A CRITICAL TANTRISM
These women were regarded with great aversion and horror by outsiders
because of the abominable aspect of their cult based on all the hideous and
repulsive elements of the cemetery. At the same time, however, they were awed
and revered because of their marvelous attainment of magical power (siddhi
~:t!B) and their unusual ecstacy which could only be realized in an exclusive
society.
In the course of time, their sexual yogic practices were systematized to
present a general idea of the physical structure of three veins (niic/i) and six
nerve centres (cakra) within the body, and accordingly, the certainty and univer-
sality of the sexual pleasure which was realized through these practices was
increased. It was at this stage that a group of Tantric Buddhists, noticing the
mental and physiological certainty of the effect of the sexual yogic practices of
these yogin'is, adopted this cult of cemetery so as to utilize the concrete basis
of the cult in order to attain a solid answer to the anxiety caused by the formula of
the quick attainment of enlightenment presented in the Tattvasamgraha-tantra.
At that time, the male objects (yogin) of the sexual practices of these women,
who were fundamentally non-clerical and territorial, were the somewhat more
professional and migratory practicers of yoga, affiliated with the lower sects of
Saivism such as Kapalikas or Kalamukhas.
The Buddhist immigrants to the cult of cemetery tried to take the place
of these Saivaite yogins leaving the basic structure of the cult, that is, the group
of yogin'is (yogin'i-cakra) untouched. Preserving almost all the elements of
Bhairava, the god of smasiina, adding only trivial elements, they created a new,
demonic God Heruka, alias Hevajra, who stands trampling his own father
Bhairava under foot assuming almost an identical form.
v. The Hevajra-tantra, Buddhism of the cemetery
Originally, eight yogin'is formed a group and practised sexual yoga in rotation
surrounding a male object (yogin). This phenomenon is alluded to by the word
sanciira (translocationV To this original group of eight yogin'is, Buddhist immi-
grants introduced, with a clear methodological consciousness, the group of five
yogin'is to form a new living mm:ujala. In the ma!J4ala of the Hevajra-tantra, the
original group of eight yogin'is was pushed away to the outer circle (biihyaputa
~1!1t) of the ma!J4ala and excluded from the sexual yoga with the Lord
Hevajra.^9
In the Hevajra-tantra, the five yogin'is who compose the newly introduced
group are regarded as nothing other than the five families of tathiigatas which
composed the Vajradhiitu-ma!J4ala (the ma!J4ala of the adamantine sphere
~MU!f.Jl~m), the ultimate reality of the Tattvasamgraha-tantra. Here, the wild
lower caste women of the time, who used to assemble in a cemetery at midnight
and indulge themselves in witchcraft and sexual practices in the orgie, were
reorganized to form a new matrix in which the quick attainment of enlighten-
ment was expected to be realized. Thus, the universal formula which had been