Publication of Tantric Teachings of the Kālikā Purāṇa by Karel R. van Kooij

Leiden: Brill, 2021

Dear All, 

Although it appeared last year, you may be interested in the announcement of this publication by Karel R. van Kooij, one of my former professors at the Indology department of Utrecht University (I have not yet seen any announcement here, may have missed it): 

Together with van Kooij's well-known earlier publications, esp. 

Worship of the Goddess According to the Kālikāpurāṇa, Part I (Leiden: Brill, 1972), 

this new book contains a monumental introduction to, and presentation of, the peculiar cultural-religious complex that found expression in this Purāṇa and the analysis and translation of substantial fragments of the text.

From the Preface: 

"The learned brāhmin who composed the text is clearly recommending a ‘civilised’ Tantrism conforming to the dharma. Tantrism had become part of correct behaviour. Violence is part of the game – human sacrifice too – but is mythologised, ritualised, moralised."

As a philologist of the school of Jan Gonda, the author explains

"I wanted to give the floor to the text itself, and to figure out what the Teachings have to say before anybody else, including myself." 

He further explains that

"That is why I am including many fragments in text and translation, thereby supported by manuscripts, which were at my disposal when I started this research. At the same time, I wanted to expose the Kālikāpurāṇa, because the work deserves attention. Even now, after the study of Tantrism took such an impressive sprint forward, the Kālikā Purāṇa remains relatively unexplored. What this Purāṇa has to offer in extensively presenting Tantric knowledge is remarkable and valuable. The text frequently plays its own guru and explains itself. The Tantric portion certainly does not belong to the genre of concise, sometimes deliberately obscure, Tantric treatises meant for the initiated sādhaka, but represent an open Purāṇic Tantrism. Nevertheless, the Śiva’s teaching is based on a Bhairava Tantra, as the text itself reveals , but polished and abridged in order to make the contents suitable to a lay audience, in this case, no doubt, a royal patron of Kāmarūpa."