Philosophy and Religion / Arthur Avalon: The Serpent Power

Arthur Avalon

The Serpent Power: Preface

Publishers’ note to Fifth Edition

Within the last three years most of the Works of Sir John Woodroffe have been published by us after they had been out of print for nearly twenty years. It is gratifying to note that the public have appreciated the valuable nature of these books and their new, uniform get-up. The last Edition of Serpent Power was exactly the same as its predecessor but in the present one, to make reference to the Sanskrit portion easier and more convenient to critical students, indexes have been included for the verses, authors, citations, bibliography and important words at the end of the book. It is hoped that these additions would prove useful to at least some of the readers.

November 1953

“We pray to the Paradevata united with Shiva, whose substance is the pure nectar of bliss, red like unto vermilion, the young flower of the hibiscus, and the sunset sky; who, having cleft Her way through the mass of sound issuing from the clashing and the dashing of the two winds in the midst of Sushumna, rises to that brilliant Energy which glitters with the lustre of ten million lightnings. May She, KundalinI, who quickly goes to and returns from Shiva, grant us the fruit of Yoga ! She being awakened is the Cow of Plenty to Kaulas, and the Ealpa Creeper of all things desired for those who worship Her .” —Shdradd Tilaka, xxv, 70.

Preface to Third Edition

This edition to which some additions have been made and in which some errors have been corrected has been revised throughout. Since the issue of the second edition several new volumes have appeared in the series of “Tantrik Texts”. In connection with this book the reader is specially referred to the Kamakalavililsa, one of such Texts, as also to the essay on “Creation in the Tantras” which with other new material is printed in “Shakti and Shakta The publishers have published a volume called “Mahamaya” by Professor Pramatha Natha Mukhyopadhyaya and myself in which comparison is made of the concept Maya as held by the Shaktas and Mayavadins respectively. I repeat that it is not possible to understand this Yoga without having been first well-grounded in its philosophy. I say ‘understand’ only because the question of the reality and value of this form of Yoga is not one with which this book is concerned.

Since the publication of the second edition, there has been issued a monograph on the Chakras by the well-known Theosophist, the Right Reverend C. W. Leadbeater, which includes matter published by him in 1910. The volume contains plates of the Chakras as said to have been seen clairvoyantly as also a plate of the Chakras according to Johann Georg Gichtel, a pupil of Jakob Boehme taken from his Theosophia Practica originally issued in 1696 and reprinted in 1897 (Chacornac Paris. See also Plates at the end of Dr. Law’s edition of the translation into English of Behmen). Dr. Eele has also published a book entitled “The Mysterious Kundalini” (Taraporewalla, Bombay) to which I have written an Introduction.

Oxford A. A.
September 11,1928

Note to Second Edition

Considering the recondite nature of the subject, the first edition published by Messrs. Luzac & Co., London has had a more rapid sale than was expected, and a call for a second edition has enabled me to revise the whole work and to make several corrections and additions both in the Introduction and Text. To this second edition has been added the Sanskrit Text of the works here translated which formerly appeared as Vol. 2 of the Tantrik Texts and which has since gone out of print. This edition also contains in addition to the original coloured plates of the Chakras, a number of half-tone plates taken from Life, showing some positions in Kundalini Yoga.

The Introduction deals in a general way with the subject-matter of the Texts translated. I take however this opportunity to say again that it has not been possible to give here a full explanation of such matters, and refer my reader to my other works dealing with the Tantras and their Ritual, namely, Principles of Tantra, a work of peculiar value in that it is a translation of the work of a Bengali Pandit himself a Shakta unacquainted with the English language but an inheritor of the old traditions ; as also my Shakti and Shakta dealing with ritual, published since the date of my first Preface. The Studies in Mantra Shastra referred to therein has also recently been published under the title of Garland of Letters. All such technical terms as Bindu, Nada and the like used in the works translated have been fully explained therein as also the general principles of Mantra. It is necessary also to know with accuracy the exact meaning of the terms Consciousness, Mind, Life, Matter and so forth as used in Vedanta and these have been given in the series of little works under the general caption The World as Power. It is not possible to understand the rationale of Yoga without an accurate understanding of these fundamental terms. It has been rightly said that “the practical portion of all Yoga, specially of Raja Yoga, is concerned with mental practices. It is therefore absolutely necessary that the student of Yoga should know what his mind is and how it works” (Raja Yoga, by Swami Dayanand, p. 11). I have given a short account of Sarvananda and his life in the Hindusthan Review. Other works by me on the Shastra are noted in the advertisement sheet at the end of the book.

A. Avalon

Les Andelys Eure
October, 1922

Preface

In my work “Shakti and Shakta” I outlined for the first time the principles of “Kundali-Yoga” so much discussed in some quarters, but of which so little was known.

This work is a description and explanation in fuller detail of the Serpent Power (Kundali Shakti), and the Yoga effected through it, a subject occupying a pre-eminent place in the Tantra Shastra. It consists of a translation of two Sanskrit works published some years ago in the second volume of my series of Tantrik Texts, but hitherto untranslated. The first, entitled “Shatchakranirupana” (“Description of and Investigation into the Six Bodily Centres”), has as its author the celebrated Tantrik Purnananda Svami, a short note on whose life is given later. It forms the sixth chapter of his extensive and unpublished work on Tantrik Ritual entitled “ Shritattvachintamani This has been the subject of commentaries by among others Shangkara and Vishvanatha cited in Volume II of the Tantrik Texts, and used in the making of the present translation. The commentary here translated from the Sanskrit is by Kallcharana.

The second text, called “Paduka-Panchaka” (“Fivefold Footstool of the Guru”, deals with one of the Lotuses described in the larger work. To it is appended a translation from the Sanskrit of a commentary by Kallcharana. To the translation of both works I have added some further explanatory notes of my own. As the works translated are of a highly recondite character, and by themselves unintelligible to the English reader, I have prefaced the translation by a general Introduction in which I have endeavoured to give (within the limits both of a work of this kind and my knowledge) a description and explanation of this form of Yoga. I have also included some plates of the Centres, which have been drawn and painted according to the description of them as given in the first of these Sanskrit Texts.

It has not been possible in the Introduction to do more than give a general and summary statement of the principles upon which Yoga, and this particular form of it, rests. Those who wish to pursue the subject in greater detail are referred to my other published books on the Tantra Shastra. In Principles of Tantra will be found general Introductions to the Shastra and (in connection with the present subject) valuable chapters on Shakti and Mantras. In my recent work, Shakti and Shakta (the second edition of which is as I write reprinting), I have shortly summarised the teaching of the Shakta Tantras and their rituals. In my Studies in the Mantra Shastra, the first three parts of which have been reprinted from the “Vedanta Kesari”, in which they first appeared, will be found more detailed descriptions of such technical terms as Tattva, Causal Shaktis, Kala, Nada, Bindu, and so forth, which are referred to in the present book. Other works published by me on the Tantra, including the “Wave of Bliss,” will be found in the page of advertisements.

The following account of Purnananda, the celebrated Tantrika Sadhaka of Bengal, and author of the “ Shatchakranirupana,” has been collected from the descendants of his eldest son, two of whom are connected with the work of the Varendra Research Society, Rajshahi, to whose Director, Sj. Akshaya Kumara Maitra, and Secretary, Sj. Radha Govinda Baisak, I am indebted for the following details:

Purnananda was a Rahri Brahmana of the Kashyapa Gotra, whose ancestors belonged to the village of Pakrashi, which has not as yet been identified. His seventh ancestor Anantacharya is said to have migrated from Baranagara, in the district of Murshidabad, to Kaitali, in the district of Mymensingh. In his family were born two celebrated Tantrika Sadhakas—namely, Sarvananda and Purnananda. The descendants of Sarvananda reside at Mehar, while those of Purnananda reside mostly in the district of Mymensingh. Little is known about the worldly life of Purnananda, except that he bore the name of Jagadananda, and copied a manuscript of the Vishnupuranam in the Shaka year 1448 (a.d. 1526). This manuscript, now in the possession of one of his descendants named Pandit Hari Kishore Bhattacharya, of Raitali, is still in a fair state of preservation. It was brought for inspection by Pandit Satis Chandra Siddhantabhushana of the Varendra Research Society. The colophon states that Jagadananda Sharma wrote the Purana in the Shaka year 1448.

This Jagadananda assumed the name of Purnananda when he obtained his Diksha (Initiation) from Brahmananda and went to Kamarupa (Assam), in which province he is believed to have obtained his “Siddhi” or state of spiritual perfection in the Ashrama, which still goes by the name of Vashishthashrama, situated at a distance of about seven miles from the town of Gauhati (Assam). Purnananda never returned home, but led the life of a Paramahangsa and compiled several Tantrika works, of which the Shritattvachintamani, composed in the Shaka year 1499 (a.d. 1577), Shyamarahasya, Shaktakrama, Tattvanandataranginl, and Yogasara are known. His commentary on the Kallkakarakuta hymn is well-known. The Shatchakranirupana, here translated, is not, however an independent work, but a part of the sixth Patala of the Shritattvachintamani. According to a genealogical table of the family of this Tantrika Acharya and Virachara Sadhaka, given by one of his descendants, Purnananda is removed from his present descendants by about ten generations.

This work has been on hand some five years, but both the difficulties of the subject and those created by the war have delayed its publication. I had hoped to include some other plates of original paintings and drawings in my possession bearing on the subject, but present conditions do not allow of this, and I have therefore thought it better to publish the book as it stands rather than risk further delay.

Arthur Avalon

Ranchi
September 20, 1918

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