Title: The tantric body : the secret tradition of Hindu religion /
Authors: Flood, Gavin D., 1954-
Publisher: I.B. Tauris ; Distributed in the U.S. by Palgrave Macmillan,
Year: 2006
Subjects: Tantrism.
Contents: pt. Theory, text and history -- 1. Introduction : the body as text -- Tantra, tradition and the body -- Reading strategies : text -- Reading strategies : body -- Experience and asceticism -- The argument of the book -- 2. The vedic body -- The political and social context -- Legal discourse -- Political discourse -- The highest good -- 3. The tantric revelation -- The validity of tantric revelation -- The Pāñcarātra revelation -- The Śaiva revelation -- Text and tradition -- The tantric theology of revelation -- Revelation and doctrine -- 4. Tantric civilisation -- The divinisation of the body as root metaphor -- Tantric polity -- The tantric temple -- Tantra and erotic sculpture -- Possession -- pt. II. The body as text -- 5. The Pāñcarātra -- Emanationist cosmology -- The purification of the body -- The Bhūtaśuddhi in the tantric revelation -- The divinisation of the body -- Inner worship -- External worship -- 6. Śaiva Siddhānta -- Śaiva Siddhānta doctrine -- The tattva hierarchy -- The six paths -- The ritual process : initiation -- The ritual process : daily rites -- The ritual process : behaviour -- 7. Ecstatic tantra -- Absolute subjectivity and indexicality -- The circle of deities in the body -- Kuṇḍalinī and the cakras -- Two ritual systems -- 8. The tantric imagination -- Vision -- Gesture and utterance -- Icon -- Indexicality -- Reading -- Epilogue -- Appendix. The Jayākhya-saṃhitā.