Can Encounters with Yoginīs in the Jayadrathayāmala Be Described as Possession
2013
Ever since Alexis Sanderson’s publications, 1 the association of the yoginīs with
possession has become commonplace in the secondary literature. But is it correct
to claim that yoginīs possess? Or are they, rather, themselves possessed? Focusing
on the Jayadrathayāmala (JY), I would like to attempt in this brief essay to
explore what is actually going on in textual descriptions of the encounters with
the yoginīs, and, further, to consider whether Western concepts such as possession can really be applied to the material. Can such encounters properly be classified as āveśa or stobha , or any of the other possession-related terms one finds
in the earlier texts? What are the psycho-physical symptoms described in accounts
of such encounters, and do these signs correspond to those of āveśa ?
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