Obscure Religious Cults as Background of Bengali Literature c17.2

c17.2

The religious views of the Nātha Siddhas are as much obscured by the insufficiency and anomaly of accounts as is the history of the whole cult. The distinctive features of their yogic practices as also the theories behind them are not found explained systematically in any of the Sanskrit or non-Sanskrit texts, associated with the cult somehow or other. The Sanskrit texts are mainly texts on Haṭha-yoga in general and the vernacular texts are generally poetical texts on legends and myths. The method of treatment of the present writer has, therefore, been to analyse and examine all the available data and to give a systematic exposition of them so as to give a general idea about the nature of the cult.