Yoginīs

Abstract

Goddesses known as yoginīs (feminine of the Sanskrit yogin, “practitioner of yoga” or “possessed of yoga”) were prominent in the esoteric or “tantric” religious traditions of premodern India, beginning from around the 7th century ce. They feature especially in tantric Śaiva cults of Bhairava and allied goddesses, as well as within the Vajrayāna Buddhist Yoginītantras or Yoganiruttaratantras. In fact yoginī cults form a significant shared dimension of these tantric traditions. This bibliography is primarily concerned with yoginīs in premodern Hindu traditions, especially Tantric Śaivism, while nonetheless including some representative works on Buddhist and other traditions. While sharing characteristics with several other deity types, yoginīs have particularly deep connections with mātṛs or “mother-goddesses,” ancient deities associated with fertility, motherhood, disease, and warfare. Several key aspects of yoginīs are shared with the earlier mātṛs, such as the ability to fly, the high frequency of animal faces, occurrence in groups, martial prowess, and their simultaneous beauty and dangerous power. Yoginīs have particularly strong connections with the Gupta-era Seven Mothers (saptamātṛs or saptamātṛkās), who are often included in yoginī sets. Within Tantric Śaivism, yoginīs surface first in the Vidyāpīṭha division of Bhairavatantras, such as the extant Siddhayogeśvarīmata and Brahmayāmala, remaining prominent in Kaula traditions of the late 1st and early 2nd millennia. This literature depicts yoginīs as powerful, potentially dangerous flying goddesses who embody the numinous powers of yoga, powers sought by tantric practitioners through visionary, transactional encounters. Organized into clans (kula), yoginīs were regarded as both guardians and potential sources for the transmission of tantric revelation. While quintessentially tantric goddesses, the veneration of yoginīs took on more public forms by the 10th century. Temples dedicated to groups of yoginīs were constructed across India, mainly from the 10th to 12th centuries, and yoginīs also left their mark in non-tantric religious and narrative literatures. Although yoginī worship waned in the latermedieval period, these goddesses remained important in some tantric traditions, and have received renewed attention in the modern world. Distinctive to the figure of the yoginī is the blurring of boundaries between goddesses and women: in many contexts, the word yoginī simply refers to a female yogi or tantric initiate, and female adepts were viewed as potentially becoming divine yoginīs through sudden gnosis or ritual perfection. For this reason, while the bibliography is mainly devoted to scholarship on tantric goddesses, rather than yoginī in the more general sense of “female practitioner of yoga,” it also necessarily concerns female tantric adepts, gender and sexuality in the tantric traditions, and the impact of belief in yoginīs upon women. Indeed, one of many meanings of yoginī and closely related terms is “tantric sorceress” or “witch,” a notion carried into the modern world, sometimes with tragic consequences.