Review of Yogi Heroes and Poets PDF

234 Book Reviews
language, and the non-physical effects of punishment may be studied through the
lens of even ancient Sanskrit intellectual traditions.
Donald R. Davis, Jr
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Downloaded from http://jhs.oxfordjournals.org/ at School of Oriental and African Studies on August 10, 2013
doi:10.1093/jhs/hit020
Yogi Heroes and Poets: Histories and legends of the N@ths. Edited by David N.
Lorenzen and Adrián Muñoz. New York: State University of New York Press,
2011. pp. xviii, 228. $75 (hardcover).
This short volume consists of an introduction and nine chapters on a variety of

aspects of the broad and heterogeneous tradition latterly known as the N@th
sam.prad@ya. The contributions are themselves appropriately heterogeneous, with
methodologies ranging from ethnography (A. Gold, D. Gold) to text-critical phil-
ology (OndraJka, Kiss) and subjects as diverse as esoteric Bengali N@th ritual
(OndraJka) and the representation of N@th tradition in early 20th-century histori-
ography of Hindi (Agrawal).
Many of the contributions uncover or shed new light on specific aspects of the
N@ths. Two such essays are grounded in exemplary text-critical scholarship. Csaba
Kiss reports important aspects of his findings about the Matsyendrasam.hit@, show-
ing it to be a 13th-century South Indian work from the Ś@mbhava Śaiva yogic
tradition, which also incorporates the Kaula Yogina cult and whose teachings on
yoga pave the way for a subsequent pan-Indian hat.hayoga. Lubomı̀r OndraJka,
complementing philological work with insights drawn from ethnographies of
today’s Sahajayas, seeks to identify the four moons whose consumption is said,
in a variety of medieval Bengali works, to enable the first earthly N@th guru,
Matsyendra, to restore his ailing body after a lengthy debauch in the land of
women. OndraJka tentatively suggests that these four moons might be semen,
menstrual fluid, urine, and faeces, as used by present-day Sahajayas, but, despite
a thorough presentation of the available evidence, is commendably inconclusive.
Ann Grodzins Gold complements her monograph A Carnival of Parting (1992,
University of California Press) with reports of two short N@th tales which also
feature the famous N@th protagonists Gopacand and Bhartr.hari. The importance of
her work is brought home by one of her informers telling her that N@th perform-
ance practices are ‘radically on the wane’. The tales are enhanced by the addition
Book Reviews 235
of an interpretational discourse by one of Gold’s informers, which transmits

Rajasthani N@th householder ideology, and Gold’s own understanding of what
they convey about the complex relationship between Rajasthani N@ths and the
wider community.
Daniel Gold describes two Maharashtrian N@th traditions that came to the city of
Gwalior in the 18th-century when it was the northernmost point of the Maratha
empire. They remain strong cultural presences in Gwalior society, while retaining
their Marathi identity, and, with their Vais.n.ava and S+fa elements, they highlight
the difficulty of generalising about the N@ths.
Two text-based essays attempt broader analyses of N@th doctrine. David Gordon
White draws on the Siddhasiddh@ntapaddhati’s location of the entire cosmos in the
body of the yogin, together with statements in N@th vernacular works, Upanis.ads,
[email protected], the Bhagavadgat@, other parts of the Mah@bh@rata, and tantric texts, to
speculate that the N@ths did not see the body as a microcosm of a macrocosmic
universe, but that through the power of their yoga they literally came to embody
the universe. Adrian Muñoz identifies a ‘threefold N@th canon’ comprising
‘Sanskrit texts on hat.ha-yoga, vernacular N@th poetry, and hagiographic sources’
(p. 110) and sensibly emphasises hagiography’s importance for understanding the
N@th tradition. He then analyses the legend of Goraks.a rescuing Matsyendra from
the land of women that is at the heart of OndraJka’s piece, concurring with pre-
vious commentators that it represents a reformation by Goraks.a of antinomian
Kaula practices. Muñoz’s ambitious attempt at a broad overview of the tradition
is hampered by a superficial acquaintance with some of the texts he uses in his
analysis. Thus the Śivasam.hit@, which is not a N@th work but a product of the
Śravidy@ tantric tradition and has the longest description of vajrolamudr@ in early
hat.hayogic sources (it is the first text to claim – incorrectly – that vajrolamudr@ can
be used to absorb through the penis the mixed products of sexual intercourse),
is said by Muñoz not to mention vajrolamudr@ and to have a ‘rather nontantric
oriented ideology’.
The first two chapters of the book are tours de force by scholars at the height of
their powers. Purushottam Agrawal examines the place of the N@ths in 20th-
century Hindi literary histories and what it tells us about Hindi historiography
and nationalist ideals. David Lorenzen compares the medieval Hindi works of
Gorakh and Kabar, showing that religious identity is better delineated therein
than might be expected and that, in different ways, Kabar and Gorakh both
sought to transcend religious boundaries.
These two essays use the N@ths to shed light on important subjects, but
the reader looking to learn more about the N@ths themselves might find them
somewhat frustrating. More frustrating still would be the remaining essay,
Ishita Banerjee-Dube’s piece on the Mahima Dharma. In seeking to identify N@th
236 Book Reviews
‘influence’ on this tradition which originated in 19th-century Orissa, Banerjee-

Dube admits that the only shared features are the dh+ni or sacred fire, the chant-
ing of ‘alakh’ and the idea of the avadh+ta, while invoking a more general, but
flawed, principle, often found in scholarship, of identifying anything tantric as
N@th. The teachings of Bhima Bhoi in fact seem much closer to those of the Bengali
Vais.n.ava Sahajiy@s than the N@ths and the Mahima Dharma’s supposedly N@th
features are common to a broad range of North Indian ascetic traditions.
To identify such features as originally N@th is to make the mistake that subtly
underpins the volume’s introduction and Muñoz’s essay, namely to posit some
essentialist ‘N@thism’. Such essentialism is rarely made explicit in the text and
at points more realistic appraisals of the N@th tradition are made. Thus, Muñoz
raises the possibility that ‘this tradition is in fact a whole cluster of traditions,
all gathered together under the general label of the Naths’ (p. 124). Yet elsewhere
the spectre of a perennial N@thism does occasionally raise its head. Kiss shows how
in the 13th-century Matsyendrasam.hit@, Goraks.a, later understood to have been
an ascetic who cleansed the N@th tradition of its licentious ways, is depicted as
a Col@ king who learns, among other things, Kaula sexual rituals from his guru
Matsyendra. The introduction says that ‘this argument can be seen as highly
controversial’ (p. xviii). By whom? Scholars will have a hard time picking holes
in Kiss’s thesis, founded as it is in exemplary philological scholarship. Today’s
north Indian N@th ascetics might take offence, but do they really have a better
window onto the south India of 800 years ago?
The volume contains a larger than average number of typographical errors and
inconsistencies, particularly in the use (or not) of diacritics. Some chapters are
worse than others: the volume would have benefited from more thorough copy-
editing. Nevertheless, it includes a wide variety of excellent essays on specific
aspects of N@th tradition. In a short space it covers N@th traditions from the
13th-century to the present day in Bengal, the Hindi belt, Rajasthan, and the
Tamil country. The only significant omissions from current scholarship on aspects
of N@th culture are the ethnographic studies of N@ths in Kerala by Richard
Freeman and in Nepal by Véronique Bouillier, together with the latter’s work
on the north Indian ascetic N@ths who, rightly or wrongly, are usually assumed
to represent the original N@th sam.prad@ya. In spite of this the volume gives a good
introduction to the importance and diversity of the tradition. An omission that
does let it down, however, is that of a reappraisal of the received essentialist
understanding of N@th history in the light of the new data presented.
James Mallinson
Oriental Institute, University of Oxford

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234 Book Reviews

This short volume consists of an introduction and nine chapters on a variety of

of an interpretational discourse by one of Gold’s informers, which transmits

‘influence’ on this tradition which originated in 19th-century Orissa, Banerjee-

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