Abstract
This paper examines the ritual and philosophical meaning of the term ‘nondual’ (advaya/advaita) in early Śākta Tantras (6th–9th centuries), including some early sources of the anti-ritualist kaula cult. It shows that nondualism denoted only ritual nondualism in the earliest texts, namely, the principle of seeing and using pure and impure substances in ritual without distinction, rejecting the pure-impure dichotomy of orthopraxy. The ontology these tantras presuppose is basically dualist, for they usually see the Lord and the created world as different and regard original impurity (mala) as a removeable material entity, similarly to the classical system of the dualist Śaiva Siddhānta. Nondual ontology evolves gradually, starting with scattered statements about the nature of the god and the phenomenal world, usually in a ritual context. It appears in a form similar to the classical one only in the Krama and related systems, as argued in Sanderson (in: Goudriaan (ed.) Ritual and speculation in early tantrism: studies in honour of André Padoux, 1992).
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References
Abbreviations
Gretil = Göttingen Register of Electronic Texts in Indian Languages, http://gretil.sub.uni-goettingen.de
IFI / IFP = Institut Français de Pondichéry
KSTS = Kashmir Series of Texts and Studies
MIRI = Muktabodha Indological Research Institute, http://www.muktabodhalib.org
NAK = National Archives, Kathmandu
NGMPP = Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project
TAK vol. III. = Tāntrikābhidhānakośa vol. III. Ed. D. Goodall and M. Rastelli. Wien: ÖAW. 2013
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Törzsök, J. Nondualism in Early Śākta Tantras: Transgressive Rites and Their Ontological Justification in a Historical Perspective. J Indian Philos 42, 195–223 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10781-013-9216-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10781-013-9216-1