Chakras into the west: BK Majumdar, Arthur Avalon and Serpentine conundrums – I

Posted by Phil Hine in History, tantra  |  March 6th 2018  |  About poster:

In an earlier post in this series I gave some attention to a series of articles published in The Theosophist by Baradā Kānta Majumdār and concerning “Tantric Occultism” including english translations from Pūrnānda’s Ṣatcakranirūpaṇa which precedes Arthur Avalon’s (aka Sir John Woodroffe) translation of this text by nearly forty years. ¹

For this series of posts, I’m going to take a closer look at these articles – particularly in respect to Majumdār’s references to the Chakras and Kundalinī, and then go on to some thoughts on Avalon’s work, The Serpent Power.

What do we know of Baradā Kānta Majumdār? Very little at the moment. He was from Bengal, and was of the Brahmin caste. Kurt Leland ² describes him as “as a writer of novels, tales, and philosophical works in Bengali and the publisher of a Bengali children’s magazine based in Calcutta. This latter was Sisu, a monthly periodical which was published between 1912-1914. He also published a series of books for young people referred to as the Sati-katha Granthabali – the first of which was Sita (1910) which stressed the character of Sita as a model of piety and a role-model for the moral education of young women. We know from an announcement in The Theosophist that Majumdār started a school at Naldanga in 1882 which taught English, Bengali and Sanskrit “up to the Matriculation standard of the Calcutta University” and he also ran a Sunday School “where Hindu ethics are taught”. ³ Also from The Theosophist (February 1883) it is recorded that he was, at one point, attempting to cultivate a branch of the Theosophical Society at Jessore, but was unsuccessful, due to the death of his eldest son. His other written works include The Shikshaka or Monitor “A Series of Civil Discourses for the Instruction of Young Proprietors of Land” (1876) and, according to Sujata Mukherjee ⁴ an 1889 work entitled Naritattva – a reformist work dealing with sexual matters and the consummation of marriage and prescribing that “a prolonged period of gaona or the bride’s residence at her father’s house during the period between marriage and sexual maturity should be observed so as to delay the onset of the first menses”.

What emerges is a view of a man with an obvious talent from writing and organization – with a strong interest in social reform and education. But it is for Majumdār’s contributions to Theosophical Journals and later – as a collaborator with Arthur Avalon – that I want to focus on for now. I briefly examined Majumdār’s April 1880 article for The Theosophist, entitled Tantric Philosophy in this post. Looking again at this text, here is Majumdār’s initial discussion of Kundalinī:

“The Deity, according to the Mahanirvana Tantra, is a duality – the grand, immutable and inseparable combination of mind and matter. It is always indivisible, impersonal, unsusceptible of any feeling such as pleasure and pain, imperceptibly latent in every created object, all-pervading and eternal. It is the fountain-light of the senses and the faculties itself, having neither the one nor the other. Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva are the personifications of the centrifugal and centripedal energies of the Great One, they being never independent entities. All the created objects from the great to the small are provided with it.”

The mahānirvāṇa tantra (MNT) is a well-known text, as it was one of the first tantric texts translated by Arthur Avalon and published by him in 1913 with the title The Tantra of the Great Liberation. Despite its popularity, the general scholarly consensus on this work is that it is a very late text, and possibly even a fabrication ⁵ or that is was written by Rammohun Roy. According to Avalon biographer Kathleen Taylor, the very restrained nature of the MNT accounted for its success, particularly in Bengal, as it was popular with the English-educated middle-classes, and with European scholars who valued its elucidation of many technical terms. I’m not going to delve into the many questions provoked by the MNT – Hugh Urban does that very well, but it is worthy of notice that Majumdār is apparently familiar with this work, first published in Bengali in 1876 by the Brahmo Samaj.

This Great Cause of Causes is known only to those who are adepts in what is known by the name of Samadhi yoga. The Yogi is to feel it must be impregnable to feelings of pleasure and pain, happiness and misery, heat and cold, in short, every terrestrial thing that affects the mind of the ordinary mortal. The discipline of the mind is not the less imperative. The practiser of Yoga should stand beyond the control of the passions, regard with an even eye both friend and foe, and completely abstract his mind from the outside world. He is to concentrate his mind upon the vital Mantra, om satchit ckam brahma; which is thus explained. The syllable om is the symbol of the centrifugal, sustaining and centripedal energies of God; the letter (a) means the sustaining or preservative energy, (u) the destroying (rather decomposing and centripedal) energy and (m) the creative (rather centrifugal) energy.

I have used the words centrifugal, centripedal and energy advisedly. From the Kamadhena Tantra it would appear that the letter (u) of the Pravana is the symbol of a certain force (call it power if you will) named Adha Kundalini, whose color is like the scarlet Champak, embodying the five Devas (that is Tanmatras or the occult essences of sound, light, smell, touch and air) and the five Pranas. The colour of the force symbolised by (m) is like that of the dawning sun and is called the Parama Kundalini; it also embraces the five Devas and Prans. The symbol (a) is of the moon’s colour, pentangular, embracing the five Devas as above; having three powers (Sakti), three attributes, though without any attribute, and itself the divine essence embodied. [italics in original]

This is an extremely interesting passage, being an early description of Kundalinī. Note particularly that he is aware of two forms of Kundalinī – Adha Kundalini and Parama Kundalini, although as can be seen from the next paragraph he is unclear as to what these two aspects of Kundalinī are.

Now among the descriptions of Kundalini in Tantrasara these three attributes among others are noticable, viz., that it is subtle, moving in three and a half circles and encircling the esoteric (procreative will, I believe) of the self-existent Deity. Viewing in this light this Kundalini appears to be the grand pristine force which underlies organic and inorganic matter. Modern science also teaches us that heat, light, electricity, magnetism etc., are but the modifications of one great force. I confess my inability to ascertain the distinction between Adhas Kundalini and Parama Kundali, typifying the negative and the positive force respectively, but doubtless they are the manifestation if the one great primeval force or power which created the universe.

So here Majumdār is attempting to make a correlation between Kundalinī and modern science. We also have this rather strange concept that Kundalinī “is subtle, moving in three and a half circles and encircling the esoteric (procreative will, I believe) of the self-existent Deity.” This is an early reference, I would think, to the term Svayaṁbhu-liṅga which in a later essay, Majumdār will translate as “phallus” – an interpretation which is followed by Avalon. ⁶

His last paragraph, before he moves on to other matters, is:

… I am struck with an idea, though I am not now in a position for want of some very valuable Tantrik works to substantiate my point, that the syllable Om is the esoteric verbal symbol, whereas the cross, Arani, Lingam &c., is the esoteric physical symbol hiding the same divine meaning underneath. There is the positive vertical force (m) intersecting the negative horizontal force (u) and (a) is the harmonial motion of these two forces, (the harmony being mentioned by the three other royal saktis of dignity, energy and counsel) sustaining and pereserving the universe, which is but the embodiment of the divine essence.”

I’m going to hold it there for now, but in the next post I’ll take a look at Majumdār’s essays from the July and October 1880 issues of The Theosophist, which together give what must be one of the very first accounts of the chakras and appear to be taken from the sixth chapter of Pūrnānda’s Srītattvachintāmanī – the famous Ṣatcakranirūpaṇa.

Sources
J. Duncan M. Derrett ‘A Juridical Fabrication of Early British India: The Mahānirvāņa Tantra in Derrett Essays in Classical and Modern Hindu Law, v.II (Brill, 1977)
Kurt Leland Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to Brennan (Ibis Press, 2016)
BK Majumdār Tantric Philosophy in The Theosophist (April 1880)
Sujata Mukherjee 2018. What did the ‘Wise Men’ Say? Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Health in Colonial Bengal in Biswamoy Pati, Mark Harrison (eds) Society, Medicine and Politics in Colonial India (Routledge, 2018)
Kathleen Taylor Sir John Woodroffe, Tantra and Bengal: ‘An Indian Soul in a European Body?’ (Routledge Curzon 2001)
Hugh Urban The strategic uses of an esoteric text: The Mahanirvana Tantra (Journal of South Asian Studies, 18:1, 55-81)
Sir John Woodroffe The Serpent Power (Ganesh & Co., 1972)

Online
Index of the Theosophical Journal
Digital Archive of The Theosophist

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