Discerning Philosophy in the Uttarāmnāya Liturgies of the Newars

Abstract

Although the Kaula literature of the Newars did not give rise to a systematic philosophical school like that of their Kashmiri counterparts, I will argue in this article that philosophical thinking can be detected in Newar ritual texts. I do this by translating and analysing the unpublished Kālīsūtra, an important hymn found in Newar Uttarāmnāya liturgies whose transmission and composition will also be touched upon. This hymn indicates that the cult of Kālī in Nepal had a distinct ontological stance tending towards a non-dualism which was world-affirming while also seeing consciousness as the ultimate reality. Several key conceptual strands of the Sūtra such as the relationship between transcendence and immanence, reality and cognition and the divine and the body will be elaborated upon. In the process, I will show that the Kālīsūtra’s philosophy brings into sharper focus doctrines already present in the canonical Krama and thus displays many affinities with the Pratyabhijñā, a school which shares its cultic backdrop.