The Brahmayamalatantra or Picumata, vol. 1: Chapters 1-2, 39-40, & 83: Revelation, Ritual, and Material Culture in an Early Saiva Tantra.

AuthorWhite, David Gordon
PositionBook review

The Brahmayamalatantra or Picumata, vol. 1: Chapters 1-2, 39-40, & 83: Revelation, Ritual, and Material Culture in an Early Saiva Tantra. By SHAMAN HATLEY. Collection Indologie, vol. 133; Early Tantra Series, vol. 5. Pondicherry: INSTITUT FRANCAIS DE PONDICHERY/ECOLE FRANCAISE D'EXTREME-ORIENT/ASIEN-AFRIKA-INSTITUT, UNIVERSITAT HAMBURG, 2018. Pp. xiv + 695. Rs 1600.

In 2007 Shaman Hatley completed a doctoral thesis entitled "The Brahmayamalatantra and Early Saiva Cult of Yoginis," a work that I consider to be the finest study of the Yoginis written to date. Hatley never published that dissertation (although it is accessible online), and it is only now that he has brought out his first monograph on the subject of the same Brahmayamalatantra (BraYa). This volume is neither simply one of "three separate projects... carried over" (p. v) from his dissertation nor, in spite of its title, a simple edition and translation of five chapters from that massive Tantra. Nor is it simply the first volume (albeit published three years after volume two: Csaba Kiss, The Brahmayamalatantra or Picumata, vol. 2: The Religious Observances and Sexual Rituals of the Tantric Practitioner: Chapters 3, 21, and 45. A Critical Edition and Annotated Translation [Pondicherry: Institut Francais de Pondichery, 2015]) of a projected set of three critical editions and translations of portions of the BraYa (p. 22). Nor is it a return to the Yoginis that were at the heart of the 2007 dissertation. They and their cults are not treated in any of the five chapters edited and translated here; however, as Hatley promises, these will figure prominently in the chapters of the BraYa slated to appear in a forthcoming volume three (p. 23). What one does find here are "heavily revised or re-written" passages excerpted from other parts of the original thesis, appearing as portions of chapter 1 and all of chapter 2 of the present volume's part I, together with the edition and translation of the BraYa's first two chapters, and an appendix (A) comprising a list of chapter titles and colophons in the work's principal manuscript source (NAK 3-370). New here are editions and translations of the BraYa's chapters 39, 40, and 83, together with Hatley's extensive general introduction, a set of "topical studies" (chaps. 2 through 6) based on the BraYa chapters edited and translated in the book's part II, and several additional appendices (B-F). Three of the chapters treated here (1, 39, and 83)...

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