The Brahmayamalatantra or Picumata, vol. II: The Religious Observances and Sexual Rituals of the Tantric Practitioner: Chapters 3, 21, and 45. A Critical Edition and Annotated Translation.

• Author: White, David Gordon
• Position: Book review

The Brahmayamalatantra or Picumata, vol. II: The Religious Observances and Sexual Rituals of the Tantric Practitioner: Chapters 3, 21, and 45. A Critical Edition and Annotated Translation. By CSABA Kiss. Collection Indologie, vol. 130, Early Tantra Series, vol. 3. Pondicherry: INSTITUT FRANCAIS DE PONDICHERY/ECOLE FRANCAISE D'EXTREME-ORIENT; HAMBURG: ASIEN-AFRIKA-INSTITUT, UNIVERSITAT HAMBURG, 2015. Pp. 373. [euro]32, Rs. 750.

Considered by many to be the "grail" of early Hindu tantric studies, the Brahmaydmalatantra (BraYa), very likely the earliest of the Bhairava Tantras (p. 13), has been largely inaccessible to scholars due to the rarity and near illegibility of the few extant manuscripts of the work. With the present volume, a critical edition and translation of three of the BraYa's one hundred and one chapters (chapters 3, 21, and 45) are now available; these complement Shaman Hatley's edition and translation of chapters 1, 2, 55, 73, and 99, which first appeared in his 2007 PhD dissertation ("The Brahmayamalatantra and Early Saiva Cult of Yoginis," Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2007) and have long since been available on line. The published version of Hatley's edition and translation of chapters 1 and 2 are forthcoming in a companion (The Brahmayamalatantra or Picumata, vol. 1) to the present volume. The editions and translations of both volumes are based nearly exclusively on Hatley's electronic transcription of a 1052 CE manuscript held in the Nepal National Archives (NAK-3-370) (p. 58). The Old Newari script of this palm-leaf manuscript (Kiss's MS A) is extremely difficult to decipher in and of itself; the Sanskrit, which Kiss qualifies as "extremely non-standard, non-Paninian, or extremely Ais'a" (even if, "it sometimes falls back to perfectly standard Paninian language for fairly long passages" [p. 74]), presents great challenges to translation. Addressing the impact of these irregularities on his edition and translation, Kiss states that his aim "as a kind of experiment, has been to present the text of the BraYa in its extremely Ais'a form" (pp. 73-74). Given his nearly exclusive reliance on MS A, he notes that the importance of a critical apparatus is greatly reduced (p. 75); however the pages he devotes to character and numeral charts, "Ais'a phenomena," and editorial conventions are thorough and concise (pp. 59-90). The same holds for intertextual references: nearly every technical term found in the text is analyzed in the light of usages in other texts from the same canon, and nearly every mantra, verse, and passage cross-referenced wherever possible or applicable. An appendix summarizing...