Verse 35: Āmnāya Samaṣṭipūjā

Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation of verse 35:

अन्तरङ्गकरणात्मनां चतुःस्रोतसां विविधदेवताजुषाम् ।
पूजनं परम् इहोन्मनीशिखामध्यवर्तिपरमात्मयोजनम् ॥ ३५ ॥

antaraṅgakaraṇātmanāṃ catuḥsrotasāṃ vividhadevatājuṣām |
pūjanaṃ param ihonmanīśikhāmadhyavartiparamātmayojanam || 35 ||

Here worship of the four [Kaula] streams devoted to various deities and consisting of inner elements and the Śākta pantheon, in its highest form, is uniting with the supreme Self that is present at the peak of the transmental state.

Notes:

Kaula tantra is a specific branch of tantric Śaivism centered on the worship of Śiva/ Śakti that requires a human guru to bestow upon the aspirant an initiation into its doctrines and practices. The Kaula revelation originated with the extra-Vedic visionary Śaiva ascetics of the cremation grounds and formed into early proto-Kaula tantric mātṛ and yoginī lineages organized by distinct clans (kula) based on the worship of the famous eight mātṛ goddesses (Brāhmī, Maheśvarī, Kaumārī, Vaiṣṇavī, Vārāhī, Indrāṇi, Cāmuṇḍā, and Mahālakṣmī). Kaula tantra built on the focus of kula as clans, but also understood kula to mean the body, as well as the totality, thereby linking Śakti with the individual body and internal modes of practice.^[1] In a broad sense, Kaula tantra interiorized and increased subtle awareness, and mystical reflections on consciousness, as the ultimate goal (and ground) of all spiritual practice.

There are several Kaula lineages and many non-Kaula traditions that even adopted select Kaula elements and influences over time. Of the many Kaula lineages, which actually span several Indic religions including Buddhism, four principal revelatory streams, known as āmnāyas, stand out as especially noteworthy. Āmnāya means a stream of teachings and usually consists of a principal deity, mantra, maṇḍala, and other aspects of worship. The four principal Kaula āmnāyas (despite their deity specific revelations) also share in a number of common features, doctrines, and practices. After all, the āmnāyas are all Kaula teachings located within a specialized (viśeṣa) corpus of tantric texts. The fourfold āmnāya classification seems to first appear in the Ciñciṇīmatasārasamuccaya [=Ciñcinīmatasārasamuccaya], an unpublished text from the Kubjikā tradition which describes the four āmnāyas as follows:^[2]

Transmission	Direction	Principal Deity and tradition
Uttarāmnāya	(North)	Kālīkā, of the Kālīkulakrama
Purvāmnāya	(East)	Parā, of the Trika
Paścimāmnāya	(West)	Kubjikā, of the Kaubjikā tradition
Dakṣiṇāmnāya	(South)	Kāmeśvarī/Tripurasundarī, of what will be known as Śrīvidyā

The fourfold āmnāya classification of Kaula lineages is based on an earlier understanding from Śaivism that organized teachings into five srotas (currents, or streams) spoken from the five heads of Sadāśiva as follows:^[3]

Direction	Face of Sadāśiva	Śāstra revealed
West	Sadyojāta	Laukika
North	Vāmadeva	Vaidika
South	Aghora	Ādhyātmika
East	Tatpuruṣa	Atimārga
Upper	Īśāna	Mantramārga––> Śaivāgama

Within these five revelatory streams of teachings, there was further classification, as Dr. Mark Dyczkowski has pointed out, "The Śaivāgamas are the Mantratantraśāstra manifested by Sadāśiva through Īśāna, his upper face. Insofar as each face is supposed to possess all five faces, the Mantratantra group is also divided into five."^[4]

Five fold division of the Mantramārga
Direction	Face of Sadāśiva	Āgama revealed
Upper	Īśāna	Siddhāntāgama
East	Tatpuruṣa	Gāruḍatantra
South	Aghora	Bhairavatantra––> Kaulatantra
North	Vāmadeva	Vāmatantra
West	Sadyojāta	Bhūtatantra

While the Kaula revelation is often thought to be primarily located within the Bhairavatantra stream, Dr. Mark Dyczkowski provides the following further clarification:

"Kaula doctrine and practice is not confined exclusively to those Tantras which explicitly consider themselves to be Kaula: it is an important element of other Tantras as well—particularly those of the Vāma and Dakṣiṇasrotas with which the Kaulatantras are closely related. Kula doctrine originates in these two currents of scripture and so is said to flow from them and extend them at their furthest limit. At the same time, it is present in all the Śaiva scriptures, pervading them as their finest and most subtle element, like the perfume in flowers, taste in water or the life in the body."^[5]

From its earliest sources and mūlaśāstra, the Nityāṣoḍaśikārṇavatantra, Śrīvidyā saw itself as embodying, and in some cases even transcending, the fourfold classification of the āmnāyas.

The Nityāṣoḍaśikārṇavatantra teaches:

कामपूर्णजकाराख्यश्रीपीठान्तर्निवासिनीम् ।
चतुराज्ञाकोशभूतां नौमि श्रीत्रिपुराम् अहम् ॥ १.१२ ॥

kāmapūrṇajakārākhyaśrīpīṭhāntarnivāsinīm |
caturājñākośabhūtāṃ naumi śrītripurām aham || 1.12 ||

"I worship Śrī Tripurā, residing in Kāmarūpa, Jālandhara, Pūrṇapīṭha, and Uḍḍiyāṇa (śrīpīṭha), who is the treasure-house of the four commands (ājñās, that is, teachings)."^[6]

Further clarifying that all four Kaula lineages are subsumed within Śrīvidyā, Amṛtānanda teaches in his Saubhāgyasudhodaya:

सैव महाविद्यात्मा माता चतुरन्वयैकविश्रान्तिः ॥ २.१ ॥

saiva mahāvidyātmā mātā caturanvayaikaviśrāntiḥ || 2.1 ||

"This same Mother, who is the Supreme Vidyā, is the single ground in which the Four Anvayas come to rest."^[7]

The Paraśurāmakalpasūtra (1.2) speaks of five āmnāyas, with the understanding that Śrīvidyā is the "upper" tradition known as the ūrdhvāmnāya:

भगवान् परमशिवभट्टारकः संविन्मय्या भगवत्या भैरव्या स्वात्माभिन्नया पृष्टः पञ्चभिर् मुखैः पञ्चाम्नायान् परमार्थसारभूतान् प्रणिनाय तत्रायं सिद्धान्तः

bhagavān paramaśivabhaṭṭārakaḥ saṃvinmayyā bhagavatyā bhairavyā svātmābhinnayā pṛṣṭaḥ pañcabhir mukhaiḥ pañcāmnāyān paramārthasārabhūtān praṇināya tatrāyaṃ siddhāntaḥ

"Lord Paramaśiva, questioned by the Goddess Bhairavī, by the awareness that is his own self, promulgated through his fives faces the five Āmnāyas as the very essence of ultimate truth. In these what follows is the definitive doctrine..."^[8]

The four āmnāyas are primarily understood within Śrīvidyā to exist as the four doorways into the Śrīcakra. Since many saṃpradāyas and schools of thought use āmnāya to refer to their own specific teachings, it can be confusing as to what "āmnāya" actually refers to in any given text, especially when attempting to apply a "one-size-fits-all" meaning. For example, teachings associated with the southern transmission, such as the Śaṅkarācārya Śṛṅgerī Maṭha, Aghora Śiva, and the worship of Kāmeśvarī, will all be known as dakṣiṇāmnāya.

In addition to being doorways into the Śrīcakra, Śrīvidyā also conceives the four āmnāyas as a way to organize the vast mantric pantheon it inherited from the earlier Kaula traditions within its own initiatory hierarchy. Understood in this way, the āmnāyas become six traditions, following a later development in Kaula tantra that included an upper āmnāya spoken of in the Kulārṇavatantra (see teachings below) as well as within Śrīvidyā (as explored above), and even a secret sixth "supreme" āmnāya known as the unsurpassable (annutara). The general idea is that mantras within Śrīvidyā emanate from Tripurasundarī through various revelatory streams (āmnāya) that are related to corresponding levels of initiation and practice. In this way, various levels of mantras are correlated with different āmnāyas based on the types of practices one is initiated into and the suitability of specialized mantras for practitioners within various initiatory levels.

Śrīvidyā practitioners performing Navāvaraṇa pūjā may also recognize the āmnāya classification as it is present (although in an encoded form) in the "Āmnāya samaṣṭipūjā," a part of many contemporary ritual manuals such as in Śrī Caitanyānandanātha's "Śrīcakra Pūjā Vidhi" where they are publicly mentioned with their Vedic correlations. Śrī Caitanyānandanātha teaches:

"The four amnayas -East, South, West and North are Ṛk, Yajus, Atharvaṇa and Sama Vedas. The ūrdhvāmnāya is the verbal content of the upaniṣads and the anuttarāmnāya their implied sense. Seven crore mantras are contained in these six āmnāyas. The purpose of āmnāya samaṣṭi pūjā is to emphasize that all these mantras only describe citśakti who is not different from Brahman."^[9]

The Āmnāya samaṣṭipūjā also reveals four Kaula goddesses, their mūlavidyās, and their associations with the four principal Kaula pīṭhas (Oḍḍiyāṇa, Jālandhara, Pūrṇagiri, and Kāmarūpa) that exist along the inner trikoṇa of the Śrīcakra. Āmnāya samaṣṭipūjā is an important part of venerating all of the four Kaula traditions and can traced back to some of the earliest Śrīvidyā ritual manuals currently available. Practiced in this way, the worship reinforces the essential teaching that all Kaula lineages, despite their apparent differences, deity specific revelations, and variant mantras, are actually one.

There is a possibility that Amṛtānanda might be referring to another set of of teachings in this verse, since he uses the older srotas term^[10] rather than āmnāya. However, Amṛtānanda was well aware of the four principal Kaula traditions, even if not in the same exact way as taught in the Ciñciṇīmatasārasamuccaya, or how they are understood today—over seven hundred years later. In his Dīpikā commentary on the Yoginīhṛdayatantra (2.17) Amṛtānanda cites his own work, the Saubhāgyasudhodaya, that teaches esoteric knowledge about the inner nature of the principal mantra of Tripurasundarī (the Pañcadaśākṣarī) and how all four traditions contribute a syllable, or set of syllables, to its construction.

Despite the possible ambiguities present in this verse, it seems clear that Amṛtānanda is contemplating the supreme form of Āmnāya samaṣṭipūjā. Understood in this way, Amṛtānanda is teaching that the higher form of venerating the diverse currents of Kaula revelations as a single tradition is uniting the individual self with the supreme Self, identified, as all supreme (parā) Kaula goddesses of consciousness are, with unmanī śakti at the "peak of the transmental state."

Clarifying the four principal āmnāyas, and explicitly mentioning the superiority of the fifth ūrdhvāmnāya, the third chapter of the Kulārṇavatantra teaches:

मम पञ्चमुखेभ्यश्च पञ्चाम्नायाः समुद्गताः ।
पूर्वश्च पश्चिमश्चैव दक्षिणश्चोत्तरस्तथा ।
ऊर्ध्वाम्नायश्च पञ्चैते मोक्षमार्गाः प्रकीर्तिताः ॥ ७ ॥

mama pañcamukhebhyaśca pañcāmnāyāḥ samudgatāḥ |
pūrvaśca paścimaścaiva dakṣiṇaścottarastathā |
ūrdhvāmnāyaśca pañcaite mokṣamārgāḥ prakīrtitāḥ || 7 ||

"I have produced the five āmnāyas (great traditions) from My Five Faces, viz. Purva (East)-āmnāya, Paścima (West)-āmnāya, Dakṣiṇa (South)-āmnāya, Uttara (North)-āmnāya and the Ūrdhva (Upwards of high facing)-āmnāya. These are the Five Āmnāyas and all the five are famous as the paths for Emancipation."^[11]

तस्माद्देवेशि जानीहि साक्षान्मोक्षैकसाधनम् ।
सर्वाम्नायाधिकफलमूर्ध्वाम्नायं परात् परम् ॥ १९ ॥

tasmāddeveśi jānīhi sākṣānmokṣaikasādhanam |
sarvāmnāyādhikaphalamūrdhvāmnāyaṃ parāt param || 19 ||

"O Deveśi! Know the Ūrdhvāmnāya as the direct single means for Emancipation yielding a greater Fruit than all others and better than the best of them."^[12]

Footnotes and references:

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[1]:

Sanderson 1988, 679.

[2]:

Sanderson 1988, 680-690.

[3]:

Chart adapted from Dyczkowski 1988, 31.

[4]:

Quote and subsequent chart from Dyczkowski 1988, 32.

[5]:

Dyczkowski 1988, 61.

[6]:

Translation by Golovkova 2020, 94.

[7]:

Translation by Sanderson 2014, 65, fn. 247.

[8]:

Translation by Sanderson 2014, 66.

[9]:

Caitanyānandanātha 2023, 449.

[10]:

Dyczkowski 2009 Introduction Vol II, 345.

[11]:

Translation by Rai 1999, 39.

[12]:

Translation by Rai 1999, 40.