History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v7.c92.s1.106

v7.c92.s1.106

'Lights on the Tantra' by M. P. Pandit (published by Ganesh & Co., Madras, 1957) This is a booklet of 54 pages of text and pp. 55-71 of notes containing hardly anything valuable of the author's own; over three-fourths of it consists of long quotations from the works of Woodroffe (particularly from 'Śhakti and Śhākta'), Sri Aurobindo and Shri Kapali Sastry and is here and there marked by bold and unwarranted assertions such as 'It is the central truths of the Tantra thought and ritual that form the backbone of the Hindu religion today' (p. 33). The present author repudiates totally this assertion. The author of this booklet has to admit that in the case of the Tāntrik cult that abuse of the body of occult knowledge for malevolent purposes instead of for the material and spiritual advancement of man and the vulgarization of the profound rationale of the mystic ritual are deplorable deformations (p 36), that there has doubtless been a gross misuse of the knowledge developed by this science and that spurious texts have sprung up (p. 21).