Reviews of Books 823

open and closed syllables in determining vocalic developments. The demonstration that the quantity
of Avestan / and u normally reflects the original quantities, if allowance is made for a number of late
conditioned changes, shows just how worthwhile it is to reinvestigate every aspect of this language's
vowel system without any preconceptions. Whether most of de Vaan's findings gain general acceptance
or not, his work should ensure that the debate on all aspects of Avestan vocalism is reopened, and that
opinions based on insufficient evidence are revised.

ELIZABETH TUCKER
OXFORD UNIVERSITY

A Journey in the World of the Tantras. By MARK S. G. DYCZKOWSKI. Varanasi: INDICA BOOKS, 2004.
Pp. 315. Rs. 375.

A collection of six articles and chapters written between 1986 and 2001, the present volume is very
much an account of the personal and scholarly itinerary taken by Mark Dyczkowski, the undisputed
master of Kubjika materials, and arguably the most original and wide-ranging scholar of Hindu tantra
of the present generation, if not of all time. A semi-permanent resident of Varanasi for the past thirty
years, Dyczkowski is bicultural in a way unrivalled by any living westem scholar of Indian religions,
combining the sterling textualist training in the medieval tantras he received at Oxford under Alexis
Sanderson in the 1970s with a total immersion in the living traditions of Hinduism in Varanasi in
India, and Kathmandu in Nepal.
In many respects, the six studies contained in this volume are a record of a journey away from a
purely textual, philological, and philosophical approach to Kashmiri Saivism, and toward a more
nuanced, complex, historically and anthropologically rigorous interpretation of the same. The first
three—on the subjects of divine self-awareness in the writings of Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta;
abhavavdda, the doctrine of non-being; and the ninth-tenth century Sarnvitprakasa of Vamanadatta,
an idealist monist Vaisnava work—are purely textualist studies of Kashmiri Saiva metaphysics. The
second three—on the sacred geography of the Kubjika tantras (complemented by twenty-three pages
of maps, diagrams, and figures), scriptural representations of the goddess Kubjika as an androgyne,
and the cult of Kubjika in the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal—shade increasingly toward a historical,
anthropological, and sociological synthesis. At the end of the book, Dyczkowski leaves his readers on
the road that he is still traveling, a road whose final goal is a massive critical edition and study of the
Manthdnabhairava Tantra, a seminal text of the so-called pascimdmndya, the "Westem (or Latter-Day)
Transmission" that centers on the cult of the goddess Kubjika. This study, over a decade in the making,
will appear in the course of the coming years.
The articles brought together in this volume may be read on two levels, those of text and subtext.
The text—the articles themselves—is comprised of closely argued, highly detailed studies of specific
philosophical, metaphysical, theological, and anthropological issues in Hindu Sakta-Saiva tantra. The
subtext, often found in the abundant footnotes to each article, contains observations of a more general
order, on the nature of Hindu tantra; the relationship between text and context, map and territory,
idealized system and lived experience, langue and parole. Particularly compelling are Dyczkowski's
insights into the implications of the shift from nomadism to sedentarism for the emergence of pil-
grimage as a religious practice (pp. 18-19); the interplay of local and translocal power places in
medieval South Asian religious landscapes (pp. 20-21, 97); the relationships between the idealized
world of Sanskrit text, human context, and historical change (pp. 25-26, 239-40); the circularity of
pilgrimage (p. 122, n. 52); the relationship between intemalized sacred geography in the individual and
its projection onto a civic space when kings become tantric initiates (p. 136); the difference between
a skull-bearing vow and a skull-bearing (Kapalika) sect, the existence of which Dyczkowski doubts
(pp. 138-39); the power of place in archaic South Asian religions, and the internalization of the same
824 Journal of the American Oriental Society 124.4 (2004)

as part of the process of Sanskritization (pp. 141, 146-47); the differences between tantric
Kaulism, with its multiple secret families of goddesses, and Puranic Saktism, with its public cult of
the goddess Durga (pp. 148; 240, n. 76); parallels and reversals between tantric initiation into the
family of a god or goddess, with its household, clans, caste distinctions, and the renouncer's rejection
of the same in human society (p. 180, n. 11); the relationship between public and private, and the
outer and inner pantheons of tantric deities with the graded hierarchies of Newar society in the Kath-
mandu Valley (pp. 194-95); the role of Brahmins as culture brokers in colonial and post-colonial
(mis)understandings of Hinduism (p. 202, n. 13); the "contested hierarchies" of Kathmandu Valley
society, with the tantric blurring of the distinction between priest and layman, and the disconnect
between brahmanic precept and actual practice in caste relations and the division of priestly labor
(pp. 203-6); the dialectic relationship between "core" indigenous traditions and high-caste interpre-
tations and appropriations of the same (pp. 208, 214); the dynamics and implications of shifts from
aniconic to iconic representations of the godhead (pp. 216-18); the relationship between tantra and the
process of Sanskritization (pp. 218-19); methodological insights into the ways in which anthropological
fieldwork can be usefully supplemented by the work of the textual scholar, referring specifically to the
sleuthing of Alexis Sanderson into tantric liturgies (p. 224, n. 43); the relationship between Brahmins
and ascetics in the formation, propagation, domestication, and institutionalization of tantra (pp. 95-96;
146; 231, n. 60); and the human agency in the innovation of new tantric systems, through permutations
on the mantras, iconographies, and metaphysics of earlier systems (p. 236).
This collection of articles may be criticized on a small number of points. Background information
and certain discussions are repeated from one chapter to the next, due to the fact that these originally
appeared as stand-alone studies. While he often alludes to the tantric "yogi" in his articles, Dycz-
kowski never satisfactorily defines the term. The text is marred by numerous spelling and typograph-
ical errors that a careful editor should have noted and corrected. (While Indica Books performs an
important service in producing important Indological works out of its humble publishing house in
Varanasi, Dyczkowski's monumental work deserves a more established European or North American
publisher.)
To date, the scholarly study of Hindu tantra has been carried forward in a parallel fashion in three
different disciplines—classical textual exegesis, art history, and anthropology—with very little commu-
nication across disciplinary boundaries. It is as if the textual, art historical, and ethnographic records
were documenting three different traditions. With this collection of studies, and most particularly the
ninety-eight-page final chapter on "The Cult of the Goddess Kubjika," Dyczkowski effects a masterful
synthesis of all three complementary approaches to a single, millenarian tradition. The cult of the
goddess Kubjika is the most vibrant living Hindu tantric tradition on the planet, permeating every
level of society, polity, culture, and art in the Kathmandu Valley. In the light of Dyczkowski's ground-
breaking archaeology of this tradition, one wonders why so much scholarly attention has been devoted,
over the past generation, to the purely archival traditions of the Saivism of Kashmir or to the strictly
brahmanical Srividya tradition of modern-day Tamilnadu.

DAVID GORDON WHITE

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA

Reason's Traces: Identity and Interpretation in Indian and Tibetan Buddhist Thought. By MATTHEW
T. KAPSTEIN. Studies in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism. Boston: WISDOM PUBLICATIONS, 2001.
Pp. xviii + 473. $34.95.

This is a collection of essays and translations, some previously published and some revised from
the author's 1986 doctoral dissertation. More than half the work is taken up with Indian Buddhist dis-
cussions of the self and personal identity. But there are also essays on other topics in Indian and Tibetan