Despite exhibiting varying degrees of contempt for localized spirit religions, Vaidika Brahmins, Śaivas, and Buddhists frequently appropriated and assimilated aspects of these traditions. Kunal Chakrabarti brings our attention to a similar phenomenon in his theorization of the 'Purāṇic Process' as a Vaidika Brahmin literary strategy for appropriating and
transforming local religious cults. Chakrabarti argues that the Purāṇas functioned, among other things, as "a medium for the absorption of local cults and associated practices," a statement that carries far-reaching implications given the Purāṇic literature's role in defining the parameters of much of 'Hinduism' as we know it today.67 Following Chakrabarti, we might say that what many understand as mainstream 'Hinduism' today is largely a product of this 'Purāṇic process' that assimilated local spirit religions into the Vaidika fold where they were inscribed within the brahmanic pantheon, brought into agreement with a brahmanic social ethos, and integrated into in a range of brahmanic ascetic and ritual traditions.
The Śaiva orders of the atimārga and mantramārga engaged in their own version of this 'Purāṇic process,' as the atimārga Śaiva sects began to author their own Purāṇanic
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observances!(vrata)!in!this!bhūtatantra's!system,!which!Acharya!notes!may!approximate!the!ten!forms!of!
restraint!(yama)!in!Kauṇḍinya's!Paśupatasūtrabhāṣya.!See!Acharya,!"Three!Fragmentary!Folios,"!158–
161.!
66!My!observations!here!take!their!lead!from!David!Gordon!White's!work!on!the!Rājastāni!popular!cult!of!
Bhairava.!White!makes!a!similar!argument!for!the!pervasion!and!striking!theoretical!uniformity!of!what!I!
am!calling!'spirit!religion'!across!South!Asia,!where!he!notes!that!the!incorporation!of!these!traditions!
into!Āyurveda(signifies!their!acceptance!at!all!levels!of!South!Asian!society,!thus!pointing!to!the!
shortsightedness!of!the!discriminatory!practices!of!academics!who!discard!such!traditions!as!'low'!or!
merely('popular'!forms!of!religious!expression.!See!David!Gordon!White,!"Filthy!Amulets:!'Superstition,'!
True!'Religion,'!and!Pure!'Science'!in!the!Light!of!Indian!Demonology,"!Puruṣārtha(27!(2008):!135–62.!
67!Kunal!Chakrabarti,!Religious(Process:(The(Purāṇas(and(the(Making(of(a(Regional(Tradition!(New!York:!
Oxford!University!Press,!2001),!52.!!
literature.68 Both the more orthodox atimārga Śaiva orders and their counterparts aligned with the mantramārga oriented their ritual and ascetic cultures heavily toward the very same environments in which the spirit beings of popular religious cults in South Asia are
commonly said to dwell. The Śaiva literature of the mantramārga in particular went to great lengths to fully integrate various deities from popular religious cults in its ritual,
iconography, and ascetic practices. The textual record of this process is preserved in the yāmala literature of the Śaiva bhairavatantras, a genre that focuses on worshipping and attaining a mutual identity (yoga) with Bhairava and his circle of eight mātṛkas.69 The fruits of these efforts can be seen in the Śaiva orders' successful assimilation of local deity cults across South Asia into the cults of the deity Bhairava. This development established a continual sense of Śaiva identity that extended from popular, widely accessible, local forms of religious expression to the elite practices of the Śaiva initiates and their socially elite clientele. The textual inclusivism of the Śaiva Purāṇas had a yogic counterpart in the
charismatic power of the initiated Śaiva ascetics of the mantramārga. Śaiva bhairavatantras such as the Brahmayāmala/ Picumata outline a yoga or union via symbiotic possession by the deity Bhairava as the culmination of the performance of one of a number of observances (vrata) through which Bhairava and a host of spirit deities of various classes such as mātṛs, guhyakas, yoginīs, śākinīs, and pūtanās are internally mapped onto the body of the elite initiated practitioner or sādhaka.70 Viewed in this light, the mantramārga literature and its
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68!Richard!H.!Davis,!"The!Origin!of!Liṅga!Worship,"!in!Religions(of(India(in(Practice,!edited!by!Donald!S.!
Lopez!Jr.!(Princeton,!NJ:!Princeton!University!Press,!1995),!637.!Davis!discusses!the!story!of!Śiva's!
challenge!to!the!sages!in!the!pine!forest!here!as!told!in!the!Kūrmapurāṇa,!a!text!originally!of!Vaiṣṇava!
Pancarātra!authorship!that!was!later!taken!over!and!modified!by!authors!who!belonged!to!the!Śaiva!
atimārgic!Pāśupata!sect.!!
69!David!Gordon!White,!The(Kiss(of(the(Yoginī:(Tantric(Sex(in(its(South(Asian(Contexts!(Chicago:!Univ.!of!
Chicago!Press,!2003),!Chapter!2.!
70!Judit!Törzsök,!"Yoginī!and!Goddess!Possession!in!Early!Śaiva!Tantras,"!in!'Yoginī'(in(South(Asia:(
Interdisciplinary(Approaches,(edited!by!István!Keul!(New!York:!Routledge,!2013),!182.(
ritual and ascetic traditions reflects an ongoing dialogical process that reformulated the negative possession associated with these spirit deities in their localized cults as a form of positive possession through a skillful deployment of the concept of yoga within a broader cultural discourse around spirit possession.
The Śaiva assimilation of popular spirit religions follows a cardinal rule of 'lords' and 'hordes,' or the belief that the hordes of inimical beings that routinely seek out vulnerabilities in human hosts operate within their own hierarchies, and thus controlling a certain class of spirit deity depends on winning the good graces of whatever deity (or deities) occupies the apex of this hierarchy. Such hierarchies provided a platform for the Śaiva appropriation and repurposing of localized spirit religions through assimilating local religious cults to the deity Bhairava, and by extension assimilating the Śaiva ascetic, through his yoga with Bhairava, to the idea of the bhūtanātha or the 'lord of spirits.' Although not the final stage of the ascetic observances,71 the sādhaka's union with Bhairava via positive possession certainly could have lent support to the idea that he had himself become a kind of bhūtanātha. This kind of a reversal of the predatory possession of the bhūtas, grahas, and other beings, a model of possession that Fred Smith calls a 'hostile takeover,'72 proved an effective strategy for infiltrating local spirit religion cults and placing Śaiva officiants at their head as intermediaries and 'lords of the spirits.'
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71!Csaba!Kiss!trans.!and!ed.,!The(Brahmayāmalatantra(or(Picumata(Volume(II,(The(Religious(Observances(
and(Sexual(Rituals(of(the(Tantric(Practitioner:(Chapters(3,(21,(and(45,!Collection!Indologie!130,!Early!
Tantra!Series!3!(Institut!Français!de!Pondichéry,!École!française!d'ExtrêmemOrient,!AsienmAfrikamInstitut,!
Universität!Hamburg,!2015),!34.!Kiss!follows!Törszök!in!noting!that!the!positive!possession!exhibited!in!
this!early!Śaiva!bhairavatantra!of!the!mantramārga(derives!from!an!atimārga(predecessor!in!the!
atimārga!kāpālika!observances!(vrata).!In!the!Brahmayāmala,!the!sādhaka's(possession!by!Bhairava!
merely!allows!him!to!advance!to!the!next,!and!more!powerful,!level!of!ritual!practice.!
72!Frederick!M.!Smith,!The(Self(Possessed:(Deity(and(Spirit(Possession(in(South(Asian(Literature(and(
Civilization!(New!York:!Columbia!Univ.!Press,!2006),!Chapter!6.!
The networks of Bhairavas (or Bhairabs) that encircle the peripheries of the three original cities of the Kathmandu Valley and the valley itself provide one salient example of the Śaiva appropriation of localized traditions. As David White notes, popular Bhairava cults often treat the deity as a guardian or protector dwelling on the periphery who, when properly propitiated, prevents the unwanted entry of seizers, ghosts, and other inimical beings into civic space. The local cults of deities such as Pachali Bhairab and Ākāś Bhairab that persist in the Kathmandu valley preserve the dynamics of Śaiva inclusivism to this day.
Figure 1: Ākāś Bhairab (author's photo), whose shrine is located just beyond the north-west corner of the Kathmandu Valley behind the Swayambhunāth stūpa, serves as one example of the enduring employment of bhairava as a deity marking the peripheries of civic space.
The original, local traditions of the 'Bhairabs' of the Kathmandu Valley are, like so many religious cults in the valley, layered with both a local and trans-local religious significance that remains highly transparent and visible. Bhairab attained an elite status in the Kathmandu valley quite early in the form of a Buddhist tantric deity Vajrabhairava, who is mentioned in an inscription from the Licchāvi king Śivadeva II (ca. 694–705 CE). Śivadeva II is also said
to have had an iconic image of Bhairava created and placed in front of his palace for
protection, and the continuation of this practice can be observed today in many of the temples and palaces of the three original city-states of Lalitpur, Bhaktapur, and Bhasantapur that position both black and white Bhairava images on each side of their main gates. The emergence and persistence of Bhairava as a royal court deity in Nepal likely initiated a process of gradual assimilation of a number of localized spirit deity cults. White also notes that the aniconic stones now worshipped as bhairabs throughout the Kathmandu Valley likely had other names prior to the explosion of tantric culture in the tenth century.73
In a process resembling ta kind of vassalage, these original cults were assimilated into the trans-local Śaiva cult of Bhairava while retaining their original function as "'scarecrows' that protect inner, domesticated space from the dead, the demonic, and enemy peoples.'"74 In this sense White advocates for a diachronic reading of tantric maṇḍalas as historical
documents that record the appropriation of localized popular religious cults into larger, trans-local tantric ritual systems. From this perspective the classes of beings that exist beyond the edges of a maṇḍala, along its periphery, and at its gates represent various degrees of
appropriation and repurposing of the 'spirit deities' of local, popular cults. The imagery can at the same time be read synchronically, as a militarized urban vision of civic space that
imposes a hierarchical schema on the maṇḍala moving from the center to the periphery of the maṇḍala. When viewed from this perspective, White argues that Bhairava as the lord of the spirits (bhūtanātha) is worshipped across South Asia "[as] the guardian of boundaries—of
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73!In!many!cases!the!panmIndic!or!transmlocal!names!and!mythologies!associated!with!these!deities!are!
preserved!alongside!their!localized!names!and!mythologies,!which!lends!a!remarkable!sense!of!
transparency!to!the!process!of!assimilation!in!Nepal.!
74!David!Gordon!White,!"At!the!Maṇḍala's!Dark!Fringe:!Possession!and!Protection!in!Tantric!Bhairava!
Cults,"!in!Notes(from(a(Maṇḍala:(Essays(in(the(History(of(Indian(Religions(in(Honor(of(Wendy(Doniger,!edited!
by!Laurie!L.!Patton!and!David!L.!Haberman!(Newark:!University!of!Delaware!Press!2010),!205.!
the permeable vessel of the human body, the bounded topocosm of the village, town, or kingdom, between consecrated and unconsecrated space, between the living and the dead, as well as the turning points in various stages of the human life cycle." These peripheral
Bhairavas "are the pivotal deities of local pantheons, which neutralize and drive away the spirits they control, for the benefit of their devotees."75