David Gordon White, Kiss of the Yogin: Tantric Sex in Its South Asian Contexts

Kiss of the Yogin: Tantric Sex in Its South Asian Contexts by DavidGordon White,
Review by: JonathanC.Gold
The Journal of Religion, Vol. 84, No. 2 (April 2004), pp. 333-335
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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Book Reviews
333
chapter deftly concludes with a thematic approach; the approaches touch on
issues that range from philosophy and psychology to law, queer theory, and
sexual rhetoric. The structure of the work lends an air of quick movement,
both in reason and play, as in a dance performance.
For example, in a section on animal husbandry and animal brides in chapter
3, Waking Up in Bed with an Animal, Doniger states: It is useful to distin-
guish stories about animal brides from those about animal grooms, for men
and women have different sorts of animal lovers and become different sorts
of animal lovers. . . . The animal skin that the woman wears also symbolizes
the very sexuality that she is eeing, for this is a two-way stretch of the imag-
ination . . . . The paradox that emerges from this corpus is: the woman in the
animal skin is simultaneously more sexual and less sexual than the man who
pursues her (pp. 12223). In her penetrating analysis, Doniger deftly weaves
together fairy tales from the imaginations of European traditions with the folk
traditions of India and Japan, among others. She concludes with the approach
entitled Zoology, which involves mares and stallions.
The book uses typographic marks to lift the text into a hypertext, presenting
a dense contextualization of myth through literature, lm, and theory. Pre-
senting a dizzying array of possibilities of bedtricks, from the double-back,
double play, and double cross, to double-back-cross-play, Doniger reveals
sheath upon circular sheath of intellectual thickness. This book, in a way, is a
marvelous example of her famous toolbox theory at work, going back and forth
between text and context, going back between theory and all the rest, though
it is the voice of the narrator that the reader enjoys the most. Her voice of
assurance and wit charges along the multiple trails of her scholarly and playful
mind in an almost neighborly way, belying the complex paths she navigates
with such sureness. A feast for the mind, it moves convincingly between various
genres of world myth, from eld to eld, from theme to theme, from lm to
opera and back to literature, in a brilliant display of knowledge, storytelling,
and analysis.
With detailed endnotes and an astoundingly lengthy bibliography, her ref-
erences include sources from the traditions of Hinduism and Judaism and
from various languages, including Sanskrit, French, and Hebrew. The analysis
moves from a Hindu myth centering on the relationship between Shiva and
Parvathi to the Odyssey, The Canterbury Tales, The Decameron, and Shakespeare,
supplemented by a whole host of references in history, literature, and mythol-
ogy. Where else can one nd such a comparativist feast? The author clearly
has had fun in writing this book, which she herself says is made partly from
the otsam and jetsam from the ocean of my casual reading and viewing,
carried to me by the strong current of my obsession (p. xxv). Readers who
are willing to follow the sea paths and trails she enthusiastically and energet-
ically pursues are in for some real delight and pleasure.
This book, generating insight upon insight, connection upon connection, is
an astounding example of intertexuality. It is a must-readnot only for schol-
ars and students in religion but also for those in folklore, lm studies, and
any other eld that wrestles with the question of how to use theory in the
service of understanding richly one particular theme.
VIJAYA NAGARAJAN, University of San Francisco.
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The Journal of Religion
334
WHITE, DAVID GORDON. Kiss of the Yogin : Tantric Sex in Its South Asian Contexts.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. xix372 pp. $45.00 (cloth).
David Gordon Whites signicant new work sheds welcome light on the topic
of Hindu Tantric sex. White focuses on sexual practice and argues that sex-
ualized ritual practice is the sole truly distinctive feature of South Asian Tantric
traditions (p. 13). The main strategic procedure White employs is, radically
enough, to read Tantric languageterms such as dravyam (uid) and mu-
kham (mouth)literally (p. 5). The result is a revelation of the internal logic
of Tantric ritual and a new perspective on a wide range of old confusions.
As White explains, sex in the Kaula context was never about the sex itself.
Sex was the necessary precursor to the consumption of the powerful clan
uids (kuladravyam)that is, the combination of the practitioners semen and
the consorts menstrual blooddrunk from the (lower) mouth of the god-
dess, the Yogin . This practice, which granted the initiate uid gnosis, was
part of a body of ritual in which the Kaula practitioner sought magical powers
(siddhis) from the Yogin demonesses of the cremation grounds in exchange
for his own offered bodily substances. The difference between these rituals
and the internalized gnosis of high Hindu Tantra is that the latter has se-
manticized and tamed the original Kaula ritual.
The works chaptersOrigins, Blood, Mouth, Power, Consort,
Flight, and (on Orthodox Hindu High Tantra) Sublimationanalyze the
history and symbolism of these various aspects of the Yogin . A nal chapter,
entitled Tantra for the New Millennium, explains some varieties of Hindu
Tantra still active after Tantras ostensible decline.
A number of surprising revelations help to decode long-buried Tantric sig-
nications. Yogin s, for instance, have their origins among the female Seizers
(grahas) associated with disease, especially childhood disease and infertility.
These terrifying goddesses, listed as Mothers of Skanda in the Mahabharata,
come in circles (cakras), are propitiated with offerings of esh, and y in the
air as birds of the cremation grounds.
The successful consorts of the Yogin s are the Siddhas (perfected beings).
As White shows in one of his more remarkable discussions, Siddhas in Pura ic n
cosmology dwell simultaneously on the tops of mountains and in the World
of Brahma, where they sip the elixir of immortality. This realm is just under
the top of the cosmic egg, the very crest of the created universe. At the same
time, however, the universe is understood to exist as an interior space within
the great God. As White writes, It is at this intersection of cutting-edge me-
dieval cosmology and soteriology that the Tantric internalizationof the entire
cosmic egg into the subtle body microcosmwas rst theorized. Conse-
quently, Siddhas dwell beneath the vault of heaven within their own cranial
vaults (p. 187).
Scholars with an interest in Tantra will enjoy a great number of such fasci-
nating discussions. Of particular note are Whites archeology of cakra theory
and his hypothesis that abstract, elite Tantrism and demonological protection
racket Tantra are in fact two remnants of a single ma ala that in medieval n d
practice would have been united under royal patronage.
Still, not every nail is hit directly on the head. White does not prove con-
vincingly that ight is the paradigm, or even the most important, of the many
powers granted by the Yogin s. Even if ight was the great obsession of the
age, this hardly sufces to make powers such as Kha ga (magical sword) and d
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Book Reviews
335
rasa-rasayana (elixir of immortality) mere side benets, especially when kings
and lords were the major patrons of elite Tantric practitioners (p. 200).
Even so, the work exemplies the best the etic perspective has to offer: we
learn more about why Siddhas live on mountains, how Yogin s y, and whence
comes the magical power of sexual uids than has ever been known before,
by anyone. The oddness is that this includes Hindu practitioners. We may know
that Yogin s eat esh at cremation grounds because they are derived from local
cremation-ground demonesses, but this does not tell us what a practitioner is
thinking who calls his internal Yogin cakras cremation grounds. Surely, the
average aivite who pours liquid over a lin gam and then gathers it up and

S
drinks it as prasada after it ows from the sculpted yoni is not imagining that
he imbibes powerful divine sexual uids.
Given, therefore, that it is impossible to establish authenticity from out-
side, I cannot understand Whites complaint that once the famous ve Ms
of Kaula practice are replaced with ritual substitutes, Tantra becomes just a
form of Orthodox householder practice (p. 253). That may be, butunless
he believes in the distinctive efcacy of the older Yogin practiceswhy should
he mind?
JONATHAN C. GOLD, Fordham University.
KEPEL, GILLES. Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam. Translated by Anthony F.
Roberts. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002. viii454 pp.
$29.95 (cloth); $15.95 (paper).
Gilles Kepel, a sophisticated political theorist with cross-cultural and compar-
ative instincts, has produced a book unmatched by other current best-selling
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Kepels analysis rests on a twin premise. The rst is that the convergent
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extolled the virulent anti-Western diatribes of Qutb (whose brother teaches
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