Religions of South Asia 16.

2–3 (2022) 370–372 ISSN (print) 1751-2689

https://doi.org/10.1558/rosa.24409 ISSN (online) 1751-2697

Review
Tantra, Ritual, Performance and Politics in Nepal and Kerala: Embodying the Goddess
Clan, by Matthew Martin. Leiden: Brill, 2020. 265 pp., €124.00/$149.00. ISBN
978-9-00-443899-6.

Reviewed by: Lucy May Constantini, The Open University, UK

LucyMay.Constantini@open.ac.uk

Keywords: embodied practice; goddess; Tantra.

In this book based on his doctoral research at Oxford, Matthew Martin com-
pares two goddess-centred ritual performance traditions specific to their
distinct localities in South Asia. The Navadurgā (literally the nine goddesses
Durgā) rite is centred on Bhaktapur in the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal,
while his study of Teyyāṭṭam (literally the dance of the deity) focuses on
the Kannur district of Malabar in northern Kerala, itself a state in southwest
India. Identifying a gap in comparative studies of Śākta (goddess-centred)
religion, Martin describes his method as ‘anthropologically informed reli-
gious studies’, combining fieldwork with ‘historico-cultural study’ building
on the work of such theorists as Durkheim and Weber. His fieldwork con-
sisted of twelve months split between Bhaktapur and Kannur, approximately
two thirds of which was spent at the Nepali fieldsite, although the book con-
sistently gives more space to the Keralan practice.
Part 1 introduces Martin’s case studies, Teyyāṭṭam in Chapter 1 and the
Navadurgā rite in Chapter 2. Part 2 moves onto the themes of his study, with
Chapter 3 analysing the communities and kinship bonds within which the
respective rituals occur, and Chapter 4 examining the rituals’ place in wider
Tantric cosmology, in particular exploring Martin’s notion of ‘somatic textu-
ality’. Chapter 5 focuses primarily on blood sacrifice, while the sixth chapter
considers the rituals’ roles in the politics and hierarchies of their respective
social contexts. Martin’s conclusion summarizes the findings of each chapter,
but given that the comparative premise of the book is so intriguing, it would
have been helpful to round off with a fuller, synthesizing analysis of how
far the ‘web-like ritual networks’ (p. 260) that Martin identifies satisfy his
opening questions pertaining to theoretical advances in the discussion of
these practices. As his aim is to shine ‘new theoretical light on Śākta tra-
ditions’ (p. 5), considerable space in the introduction is given to position-
ing himself against theorists. However, work on areas such as the limited

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 BOOK REVIEW 371

usefulness of the reductive emic/etic binary, attention to information beyond

the verbal (such as body language and material culture) when gathering data
at field sites, and the decolonizing impetus to include indigenous methodol-
ogies and categories in data analysis, has advanced significantly since their
examination fifty and thirty years ago respectively by Geertz and Marriott,
who form the focus of Martin’s discussion.
The main interest of this book lies in the comparison of these two forms
of ‘Folk Śākta’, as Martin terms them, rather than any new ethnographic
insights into the individual practices. Bringing together these two iconic
practices from opposite ends of the Indian subcontinent is both original
and potentially fascinating, and Martin lays out many intriguing paral-
lels. Both are performed by male, low-caste dancer-mediums who pass on
their ritual-art through a family lineage; both forms reproduce their social
systems, preserving cultural identities while simultaneously challenging
orthodox caste hierarchies; both exist in regions with a modern history
of Marxist-influenced politics; and both adhere to a system that admits to
varying degrees the antinomian practice of blood sacrifice in veneration
of a fierce form of the goddess. Each combines Śākta Tantra, more usually
understood as ‘Hindu’, with local influences: heroic ancestors reappearing
as gods, which Martin identifies as the Dravidian elements of Teyyāṭṭam,
and Buddhist Vajrayāna influences in the Newari culture of the Navadurgā
ritual. He differentiates between the public, once royally-sponsored, func-
tion of the goddess-oriented Tantric performances of northern Kerala and
the Kathmandu Valley, and the secret Tantric lineages of Bengal and Kashmir,
describing a span of both Tantric and Brahmanical religiosity and a resultant
tension between the pollution of violence and the purity of divine protection.
Martin paints some lively pictures which give a clear sense of local con-
texts, for example of the family arrangements of his accommodations in
Bhaktapur, or the inclusivity of Teyyāṭṭam as experienced by one of his inter-
locutors in Kannur, and the tension inherent in some people’s descriptions
of it as a cultural rather than religious practice. There are also evocative pas-
sages illustrating how the land itself, holder of ancestral remains, and indeed
how all natural and somatic phenomena, are understood to be vehicles for
immanent divine power.
My own research explores the relationship between the practice and
manuscripts of a Keralan embodied tradition with my methodological focus
deriving from my background in dance and somatic praxes, so I was especially
drawn to Martin’s focus on ‘somatic textuality’. He gives several tantalizing
pointers to the profound somatic experiences of practitioners and partic-
ipants of these rites, for example in contending that god is experienced in
society through the body (p. 162) and that ‘Somatic experiences and internal
visions of the goddess are not uncommon in nondual Śākta Tantra’ (p. 197).
However, Martin avers that texts are not used in either ritual, and so it seems
to me that the whole notion of ‘somatic textuality’ requires deconstruction if

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it is not simply to replicate an unconsidered hegemony of text in the academy.

That symbols are sometimes inscribed on dancer-mediums’ bodies does not
on its own seem sufficient basis to reduce somatic experiences to ‘textuality’,
nor does it explain why an embodied practice should be described in terms
of text in the first place. Martin’s ethnographic descriptions generally focus
on the paraphernalia and shapes perceivable to an outside observer, with the
conveying of any somatic experience, when it does occur, confined to medi-
calized or fetishized language (the dancer-mediums exhibit ‘hyperactivity’,
‘hyperkinesia’, or ‘cavort fervidly’, p. 59). More nuanced language or more
technically precise somatic descriptions might give richer insight into what
practitioners and participants themselves experience. A memorable instance
of incongruous language is the claim that Navadurgā dancer-mediums are
‘continually subjected to animal sacrifice’ (p. 220) preceding a description
of one of them severing a live chicken’s jugular with his teeth, which is an
unusually active interpretation of the notion of being ‘subjected’.
Martin’s transliteration and orthography of Indian languages would
benefit from more careful presentation. He rarely guides the reader as to
which language he is using, and while I am in no position to comment on the
Newari, the Malayalam is more often misspelled than not,1 and the transliter-
ations inconsistent.2 The Sanskrit is also at times inaccurate, so that it would
be less misleading to eschew diacritical markings altogether and opt instead
for a current local anglicization of words. It is a shame that there was not
better editorial oversight on these issues.
This book is relevant to students of embodied ritual practices, indigenous
religion and Śāktism. Martin’s most significant intervention is in providing a
comparative example of two ‘Folk Śākta’ traditions in disparate geographical
locations; this broader context is essential for understanding the diversity
and continued relevance of contemporary Śākta practices.

1. While some symbols, the double ṟa and the candrakala ( ˘ ) for example, do not have
universally accepted transliterations, vowel length, differentiation between sibilants, and
the distinction between retroflex and alveolar syllables, are all uncontroversial.
2. The symbol ḻa (ഴ) for example, is transliterated three separate ways with no apparent
awareness thereof.

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