My name is Imma Ramos and I'm the curator of the medieval to modern South Asia collections
here at the Museum, and the curator of this exhibition, Tantra: enlightenment to revolution.
The exhibition aims to demystify Tantra and challenge the stereotype that it’s a hedonistic
guide to sex. Above all, it presents a the history of Tantra as a countercultural philosophy.
Originating in 6th century India, Tantra has been linked to successive waves of
revolutionary thought, from its early medieval transformation of Hinduism and Buddhism,
to the Indian fight for independence and the rise of 1960s counterculture in the West.
MANUSCRIPTS Tantra is rooted in
instructional sacred texts called Tantras. They take their name from the Sanskrit word 'tan',
meaning 'to weave' or 'compose', and are often written as a dialogue between a god and a goddess.
We open the exhibition with some of the earliest surviving Tantras in the world, on loan from
Cambridge University Library. The Tantras taught active engagement with spiritual obstacles,
such as desire, aversion and fear, in order to ultimately transcend them.
Tantric imagery is therefore unique in its inclusion of erotic and macabre symbolism.
RA INTRO
The first major section of the exhibition explores the rise of Tantra in medieval India. Power is
absolutely central to Tantra. It presented a new worldview which saw all material reality
as animated by Shakti – divine feminine power. This worldview inspired the dramatic
rise of goddess worship in India. New Tantric goddesses were introduced into the Hindu and
Buddhist pantheons – what made them specifically Tantric were their intertwining of destructive
and maternal power, which challenged traditional models of womanhood as passive and docile.
These temple sculptures represent the Tantric goddess Chamunda. This one from
11th century Central India shows her dancing ecstatically after her rampage against demons
on the cosmic battlefield. She is a skeletal vision to behold,
with a skull-like face and glaring eyes. Her nakedness is ornamented with a garland
of heads. She carries a sword of wisdom with which she destroys not only demons but also
obstacles to enlightenment, such as a devotee’s ego – their attachment to a false sense of self.
The ego is symbolised by a corpse that turns to look up at her adoringly. A jackal picks at the
corpse’s heel, suggesting the nocturnal setting of a cremation ground, Chamunda’s favourite haunt.
This 10th century Tantric goddess from Tamil Nadu represents a Yogini. From a distance her
voluptuous nudity attracts the eye and invites the viewer to approach, but closer observation
reveals the fearsome details of her fangs, angrily arched eyebrows, and earrings made
from a dismembered hand and a cobra. Yoginis are described in some of the earliest Tantric texts.
Seductive yet dangerous, these goddesses could transform into women, birds, tigers or
jackals as the mood took them. This sculpture is part of a group that would have once been
enshrined in a temple dedicated to the Yoginis. Between the 10th and 13th centuries, royal patrons
commissioned Yogini temples across India. Rulers believed that Yoginis could predict the future,
protect their kingdoms against disease or enemy armies and help them win new territories.
This space evokes an imaginative and immersive recreation of one of the most
famous Yogini temples in India, which is located in Odisha, and was built around the 10th century.
We wanted to transport visitors to a time when devotion to these goddesses
was at its height. Most Yogini temples were circular and unique in their roofless design,
perhaps in order to attract the Yoginis from the sky into the sacred courtyard.
Tantra’s affirmation of the divine feminine informed the lives of real women. Tantric texts
not only encouraged their worship as goddesses, but women themselves could play powerful roles as
independent practitioners. We see this through the historical figure of Karaikkal Ammaiyar,
who lived in Tamil Nadu in the 6th century. She became a follower of the god Shiva, one of the
most important deities within Tantric philosophy and practice. She asked him to replace her beauty
with an appearance which echoed that of a Tantric goddess. In this 13th century Chola bronze of her
from the Metropolitan Museum she’s shown reciting one of her poems, with a pair of cymbals.
New techniques of Tantric yoga harnessed the body as the ultimate instrument for
internalising Shakti, or divine feminine power, by visualising a goddess at the base of the spine,
surrounded by chakras or energy centres. Awakening this inner goddess through breath control
became the ultimate goal of Tantric yoga. This cosmic vision of the body is what is
being visualised in these paintings from the British Library and Wellcome Collection.
The word ‘yogini’ not only refers to the goddesses we saw earlier but also to female practitioners of
Tantra or yoga. In this beautifully detailed 18th century painting, a mortal yogini sits
on a tiger skin outside her hut. Two women come seeking guidance and make an offering of flowers.
Many Tantric texts describe women as superior gurus or teachers
in their embodiment of Shakti. Rulers across India were attracted to Tantric masters as agents of
power. This included the Mughal dynasty who arrived from Central Asia in the 16th century,
as well as the Islamic rules of independent sultanates further south. They commissioned
some of the earliest detailed representations of women as gurus, such as the ones on display here.
This visionary depiction of the Tantric goddess Bhairavi from the Met was painted in the 1630s
by Payag, a celebrated artist at the Mughal court. The setting is a cremation ground – the
goddess sits cross-legged on a corpse, its head violently wrenched off. Blood-red and cackling,
she wears a skirt of skulls and has horns in the shape of spearheads. Her devotee here
may be the god Shiva or it might be a mortal yogi emulating him. Tantric yogis imitated
Shiva’s wild appearance and behaviour in order to fully embody him. They meditated
in cremation grounds to overcome obstacles to enlightenment, such as the fear of mortality.
The rise of Tantra led to a new school of Tantric Buddhism
known as Vajrayana or the Path of the Thunderbolt, which had spread across Asia by the 8th century,
with a particularly strong hold in Tibet. Instrumental in the transmission of Tantric
teachings from India to the Himalayas were the Mahasiddhas or Great Accomplished Ones. They wear
human bone ornaments in imitation of Tantric deities. This painting depicts the Mahasiddha
Saraha in the centre. He composed songs about the body as a channel to enlightenment.
Jalandhara was one of the most famous Mahasiddhas – this bronze
of him performing Tantric yoga from the Rubin Museum
shows him balancing on a personification of his own ego, which he has transcended.
One of the themes the exhibition explores is the role of sex and divine union in Tantra,
in order to confront some of the more prevalent stereotypes. In Tantric texts,
gendered symbolism is often used to articulate the two qualities to be cultivated on the path towards
enlightenment, wisdom and compassion. These are visualised as a goddess (representing wisdom)
and a god (representing compassion) in sexual union, as we see with this Tibetan painting.
The goal is to internalise their qualities by visualising the deities uniting within the body
through meditation. These are deities to be adored as well as emulated. The painting was
probably a monastic commission and would have been used to support meditation.
You’ll notice the deities here are both wearing crowns of human skulls
and he is carrying a skull-cup in one of his many hands.
The representation as well as the use of human remains in Tantric practice is a reminder of
the impermanence of the body and the importance of overcoming attachment to the idea of a fixed
self. In Tibet practitioners often left their skulls and other bones after their death
to a lama and to monasteries in order to gain spiritual merit in the next life. This part of the
exhibition explores the role of human remains in Tantric Buddhist practice which has been developed
in consultation with members of the Tibetan community and scholars of Tibetan Buddhism.
This Tibetan painting from the Rubin Museum represents the renowned female Tantric master,
Machig Labdron, who lived in the 11th century. She is most famous for popularising the Tantric
practice known as Chöd (meaning to ‘cut’), which involved the use of human remains used as
instruments like the ones shown here. It entailed the visualisation of the dissection of one’s own
body, and by extension the ego, which is presented as an offering to divine spirits. The goal of the
practice is to sever and dismember all ties to the idea of a fixed self. The sounds of a two-headed
skull drum and a trumpet made from a human thighbone invite the spirits to devour the body
during this ritual. The role of human remains in Tantra is still misunderstood in the West – this
goes back to the 19th century colonial period when British officials encountered these instruments
and associated them with black magic. This leads us to the next part of the exhibition
which explores the role of Tantra during British rule in India and how Tantric goddesses were
harnessed for their insurgent potential during the fight for Indian independence.
This figure of the Tantric goddess Kali dates to the late 19th century and was made in Bengal,
which was an early centre of Tantra as well as the nucleus of British rule at the time. A
garland of severed heads hangs from her neck, corpses from her ears and hands from her girdle.
Her mouth is smeared with blood and she sticks out her tongue as though thirsting for more.
On the surface she appears fierce, but she's approached as a mother-figure.
The heads represent the ego which Kali helps her devotees to transcend. She’s shown standing on
her husband, the god Shiva. According to Tantric belief, existence results from the union between
Shakti as creative force (embodied here by Kali) and Shiva as pure consciousness. The
image of Kali striding over Shiva symbolises the superiority of the female principle within Tantra.
Kali was completely misunderstood by Christian missionaries and colonial officials who saw
her as demonic. This became one of the most popular prints made by the Ravi Varma Press.
It was reproduced in a Christian missionary text as a reflection of India’s so-called depravity.
Indian revolutionaries in Bengal harnessed Kali’s radical potential, playing on British anxiety and
paranoia. They reimagined her and other Tantric goddesses as figureheads of resistance and symbols
of an independent India rising up against the British. In 1917 this report was published
detailing the anti-colonial activities of Bengali revolutionaries and their allegiance to Kali.
The frontispiece featured this popular print of the goddess. In the report Bipin Chandra Pal,
a prominent activist, is quoted describing Kali as a symbol that could, quote, ‘arouse the dormant
energies of the nation and to lead it on to realise its highest destiny.’
In the final part of the exhibition we explore how Tantra has been reimagined from the 20th
century until today. Following the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947, artists forged modern,
national styles rooted in the pre-colonial art of the past. Many were inspired by the philosophical
and counter-cultural elements of Tantra. Artists associated with the Neo-Tantra movement in the
1970s adopted Tantric symbols and adapted them to speak to the visual language of global modernism.
In this painting by Santosh, who was born in Kashmir, limbs emerge from an oval,
egg-like shape to suggest a genderless figure seated in a cross-legged yoga pose,
known as the lotus posture. The head is replaced by an orange trident, the emblem of Shiva.
In Britain and the US, Tantra had an important impact on the period’s radical politics, where it
was interpreted as a movement that could inspire anti-capitalist, ecological and free love ideals.
In the West Tantra was reimagined as a ‘cult of ecstasy’ that could challenge stifled
attitudes to sexuality. This 1960s psychedelic poster by the London-based designers Hapshash
and the Coloured Coat drew on Tantric images of deities in union to communicate this idea.
The impact of Tantra on musicians is also explored in this section. Mick Jagger had this
logo designed for the Rolling Stones, inspired by Kali. It focuses on her protruding tongue,
an attribute of the goddess originally suggesting her ravenous appetite on the
battlefield. Here it was chosen to convey the band’s rebellious, anti-establishment spirit.
Today, Tantra is as alive as ever. Sects in India, including the Aghoris, reveal its enduring power.
These images are from a photographic archive we’re exhibiting for the first time, documenting
different Tantric communities. The practices of the Aghoris include smearing their bodies with the
ash of burnt corpses from funerary pyres, as seen here, which is traditionally deemed polluting.
For the Aghoris, transgressive practices are an expression of the Tantric assertion
that all is sacred and there is no distinction between what is conventionally perceived as pure
and impure, just as there is no distinction between the self and the divine.
Tantra has gone on to influence modern feminist thought and artistic practice.
Female artists have harnessed Tantric goddesses through the bodies of real women, evoking them
in a feminist guise. The exhibition ends with dramatic works of art, including this one. Bharti
Kher, born in London and now based in Delhi, creates sculptures made from casts of real women
to produce dramatic ‘urban goddesses’. This figure blurs the boundaries between mortal and
divine. It presents the self-decapitated goddess Chinnamasta with copper wires spurting from her
neck like jets of blood. The title of this almost three-meter tall mixed-media painting, Housewives
with Steak-knives, challenges the stereotype of the submissive wife confined to the kitchen.
It is by the Bengal-born British artist Sutapa Biswas. Here the ‘Housewife’ as Kali wears a
garland of heads that the artist describes as figureheads of authoritarian patriarchy.
This exhibition offers new insights into a philosophy that has shaped lives and captured
imaginations for more than a millennium. I hope you've enjoyed learning more about the
fascinating history of Tantric philosophy and its enduring impact on world culture.
And that you will have the opportunity to visit the exhibition in person soon. On behalf
of everyone at the Museum, thank you for your ongoing support during this difficult time.