alexander jacob
worship that followed them are relatively easier to date
since they flourish around the beginning of the Kali
Yuga, which is traditional y fixed at the historical date
of.3102 B.C.253 – even though early temple cults are attested
already in the sixth millennium B.C., in Ubaid in southern
Mesopotamia.254
The Indic literary references to the Vedic sage Agastya
are of special significance in identifying the sources of
the Hamitic spiritual tradition since he is traditional y
considered to be the sage who conveyed Vedic wisdom to
the Tamils. In the Tamil Kal atam (10th c. A.D.), Skanda/
Muruga, or Subrahmanya, is said to have bestowed the
Vedic knowledge on Agastya, who then transmitted this
wisdom to “South India” having crossed the “Vindhya”
mountain range. It is quite probable that the sage Agastya
is actual y a reference to Akkad,255 and the transmission of
Vedic wisdom to “South India” a modern rendering of the
traditional memory of a migration of proto-Akkadians
from northern Mesopotamia to the Uruk region of
southern Mesopotamia. The reference to the “Vindhya”
mountain range suggests that this immigration proceeded
from a region north-east of Kish, since there are no high
mountains south of Kish. Agastya's spiritual instruction
of the Tamils also permits a location of the proto-Tamils
among the Sumerians of Uruk.
The Dravidians of the “South India” of the Kal atam
may have been proto-Tamils as distinguished from the
proto-Dravidian Manu. These proto-Tamils seem to
have been contemporaneous with the rulers of Uruk. An
and the Indus Valley.
253 This is the calculation of the early (ca. 6th c. A.D.) astronomical treatise, Sūrya Siddhānta.
254 See H. Frankfort, Archaeology and the Sumerian Problem, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1932, p.19.
255 See A. Jacob, Ātman, Ch.I; Brahman, Ch.IV.
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indo-european mythology and religion
interesting episode in the Sanskrit poem of Kālidāsa (5th
c. A.D.), Raghuvamsha (VI,59ff.), refers to Agastya’s being the officiating priest of a Pāndya (Tamil) king who is the
contemporary of Aja (the grandfather of the Ikshvāku king
Rama), and the capital of the Pāndya king here is called not
Madurai, as one would have expected if the scene were set
in South India, but rather “Uraga”,256 which might indeed
refer to the Sumerian Uruk itself. Aja may be represented
in the Sumerian king-list as Aka,257 of the first dynasty of
Kish, which preceded the foundation of Uruk. The first
rulers of Kish were thus proto-Akkadians from whom
the Ikshvākus were derived. Ikshvāku itself seems to be
identical to Akshak258 in the Sumerian King-List.259 One of
the extant Sumerian histories related to “Gilgamesh and
Agga” too refers to the initial supremacy of Kish and the
north under the king Agga, son of Enmebaraggesi, who
demands the submission of Gilgamesh in Uruk.260 This
means that the proto-Akkadian Kish and Kosala are
identical and the Treta Yuga date of the story of Rāma,
while a chronological exaggeration, an indication of the
greater antiquity of this “avatār” to that of Krishna in the
following Dvāpara Yuga.
256 See G.S. Ghurye, Indian Acculturation: Agasthya and Skandha, Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1977, p.31.
257 The “centum” quality of Sumerian is also evident in the Sumerian word for “eye”, “igi”, which is closer to the Germanic “auge” than to the Sanskritic “akshi”.
258 Akshak was later called Upi (Gk. Opis) and may, like Kish, have been situated in the southern vicinity of modern Baghdad.
259 See T. Jacobsen, The Sumerian King-List, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939, p.107.
260 See J.B. Pritchard, ANET, pp.44-7. In the Sumerian King-List, Aka is a king of the first dynasty (at Kish), though Gilgamesh follows apparently later in the second dynasty (at Uruk) after the fall of Kish (see T. Jacobsen, op.cit., pp.85, 89-91).
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Agastya is said to have learned the “difficult language”
of the Tamils261 from either Muruga or directly, from
Muruga’s father Shiva.262 The reference in Kālidasa must
be to a time when the Uruk Sumerians (speaking an
agglutinative language) were still somewhat alien to the
Akkadians (speaking an inflected language). The fact that
Agastya is said to have crossed the “Vindhya” mountains
in order to reach Uraga suggests that the Kish dynasties
included peoples who arrived from farther north.
These northern Mesopotamians and Elamites may have
imparted their spiritual wisdom to the proto-Akkadians
who then relayed it to the Sumerians of Uruk, whose
political ascendancy seems to have been established first
in the south.
The Hamitic religious tradition which came to the fore
in the age of temple building is essential y that of Tantra.
The term Tantra itself may mean ‘essential constitution’
or 'doctrine'. It may also be derived from the root “tan”
which means “to extend”, a concept that is also associated
with the Vedic sacrifice.263 Although the origins of Tantra
are obscure it seems most probable that they did not
arise among the Āryan Brāhmans.264 We have seen that
Jainism, unlike Buddhism, is averse to Tantric practices.
The Āryans who maintained the essential y esoteric Vedic
tradition of fire-worship were, likewise, original y opposed
to the Hamitic religious tradition centred on temple
worship—which they considered to be inappropriately
exoteric—just as they were to the various Kundalini
Yogic attempts to control the “chakras” in Tantra. The
261 Modern Dravidian languages, like Sumerian, are agglutinative, in contradistinction to the inflected Āryan languages.
262 See K. Zvelebil, Tamil Traditions on Subrahmanya-Murugan, Madras: Institute of Asian Studies, 1991, p.24.
263 See, for instance, Rgveda X,130.
264 See G. Flood, ibid., pp.161-62. 113
indo-european mythology and religion
Manusmriti (III,152), for example, records the aversion of the Āryan brāhmans to the temple priests who followed
the Āgamic tradition of Hamitic origin: “Doctors, temple-
priests, meat-sellers and such should be excluded from the
sacrifices to the gods and manes”. Besides, the description
of all of Tantra as “liberality” in Manusmriti, I,86265 is a clear indication of the contempt with which it was viewed
by the Brāhmans. Heesterman has noted the relative lack
of importance of the priestly office in ancient Greece and
Iran too.266 He attributes the rise of the priesthood to the
development of the temple cults in the ancient Near East.
Tantra is less focussed on the macrocosm than
Brāhmanical yajna and concentrates rather on the
microcosm through several symbolistic rituals involving
mandalas (yantras that represent larger universal
and cosmic structures), yantras (symbolic geometric
diagrams), mantras (mystical syl abic chants), nyāsas
(invocation of the deity to enter the human body), mudras
(symbolic gestures), pūja (worship), yātras (pilgrimages)
and dīksha(initiation). Teun Goudriaan defines Tantric
practices as a “systematic quest for salvation or spiritual
excellence”267 by realizing and fostering the divine within
one's own body, one that is a simultaneous union of spirit-
matter and the masculine-feminine and has the ultimate
goal of realizing the “primal blissful state of non-duality”.
Unlike the Shramana doctrines, Tantra is not entirely
world-abjuring but maintains that one can realise the
divine even in one's corporeal condition.
265 See p.94.
266 J.C. Heesterman, The Broken World of Sacrifice: An Essay on Ancient Indian Ritual, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993, p.184.
267 T. Goudriaan, S. Gupta, Hindu Tantric and Shākta Literature, Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1981, p.1.
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The Āgamas
Tantra is based principal y on Āgama (“inherited
scriptures”) rather than Vedic texts, though, as the
name Āgama implies, it certainly draws on very ancient
sources of sacred ritual.268 The doctrines of the Āgamas
are divided into four stages, starting with Charya (selfless
conduct and service) and Kriya (esoteric worship and the
construction of temples and sculptures) and proceeding
to Yoga (spiritual concentration) and Jnāna (supreme
knowledge). There is no focus on fire-worship in the
Āgamas. The four aspects deal with, first, the rules relating
to the observance of religious rites, second, rules for the
construction of temples and for sculpting, third, yoga, and
mental discipline, and, final y, philosophical knowledge.
The lowest form of Āgamic practice, therefore, is that of
temple worship and the highest the supreme knowledge
of the Supreme Being. The fact that Yoga is included in
the Tantra system suggests that it is a more comprehensive
one than the Shramana traditions deriving from Sāmkhya-
Yoga.
The Āgama texts are normal y constituted of speeches
made by Shiva to Pārvati, whereas the texts that contain
speeches made by the latter to her consort are called
Nigama. Yamala texts involve the worship of united deities.
The Āgamas are written in Sanskrit using the South Indian
Grantha script rather than the Devanāgari. The Āgama
texts are divided into three types, Tantra (Sattvaguna – or
based on the quality of Sattva), Yamala (Rajoguna – or
based on the quality of Rajas) and Damara (Tamoguna
– or based on the quality of Tamas). Although drawing
268 According to Flood, the Tantric texts were composed in the 8th century A.D. (see G. Flood, An Introduction to Hinduism, p.159) but this may only be the approximate date of the compilation of Tantric doctrines that had an earlier origin.
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indo-european mythology and religion
on the Vedic tradition, Āgama claims to supersede it. As
Flood points out,
The mainstream tantric texts of the Pancharatra and
Shaiva Siddhanta maintain a close proximity to the
vedic tradition and prescribe a whole way of life that
incorporates vedic rites of passage [samksaras] …
along with the supererogatory tantric rites of their
tradition.269
Āgama considers the universe as a whole whose every
single part bears an influence on the others. Thus a system
of sympathetic magic was developed out of it in which the
final aim of the spiritual adept (sādhaka) is to transform,
within his consciousness, his own person as well as
cult-objects and rites into that which these phenomena
essential y are. Every god is indeed represented by a ‘bija’
or seminal mantra which embodies the essence of the
god. Thus the syl able ‘ram’ betokens Agni, ‘dam’ Vishnu,
‘horum’ Shiva, etc. And the ultimate aim of Tantra, called
‘Siddhi’ or spiritual perfection, is a practical realisation of
the Upanishadic equation of the individual ātman with
Brahman (“tat tvam asi”/that art thou).
Men, in general, are classified according to the
predominance of the tāmasic, rājasic, or sāttvic elements
(terms derived from Sāmkhya) in them, as pashu (animal),
vira (heroic) or divya (divine), this classification roughly
corresponding to the vaisya, kshatriya, and brāhmanical
castes among the Vedic Āryas, though, as we have seen,
the Jains trace the caste system to another source than
the Vedas. There are only two life-stages (āshramas)
recognised by the Āgamic tradition, those of householders
and ascetics, for both brāhmans and non-brāhmans,
269 See G. Flood, The Tantric Body: The Secret Tradition of Hindu Religion, London: I.B. Tauris, 2006, p.38.
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“though the particular practices of the Vipras [brāhmans]
and other castes vary” ( Mahānārāyana Tantra, Ch.8).
In spite of the relatively exoteric aspect of Tantra,
the aims of both Brāhmanism and Tantra are not
dissimilar, only the means differ considerably. While the
Brāhmanical rituals aim at reviving the cosmos through
the agency of the divine fire and the construction of
elaborate fire-altars, Tantra expands the celebration of
the spiritual cosmos from mere fire altars to large temple
and the only idol mentioned in the SB is the gold man that is placed within the fire-altar.270 The idolatry employed in
Tantra, however, is based on the divinisation of the king
as sun-god that is the aim also of the Brāhmanical royal
consecration, Rājasuya Yagna.271 This divinisation resulted
in the numerous representations of the king as a god in the
Hamitic cultures, and this regal apotheosis is also closely
related to the worship of divine idols in the temples. Just
as the major focus on Agni in the Vedic rituals is on its
creative solar force and the need to preserve this force,272
in temple worship the deity whose idol is adored is daily
created and sustained.
It should be noted also that the Āgama texts on temple
worship use Vedic mantras in their Tantric rituals. For
instance, the Bodhayana Shesha Sūtra and the Vishnu
Pratishtha Kalpa combine Grihya Sūtra rules with Tantric practices to outline the rites for the instal ation of Vishnu
images, etc. The Grihya Sūtras, however, do not include
the Prāna Prathistāpana ritual (infusing life into the idol)
which is taken from Tantra, and the latter is combined, as
270 See A. Jacob, Brahman, Ch.IX; cf. Ch.V.
271 Ibid.
272 For instance, the fire is aroused after its nightly rest in the Agnihotra ritual and put to sleep at the end of the evening (see, for instance A. Jacob, Brahman, p.189f).
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indo-european mythology and religion
in Egypt and Sumer, with the ceremony of “opening the
eyes of the deity with a needle”.
There are clear similarities between the structures
of the Vedic fire-
altars and those of the temples of the
Hamitic traditions. The Gārhapatya fire is represented in
the temple by the vedika platform. The cel a where the
icon is placed is called a garbhagriha (womb chamber),
and we may remember that Agni, and the Vedic sacrificer
himself, were considered as undergoing a rebirth in the
course of the sacrifice. Also, the plinth of the temple is
adorned with sculptures of men, horses, and other animals
which beings correspond to those of the five heads buried
in the foundation of the Vedic altar.273 The axis on which
the temple is built is identical to that of the sacrificial post, yupa, in the Vedic altar which SB III,vii,1,25 describes as rising from the underworld to the heavens. The stambha
of the Vedic fire-altar may have later been transformed
into the more graphic Shiva Linga of Hindu temples, for
Shiva is also called Sthānu or pil ar, the axis mundi.
The Āgama texts relating to temple worship clearly
include Yoga methodology since they consider temple
architecture as imitative of the human body and locate the
six chakras within the temple structure. Following Yogic
correspondences, the mūlādhāra chakra is identified
with the platform for the sacrificial food offerings, the
svādhishthāna with the flagpole, the manipūra with
the vāhana or vehicle of the god, the anāhata with the
mahāmandapa or assembly hal , the vishuddha with the
antarala or corridor between the mandapa and the cel a,
the ajna with the cult image, and the brahmarandhra with
the amalaka stone.274
273 See S. Kramrisch, The Hindu Temple, Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1946, I, 146-7.
274 See K.-H. Golzio, op.cit., p.127f.; cf. H. v. Stietencorn, Ganga und Yamuna, Wiesbaden, 1972, pp.92-4.
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Temples are built on a mandala representing a supine
Vāstu-Purusha oriented according to the course of the
sun. The Vāstu-Purusha is a Purānic variation of the Vedic
account of the formation of the Cosmic Man, or Purusha,
which coincides with the emergence of the supreme Light
and Consciousness of Brahman. The Agni Purana LXI,
19-27, for example, declares that the temple is the body of
the Purusha, so that the door of the temple is the mouth
of the Purusha and the image is his life. In the Vedic fire-