fluids are given ritual function and meaning. This is exemplified by the Brahmayāmala's rites for the male practitioner known as the tālaka, and his female partner, the dūtī (“consort”) or śakti (“power”).Footnote ⁷ Unlike the previous examples, these practices are highly choreographed and incorporated into a demanding disciplinary regimen. Though described from the male perspective, they are performed by a couple, both of whom have received tantric initiation.Footnote ⁸ Oriented towards the attainment of supernatural power, their coital rituals are virtuoso performances spanning long periods sequestered in a shrine or earthen chamber; in some cases these involve groups of women.Footnote ⁹ The gathered sexual fluids are both consumed and used as offerings to the deities. Although coitus is to be performed in a state of meditative concentration, gnosis and ecstasy are not otherwise emphasized.

4. 4. Highly regulated coitus may form an element of the secret assembly or “tantric feast” (gaṇamaṇḍala, gaṇacakra, etc.), as intimated in a number of Buddhist Yoginītantras, such as chapter 8 of the Saṃvarodaya.Footnote ¹⁰ A Śaiva example is provided by the nocturnal “gathering of heroes” (vīramelāpa) described in the Jayadrathayāmala. While the gathering is in some respects tightly choreographed, the erotic acts are not: the heroes (vīra) and yoginīs behave as impelled by the cosmic śakti. Some dance, laugh, leap, give voice to mantras or to poetry, or perform mudrās; others copulate, consuming the products thereof.Footnote ¹¹ This unscripted sexuality takes on an ecstatic quality.

5. 5. In another mode of tantric sexuality, coitus is integral to the ceremony of initiation. Within Śaiva traditions, this is exemplified by the dūtīyāga Abhinavagupta delineates in chapter 29 of the Tantrāloka, wherein coitus is highly ritualized and has an ecstatic, gnostic emphasis.Footnote ¹² Combining as it does the guru's performance of coitus with an esoteric Kaula initiation, this invites comparison to the higher Vajrayāna consecrations: the guhyābhiṣeka and prajñājñānābhiṣeka integral to initiation in most systems based on the Yoginītantras.Footnote ¹³

6. 6. Another variety of tantric coital ritual is represented by the sexual yogas of the completion stage (utpannakrama) in Vajrayāna sādhana, such as taught in chapter 6 of the Caṇḍamahāroṣaṇatantra, or in the Yoga of Six Limbs (ṣaḍaṅgayoga) of the Kālacakra system.Footnote ¹⁴ While the Caṇḍamahāroṣaṇatantra's completion stage involves copious, variegated coitus, in the latter, emphasis lies on interiority, gnosis and the sublimation of bliss. Sexual union may be actual or performed through meditative visualization. (One might also mention visualizations of the deities involving erotic imagery as a distinct dimension of tantric sexual practice.)

7. 7. Some sexual practices associated with the tantric traditions are markedly corporeal. A comparatively well-known, though misunderstood, example is that of the haṭhayogic practice called vajrolīmudrā, recently studied by James Mallinson (forthcoming). Attested from the twelth or thirteenth century, this is a technique, he argues, by which the male practitioner learns to draw up liquids through the urethra with a tube, thereby attaining control over ejaculation; one may also, at least in theory, learn to draw sexual fluids back up into the body. Vajrolīmudrā thus facilitates sex without seminal loss. Haṭhayogic texts suggest that women too may practise this technique, the feasibility of which is unclear (Mallinson forthcoming).

These examples, which could be multiplied, intimate much of the range of erotic practice found in the tantric traditions, differing in procedure, aim, and premise, and emerging from multiple sectarian and historical contexts. “Tantric sex” is thus not a singular phenomenon, and clearer understanding of the history of tantric sexual practices requires detailed case studies. A final example forms the focus of the present essay: a distinctive coital ritual known as “the sword's edge observance” – asidhārāvrata, āsidhāraṃ vratam, khaḍgadhārāvrata or, in the less polished Sanskrit of the Brahmayāmala and some other sources, asidhāravrata. In brief, this is a practice in which the male practitioner exposes himself to various degrees of sexual temptation without fully consummating the act, maintaining sensory restraint. It seems to me that much can be learned concerning the early development of so-called “tantric sex” through historical examination of this practice, for, uniquely, its development can be traced through a range of orthodox Vedic, literary, Śaiva, and other texts. My study of the asidhārāvrata ensues directly from my effort to edit and contextualize chapter 40 of the Brahmayāmala – “The chapter of the sword's edge observance” (asidhāravratapaṭala). This is a voluminous and relatively archaic Śaiva scripture (c. seventh–eighth centuries ce) also known by the title Picumata.Footnote ¹⁵

It has been proposed that “tantric sex” was, in its original form, principally a means for producing sexual fluids utilized as sacramental offerings to the goddesses.Footnote ¹⁶ Sexual fluids do figure prominently among the impure or “nondual” substances (advaitadravya) offered to goddesses and/or consumed in ritual, as described in Śaiva tantras of the Vidyāpīṭha,Footnote ¹⁷ especially the Brahmayāmala. Nonetheless, such an instrumental view of the role of sexuality in early tantric ritual systems seems unhelpful, given the variety and complexity of the rites attested. Moreover, coital practices in which sexual fluids were collected or consumed are unlikely to have historical precedence, for a sexual ritual significantly different in nature finds earlier attestation in Tantric Śaivism. This is the asidhārāvrata. In addition to being the subject of chapter 40 of the Brahmayāmala, this ritual is taught in the archaic Niśvāsatattvasaṃhitā (Guhyasūtra 3.38c–43b) and in another early Siddhāntatantra, the Mataṅgapārameśvara (kriyāpāda 11.41–53), as well as the Jayadrathayāmala (ṣaṭka I, 21) of the Vidyāpīṭha, as identified and discussed briefly by Sanderson (Reference Sanderson and Bhatt1985: 565).

The asidhārāvrata attested in tantric literature appears likely to be an inflection of a Brāhmaṇical observance of the same name: a male ascetic discipline distinguished by maintenance of chastity while lying together with a sexually available woman. A number of references to the vrata in Sanskrit literary sources were noted in a brief article by Adolf Stenzler (Reference Stenzler1886). In the History of Dharmaśāstra, vol. V.1, Kane (Reference Kane1974: 266) summarizes the discipline as follows (with abbreviations expanded):

In its Brāhmaṇical variety, the asidhārāvrata is not hence a “sexual ritual” per se, but an ascetic discipline for men characterized by cultivation of dispassion in the presence of considerable temptation – perhaps not dissimilar to practices of a variety Mahatma Gandhi famously experimented with (Lal Reference Lal2000), which have continuing cultural resonance.Footnote ¹⁸

The meaning of the observance's name and its relation to the practice are somewhat obscure. Remarking on Raghuvaṃśa 13.67, a verse mentioning the asidhārāvrata, Kālidāsa's commentator Dinakara states that it involves placing an actual sword (asi) in the bed of the chaste couple (presumably as a deterrent).Footnote ¹⁹ This idea is repeated by Bhavabhaṭṭa in his commentary on the Laghucakrasaṃvara.Footnote ²⁰ Adducing parallels from European folklore, Stenzler (Reference Stenzler1886: 525) suggests that there existed an ancient Indo-European custom in which a sword was placed between a couple observing chastity. While an intriguing possibility, it is difficult to assess its plausibility in the absence of early Indian evidence for the use of an actual sword. Mallinātha's interpretation of the name (also ad Raghuvaṃśa 13.67) is more in line with literary allusions to the vrata and descriptions of its procedure in most Sanskrit sources: “and this is called the ‘edge of the sword observance’ because of being comparable to walking along the edge of a sword” (idaṃ cāsidhārācaṃkramaṇatulyatvād asidhārāvratam ity uktam). The image conveys extreme difficulty as well as danger, both of which find echo in depictions of the observance: according to the Brahmayāmala, it is difficult even for the gods,Footnote ²¹ while the Niśvāsatattvasaṃhitā warns that, in its course, “one who becomes overpowered by lust goes to hell, assuredly”.Footnote ²² In Sanskrit literature, the asidhārāvrata becomes a metaphor for a task of exceptional difficulty or precariousness. Both literally and figuratively, the image bears affinity to the expressions “[on] the razor's edge” and “[on] a knife's edge”, and I hence take the liberty of translating asidhārāvrata as “the razor's edge observance”. The collocation may echo a well-known metaphor of the Kaṭhopaniṣad, which likens the difficulty of the path of spiritual knowledge to crossing a razor's sharp edge.Footnote ²³

It is unclear how old the asidhārāvrata is: Kane's summary is based on the description in the Viṣṇudharmottarapurāṇa, which one thoughtful, if somewhat speculative, interpretation would place in early eighth-century Kashmir (Inden Reference Inden, Inden, Walters and Ali2000: 81–4). A comparatively early reference, without elaboration, occurs in the Vaikhānasagṛhyasūtra in a description of the discipline of the ghorācārika householder;Footnote ²⁴ Kane (Reference Kane1968: 260) places this text around the fourth century ce. Another early reference – potentially the earliest – occurs in the Buddhist Laṅkāvatārasūtra, which likens the difficulty of developing non-attachment to sensory objects to the asidhārāvrata.Footnote ²⁵ As mentioned, the circa fifth-century Raghuvaṃśa of Kālidāsa also refers to the observance, to which is likened Bharata's refusal to indulge in royal splendour – the “lady royal fortune” (Śrī) – in deference to his absent elder brother, Rāma.Footnote ²⁶ The image of a king's abstention from royal splendour/goddess Lakṣmī (rājalakṣmī) as an asidhārāvrata finds echo in the Harṣacarita of Bāṇa (early seventh century),Footnote ²⁷ while a tale of the Pañcatantra compares the difficulty of dwelling with an enemy to the observance.Footnote ²⁸ These references suggest that the asidhārāvrata was well known by the fifth century ce, though somewhat or significantly older than this, hence most probably predating most or all extant works of Tantric Śaiva literature.

In addition, the asidhārāvrata seems to be the first tantric ritual attested which involves sexual contact. The earliest surviving account of a tantric asidhārāvrata belongs in all likelihood to the archaic Niśvāsatattvasaṃhitā (hereafter Niśvāsa), perhaps the most ancient extant Śaiva tantra; while its older portions could date to as early as the mid-fifth century ce, the Guhyasūtra, in which occurs the asidhārāvrata (3.38c–43b), probably does not belong to this stratum of the text (Goodall and Isaacson Reference Goodall and Isaacson2007).Footnote ²⁹ In the asidhārāvrata of the Niśvāsa, as well as the Mataṅgapārameśvara (hereafter Mataṅga), we find an ascetic observance for the cultivation of sensory restraint transformed into a Mantramārga technology for supernatural attainment (siddhi). In the tantric observance, a key premise remains, viz. maintaining sexual restraint in the face of temptation, but this is incorporated within a framework of mantra-practice and meditation. The asidhārāvrata of the Niśvāsa is as follows:Footnote ³⁰

Occurring in the Guhyasūtra alongside rites harnessing such potent and impure materials as skulls, flesh and menstrual fluid, the asidhārāvrata belongs to a corpus of ritual directed towards non-soteriological aims that presages the visionary ritual world of the Bhairavatantras. The asidhārāvrata of the Mataṅga too belongs to the ritual repertoire of the power-seeking sādhaka (Sanderson Reference Sanderson and Bhatt1985: 565), whose practices become the overriding concern in the Brahmayāmala and related sources.

With the tantric asidhārāvrata, the edge of the sword grew sharper. Descriptions of the observance in the Niśvāsa, Mataṅga, and Brahmayāmala all emphasize the erotic appeal required of the woman: she should be young, beautiful, and seductive. Moreover, the degree of physical intimacy goes beyond that envisioned in non-tantric versions of the rite. According to the Niśvāsa, the practitioner of the vrata does not merely lie in close proximity to the woman, but must place his liṅga upon her genitals, though apparently without penetration (liṅgaṃ sthāpya bhagopari, 39d). The Mataṅga instructs that the sādhaka should adorn himself and behave seductively, though with a mind purified by yoga (11.42–43b).Footnote ³¹ He propositions a young woman who possesses the marks of auspiciousness, has not given birth, is skilled in the erotic arts, obedient, and so forth (vv. 43c–45). Without mentioning genital contact, it is said that the sādhaka should meditate on the mantras while in the woman's embrace, without ejaculation (vv. 46c–51).Footnote ³² The Brahmayāmala too enjoins kissing and embracing, but departs by explicitly enjoining penetration (liṅgaṃ tatra vinikṣipet, 10d), though without orgasm (kṣobha). Absorbed in meditation (dhyānaparāyaṇaḥ, °tatparaḥ), he nonetheless goes through the motions of passionate lovemaking. While all three sources enjoin meditation in intimate contact with the woman, only the Brahmayāmala's version unambiguously involves actual, though non-orgasmic, coitus. Failure to control ejaculation is a ritual fault that requires arduous expiation, prior to re-commencing the observance (vv. 23–6).

In addition to inflecting the observance by enjoining genital penetration, the Brahmayāmala provides an elaborate (if not always clear) description of the discipline, detailing how the coital rite is incorporated into a practitioner's demanding routine. It is possible that the redactors drew directly from the description of the asidhārāvrata in the Niśvāsa.Footnote ³³ The actual sexual practices of the Brahmayāmala's asidhārāvrata chapter are described primarily in verses 40.8c–14b and 20–3. These follow a description of the qualities desired of the female partner, and precede a statement on the fruits of successful practice. I quote the passage in full:Footnote ³⁴

Unlike the cases of the Niśvāsa and Mataṅga, coitus forms an integral rather than marginal element of the Brahmayāmala's ritual system, although its practice is restricted primarily to the highest of three grades of sādhaka – the tālaka. Besides the chapter on the asidhārāvrata, the Brahmayāmala's most detailed treatments of coital ritual occur in chapters 22 and 24 (both entitled guhyāmṛtapaṭala, “chapter of the secret nectar”), as well as chapter 45 (the sādhakādhikārapaṭala), which delineates the disciplines of sādhakas in considerable detail. In these accounts, ritual coitus is orgasmic, while the conjoined male-female sexual fluids – the “secret nectar” (guhyāmṛta) – are among the most important substances utilized in ritual. In the context of the Brahmayāmala, the asidhārāvrata's focus upon ascetic mastery of sexual arousal and abjuration of orgasm are hence anomalous. This might explain why even the sādhaka known as the carubhojin (“consumer of the oblation gruel”) may practise the asidhārāvrata, though his discipline otherwise excludes coitus.Footnote ³⁶ Within the Brahmayāmala, the asidhārāvrata appears somewhat marginal, and the observance finds meagre attestation in subsequent Tantric Śaiva systems. Abhinavagupta, for instance, makes reference to the asidhārāvrata (or khaḍgadhārāvrata) only in passing, and apparently viewed it as a form of penance (tapas) not specifically tantric in character.Footnote ³⁷ It perhaps became obsolete with the development of coital ritual of the varieties emphasized elsewhere in the Brahmayāmala, as well as subsequent Kaula practices more ecstatic and gnostic in orientation. Nonetheless, given its historical priority, this observance may have had a profoundly important role in the development of “tantric sex”, and has continuity with a range of later practices emphasizing seminal retention.Footnote ³⁸ It is evident also that, despite the paucity of depictions of the observance in post-eleventh-century tantric sources, the practice is not unknown in contemporary times.Footnote ³⁹

As should be apparent, the asidhārāvrata is depicted as a practice performed by a man, with a woman; he is the ritual agent, and the rite primarily or exclusively benefits him. She is represented more or less as a ritual object. According to the Niśvāsa and Mataṅga, the woman is selected on the basis of her erotic appeal, and there is no indication that she receives any kind of initiation. While the sādhaka purportedly aims for and may attain occult mastery, she is portrayed as desiring nothing more than coitus. In the words of the Mataṅga, “His aim accomplished, he should let her go, if she does not like [the practice]. Should she like [it], then that excellent man, who has attained siddhi, sports with her for a long time, without ever losing his seed”.Footnote ⁴⁰ The position of the woman in the Brahmayāmala's asidhārāvrata is more complex. Generally, the text envisions both participants in coital rituals as initiated practitioners, and provides evidence for the involvement of women in a variety of ritual capacities.Footnote ⁴¹ Women participating in sexual ritual are designated by the terms śakti (“power”) and dūtī (“consort”), though only the former occurs in the asidhāravratapaṭala. In many ways the role of the woman in the Brahmayāmala's asidhārāvrata is similar to that of the Niśvāsa and Mataṅga. The description of her desired qualities heavily emphasizes erotic appeal, and there are no statements indicating that she benefits from the ritual. Her lack of ritual agency is illustrated by the exclusion of her hands from mantra-installation (nyāsa; v. 9ab), while her body and her vulva – objects of ritual action – do receive nyāsa. However, after the evening meal, they perform ritual together (the nityavrata, 18cd), an indication that here, as elsewhere in the text, both practitioners must be initiates.

While the record is fragmentary, it seems that the coital rituals of early Vidyāpīṭha Bhairavatantras, such as the Brahmayāmala, may have developed directly out of a tradition of ritual experimentation with sexuality represented by the asidhārāvrata of early Siddhāntatantras – the Niśvāsa and the Mataṅga. A Kashmirian author, Takṣakavarta, in fact reports the existence of a Saiddhāntika lineage having this vrata as its characteristic practice, intimating the kind of context in which ritual experimentation with eroticism might have taken place.Footnote ⁴² Should this hypothesis prove correct, it suggests that the razor's edge proved sharp indeed, the asidhārāvrata leading to the development of coital practices more “magical” or ecstatic in orientation than ascetic.

In closing, I would like to propose an additional possibility: that the early Mantramārga or tantric asidhārāvrata represents the adaptation of the observance as it was practised within the Śaiva Atimārga – Pāśupata and related, more radical Brāhmaṇical Śaiva ascetic orders that Sanderson (Reference Sanderson2006a) has demonstrated were formative to the development of Tantric Śaivism. One indication of this possibility lies in a list of seven caryāvratas (“disciplinary observances”) for celibate neophytes (brahmacārins) found in the Svacchandatantra and a handful of other sources.Footnote ⁴³ While occurring in the context of a description of orthodox Vaidika disciplines, the list betrays a Śaiva, and probably Atimārga, orientation. One of the observances, the unmattakavrata (“madman observance”), is a characteristic discipline of the Lākula sect of the Atimārga (Sanderson Reference Sanderson2006a: 209), while the names of four others identify them as Śaiva: bhauteśa (“of [Śiva as] lord of spirits”), pāśupatya (“of Paśupati”, or perhaps “of the Pāśupatas”), gāṇa (“of [Śiva's] gaṇas”), and gāṇeśvara (“of [Śiva's] gaṇa-lords”). What remain are the “lord of ghee [i.e. Agni] observance” (ghṛteśavrata) and the asidhāravrata, the context suggesting by association that these too were practices of Śaiva brahmin ascetics. That similar Atimārga ascetic observances (vratacaryā) found their way into the Mantramārga or Tantric Śaivism has been demonstrated in the case of the rudravrata taught in Mataṅga, caryāpāda 9 (Sanderson Reference Sanderson2006a: 202–8).

Further indication of Atimārga engagement in the asidhārāvrata is found in a passage of Abhinavagupta's Tantrāloka (8.300b–302) and the commentary of Jayaratha. These cite the lost Śivatanuśāstra of Bṛhaspati, a Saiddhāntika exegete who wrote between approximately 650 and 750 ce.Footnote ⁴⁴ Abhinavagupta attributes to the Śivatanu the view that practitioners of modes of ascetic discipline, which include the skullbearer observance (kapālavrata) and razor's edge observance (khaḍgadhārāvrata), ascend thereby to a hierarchy of heavenly realms at the level of māyātattva, over which Ananta presides.Footnote ⁴⁵ In elaborating, the commentator Jayaratha adduces a passage in ārya-metre from the Śivatanu describing vratas of Atimārga Śaiva ascetics devoted to Vāmadeva and an unusual series of rudras. Of the fifth group is said the following: “They make themselves attractive with garlands, [fine] clothing, and ornaments, and are devoted to performing the razor's edge observance; meditating, they attain to the state of [the rudra] Pūrva”.Footnote ⁴⁶ Headed as the list is by votaries of the Atimārga kapālavrata, and linked as the practitioners are to attainment of a “lesser” liberation at the cosmological level of māyātattva, the passage seems intended to describe Atimārga practices.Footnote ⁴⁷ While inconclusive, this provides further indication that the asidhārāvrata was practised by Śaiva brahmins of the Atimārga. From this mid-first millennium context, the observance may have been adapted within the Mantramārga at the level of the early Siddhāntatantras, represented by the Niśvāsa and Mataṅga, and thence into the Bhairavatantras, thereafter becoming increasingly obsolete with the rise of sexual practices more magical, ecstatic, or gnostic in orientation.