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अवधारणा

Kulaकुल

Family, clan or totality. A term whose meaning varies enough across texts and lineages that no single definition serves.

रूपांतरण का विज्ञान
Hands folded in the seated posture

शाब्दिक अर्थ

Ordinarily "family" or "clan". In Tantric usage it carries several extended senses: a lineage of transmission, the body understood as a totality, and the whole of manifest reality taken as one continuum. The specification for this section warns against offering one universal definition, and that warning is well founded — the texts do not agree.

दार्शनिक अर्थ

पारंपरिक व्याख्या
Where Kula is paired with Akula, Akula commonly denotes the transcendent, unmanifest pole and Kula the manifest totality that is not separate from it. The pairing is a way of refusing the choice between world-affirmation and world-denial. This usage is specific to particular texts and should not be assumed wherever the word appears.

Abhinavagupta, Tantraloka; Ksemaraja, commentary on the Sivasutra

संबंधित अवधारणाएँ

ऐतिहासिक संदर्भ
The Kaula traditions took shape from roughly the ninth century within a wider Shakta and Shaiva field, and were later systematised — notably by Abhinavagupta, who both inherited and reorganised them. Their earlier forms included practices later traditions reinterpreted, and the historical record is uneven.

Sanderson, "The Saiva Age", in Genesis and Development of Tantrism, 2009

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