Dance, Song, and Ritual Somatics in the Caryāpaṭala of the Hevajratantra
Abstract
This article examines the body-centred ritual practices - or ritual somatics[1] - articulated in the Caryāpaṭala of the Hevajratantra, a Buddhist tantric text associated with the cultural world of Pāla-period eastern India and Bengal. It argues that dance and song operate here neither primarily as theatrical representations nor as autonomous aesthetic forms, but as disciplines of bhāvanā: practices through which perception, affect, bodily awareness, and consciousness are deliberately reconditioned.
Read through the principle of pratītyasamutpāda, their transformative efficacy belongs to no single act or faculty. It emerges through the contingent conjunction of movement, voice, breath, mantra, mudrā, visualisation, initiation, ritual environment, and meditative awareness. The performing body is therefore not an autonomous instrument that produces realization through technique alone. It is a relational field in which material, sensory, cognitive, affective (emotional), and ritual conditions are brought into mutually transformative alignment. Performance, in this context, becomes not simply the expression of an interior spiritual state, but one of the processes through which such a state is cultivated and made experientially possible.
This ritual logic also complicates aesthetic frameworks centred predominantly on representation and spectatorship. Without denying the aesthetic force of song, rhythm, gesture, and ornamentation, the Caryāpaṭala redirects these elements towards the transformation of the practitioner. Its distinction from spectator-oriented theories of rasa lies, therefore, not in the absence of aesthetic experience, but in a different location of efficacy: the decisive event occurs within the practitioner’s ritually constituted body rather than principally in the contemplative reception of an audience.
In dialogue with theories of ritualisation, embodiment, and corporeal practice, the article introduces performed liberation as a heuristic (experiential/experimental) for this distinctive soteriological (Soteriological is an adjective that means of or relating to soteriology (the theological study or doctrine of salvation. [1, 2]) orientation. The term does not suggest that liberation is automatically achieved whenever ritual is performed. Rather, it identifies a process in which liberation is ritually anticipated, bodily rehearsed, and progressively cultivated through disciplined enactment. Read alongside the Caryāpada[2], this paradigm reveals a broader tantric epistemology in which knowledge need not remain separate from bodily practice: it may be generated through rhythm, sensation, movement, voice, and transformed modes of awareness. The Caryāpaṭala thus invites a reconsideration not only of what performance does, but of what may count as knowledge when the body itself becomes a site of contemplative inquiry.
Preamble
"If supreme bliss[3] arises through singing,
it becomes united with the supreme Vajra-consciousness;
and when one dances in complete identification with that bliss,
the realization of liberation becomes possible."
- Hevajratantra, Caryāpaṭala (1.10)
What happens when dance is understood not merely as a performance presented before an audience, but as a contemplative discipline of spiritual cultivation? The Hevajratantra offers a striking response to this question. Here, song and dance are not ornamental embellishments of religious life; they constitute disciplined forms of ritual practice (ritual cultivation) and systematic methods of contemplative realization. Within this process, the body itself becomes the locus of meditation, while dance is transformed into an effective means of realizing mahāsukha - the "Great Bliss" that occupies a central place in Vajrayāna Buddhist soteriology.
In the Hevajratantra, awakening does not sit apart from the world.
It sings.
It dances.
It enters the body like fire through incense smoke.
The Caryāpaṭala reveals a radical tantric vision in which gesture becomes meditation, sound becomes realization, and the moving body itself becomes a mandala of liberation.
This understanding lies at the heart of the Mahāsiddha tradition that flourished in eastern India and Bengal. Within this tradition, liberation is never conceived as an escape from embodied existence; rather, it is attained through the profound transformation of the body, perception, and lived experience. The songs preserved in the Caryāpada bear witness to a ritual culture in which the body is imagined not as an obstacle to awakening but as the living maṇḍala within which awakening itself is cultivated.
Within this tantric worldview, bodily gesture is transformed into mudrā, sound assumes the form of mantra, and movement itself becomes bhāvanā - a disciplined process of contemplative cultivation and mental transformation. Consequently, the dancing body is no longer merely a vehicle for aesthetic expression; it becomes a carefully cultivated instrument of conscious, embodied, and contemplative self-transformation.
It is this body-centred tantric vision that the present study explores through the Caryāpaṭala of the Hevajratantra. The article argues that ritual movement, dance, sound, and sensory experience are not peripheral embellishments to Buddhist tantric practice; rather, they constitute indispensable components of a contemplative discipline directed toward transformative realization. Read in this light, the Caryāpaṭala presents an integrated vision in which ritual action and meditative cultivation are inseparable, and in which liberation is realized through disciplined embodied practice rather than through intellectual abstraction or aesthetic spectatorship.
1. Introduction: An alternative aesthetic paradigm
The Hevajratantra (Nyaupane) presents one of the clearest and most significant expositions of embodied contemplative practice in northern Buddhist Tantra in the following verse:
मन्त्रविशुद्ध्या गीतिर्नृत्यं भावना स्मृता ।
तस्माद्गीतं च नृत्यं च कुर्याद्योगी सदा सदा ॥ १.६.१३ ॥
Transliteration
mantraviśuddhyā gītir nṛtyaṃ bhāvanā smṛtā |
tasmād gītaṃ ca nṛtyaṃ ca kuryād yogī sadā sadā || 1.6.13 ||
Translation
"Through the purification effected by mantra, song and dance are understood as bhāvanā (contemplative cultivation). Therefore, the yogin should constantly practise both singing and dancing."
This verse raises a fundamental question for the study of Buddhist ritual, aesthetics, and the performative traditions of South Asia: In what sense do dance and song become bhāvanā?[4]
In the Caryāpaṭala (Chapter 1.6) of the Hevajratantra, dance and music are never presented as theatrical performances intended for an audience. Rather, they are explained as embodied contemplative practices situated within an initiatory tantric discipline. Here, bodily movement, sound, and sensory experience are not external expressions of spiritual practice; they themselves constitute its immediate means. Consequently, lived experience is transformed into bhāvanā - that is, into an effective discipline of contemplative cultivation and mental development.
Similarly, the expression performed liberation is employed in this article as an interpretative concept. By this is meant a contemplative paradigm in which liberation is not symbolically enacted before an audience but is actualized through disciplined embodied practice and ritual observance. It should be noted that neither of these expressions is an indigenous technical term found in the Hevajratantra itself; rather, both are heuristic formulations adopted for the purposes of modern scholarship.
The term somatics has an established place within dance studies, phenomenology, and the history of body-oriented therapeutic practices. However, as indicated above, the present study deliberately employs the expression ritual somatics, rather than simply embodiment, for a specific reason. The Caryāpaṭala does not merely articulate a theory of embodied experience; rather, it disciplines and transforms the body through mantra, dance, ritual ornamentation, ceremonial practice, and contemplative exercises.
Likewise, the expression performed liberation should not be understood as referring to "performance" in the modern secular sense of theatrical presentation. Accordingly, throughout this study, performed liberation functions as an interpretative concept through which the soteriological significance of embodied ritual practice in the Caryāpaṭala is explained.
The Hevajratantra, composed between the late eighth and the early tenth centuries CE, emerged within the tantric Buddhist milieu of Pāla-period eastern India and Bengal[5]. Although it is difficult to reconstruct the specific ritual context of the Caryāpaṭala on historical grounds, both literary and archaeological evidence suggest the existence of a wider tantric culture in which song, gesture, visualization, and bodily discipline constituted essential elements of contemplative practice. In this regard, the Caryāpada - the earliest extant collection of Buddhist mystical songs associated with the Bengali language, composed by the Siddhācāryas - provides an invaluable literary context.
এক সো পদ্ম চউষট্টি পাখুড়ি।
তহি চড়ি নাচঅ ডোম্বি বাপুড়ি॥ ধ্রু॥
Transliteration
eka so padma cauṣaṭṭi pākhuṛi |
tahi caṛi nāca-a ḍombī bāpuṛi || dhru ||
Translation
"Upon the lotus with sixty-four petals, the Ḍombī ascends and dances there."
(Caryāpada 10; composed by Kanhapāda/Kṛṣṇācārya.)
Verses such as this clearly demonstrate the multilayered character of sandhyābhāṣā (intentional or twilight language). Here, sensuality, sexuality, symbolism, and contemplative practice are intentionally interwoven. Such verses suggest that esoteric songs and dance were not merely literary metaphors but formed an integral part of a broader embodied tantric ritual culture that flourished in eastern India and Bengal.
To appreciate this performative tradition more fully, it is essential to compare it with Bharata’s Nāṭyaśāstra, which has exercised an almost unrivaled authority within South Asian aesthetic discourse. In such a context, it is unsurprising that alternative aesthetic paradigms have remained marginal. Yet the Hevajratantra preserves reflections that radically reconsider embodied knowledge and ritual movement. It is important to clarify, however, that although this essay employs the phrase “performance aesthetics,” the dance and song described in the Hevajratantra are not theatrical performances intended for spectators. Rather, they constitute what may more appropriately be called ritual somatics - an embodied ritual technology of transformation.
Classical aesthetics presupposes the presence of a spectator or sahṛdaya (“sensitive participant”), whereas tantric ritual praxis frequently unfolds within esoteric and initiatory contexts devoid of public spectatorship. Consequently, the term “aesthetics” is employed here only in relation to the meaning and experience of bodily movement, marking a conscious departure from conventional aesthetic frameworks.
Accordingly, the purpose of the present article is not to reconstruct a particular historical form of tantric dance performance. Rather, its aim is to offer an interpretative analysis of how the Caryāpaṭala conceptualizes and structures the body, movement, and sensory experience within a contemplative tantric framework, both at the level of doctrine and of ritual practice.
2. The Hevajratantra and the Caryāpaṭala: The Body as a Dynamic Maṇḍala
The central concern of the Caryāpaṭala's understanding of the body is that the body, the senses, and ritually regulated experience constitute inseparable components of contemplative cultivation. Rather than placing particular emphasis on monastic world-renunciation or severe asceticism as the path to liberation, the text explores the possibility of awakening through transformative embodied experience within the midst of ordinary worldly life. At the heart of this vision lies sahaja - the innate and spontaneous state that transcends dualistic distinctions such as pure and impure, sacred and profane, saṃsāra and nirvāṇa.
For this reason, the Caryāpaṭala never conceives liberation as synonymous with withdrawal from the world. Rather, contemplative awareness unfolds through movement, sound, ornamentation, social coexistence, and everyday experience itself. The yogin remains situated within a socially diverse and multidimensional world, yet inwardly abides in unwavering contemplative stability:
विहारे पञ्चवर्णे तु स्थितो योगी सुसंवृतः ।
नित्यं ध्याने स्थितो योगी सर्वबुद्धैर्नमस्कृतः ॥ ७ ॥
Transliteration
vihāre pañcavarṇe tu sthito yogī susaṃvṛtaḥ |
nityaṃ dhyāne sthito yogī sarvabuddhair namaskṛtaḥ || 7 ||
Translation
"Though dwelling amidst the diverse strata and conditions of society, the yogin remains inwardly composed. Established continually in meditative awareness, the yogin is revered by all the Buddhas."
In this verse, meditation is not confined to a secluded cave, monastery, or fixed posture. Rather, the yogin remains immersed in contemplation while moving through the flux of life, diverse social relationships, and ritual environments. Movement is therefore not an obstacle to meditation; it is itself an integral expression of contemplative awareness.
The same perspective is reflected in the text's treatment of clothing, ornamentation, fragrance, and food:
नानावस्त्रधरो योगी नानारूपपरिग्रहः ।
नानागन्धानुलेपञ्च नानाभक्षणभोजकः ॥ ८ ॥
Transliteration
nānāvastradharo yogī nānārūpaparigrahaḥ |
nānāgandhānulepaṃ ca nānābhakṣaṇabhojakaḥ || 8 ||
Translation
"The tantric yogin wears garments of many kinds, assumes diverse appearances, applies various fragrances and ritual unguents, and partakes of different kinds of food; yet he remains firmly established in contemplative awareness."
This description should not be interpreted as an endorsement of sensual indulgence. Rather, it reflects a non-dual tantric ritual vision in which everyday bodily and sensory experiences become incorporated into contemplative discipline. What is central here is not renunciation, but transformation.
Another important aspect of this insight is the cultivation of steadfastness and constancy. The Caryāpaṭala declares:
यस्य निन्दा प्रिया नित्यं स्तवश्च प्रिय एव हि ।
तस्यैवायं विधिर्ज्ञेयः सर्वत्रैवास्तिरो भवेत् ॥ ९ ॥
Transliteration
yasya nindā priyā nityaṃ stavaś ca priya eva hi |
tasyaivāyaṃ vidhir jñeyaḥ sarvatraivāsthiro bhavet || 9 ||
Translation
" For one to whom blame is always welcome, and praise is equally welcome, this discipline alone is to be understood: one should remain unwavering in every circumstance."
Here, blame and praise are no longer opposing experiences; both become fields for cultivating samatā (equanimity). The yogin's inner balance does not depend upon social approval or rejection. This perspective accords closely with the Caryāpada tradition of the Siddhācāryas, in which the practitioner often pursues the path of inner awakening while inhabiting socially marginal spaces.
The ritual transformation of the body finds one of its most powerful expressions in the use of the kapāla (skull emblem) and cremation-ground symbolism:
पञ्चबुद्धकपालानि धर्तव्यं योगचर्यया ॥ १५ ॥
Transliteration
pañcabuddhakapālāni dhartavyaṃ yogacaryayā || 15 ||
Translation
"As part of yogic practice, the practitioner should bear the skull-emblems associated with the Five Buddhas."
Here, the skull is not merely a symbol of death. It is a profoundly transformative emblem within tantric ritual life through which conventional notions of death, fear, and impurity are reconfigured. That which appears terrifying to ordinary social consciousness becomes, within tantric practice, an instrument of awakening.
Thus, the Caryāpaṭala bears witness to an embodied contemplative discipline in which movement, sensory experience, ornamentation, equanimity, and disciplined bodily awareness form mutually interdependent elements of tantric practice. The body is no longer merely a biological organism; it becomes a dynamic maṇḍala, in which every gesture, every step, and every sensation is transformed into an aspect of contemplative cultivation.
Within this context, the concept of ritual somatics acquires particular significance. It denotes a contemplative discipline in which mudrā, sound, rhythm, ornamentation, and sensory experience all assume the character of bhāvanā. Liberation is not attained by escaping the body; rather, its possibility unfolds through the conscious, ritually disciplined, and contemplative transformation of embodied experience. The fullest explanation of this ritual understanding of the body, however, is preserved not only in the root tantra itself but also in its exegetical tradition. It is therefore necessary to turn next to the Yogaratnamālā.
3. The Yogaratnamālā (Bhaskar) (Farrow and Menon) and the Ritual Body: Commentary, bhāvanā, and embodied tantric practice
To appreciate fully the significance of the embodied tantric discipline reflected in the Caryāpaṭala of the Hevajratantra, its early commentary, the Yogaratnamālā, is indispensable. Traditionally attributed to Kṛṣṇācārya (Kānhapāda), this commentary is not confined to explaining the literal meaning of the root tantra. Rather, it elucidates the intrinsic relationship between ritual practice, bodily awareness, movement, ornamentation, and contemplative cultivation that underlies the Caryāpaṭala. Consequently, the Yogaratnamālā is not merely an exegetical work; it serves as both a philosophical and ritual manual for understanding the tantric discipline embedded within the Caryāpaṭala.
Read in the light of this commentary, it becomes clear that, within tantric practice, the body is not a passive vehicle but a living ritual field constituted through initiation, mantra, movement, mudrā, ornamentation, and meditation. Dance, song, and bodily gesture are not intended for aesthetic presentation; rather, they embody the lived realization of bhāvanā.
Skull Crown and the Ritual Body
This process of ritualizing the body is expressed most clearly in the commentary's explanation of the kapāla-mukuṭa(skull crown). On
‘पञ्चाङ्गुलकपालखण्डं मुकुट्यां ध्रियते सदा’ ॥1.6.16 ॥
the commentator quotes:
अक्षोभ्यादिपञ्चबुद्धस्वभावानि कपालानि ।
पञ्चयोगः प्रज्ञोपाययोगः समापत्तिः ।
तत्र लीला बाह्याध्यात्मिक पूजा तदर्थम् ॥
Transliteration
pañcāṅgulakapālakhaṇḍaṃ mukuṭyāṃ dhriyate sadā.
akṣobhyādi-pañcabuddha-svabhāvāni kapālāni |
pañcayogaḥ prajñopāyayogaḥ samāpattiḥ |
tatra līlā bāhyādhyātmika-pūjā tadartham ||
Explanatory Translation
"A fragment of skull measuring five finger-breadths should always be worn upon the crown. These skulls represent the essential nature of the Five Buddhas. They symbolize the union of wisdom (prajñā) and skilful means (upāya), culminating in contemplative absorption (samāpatti). Through this ritual enactment, both external worship and inward spiritual devotion are simultaneously accomplished."
This commentary is of considerable significance. The skull crown is not presented as a macabre ornament; rather, it serves as a visible symbol of the Five Buddhas, the union of wisdom and skilful means, and the ritual integration of the external and internal dimensions of spiritual practice. Ornamentation itself is thus transformed into an extension of contemplative discipline. Every ritual emblem worn upon the body becomes an integral component of meditation.
Accordingly, the Yogaratnamālā interprets ritual adornment as part of a discipline in which external worship and inward contemplative realization become inseparably united within a continuous spiritual practice.
Bodily Postures, the Maṇḍala, and Hevajra
The commentator further explains the ritual configuration of the body:
वज्रो हेवज्रः तस्य पदैर् आलीढप्रत्यालीढमण्डलसमपादार्द्धपर्यङ्कादिभिः ।
Transliteration
vajro hevajraḥ | tasya padair ālīḍha-pratyālīḍha-maṇḍala-samapādārdhaparyaṅkādibhiḥ.
Explanatory Translation
"'Vajra' here signifies Hevajra himself. His practice is accomplished through prescribed bodily postures such as Ālīḍha, Pratyālīḍha, Maṇḍala, Samapāda, Ardhaparyaṅka, and related ritual stances."
This explanation further clarifies the ritual logic of the Caryāpaṭala. These bodily postures are not merely physical positions; each constitutes a contemplative state. Dance is therefore neither the spontaneous expression of emotion nor a performance intended for spectators. Rather, it is a regulated, disciplined, and ritually prescribed bodily practice in which every movement extends the consciousness of the maṇḍala.
From External Ritual to Interior Sacrifice
One of the most original contributions of the Yogaratnamālā lies in its transformation of external Vedic ritual into inward tantric practice. The commentator explicitly declares:
बाह्यहोमादिः सर्वथा परिहर्तव्यः ।
Transliteration
bāhyahomādiḥ sarvathā parihartavyaḥ.
Translation
"External fire-sacrifices and similar rites are to be completely abandoned."
This, however, does not signify a rejection of ritual itself. Rather, it marks the interiorization of ritual into the body and consciousness. The commentator immediately explains this transformation:
यत्किंचिद्भक्षणं होमः ।
प्रज्ञासेवनञ्च योगः ।
सर्वं कायकर्म तपः ।
Transliteration
yatkiñcid bhakṣaṇaṃ homaḥ |
prajñāsevanaṃ ca yogaḥ |
sarvaṃ kāyakarma tapaḥ |
Explanatory Translation
"Whatever one eats is the sacrificial offering (homa); the cultivation of wisdom is yoga; and every action of the body constitutes ascetic practice (tapas)."
These concise statements express the very centre of the ritual vision articulated by the Yogaratnamālā. Sacrifice is no longer confined to the sacrificial fire; it is enacted throughout the entirety of daily life. Eating, contemplative cultivation, and bodily activity all become ritual acts. In this way, the commentator transforms the external sacrifice into an interior contemplative discipline.
Mantra, the Ḍamaru, Dance, and Meditation
This process of interiorization becomes even more explicit in the following passage:
डमरुकस्वनिखट्वाङ्गधारणे अपि मन्त्रध्याने वज्रनृत्यगीते अपि मन्त्रध्याने ।
Transliteration
ḍamarukasvani-khaṭvāṅgadhāraṇe api mantradhyāne vajranṛtyagīte api mantradhyāne.
Explanatory Translation
Here the sound of the ḍamaru, the carrying of the khaṭvāṅga, Vajra dance, song, and mantra-meditation are presented not as separate ritual acts but as interrelated components of a single contemplative discipline. Sound, movement, ritual implements, and meditation converge into one unified spiritual process. The body thereby becomes a dynamic maṇḍala, in which every action is inseparable from contemplative awareness.
Samaya, Saṃvara, and the Ritual Life
The culmination of this ritual vision is expressed by the commentator with remarkable brevity:
यदेव करोति तदेवास्य समयः ।
यदेव न करोति स एवास्य संवरः ।
Transliteration
yad eva karoti tad evāsya samayaḥ |
yad eva na karoti sa evāsya saṃvaraḥ |
Explanatory Translation
"Whatever he does constitutes his samaya (sacred commitment); whatever he refrains from doing constitutes his saṃvara (discipline or restraint)."
Here, samaya signifies far more than ritual observance; it encompasses the entire ethical and ritual structure of tantric life. Every action, every restraint, and every decision of the yogin forms part of his contemplative discipline.
Taken together, these passages demonstrate that the Yogaratnamālā does not interpret the Caryāpaṭala as a work of dramaturgy or aesthetics. Rather, it presents a tantric ritual system in which the body, movement, mudrā, ornamentation, sound, mantra, and everyday conduct are all transformed into diverse expressions of bhāvanā.
For precisely this reason, the concept of ritual somatics assumes particular importance in the present study. The Yogaratnamālā demonstrates that tantric liberation is not attained through the negation of the body, but through its ritual transformation. Likewise, performed liberation is not an event enacted before spectators; rather, it is an ongoing spiritual realization accomplished through the integration of body, mantra, movement, and contemplative awareness. In this sense, the Yogaratnamālā is not merely a commentary upon the Caryāpaṭala of the Hevajratantra; it stands as one of the most authoritative expositions of embodied tantric practice.
4. Pratītyasamutpāda: Dependent Origination and Ritual Conditionality
The philosophical foundation of the present study is the Buddhist doctrine of pratītyasamutpāda (dependent origination), one of the most fundamental principles of Buddhist thought. Within the Buddhist tradition, it is not merely a general explanation of causal relationships but the basic principle through which the nature of all existence, experience, and consciousness is understood. In the Majjhima Nikāya, the Buddha declares:
यः प्रतीत्यसमुत्पादं पश्यति स धर्मं पश्यति ।
यः धर्मं पश्यति स बुद्धं पश्यति ॥
(Sanskrit canonical tradition; parallel to the Mahāhatthipadopama Sutta, Majjhima Nikāya 28.)
Transliteration
yaḥ pratītyasamutpādaṃ paśyati sa dharmaṃ paśyati |
yaḥ dharmaṃ paśyati sa buddhaṃ paśyati ||
Translation
"Whoever sees dependent origination sees the Dharma; and whoever sees the Dharma sees the Buddha."
The Nidāna-saṃyutta and other Budddhist discourses go on to repeatedly state:
Imasmiṃ sati idaṃ hoti;
imass' uppādā idaṃ uppajjati.
Imasmiṃ asati idaṃ na hoti;
imassa nirodhā idaṃ nirujjhati.
"When this exists, that comes to be; with the arising of this, that arises. When this does not exist, that does not come to be; with the cessation of this, that ceases."
The significance of these statements are that no phenomenon, sensation, or experience possesses an independent, immutable, or self-sufficient existence. Each arises through the conjunction of specific causes (hetu) and conditions (pratyaya), and each is transformed as those causes and conditions change. Consequently, meditation, bliss, liberation, and even mahāsukha (Great Bliss) are not fixed or eternal entities. They too arise dependently upon specific conditions, including ritual practice, initiation, mantra, embodied discipline, and mental cultivation.
Viewed from this perspective, the Caryāpaṭala of the Hevajratantra assumes particular significance. Here, liberation is not the result of a sudden mystical insight or merely an intellectual realization; rather, it is the fruit of a carefully integrated ritual discipline. Song, dance, mantra, mudrā, initiation by the guru, and disciplined bodily awareness together constitute the constellation of conditions through which contemplative consciousness gradually unfolds. In this sense, the ritual practices described in the Caryāpaṭala establish what may be described as a ritual ecology - a field of ritual interdependence structured according to the principle of dependent origination.
As stated above, the external Vedic sacrifice are to be replaced with an interiorized contemplative discipline, as iterated by the shloka: “बाह्यहोमादिः सर्वथा परिहर्तव्यः ।”
This understanding corresponds closely with the principle of dependent origination. Just as no phenomenon arises independently, neither does liberation emerge without its requisite conditions. The Caryāpaṭala therefore presents liberation not as a transcendent state bestowed from outside, but as an experiential reality that gradually arises through the interdependence of body, ritual, mantra, movement, meditation, ethical discipline, and the guidance of the guru.
The same principle explains why the Hevajratantra consistently presents dance and song as bhāvanā rather than as artistic performance. Their efficacy lies neither in aesthetic beauty nor in symbolic representation, but in their capacity to generate the conditions necessary for contemplative transformation. Song does not merely express realization; it conditions realization. Dance does not merely symbolize awakening; it participates in the causal process through which awakening is cultivated.
Accordingly, the concepts of ritual somatics and performed liberation, proposed in the present study, should likewise be understood within the framework of dependent origination. Neither expression denotes an independent doctrinal category found in the Hevajratantra. Rather, each serves as a heuristic formulation for describing a contemplative process in which liberation is realized through the interdependent functioning of embodied ritual practices.
From this perspective, the body itself becomes a conditioned field of awakening. Gesture, mantra, movement, breath, ritual ornamentation, meditative awareness, and sensory experience function not as isolated techniques but as mutually conditioning elements within a single contemplative system. The body is therefore not an obstacle to liberation but one of the indispensable conditions through which liberation becomes possible.
Finally, this perspective also clarifies why the Hevajratantra does not reject scripture or the guru lineage. On the contrary, embodied realization becomes meaningful only within the disciplined framework of initiation (abhiṣeka), ritual observance, the guidance of the guru, and sustained contemplative practice. Liberation in the tantric tradition is therefore not the product of spontaneous emotional exaltation; it is the outcome of prolonged discipline, ethical preparation, ritual cultivation, and the gradual maturation of the conditions upon which awakening depends.
From a Vajrayāna perspective, mahāsukha ("Great Bliss") should likewise be understood within the framework of pratītyasamutpāda. It is not an eternal metaphysical essence nor an unconditioned emotional state suddenly bestowed upon the practitioner.
Rather, mahāsukha itself arises through a carefully cultivated constellation of ritual and contemplative conditions. Initiation (abhiṣeka), mantra, mudrā, yogic posture, regulated breath, visualization, song, dance, and meditative awareness function together as mutually conditioning factors that make the experience of Great Bliss possible. In this sense, mahāsukha is not the negation of dependent origination but one of its highest ritual expressions. The Hevajratantra thus reinterprets the Buddhist principle of conditionality within a distinctly tantric framework: liberation is realized not by escaping causality but by consciously transforming the very conditions through which embodied experience arises. The culmination of this process is neither sensory pleasure nor aesthetic enjoyment, but the experiential realization of mahāsukha, wherein the non-duality of prajñā (wisdom) and upāya (skillful means) is embodied and directly lived.
5. The Abhidharmakośa and the Transformation of Sensory Experience
The ritual understanding of embodied practice presented in the Caryāpaṭala acquires further philosophical depth when viewed in relation to the Buddhist Abhidharma tradition. Although the Hevajratantra belongs to a much later Vajrayāna context, its conception of the transformation of embodied experience may profitably be read alongside the analysis of consciousness and sensory cognition found in the Abhidharmakośa (Kavi) . Such a comparison does not imply direct textual dependence; rather, it provides a broader Buddhist philosophical framework within which the contemplative logic of the Caryāpaṭala may be more clearly understood.
The Abhidharmakośa explains experience not as the activity of an enduring self but as a conditioned process arising from the interaction of the sense faculties (indriya), their corresponding objects (viṣaya), and consciousness (vijñāna). Perception is therefore never autonomous or self-subsistent; it emerges only through dependent conditions. Consequently, sensory experience itself is neither intrinsically liberating nor intrinsically binding. Its significance depends upon the manner in which it is cultivated and transformed through disciplined contemplative practice.
Read from this perspective, the ritual practices described in the Caryāpaṭala are not intended to suppress the senses but to transform the mode in which sensory experience functions. Sound, movement, rhythm, gesture, touch, and visual symbolism are all incorporated into contemplative discipline. Rather than becoming causes of attachment, they become conditions for awakening. Thus, the senses themselves are ritually reconfigured as instruments of contemplative realization.
Within the Hevajratantra, dance and song therefore function in a manner fundamentally different from ordinary sensory enjoyment. Their purpose is not the production of pleasure through aesthetic consumption but the disciplined transformation of consciousness. Bodily movement is no longer merely kinetic activity, nor is sound merely auditory stimulation; both become integrated into bhāvanā, contemplative cultivation directed towards awakening.
From this standpoint, the distinction between ordinary experience and contemplative experience lies not in the sensory object itself but in the transformation of the conditions under which experience arises. The same bodily movement that ordinarily reinforces habitual attachment may, when performed within an initiatory and ritual context, become a condition for meditative realization. Likewise, sound, ornamentation, fragrance, and ritual gesture acquire contemplative efficacy not because of any inherent sacred quality but because they are incorporated into a disciplined ritual process.
This interpretation is entirely consistent with the principle of pratītyasamutpāda discussed in the previous section. Since all experience arises dependently, contemplative realization likewise depends upon the appropriate constellation of causes and conditions. The Caryāpaṭala therefore does not posit liberation as something opposed to embodied existence. Rather, it presents liberation as emerging through the transformation of embodied experience itself.
In this respect, the Abhidharmakośa provides an important philosophical background for understanding the ritual vision of the Hevajratantra. The Abhidharma analysis demonstrates how sensory cognition functions as a conditioned process, while the Caryāpaṭala shows how that conditioned process may be ritually reorganized through mantra, mudrā, dance, song, meditation, and disciplined bodily awareness. The two traditions thus address different dimensions of the same Buddhist concern: the transformation of experience through the transformation of conditions.
Clearly, the present study does not suggest that the Hevajratantra simply reproduces Abhidharma doctrine. Rather, it argues that the tantric ritual practices described in the Caryāpaṭala may be understood as extending the Abhidharma insight into conditioned experience into a new ritual and contemplative domain. The focus shifts from philosophical analysis to embodied practice, yet the underlying Buddhist logic of dependent origination remains continuous.
This perspective also helps explain why movement, sound, gesture, and ritual ornamentation occupy such a central position within the Caryāpaṭala. They are not secondary embellishments to contemplative practice but integral components of a carefully structured ritual discipline through which the ordinary operations of body and mind are gradually transformed. The body thus becomes neither an object to be rejected nor merely a vehicle to be transcended; it becomes the very field within which contemplative transformation unfolds.
Seen in this light, the Caryāpaṭala offers a distinctive Vajrayāna interpretation of the Buddhist path. It neither abandons the fundamental Buddhist understanding of conditioned experience nor remains confined within earlier analytical frameworks. Instead, it reconfigures that understanding into a ritual discipline in which the transformation of sensory experience becomes inseparable from the transformation of the practitioner. It is precisely this integration of philosophical insight, ritual practice, and embodied contemplation that distinguishes the Hevajratantra within the broader history of Buddhist thought.
6. Performed Liberation: The Soteriology of Embodied Ritual Practice
On the basis of the foregoing discussion, the central question may now be posed more explicitly: Can liberation be ritually enacted? Within the Hevajratantra, dance and song are conceived not as aesthetic performances intended for spectators but as forms of embodied contemplative practice situated within a disciplined tantric ritual order. It is in this context that the expression performed liberation is employed in the present study as a heuristic concept. By this is meant a tantric contemplative paradigm in which liberation is not symbolically represented; rather, it is actualized through disciplined bodily practice, ritual observance, and contemplative cultivation.
This understanding differs fundamentally from the performative logic of the Nāṭyaśāstra. Classical Indian dramaturgy is directed towards the aesthetic experience (rasa) of the spectator (sahṛdaya), whereas the Hevajratantra directs dance and song towards the self-transformation of the practitioner. In the former, performance culminates in aesthetic relish; in the latter, embodied ritual culminates in contemplative realization. The body is therefore not a medium for representing liberation but the very locus in which liberation is progressively realized.
This perspective offers an important alternative to spectator-oriented aesthetic theory. In the Nāṭyaśāstra, the relationship between stage and audience constitutes the primary framework of meaning. In the Hevajratantra, by contrast, the central elements are the body, mantra, breath, consciousness, and ritual. These do not exist for the sake of theatrical communication but for the disciplined transformation of embodied awareness.
Under these circumstances, the intention of dance in the Hevajratantra is not just to narrate a story, or to imitate a dramatic character.
Dance itself is meditation.
Song itself is mantra.
Movement itself is ritual.
Through the continuous discipline of these ritual practices, liberation is gradually actualized within the practitioner's embodied existence. The body does not merely express realization after it has been attained; rather, it participates in the very process through which realization becomes possible.
For this reason, the expression performed liberation is not employed here merely as a poetic metaphor. It functions as an analytical concept through which the embodied tantric soteriology reflected in the Caryāpaṭala may be understood. Liberation is not conceived as an abstract, otherworldly condition detached from lived experience. Rather, it is a living process continually constituted through the interaction of body, consciousness, movement, mantra, and ritual.
Such a reading also clarifies the significance of the concepts developed throughout the various sections of the essay. Ritual somatics describes the disciplined transformation of the body through ritual practice; dependent origination explains how contemplative realization emerges through appropriate causes and conditions; the Yogaratnamālā demonstrates how ritual is interiorized within embodied existence; and the Abhidharmakośa provides the philosophical framework for understanding the transformation of sensory experience. Together, these perspectives converge in a single soteriological insight: liberation is neither externally bestowed nor internally discovered as an already completed state. It is gradually cultivated through the disciplined integration of ritual, contemplative awareness, and embodied practice.
This conception likewise distinguishes the Hevajratantra from any understanding of ritual as merely symbolic or representational. Ritual action does not simply signify awakening; it conditions awakening. Bodily movement does not merely symbolize transformation; it participates in the causal process through which transformation unfolds. Thus, the ritual body becomes a dynamic field in which contemplative realization is continuously enacted.
It should, therefore, be emphasized once again that performed liberation is not proposed as an indigenous doctrinal category within the Hevajratantra. Rather, it is introduced as a heuristic formulation that enables the distinctive ritual logic of the Caryāpaṭala to be articulated within contemporary scholarship. It seeks to capture a mode of liberation that is neither theatrical performance nor abstract philosophical realization, but an embodied, ritualized, and contemplative process through which awakening gradually takes shape within the practitioner.
In this sense, the Hevajratantra presents a profoundly embodied vision of the Buddhist path[6]. Liberation is not attained by withdrawing from the body but through its disciplined transformation. The body becomes the maṇḍala, movement becomes meditation, mantra becomes lived awareness, and ritual becomes the very mode through which awakening is continuously realized.
7. Gender, Yoginītantra, and the Question of Embodied Liberation
The discussion of the body, dance, mahāsukha (Great Bliss), and sahaja in the Hevajratantra is never detached from the question of gender. Indeed, this issue is of particular significance because the Hevajratantra belongs to the class of Yoginītantras, a genre of tantric literature in which yoginīs, ḍākinīs, goddess-power (devīśakti), and the ritual polarity of female and male constitute central elements of religious practice. Consequently, a fundamental question naturally arises: through whose body is liberation ritually enacted?
The Yoginītantras developed within a broader tantric milieu characterized by cremation-ground symbolism, deity-yoga, esoteric initiation, and socially transgressive ritual practices. Alexis Sanderson has demonstrated that the development of the Buddhist Yoginītantras occurred through close interaction with Śaiva tantric traditions, particularly the Bhairava and Kaula lineages (Sanderson). Within this shared tantric environment, the female body was regarded not merely as a bearer of symbolic beauty, but as a fundamental locus of esoteric knowledge, ritual power, and spiritual transformation.
The Hevajratantra repeatedly affirms the mutual interdependence of prajñā (wisdom) and upāya (skillful means). These two principles are frequently expressed through the symbolic polarity of the female and the male. Consequently, women are not presented in this text merely as passive participants in ritual performance. Rather, they appear as embodiments of wisdom, bestowers of initiation, companions in spiritual practice, and living manifestations of esoteric insight.
In this regard, Miranda Shaw (Shaw) has argued that women in Buddhist Tantra are not merely goddesses or symbolic consorts. In many instances, they function as gurus, initiators, ritual partners, and active transmitters of religious knowledge. This observation opens new possibilities for reassessing the role of women within the Yoginītantras. Yet this picture is by no means unambiguous. In tantric literature, representations of women are profoundly multilayered and inherently ambiguous. A yoginī or a ḍākinī may appear as an actual female practitioner, a ritual companion, a goddess, a metaphor for wisdom, or a symbol of a particular state of consciousness. Because of this multiplicity of meanings, it is not always possible to draw clear boundaries between symbol, ritual, and historical reality.
In consonance, Christian Wedemeyer (Wedemeyer) has cautioned that tantric literature frequently and deliberately merges the levels of symbolic language, philosophical experience, and ritual practice. As a result, a straightforward historical reading of its characters or events may be misleading. This complexity applies equally to the concept of mahāsukha.
Within the Yoginītantras, mahāsukha is never understood as a transcendent experience attained by escaping or surpassing the body. Rather, it arises through the conscious transformation of the senses, feeling, and consciousness. Bliss here is neither sensual indulgence nor ascetic repression. It is the fruit of disciplined tantric practice, in which sensory experience itself is incorporated into contemplative cultivation.
At this point, however, an important critical question arises. If tantric philosophy accords such an exalted status to feminine wisdom, how are we to account for the social inequalities and power relations that existed within historical tantric institutions, communities, and guru lineages? In other words, if woman is represented symbolically as the embodiment of wisdom, was she equally empowered within historical social reality? The Hevajratantra itself offers no direct answer to this question. Yet this very silence reminds us that symbolic equality and social equality are not necessarily identical.
This question is especially important because one of the central concepts of the present study is performed liberation. If liberation is realized through the body, then that body can never be conceived as an abstract, ahistorical, or gender-neutral entity.
The body is always situated within a particular society.
The body is always part of a culturally meaningful world.
The body is always shaped by gender, power, identity, and history.
Therefore, any theory of embodied liberation must also take these realities into account.
In this sense, the Hevajratantra presents a ritual world in which liberation is not attained by denying the body, but rather through the body itself, through the senses themselves, through relationships themselves, and through the discipline of ritual practice. Yet that body is always historically situated, socially constituted, and gendered. Unless this fact is acknowledged, the full significance of the soteriology of the Caryāpaṭala cannot be adequately understood.
The Yoginītantras thus present a complex yet profound philosophical vision in which the body is simultaneously spiritual, social, and political. Liberation, therefore, is not merely a matter of individual contemplation; it becomes meaningful only through the dynamic relationship among body, gender, power, and ritual.
8. Theoretical Perspectives
To understand the embodied ritual practices reflected in the Caryāpaṭala of the Hevajratantra, contemporary ritual theory and theories of embodiment provide important interpretive perspectives. Although these theoretical frameworks were not, in any way, developed to explain medieval Buddhist Tantra, they nevertheless serve as productive analytical tools for understanding the nature of the dance, song, and embodied ritual practices described in the Caryāpaṭala.
In this context, Catherine Bell's concept of ritualization is of particular significance. In her influential work “Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice” (Bell), she argues that "ritual" is not a fixed or predetermined activity; rather, it is a process through which certain actions are distinguished from everyday behavior and endowed with particular cultural and spiritual significance.
Viewed from this perspective, the Hevajratantra does not regard dance and song merely as artistic forms; rather, it ritualizes them. Through mantra, initiation, yogic discipline, and disciplined bodily practice, dance and song become integral components of contemplative practice.
The particular importance of Bell's theory lies in its emphasis on the process of ritual performance rather than on the interpretation of symbols. In other words, more important than what a ritual signifies is how it is performed and how that very performance generates a particular kind of experience.
This observation is equally relevant to the Caryāpaṭala. Here, dance and song are not ornamental expressions of doctrine; rather, they are active components of tantric practice. Bodily movement, rhythm, breath, mudrā, and sound all acquire new spiritual significance through ritual enactment.
This discussion is further deepened by Thomas J. Csordas's theory of embodiment (Csordas). In his “Embodiment and Experience”, Csordas argues that the human body is not merely a vehicle of culture but the existential ground of culture and selfhood. This conception challenges the conventional dualistic division between mind and body.
This perspective resonates profoundly with the Hevajratantra. In the Caryāpaṭala, contemplative practice is never merely a mental exercise; rather, it constitutes an integrated experience involving the body, feeling, movement, gesture, sound, and sensory perception.
Here, the body is not a symbol; it is the field of practice.
The body is not merely a vehicle; it is the medium of realization.
The body is not an obstacle; it is the potential ground of liberation.
Not surprisingly, it is noteworthy that the Caryāpaṭala repeatedly associates contemplative visualization (bhāvanā) with embodied practice. Meditation is not an abstract mental activity; rather, it develops through bodily awareness.
This discussion may also be juxtaposed, within a limited scope, with two further theoretical concepts: Victor Turner's notion of liminality (V. Turner) and Richard Schechner's (Schechner) concept of restored behavior. According to Turner, many rituals create an intermediate or liminal state in which ordinary social identities are temporarily suspended and participants enter a new existential condition. Similar characteristics may be observed in the tantric practice presented in the Caryāpaṭala. Initiation, mantra, dance, and ritual movement lead the practitioner beyond conventional social identity into a transformative state of being.
Schechner's concept of restored behavior, on the other hand, suggests that many performative actions are repeated, rehearsed, and culturally constructed. In a similar sense, the mudrās, dance movements, and mantra recitations of the Caryāpaṭala are repetitive ritual acts. Their purpose, however, is not theatrical presentation but disciplined methods of meditation, self-discipline, and spiritual transformation.
At the same time, it is important to recognize the limitations of these comparisons. The rituals described in the Hevajratantra are fundamentally initiatory, esoteric, and contemplative. Their purpose is not public performance but the inward transformation of the practitioner. Consequently, they should not be equated uncritically with modern theories of dance or performance.
Semā: An Intercultural Comparative Perspective
For purposes of comparison, a limited parallel may be drawn between the ritual dance presented in the Hevajratantra and the Semā ceremony of the Mevlevi Sufi tradition. In both cases, the body is not merely a medium of artistic performance but an effective locus for the cultivation of contemplative awareness.
Through regulated rotation, repetitive movement, rhythmic recitation (zikr), and disciplined bodily practice, both traditions cultivate distinctive states of consciousness. In this sense, the concept of ritual somatics is applicable to both traditions.
Despite these similarities, however, fundamental differences remain.
The Semā ceremony is grounded in a monotheistic Sufi worldview in which love, God, and union with the Divine occupy the central place. The Hevajratantra, by contrast, is founded upon Buddhist tantric philosophy, whose central concepts include śūnyatā (emptiness), mahāsukha (Great Bliss), and sahaja.
Moreover, from a historical perspective, the Semā gradually developed into a public devotional ritual, whereas the dance discussed in the Caryāpaṭala remained fundamentally initiatory, esoteric, and confined to a restricted ritual context.
The purpose of this comparison is, certainly, not to establish any historical relationship between the two traditions. Rather, it is intended to draw attention to the broader human experience through which the body, movement, and ritual become vehicles of contemplative awareness and self-transformation across different cultural traditions.
The foregoing discussion makes one point particularly clear: the Caryāpaṭala of the Hevajratantra is not merely a manual of tantric ritual practice; it is a profound philosophical reflection on the relationship between the body, ritual, and contemplation. Read in the light of contemporary ritual theory, theories of embodiment, and performance studies, the text reveals a worldview in which the body itself is meditation, ritual itself is knowledge, and movement itself becomes the path of self-transformation.
9. From Aesthetic Reception to Ritual Cultivation
Both classical Indian aesthetics and Buddhist Tantra undertake a profound exploration of the relationship between the body, feeling, and consciousness. Their points of departure, however, are fundamentally different. In his Abhinavabhāratī, Abhinavagupta[7] (Gnoli) characterizes aesthetic experience as distinct from ordinary worldly feeling and describes it as alaukika ("non-ordinary" or "transcending ordinary experience"):
रसः स एवालौकिकः।
Transliteration
rasaḥ sa evālaukikaḥ.
Translation
"Rasa is indeed non-ordinary (transcending ordinary worldly experience)."
This "non-ordinary" character should not be understood in the sense of the supernatural. Rather, it denotes an experience that transcends the ordinary conditions of pleasure, pain, attachment, and practical self-interest that characterize everyday life. In aesthetic experience, the spectator momentarily transcends the limitations of personal emotion and enters a universalized mode of contemplative enjoyment.
The Hevajratantra, however, presents an entirely different orientation. Although it too seeks a transformation of ordinary experience, that transformation does not occur through aesthetic spectatorship but through embodied contemplative practice. The object of transformation is not the consciousness of the spectator but the disciplined body of the practitioner. Dance, song, mantra, breath, mudrā, and ritual action are integrated into a single contemplative discipline through which mahāsukha (Great Bliss) gradually emerges.
The difference between these two traditions is therefore not simply one of terminology but of ritual logic. In Abhinavagupta's aesthetics, the aesthetic experience of rasa depends upon the contemplative participation of the sahṛdaya (sensitive spectator). The dramatic performance universalizes (sādhāraṇīkaraṇa) ordinary emotions, enabling the spectator to experience them free from personal attachment and practical concern. The transformation thus occurs through contemplative detachment.
The Hevajratantra, by contrast, directs the practitioner toward an altogether different mode of realization. Here, transformation is achieved not through detachment from embodied experience but through deeper participation within it. The body is not left behind; it becomes the very medium of contemplative realization. Dance is declared to be bhāvanā, song becomes mantra, and movement itself is incorporated into ritual discipline. The practitioner does not transcend the body in order to awaken; awakening unfolds through the disciplined transformation of embodied existence.
This distinction may therefore be summarized as one between rasa and bhāvanā. Rasa culminates in aesthetic relish; bhāvanā culminates in contemplative transformation. The former presupposes the presence of an audience; the latter requires the disciplined participation of the practitioner. The former seeks aesthetic realization through dramatic representation; the latter seeks liberation through ritual embodiment.
Nevertheless, the relationship between these traditions should not be understood as one of absolute opposition. Both are concerned with transforming ordinary experience into an extraordinary mode of consciousness. Both recognize that the body, feeling, and imagination may become vehicles for experiences that transcend everyday perception. Their divergence lies in the manner in which that transformation is achieved and in the purpose toward which it is directed.
For this reason, the present study does not argue that the Hevajratantra rejects aesthetic experience. Rather, it proposes that the Caryāpaṭala reconfigures aesthetic elements within a distinctly tantric ritual framework. Song, rhythm, movement, ornamentation, and gesture undoubtedly possess aesthetic qualities, yet these qualities are subordinated to contemplative realization. Beauty is not the final goal; it becomes one of the means through which contemplative awareness is cultivated.
This reinterpretation also clarifies the significance of the concept of performed liberation developed throughout the present article. The ritual performances described in the Caryāpaṭala are not intended to evoke aesthetic enjoyment in spectators. Their purpose is to transform the practitioner's own body into a living maṇḍala of contemplative realization. The performance is therefore not representational but transformative. It does not communicate liberation; it participates in its gradual realization.
Emphatically, the movement from rasa to bhāvanā should not be understood as a rejection of Indian aesthetic thought but as a shift in emphasis. The centre of gravity moves from the spectator to the practitioner, from aesthetic contemplation to ritual cultivation, and from artistic representation to embodied realization. The contemplative body replaces the theatrical stage as the primary site of transformation.
The Hevajratantra thus offers an alternative understanding of performance. Where classical aesthetics seeks the universalization of emotion through dramatic representation, the Caryāpaṭala seeks the transformation of consciousness through embodied ritual practice. The body itself becomes meditation, ritual becomes knowledge, and movement becomes the path of self-transformation. It is in this sense that the Hevajratantra invites us to move conceptually from rasa to bhāvanā, thereby reconsidering the nature of aesthetic experience within the broader horizon of Vajrayāna contemplative practice.
10. The Caryāpada: Tantra in the Vernacular and as Embodied Poetics
The embodied ritual discipline described in the Caryāpaṭala did not remain confined to the esoteric world of Sanskrit tantric literature. It also found expression in the vernacular poetic tradition of the Caryāpada (Basu), composed by the Siddhācāryas of eastern India and Bengal between approximately the tenth and twelfth centuries. Although differing in literary form, the Caryāpada and the Hevajratantra participate in a common tantric cultural milieu in which the body, movement, song, and contemplative practice are inseparably interconnected.
The language of the Caryāpada is neither purely literary nor merely colloquial. Rather, it employs sandhyābhāṣā("intentional" or "twilight" language), in which ordinary images simultaneously convey multiple levels of meaning. Agricultural labour, domestic life, rivers, boats, marketplaces, lovers, dancers, and outcaste women all function as symbolic vehicles for expressing contemplative experience. The poems therefore operate simultaneously within the worlds of everyday life and esoteric tantric practice.
Within this poetic universe, dance and song are not simply artistic motifs but embodied practices of realization. The celebrated image of the Ḍombī dancing upon the sixty-four-petalled lotus, discussed earlier, illustrates this ritual poetics with particular clarity. The dance is not merely descriptive; it signifies the activation of the yogic body as a living maṇḍala. Likewise, references to music, rhythm, movement, and bodily gesture throughout the Caryāpada should be understood within the broader contemplative horizon established by the Hevajratantra.
The vernacular character of the Caryāpada is equally significant. By employing the spoken language of eastern India rather than exclusively Sanskrit, the Siddhācāryas relocated tantric discourse from the scholastic sphere into the domain of lived experience. The body became the site of realization, and the vernacular became the medium through which that realization could be communicated within particular communities of practice. Language itself thus underwent a process analogous to ritual transformation: ordinary speech acquired contemplative depth without ceasing to remain rooted in everyday life.
This convergence of vernacular language and embodied practice helps explain why the Caryāpada occupies such an important place within the present study. It demonstrates that the ritual principles articulated doctrinally in the Hevajratantra were not confined to philosophical exposition but also found expression in poetic performance and oral transmission. The same contemplative logic that transforms dance into bhāvanā and movement into ritual practice also transforms vernacular poetry into a vehicle of tantric realization.
The relationship between the Hevajratantra and the Caryāpada should therefore not be understood simply as one of textual influence. Rather, both emerge from a shared ritual culture in which song, movement, meditation, and embodied discipline were mutually reinforcing aspects of contemplative life. The Caryāpada gives poetic voice to a ritual world whose doctrinal foundations are articulated more systematically in the Caryāpaṭala.
This perspective also sheds light on the distinctive poetics of the Siddhācāryas. Their verses do not seek aesthetic ornamentation for its own sake, nor are they merely vehicles of mystical symbolism. Instead, poetic language itself becomes performative. The recitation of the poem, its rhythm, its imagery, and its layered meanings participate in the contemplative process. Poetry thus functions not merely as description but as ritual practice.
Understandably, the embodied poetics of the Caryāpada literature differ fundamentally from the objectives of classical court poetry. Its language is intentionally polyvalent, its symbolism is experiential rather than decorative, and its poetic voice is directed towards transformation rather than literary refinement. The body remains the central point of reference throughout: it is the locus of meditation, the field of ritual action, and the living maṇḍala within which awakening is cultivated.
In this respect, the Caryāpada provides an important bridge between the philosophical and ritual teachings of the Hevajratantra and the lived religious culture of Pāla-period eastern India and Bengal. It demonstrates that tantric contemplation was not confined to monasteries or scholastic institutions but circulated through vernacular song, oral performance, and embodied communal practice.
The Caryāpada therefore represents far more than the earliest stratum of Bengali literary history. It preserves the poetic expression of a distinctive tantric worldview in which the body itself becomes meditation, song becomes contemplative practice, and poetic utterance becomes a mode of embodied realization. Read alongside the Caryāpaṭala, it confirms the central argument of the present study: that Vajrayāna Buddhist practice in eastern India developed a ritual culture in which movement, language, and the body were integrated into a single discipline of contemplative transformation.
Conclusion: The Body as a Site of Knowing
The significance of the Caryāpaṭala lies not simply in its inclusion of dance and song within tantric ritual, but in the epistemology of practice that this inclusion reveals. In the world of the Hevajratantra, realization is not first conceived intellectually and subsequently expressed through the body. It arises through the disciplined coordination of movement, voice, breath, mantra, visualization, sensation, initiation, and awareness. The body is therefore more than the instrument of contemplative knowledge: under ritually constituted conditions, it becomes one of the means by which such knowledge comes into being.
This alters the terms through which performance itself must be understood. If dance is approached principally as representation, communication, or the production of aesthetic experience for spectators, the Caryāpaṭala will remain conceptually elusive. Its dancing practitioner does not portray liberation, narrate it, or offer its image to an audience. The practitioner enters a carefully constructed field of conditions in which ordinary bodily and sensory processes may be reoriented towards realization. “Performed liberation” designates this movement from representation to actualization - but it does not imply that liberation is accomplished by performance alone. It names the embodied and relational process through which the conditions of realization are cultivated.
The principle of pratītyasamutpāda is crucial here because it prevents this process from being reduced either to bodily technique or to an autonomous mystical experience. Neither movement, mantra, sensation, nor consciousness possesses transformative power in isolation. Efficacy emerges from their conditioned conjunction. The ritual body is thus not a self-contained instrument under the mastery of an autonomous practitioner; it is a contingent assemblage formed through instruction, initiation, material objects, disciplined repetition, affective intensity, community, and lineage. Liberation is “performed” precisely because it is relationally and conditionally brought into being.
Read in this way, the Caryāpaṭala also exposes a limitation in conventional histories of Indian aesthetics and performance. Categories organised around drama, artistic form, textual meaning, and spectatorship do not fully account for practices in which movement constitutes cultivation and sensory experience becomes a field of soteriological work. This does not require the rejection of rasa theory, nor the establishment of a simple opposition between Brahmanical aesthetics and Buddhist Tantra. It requires recognition that South Asian intellectual history contained multiple, intersecting theories of what bodies, sounds, gestures, and performances could accomplish. The tantric paradigm has often remained difficult to perceive because modern disciplinary boundaries divide precisely what its ritual practice holds together: body and mind, art and religion, sensory experience and knowledge, performance and liberation.
The vernacular songs of the Caryāpada extend this challenge beyond the Sanskrit tantra. They suggest that such knowledge is circulated not only through doctrine and monastic commentary but through voice, rhythm, coded language, memory, and embodied communities of practice. Their historical importance therefore exceeds their designation as early Bengali literature. They preserve traces of an intellectual world in which philosophy could be sung, ritual knowledge could be carried in the body, and the everyday language of boats, labour, desire, caste, and domestic life could become a medium of contemplative transformation.
What the Caryāpaṭala finally asks us to reconsider is not simply whether dance may be religious or whether ritual may possess aesthetic qualities. Its more radical question is: what must count as knowledge if realization can arise through movement, breath, rhythm, sensation, and disciplined bodily transformation? Once this question is taken seriously, dance and song can no longer be treated as embellishments surrounding tantric doctrine. They emerge as sites in which doctrine becomes experience, experience becomes cultivation, and the body becomes capable not merely of representing another world, but of transforming the conditions through which a world is known.
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In this article, ritual somatics refers to the coordinated, body-centred processes - including breath, posture, mudrā, movement, dance, song, visualisation, and meditation - through which the practitioner’s body becomes not merely an instrument of ritual action but a relational field of experience, knowledge, and contemplative transformation. The term is employed as a contemporary heuristic (A heuristic is a practical method, rule of thumb, or mental shortcut used to solve a problem, make a decision, or learn something quickly when finding an exact or optimal solution is too slow, complex, or impossible. [1, 2]) rather than as an indigenous category found in the Hevajratantra. ↑
Caryāpada (also spelled Charyapada or Caryācaryāviniścaya) is a collection of 47 to 50 mystical Vajrayāna Buddhist poems and songs of realization, widely recognized as the oldest known text in the Bengali language and early Eastern Indo-Aryan literature. ↑
The “supreme bliss” produced through song is not ordinary musical pleasure but the somatic-affective quality of non-dual awareness. In tantric practice, disciplined singing integrates breath, vibration, mantra, visualization, and concentrated awareness, temporarily loosening the practitioner’s habitual experience of a separate self. When this bliss is recognized as inseparable from emptiness and subsequently embodied through dance, performance becomes a mode of contemplative realization rather than its aesthetic representation. ↑
The Buddhist Meditative Foundations of Dance and Bhāvanā
In Buddhist Abhidharma terminology, bhāvanā refers to the deliberate cultivation or meditative development of a specific mental quality. Thus, maitrī-bhāvanā denotes the cultivation of loving-kindness, while aśubha-bhāvanā refers to meditation upon impurity.
Within Tantric Buddhist practice, particularly in deity yoga (devatā-yoga), the practitioner meditates upon the deity's form (rūpa), speech (mantra), and awakened awareness (prajñā). In this context, Hevajratantra 1.6.13 may be understood as presenting a dance- and song-based modality of deity yoga:
मन्त्रविशुद्ध्या गीतिर्नृत्यं भावना स्मृता ।
तस्माद्गीतं च नृत्यं च कुर्याद्योगी सदा सदा ॥ १.६.१३ ॥Transliteration
mantraviśuddhyā gītir nṛtyaṃ bhāvanā smṛtā |
tasmād gītaṃ ca nṛtyaṃ ca kuryād yogī sadā sadā || 1.6.13 ||Translation
"Through the purification effected by mantra, song and dance are understood as bhāvanā(contemplative cultivation). Therefore, the yogin should constantly practise both singing and dancing."
Within this contemplative discipline, the practitioner visualizes the deity's posture, ornaments, ritual implements, and mudrās while dancing, and articulates the deity's mantra through song. The underlying tantric theory is founded upon the complementary principles of nāda (primordial sound) and bindu (the subtle point or seed of consciousness). Dance activates the subtle bindu within the body, while song awakens the resonance of nāda. Through the union of these two dynamic principles, the experience of mahāsukha ("Great Bliss") gradually manifests.
For further discussion, see:
- Shashibhushan Dasgupta, An Introduction to Buddhist Tantra.
- David L. Snellgrove, The Hevajra Tantra: A Critical Study, Introduction, pp. 15–27.
The Archaeological and Literary Context of Medieval Eastern Bengal
There is, as yet, no conclusive historical evidence demonstrating that the Caryāpaṭala of the Hevajratantra (c. eighth–tenth centuries CE) was composed in eastern Bengal. Nevertheless, both archaeological and literary evidence point toward the existence of a continuous tantric cultural milieu throughout the region.
Archaeological excavations at Śālban Vihāra and Kutila Mura in the Mainamati–Lalmai complex of present-day Comilla have yielded copper-plate inscriptions, sculptures, and terracotta plaques depicting scenes associated with dance, music, and tantric ritual. Likewise, excavations at Somapura Mahāvihāra (Paharpur, present-day Naogaon; UNESCO World Heritage Site) have uncovered numerous tantric images, ritual objects, and iconographic materials associated with Vajrayāna Buddhism.
The literary evidence is equally significant. The Caryāpada, composed between the tenth and twelfth centuries by Buddhist Siddhācāryas, contains numerous references to dance, song, rasa, and sahaja. One representative example reads:
নাচ নাচ গো বিটু হামারি নাচনহো।
(Caryāpada 19)Transliteration
nāca nāca go biṭu hāmāri nācanaho.
Translation
"Dance, dance, dear one - this is our dance."
Taken together, these archaeological and literary materials strongly suggest a close affinity with the ritual world described in the Caryāpaṭala of the Hevajratantra. Although they do not establish direct textual dependence, they considerably strengthen the hypothesis that a widespread culture of dance-centred tantric ritual flourished throughout medieval eastern India and Bengal.
For further discussion, see:
- Shashibhushan Dasgupta, Siddhācāryagaṇ o Caryāpada.
- Rahul Sankrityayan, Bauddha Caryāpada.
"Three Possible Objections to the Concept of "Performed Liberation"
First Objection: The Possibility of Self-Deception
One may ask whether tantric dance genuinely cultivates non-attachment, or whether it merely transforms desire and sensuality into more subtle ritualized forms.
The Hevajratantra responds that the senses are not to be suppressed but ritually transformed through mantra, initiation (abhiṣeka), and disciplined yogic practice.
Nevertheless, caution remains necessary. Because the Caryāpada frequently employs sexually charged symbolic imagery - such as the figure of the Ḍombī - it is not always easy to distinguish genuine contemplative realization from ritualized desire. Consequently, both the historical interpretation and the experiential evaluation of tantric practice remain complex and require careful scholarly assessment.
Second Objection: Does Transgression Lead to Social Anarchy?
A second question concerns the social implications of tantric transgression. If tantric ritual deliberately challenges caste distinctions, concepts of purity and impurity, and established social norms, does it ultimately encourage social disorder?
The Hevajratantra does not advocate unrestricted rebellion.
Its transgressions are symbolic, initiatory, and strictly regulated by ritual discipline. Their purpose is not the destruction of social order but the transcendence of conceptual dualities that bind the practitioner. Ritual transgression functions as a contemplative method rather than as a programme of social revolution.
Third Objection: The Relationship between Direct Experience and Scripture
If liberation ultimately depends upon direct embodied experience, what role remains for scripture, doctrine, and the lineage of the guru?
The Hevajratantra does not reject either scripture or the guru tradition. On the contrary, it consistently situates embodied realization within the framework of initiation, ritual observance, the guidance of the guru, and long-term contemplative discipline.
Accordingly, tantric liberation should never be understood as spontaneous emotional ecstasy or unregulated mystical experience. It is the fruit of sustained practice, ethical preparation, ritual discipline, and gradual contemplative maturation. ↑
Although Abhinavagupta is commonly known as a commentator on the Nāṭyaśāstra and as an exegete of the Dhvanyāloka, within Kashmir Shaivism he is revered as a Mahāsiddha and tantric ācārya. His principal tantric text, Tantrāloka (c. 1014 CE), comprising thirty-seven chapters on the Kaula and Trika systems, offers a detailed exposition of embodied ritual practice, the pañcamakāra (“five Ms”), and the path of yogic bliss. He explicitly states: अनने शरीर एतत् स्वप्रकाशं भवेद् ध्रुवम्” “Anena śarīra etat svaprakāśaṃ bhaved dhruvam” (“It is through this very body that self-revelation is assured”). There exist striking parallels between the mahāsukha (“great bliss”) and sahaja (“spontaneous awakening”) of the Hevajratantra and the paramānanda (“supreme bliss”) and ego-dissolution (ahaṃ-vismṛti) of Śaiva Tantra. For this reason, many modern scholars - such as David Peter Lawrence in The Disclosure of Śakti in Aesthetics (2013) - analyze Śaiva and Buddhist Tantra not as entirely separate traditions, but as complementary branches of a shared South Asian tantric aesthetic philosophy. For a discussion in Bangla, see Arun Kumar Biswas, Kashmir Shaivadarśan o Abhinavagupta (Kolkata: Sanskrit Pustak Bhandar, 2009). ↑
