"Bengali Tantric Literature"

    

Tantrism lies at the very core of the Hindu tradition. The Tantric movement is of vital importance to Hinduism as a whole and not just to some esoteric devotees.

    Also, Tantrism has been especially popular in certain regions like Bengal. The greatest hold of Shakta worship has been in the Bengal region. Let us, therefore, now look at the Tantric tradition of Bengal in some detail.

    Just as in the rest of the country, where the emotional appeal of the many vernacular songs on Tantric themes is still alive, in Bengal too the songs of Ramprasad on Kali are still popular today, even among non-Tantrics. The Kapalika and the cremation-ground figure prominently in these Tantric songs.

    Such songs and ballads have become an integral part of ritual, in its private and public forms. Thus, ballads to the Goddess are ceremonially sung during her annual festival. And at this point, it may also be noted that in parts of Bengal, Durga is first worshiped by untouchable priests and only then by Brahmans, since this is supposed to please the Goddess. We may now turn to particular aspects of the Bengali Tantric literature.

The Charyapadas 

    The Charya literature of the Tantric Siddhas has been called the first significant expression of the “peculiar style and temper of the Bengali people”. Being mostly Buddhist, the Siddhas were very much opposed to Brahmanical orthodoxy and to the caste system. This spirit largely influenced the course of Bengali literature.

    These songs are the oldest literary record of Bengali and of the other languages of the region, and date from before the tenth century A.D. They became very popular because of their simplicity, and deep religious emotion. The Siddhas who wrote them were mainly Vajrayanist yogins, but they wrote for the ordinary people. The unconventional nature of their religious practices is conveyed by symbols such as that of the Brahman who is attracted to the charming but ritually impure Dombi or washerwoman. These Vajrayana Siddhas were also associated with the royal courts, e.g. during the Pala dynasty.

Influence of Vaishnavism 

    The Vaishnavite revival in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The influence of Vaishnava religion and literature moulded the attitudes of late-medieval Shakta Tantrics. Thus, the concept of bhakti, which emphasizes the personalistic aspect of the divine, came to be important even for Bengali Shakta groups in this period.

    By then, Tantrism had become an established tradition in the Bengal region. Great Tantrics, like Krishnananda Agamavagisha (1500 A.D.), had composed important Sanskrit works on Tantric ritual and theology. Maithili poets like Vidyapati had written ballads and songs about the Goddess, which greatly influenced Bengali Tantrism. The local courts were of Shaiva or Shakta faith, and Shakta literature enjoyed royal patronage and became part of the official vernacular literature.

    Then, due to the Vaishnavite influence, bhakti themes like the lila of the young Krishna inspired the Tantric poets. This was reflected in the Tantric image of the Goddess as Kumari, the virgin Uma, which inspired devotees to love her like a doting father would. The motif of the mother separated from her newly-wed daughter (as Menaka was separated from Parvati, when the latter married Shiva) was culturally very fertile. Thus, the autumnal Durga festival is a time of family reunion and joy, and the daughter’s visit is like Uma herself visiting her natal home.

    From the late-medieval period, Bengal produced a vast body of Tantric literature. Late-seventeenth and early eighteenth century Bengal witnessed a revival of creative Hindu Tantrism, which produced a body of mystic hymns full of emotional devotion (i.e. Bhakti) to the Goddess. Many Shakta temples were established, mainly dedicated to Kali.

    In the eighteenth century, the lyric poems (padas) of the great Vaishnava poets became very influential in Bengal. Among Tantrics also, devotional songs about the Goddess replaced ballads; the songs of Ramprasad especially became very popular among the common people. He introduced a new style of Shakta poetry by combining the earlier lyric tradition of the Charyapadas with Vaishnavite bhakti, and this innovation became very popular.

    The era of Ramprasad was one in which the earlier sectarian exclusiveness was replaced by a religious syncretism. Themes about the playful and popular Krishna were used to express delicate emotions, even by the worshipers of Kali. (The development of a common Bengali literary culture had actually started in the seventeenth century.) Thus, Ramprasad declared that there was really no difference between Kali and Krishna. This harmony was maintained even into the late-nineteenth century by poets like Kamalakanta Bhattacharya. The neo-Shakta movement of the eighteenth century found its culmination in the figure of the great nineteenth-century mystic Ramakrishna.

Vaishnava-Sahajiyas, Bauls, etc. 

    There is also in Bengali a large body of Tantric literature by Vaishnava-Sahajiyas, Bauls and Natha-Siddha yogins. All three groups followed similar methods of esoteric ritual and meditation. The first group has produced a large number of treatises on their doctrines and sexual-yogic practices, which are similar to early Hindu and Buddhist Tantric literature. Their adored deity is Radha, the beloved of Krishna. These Bengali Tantras were composed between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Influenced by Chaitanya’s Vaishnavite movement, their fervent religious aesthetics is very different from that of the impersonal Sanskrit Tantras. Their doctrines, however, did influence some Shakta practitioners, and the poet Kamalakanta compared the rise of Kundalini to the sahasrara with Radha’s secret visit to Krishna.