1.1 Seeds
Mantras are codified sounds, clusters of syllables or words, or hymns uttered aloud or silently during religious rituals or contemplative practice. Recitations of mantras invoke deities, consecrate images of deities and mark rites of passage, from birth to marriage and cremation. In a yajna or homa ritual, mantras are offered to deities, typically via the fire-deity Agni, along with other offerings. 1 Puja (worship) in Hindu temples and homes is conducted with mantras, and mantras are also integral components of individual spiritual practice called “ sadhana .”
The seeds of my interest in mantra were planted in 2005. Returning to India after an advertising and television media career, and in response to a dream of Sathya Sai Baba, I began to spend some time at his ashram (spiritual community) in Puttaparthi, in the South Indian state of (what was then) Andhra Pradesh. Although Sai Baba’s teachings were pluralistic, one of his missions was to promote the vedas; therefore, students at his schools and universities learned a set of vedic mantras as a part of their syllabus. These mantras were memorized and chanted on their own, detached from rituals. The word “veda” means “to know,” and the term “veda” refers to a corpus believed to be the oldest source in Sanskrit and considered a revelation. This corpus is divided into four parts—Rigveda, Yajurveda, Samaveda and Atharvaveda, and at the core of each of these is a collection of mantras ( samhita ). In the daily gatherings at Sai Kulwant Hall in Baba’s ashram, the sound of vedic mantras filled the air—many in the crowd chanted along by memory. Whereas across India, mantras are mostly heard at temples or on religious and mythological programs on television, they are ubiquitous in Puttaparthi. The shopping center played mantras on a loop and the shops outside the gates of the ashram sold handbooks of mantras. Twice-daily bhajans (devotional songs) began and ended with mantras for peace (shanti). Additionally, among the crowds waiting in the Poornachandra auditorium for Sai Baba’s public appearance, many would be occupied in japa , the repetitive utterance of a mantra, often using a rosary ( japamala ). I had heard about and witnessed several extraordinary phenomena attributed to Sai Baba such as manifestations of vibhuti (sacred ash) and materialization of objects, but did not have any understanding about spiritual practice. Living in Puttaparthi those few months, I became familiar with the idea of sadhana . Derived from the verbal root “siddh” (to achieve), sadhana carries the idea of earnest, hard work and of aspiring toward achievement. The culmination of sadhana is “ siddhi ” which means power, mastery or achievement. One imagines an athlete in training—no matter how many trainers she has, it is she who has to train; every sprint calls for single-minded attention and helps improve ability. A person who does sadhana is called a “ sadhaka .” When sadhana is centered around mantras, the siddhi involves gaining siddhi over a mantra, or having the ability to harness its power.
At the time, my own responses to mantras were aesthetic. Outside my day job, I was a poet and placed particular emphasis on sound structures. Admiring the rigor of mantra-sounds, I wondered, what prosodic elements made the chant of Srisuktam different in mood and effect from the chant of Rudram? What were the differences between mantras and Sanskrit classical poetry? If I accentuated the “Ṃ” in the utterance of “OṂ” (or “AUṂ”) which prefaced so many mantras, I could feel the vibration on the top of my head; did the “A” and “U” also resonate in my body, and where? I was intrigued by such popular mantras as the Gayatri. 2 In vedic recitations, it was chanted in a jagged tone (svara) but commercial establishments in Puttaparthi played dulcet versions of it sung by the popular singer, Lata Mangeshkar. 3 During my stay on that visit, I developed a rudimentary sadhana; attracted to the Gayatri mantra—I thought, for its lofty meaning and jagged rhythms—I would often chant it silently.
It was in late 2005 when I was on a writing fellowship in Iowa City, USA, that I had what I would later call my first “mantra-experience.” It was Fall, the leaves had turned red, rust and orange, and I would take a walk in the evening after a day of writing and meditation. On a walk one day, I heard a continuous tone in my right ear. I could tell it did not originate from outside me, and I could still hear it. The tone stayed with me, and while it was not unpleasant, it made me anxious, for I remembered reading about such a symptom in relation to some kind of motor imbalance. Searching for this symptom on the internet, I found information that suggested it could be related to meditation—an effect of certain chakras (energy centers) during meditation. Chakras are funnel-like structures at different points along the spinal path of the kundalini “energy” that may rise during spiritual practice, and the process is described as an awakening of the coiled-serpent-like kundalini from the muladhara chakra at the base of the spine to the sahasrara chakra at the crown. I phoned a Puttaparthi friend who engaged in full-time sadhana. She asked me a few questions—was it in my right ear, or the left? Was it continuous, and did I hear it all the time? It was in my right ear, it was quite loud, and if I forgot it, the slightest attention would bring it back to my hearing. She told me it was the Pranava (OṂ) and just a sign of a step forward in spiritual practice, I should pay no attention to this. I knew—from my general reading of early Indian ideas—that the sound of OṂ was said to be present in the akasha (etheric space), but I had never read about hearing it, and did not know quite what to make of it. Why me? Was there something I was supposed to do? What could I do with it? What next? Over the next few weeks, I lost this sound. Sometimes, I would hear a smallish wind-like swoosh-swoosh sound in the ear, but never a full-fledged and continuous sound like that first time. A decade later, when I began to study early Indian sources formally, mantra became my first scholarly project. Reviewing the scholarship, I found little or no study of the practice and experience of mantra. My methodology became ethnography; it was when I was deep into fieldwork that I realized the gaps in scholarship were also my own, eager to be bridged.
1.2 Homing In: Andhra-Telangana
Andhra-Telangana is one of the five Southern states of India. Previously a single state called “Andhra Pradesh,” it was divided into two states of “Andhra Pradesh” and “Telangana” on 2nd June 2014, when I had just begun fieldwork there. Historically, vedic communities settled along the banks of the river Godavari which flows all the way from western India’s Nasik in Maharashtra for over 900 miles into Telugu-speaking regions of southeast India. Compared to other regions of India, the population of vedic ritualists is more dense in the Godavari delta (Knipe 1997, 2015). At the same time, this region is home to tantric Hinduism including the Shakta Srividya tradition in which the Goddess, Shakti, is the absolute divine power. A number of places in Andhra are Shakti pithas , or “seats” of Shakti (Sircar 1950), and associated with legends about Shakti.
The primary language spoken across this region is Telugu, and one of the popular explanations for the derivation of the word “Telugu” is that it may come from “Tri-linga,” denoting three Shivalingas (aniconic forms of Shiva) manifested at Kaleshwaram in Telangana, Srisailam in Rayalaseema and Draksharamam in Andhra—these three locations are also Shakti pitha s (seats of Goddess Shakti). Telugu is replete with words from Sanskrit and has retained the same alphabet (unlike Hindi which has dropped some of the letters). Sanskrit texts circulate in the Andhra region in the Telugu script; therefore, many Telugu people are familiar with Sanskrit religious texts and mantras even though they may not be able to read the Nagari script. This results in a population of Sanskrit pundits as well as Telugu-speaking laity with access to religious literature. Those who have trained in veda schools become professional priests and are called upon to conduct rituals for the laity, especially rites of passage such as weddings and after-death ceremonies. The laity may also have their own mantra-sadhana including extracts from vedic mantras and tantric mantras, often not overtly understood as such.
One may categorize ideas and/or practices at the three locations of this fieldwork as tantric Hindu, or even as folk tantra, 4 and the central role of Goddess Tripurasundari and Goddess Kali marks them as “Shakta.” Typically, “sadhana” refers to Hindu tantric practices; however, many foundational ideas about mantra (e.g., Vak, or divine Speech) in tantric sources are to be found in vedic sources. Unless one is speaking to orthodox vedic practitioners, both veda and tantra are considered shruti (revelations). On-ground, veda and tantra are neighbors, and neighbors do speak to each other. There are several instances in the narratives of this book where vedic pundits have a private mantra-sadhana. Therefore, staying close to ground realities in this fieldwork, while I focused on three Hindu tantric locations, I did not exclude cases of visionary experience or insights from vedic ritualists. Finally, discussions with practitioners suggested that revelations and visions occur beyond and may even confound categories. Just as Hindu religious sources may be classified as vedic (from vedas), tantric (from tantras)...