LA NORMA EAD (La Descripción Archivística Codificada)

Before we move on to discuss the Pascimamnaya, we take this opportunity to sum up what we have said up to now about the develop­ ment of these Kaula traditions. Firstly, we should emphasize that the essential features of Kaula doctrine and ritual are by no means exclusive to Tantric works which call themselves Kaula. Practically all that is generally considered to be the ritual, yogic practice and life style of a Kaula (whether itinerant ascetic or householder) can be found prescribed in the Bhairava-

lantras. The JY, SYM, BY and Bhairavatantras of this sort all seem at first

sight highly Kaula in character. They themselves, however, do not consider themselves to be such, even though they do sometimes describe rituals that they specifically state are Kaula. Indeed, this fact only serves to make the contrast between them and the Kaulatantras even more striking, despite much that they seemingly share in common. How then are we to distinguish a Kaulatantra from other Tantric works? The reply to this question lies essentially in what a given Tantra says about itself and its relationship to other Tantras and Tantric traditions. A Kaulatantra will itself tell us that its dominant concern is with Kaula doctrine which it labels as such in its own terms. This is a simple principle of general application in trying to assess to what type a Tantra belongs.

As we have already noted, the earliest Tantras which Kashmiri Saivites refer to as original sources of Trika doctrine are not, in this sense, Kaula. It makes sense, therefore, that according to Abhinavagupta the

Malinivijayottaratantra which he considers, along with the SYM, to be the

most important Trikatantra, refutes Kaula doctrine. Although he says that it goes beyond Kula doctrine, in fact it belongs to the strata of

Trikatantra which had not yet become Kaula (or a 'higher' Kaula) in the

way that it is for example, in the Bhairavakulatantra or Kularatnamala. The same is true of the Kalikrama. The Tantrarajabhattaraka (alias

Sirascheda or Jayadrathayamala), to which the Kashmiris refer as an

authority for certain points of Krama doctrine, is a sophisticated Tantra which typologically can be said to be highly Kaula in character; it does not, however, define itself as such even though it does deal with Kaula ritual in places.191 Therefore, we cannot say that this Tantra belongs to the Kalikrama in the specific sense of the term, although it is certainly concerned in parts with the worship of Kali in many forms and is full of

86 THE KAULA TANTRAS

typically Kalikrama notions. Other, probably later, Tantras of the Kali cult were, however, Kaula and conscious of themselves as Kalikrama Tantras. One could say that the Kalikrama, like Trika, acquired a specific independent identity as a Tantric tradition when it became conscious of itself as Kaula. Moreover, at this stage of its development we can begin to identify figures in the line of the Agamic Kali cults who brought Tantras 'down to earth' or transmitted the oral tradition of the Kalikrama which finally emerged in Kashmir, fashioned at the hands of the Kashmiri authors, as a fully fledged system, not just a mass of ritual details or scattered visions in chaotic scriptural sources.

We can trace a continuity from the virtually total anonymity of the earliest scriptural sources of the proto-Krama and proto-Trika, namely, the Bhairava and Varna Tantras, to the more distinctly sectarian Kaula-

tantras of the Trika and Krama, right up to the extra-canonical exegetical

works of monist Kashmiri Saiva authors. In this way, by the middle of the ninth century, they emerged out of the world of the Saiva Agamas into that of the sastras. For at least two centuries these two worlds of discourse remained vitally linked through the Tantric adepts who belonged to the line of transmission of the Agamic teachings and served as living sources of their hidden meaning. Although we have taken a leap outside the ambit of Saiva scripture into a different dimension of discourse, the line of transmission is linked to that of the canonical works themselves. In other words, the Trika and Krama schools matured to this level following the pace of a progressively more refined hermeneutics of the Tantras'esoteric meaning, which developed in the oral traditions. It was Sambhunatha - Abhinavagupta's Trika master - who gave him the basic exegetical Trika- based model upon which the culminating work of the Trika tradition - the

Taniraloka - is based. Again it appears that it was largely due to him that

Trika was taken to be the apogee of monist Kashmiri Saivism, for there can be no doubt that Trika is far from the central focus of monist Kashmiri Saivism before Abhinavagupta.

To get back to the point: when the Krama emerged as a self-conscious Kaula cult, it seems that it also became conscious of itself as one of a group of amnayas. Whether these two events are concomitant or not, that is, whether the Kalikrama as an independent Kaula tradition knew itself right from its inception as the Uttaramnaya or not, it certainly did so at some stage of its development. The Trikakula on the other hand, it seems, never thought of itself as belonging to an atnnaya even though the CMSS refers to Trika as the purvamnaya. This is probably why the Kashmiri Saiva authors ignored the amnaya system and preferred to relate the Trika - as a 'higher' Kaula tradition - to the Saivagama as a whole, just as the Agamic Trika itself did.

Pascimamnaya 87 The Tantras of the Kubjika cult were, however, it seems, Kaula right from the start and thought of themselves as belonging specifically to the

Pascimamnaya. We know that the KMT is older than the JY - a proto-

Krama Tantra - which refers to it (see appendix C) and that it is also older than the NSA. The JY is well aware of an independent current of Kaula scripture although it does not say specifically that the KMT belongs to it. Are we therefore to assume that the Kalikula already existed at the time and that it represented an Uttaramnaya in relation to the Kubjikatantras? Or is the KMT the oldest extant type of amnaya-oriented Tantra? We have already noted that it nowhere clearly defines the amnayas of the other directions, although it refers to them. Could this be because they were simply empty categories? In other words, did they have no more than an ideal existence as mere logical complements to an existent Pascimam­

naya? If we accept this hypothesis, we are led to consider the possibility

that the Kalikrama accommodated itself later to this pattern, as did the Srividya tradition in a less certain manner. Perhaps, on the other hand, it would be better to think of them as developing together with their roots firmly embedded in the Saivagama, drawing life from it and growing out of it, as well as alongside it.