History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v7.c92.117.1

v7.c92.117.1

The teaching of Tāntrika texts about the five *makāras* must have created a very unhealthy and debased state among all classes, particularly the lower orders of Society. The centuries from the 7th to the 12th A. D. were the peak period of Tāntrik works and cults, both Hindu and Buddhist. In a certain cult of the Vajrayāna the gurus wore a blue vesture. A story is narrated of a guru (a monk) of the *sammitīya* sect who went dressed in a blue dress to a courtezan. He did not return to the monastery at night. When asked in the morning by his disciples why he put on a blue dress, he explained the great spiritual merit of the blue-coloured dress. Since then his followers began to wear blue dress and in their book called ‘Nīlapaṭadarśana’ it is written ‘the god Kāmadeva (Eros) is a jewel, a courtezan is a jewel, wine is a jewel, I bow to these three jewels; other so-called jewels are three glass beads’. It should be remembered that for devout Buddhists, Buddha, Dharma and Sangha are three Ratnas (jewels). The followers of the Nīlapaṭadarśana deemed these last three to be as worthless as glass beads. Vide Bhikṣu Rāhula Sānkṛtyāyana’s paper ‘On Vajrayāna or Mantrayāna’ in J. A. vol. 225 (1934) p. 216 where this is narrated. False gurus must have gone about deluding people with rosy prospects of bliss and liberation by the easy method of drinking wine, eating flesh and free association with all sorts of women.