Few notions that were born and developed in the complex spiritual matrix that produced the religions of South Asia, including those of Hinduism and Buddhism, are as contested and debated as that of Tantra. André Padoux, one of the most respected and senior scholars of Tantra, has written a summation of his conclusions on the subject, which attempts to deal with many of the salient characteristics that define Tantra. The Hindu Tantric World is not an introduction to Tantra. Rather, it is what the book's subtitle says, “an overview,” and as this term implies, it is a view that is Padoux's own conclusions and definitions. He is not making a specific argument, and he does not attempt to refute the research or theories of other scholars. He states his views in declarative sentences, and these are often views that could take books to unpack and support (and many already have).
As such, there is a certain clarity and conclusiveness that prevent the reader from going down the rabbit hole of contradictions and abstruseness that is indeed part of Tantra's nature. This is not to say the book is superficial, nor that the material has been simplified. I kept thinking of the book as both a kind of handbook and a declaration. It is perhaps most helpful for those readers who already know about the subject.
The book is divided into three parts. The first is the “Hindu Tantric Domain.” This section deals with terminology and defining a Tantric Domain; with origins, history, and expansion; with the textual material; and finally, with fundamental notions, beliefs, and speculations. Padoux does not shy away from the central issue of what is and is not Tantric in Indian religion, and more broadly in Indian society, economics, politics, and history. Among the statements he makes in this regard are: that the Hindu conception of the king is Tantric (not Vedic); that Tantra can be divided into a hardcore transgressive aspect and a soft Tantrism in notions of Hinduism; that there is a close connection between Tantra and yoga; that Tantra is embedded in brahmanical tradition; that mantras are central to Tantra; and that Hindu religious architecture is Tantric.
Padoux's review of the textual material is a tour de force of presenting the complex relationships of the extensive textual corpus of Tantras (texts written in Sanskrit) and vernacular textural sources in a few pages (fourteen, to be exact). Tantric texts tend to be extremely long, rarely dated, philosophical, and normative. Padoux points out that in recent years a large number of hitherto unknown texts have been found, so that the “whole study of the Tantric field has thus entered a new phase” (p. 30), and alerts the reader to expect new insights and rethinking in the future. While this is exciting, it is also somewhat disheartening to realize how little we actually know.
The second part of the book, “The Tantric World,” examines the actual uses of the Tantric notions outlined in the first part. It includes discussions of the Tantric body, sex, mantras, ritual, spiritual aspects, and places or practices. The reader may feel more at home with some of this material, but it is still Padoux's attempt to say what about these topics is Tantric, and what about them is not. Among what is Tantric is a universe pervaded by divine power, use of visual imagination, the identification of the officiant with the deity, union with the Absolute, and infusion of power into objects. These are just some of what makes up the Tantric world, and are not new insights, but stripping them to the bone and placing them in a solid context serves to place them as a unit in the reader's mind.
The third part of the book brings Tantra up to the present by discussing its modern development in both India and the West. This is again a massive topic that can only be dipped into. Padoux stresses how important individual gurus have been to create the modern trends, and how radically they have reinterpreted traditional Tantra.
Early in the book, Padoux says that the Tantric world was “brought, together with the cult of the divine monarch, from the various parts of the Indian subcontinent to Cambodia, Champa, and Indonesia. We may therefore speak of a Tantric civilization – a veritable Tantric world – that existed for centuries in India and in all the ‘Indianized’ parts of Asia” (p. 28). This immediately brings to mind Sheldon Pollock's notion of the cosmopolis, which is causing much interest today, with Sanskrit as an aesthetic political power that created a world culture.Footnote 1 In both instances, Sanskrit is the conveyer, both beginning more or less in the fifth century CE, both explaining a connected world. Neither Padoux nor Pollock notes the other. Are we to consider these two South and Southeast Asian world-producing systems as running on parallel tracks? Padoux's case for a Tantric world is strongly argued in The Hindu Tantric World.
