Discerning Philosophy in the Uttarāmnāya Liturgies of the Newars

Abstract

Although the Kaula literature of the Newars did not give rise to a systematic philosophical school like that of their Kashmiri counterparts, I will argue in this article that philosophical thinking can be detected in Newar ritual texts. I do this by translating and analysing the unpublished Kālīsūtra, an important hymn found in Newar Uttarāmnāya liturgies whose transmission and composition will also be touched upon. This hymn indicates that the cult of Kālī in Nepal had a distinct ontological stance tending towards a non-dualism which was world-affirming while also seeing consciousness as the ultimate reality. Several key conceptual strands of the Sūtra such as the relationship between transcendence and immanence, reality and cognition and the divine and the body will be elaborated upon. In the process, I will show that the Kālīsūtra’s philosophy brings into sharper focus doctrines already present in the canonical Krama and thus displays many affinities with the Pratyabhijñā, a school which shares its cultic backdrop.

It is well known that both the Valleys of Kashmir and Kathmandu were active centres of Śaiva patronage in the medieval period where almost the entire array of cults from this tradition flourished, often in competition with one another.¹ However, whereas the Tantric Śaivism of the former is celebrated for giving rise to one of the most sophisticated non-dualistic systems of Indian philosophy known as the Pratyabhijñā, the Kathmandu Valley did not produce any systematic Tantric philosophy to speak of. This is not to say that the Kathmandu Valley was not responsible for any literature of its own and the vast array of liturgical material as well as home-grown Tantras² which gained a relatively widespread following shows that the Valley was a centre for literary production of a different kind. In this article, I will demonstrate that although ritual literature does not offer an explicit and systematic philosophy, by closely examining non-prescriptive material in Newar liturgies of the Uttarāmnāya, a Kaula school of Tantrism focused on forms of Kālī, we may detect an undercurrent of philosophy or in the very least “pseudo-philosophy” or “pre-philosophy”. To limit our scope amongst the thousands of Newar liturgical material available, this speculation will be done in relation to just one text—the Kālīsūtra—a hymn which appears in several Newar Uttarāmnāya liturgies. On account of its importance, which will be discussed later, we may argue that this hymn is a useful tool for unlocking ideas implicit in Uttarāmnāya ritual more broadly. A careful reading of this material against the backdrop of wider Tantric literature will enable us to tease out the strands of philosophical thinking in Newar ritual texts and may reveal that the positions taken by the Kālīsūtra are not entirely different from the type of non-dualism advanced by the Pratyabhijñā.

The reason why I see this line of comparison as permissible is because the Kashmiri Pratyabhijñā and the Newar Uttarāmnāya in fact arose out of the shared cultic backdrop of the canonical Krama. A number of scholars, especially Sanderson (1992, 2007),³ have shown that the Pratyabhijñā, although couched in the language of non-sectarian Śāstric discourse, is part of the larger project of systematising the theology of Trika and Krama scriptures. Particularly relevant to us is the fact that the key proponents of the Pratyabhijñā—Somānanda, Utpaladeva, Abhinavagupta and Kṣemaraja—were initiated into the Krama lineage.⁴ In fact, three of the principal Krama texts harnessed by the Kashmiri exegetes⁵—the Jayadrathayāmala, the Kālikākulapañcaśataka, the Kālīkulakramasadbhāva—are also widely reproduced in Nepal and cited in its liturgies. Significantly, our principal witness for the Kālīsūtra—the thirteenth century Kālīkulakramārcana- extracts many of its instructions for various rites from these same sources.⁶

Although the chasm between the scriptural background of a school of thought and its philosophy as logically presented by exegetes can be very wide in Indian traditions, in terms of the Pratyabhijñā, the kernel of its systematic thinking seems to already be evident in Krama scriptures. Indeed, both Törzsök (2014) and Sanderson (1992) argue that amongst the many Śaiva scriptures that were understood to be non-dualist by exegetes, it is mainly those of the Krama that show this ontology in earnest.⁷ This is so much so that Sanderson believes that the Krama was a decisive factor in the formation of the Pratyabhijñā itself.⁸ Moreover, in certain post-scriptural Krama works that deal with both ritual and philosophy, the relationship between non-dual ontology and the ritual process is explicitly laid out, prompting us to ask ourselves whether it is even necessary to speculate on the philosophical outlook of liturgies.

For instance, a text like the Anonymous Mahānayaprakāśa⁹ makes the relationship between ritual and philosophy clear by showing that the phases of worship of the Krama’s pantheon (the six ancillary cakras of the Krama (the Pañcapīṭha, Pañcavāha, Prakāśa, Ānanda, Mūrti and Vṛnda) followed by the kramas (sequences) of Sṛṣṭi, Sthiti, Saṁhāra and Anākhya) directly represent the phases and the factors of cognition as consciousness is projected towards the external object and eventually returns to its absolute and non-dual ground in the supreme Kālī. However, the Mahānayaprakāśa is a Kashmiri work most likely inspired by the Pratyabhijñā¹⁰ while none of the Newar Uttarāmnāya liturgies that I am aware of openly mention the equivalences between phases of worship and phases of cognition. Furthermore, unlike the situation in South India where the influence of Pratyabhijñā was widespread,¹¹ there are no Newar works that I am aware that are steeped in terminology exclusive to Pratyabhijñā while the texts of this school are not recorded in any pre-modern Newar manuscripts. Therefore, we must turn to Newar liturgies themselves and not material from elsewhere to understand what these liturgists may have had in common with more systematic forms of Śaiva non-dualism.

The Kālīsūtra’s Significance and Its Possible Transmission History

Paddhatis are predominantly concerned with the practicalities of ritual and therefore their mostly prescriptive material gives little insight into doctrine or philosophy. However, non-prescriptive material does feature in Newar paddhatis in the form of short pronouncements on the nature of reality (tattvopadeśa) or in the form of hymns (sūtra or stotra) extoling the deity which are chanted in the course of worship. The six-versed Kālīsūtra is such a hymn and is selected because of its presence in several texts, including the Kālīkulakramārcana, arguably the most important extant Krama liturgy written in the Kathmandu Valley. We may accord this status to the Kālīkulakramārcana on account of it being not only the most comprehensive Krama paddhati known to us, covering all the steps of routine and occasional worship but also because it is the oldest known Krama work from the Valley. Its significance is bolstered by the authorship of Vimalaprabodha, who was the preceptor of Arimalla (r. 1200–1216), the first King of the Malla dynasty.¹²

Firstly, it is important to note that the Kālīsūtra’s appearance in Newar liturgies shows its transmission and compositional history to be by no means straightforward. In the Kālīkulakramārcana itself, the six verses of the hymn are not found together but are present at two points in the text. The Kālīsūtra’s first verse acts as the Kālīkulakramārcana’s maṅgalācaraṇa while its five remaining verses are chanted during arguably the most important and elaborate rite of the text, the Mahāśivarātrividhi where it is explicitly named Kālīsūtra.¹³ The fact that Vimalaprabodha refers to it by means of a discrete title shows that these five verses were most likely not his composition. As far as I have been able to ascertain, the work begins to appear as a single hymn of six rather than five verses in a liturgy known as the Guhyakālīnirvāṇapūjāpaddhati. This is a paddhati which was written, according to its colophon, in 1380 CE during the reign of King Jayasthitimalla, and is one of only a few liturgies to share the exact same pantheon, sequence and mantras of worship as the Kālīkulakramārcana. In this liturgy, the hymn which is also called the Kālīsūtra occurs at the conclusion of the entire ritual sequence.¹⁴ Its appearance as a six rather than five-versed work is also attested in later manuscripts such as a collection of hymns known as the Stotrasaṃgraha—possibly an eighteenth century compilation on account of its script and paper material—where the six verses are called the Śrīkālikādevīnityastuti.¹⁵ This perhaps proves that by the time of the reign of Jayasthitimalla, which was over a century and a half after the Kālīkulakramārcana’s composition, a redactor had decided to create a single hymn out of the Kālīkulakramārcana’s maṅgalācaraṇa and the five-versed sūtra found in its Mahāśivarātrividhi. This was in a way a natural step because the subject matter, symbolism and style of these two verse segments are already highly consonant. It is also in the spirit of the cohesion of its message that I have decided to present this hymn in its six-versed version in this article while keeping in mind its possible origins as a five-versed work.

Moreover, additional proof that the hymn could have originally been five-versed is attested in several liturgies of Siddhilakṣmī in which the Kālīsūtra is chanted in the course of worship without its first verse. These manuscripts include the Siddhilakṣmyadhivāsanasthaṇḍilārcanavidhi and Siddhilakṣmīkramasthaṇḍilārcanavidhi.¹⁶ It is unsurprising that Kālī-oriented material is found in the liturgies of this goddess because there is evidence to suggest that the two deities have been connected since early years of the Tantric Kālī cult and, in Nepal, both are said to be the central deities of the Uttarāmnāya or Northern Transmission of the Kaula.¹⁷ Another layer of complication is added to the hymn’s compositional history since the stotra’s second and sixth verses (if we are to count them according to the six-versed version) also appear in slightly altered form as the maṅgalācaraṇa of the Devīdvyardhaśatikā, Kālikākulapañcaśataka and Yonigahvara,¹⁸ three early important Tantras of the Krama. To elaborate, verse 2, padas a–c of the Kālīsūtra is almost identical to padas a–c of the maṅgalācaraṇa of these three Tantras while pada d in these Tantras somewhat resembles pada d of verse 6 of the Kālīsūtra.¹⁹ In short, it seems that this maṅgalācaraṇa contains the five-versed version of the hymn in kernel form. This very same verse also serves as the first verse of the Mahāśivarātrividhi chant of another liturgy written by Vimalaprabodha as yet unmentioned in secondary literature known as the Parvatrayavidhāna and appears as a line in a hymn to Siddhilakṣmī in two other paddhatis known as the Siddhilakṣmyārātrikavidhiand Siddhilakṣmīkoṭyāhutidinakṛtya.²⁰

Since the Devidvyardhaśatikā, the Kālikākulapañcaśataka and Yonigahvara are considerably older than the Kālīkulakramārcana, this gives rise to the possibility that the five-versed version of the Kālīsūtra itself was originally composed as an elaboration upon a single verse with its beginning and ending mirroring this canonical maṅgalācaraṇa. This would mean the hymn’s compositional history roughly underwent the following steps: (1) its appearance as a single verse maṅgalācaraṇa of three or more canonical Tantras of the Krama, (2) its expansion into five verses as found in the Mahāśivarātrividhi of the Kālīkulakramārcana, (3) the combination of the Kālīkulakramārcana’s maṅgalācaraṇa with these five verses to form a six-versed Kālīsūtra as found in the Guhyakālīnirvāṇapūjāpaddhati and later Newar material.

Although we can only provide a conjecture of the hymn’s compositional history, we can confidently maintain its significance for the Newar Uttarāmnāya tradition. Thus, its presence in one form or another in multiple liturgies, its appearance at crucial points in the important Kālīkulakramārcana and its shared material with the core Tantras of the Krama allow us to argue that the Kālīsūtra can be used to examine the philosophical stance of Newar ritual texts. Moreover, since to my knowledge, the hymn as a whole has been neither published nor referred to in secondary literature, our edition and translation below will contribute to available sources on the Krama in Nepal.

Edition and Translation of the Kālīsūtra

Having discussed the importance of the Kālīsūtra and its witnesses, we can turn to the hymn itself. Our transcription of the hymn below is taken from two manuscripts of the Kālīkulakramārcana whose readings for it are almost identical.²¹ Since certain compounds describing the goddess are highly ambiguous, some of my translation remains speculative. The ellipsis in meaning will be elaborated later on in the analysis of the philosophy of the Sūtra. Its verses are as follows:

yā candre bhūtabhinnā ravihavisadane gotracandraiś ca rudrair

hṛnnābhau kandacakre tridahanakuhare dvādaśaikena saṃsthā |

sṛṣṭisthairyāntakartrī trikalakhakhayutāṃ sarvatattvaikavṛttiṃ

tāṃ kālīṃ naumi nityaṃ paramapadamayīṃ satsadānandadātrīm ∥(1)

yā sāntakāgnikuharotthitabhāsvarūpā somārkavahnitripathodaramadhyasaṃsthā|

ciccetyacitta²²viṣayākṣavilīnabhāvā sṛṣṭisthitipralayakāraṇatattvarūpā ∥(2)

jñānātmikā sakalabhāvavibhāgabhinnā ānandananditasadāparamārthalīnā |

nāḍīkalākalitavigrahamantrarūpā saptadaśākṣaragatā khalu chidravarṇā ∥(3)

vidyāśatākṣaravarā kulakarmacaṇḍā trailokyalampaṭavarā kulasaṃghasiddhā|

ekā hy anekagaticakravaraprapūjyā satsaṅgasiddhavarabhairavapūjitā²³ yā ∥(4)

kālī kalākalitakālakalormivāhā śrīcakramadhyanilayā navabhedabhinnā |

pūrṇā śaśāṅkakalitā kulabhānurūpā vijñānasiddhivaravahnikulaprasiddhā ∥(5)

ālambakhecarapadā paramapracaṇḍā cakrakrame gaditamantramahārthavelā |

satsaṅgayoganiratā kulasiddhidātrī svābhāvabhāvikiparāṃ praṇamāmi kālīṃ ∥(6)

She is present in the moon (Sṛṣṭikālī) as divided into the Five (Kālīs), in the sun (Sthitikālī) and the abode of the oblation (Saṃhārakālī) as 17 and 11 (Kālīs), (found respectively) in the navel, in the heart and in the root wheel (kandacakra), present in the void of the three fires (Anākhyakālī) as 13 (Kālīs) and as the enacter of emission, maintenance and dissolution. I always pay homage to her who is joined with that which is the void of the void of the three kalās (Bhāsākālī), the sole activity of the tattvas, consisting in the supreme realm, granting the true and eternal bliss. She is one whose own nature is the light arising from the void of the Fire of Time (antakāgni), dwelling in the centre and interior of the three paths of moon, sun and fire. She is one in whom the states of cognition (literally “states of the sense and sense object”) arising from mind (the cogniser), object of thought (the cognised) and thought (the means of cognition) are dissolved while having the form of that reality which causes emission, maintenance and dissolution. She has the nature of knowledge and is split into the divisions of phenomenal reality (sakalabhāva) yet always resides in supreme reality delighted by joy. She is one whose form as mantra is made of the kalās and whose physical form (vigraha) is made of the nāḍīs,²⁴ present in the seventeen-syllabled mantra,²⁵ and indeed has the nature of the “opening” (chidra). She is the most excellent one hundred-syllabled mantra, fierce in relation to the deeds of the kula,²⁶ that excellent one who is greedy for the three worlds, established by the congregation of the kula. She is one yet also to be worshipped in the best of cakras whose paths are multiple and revered by the best of Bhairavas, siddhas and those of good company (satsaṅga).²⁷ That Kālī propels the waves of the digits of time effected by kalā, whose abode is the centre of the blessed cakra, split into the nine divisions (of syllables). She is manifest as the full moon, possesses the form of the sun of the kula and is celebrated by the kula as the excellent fire of the fulfilment of knowledge. She is one whose state is both that which is with support (the phenomenal world) and that of the farers of the void, supremely fierce, the shore of the Mahārtha²⁸ which is proclaimed as mantra in the sequence of cakras. She is committed to union with those of good company and bestows the magical attainments of the kula. I pay homage to that Kālī, the supreme one in whose self rests both existence and non-existence.

Unpacking the First Verse of the Sūtra

Before moving on to an analysis of the implicit philosophy of the Kālīsūtra, we should first unpack the meaning of the first, highly esoteric verse which will be important for our understanding of the other verses. This can only be done by making reference to the wider cultic context of the Krama since the subject of the first verse is the Five Kālīs who are the core pantheon of the Krama. The Krama’s sequence of routine worship according to the Kālīkulakramārcana involves 11 ancillary phases of worship (the Pañcapīṭha, Pañcavāha, Mūrti, Prakāśa, Ānanda and six cakras of 64 yoginīs that are in other sources often combined into the Vṛndacakra²⁹) which culminate in propitiating the central Kālīs. In wider Krama literature, these central Kālīs are either four or five in number depending on the tradition followed.³⁰ The Kālīkulakramārcana’s system has five Kālīs (Sṛṣṭi, Sthiti, Saṃhāra, Anākhya and Bhāsā) who are each located at the centre of a pantheon of ancillary Kālīs. In the scriptural and exegetical literature, these five are often ascribed roles discernable from their names that are either cosmic or associated with the phases of cognition from the emission of the object of cognition to its identity with supreme consciousness represented by the last Kālī.

Certain words in the first verse of the Kālīsūtra act as common codes for numbers while the symbols of the moon, sun and fire (often collectively known as tryagni or “three fires”) in some Krama texts are symbolic of Sṛṣṭi, Sthiti and Saṃhāra. By pairing these veiled terms together, we see that the verse is an oblique exposition of the basic arrangement of the cakras of the five Kālīs. The reason why we can definitively understand the tryagni as representing the three Kālīs is because such a link is made explicit at two points in the Kālikākulapañcaśataka (vv 4.3–7 and vv. 7.36–39) where the three Kālīs are imagined in a column with Sṛṣṭi at the top represented as the moon, Sthiti known in this scripture known as Avatāraka as the sun and Saṃhāra at the base as the Fire of Time. We know the Kālīsūtra to be indebted to or at least strongly connected with the Kālikākulapañcaśataka due to their shared verse. Therefore, although the symbolism of the three fires is polysemous in Tantric literature,³¹ we can lean towards this particular reading. The first coded association in the verse is between candra (Sṛṣṭikālī) and the numeric code bhūta. Since bhūta can mean the (five) elements and commonly denotes “five”, we can understand this association as a reference to the five ancillary Kālīs in the Sṛṣṭikālīcakra. These five are known as the Pañcayoni and are located on five petals around Sṛṣṭikālī. Next is ravi (Sthitikālī) who is linked to gotracandra. Gotra, often denoting 16, and candra, which can mean 1, add up to make 17, which is the number of figures in the Sthitikālīcakra if we are to include the central Sthitikālī herself (these 16 figures surrounding Sthitikālī are known as the four Yuganāthas and the twelve Rājaputras). Meanwhile, rudra is a well-known code for 11 and is paired with havisadana, literally the abode of the oblation or another term for fire. These 11 figures of the fire are quite clearly the ten deities of the Saṃhārakālīcakra (known as Saṃhāriṇīs in the Kālīkulakramārcana) alongside the central Saṃhārakālī.

The three Kālīcakras represented by the three fires (Sṛṣṭi, Sthiti, Saṃhāra) are said by the Kālīsūtra to be located in the heart, navel and root cakra. Since these three bodily locations are aligned as a column with the heart at the top and the root at its base, they presumably correspond to the vertical arrangement of Kālīs described in the Kālikākulapañcaśataka 7.36–39 with Sṛṣṭi at the top (heart), Sthiti in the middle (navel) and Saṃhāra at the base (root cakra). A fourth location—tridahanakuhara—is also given in this verse, which must correspond to Anākhya. This is consolidated by the fact that this Kālī is said to be present as thirteen, given in uncoded form as dvādaśaikena, which is a reference to the ubiquitous formulation of 12 Kālīs of the Anākhyacakra who surround Anākhyakālī. Her location as the “void of the three fires” also conforms with the Krama idea that each of the Five Kālīs is subsumed by the succeeding Kālī and that the succeeding Kālī supersedes the power of her predecessors. Thus, for instance, after the worship of each Kālīcakra in the Kālīkulakramārcana, we are told to envision that Kālī dissolving into her successor as denoted by stock formulas such as “layam kūryāt” or “layam nayet”. Anākhya is thus the void or point of dissolution of the moon, sun and fire since the three preceding Kālīs successively dissolve into her. Moreover, the descriptor sṛṣṭisthairyāntakartrī (the enacter of emission, maintenance and dissolution) arguably applies to her as well because transcending the three that precede her, she has absorbed their three cosmic functions.

However, since the Kālīkulakramārcana preaches a system of five Kālīs, we would also expect the presence of Bhāsākālī in this verse. We may argue that the verse is neatly split so that the qualifiers of the first four Kālīs are declined in the nominative agreeing with the relative pronoun yā while all descriptors of Bhāsākālī are declined in the accusative, becoming the direct object of naumi and conforming to tām. Accordingly, the description trikalakhakhayutām should apply to Bhāsā. Following the principle that each Kālī dissolves into her successor, I interpret this compound to mean that Bhāsā is “the void of the void of the three Kālīs” or the point of dissolution of the void of the three Kālīs. We have already seen the use of tridahanakuhara (the void of the three fires) as a descriptor for Anākhya. If we interpret trikala/trikalā as a reference to Sṛṣṭi, Sthiti and Saṃhāra, then trikalakha (this can be translated as the “void of the three kalās” with one of the many meanings of kalā in Tantric literature being the cosmic or creative power of the divine³²) must be the equivalent of tridahanakuhara (Anākhya). Since Bhāsā transcends and absorbs Anākhya, she can be described as devoid even of that void (khakha). This doubling of apophatic language (void of the void) may seem strange and redundant at first sight but is actually a common feature in the Krama and will be discussed in detail below. Meanwhile, the three other descriptors attached to Bhāsākālī in this verse merely emphasise her supremacy.

The Tenets of Śaiva Non-dualism Contained in the Sūtra

Now that we have deciphered the Sūtra’s first verse which acts as a foundation to the arrangement of its pantheon, let us return to the possible philosophical position of the Kālīsūtra. I hope to show here that despite the distance—in geography and genre—between the systematic formulation of Śaiva non-dualism epitomised by the Pratyabhijñā and the Newar Kālīsūtra, we can nonetheless find the key tenets of the former in this short hymn. Before demonstrating how this is the case, we may succinctly remind ourselves of how the philosophy of Śaiva non-dualism is distinctive. This can be done first by distinguishing it from its dualistic counterpart—the Śaiva Siddhānta—and then by contrasting it with a more well-known type of monism—Advaita Vedānta—to discern its particular variety of non-dualism. The distinction between the Pratyabhijñā and the Siddhānta is brought into sharp relief in their understanding of cosmology. Sanderson (1992) very aptly summarises the dualistic position as “the doctrine that (1) Śiva, (2) souls and (3) the rest of reality, mental and material, are essentially and eternally distinct from each other. According to this view, Śiva is only the efficient cause (nimittakāraṇam) of the universe. Its material case (upadānakāraṇam), that out of which it is fashioned, of which it consists, and into which it dissolves, is not Śiva but māyā”. Meanwhile, in contrast, the Śaiva non-dualist “holds that it is Śiva alone, as a single autonomous and omnipotent consciousness, who is manifest in the form of individual souls, māyā, and its products.”³³

To home in on the Pratyabhijñā position, there is the active affirmation that Śiva is to be wholly found in all of creation. This hallmark doctrine is known as sarvasarvātmavāda or the existence of all things in one another, a term already used by Pratyabhijñā’s earliest proponent, Somānanda.³⁴ Torella captures this doctrine thus in the introduction to his edition of the Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā: “In this universe where everything is penetrated by Śiva, nothing remains in the margins, all is mirrored even in the humblest thing and the whole nature of Śiva is present in it”.³⁵ This distinguishes the Pratyabhijñā from Advaita Vedānta, a school which maintains that ultimate reality as Brahman is entirely quiescent (śānta), partless (niṣkala) and unchanging. In doing so, it must impute the multiplicity of the universe to the concept of nescience (avidyā). Instead, Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta, in the Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā and its commentaries, uphold the oneness of the divine while also accounting for difference in the universe. This is achieved by arguing that the Lord, being supreme consciousness, is by his very nature dynamic and possesses complete freedom (svātantrya) to assume whatever form he so wishes.³⁶

The essential tenet of non-dualism described above—that the divine is both the efficient and material cause—is arguably reflected in the Kālīsūtra. As per this classical non-dual Śaiva stance, the Kālīsūtra states that the divine both wills the differentiated universe to come about and is also the very substance out of which the universe is created. In her guise as the efficient cause of the universe, Kālī is described as “having the form of the reality which causes emission, maintenance and dissolution” (sṛṣṭisthitipralayakāraṇatattvarūpā). She is thus the one who impels the cosmic cycles. However, it is Kālī and not some other phenomena that undergoes transformation into the differentiated universe as suggested by how she herself is “split into the divisions of phenomenal reality” (sakalabhāvavibhāgabhinnā) and is “the sole activity of the tattvas” (sarvatattvaikavṛttiṃ), rendering Kālī the universe’s material cause as well. Moreover, mirroring the unique flavour of monism of the Pratyabhijñā, we also see the suggestion in the Kālīsūtra that the divine is equally transcendent and immanent. The Kālīsūtra therefore portrays Kālī as bridging dichotomies such as the singular and the multiple, the gross and the quiescent and absence and presence. She is, for instance, described as “singular yet to be worshipped in the best of cakras whose paths are multiple” (ekā hy anekagaticakravaraprapūjyā) in v. 4; “one whose state is both that which is with support (the phenomenal world) and that of the farers of the void (utterly transcendent)” (ālambakhecarapādā) in v.6; and “the supreme one in whose self rests both existence and non-existence” (svābhāvabhāvikiparām). In this way, we can understand the Kālīsūtra as propounding a non-dualism which attempts to reconcile unity and diversity. It therefore shares the same ontological basis of qualified non-dualism as the proponents of sarvasarvātmavāda.

Apophatic Language and the Symbolism of Fire

At this point, it is also worth noting that the Kālīsūtra proclaims its non-dual ontology in another manner that holds currency in both a wider Krama and Pratyabhijñā context, namely the pairing of apophatic language with the symbolism of “fire”. The characterisation of Kālī through terms such as “cavity” (kuhara), “emptiness” (śunyatā) and “void” (kha) is a common feature of Krama literature and is found in abundance in a text like the Kālikākulapañcaśataka where we frequently find supreme reality described through such descriptors as śunyasaṃjñitam (“known as empty”), śunyaśunyataram (“more empty than the empty”), khasvarūpā (“possessing the own nature of the void”) and khamadhyasthā (“situated in the middle of the void”).³⁷ With her designation as “more empty than the empty”, we can see the scriptural roots of the double apophasis found in the Sūtra’s first verse where Kālī is said to be “joined with void of the void” (khakhayutā). At a more superficial level, the function of this apophatic language is simply to denote the ineffability of the divine. In other words, the supreme Kālī is so beyond conceptualisation that it is more accurate to refrain from making any positive assertions and to characterise her through the language of absence.

However, in a Krama context and within the Kālīsūtra itself, this apophasis is more importantly there to make a point about non-duality. This point becomes clearer when we examine verse 2 and the pairing of apophasis with the metaphor of the Fire of Time, another common trope in Krama scripture.³⁸ Kālī is described as “one whose own nature is the light which arises from the void of the fire of time” (antakāgnikuharotthitabhāsvarūpā). This symbolism is used because such a fire, which occurs at the end of an aeon to destroy the universe as part of cyclic creation and destruction, is traditionally conceived as burning so relentlessly that it leaves no trace of its fuel. When applied to the supreme Kālī who, as we have seen in verse 1, causes the dissolution of all realities as she successively transcends them, this metaphor clearly denotes how the goddess absorbs the phenomenal universe into herself until no trace of it remains. In light of this, the description of her as “kuhara” therefore implies that this fiery dissolution is such that she creates a void beyond which and besides which there are no other phenomena. The metaphor suggests that in ultimate reality, in the total absence of anything else, Kālī is the non-dual ground of the cosmos.

By viewing the metaphor in verse 2 in this way, we can begin to understand another otherwise cryptic descriptor. In verse 4, she is described as trailokyalampaṭavarā (greedy for the triple world). The term lampaṭa usually has a negative connotation denoting “greedy”, “lustful” or “covetous”. When understood against her earlier characterisation as the Fire of Time though, we understand her greediness for the triple world in the context of the conflagration that is ever eager to consume its fuel in the form of the three worlds and to absorb this fuel into itself. This understanding of the term lampaṭa is also backed by its usage or the usage of equivalent terms in the Kālikākulapañcaśataka where, for instance, Kālī is referred to as “covetous of consuming the tattvas” (tattvagrasanalolupā in v. 2.31) and “greedy solely for consuming the universe” (viśvagrasaikalampaṭām in v. 2.71).

The prevalent symbolism of fire in Krama scripture also came to influence the discourse of the Pratyabhijñā. However, in this school, this concept of Kālī as fire is intimately linked to the activity of consciousness in order to serve the purpose of a systematic idealist non-dualism. In terminology that is comparable to that of the Kālīsūtra, Kṣemarāja, for instance, explains that consciousness is fire on account of its habit of consuming the universe (citir eva viśvagrasanaśīlatvāt vahniḥ). By this he means that just as fire assimilates its fuel into itself, the knower, in the act of cognition, also absorbs into his awareness the fuel of the external object (prameyendhanam).³⁹ In its supreme mode, however, this consciousness is akin to an unquenchable conflagration that “consumes whole” (alamgrāsa) and “violently cooks” (haṭhapāka) the phenomenal world so that even the latent traces (saṃskāra) of otherness are destroyed.⁴⁰ In this state of liberation, ultimate non-duality is achieved through the obliteration of the distinction between the knower and the object of knowledge.

Non-dualism and Consciousness

As already alluded to above, the ontology of the Pratyabhijñā is an idealistic non-dualism in which all reality is not only the same as the divine but also identical to it in the form of supreme consciousness. The differentiated world we perceive is only this consciousness manifesting itself as multiple and other. This idealism had its roots in Krama literature where statements identifying consciousness with reality are already prevalent.⁴¹ We may also argue that a similar idealism shapes the philosophy of the Kālīsūtra. This is seen in how Kālī is both predicated as having the very nature of awareness (jñānātmikā) in verse 3 and as being the basis of differentiated cognition (ciccetyacittaviṣayākṣavilīnabhāvā) in verse 2. The latter compound is somewhat elliptical. I will offer several possible interpretations of it in this section but begin with the way Dyczkowski has translated the compound as it appears in the Yonigahvara. As already mentioned, verse 2 of the Kālīsūtra closely resembles the first verse of this Tantra. Dyczkowski reconstructs this verse from Yonigahvara, which he states is very corrupt in the sole surviving manuscript of the scripture, by comparing it to the first verse of the Devīdvyardhaśatikā.⁴² He records the compound we are concerned and his emendation of it as follows: “ciccetyacittaviṣayākṣavilīnabhāvāṁ [k: cicceta- -virīnabhāvaṁ]”.⁴³ We should note that like us and in line with the critical editions of the Devīdvyardhaśatikā and Kālikākulapañcaśataka, he has emended ceta to cetya (see fn. 19). He translates the compound as a genitive bahuvrīhi qualifying Kālī meaning “(she) whose state is one in which consciousness (cit), the object of thought (cetya), the mind (citta), the objects of sense (viṣaya) and the senses (akṣa) have been dissolved away’. He thus splits “ciccetyacittaviṣayākṣa” into five different components. I tentatively propose below a second interpretation in which this segment of the compound can be understood as referring to the traditional triad in Indian epistemology of knower, means of knowledge and object of knowledge.

The way I cautiously understand the compound in question is to interpret it as a locative bahuvrīhi pertaining to Kālī with a possible vigraha as follows: “ciccetyaccittebhyo/ciccetyacittasambandhino viṣayākṣasya vilīnā bhāvā yasyāṃ sā”.

This would give it the meaning of “she in whom the states of cognition resulting from/connected to the cogniser, object of cognition and means of cognition are dissolved”. The reader will notice the awkward position of the past passive participle “vilīnā” which technically should be placed as the first member of compound (vilīnaciccetyacittaviṣayākṣabhāvā) but a jumbled word order of this kind is not uncommon in scriptural Tantric literature. Meanwhile, I have understood “the states of sense-object and sense” (viṣayākṣasya bhāvāḥ) to mean phenomenal cognition since terms that designate states of union (often denoted by words such as saṃyoga or saṃnikarṣa) between sense-object (viṣaya or artha) and sense faculty (akṣa or indriya) connote an individual act or moment of cognition in Sanskrit, for instance, such widely used terms as viṣayendriyasaṃyoga or indriyārthsaṃnikarṣa.⁴⁴ The three other components of the compound—cit, cetya and citta—I interpret as referring to the cogniser, object of cognition and means of cognition. This would follow logically since in most Śāstric Indian views of epistemology, the three necessary factors for a moment of cognition to arise are the pramātṛ (knower), prameya (object of knowledge) and pramāṇa (means of knowing). Cetya, assuming that our emendation is permissible, is an unambiguous synonym of prameya. Although it is difficult to discern the nuance between cit and citta, my reason for distinguishing them in the above way is because in common usage cit more strongly signifies the mind or conscious agent itself while citta can denote a discrete thought or thought process. If taken in the way I understand it, the compound implies that Kālī is the substratum for the invidual act of cognition and the cognitive factors that make that cognition possible.

There are of course other ways of breaking down this compound and it would be possible to maintain the interpretation of cit as the cogniser while viewing cetya and citta as respectively paired with viṣaya and akṣa (in the sense of cetyam eva viṣayaḥ and cittam eva akṣam) thus rendering the meaning “she in whom the states of knower (cit), the object of knowledge as cetya (the thing to be cognised) and the means of knowledge as citta (thinking) are dissolved”. This is arguably closer to Dyczkowski’s interpretation. A final alternative, especially if we do not amend ceta to cetya as I have done, is to understand ceta as an altered form of cetas or a shortened form of cetana/cetanā for metri causa. In doing so, we might see this triad as denoting different levels of consciousness or the cognising subject similar to the manner in which Kṣemarāja distinguishes between cit/citi, cetana and citta as different stages of the descent of consciousness from supreme reality to limited subject.⁴⁵ With such an interpretation, we could still maintain the meaning of viṣaya and akṣa as the two other components of cognition (the prameya and pramāṇa). We might summarise by saying that despite the different interpretations of this compound and no matter which we select, they all seem to suggest the common idea that Kālī absorbs into herself all the different factors of cognition since she is non-dual consciousness itself.

This idea that all cognition is absorbed in the divine as supreme consciousness found in Krama literature and the Kālīsūtra is also the doctrinal foundation of the Pratyabhijñā. Unlike its mystical expression in Krama literature though, the Pratyabhijñā develops this non-dual idealism in a philosophically rigorous manner by which it can engage with other Śāstric schools. This is done by harnessing the various arguments of the Vijñānavādins against the Sautrāntikas in the refutation of the real existence of external objects (bahyārtha) and the establishment of mind only, especially as witnessed in the fifth chapter of the Jñānādhikāra of the Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā.⁴⁶ The final position of a single supreme consciousness against the Buddhist position of radical ontological diversity is meanwhile achieved by appealing to the necessity for a synthesis (anusaṃdhāna) between the cogniser and object of cognition in order to explain the phenomenon of memory, something which they argue the Buddhist concept of saṃskāras fails to account for.⁴⁷ The unification of the factors of cognition in the supreme Kālī is also turned into a systematic theology by Abhinavagupta, one of the Pratyabhijñā’s key proponents. We see this in his explanation of the concept of the twelve Kālīs in the Tantrasāra and Tantrāloka who are explained as twelve in number because they represent the different phases of cognition as it projects outwards and returns to its non-dual ground (Sṛṣṭi, Sthiti, Saṃhāra and Anākhya) applied to the three factors of consciousness (pramātṛ, prameya and pramāṇa).⁴⁸ In this way, the supreme Kālī, according to Abhinavagupta, undergirds each of these twelve, making her the basis of every moment of cognition. In short, what we again see is a line of thought derived from Krama literature and systematised by Kashimiri exegesis but also conspicuous in a ritual setting in the Kālīsūtra.

The Goddess and the Body

We further observe the non-dualism of the Krama expressed in the Kālīsūtra through identification between the macrocosmic and the microcosmic. This is most evident in the way the Sūtra locates the functions of Sṛṣṭi, Sthiti and Saṃhāra which are represented as the moon, sun and fire in the body of the worshipper. In this way, the individual’s body becomes a locus for both the universal cycle of creation and dissolution as well as the cosmic triple fire. In relation to verse 1, we have already shown how the Kālīsūtra identifies the cakras of Sṛṣṭi, Sthiti and Saṃhāra with the heart, navel and root cakras of the body. This identification between the divine and the body is again affirmed by locating these three goddesses in a different triad of human anatomy. In verse 2, we are told that the supreme Kālī is “present in the centre and interior of the three paths of “moon”, “sun” and fire”” (somārkavahnitripathodaramadhyasaṃsthā). The tripatha commonly denotes the three channels of the body—the iḍā, pingalā and suṣumnā—while these channels’ identification with the symbols of the moon, sun and fire is a widespread one in Tantric literature. It is, for instance, already present in the Svacchandabhairavatantra,⁴⁹ a strata of Tantric literature that is older than the Krama. These channels are also arguably the feature of human anatomy that throughout time is the most heavily associated with feminine power.⁵⁰ However, in the Kālīsūtra itself, these channels do not only signify macrocosmic elements but also unequivocally correspond to the three Kālīs since the synonymity of moon, sun and fire with Sṛṣṭi, Sthiti and Saṃhāra is already made in verse 1 and because, in this compound, the supreme Kālī, who is understood as nothing but the unification of these three Kālīs, is said to dwell at the centre of these channels.

Practices aimed at realising that the cosmic powers of the three Kālīs are already present in the body were seemingly prevalent in the Krama. A famous example of this is found in Kṣemarāja’s explanation of the liberatory practice known as the kramamudrā which he cites from the canonical but now lost Kramasūtras.⁵¹ Kṣemarāja glosses this term by stating that it is an activity which causes the external sequence (krama) in the form of the three cosmic functions of Sṛṣṭi, Sthiti and Saṃhāra to be sealed (mudrayati) in the self. The identification between self and cosmic powers allows the worshipper to be penetrated (samāviṣta) by what he assumed to be external to him and to realise that these cosmic powers are no different to the operations of his own internal consciousness. Thus, by aligning the inner and outer, even when his awareness is extroverted, he can still dwell in non-duality. The process of locating the macrocosmic and the divine in the human body encapsulated by the Kālīsūtra also becomes a recurrent theme in the ritual sequence of the Kālīkulakramārcana. This is, for instance, seen in two ritual steps which form part of the preparatory rites (paripāṭi) before the sequence of routine worship, namely the Ātmapūjā and the Sanyāsadhyānavidhi. In the former, the Krama’s 11 ancillary cakras are deposited into different parts of the body and then imagined as subsumed into the Five Kālīs while in the Sanyāsadhyānavidhi, different parts of the adept’s body are divinised and transformed into the body of the goddess.

It should also be noted that the Kālīsūtra contains yet another epithet linking the goddess to the body but one with more archaic connotations. This is the description of the goddess as chidravarṇā (she whose appearance is “chidra”). In conventional usage, the term chidra simply means a hole or an opening and thus we might assume that this is another apophatic description of the goddess synonymous with kuhara or kha. However, chidra also has a more technical sense associated with the sinister activities of female spirits in the earliest strata of Tantric yoginī literature. As Törzsök explains, “in exorcistic contexts, this word denotes the vulnerable point through which a spirit enters someone̍’s body or through which the evil eye (dṛṣṭipāta) can be effective.”⁵² This word is used interchangeably with other terms such as marman or dvāra. Although possession by yoginīs was a fate to be avoided at all costs in the period of such texts, the positive possession by the goddess was eargerly courted later in the Kaula. As Sanderson has shown,⁵³ in a Kaula milieu, the outer signs of possession were observed during initiation to indicate that the initiand had received the goddess’s descent of power (śaktipāta) and was thus a fitting candidate for Kaula worship. It this thus perhaps with this sense that we see Kālī counterintuitively extolled as marmaghātinī (“the piercer of the weak points”) in many Newar liturgies and it is also with such an understanding that the epithet chidravarṇā presumably belongs. This makes the use of this descriptor in the Kālīsūtra another reminder of the role of the body as a vessel for transformation rather than something to be repudiated.

Conclusion

To conclude, what this article has hopefully shown is that the Kālīsūtra possesses certain philosophical positions and that its philosophy can be identified as a specific type of non-dualism. This non-dualism has both idealistic and world-affirming characteristics in that it sees reality as no different to consciousness but also refuses to abnegate phenomenal experience and the human body. I have therefore argued that the ontological stance of the Kālīsūtra is thus not so different to that of Pratyabhijñā. This is not surprising given their shared Krama scriptural substratum. The Kālīsūtra by and large reflects the doctrines found in Tantras such as the Kālikākulapañcaśataka but brings these doctrines into sharper relief by distilling them in a short hymn of six verses. Moreover, insofar as the Sūtra reflects the viewpoints of the liturgies in which it so prominently features, we may state that the Uttarāmnāya paddhatis of the Newars were not just texts concerned with the mundane practicalities of ritual performance but are indeed guided by some philosophical thinking.