The Throne of Worship: An ‘Archaeological Tell’ of Religious Rivalries

Abstract

The throne of worship, which is typically a colourful grotesque of theriomorphic theologemes that is to be visualized similarly in both internal and external worship, is a common feature of most surviving tantric literature. We may often read of ritual and doctrine being locked in so close an embrace that the one may not be interpreted without the other2 and it is certainly true that their relationship can very often be demonstrated. Indeed, one article known to me demonstrates it with respect to the throne of worship: Sanderson3 has pointed out that the enthronement of the three deities—Parā, Parāparā and Aparā—on the tips of a trident that rises above the enthroned corpse of Sadāśiva is intended to express that the Trika has transcended, among other systems, the Śaiva Siddhānta. It is noteworthy, however, that we should find not only that the enthronement of the principal deity should be an almost universal feature of tantric cults but also that many elements of the throne are the same or more than coincidentally similar in different systems. The most widespread common feature of thrones is that of a lotus resting upon a pīṭha that has at least four legs in the intermediate directions, these legs being formed by lions as incarnations of entities that have the names of the four positive qualities of the buddhi, namely, dharma, jñāna, vairāgya and aiśvarya. Furthermore, we find both Śaiva and Pāñcarātra accounts in which the mantras of these entities involve the four so-called ‘neuter’ vowels. Thus, the rituals of these cults may be shown to express or reinforce doctrinal truths, but we cannot in such cases always assume that their original ‘sense’ is shining through: expression of doctrine must often rather be the result of successful secondary reinterpretation. Plainly, an examination of thrones furnishes evidence of the kind that led to Sanderson’s observation that ‘[t]he ritual systems taught in the Śaiva and Pāñcarātrika Saṃhitās resemble each other so closely in morphology and syntax that they have the appearance of two dialects of a single “Tantric” language.’4 In this article I will attempt an exploration of some textual accounts of thrones and I hope to provide a ‘footnote’ to Sanderson’s observation, which although is itself part of a footnote, deserves a more prominent place and, of course, examination in not a few further ‘footnotes’.