Vac: The Concept of the Word in Selected Hindu Tantras.

• Author: Smith, Frederick M.

In this massively revised, updated, and long-awaited publication of his 1964 doctoral thesis, Andre Padoux presents a wonderfully detailed and insightful account of the fundamental notions of mantrasastra according to the texts of the nondualistic Saiva tradition of Kashmir (Abhinavagupta's "emanationist nondualism" |p. 231~). The Saiva concerns, of the tenth century and beyond, with word and its powers reflect earlier Indian "speculations about the Word ... |which were~ regarded as a symbol of the Godhead, or more exactly as revealing the divine presence within the cosmos, as the force that creates, maintains, and upholds the universe". The word was regarded as an energy that could "be tapped and used by anyone who is able to penetrate its secret nature and mysteries". Its knowledge was therefore liberating.

Padoux explains his title, Vac, as "the female energy principle ... the life of Consciousness, the very energy of Siva. She is, within Siva, the Power, or the Word, better still the Energy-Word taken at its source, the power through which he creates, maintains and withdraws in himself the universe". In fact, throughout the book Padoux is careful to consider both emanation and reabsorption of the word, which is to say manifestation and dissolution as transformations in the subtle impulses of sound. Manifestation, the external movement of both consciousness and sound, ranges from the primeval rhythms of the created universe (mantramayam jagat, p. 160) to the sounds uttered by the female in sexual enjoyment (when the "uncreated |svayambhu~, spontaneous |sahaja~, pure ... phonic vibration |satatoditanada~ ... arises in her throat, swells up and becomes perceptible" |p. 283, Jayaratha on Tantraloka 3.146-148ab~). Reabsorption or dissolution (Padoux's term is "resorption"), the "flow of the energy of the Word back to its source", also occurs within the phonetic process, as an "inherence of objectivity in subjectivity, which is proper to a consciousness turning back on itself". This is metaphysics becoming phonetics.

The opposite conceptual approach, also taken up by Abhinavagupta and his followers, is the endeavor to translate phonetics into metaphysics and cosmogony. Here the entire cosmic manifestation evolves out of various aspects of Siva's energy contained within the first sixteen varnas of the aksarasamamnaya or Sanskrit alphabet, while the thirty-four tattvas evolve from the remaining varnas (ch. 5). Of ultimate import here are...