AMBIGUOUS SEXUALITY8 As Dowman notes (p. 130), Kal)ha also figures in the lineage of the Hindu niith tradi-
tion; a number of figures are common to both lists.
9 See Abhayadatta, Buddha's Lions: The Lives of the Eighty-Four Siddhas, translated
by James B. Robinson, Berkeley, CA, Dharma Publishing 1979, pp. 81-5; and
Dowman, pp. 123-31.
10 E. Obermiller (translator), The History of Buddhism in India and Tibet by Buston, rpt.
Delhi, Sri Satguru Publications 1986, p. 120.
11 Tiiranatha, Tiiraniitha 's History of Buddhism in India, translated by Lama Chimpa
and Alaka Chattopadhyaya, (ed.) Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya, Simla, Indian Institute
of Advanced Study 1970,passim and pp. 412-3.
12 Ibid., p. 249.
13 Ibid., p. 268.
14 For a fuller discussion of these issues, see Snellgrove, The Hevajra Tantra, vol. I,
p. 13, note 4. According to him, the linguistic evidence of the caryiiglti would seem
to place them no earlier than the II th century.
15 See Per Kvaerne, An Anthology of Buddhist Tantric Songs: A Study of the Caryiiglti,
Oslo-Bergen-Tromso, Universitetsforlaget 1977, pp. 3-4.
16 The translations are mine, though I am much indebted to Kvaerne (pp. 113, !50, !55)
and Stephan Beyer, The Buddhist Experience: Sources and Interpretations, Belmont,
CA, Dickenson 1974, pp. 259-60. For alternative translations of all three songs, see
M. Shahidullah (ed. and translator), Les chants mystiques de Kiil)ha et Saraha: Les
Dohii-ko!ia et les Caryii, Paris, Adrien-Maisonneuve 1928, pp. 117, 119-20. For nos
10 and 18, see S. B. Dasgupta, Obscure Religious Cults, rpt., Calcutta, Firma KLM
Private Limited 1976, pp. 103-5. For a strikingly different version of no. 10, see Lee
Siegel, 'Bengal Blackie and the Sacred Slut: a Sahajayana buddhist song', Buddhist-
Christian Studies I ( 1988), pp. 51-2.
17 For discussions of these hermeneutical traditions, which include a tantric version of
the earlier Buddhist distinction between 'interpretable' (neyiirtha) and 'direct'
(nltiirtha) teachings, and the system of 'seven ornaments' developed in the
Guhyasamaja exegetical tradition, see e.g. Ernst Steinkellner, 'Remarks on Tantric
Hermeneutics', in L. Ligeti (ed.), Proceedings of the 1976 Ksoma de Karas Sympo-
sium, Biblioteca Orientalia Hungarica no. 23, Budapest, 1978, pp. 445-58; Michael
M. Broido, 'Does Tibetan Hermeneutics throw any light on Sandhiibhii!ia?' Journal
of the Tibet Society 2 (1982), pp. 5-39; Broido, 'bshad-thabs: Some Tibetan methods
of explaining the tantras', in Ernst Steinke liner and H. Tauscher ( eds ), Proceedings of
the 1981 Ksoma de Karas Symposium, Vienna, Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und
Buddhismuskunde; Broido, 'Killing, lying, stealing, and adultery'; and Robert A. F.
Thurman, 'Vajra Hermeneutics', in Donald S. Lopez, Jr (ed.), Buddhist
Hermeneutics, Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press 1988, pp. 119-48.
18 Dasgupta, Obscure Religious Cults, pp. 51-61.
19 Lee Siegel, 'Bengal Blackie rides again', Buddhist-Christian Studies 5 (1985), pp.
191-2.
20 Beyer, p. 258.
21 See Agehananda Bharati, The Tantric Tradition, Garden City, NY/Doubleday 1970,
pp. 29-30.
22 For the most recent exposition of this view, see John Stevens, Lust for Enlightenment:
Buddhism and Sex, Boston, MA, Shambhala 1990, especially pp. 60-80. Stevens cites
with gusto a wide range of Indian and Tibetan tantric texts (he excludes Ka~ha), but
shows only a limited awareness of readings of them beyond the literal level.
23 In pre-tantric Buddhism, the lotus is a symbol of purity; the sixty-four petalled lotus
refers in tantra to the cakra -at the intersection of sixty-four subtle-body channels
-located near the navel; it is the site of the 'red drop', inherited from one's mother,