Abstract

The concept of sakti is essential to the study of Indian religious thought because it elucidates the general problem of causality and provides insight into two of the most prominent Tantric systems, Saktism and Saivism. In spite of the concept's importance in these systems, as yet there has been no comparative, philological study of saki's role in Saivism and Saktism. The present study examines the concept of sakti in Srivida--the most important branch of Sakta Tantrism--and offers an explicit interpretation of the usage of the term in wider Sakta literature. It focuses in particular on Laksmidhara's commentary on the Saundaryalahari--an important text of Srivida which draws on both Tantric and Vedic sources. In order to place Laksmidhara's use of the term sakti in philological and historical perspective, the present study surveys how the word has been used in early Sanskrit literature through to contemporary scholarship, traces the origin and historical development of Tantra, the Tantric Sakta school, and the Srivida branch, and provides a philological analysis of sakti and related terms in Laksmidhara and other Srivida texts. In particular, the present work analyzes and compares the notion of sakti with that of Abhinavagupta in the Tantraloka which is the subject of several satisfactory studies. Although the historical origins of his primary text, Saundaryalahari, may be ambiguous, Laksmidhara's influence on the Srividya tradition is indisputable. His commentary offers for the first time a clear description of the sakti concept, which he terms samaya, and its metaphysical status in relation to siva. His methodology can serve as a valuable model with which to delineate the philosophy of sakti in other schools of Sakta Tantrism