Advaita Vedanta

 

VERSE 32

 

KAULA MONOMARKS

STRUCTURAL UNITS AND MONOMARKS, WHICH ARE CHARACTERS AS WELL AS FIGURES

 

शिवः शक्तिः कामः क्षिति-रथ रविः शीतकिरणः
स्मरो हंसः शक्र-स्तदनु च परा-मार-हरयः ।
अमी हृल्लेखाभि-स्तिसृभि-रवसानेषु घटिता
भजन्ते वर्णास्ते तव जननि नामावयवताम् 

 

shivas saktih kamah ksitaratha ravis sitakiranah
smaro hamsas sakras tadanu ca para maraharayah
ami hrlekhabhis tisrbhir vavasanesu ghatita
bhajante varnas te tava janani namavayavatam

 

Shiva, Parvati, Eros and earth, sun, moon,
God of Love, Swan and Indra; Para, Mara and Hari
With these three sets, with their heart monomarks suffixed
They adore your letters, o Mother, by way of naming your component limbs.

 

Some clarifications will be needed before the reader can enter into the spirit and full implications of Verses 32 through 35. We know that there were two schools of Tantrism, called the Kaulins and the Samayins. The Kaulins were primarily interested in cultivating a form of absolutist delight or enjoyment through what they understood to be the ontological approach to the absolute source of all delight. Those who practiced this kind of eroticism were not necessarily influenced by the Vedas. They belonged to the ordinary stratum of society. Eating meat, drinking wine of some sort and having sex experiences were to be taken for granted in their lives. They did not feel any guilt in such matters. The Kaula School had two main divisions called Purva Kaula and Uttara Kaula. Purva Kaulins emphasized ontology more than Uttara Kaulins. We could imagine further subdivisions between them. In both, an actual girl of good family was a necessary item in their ritualistic orgies, often conducted secretly in the basements of neglected temples. Although their starting philosophy was something concrete and tangible, they made every effort to rise from Yantra to Mantra through the medium or means of Tantra.

 

In the South Indian school of Tantra, there is a convention of distinguishing divinities by certain syllables such as ha, sa, ka, la, hrim, srim, aim and klim. By convention, each of these syllables stands for a devata, which is a divinity with a special function within the structural dynamic setup of the technique of Tantra, Yantra and Mantra combined, well known by the overall, though rather vague, term of Tantra.

 

In the ritual worship of the Kaulins, letters of the alphabet brought to their minds images of these phenomenal functionaries (devatas) in the universe, in theological, cosmological or psychological terms. The first line of Verse 32 lists three distinct sets of such divinities.

 

The letter Ka represents Shiva, the letter E represents Shakti, I represents Kama, the god of love, and La represents ksiti, the earth. These four form the first group.

 

Then Sun (ravi) as Ka, Moon (sitakirana) as Sa, smara (the god of love) as Ka, swan (hamsa) as Ha and Indra as La, form the second group.

 

The third group consists of Sa, Ka and La which represent Para, Mara and Hari respectively.

 

When we suffix the letter Hrim (in Sanskrit, "hrim" is written with one character or letter. ED), which represents the heart centre, to each of these three groups, it is easy to recognize the favourite conventional fifteen-lettered Mantra belonging to the Adi Vidya called the Pancadasaksari Mantra, which is made up of three sets: Ka, E, I, La, Hrim; Ha, Sa, Ka, La, Hrim; Sa, Ka, La, Hrim. Thus we get a charm of fifteen divinities strung together into an imaginary rosary, and indicated by letters of the Sanskrit alphabet. If the divinities are used as monomarks for purposes of taxonomy, we could also say that the syllables stand for the same divinities understood nominalistically rather than realistically.

 

It is true that sometimes the sixteen-lettered Sadasaksari Mantra is also conventionally understood. The sixteenth letter is supposed to be a secret one, summing up or cancelling out into a total value having an absolutist status. This final touch cannot be imparted except by a personal guru, acting as an intermediary. This must be due to its very abstract epistemological status. Pancadasaksari Mantra and Sadasaksari Mantra both stand for the same tendency to use letters of the alphabet to represent devatas or divinities, each of whom has his own function in the total setup of the absolute Divinity or principle of beauty. We do not propose to enter into the intricacies of such esoteric technicalities, of which there is no end. The reader is referred to other esoteric books such as the Shakta Upanisads and the Shivananda Lahari, both published by the Theosophical Publishing House.

 

This particular school of Kaulins, by intending to bring into proper perspective this total setup within the structure of the Absolute, could be said to be traveling from the "Universal Concrete", as in the actual girl involved in the ritual, to the utmost limit of nominalism, by attempting to raise themselves through aksara. Aksara means values resulting from the fusion of alpha and omega in the alphabet of any language; A being the starting vowel and Ksa being the last consonant in Sanskrit. Aksamala means a rosary of beads which, when understood in the context of Rudra (Shiva), is called a rudraksa mala. In Verse 33 also, the same kind of values are strung together into two rosary-like formations: one as an actual rosary of beads and another as a rosary of oblations of clarified butter derived from the celestial cow.

 

In this verse we can see clearly how Sankara is thinking of this Pancadasaksari Mantra of the Sri Vidya. The tendency of the Kaula Tantra, as we have said, is to ascend from the realistic upward towards the nominalistic, with iconographic divinities used as monomarks which have corresponding lettered syllable combinations with a one-to-one correspondence between the monomarks and the names more symbolically understood. Evidently the pre-Vedic Kaula School of erotic Tantrism is the subject of this verse. For Sankara, the overall purpose or raison d'etre of this kind of Kaula Tantrism is to meditate realistically on the Goddess of Absolute Beauty: first with monomarks, and finally with names applied to each element that might contribute to the beauty significance that the Devi is here meant to represent. It is important to give a name as well as a function to each component element so that the totality might effectively loom into the contemplation of the worshipper, whatever school he might accidentally belong to. Even a wrong worship could be made right by the light of its correct intentionality, according to the Bhagavad Gita (IX:29 - 31). God accepts everything according to the calibre of the person involved. The attitude concerning worship is a catholic one. A man is saved by his intentions only; for his actions in this world may not have amounted to anything, due to uncontrollable circumstances.

 

The three sets of devatas in this verse have each to have the syllable Hrim suffixed. The heart is the centre, which is both a monomark and also something that can be understood by a syllable. It is easy to see the need for suffixing the heart monomark, because the heart refers back to the self at the centre of one's own consciousness, to which all things must refer. When we add the letter M at the end of a syllable like Hrim, we are reminded of the syllable Aum, which also ends in M. The letter A of Aum is an open sound; the letter U is a half-open sound; while the letter M is fully closed. The syllable composed of these three letters suggests the base, sides and apex of a triangle respectively, within the totality called Absolute Beauty or Absolute Value-Significance in human life. We are asked in this verse to recognize three rosary-like garlands adorning the totality of the structure of the Goddess. Between the open syllable and the closed syllable there is implied a cancellation between horizontal and vertical values. When we are able to place properly the three sets indicated, as complete garlands within the total frame of reference represented by the Devi here, we could be expected to have understood Her complete value under three main sets of categories, making up fifteen elements, each based on monomarks and spelled out by letters of the alphabet.

 

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Bhagavad Gita, IX,

29

I (regard) all beings equally. To Me there is none hateful
or dear. They however who worship with devotion, they are
in Me and I too am in them.

30

Even if one of very evil actions should worship Me with a
devotion exclusive of all else, he should be accounted to be good
all the same merely by the fact that he has a properly settled
determination

31

Instantaneously he becomes established in his own right
nature and enters into eternal peace. Believe Me in all
confidence, 0 Son of Kunti (Arjuna), that one affiliated
to Me with fidelity knows no destruction.

 

 

 

 

An example of degenerate religiosity - animal sacrifice.

 

(In this verse, Sankara is revising and revaluing the Tantric use of these "Bija Mantras" which are used as monomarks in their rituals. To a certain extent, they are a kind of schematism or structuralism. Each of these syllables is a meaning signifier or "sememe". A sememe (from Greek σημαίνω (sēmaínō), meaning "mean, signify") is a semantic language unit of meaning, correlative to a morpheme. The concept is relevant in structural semiotics. A sememe is a proposed unit of transmitted or intended meaning; it is atomic or indivisible. ED)

 

 

 

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