For centuries, Tantra has shaped the socio-religious landscape of southeastern Asia, yet it remains poorly understood, and has been often misrepresented in modern pop culture. In this context, the project MANTRATANTRAM (Monsoon Asia as the Nexus for the TRAnsfer of TANTRA along the Maritime routes, ERC Consolidator Grant 101124214), led by Andrea Acri at the EPHE (PSL University, Paris), will study tantric traditions within their broader historical and geographical contexts across Monsoon Asia. This geoenvironmental region, including South and Southeast Asia as well as large areas of Central and East Asia, is the most populated of the planet, and can be regarded as forming an extremely variegated yet historically, culturally, and linguistically interconnected network dominated by shared environmental factors like the seasonal monsoon winds and precipitation patterns.

This initiative seeks to transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries and the limitations of Area Studies by examining tantric traditions as a dynamic, interconnected phenomenon. Focusing on the mediaeval period, maritime connectivity, and cross-cultural exchanges (also between elite and non-elite communities), the project will analyse diverse textual sources in Sanskrit, South Asian vernacular languages, and non-Indo-Aryan languages (e.g., Old Javanese, Tibetan, and Chinese), as well as art historical vestiges. By doing so, it will reveal Tantra’s complex network of cultural exchanges, enhancing our appreciation of its impact on the region’s shared religious heritage.

This website is the communication and dissemination channel for the project (2024–2029). It presents the intellectual parameters of the project and its team, as well as news, activities, discoveries, publications, and digital tools.

 

 

The project’s wider-ranging approach to the phenomenon of Tantra will be articulated through three interlinked, complementary, and mutually illuminating subprojects, each including two work packages (WP):

 

1. Roots of Tantra: Monsoon Asian perspectives

WP1a: Early Śaivism from the prism of (Sanskrit-)Old Javanese Śaiva texts, involving the edition, translation, and study of selected sources of a  body of Śaiva literature from Java and Bali that has seldom been investigated from a comparative perspective. This corpus can be approached not only as the product of transcultural transactions involving the localization of Indic material, but also as having preserved ancient strands of Śaivism that have scantily survived in the tantric Śaiva literature of South Asia.

WP1b: Early/proto-tantric material in the Chinese Taishō canon, investigating dhāraṇī collections and other textual material in Chinese to cast light on one of the strands that contributed to the genesis of Tantric Buddhism, as well as the Śaiva material that was preserved therein.

 

2. Tantra as transcultural contact across Monsoon Asia

WP2a: Old Javanese-Balinese ‘magical’ texts, exploring a scantily studied corpus of Old Javanese-Balinese sources on ‘magic’ (intended as ‘supernatural efficacy’) containing descriptions of rituals, mantras, and magical recipes that are often related to those found in tantric texts from the Indian subcontinent, and also involving the cataloguing and documentation of a virtually uncharted collection of 2500 Balinese palm-leaf manuscripts at the BSB in Munich, most of which belong to this textual genre.

WP2b: Cross-cultural contact from the prism of tantric texts in Sanskrit and vernaculars,  approach transculturality from the prism of Sanskrit and vernacular tantric texts from the Indian subcontinent (and beyond) to uncover the multicultural social history of Tantra. For instance, relevant Sanskrit and vernacular texts will be analysed to individuate words of non-Indo-Aryan origin associated with cultic complexes, and test the hypothesis that specific features of tantric systems may be selective elite appropriations of non-Sanskritic/non-elite cults and practices. 

 

3. Maritime transfer of Tantric Buddhism across Monsoon Asia in the light of texts and artefacts

WP3a: Comparative study of dhāraṇīs from the Indonesian archipelago and Sino-Tibetan sources, focusing on the study of a corpus of published and unpublished dhāraṇīs and mantras from the Indonesian archipelago, which is relevant to the maritime transfer of Tantra across Monsoon Asia, and to the study of Pan-Asian Buddhism. Indeed, this WP also tackles the wider-ranging aspects of maritime transfer and connectivity of Mahāyāna Buddhist Tantra by mapping networks of masters, texts, and icons.

WP3b: Portable Tantric Buddhist maṇḍalas and statuettes from insular Southeast Asia, combining the study of transmitted literature in various languages with art historical data, so that they can illuminate each other. The metal statuettes of deities of the pantheons of Tantric Buddhist maṇḍalas from Southeast Asia (e.g. the Surocolo, Nganjuk, and Ponorogo/Kunti hoards from Java, the last of which is still unpublished) and relevant Sanskrit and Chinese textual sources that may cast light on their identification.

 

 

The project will synergize with ERC Synergy MANTRAMS (Mantras in Religion, Media, and Society in Global Southern Asia), hosted at the universities of Vienna,  Tübingen, Oxford, and the EPHE from 2024 to 2030, with collaboration on the study of corpora of mantras and dhāraṇīs from a transregional and comparative approach emphasizing transculturality.

Besides Open Access scientific publications and dissemination events, the project’s outcomes will include a database of tantric texts, as well as an online resource that will allow the visualization of the circulation of Tantric Buddhist agents, texts, and icons across Maritime Asia.

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Funded by the European Union (ERC MANTRATANTRAM, Project No. 101124214). Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.