Manthānabhairavatantram Kumārikārikākhaṇḍaḥ: The Section Concerning the Virgin Goddess

of the Tantra of the Churning Bhairava by Mark S. G. Dyczkowski

Review by: David Gordon White
Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 131, No. 2 (April-June 2011), pp. 295-297
Published by: American Oriental Society
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 Reviews of Books

Manthanabhairavatantram Kumarikakhandah: The Section Concerning the Virgin Goddess of the Tan
tra of the Churning Bhairava. By Mark S. G. Dyczkowski. Varanasi: Indica Books, 2009. 14
vols. $775.00, Rs. 15500.

This prodigious work of scholarship, two decades in the making, is an essential contribution
to the study of Hindu tantra, and specifically to the cult of the goddess Kubjika, of which the
Manthanabhairavatantra (MBhT) is a primary scripture. In terms of its sheer volume, this work is

unprecedented in the field of Indology: the sole comparable scholarly productions are the Bhandarkar
Oriental Research Institute's critical edition of the Mahabharata (1927-1966) and the Baroda Oriental
Institute's edition of the Ramayana (1960-1975). However, whereas these are simply critical editions,
Dyczkowski's work also comprises a translation and a massive introductory study. While these are

entirely the fruits of his own labors, the work of establishing both the present edition—as well as edi
tions of several other unedited tantras and texts used for the purpose of translating and exegeting the
MBhT itself—was carried out in concert with a team of five assistants, whom Dyczkowski acknowl

edges (1: xxviii).

While the early ninth-century Kubjikamata is considered its "root text," the later, far more massive

24,000-verse MBhT is an exponentially richer source for the Kubjika cult and traditions. The present
fourteen-volume work treats only of the Kumarika Khanda (KK), the first of the three divisions of this
work (the others are the Yoga Khanda and Siddha Khanda). Dyczkowski's 1735-page introduction
to the text comprises the first three volumes, which are broadly divided into discussions of Kubjika's

mythology, cultus, and canon. The Sanskrit text (in Devanagari script), English translation, and notes
are presented in volumes four through thirteen, and volume fourteen is devoted to bibliography and
indexes. Volumes containing text and translation alternate with volumes devoted to notes: so, for exam
ple, volume four is composed of the text and translation of chapters one to seven of the KK, while
volume five contains notes to the same chapters, with each chapter's notes divided into Sankrit text (for
alternate readings and discussions of grammar, etc.) and English translation (presented as commentary
on the verses themselves).
While Dyczkowski rarely refers to this as a critical edition of the KK (for example, at 4: liv), it
is in fact based on all of the extant manuscripts of the work, of which there are twelve, all housed
in the Nepal National Archives or held in private collections elsewhere
Valley (4: in the Kathmandu
xlvi-xlviii). Given the KK's size and the corrupt state of the Sanskrit
in its manuscript witnesses,
there is nothing that one could criticize with regard to the edition of this work. Rather, Dyczkowski
and his collaborators are to be applauded for their superhuman work in spinning gold from straw, as
it were. The same may be said for the English translation, in spite of the fact that it is contains many

typographical errors. Far more than simply a heavily annotated edition and translation of the sixty-nine

chapters of the KK itself (whose content Dyczkowski helpfully summarizes in 3: 221-73), this is a
veritable encyclopedia of Hindu tantra, with specific reference to the Kubjika cult and its entire canon.
In effect, Dyczkowski's work comprises a study and exegesis of no fewer than twenty-four major and
minor scriptures, commentaries, and liturgies, which are discussed in detail (3: 310-406) and cross
referenced with passages from the KK in both the author's copious notes and in the form of synoptic
tabulations (14: 3-22). In addition, the critical apparatus is rich in appendices, tables, diagrams, figures,
and charts, which run into the hundreds of pages.
As is the general rule with tantric scripture, the MBhT is a sprawling, composite work, a cobbling
together of heterogeneous topics that run the gamut from cosmology to iconography, ritual, devo
tion, initiation, subtle body mapping, mythology, lineages, mantra, yantra, myth, and far more. Often
cribbed from other works, these fragments (khandas) seldom follow any logical order, because they
were essentially compiled as reference works for tantric specialists. The same may be said for the

Journal of the American Oriental Society 131.2 (2011) 295

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296 Journal of the American Oriental Society 131.2 (2011)

present work. The few who will choose to read its fourteen volumes from cover to cover (to cover
. . .) will find that it is, like the text of the KK itself, rife with repetitions, digressions, and tangential
discussions. So, for example, Dyczkowski's general introduction covers much of the material that is
also found in his copious notes to the English translation of the text, notes which occupy over half of
the content of volumes 5,1,9, 11, and 13. Most will likely use this set of volumes as a reference work,
and work back from the three indexes and slokardhanukramanl contained in volume 14 into the actual
edition and translation of the KK. Given the disorganized state of the text itself and the corrupt state
of its original Sanskrit (4: li-liv), this is the most fruitful way to approach the work, and to mine it for
its rich tantric data.
With one important exception, Dyczkowski seldom ventures outside the world of the text to situate
the Kubjika cult and its exponents in the real world contexts in which they practiced. A notable, and

fascinating, exception is his treatment of the historical development of the Kubjika corpus, in which he
analyzes textual, archeological, inscriptional, and philological data to chart the two major phases of the
canon's redaction (3: 273-310). While there is scant data to localize the first phase, which comprises
the Kubjikamata itself as well as the initial redaction of the Srimatottara, Dyczkowski's scholarly
sleuthing skills are brought to the fore in his discussion of the second phase, during which the compil

ing of the great bulk of the Kubjika scriptures, including the MBhT, took place. Here, the locus of the
Kubiika traditions was the Koiikana resion. located between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea—

and, further inland, the western Deccan plateau. In fact, as Dyczkowski notes repeatedly, these Kubjika
traditions have especially flourished in the Kathmandu Valley. Virtually every extant manuscript of its

principal and secondary scriptures, commentaries, liturgies, and so forth is found there. As the "secret"
form of Taleju, Kubjika was the royal goddess of the Valley's Newar populations, who continue to ven
erate her in accordance with her scriptural injunctions down to the present day. This being said, the fact
that Nepal is barely mentioned in the scriptures themselves indicates that the canon was closed by the
time it was embraced by the Newars. However, a significant body of secondary literature, in the form
of liturgical works required for the performance of the Kubjika rites, is entirely Nepali (3: 274). While
little attention is devoted in the present work to the this-worldly context of the Kubjika traditions, that
context may be found in two chapters of Dyczkowski's A Journey in the World of the Tantras, also

published by Indica Books (2004).

As he indicates in the opening sentences of his acknowledgments (1: xxvii), Dyczkowski has lived
most of the past thirty-five years "in India, the Holy Land of the Rsis, Siddhas and Yoginls." Elsewhere,
he makes no secret of his scholar-practitioner status: his book is "dedicated to the Goddess who willed
it," and his acknowledgements include "the One Infinite Being" and "the revered Kashmiri master
Swami Laksmanjoo [who] sealed my quest with his initiation and divinely inspired teachings." At
the same time, the list of scholars whom he also acknowledges—from India, Nepal, England, and the
United States—islong, and his appreciations of several of them quite reverential. In many respects,
this book is the legacy of Dyczkowski's dual intellectual apprenticeship, at times reading more like
an "indigenous" tantric commentary than a "Western" work of scholarship. I do not intend this as a
criticism: other scholar-practitioners have taken such a hybrid approach with great success, as Edwin

Bryant (The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary with Insights from
the Traditional Commentators [New York: North Point Press, 2009]) has done for the Yoga Sutras. In

Dyczkowski's case, discerned links between Vedic and tantric traditions—e.g., between the Vedic Aditi
and her earring {kundala) and the tantric Kubjika and the kundalini (2: 3-4), or the dark color of the
Vedic god Rudra and the tantric goddess Kubjika (1: 44-45)—rather smack of brahminical "punditry,"
and do little to elucidate the data found in the Kubjika canon itself.
But these are quibbles, which pale in comparison to the remarkable insights and depths of under

standing that Dyczkowski communicates through the length and breadth of his work, insights that he
could not have had, had he not himself been initiated into the tantras from the inside. To give but one

example, his discussion of the development of tantric systems, the mature fruit of decades of study and

reflection, is profound, yet deceptively simple:

Tantric systems develop by a process of accretion from the systems that preceded them. It is
therefore possible to arrange them roughly in a chronological order and discern remnants of

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 Reviews of Books 297

earlier systems and even pre-Tantric strata in them. Although breaks and distinctions between
traditions are evident, there is always a no less evident continuity between them. The reason
for this is simple. New Tantric systems are constructed by the initiates of earlier ones. As we
go from one to the other and each one evolves, we retrace their history, rising, as it were, from

lower, earlier systems to higher, later ones. Viewed by initiates from the inside, this journey

through time is marked by the rungs of the ladder of initiation they ascend to gain access to their
own school, which for them is the highest. (2: 49)

No scholar willing to undertake such a journey could hope to find a more masterful guide than Mark

Dyczkowski. This stunning work of erudition, which will long stand as one of the great monuments in
the field of Hindu tantra, deserves a place in every research university library as well as on the book
shelves of any serious scholar of South Asian religions.

David Gordon White

University of California, Santa Barbara

The Final Word: The Caitanya Caritamrta and the Grammar of Religious Tradition. By Tony K.
Stewart. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Pp. xxvii + 442. $74.

The Final Word is a masterful and long-awaited work which examines the literary and theologi
cal history of the Gaudlya Vaisnava movement and makes some startling new claims about the role
and purpose of Krsnadasa Kaviraja's hagiography, the Caitanya Caritamrta (henceforth CC, Stewart's
"Final Word"). This work is an essential complement to the Dimock and Stewart translation of the CC
that appeared a few years ago, work on which necessarily delayed Stewart's completion of the present

piece. Further, it in itself comprises the "final word" on the early years of the Gaudlya movement, as
no one else has attempted such a comprehensive examination of the formation and definition of that

stage of the community. SK De and Ramakanta Cakravarty have both produced useful overviews of
the Gaudlyas, but neither volume is as voluminous or comprehensive as Stewart's work. Other scholars
have written on specific subgroups of the Gaudlyas—Glen Hayes and Jason Fuller in their as-yet

unpublished dissertations; Alan Entwistle on Braj; David Haberman on rasa theory; and this reviewer
on the Advaitacarya corpus. The Final Word, however, brings all previous scholarship together and

expands on it, and, more important, through its careful consideration of an enormous set of hitherto
unexamined works, pushes our understanding of the CC well beyond previous boundaries. Scholars
interested in hagiography, in community definition and formation, in the ways pieces of literature
inform subsequent production and use, in rhetorical strategy, in addition, of course, to those working
specifically in South Asia or even medieval Bengal, will all find much to ponder here.
Stewart s periodic re-statements of the issue under consideration allow the reader to follow the

development of his overarching argument through the book. As the cover "blurb" states, "Tony K.
Stewart investigates how, with no central leadership, no institutional authority, and no geographic
center, a religious community nevertheless came to define itself, fix its textual canon, and flourish."
Indeed the community had begun to show fissures even before the death of its charismatic leader. What,
then, would come to be identifiable as Gaudlya Vaisnavism? Stewart discusses the problem in terms of

theology, of ritual, and of canon, returning each time to the CC as the key, the "grammar," that allows
us to understand and even marvel at the school's remarkable coherence in the presence of considerable
difference. For example, on p. 216, he moves the discussion forward with "There were two challenges
to be met: reconfigure the constitution of the panca tattva, the only novel theological construct that
was sufficiently popular to resist the basic structure of divinity articulated by the gosvamis, and, in that
reconfiguration, establish a new form of advanced ritual practice for the adept, manjari sadhana. Not

surprisingly, the two went "hand-in-hand." And then proceeds to explain just how those two challenges
went "hand-in-hand." This leads him to explain how Caitanya came to be viewed as the divine couple
Radha and Krsna. On p.219, "the best practice was one that aided and abetted Radha's connections

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