Ornament of Reality: Language Ideology in a Tantric Śākta Text

Abstract

The Mahānayaprakāśa of Śitikaṇṭha is an understudied text within Kashmir Śaivism, notable for its rich description of the inner structure of consciousness vis-à-vis the body and the natural world, and esotericization of Left-Handed Tantric Practice. Furthermore, it is also significant in its form; like the Buddhist dohākoṣas it consists of Apabhraṃśa verses with accompanying Sanskrit commentary. However, in the sporadic scholarship on this text it is consistently portrayed as an early attestation of “Old Kashmiri,” and siloed off into obscurity. This article demonstrates that these verses are definitively composed in Apabhraṃśa, and argues that they should be examined alongside their Buddhist counterparts, which also articulate a mystical cosmology of the sacred realm Uḍḍiyāna located within the body. Afterwards the fourth chapter of this text is translated and presented, in which the human body takes center stage as the pīṭha, the pilgrimage destination and practice space of Tantric ritual. Ultimately this article argues that within medieval Tantric traditions the Apabhraṃśa verse form served as a privileged vehicle of esoteric teachings, and that it commands a unique linguistic value by indexing mystical states of consciousness.