3

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para , parāpara , apara)—is usual in Indian philosophy and

metaphysics.

HRĪṂ ŚRīṂ A Ṃ Kāmarūpāya nama ḥ ” on the head, for the fi rst pīṭha and the phoneme A .

See above, chapter 1, the commentary on śl . 62.

(or Kāmeśvara/Kāmeśvarī) holds the elephant goad ( āṅkuśa ), the noose ( pāśa ),

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a bow ( dhanuś ), and arrows ( bāṇa ). Āyudhas are also deities and are then shown in human form, each carrying one of the weapons. They are then part of the deity’s retinue ( āvaraṇadevatā ).

ī /Brahmanī. They are enumerated and

described in śl. 116–123 for their worship.

The latter is used for particular deities or specifi c rites. In Tantric rites, arghya may include blood, diff erent bodily fl uids or excretions, or other “transgressive” elements. Arghya is one of the ritual “services” ( upacāra ) presented to a deity during worship. Here the arghya prescribed is the common one.

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These days are also called kalas , “portions.” As for the śrīvidyā , it numbers sixteen syllables when the vidyā as a whole is added to its fi fteen constitutive letters. Sixteen is a lunar number. It is also the number of divisions of Prajāpati or of the Puruṣa, since the Veda.

is variously translated as “wild lemon” or (in the

Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English dictionary) as “horn-apple.”

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is often translated as “demon-writing” (in the Monier-Williams

Sanskrit-English dictionary, for instance). But this is a misnomer, its diff erent groups of phonemes being associated with the gross elements ( bhūta ) of the cosmos, an association mentioned in the Dī. The bhūtalipi is made up of forty-two letters only, from A to SA , ventilated into nine groups ( varga ) of vowels, diphthongs, and semivowels, then of consonants ending with the sibilants, the last of which is SA . In spite of its being called a writing, lipi , its uses seem more oral and metaphysical than concrete; here we are on the plane of madhyamā , a subtle, nonmanifested level of the Word ( vāc ).

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