Dakini Series 3.1: What the Scholars Missed

This is the third in a series of articles on the Dakini, drawn from our Dakini video series on the Siddha Tantra Arts YouTube channel. Episode 3 of the video series was substantial, so we have split the written version into three parts. This first part engages with the early textual evidence and shows how the most-cited "anti-Dakini" passages actually mean something different from what scholars have read into them. The full video is embedded below. And if something in this piece shifts something in you, or raises a question, we would genuinely like to hear from you. Leave a comment at the bottom.

What the Scholars Missed

This article is going to be heavy. There will be Sanskrit. There will be dates. There will be manuscript references. At one point I am going to discuss the editorial footnotes of a Kashmiri pandit from 1947.

We are not a debating society. We are not an academic department. We are practitioners. But sometimes the Ḍākinī's ḍaṃ bīja needs to do its work.

Sometimes things accumulate in the field: decades of scholars writing with confidence about things they have partially understood, centuries of one tradition's knowledge being quietly absorbed into another tradition's origin story, and a general atmosphere where if you say something loudly enough and cite enough footnotes, it becomes the accepted version. Some of this is genuine scholarship doing its honest best with incomplete evidence. Some of it is appropriation wearing academic robes. And some of it is simply, and I say this without malice, the rigidity that comes when a mind encounters something it cannot categorize and decides the problem is with the thing rather than the category.

None of this is worth getting angry about. But all of it, left uncorrected, calcifies. And calcified misconceptions become walls. They keep sincere seekers from finding what is actually here.

So, once. This one time. We are going to do the heavy work. We are going to engage every major scholarly argument, examine every key text, trace the evidence across traditions and centuries, and lay it all out clearly, so that it does not need to be done again. After this, we go back to practice. After this, we go back to sādhana. But these articles are the Ḍākinī clearing the field so the sādhana can happen in clean space.

This article is for the serious students. If you are someone who reads original texts, perhaps even in Sanskrit, or its various translations and interpretations, someone who cares about evidence, who is not satisfied with "just trust the tradition," then this is for you. I am going to lay out the strongest version of the scholarly argument against what I have been teaching, and then I am going to show you how Siddha Dharma accounts for every piece of it.

The Map of Shaiva Tantra

Before I engage with the textual evidence, I need to give you a map. Not because the map is the territory, but because when scholars make arguments about the Ḍākinī, they are making arguments within this map. And if you do not understand the map, you cannot see where the arguments fail.

Shaiva Tantra (the tantric traditions centered on Shiva and Shakti) organizes its scriptures broadly into two streams. One is the Shaiva Siddhānta: structured, ritual-purity-based, Brahmanical-compatible. The other is the Bhairava stream: non-dual, transgressive, centered on Bhairava as the fierce form of Shiva. Almost everything we are going to discuss here comes from the Bhairava stream.

Within the Bhairava stream, scholars identify two major seats or pīṭhas. The Mantrapīṭha (the seat of mantras), which includes texts like the Svacchanda-tantra. And the Vidyāpīṭha (the seat of goddess-knowledge), where the goddess becomes central, where cremation ground practices appear, where transgressive ritual enters, and where Ḍākinīs, Yoginīs, and Śākinīs appear most densely. This is the textual world we are about to enter.

The Vidyāpīṭha itself contains layers: Yāmala texts like the Brahmayāmala, Trika texts like the Tantrasadbhāva and the Siddhayogeśvarī-mata, and Yoginī-Kaula texts like the Kaula-jñāna-nirṇāya of Matsyendranath. These names will come up repeatedly. You do not need to memorize them. But notice one thing: within this single stream, the Vidyāpīṭha, some texts prohibit the Ḍākinī and some texts place her at the center of their maṇḍala. Same family of scriptures. Opposite conclusions. That fact alone should make you pause before accepting any simple narrative about what "the texts" say about the Ḍākinī.

Now, this taxonomy I just described is largely the achievement of modern scholarship, built on foundations laid by traditional Kashmiri masters like Abhinavagupta a thousand years ago. Both Western and Indian academics use it. It is genuinely useful for understanding where particular texts sit in relation to each other.

But I want to be clear about something. No living lineage thinks this way. Practitioners do not say "I practice Vidyāpīṭha-class tantra." They say "I do Ḍākinī sādhana as my guru transmitted it." Living traditions organize themselves differently: by āmnāya, the directional streams (Pūrva, Dakṣiṇa, Paścima, Uttara). By sampradāya (Nātha, Kaula, Śrīvidyā). By paramparā (who taught whom). By deity.

Even what has become known as "Kashmir Shaivism" is a modern scholarly label, not a traditional self-designation. No practitioner in 10th century Kashmir said "I practice Kashmir Shaivism." They identified with specific streams: Trika, Krama, Kula, Pratyabhijñā. Abhinavagupta synthesized these streams in his Tantrāloka, and later scholars treated his synthesis as though it was the tradition rather than one master's extraordinary integration of multiple living traditions. This is what scholarship does. It organizes. And the organization becomes so clean that people forget it was imposed after the fact.

And Kaulantak Peeth, the seat from which this teaching comes, does not sit inside any one box on the scholarly diagram. It holds oral transmissions that were never written down. Manuscripts that scholars have never catalogued. Practices that span what academics would call Mantrapīṭha, Vidyāpīṭha, and Yoginī-Kaula. Material that predates the classification entirely.

Asking where Kaulantak Peeth fits in the scholarly taxonomy is like asking which branch a tree trunk belongs to.

The scholarly map describes the library. The lineage lives in the temple. I will use the scholarly map when it is useful (to identify texts, to locate arguments, to engage with evidence precisely). But I will not mistake the map for the territory. And I ask you not to either.

With that, let us look at what the texts actually say.

The Evidence

Let me start with the oldest text that is cited. The Bodhāyana Rudra-mahānyāsa, from the late Vedic period, contains this passage:

"Tato bhūta-preta-piśāca-brahmarākṣasa-yakṣa-yamadūta-śākinī-ḍākinī-sarpa-śvāpada-taskara-ādi-upadravāḥ sarve jvalantaṃ paśyantu. Māṃ rakṣantu."

"Then may all these afflictions, ghosts, hungry dead, flesh-eating spirits, brahmin-demons, yakṣas, death's messengers, Śākinīs, Ḍākinīs, serpents, wild beasts, thieves and the rest, see me as blazing. May they protect me."

There it is. Ḍākinī listed between "death's messengers" and "serpents." This is the passage that scholars point to as one of the earliest textual references to Ḍākinī, and it looks damning.

Then the Shivadharma, the general Shaiva code, places Ḍākinīs of various forms among beings that cause harm.

The Uddāmareshvara tantra contains a mantra explicitly titled Sarva-bhūta-ḍākinī-damana-mantra: the mantra for the subjugation of ghosts and Ḍākinīs. It invokes Caṇḍeśvara:

"Oṃ namo bhagavate vajrāya caṇḍeśvarāya īṃ īṃ phaṭ svāhā"

And a second mantra, the Ḍākinī-doṣa-vināśana, for destroying the ill-effects of Ḍākinīs.

Even in the advanced esoteric texts of the Bhairava stream, the Vidyāpīṭha class, the Tantrasadbhāva has a rule: the initiated practitioner should not even say the word "Ḍākinī."

Scholars trace a clear trajectory from these early negative depictions, through the Mātṛkā worship traditions (the famous Gangdhār inscription of about 424 CE mentioning a shrine "permeated with Ḍākinīs"), through the Brahmayāmala where Ḍākinīs begin appearing as transmitters of scripture, to the early Kaula texts where the six Ḍākinīs map to the bodily dhātus, and finally to the developed Kaula and Yoginī tantras where Ḍākinīs are central objects of worship.

Their conclusion: the Ḍākinī evolved from malevolent spirit to positive deity over centuries. A gradual incorporation.

First Level: Read the Text for What It Actually Is

Now, Siddha Dharma's response. And I want to begin not with theology but with something very practical, something scholars often overlook.

Let us go back to that Bodhāyana passage. Because it is doing something very specific, and if you miss what it is doing, you will misread the entire textual tradition that follows.

The Bodhāyana Rudra-mahānyāsa is not a philosophical text. It is not a theological treatise about the nature of beings. It is a ritual manual, specifically an elaborate purification rite performed before major Rudra worship. The Mahānyāsa is the ceremony in which the practitioner temporarily transforms his own body into Rudra before commencing worship. The principle behind it is na rudro rudraṃ arcayet: one cannot worship Rudra without first becoming Rudra.

And the specific passage I just read to you? It comes at the conclusion of this purification. It is an Ātma Rakṣā, a self-protection formula. After the practitioner has ritually become Rudra, blazing with Rudra's fire, this mantra declares that all afflicting entities should see him as too radiant to approach.

It is a comprehensive sweep of everything that might disturb the ritual space. That is why it lists Ḍākinīs in the same breath as serpents, wild beasts, and thieves. Not because someone sat down and philosophically classified Ḍākinīs as equivalent to snakes, but because the formula's purpose is practical: clear the space, protect the practitioner, list everything that could interfere.

Think of it this way. A hospital sterilization protocol lists "bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites." That protocol tells you nothing about the beneficial role of gut bacteria. It tells you nothing about the medical applications of fungi. It is not making a statement about the nature of bacteria. It is listing things to eliminate from a specific environment for a specific purpose.

The Bodhāyana passage is doing exactly this. It is a ritual sterilization. And to read it as a theological statement that "Ḍākinīs are malevolent beings equivalent to serpents and thieves" is to fundamentally mistake a practical instruction for a philosophical conclusion.

And here is where the argument gets sharper. Why didn't the Bodhāyana tradition know about benevolent Ḍākinīs? Why is there no distinction in this text between Nikṛṣṭha and Deva Ḍākinīs?

Because the Bodhāyana tradition is a Vedic ritual tradition. It is Śrauta and Gṛhya focused, concerned with yajña, abhiṣeka, homa, the proper performance of Vedic sacrifice. It is not a tantric tradition. It is not a Kaula lineage. It does not hold Ḍākinī sādhana.

It is not that they "did not know" in some general sense, as though they were ignorant people who had not yet "discovered" the benevolent Ḍākinī. It is that Ḍākinī worship was never part of their system. They encountered Ḍākinī shakti only as something that disrupts Vedic ritual space, because that is the only context in which their system would encounter it. And they developed mantras accordingly.

Their text is a ritual manual, not an encyclopedia of all beings. Asking why the Bodhāyana Rudra-mahānyāsa does not contain the Ḍākinī Kula Maṇḍala is like asking why a surgical manual does not contain recipes. It is the wrong genre. The wrong purpose. The wrong tradition.

The Uddāmareshvara Problem

This same principle applies, to varying degrees, to the other early texts. The Shivadharma is a general code of Shaiva conduct; its purpose is behavioral prescription for Shaiva practitioners, not philosophical taxonomy.

But let me spend more time on the Uddāmareshvara tantra, because this is the text that scholars cite most confidently. It contains not just a passing mention but a named mantra, the Sarva-bhūta-ḍākinī-damana-mantra. That sounds authoritative. It sounds like a tradition that has clearly identified Ḍākinīs as a problem and developed specific technology to deal with them.

So let us look at this text. Actually look at it. Not just cite it, but examine what it is.

The Uddāmareshvara tantra survives in a single manuscript, twenty-six folios in Devanagari, from the Maharaja of Kashmir's private library. It was published in 1947 as Kashmir Series of Texts and Studies No. LXX, edited by Pandit Jagad Dhar Zadoo.

And here is what its own editor says about it, and I want you to hear this clearly, because this is not my assessment, this is the assessment of the man who actually published the text:

Zadoo calls it a medieval compilation. Not an original scripture. He says it falls into the category of handbooks compiled by, in his words, "quack-Tantricians" who, "unaware of the ways of the attainment of the high Yogic wonders, resorted to mean and low practices of magic, tinging them with the colour of religion and designating them as practices enjoined by the Tantras."

That is the published editor speaking about his own published text.

When you read the Uddāmareshvara, what do you actually find around that anti-Ḍākinī mantra? Recipes for invisibility. Spells to attract Yakṣiṇīs as lovers. Methods for becoming irresistible to women. Procedures to defeat enemies in court. The anti-Ḍākinī mantra sits in the same chapter as instructions for finding buried treasure. This is not a serious tantric text engaging with the deep nature of beings. It is a medieval magical compendium, the South Asian equivalent of a grimoire. And it is the text scholars cite as proof that "the tradition" considered Ḍākinīs malevolent.

The Counter-Spell Logic

Now I want to address something that initially looks like the strongest part of the scholarly case, but actually exposes a logical fallacy that runs through the entire argument.

Two more texts: the Unmatta Bhairava tantra has its own anti-Ḍākinī mantra, calling on Bhairava in his "Unmatta" form (the mad Bhairava) to drive away the duṣṭa-ḍākinī, the wicked Ḍākinī. And the Bhūta-Ḍāmara tantra, which gives detailed prescriptions for binding and dispelling various entities including Ḍākinīs.

So we have multiple texts. From multiple traditions. All saying the same thing.

But look more carefully.

The Unmatta Bhairava and the Bhūta-Ḍāmara are not independent witnesses. They are both part of the Bhūtasrotas: the stream of texts dealing with grahas, bhūtas, and entities that afflict humans. This entire stream's purpose is the management of disturbances. Of course it contains counter-spells. That is its genre. And notice that the Unmatta Bhairava mantra does not say "all Ḍākinīs are evil." It specifies duṣṭa-ḍākinī: the wicked one. The very mantra acknowledges, by its specific qualifier, that there are Ḍākinīs who are not duṣṭa.

But here is where the argument becomes decisive. Take the Jayākhya-saṃhitā, a canonical Pañcarātra Vaiṣṇava Āgama, considered authoritative scripture in mainstream Vaiṣṇava tantra. It contains, in the same context as its anti-Ḍākinī references, mantras for dispelling Grahas (planetary afflictions), Bhūtas, Pretas, and other entities. In the Jayākhya-saṃhitā, the same Mantra-rāja that counters Ḍākinīs also counters Grahas. They appear in the same verse.

So if the existence of an anti-Ḍākinī mantra proves that Ḍākinīs are inherently malevolent beings, then the existence of an anti-Graha mantra in the very same verse proves that Grahas, the planetary intelligences, the Navagraha worshipped at every Hindu temple, with their own elaborate stotras and yantras and dedicated worship, are also inherently malevolent beings.

But of course no scholar argues this. Everyone understands that Graha-doṣa is a real phenomenon, that planetary influences can cause affliction, and that the Grahas are also divine intelligences worshipped throughout Hindu civilization. The Navagraha sit in every traditional temple. Sūrya is worshipped at dawn. Soma adorns Mahādeva's head. The same texts that contain Graha-doṣa-nāśana mantras also contain Sūrya stotras and Candra dhyāna verses. No one experiences cognitive dissonance about this. The presence of counter-spells against Grahas tells us only that Grahas can cause affliction in certain contexts, not that they are essentially malevolent.

Take it further. The same textual traditions contain sarpa-viṣa-nāśana mantras: spells to neutralize snake poison, to protect against serpent attack. The Bhūta Vidyā lists Nāga among the entities that can seize a person. There are elaborate sarpa-doṣa remedies throughout tantric and Āyurvedic literature.

And yet, Nāga Pañcamī is celebrated across the entire subcontinent. The Nāgas are worshipped as sacred guardians. Vāsuki adorns the neck of Mahādeva. Ādi Śeṣa is the couch of Viṣṇu. Nāga stones are venerated at the base of sacred trees in every village. The Nāgas are auspicious, protective, ancient, and they can cause doṣa. Both things are true simultaneously. The existence of sarpa-doṣa remedies tells you absolutely nothing about the essential nature of Nāgas as a class. It tells you only that Nāgas can cause affliction in certain contexts, which no tradition has ever disputed.

So here is the logical fallacy, stated plainly.

The scholars look at anti-Ḍākinī mantras in the Bhūtasrotas and conclude: "Ḍākinīs are inherently malevolent." But they do not look at anti-Graha mantras in the same tradition, or in the same verse in the case of the Jayākhya-saṃhitā, and conclude: "Grahas are inherently malevolent." They do not look at anti-Nāga mantras in the same tradition and conclude: "Nāgas are inherently demonic." They apply a reasoning to Ḍākinī that they would never apply to Graha or Nāga, even though the evidence is structurally identical, even though it comes from the very same texts, even though in the Jayākhya-saṃhitā it comes from the very same verse.

The presence of counter-spells against a class of beings tells you one thing and one thing only: that beings of that class can cause affliction. It tells you nothing about whether that is their essential nature, their only nature, or merely one mode of their interaction with the human realm.

A doctor who stocks antivenom is not making a theological statement that all snakes are evil. A hospital that sterilizes against bacteria is not declaring that all microorganisms are demonic. And a tantric practitioner who maintains counter-Ḍākinī mantras in his ritual toolkit is not making a philosophical claim that all Ḍākinīs are inherently malevolent. He is being a competent practitioner, prepared for interference, respectful of power, and equipped for the full range of encounters his system might generate.

Nikṛṣṭha and Deva: The Distinction Siddha Dharma Holds

And now the Siddha Dharma framework explains precisely what is happening in these texts.

Siddha Dharma classifies Ḍākinīs who reside in the seven lower realms (Atala through Pātāla) as Nikṛṣṭha Ḍākinīs. Inferior. Genuinely harmful. Their worship is forbidden by the Siddhas themselves.

Siddhapedia says it plainly: "In various Hindu scriptures, such as the Purāṇas, these Ḍākinīs are often depicted with negative characteristics and attributes."

The tradition acknowledges the negative depiction, and explains it. If you do not hold the complete Ḍākinī Kula Maṇḍala, if you do not have the transmission of the Deva Ḍākinīs, the seven-fold maṇḍala from Bhū Loka to Satya Loka, then the Ḍākinīs you encounter in the wild, the Ḍākinīs that afflict people, the Ḍākinīs that your mantras need to counter, those are the Nikṛṣṭha Ḍākinīs. The lower ones. And your texts will describe exactly what you found. Faithfully, accurately, but partially.

And the Unmatta Bhairava mantra confirms this exactly. The duṣṭa-ḍākinī of the mantra is the Nikṛṣṭha Ḍākinī of the Siddha framework. The tradition that composed the mantra knew the difference; that is why it added the qualifier. It did not say "all Ḍākinīs." It said "the wicked Ḍākinī." The Siddha classification and the mantra's own language are pointing at the same reality from two directions.

Just as every village knows that Nāgas can bite, and also knows that Nāgas are sacred guardians who protect the water, the earth, the roots of existence. Both truths coexist. The Bhūtasrotas counter-spells address one truth. The Siddha Ḍākinī Kula Maṇḍala holds the complete picture.

So now we have examined the major textual pillars of the scholarly case. The Bodhāyana: a Vedic ritual purification formula, practical technology from a tradition that never held Ḍākinī sādhana and never claimed to understand what Ḍākinīs are. The Uddāmareshvara: a medieval magical compilation whose own editor categorizes it as degraded tantra, with the anti-Ḍākinī mantra appearing among invisibility potions and Yakṣiṇī love spells. The Unmatta Bhairava and Bhūta-Ḍāmara: not independent witnesses but variant recensions of the same Bhūtasrotas tradition, and their own mantra specifies duṣṭa-ḍākinī, implicitly acknowledging the existence of non-duṣṭa Ḍākinīs. The Jayākhya-saṃhitā: a canonical Pañcarātra Vaiṣṇava Āgama that lists Graha and Ḍākinī in the same verse as things the Mantra-rāja counters, proving that counter-spells are practical tools, not ontological verdicts. And across all of these, the same logical structure that produces anti-Graha and anti-Nāga counter-spells without anyone concluding that Grahas or Nāgas are essentially evil.

Neither the textual evidence nor the logic supports the conclusion that Ḍākinīs are inherently malevolent. What the evidence shows is that Ḍākinīs, like Grahas, like Nāgas, like many categories of powerful beings in the Indian cosmos, can cause affliction, and that competent practitioners maintained the tools to address such affliction. That is all.

The Harder Case

But I also need to be fair. Not all the evidence fits this explanation neatly. Because there is a harder case, and it is genuinely hard.

The Tantrasadbhāva is not a Vedic ritual manual. It is not a degraded compilation. It is not a Bhūtasrotas handbook for managing ghosts. It is an advanced esoteric tantra of the Vidyāpīṭha class within the Bhairava srotas. These are sophisticated tantric practitioners, not Vedic ritualists unfamiliar with śakti worship, and not quack-Tantricians assembling folk magic. And even they say: ḍākinīti na vaktavyaṃ pramādān mantriṇā api: the word Ḍākinī should not be uttered, even inadvertently, by the mantra-practitioner.

And it is not just the Tantrasadbhāva. The related Pūrvāmnāya text, the Siddhayogeśvarī-mata, carries an almost identical proscription, but against the word Śākinī rather than Ḍākinī. Both texts classify this among the samaya-s of the dīkṣita: the vows and observances binding on the initiated practitioner.

So here the scholarly case is at its strongest. A serious scholar will rightly say: "Your ritual-manual argument works for Bodhāyana. Your compilation argument works for the Uddāmareshvara. Your single-family argument collapses the Unmatta Bhairava and Bhūta-Ḍāmara into the same tradition. Your Graha and Nāga parallels, especially the Jayākhya-saṃhitā verse that lists them in the same line, expose the logical fallacy in reading counter-spells as ontological statements. All of this I can grant. But none of it works here. The Tantrasadbhāva and Siddhayogeśvarī-mata practitioners are deeply engaged with Yoginī worship, Mātṛkā worship, Bhairava-centered tantra. They are not unfamiliar with fierce feminine śakti. And yet they specifically prohibit the Ḍākinī and Śākinī. This is a deliberate theological boundary, not a ritual hygiene measure, not an artifact of a degraded compilation, and not a logical fallacy. This is a considered judgment by advanced practitioners who knew exactly what they were doing."

This is fair. And it is the question we take up in the next article.

All teachings in this series are drawn from the authoritative knowledge corpus of Kaulantak Peeth, and the Siddha Dharma tradition as revealed by Kaulantak Nath Mahasiddha Ishaputra.

If you wish to reference this article:

APA: Nath, A. (2026). What the Scholars Missed. Siddha Tantra Arts. https://www.siddhatantraarts.com/articles/dakini-what-the-scholars-missed

Chicago: Mahayogi Ashutosh Nath. "What the Scholars Missed." Siddha Tantra Arts, 2026. https://www.siddhatantraarts.com/articles/dakini-what-the-scholars-missed