How to Cite

Serbaeva, Olga: Significant Otherness: Reinterpreting Some Well-Known Meetings with the Yoginīs in the Light of Vidyāpīṭha Texts, in Bornet, Philippe and Cattoni, Nadia (Eds.): Significant Others, Significant Encounters: Essays on South Asian History and Literature, Heidelberg: Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing, 2023, p. 29–53. https://doi.org/10.11588/hasp.1155.c16208

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https://doi.org/10.11588/hasp.1155
ISBN 978-3-948791-50-6 (PDF)
ISBN 978-3-948791-51-3 (Hardcover)

Published

07/24/2023

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Authors

Olga Serbaeva

Significant Otherness

Reinterpreting Some Well-Known Meetings with the Yoginīs in the Light of Vidyāpīṭha Texts

This chapter proposes a new interpretation of three well-known stories of meetings with Yoginīs. Some such stories have been translated multiple times from the Sanskrit, beginning in as early as the first half of the nineteenth century. However, with the recent appearance and cataloguing of manuscript materials from Nepal that include the Vidyāpīṭha Tantras (the so-called “Tantras Dealing with the Invocations of the Throne of Female Deities”), a better understanding and thus a new interpretation of these stories is now possible. Behind the strange and cruel actions of the Yoginīs appears a design of exquisite complexity and beauty, affording the reader a better vision of the virtually unknown tantric world.

Keywords Śaiva tantric traditions, Vidyāpīṭha Tantras, Yoginīs, transgression, reinterpretation of Sanskrit literature