ABSTRACT
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?
