History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v7.c92.162

v7.c92.162

Some modern writers have been somewhat unjust to the whole Tāntrik literature in labelling it all as black magic or as full of obscenities The present writer is not one of those who sometimes hold that what is not understood is either false, absurd or non-existent. He is prepared to believe that the end and aim of a few of the higher minds among Tāntrikas and of some of the works on Tantra was the attainment of high spiritual powers by Yoga practices, the Realization of the Supreme Tattva (Principle) variously designated as *Brahma*, *Viṣṇu*, *Śiva* or *Devī*, and Liberation (*mokṣa*). He is aware that many of these claim to be based on Vedic traditions, teachings and practices and to have further developed the conceptions underlying Vedic teachings and ritual and that even the magic rites contained in several Tāntrik works had their counterparts, though on a much smaller scale, in the Ṛgveda, the Atharvaveda, Sāmavidhāna Brāhmaṇa and other Vedic works. The present author, though he has carefully studied many of the Tantras and the Yogasūtra of Patañjali with the bhāṣya and commentaries thereon, has to admit that he has had no mystic experience, but he is not prepared to deny that prophets, saints, poets and others might have mystic visions and experiences. Man's psychic powers are vast and unknown as propounded in Alexis Carrell's work 'Man the unknown' and in 'Invisible influence' by Dr. Alexander Cannon (15th impression, Rider and Co., London, 1935). He knows that some of the Tāntrik works made a distinction between the rules of ordinary social life and conventions (*samājā-dharma*) and the peculiar forms of Tāntrik worship, in which, while it lasts, no distinction is made on the ground of caste or sex (vide notes 1711 and 1713). It may further be conceded that the Tantra works placed women on a footing of equality with men, gave them an exalted position and that they endeavoured to provide a common platform (as shown in n. 1704 above) for differing and wrangling sects of Vaisṇavas, Śaivas and others by putting forward Devī as the object of worship for all; but they had not much success as is shown by the facts that Vaisṇavas and Śaivas still carried on their quarrels and that the Tāntrik texts themselves fell into five classes, viz. Śaiva, Śākta, Vaisnava, Saura and Gānapatya and that there are differing doctrines among the Tāntrikas called Kādimata, Hādimata &c.