Theurgy And The Snake The Yoga Kalandar And Bengali Sufism [Paperback]

A radically alternative vision of the fakir is given in surviving medieval (Bng. madhya-?ug, Middle Age ) and pre-modern textual sources that predate and coincide with the colonial period, such as the widely influential 17th century Yoga Kalandar text as well as B
ul oral traditions deeply influenced by this text's cosmology. This book aims therefore to fulfill three key objectives: 1) to historically situate the Yoga Kalandar text and its practitioners; 2) to describe the distinctly yogic and tantric aspects of its theology, with specific reference to the way the text harmonizes Sufi and Neoplatonic hypostases and ritual theurgy with S
Ckhya cosmology; and 3) to describe how the text's cosmology was integrated in later colonial and modern forms of indigenous Bengali mystical poetry, especially the B
ul songs of L
lan Fakir that make numerous creative references to the practices outlined in the Yoga Kalandar and, in a sense, even transcend the text's limitations. As an appendix for reference, a new English simple translation of this text (from Bengali and French critical editions) is provided.