Tantra as a religious category in the Mahābhāgavata Purāna

Abstract

The Mahābhāgavata Purāna is a late medieval Śākta text with significant links to Kāmarūpa, the pilgrimage site near Gauhati, Assam. This text's inclusive religious vision emphasizes bhakti and explicitly acknowledges Tantra as a legitimate religious category. Implicitly, the Mahābhāgavata integrates Tantra and bhakti through narratives that depict Tantric practices and principles while demonstrating their compatibility and even their unity with bhakti. This paper examines the treatment of Tantra in the Mahābh āgavata and argues that the text gives voice to a variety of concerns about Tantra at Kāmarūpa in the late medieval period. Further, this text, which has so far received little attention in modern scholarship, challenges definitions of Tantra as primarily or essentially transgressive.