Rivers to the Sky

Transformation, Metaphor, and Worldview in

Bengali Tantric Traditions

Glen Alexander Hayes

One of the most prolific and dynamic regions in South Asia for the devel-
opment of Tantra has been that of “Greater Bengal” in the northeastern
part of the subcontinent – comprising approximately modern West Bengal,
parts of Orissa, Bangladesh, and Assam. Located on the fringes of tradi-
tional Vedic and Aryan culture and religion, Bengal saw the development
of many different and distinctive types of Tantra, from popular village-
based, tribal versions to learned, Sanskritic traditions of temple cities like
Viṣṇupur. Bengal saw not only innovations in Buddhist Vajrayāna schools
in Nalanda and Tamralipti, but a wide array of Hindu Tantra in diverse
Śaiva, Śākta, and Vaiṣṇava forms. In this paper I will address the confer-
ence theme of “transformation and transfer” of Tantra by exploring how
distinctive Bengali Tantric metaphors and worldviews changed over the
centuries: from the Kṣṇa-centered lineages of the Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyās (ca.
17th-19th centuries) to the British Rāj-influenced Kartābhajās (18th-19th
centuries). Using my own translations of Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyā texts and my
fieldwork involving the Kartābhajās, as well as the work of Hugh Urban
on the Kartābhajās, I will show how Bengali Tantra underwent significant
transformations from the 17th through 20th centuries – some of this due
to the changing historical context and the presence of colonialism and
modernity. These transformations in the traditions of those Hindu Tantrics
who sought the final cosmic state of Sahaja – literally, the “together-born”
(saha-ja) state – are perfect examples of the interaction of context and
text in the history of religions. One useful way to focus our survey is to
examine important metaphors used in ritual texts, in songs, and by gurus.
For example, while earlier Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyā texts speak of an inner river-
ine yogic channel (the bāṅkānadī) that the adept must yogically “reverse,”
later Kartābhajā texts change this classic image from yogic physiology into
a passageway for the “merchant” yogin to travel from his “office” (kuthi)
114 Glen Alexander Hayes

to sell his goods in the “bazaar of the world.” Thus, we find a Tantric
response to colonialism, and an appropriation of colonial and mercantile
imagery, especially that of the marketplace (bājār), which supplants the
earlier tropes of villages, gardens and fields. However, certain core meta-
phors and ritual practices are maintained. For the scholar of Tantric Stud-
ies, then, Bengal provides us with many excellent examples of transforma-
tions and adaptations of Tantric beliefs, practices, and social expressions.

The Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyās

In the first portion of this essay I would like to examine some key aspects
of the yogic physiology (dehatattva) of a major teaching lineage of the
17th-19th century Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyās, that claiming as their guru one Sid-
dha Mukunda-deva, who lived in the late 16th century (and certainly after
the great hagiography of Caitanya, the Caitanya-caritāmta of Kṣṇadāsa
Kavirāja was composed, ca. 1575).1 One of the most distinctive things
about the post-Caitanya Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyās (and they do seem to be pri-
marily a post-Caitanya expression of Tantra) is how they created concep-
tual and ritual blends between, on the one hand, the devotional Vaiṣṇava
bhakti and aesthetic traditions of Caitanya and the Six Gosvāmin Theo-
logians and, on the other, the alchemical tantric traditions of the Nāths,
Siddhas, and perhaps earlier Buddhist Tantrics. In other words, the
Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyās embraced, but adapted for Tantric usage, the roman-
tic trysts and ritual practices associated with the love-play of the Dark
Lord Kṣṇa and his consort Rādhā. For Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyās, an underly-
ing goal was to leave behind one’s worldly form (rūpa) and merge with
one’s inner identity as the svarūpa (“true form”) of Kṣṇa (for men) and
with Rādhā (for women). The lineages descending from Mukunda-deva,
for example, expressed innovative ways of transforming these devotional
practices of singing, dancing, and aesthetic enjoyment (vaidhi-bhakti) as
powerful emotive and erotic enhancements to the higher forms of ulṭā-
sādhana (“practices of reversal”) using sexual fluids that would be used
at advanced stages of sādhana. Thus, we find a creative and fascinating
“blend” of Tantra and Bhakti. Although we do not have time in this essay

1 See Edward C. Dimock, Jr. and Tony K. Stewart, Caitanya caritāmta of Kṣṇadāsa
Kavirāja, a Translation and Commentary. Trans. and ed. by Tony K. Stewart. Harvard
Oriental Series 56. (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Department of Sanskrit
and Indian Studies, 1999). On the Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyās, see Edward C. Dimock, Jr., The
Place of the Hidden Moon: Erotic Mysticism in the Vaiṣṇava-Sahajiyā Cult of Bengal (Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1966.
 Rivers to the Sky 115

to explore the vital roles that emotions have played in Tantric ritual and
cosmophysiology, it is worth noting that the modern cognitive science of
religion has shown how the presence of any powerful emotion during a
ritual activity helps to heighten and enhance that activity.2
The closest that we have to fairly complete presentations of sādhana
and dehatattva are found in the several texts attributed to Mukunda-deva
or to one of his disciples, including the Amtaratnāvalī of Mukunda-
dāsa (ca. 1650 ce) or the Amtarasāvalī of Mathurā-dāsa (ca. 1750 ce).
Mukunda-deva seems to have been one of the primary figures in develop-
ing the distinctive Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyā blending of Bhakti and Tantra that
is found to some degree in other texts. This blending required not only a
working knowledge of the sophisticated works of the devotional Caitanya
movement – especially those of Kṣṇa-dāsa Kavirāja, Rūpa Gosvāmin and
Jīva Gosvāmin – but also an initiate’s knowledge of Nāth and Siddha deha­
tattva and sādhanas. Throw in the additional “inputs” of alchemy, Sanskrit
aesthetics, and the goddess-worship of Śāktism and you can see how com-
plex and transformative these traditions can be.
For the Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyā traditions of Mukunda-deva, sādhana typi-
cally starts with the pravarta-āśrama, the “beginner’s stage,” which essen-
tially uses techniques from mainstream Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava rāgānugā bhakti
sādhana (Haberman 1988), such as singing and dancing as a milkmaid
(gopī) to Kṣṇa (kīrtana), and developing an alternative identity and body
(siddha-rūpa; mañjarī-rūpa) as a participant in the divine love-play (līlā)
of Kṣṇa and Rādhā. This may also involve the use of mantras, and other
“external” (bāhya) ritual forms. This is where the eventual shift and blend-
ing of dualistic Bhakti begins, for the Sahajiyās regard the male and female
practitioners (nāyaka and nāyikā) not just as humans worshipping the
divine Kṣṇa and his consort Rādhā (as orthodox Vaiṣṇavas do), but as
in fact embodying in their own physical forms (rūpa) the “true form” or
“essence” (svarūpa) of Kṣṇa and Rādhā. This is where the Tantric adapta-
tion of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism is quite clear.
At the second stage, that of the “accomplished one” (sādhaka), we
find the use of more “interiorized” (marma) and “secret” (guhya, rahasya)
practices, including the antinomian ritual sexual intercourse with the
spouse “of another” (parakīyā), generally called rati-sādhana (“practice
with a desirable woman”). Here the identity of the man is blended with

2 See for example, a recent discussion of emotions and cognitive science in the National Pub-
lic Radio series “Radiolab,” at http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2008/11/14/
segments/113310. Also see, for example Daniel Gardner, The Science of Fear (New
York: Dutton, 2008).
116 Glen Alexander Hayes

Kṣṇa’s, and the woman’s is blended with Rādhā. It is also where we find
a fascinating use of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava religious aesthetics (a form of rasa-
theory, using the nuances of “moods” or bhāvas), developed in a most
intricate manner by the six Gosvāmins of the Bengal school, blended with
essentially Nāth and Siddha sādhanas and dehatattvas. Of note here is the
yogic manipulation of sexual fluids (see, e.g. White 1996, 2003a), which
are reversed (ulṭā) via urethral suction and other techniques and made to
flow “upwards against the current” (sroter ujāna) of the yogic River into
the celestial realms of the “divine body” (deva-deha). In these cases, the
sexual fluids clearly serve as constituents for the emergent structures of the
divine body. This process then leads to the third and uppermost stage, that
of the “perfected one” (siddha).
The third stage of siddha takes place within the yogic bodies of the
practitioners, especially that of the male nāyaka, who absorbs the sexual
fluids of the female nāyikā into his own body, mixing them with his own,
and directing them on into the inner Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyā realms. There are
many interesting gender and power issues at work here, and many com-
plexities regarding the yogic body.3 And thus again we see distinctive and
transformative Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyā organizing frames, structures and pro-
cesses, some reflecting the inputs of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava Bhakti influences,
some the Nāth and Siddha Tantric inputs. Rather than the well-known,
but as David Gordon White (2003b) has shown, hardly uniform Śaiva
and Śākta dehatattva of the six cakras, sahasradala, and kuṇḍalinī, the
Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyā model – very much reflecting the context of deltaic and
riverine Bengal – is instead one with typically four lotus ponds or “tanks”
(sarovaras) connected by the “crooked river” (bāṅkānadī), along which
flow the yogically-reversed male and female sexual fluids (rasa and rati). In
some texts, this central yogic channel is simply referred to as the “River”
(nadī). It is worth noting the similarity to the frequent four-fold structure
of earlier Buddhist Tantric dehatattva, and the use of baṅka nāla (“curved
duct”) in earlier Nāth and Siddha schools.4 Once yogically “reversed,” the
fluids become vastu, the basic “stuff” of the cosmos. It is this “material”
out of which the divine body, ponds, and river are generated (nirmāṇa).
Here it is the vastu, the “cosmic stuff,” which serves as a sort of anchor

3 On similar notions of “male mystical pregnancy” in Taoist traditions, see Kristofer
Schipper, The Taoist Body (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994: 116-123 and
162-163) .
4 David Gordon White, The Alchemical Body: Siddha Traditions in Medieval India (Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press), 261, 485-489.
 Rivers to the Sky 117

for the structures of the yogic realms. Using this vastu, the practitioners
essentially generate the inner yogic body and ponds.
Ascent along this River leads up to the Pond of Indestructibility
(akṣaya-sarovara) and the attainment of Sahaja – the “together-born,”
“innate,” “co-eval” cosmic state of unity in which all dualities – human/
divine, male/female, manifest/unmanifest – collapse. One thus becomes a
Sahaja-mānuṣa, an androgynous cosmic being beyond all dualities, even
that of of Kṣṇa and Rādhā. Kṣṇa and Rādhā are thus both merged into
the ultimate space of the Sahaja-mānuṣa.
In order to give the reader a sense of Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyā texts, and
especially their emphasis upon the centrality of the yogic River (nadī) in
sādhana, we will consider some previously-unpublished verses from the
Amtarasāvalī (“The Collection of Immortal Rasa”), a text attributed by
the great scholar Sukumar Sen to one Mathurā-dāsa, a later disciple in
the lineage of Mukunda-deva.5 Although the entire text runs to several
hundred couplets, in this passage we see not only the traditional imagery
of the “river” (nadī) as a place of pilgrimage, asceticism, and travel, but
also its transformation by Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyās into the central “yogic chan-
nel” through which the sexual fluids and consciousness of the adept must
travel enroute to Sahaja and the blissful abode called The Place of the
Hidden Moon (guptacandrapur). This excerpt also employs allegory to
describe the attempt by the worldly consciousness (jīvātmā), called here
“Everyman” (Sabā), to sneak along the River in order to “steal” the divine
rasa from the inner lotuses. Everyman is accompanied by nine other rasa-
thieves, which later commentaries identify as the four organs (indriya)
of action and the five organs of knowledge. Their “gang” thus totals ten
thieves. The Supreme Soul (identified with Kṣṇa), called the paramātmā
and in this passage the “God of Totality” (sarvadevā) , serves as the guard-
ian of the inner realms, and the allegory details how the unqualified entry
into the yogic body by the senses and worldly mind are met with darkness
and fear. Only by being initiated by the appropriate gurus can the adept
truly advance along the River to the inner Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyā regions. Most

5 See Dimock, Place of the Hidden Moon, p. 144 n. 43. Translations of related texts may be
found in Glen Alexander Hayes, “The Necklace of Immortality: A Seventeenth-Cen-
tury Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyā Text,” in David Gordon White, ed. Tantra in Practice, Princeton
Readings in Religion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 317-325, and “The
Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyā Traditions of Medieval Bengal,” in David Gordon White, ed. Reli-
gions of India in Practice, Princeton Readings in Religion (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1995), pp. 333-351. The original Bengali verses from which this author has prepared
English translations may be found in Manindramohan Basu (Bose), Sahajiẏā sāhitya
(Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1932), pp. 169-171.
118 Glen Alexander Hayes

of the verses are clear enough, although there are some esoteric references
to subtle physiology including a “Room” (ghara) and the revival of the
physical body (śarīra).

From the Amtarasāvalī of Mathurā-dāsa:

Now, to return to the story of the ten thieves.

Listen, and pay attention, for I’ll give an account of this.

While it was still very dark out, they went

[along the River] to enter the lotus pond (sarovara).
Except that their leader,
Everyman (Sabā), was taken prisoner.

So the other nine thieves made their own way to a house.

Still terrified at losing Everyman, they fled the
house for the realm of the devas.

Day and night they pondered the fate of Everyman.

At this time the Supreme Soul (paramātmā/
sarvadevā) arrived to see them.

The Great One shouted “Everyman! Everyman!,”

calling out again and again.
The nine men, wearing modest clothing,
went outside to meet Him.

“What is your command, oh Lord?

What do you want us to do [to find Everyman]?”
The Great One said: “We must go into the lotus pond!”

“If that be your command, oh Lord,

that is what we shall do!
We are not able to refuse your inviolable command.”

“Although we are still frightened,

we have one more question.
But asking this question will relieve us of fear.”

The Supreme Soul says: “Why are you still

afraid? There should be no more fear!”
They say: “We have lost our leader, Everyman!”
 Rivers to the Sky 119

The Great One says:

“Well, where did you lose him?”
They said: “It all happened in a flash [along the
River], and we were left sitting here.”

“Calm yourselves down, and just tell me what

happened,” [said the Great One].
“If you become agitated, [even] an artist (kāru)
cannot revive the body (śarīra).”

“Everyman went with all of you to the

forest of water-lotuses (kamala)”
“As he was intoxicated by the rasa of the lotuses,
he went on [along the River] by himself.”

Then, at dawn, Everyman called out to us.

“Join with Everyman and let’s go thieving!”

For we are just his followers,

and he is our leader!
Although we all came in order to steal [rasa], we
[nine] stayed by the banks of the River (nadī).

Yet upon entering the lotus pond, there

was [sudden] darkness!
When we beheld this great darkness, we
were seized with immense fear.

Then we arrived at the Room (ghara),

wondering about many things.
“But you were not here, so we had fear in our minds.”

“Therefore we beg for mercy at your feet, oh Great One.”

For three days we hid in that Room.

The Supreme Soul says: “ He (Everyman) is

the greatest of all warrior chiefs!”
“He moves ever so quickly, just like the wind.”

“Before Whom can even the greatest darkness be destroyed?

Due to his fear of Me, he went to another place.”
120 Glen Alexander Hayes

“Please bring him to my abode; I will

soothe him with betal-leaf.”
“And I tell you to say to him: ‘Have no fear.’”

They say: “Where did he go, and where has he stayed?”

How are we going to find him, they wondered.

“If you want to remain healthy, you must speak with him.
Failure to return with him means death
to you and your families.”

In a state of fear, the nine bowed down at His feet.

Accepting the command, they went off in search of Everyman.

Roaming through each and every country,

they could not find Everyman.
In no place could they find even a trace of Everyman.

They searched in so many realms,

yet still could not find him.
United in their quest for Everyman, they
adopted the guise of ascetics (tapasvī).

Since they were unable to return to their homes

due to the threat of the Supreme Soul,
they retired deep within the forest, following
the course of the River.

Living alongside the River, the nine men followed

the dharma of asceticism (tapasya).
They endured many privations among
the trees, yet never died.

For the River encircles the fourteen realms of the universe,

And those who fail to dwell along the banks of the River
will receive the wrath of the Lord of Death (Yama).

In subsequent portions of this complicated text, Everyman and the nine

thieves are reunited, introduced to beautiful Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyā maidens
(nāyikās) bathing in the River, and eventually learn the advanced sexual
sādhanas of the Mukunda-deva lineage. The River has indeed brought
them to the Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyā skies.
 Rivers to the Sky 121

Thus, as expressed in esoteric texts like this, the Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyās

developed a distinctive form of Tantra and yogic physiology by adapt-
ing the popular forms of Caitanya Bhakti devotionalism and Gauḍīya
Vaiṣṇava aesthetics – which had become one of the dominant religious
paradigms in 16th-through 18th-century Bengal – and blended them with
earlier Tantric physiology and sādhana based upon the kind of exchange
of sexual fluids that David Gordon White has discussed.6 And, as White
points out in Kiss of the Yogini, this use of sexual fluids and “hard core”
Tantra was not without controversy or opposition from the larger society.
Referring to earlier debates over this, White observes:

it was sexual practice and in particular the ritualized consumption of sexual

fluids that gave medieval South Asian Tantra its specificity – in other words,
that differentiated Tantra from all other forms of religious practice of the
period. This, the “hard core” of South Asian Tantra, first appeared as a coher-
ent ritual system – the Kaula – in about the eighth century in central India;
and there have been more recent revivals of the original Kaula impetus, in
fourteenth- to sixteenth-century Bengal and Nepal in particular. However,
throughout most of South Asia, a marginalization of Kaula practice occurred
in elite Brahmin circles, from a very early time onward, which sublimated the
“hard core” of Kaula practice into a body of ritual and meditative rechniques
that did not threaten the purity regulations that have always been the basis for
high-caste social constructions of the self.7

While White discusses the eventual reinterpretation and “sanitizing” of

“hard core” Kaula practices by the twelfth century, this same dynamic was
very much at work during the time of the Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyās, as some
practiced the more “hard core” rituals of vastu while others adopted the
“safer” practices of the Caitanya movement. Since Bengal was a center of
trade, pilgrimage, and travel, it is not surprising that these dynamics of
Tantra would occur, or that such diverse forms of both Bhakti and Tantra
came together under the guidance of Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyā gurus. Yet there
would be an important transformation of the Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyā tradition,
under the influence of the Kartābhajās, literally, “worshippers of the boss-
man.” This dynamic esoteric group came of age in the time of the Brit-
ish East India Company and has been most thoroughly studied by Hugh
Urban.

6  David Gordon White, Kiss of the Yogini: “Tantric Sex” in its South Asian Contexts
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 219-123 and infra.
7  White, Kiss of the Yogini, p. 21.
122 Glen Alexander Hayes

The Kartābhajās of Colonial Bengal

The arrival of the British colonial empire in the 17th century, and the
expansion of the East India Company, had profound and lasting conse-
quences upon Bengal, displacing the Muslim rule and initiating any num-
ber of socioeconomic and religious changes. Even relatively small esoteric
groups like the Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyās, whose outward social appearance might
be that of typical Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas, were transformed by these larger
forces. One of the results was the fascinating Tantric tradition known as
the Kartābhajās, As Hugh Urban has shown in his wonderful study, The
Economics of Ecstasy,8 the Kartābhajās were founded by one Āulcāṅd
(d. 1779), regarded as an incarnation of the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava godman
Cai­tanya (himself regarded by Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas as the dual incarna-
tion of both Kṣṇa and Rādhā). Urban has shown how the Kartābhajās
were “perhaps the most important later branch of the Vaiṣṇava-Sahajiyā
tradition.”9 However, while the Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyās remained largely an
underground esoteric group (perhaps to this day, according to Rama-
kanta Chakravarti10), the Kartābhajās had, “by the mid-nineteenth cen-
tury, grown into a wealthy, powerful, and quite infamous tradition.”11 The
Kartābhajās developed along two basic tracks: some, like the Vaiṣṇava
Sahajiyās, remained an underground, esoteric Tantric tradition practic-
ing sexual rituals and other antinomian practices. The majority, however,
developed a large following among the poor workers and shopkeepers of
Bengal using exoteric traditions with pilgrimages sites, wealthy leadership,
and an impressive ownership of revenue and land. Their heyday was in the
nineteenth century. Today, Urban observes:

Although many pockets of Kartābhajās still survive throughout Calcutta, rural

West Bengal, and Bangladesh, and although one can still find many Kartābhajā
subsects such as the Sāhebdhanīs, Bhagabāniyās, Gurusatyas, and Āuls, the
current status of the tradition is a rather sad reflection of its impressive power
and wealth at its height in the nineteenth century. Today, the Kartābhajās are

8 H ugh B. Urban, The Economics of Ecstasy: Tantra, Secrecy, and Power in Colonial
Bengal (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). This fine study is accompanied by a
useful collection of translations from the major Kartābhajā texts, the Bhaver Gita “Songs
of Ecstasy”): Songs of Ecstasy: Tantric and Devotional Songs from Colonial Bengal (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2001). I am indebted to Hugh for his useful insights into
the transformations embraced by the Kartābhajās.
9  U rban, Economics of Ecstasy, p. 5.
10  R amakanta Chakravarti, Vaisnavism in Bengal (Calcutta: Sanskrit Pustak Bhandar,
1985)
11  U rban, The Economics of Ecstasy, p. 9.
 Rivers to the Sky 123

typically remembered only for their large annual festival held in Ghoshpara
at the time of Holi, which now survives largely as a kind of carnival event or
popular entertainment (as well as the primary source of income for the current
family of the Kartā). Ironically, this once profoundly “esoteric” Sahajiyā cult
now survives as a relatively innocuous and “exoteric” devotional movement.12
Āulcāṅd and the other 19th-century Kartās composed a number of eso-
teric verses, known as the Bhāver Gīta (“Songs of Ecstasy”), in which
they outlined their own reinterpretation of earlier Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyā and
Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava practices and metaphors. To begin with, they felt that
19th-century Bengal was a time of corruption, and that the “marketplace
of love” needed a new incarnation of Kṣṇa and Caitanya to “redistrib-
ute” the goods of love and truth to the masses. Rich with colonial and
mercantile imagery, the Bhāver Gīta verses argue that the place of practice
must henceforth be the “secret market” (gupta hāṭ), no longer the eso-
teric “villages” (grāma) and “groves” of Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyā ritual practice.
In other words, although the most advanced Kartābhajās would continue
to practice versions of the sexual rituals involving manipulation of fluids,
their worldview and expressions reflected the dominant context of mer-
cantile Bengal, and the core metaphor of the world as “marketplace” takes
the place of more rural imagery. And while the earlier Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyās
and Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas had emphasized the need for the “pure love” of
prema, the Kartābhajās typically refer to love as a “good” or “rice” to
be traded in the marketplace. Furthermore, while the Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyās
typically referred to the ideal social group of the sādhu-saṃgha (“com-
munity of sadhus”) or rasika-saṃgha (“community of connoisseurs”), the
Kartābhajās called themselves the new “poor company” (gorib kompānī).
There are many fascinating aspects of the Kartābhajās that Urban
explores in his superb works, but it is their transformation from out of
the Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyās that concerns us today. Another adaptation con-
cerns that of the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava and Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyā notion of the
sacred locale of Vndāvana – central to the Kṣṇa-līlā of the Bhāgavata
Purāṇa and major Vaiṣṇava texts. For the Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyās, the inner
yogic realms also contain the “eternal” (nitya) Vndāvana, a microcosmic
sacred space; the Kartābhajās, however, actually located this abode as
“new” (nava) Vndāvana and placed it some 20 miles north of Calcutta in
the town of Ghoshpara, the residence of the Kartās and their families, site

12  U rban, Economics of Ecstasy, p. 10.

124 Glen Alexander Hayes

of major rituals, and place of the sacred Hīmsāgar, a small pond associated
with many miracles.13
Much as the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas believed that the six Gosvāmin-
theologians of the Caitanya movement were incarnations of major milk-
maidens (gopīs) from the Kṣṇa-līlā (an idea generally accepted by Vaiṣṇava
Sahajiyās), the Kartābhajās believed that the 22 disciples of Āulcāṅd were
themselves incarnations of the followers of Caitanya (including some, like
Kṣṇadāsa Kavirāja, claimed as “secret Sahajiyās” by Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyās).
But it was Dulālcāṅd, “miraculously born” from the wife of a key disciple,
Ramsaran Sarasvati, known as Satī Mā, who is regarded as the true genius
of the Kartābhajās, as he organizes the group, amasses great wealth, prop-
erty, and power, and composes many key Bhāver Gīta verses.14
Whereas the ancient Tantric word Sahaja had been used as far back as
the 8th century by Buddhist Tantrics to refer to the “innate,” “spontaneous”
state of liberation, and by Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyās to refer to the “together-born”
androgynous state of the Sahaja-mānuṣa, Dulālcāṅd preferred to gloss it
as “easy,” or “natural” and cast it as the easy path for the laboring masses
of Calcutta. Urban notes that the older Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyā traditions were
“especially well suited to this changing social context, and which offered a
highly marketable set of spiritual commodities.”15 The Kartābhajās offered
a “Religion of Man,” which was essentially a “popularized Tantra,” “a
new transformation within the Sahajiyā tradition which invest many older
Tantric ideals with broader social implications in the changing context of
colonial Bengal.”16 While the older Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyā schools were never
socially active, the Kartābhajās, drawing support from the growing under-
class of the Imperial City of Calcutta, quite intentionally cast themselves as
leaders of poor shopkeepers and laborers, calling them out to Ghoshpara
for miracles and festive melās – and contributions.
In my own fieldwork with Kartābhajās back in 1980, and as supported
by Urban’s later research, the dehatattva of the Kartābhajās is similar to
the rati-sādhana of the Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyās in that an “inverse” form of
sexual intercourse is claimed, whereby the male, using urethral suction,
draws the female sexual fluid (rajas) into his penis, and on into his own
body. However, they seem not to have used the older Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyā

13 In spring of 1980, while conducting fieldwork on the Sahajiyās and the Kartābhajās at
Ghoshpara, I was taken to a shrine adjacent to the Hīmsāgar, and told that a mute child
had been miraculously cured the previous day. Thanks to a holy woman at the site, she
could now speak a few words.
14  U rban, Economics of Ecstasy, pp. 52-59.
15 Ibid., p.60.
16 Ibid., p.  61.
 Rivers to the Sky 125

riverine imagery of the series of sarovaras or “ponds” within the physical

body, relying instead on the better-known system of cakras and kuṇḍalinī.
Like the later and modern Bāuls and Bartamān Panthīs,17 the Kartābhajās
believe that the sexual fluids “move” throughout the body during the
month, and that the best time for sādhana are the days of menstrual flow.
The Bhāver Gīta, using vivid imagery, sees this as:

A wondrous Royal Goose, He has plunged into

the waters and floats upon them.
Swinging and swaying, He dallies in union
with his beloved Lady Goose.
And I see the dawn of both the wondrous
full Moon and Sun together!
From time to time He appears upon Her Lotus,
in order to adorn her in splendor.18

Concluding Remarks

So, what are we to make of these fascinating transformations of Vaiṣṇava

Sahajiyā traditions that appeared with the arrival of the British Empire
and colonial mercantilism in Bengal? We have seen enough to make some
basic observations about the durability of core Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyā images
and metaphors, as well as the role of the historical and mercantile con-
text in reshaping those very metaphors. While most of the older Vaiṣṇava
Sahajiyā texts connected to the lineage of Mukunda-deva describe the sote-
riological process as a passage along an interior yogic River (nadī) leading
to the inner realms of “lotus ponds” (sarovara) and “villages” (grāma) and
upward to the skies of Mount Sumeru and the Pond of Indestructibility,
the 19th-century Kartābhajās have changed this process to the journeys
of the “merchant of love” on the “seas of desire,” carrying the “goods of
love” for sale in the “marketplace of the world.” On the deepest level, the
antinomian Tantric rituals kept much of their power and esotericism, but
the presence of the British, and the growing power of the new Bengali
mercantile elites, the bhadralok, led to what Urban has called a “sanitiz-
ing” or “deodorizing” of the most transgressive Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyā Tantric

17 An excellent recent study of the Bāuls and their modern-day descendents may be found
in Jeanne Openshaw, Seeking Bāuls of Bengal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2002).
18 Bhāver Gīta 413; II .81; in Urban, Economics of Ecstasy, p. 144.
126 Glen Alexander Hayes

practices. Or, to use David Gordon White’s terminology, we find a diver-

gence between the “hard core” and “soft core” aspects of Tantric ritual
practice – a process which has been going on for centuries. As a result,
the older Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyā traditions were forced underground, where,
according to some sources, they may still remain today. To be sure (as
Jeanne Openshaw demonstrates in Seeking Bāuls of Bengal), the modern
Bāul practice of the “four moon” sexual sādhana of semen, uterine blood,
feces, and urine has kept this ancient ritual practice of powerful trans-
formative substances alive – despite the “sanitizing” and “popularizing”
processes of modern India. As an historian of religions, I see this as yet
another vivid example of the interplay between text and context, and how
very old “rivers to the sky” may well have become transformed into path-
ways of new forms of sacred commerce.

Bibliography

Basu (Bose), Manindramohan. Sahajiyā sāhitya. Calcutta: University of Cal-

cutta, 1932.
Bose (Basu), Manindramohan. The Post-Caitanya Sahajiā [sic] Cult of Bengal.
1930. Rep. ed. Delhi: Gian Publishing House, 1986.
Brooks, Douglas Renfrew. The Secret of the Three Cities: An Introduction to
Hindu Śākta Tantrism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
Chakravarti, Ramakanta. Vaiṣṇavism in Bengal: 1486-1900. Calcutta: San-
skrit Pustak Bandar, 1985.
Dāsa, Paritoṣa. Caitanyottara cāriñi sahajiyā punthi. Calcutta: Bharati Book
Stall, 1972.
Dasgupta, Shashibhusan. Obscure Religious Cults. 1946. Rep. 3rd ed. Delhi:
Gian Publishing,1976.
Dimock, Edward C., Jr. The Place of the Hidden Moon: Erotic Mysticism in
the Vaishnava-sahajiyā Cult of Bengal. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1966.
——— . Caitanya caritāmta of Kṣṇadāsa Kavirāja, a Translation and Commen-
tary. Trans. and ed. by Tony K. Stewart. Harvard Oriental Series 56. Cam-
bridge and London: Harvard University, Department of Sanskrit and Indian
Studies, 1999.
Fauconnier, Gilles and Mark Turner. The Way We Think: Conceptual
Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities. New York: Basic Books. 2002
Gardner, Daniel. The Science of Fear. New York: Dutton, 2008.
Haberman, David. Acting as a Way of Salvation: A Study of Rāgānugā Bhakti
Sādhana. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Hayes, Glen Alexander. “The Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyā Traditions of Medieval Ben-
gal.” In Religions of India in Practice, 333-351. Ed. by Donald S. Lopez, Jr.
Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1995
 Rivers to the Sky 127

——— . “The Necklace of Immortality: A 17th-Century Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyā Text.”

In Tantra in Practice, 308-325. Ed. by David Gordon White. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2000.
——— .“Metaphoric Worlds and Yoga in the Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyā Traditions of Medi-
eval Bengal.” In Yoga: The Indian Tradition, 162-184. Ed. by Ian Whicher
and David Carpenter. New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003.
——— . “Contemporary Metaphor Theory and Alternative Views of Krishna and
Rādhā in Vaishnava Sahajiyā Tantric Traditions.” In Alternative Krishnas:
Regional and Vernacular Variations on a Hindu Deity, 19-41. Ed. by Guy
Beck. Albany: SUNY Press, 2005.
Johnson, Mark. The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagina-
tion, and Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987
Lakoff, Georgeand Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1980.
——— . Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western
Thought. New York: Basic Books, 1999.
Levin, Samuel. “Language, Concepts, and Worlds: Three Domains of Metaphor.”
In Metaphor and Thought, 112-123. 2nd ed. by Andrew Ortony. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Mojundar, Atindra. The Cāryapādas, 2nd Rev. Ed. Calcutta: Naya Prokash,
1973.
Openshaw, Jeanne. Seeking Bāuls of Bengal. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2002.
Ortony, Andrew, ed. Metaphor and Thought. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993.
“Radiolab.” A National Public-Radio program on cognitive science and
emotions. November 14, 2008, http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/
episodes/2008/11/14/segments/113310
Salomon, Carol. “Bāul Songs.” In Religions of India in Practice, 187-208. Ed. by
Donald S. Lopez. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.
Schipper, Kristofer. The Taoist Body. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1994.
Sen, Sukmar. Bāṅgalār sāhityer itihāsa. 3 vols. Calcutta: Modern Book Agency,
1940
——— . History of Bengali Literature. Revised 3rd ed. New Delhi: Sahitya Aka-
demi, 1979.
Slingerland, Edward. “Conceptual Metaphor Theory as Methodology for
Comparative Religion.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 72:
1-31. (2004)
Turner, Mark,ed. The Artful Mind: Cognitive Science and the Riddle of Human
Creativity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Urban, Hugh B. The Economics of Ecstasy: Tantra, Secrecy, and Power in Colo-
nial Bengal. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001a.
——— . Songs of Ecstasy: Tantric and Devotional Songs from Colonial Bengal.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2001b.
——— . Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Politics, and Power in the Study of Religion. Berkeley:
CA : University of California Press, 2003.
128 Glen Alexander Hayes

White, David Gordon. The Alchemical Body: Siddha Traditions in Medieval

India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
——— . Kiss of the Yogini: “Tantric Sex” in its South Asian Contexts. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2003a.
——— . “Yoga in early Hindu Tantra.” In Yoga: The Indian Tradition, 143-161.
Ed. by Ian Whicher and David Carpenter. New York: Routledge Curzon,
2003b.