page_title: Tantra
section_title: Durga
hierarchical_section_title: Tantra / History / Durga
caption_attribution_description: English: Derivative work of the following image available on wikimedia commons under Creative Commons license: File:Durga Slaying the Buffalo Demon LACMA M.84.153.1.jpg For scholarly commentary on this sculpture: Pratapaditya Pal, Indian Sculpture: Circa 500 B.C.-A.D. 700, University of California Press, ISBN&#160;978-0-520-05991-7, page 27
context_page_description: Tantra denotes the esoteric traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism that co-developed most likely about the middle of the 1st millennium AD. The term tantra, in the Indian traditions, also means any systematic broadly applicable "text, theory, system, method, instrument, technique or practice".
  Starting in the early centuries of common era, newly revealed Tantras centering on Vishnu, Shiva or Shakti emerged. In Buddhism, the Vajrayana tradition is known for its extensive tantra ideas and practices. Tantric Hindu and Buddhist traditions have influenced other Eastern religious traditions such as Jainism, the Tibetan Bön tradition, Daoism and the Japanese Shintō tradition.
  Certain modes of non-Vedic worship such as Puja are considered tantric in their conception and rituals. Hindu temple building also generally conforms to the iconography of tantra. Hindu texts describing these topics are called Tantras, Āgamas or Samhitās. In Buddhism, its tantra-genre literature has influenced the artworks in Tibet, historic cave temples of India and imagery in Southeast Asia.
context_section_description: The Mahabharata, the Harivamsa, the Devi Mahatmya in the Markandeya Purana all contain references to the fierce, demon-killing manifestations of the Great Goddess, Mahishamardini, who is identified with Durga-Parvati. These suggest reverence and worship for Goddess in the India culture was an established tradition (Shaktism), by the early centuries of the 1st millennium. However, this does not mean Tantric rituals and practices were as yet a part of either Hindu or Buddhist traditions. "Apart from the somewhat dubious reference to Tantra in the Gangadhar inscription of 423 CE", states David Lorenzen, it is only 7th-century Banabhatta's Kadambari which provide convincing proof of Tantra and Tantric texts.
caption: A 2nd-century AD statue of goddess Durga slaying the Buffalo demon from Mathura.[75] Such artwork suggests a goddess culture, but not necessarily Tantra.[76]
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