Appropriation and Assertion of the Female Self: Materials for the Study of the Female Tantric Master Lakṣmī of Uḍḍiyāna

Starting in the sixth century, a new religious notion of the female gradually emerged in Tantric Buddhism. Although the female was raised to an ideal of transcendence, she nevertheless was subject to an androcentric depiction represented as the male's Other. The current study breaks away from the confinement of the implications thereof by turning to female-authored Tantric sources. In the frame of feminist and postmodern thought, this article proposes a way of reading women's writings as expressions of an autonomous female Self.