Yoginī temples and their antecedents: reassessing the textual evidence

This was a live recording of an online talk and Q+A via zoom on 21st October 2020 for the SOAS Centre of Yoga Studies. See below for details.
Flying, therianthropic goddesses known as yoginīs were central to Śaiva and Buddhist tantric traditions in the latter centuries of the second millennium. With roots in earlier Indic mother-goddesses (mātṛ), yoginīs came to embody the numinous powers practitioners sought through tantric ritual, such as shapeshifting, unfettered movement, entry into others’ bodies, and martial victory. Despite their antinomian roots, veneration of yoginīs took on more public forms by the tenth century, when monumental temples dedicated to them (typically as a group of sixty-four) began to be constructed across the subcontinent.
This presentation by Shaman Hatley builds upon earlier research, where he argued that yoginī temples mark the entry of these goddesses into a wider religious domain, beyond the confines of the earlier esoteric tradition, bridging the ritual worlds of tantra and purāṇa. Suiting the aspirations of their elite patrons, these temples seem to represent an adaptation of tantric yoginī pantheons and rituals to a more public, calendrical liturgy. Further insights into this process are afforded by multiple period sources, especially the Bṛhatkālottara (c. 900 CE) of the Pratiṣṭhātantra genre, tantras of the cult of the goddess Kubjikā, and the circa 8th-9th century Devīpurāṇa.
Shaman Hatley is an associate professor of Asian Studies and Religious Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He completed an interdisciplinary liberal arts degree at Goddard College in 1998, and then studied Indology and Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His doctoral thesis on the Brahmayāmala and Śaiva yoginī cults was completed in 2007, under the direction of Harunaga Isaacson, after which he taught at Concordia University, Montréal (2007-2015). His research mainly concerns early Tantric Śaivism, goddess cults, and yoga.
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[@YogaConcepts4U]

Excellent. .. Thanks .

[@ANNA-zb2ws]

Wow seems to be a well researched information! Much respect!

[@francescacross8783]

Thank you - great research :)