The Alchemical Body: Siddha Traditions in Medieval India

David Gordon White is a scholar of South Asian religions, and this academic book, published by University of Chicago Press, examines the Siddha traditions of medieval Indian tantric alchemy and hatha yoga, arguing that these traditions' physical and alchemical practices have been underplayed by earlier scholarship that favored more purely philosophical readings of tantra. Its strength is close engagement with tantric primary sources on the body and physical practice specifically, correcting a historiographic tendency to over-intellectualize tantra at the expense of its ritual and physical dimensions. Its limit is that White's arguments about specific historical connections between alchemy, yoga and Siddha lineages are, by his own account, sometimes necessarily speculative given fragmentary sources, and some of his more specific claims have been debated by other specialists.