points on the body (cakra). While these practices were mastered in secrecy,
at the next stage one would “go public” inasmuch as the initiant had come
to understand there was no distinction between the pure and the impure.
Finally, one could reach the final stage (kula ̄ca ̄ra) when all distinctions were
believed to have been transcended.^28
Tantrism became a part of Jain and Buddhist practice as well. In Buddhism,
in fact, a new school emerged around the sixth century CEknown as
Vajraya ̄na. It is the school that made its way into Tibet where it was grafted
onto the indigenous religion known as Bon. Like “Hindu” forms of tantrism,
Buddhist tantra used body imagery and sounds and understood all of matter,
including alleged defilements, to be sacred. The rationale in Buddhism,
however, differed. It was rooted in the doctrine of s ́u ̄ nyata ̄wherein matter
(samsa ̄ra) and nirva ̄n.awere rendered homologous since neither had its
own existence (svabha ̄va). Further, the female principle was not perceived
to be a goddess (except later in Tibetan forms of Vajraya ̄na). Rather,
feminine forms were used to personify certain Buddhist perfections, such
as wisdom or compassion. One did not worship these feminine forms so
much as seek to emulate them or subsume their attributes. Further, the
feminine forms were sometimes juxtaposed with masculine ones as in prajña ̄/
purus.a(wisdom/spirit). Hence, in ritual coitus, the distinctions between
male and female and of all opposites were collapsed. One became the
other; one assumed the attributes of those perfections rendered in male
or female form.
It seems likely that tantrism flourished especially in border regions –
such as Assam, Northern Bengal, and Northwest India – which were not
systematically Hinduized prior to the tenth century. By the ninth and tenth
centuries, as such areas were brahmanized, there was assimilation of foreign
and/or “offbeat” expressions; families and clans who were previously obscure
and outside the circles of power were now being given land grants or in other
ways being incorporated into the body politic.^29 Now increasingly, tantric
imageries made their way into temple sculptures and architectural
symbolism; for example, the icon, at least in S ́aiva temples, was the lin.ga
or male principle; the pedestal in which it was set was the yonı ̄or female
principle. Tantrism had to some extent been “domesticated” and made part
of the brahmanic synthesis.
The rise of the goddesses to “high deity” status
One of the significant developments in the religious life of the subcontinent
during the period under discussion was the emergence of goddesses to the
status of “high deity.” Up until about the sixth century CE, goddesses had
The Post-classical Period 111