ISTITUTO ITALIANO SERIE ORIENTALE ROMA PER IL MEDIO ED ESTREMO ORIENTE LXIV SERIE ORIENTALE ROMA FONDATA DA GIUSEPPE TUCCI Atti del convegno sul tema: MIRCEA ELIADE DIRETTA DA aa E LE RELIGIONI ASIATICHE Vol. LXIV A cura di Gherardo Gnoli ROMA ROMA 1989 1989INDICE del Presidente dell Istituto ....sesssseecesessseee Pag. WIL W. Donicer, Time, Sleep, and Death in the Life, Fiction, and Aca- demic Writings of Mircea Eliade » ot le religioni indiane » B » 49 » 59 ‘TUTTI DIRITTI RISERVATI >» P. luce presso Sihabu'd-din ‘Yahya Sohrawardi: analogie e considerazioni > 87 AGL. IKALA, The Interpretation of Siberian and Central anistic Phenomena eee » 103 R. Masrromarrst, Varieties of Ecstatic Experience: Shamanism in Nepal a > 119 U. Marazz1, Mircea Bliade ¢ le concezioni religiose dei Turco-Mongoli » 129 C. Pensa, Lapproosio di Mircea Eliade alle religion! asistiche:aleune » 133 F, » 147 U. BraNcm, Mircea Eli >» 168 Cronaca del Convegno > 17 Prin iy Su Stampa , Via Oranam, 15 ~ 00152 Roma«Verily, when a person departs from this world, he goes to the air. It opens out there for him like the hole of a chariot wheel. Through that he goes upwards. He goes to the sun. It opens out there for him like the hole of a lambara. Through that he goes upwards. He reaches the moon, It opens out there for him like the hole of a drum. Through that he goes upwards. He goes to the world free from grief, free from snow. There he ternal years.» (Bphadaranyaka upanisad, V, 10, dw t0 Zen. A Thematic Sourcebook of the History of 335.36, (48) RAFFAELE TORELLA, ELIADE ON TANTRISM In 1928, at the age of twenty-two, Mircea Eliade left for India to study under the guidance of Surendranath Dasgupta. He stayed there for ‘more than three years, and this had an important influence not only on his development as a sc Ce que je vou crument de travail s de grande sophique. Ce n’étaient pas le Vedanta ou les Upani lire des expressions de la justement parce que His studies and experiences during that period form the basis of his thesis Yoga. Essais sur les origines de la mystique indienne, published in Paris in 1936, out of which evolved Le Yoga. Immortalité et liberté pub- lished in 1954, with several later corrected and updated book soon became famous, and quite rightly so, and it is still highly re- ‘garded and read today even by tton-specialists. A large portion of the volume is devoted to Tantrism. Eliade writes in the Preface: systéme de Pataijali, ceux notam- ‘cru nécessaire de nous trop ‘méditationing that Tantrism was a worthy subject of study on a fields of classical Indology was not the volume by various authors Approches de I'Inde sme a été la demnitre découverte de Ia science occidentale, lisme, le brahmanisme et ment étudiés en Occident depuis plus d’ est & peine amoreée. Une partie seulement des te tés, ts pou ont été traduits et I'analys doctrines et de ses rituels ine d’excellentes monographies sur iddhisme (Masui 1949; 132) Eliade did not write @ comprehensive work on Tantrism either (though Georges Bataille [Eliade 1973: 92} insistently asked him to, the book never materialized), but the two works cited above constitute an ex- tensive and in many respects penetrating examination of some of its main themes. Primarily, in contrast to a tendency towards ascetism and the ne- gation of the cosmos which marks not all but certainly numerous and im- Portant currents of Indian spirituality, Tantrism represents the affirmation of the concrete and of the body are valued as the manifes Supreme spiritual reality of which they seem to be the neg: path links the one to the many, thus I using those currents of energy that the psyco-physical sphere ~ to become who! which is the ultimate source of those energi says in ‘Introduction au tantrisme” As Eliade quite rightly On constate une permanente interpénétration des niveaux du réel. Plus lexactement, le tantiika s'efforve de s'anerer, aut début = ot de le transfigurer par Ia suite; en d'autres termes, de réanimer les energies cosmiques endormies dans les objets rituels qui lentourent (Masui 1949: 137), And later: Le corps humain ne perd jamais sa corporéit tantrique, le corps physique se dilate, se cosmise, se transsubst La condition physique et psycologique de homme profane {50} elles sont étendues dans une pro- portion allucinante, & la suite d’innombrables identifications d’organes ivrance (Masui 1949: 139). And he notes in Fragments d'un journal: On comprendra un jour le role important du tantrisme, qui a révélé et imposé a la conscience indienne la valeur des ‘formes’ et des ‘volumes? (Eliade 1973: 63). Eliade seems to consider Tantrism a phenomenon that is basically alien to Arian culture, though his position as regard this tends to vary. On the one hand he writes in “Introduction au tantrisme’: Pratiquement, il n'y a presque rien dans le tantrisme qui ne se trouve dgja, sous une forme plus ou moins élaborée, dans le védisme, le brah- ‘manisme ou le bouddhisme. En effet, par exemple, Ie secret de linitia- tion et de la doctrine révélée est ractére distinctif du brahmanis apparticnnent au domaine pan- ppanthéon sont aussi bien bouddhist Ia physiologie mystique est & la base du Hatha-Yoga; I’ jue n'est pas in- On the other hand, in Le Yoga he definitely stresses the non-Aryan nature of the whole of Yoga — and particularly the more extreme forms that are typical of Tantrism —, basing himself on the tenuous evidence of Mohenjo Daro and Harappa and on a Aryan or non-Arian elements in the Ind 1 Persian or Chinese Z One after the other the major themes are des mystic ph ant reference-book for anyone who wished to enter into these studies. Tantric doctrines and experiences remained a recurrent motif through- ut the whole of Eliade’s research in the years that followed. Indeed, in (1)his work as a historian or phenomenologist of religions — ‘ophical-teligious traditions of the East, and of India in particu- lar, held a prominent s‘agisse d'un phénomene spirituel étranger @ nos traditions et, par conséquent, difficile & comprendre et 2 assimiler, Je tantrisme représente une noble et audacieuse création de l'esprit (Masui 1949: 133) Tantrism, therefore, held pride of place in Eliade’s horizon (and, as ents d'un journal, numerous people even approched him privately to be enlightened in Tantric doctrines and practices), but, at the same time, the extension of his work in this field was not very vast — particularly if one considers that most points on Tantrism in the essays written after Le Yoga! are, as is not rarely the case in Eliade's works, little more than mere repetitions of what he had written earlier (‘Croce seul a le génie de dire toujours la méme chose sans se répéter’, he himself admits in Fragments d'un journal (Bliade 1973: 127)). These two facts go to explain, on the one hand, the inclusion in this Conference of a paper on ‘Tantrism — alongside the main themes in Eliade’s work, such as shamanism, yoga or alchemy ~ and, on the other, its relative brevity. have already mentioned the importance of Eliade's writings on Tan- trism and I should now like to explain the reason why T am @ vague feeling of dissatisfaction. They appear to be the outstanding mastery of an extensive secondary literature from which he obtained almost all the sources cited. This procedure, which itself blameworthy, becomes 50, i stich as mnly partially explored and has a huge litera in editions that are not always reliable or more often only to be found lar chapters I and I (Expériences \drogyne ou le mystre de a totale? in itre mystique’) and we 1962 and chapier VI manuscript form. Resigning himself to working on what is already known a scholar who went to India with the express purpose of learni in order to be able to read the Tantric texts. However, in 1978 under the title L’épreuve du labyrinthe, he tells the interviewer: Je me suis dit que jamais je n'aurais 1a compétence d'un Pelliot, d'un qu'un instrument de hheureux de m’en etre prefer lite des rythes, des rites appartenant ces cultures; essayer de les comprendre Eliade 1978: 52). ‘This argument is continued, ideally, in another of his writings: more or less form of contempt. In Fragments d'un journal he quotes Dorothy L. Sayers ~ ‘I’m just the little worker-bee, gathering honey for the queens to eat” — and remarks: Crest bien ce que devraient s‘appliquer & eux-mémes les philologues, Jes érudits et le bibliographes. Mais c’est exactement le contraire qui se produit. D'habitude, les plus infatués, les plus surs de I'importance de leur travaux, ce sont les spéeialistes du détail. Leur puissance de travail ® Cr, also Allen 1978: 108.2 considerable amount of truth in these words, but they rather strike the poverty of philology. We prefer to look as incarnated, for example, in the work of Louis de La Val Etienne Lamotte or Giuseppe Tucci. (Dumézil is the only case in point that comes to mind, but even not make him immune from the often bitter attacks of single speci should say, at least one, any one, so that he is instilled one and for ever with a sense of the density of the document he is working on, and the delicacy required in handling it, if, in using it, he wants to avoid the risk of reducing it to its bare bones. I am thinking, for instance, of the section of Le Yoga devoted to ‘Le Yoga et I'Inde aborigene’, where Eliade maintains that elements of a shamanic structure are present in ancient Buddhism (Eliade 1968: 321 ff.). As Richard Gombrich (Gombrich 1974: 225-431) has shown, I think, irrefutably, none of the three pieces of textual evidence put forward may be considered acceptable. No trace of the first extract, indicated as being from the Buddhacarita, is to be found in this or any other work by ASvagosa; the second and the third quotations, from the Majhimanikaya and the Dhammapada, are given an evidently strained interpretation, which is only rendered possible because the context is not taken into consideration, As these three arguments have been proved to be not valid phi . the shamanistic hypothesis based on them also coltapses*. But let us return to Tantrism. Eliade learnedly draws a coherent pic- ture of it — perhaps a too coherent one. This term, whose vagueness he himself was well aware of (M: wde 1968: 203), covers a groups of which Eliade mentions only the vamdcara, understood according to the currently accepted meaning, which is a rather late one (the systemization * Gombrich’s criticism concerns also several points in Chapter V “Techniques Yoga ‘dans le Boudahisme’ (54) of the cakras that he considers, following Avalon, as being pan-Tantric, is also relatively late). What perhaps represents the highest achievement of Tantrism, both in terms of complexity of thought and of great origin: of the methods adopted, is almost completely absent from this picture: I am referring to so-called Kashmir Shaivism, of which many of the essential texts had already been published and on which two extensive monographies had also appeared. Only the sadhana aspect of Tantrism is deal and ritual aspects which constantly interact ignored. To have an idea of at any tantra to see that the ritual part, the longest. Eliade — I said — dw in fact, of central importance. As I have already mentioned, he sees its ultimate cypher as being the pursuit of the coniunctio oppositorum and he talks about this at lenght in Le Yoga and especially later, in Méphistophéles et ’Androgyne, where he concludes his treatment of the subject by saying server 8 plusieurs reprises: en transcendant les contraires on n'aboutit pas toujours au méme mode d’étre.(...] Il nous faudrait beaucoup plus espace que nous n’en avons prévu pour cet essais pour préciser, & occasion de chaque exemple discuté, & quelle sorte de ‘transcendence’ conduit I’aboltion des contraires (Eliade 1962: 153-54) Now, it would have been interesting to analyse precisely this variety of approches and solutions, rather than concentrate yet again on the gen eral structure. The plane of non-duality ~ in Tantrism — may be reached by exalting contraries; by exploiting contrasting energies; by riding the energy that explodes in extreme situations; by subtly cultivating those almost concealed currents of energy that animate daily reality; by suddenly blocking their continuous flow, as the tortoise does when all at once it draws itself into its shell; by immersing oneself in the voids that open up from time to time in the fabric of everyday existence; by capturing the instant in which a thing or a process is about to happen or has just finished; etc.. These experiences and others are described in the texts. ‘And similarly, the condition of opposites in the coniunctio is extensively |. They are simply abolished or, as happens more often and in the more original currents, they are preserved as the poles between which a perpetually overflowing energy moves. The ultimate plane then 155)becomes the free movement itself: as a surviving passage from the lost ‘Kramasiitras, handed down by Ksemaraja, says, ‘From the penetrate the internal, from the internal to penetrate the external Eliade would reply in the carefully considered words of The Quest. ‘But no man of science has waited until all the facts were assembled be- Eliade’s profound and subtle intuition inevitably turns — like the needle of the compass that turns to the North — towards that which in a given phenomenon is part of a common structure, a more general pattern. ‘This might, in tcf be perfectly legitimate (wheter or not one shares his at, as though dazzled by his to return to the concrete datum only a single part of which — the one it shares with others luminated and its more peculiar nature remaining in the shadow, with the threads that tied it to the context from which it was drawn still entangled. we world and history, as it is, for instance, of his intellectual venture remains undeniable. ® baht antabpravesah, abhyantarit bahyasvardpe pravel dnrdaya (KSTS EA.), p. 46. (56) REFERENCES Allen, D. (1978) Structure and Creativity in Religion. Hermeneutics in Mircea Bliade's inthe. Entretiens avec Claude-Henri Rocget. Pats, 9) The History of Religions. Essays in Methodology. Chicago. Gombrich, R. 1974) Eliade on Buddhism. Religious Studies, 10. 149) Approches de U'inde. Textes et tudes publigs sous la direction de Les Cahiers du Sud. Pai. (71