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Kavaleuskaya A. Extraction of Mantras

A. Kavaleuskaya - University of Hamburg Hamburg, Germany, ORCID: 0000-0002-0261-5987
E‑mail: aneshvari@gmail.com

 

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ABSTRACT. The article presents a brief review of the practical techniques of encoding and decoding of mantras, illustrating them with particular examples from the tantric texts of Northern India. In Hindu tantric traditions, the great majority of methods of reverse transformation of cipher-texts into the original plain-texts of mantras are carried out within the ritual of mantra extraction (mantroddhāra), syllable by syllable, from the Sanskrit alphabet arranged in special tables (prastāra) or by replacing code words by syllables and phonemes constituting the mantra. The ritual of decoding hidden mantras is part of a wider topic of secrecy in the transmission of tantric doctrines. The secrecy in religious teachings, including tantric ones, serves not only the purpose of protecting information from those uninitiated, but also facilitates the authorization and sacralization of these teachings, which has reflected in their methods of obfuscation and deobfuscation. I hope that this article will help the scholars of tantric texts to recognize and decipher hidden mantras in Hindu tantric writings.

 

DOI 10.31250/2618-8600-2020-4(10)-59-79
УДК 811.211

 

KEYWORDS: tantra, mantra decryption, secrecy, Indian cryptography, mantroddhara, prastāra

 

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