How to Realize the Four Goals of Life by Means of mantra?

Abstract

The purpose of the present paper is to discuss a specific conceptualization of the four goals of human life, namely dharma, artha, kāma and mokṣa, known under the collective term puruṣārtha, in the terms of magical rites. Such conceptualization appears in the Sātvatasaṃhitā, which, together with the Jayākhyasaṃhitā and the Pauṣkarasaṃhitā, is classified as the oldest available text of the Tantric Vaiṣṇava Pāñcarātra. It seems that the reason of such a strategy might be not, as it happens in the case of later saṃhitās, to refer simply to the orthodoxy for the sake of proving that the Pāñcarātra belongs to the religious mainstream, but, in a sense, to adjust the way of realization of the four goals of life to the requirements of a particular Tantric practice. Obviously, the manner of presenting consecutive puruṣārthas in the Sātvatasaṃhitā aims at securing a quick and purely ritualistic method of their fulfillment to the people who were not able to realize them in the traditional way, obediently passing through the successive stages of their life.

Keywords

• Sātvatasaṃhitā
• Pāñcarātra
• siddhis
• kalpa
• puruṣārthasādhana
• caturvarga