Full Description
Explaining Mantras explores the intersection of poetry and magic in the mantras or verbal formulas of Hindu Tantra. The author reveals how mantras work in light of both the esoteric tradition of Tantra and a general semiotic theory of ritual. Mantras mimic the act of sexual reproduction and the cosmic cycle of creation and destruction. A mantra that imitates creation is believed to be more creative and effective in producing a real-world result. Drawing from linguistics, semiotics, anthropology, and philosophy, as well as the history of religions, the author argues that mantras and other ritual discourses use rhetorical devices, including imitation, to construct the persuasive illusion of a natural language, one with a direct and immediate connection to reality. This vital relation between poetry and ritual has been neglected in many current theories of religion. Explaining Mantras combines the study of ancient Tantric rituals with the latest theories in the human sciences, and will be of interest to a broad range of readers.
Contents
Acknowledgments Abbreviations Note on Translation Introduction: The Word and the World 1. Opening the Puzzle Box: Mantras, Poetry, and Magic 2. Chanting the Cosmogony: Mantras as Diagrams of Creation 3. The Linguistic Ideology of the Tantras: Language, Canon, and Idolatry 4. The Science of Illusion, Part One: Poetry and the Dream of a Natural Language 5. The Science of Illusion, Part Two: The Rhetoric of Ritual 6. Toward a Genealogy of Ritual and Rhetoric: Iconophiles and Iconophobes Notes Bibliography Index
