The issue of magic in the Vaiṣṇava Purāṇas : mantra as a magical tool exemplified by Nārāyaṇa Mantra of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa

The huge body of texts known as Purāṇas, besides the general information about religious life in ancient India, provides us with rich material concerning religion, philosophy, mysticism and also magical practices in the late ancient and medieval period. Among the Purāṇas there are texts known as Vaiṣṇava Purāṇas which support the Vaiṣṇava doctrine and practice. They contain a very wide spectrum of practices embracing bhakti, yoga and tantric modes of worship. The most popular and widely known of Vaiṣṇava Purāṇas is the Bhāgavata Purāṇa. This text (book VI, chapter 8) contains a very interesting description of the ritual which might be understood as magical ritual protecting the body of a warrior in battle. The story is based on an ancient mythical fight between the god Indra and demon Viśvarüpa. It is an example of a typical fusion of ritual and mantra known in India since the Vedic period. The body of a worshiper is protected by a mantra known as a Nārāyaṇakavaca which functions as a magical armour. The ritual sequence would be analysed as a common fusion of rite and mantra concerning bodily, verbal and mental activity. The methodology is inspired by the concepts of Frits Staal – one of the most acclaimed and also controversial figures in the field of Ritual Studies. According to Staal, formal and structural analysis of ritual and mantric complex is necessary for understanding and describing this phenomenon. This perspective views ritual as a universal human activity – its main innovation is separating the structure of ritual from the symbolic level which might be rather unstable in opposition to the fixed structural level. Moreover, the protecting ritual will be compared to some late Tantric rituals which use mantras in an analogical way (nyāsa). The human body is the field where the ritual and magical formulas meet