Obscure Religious Cults as Background of Bengali Literature c29.8

c29.8

The nature of the Sandhā-bhāṣā of the old Bengali Buddhist songs is not however exactly the same as that of the Sandhā-bhāṣā of the Tāntric literature. While the Tantras are full of technicalities, the songs are full of enigmas in addition to the technicalities.¹ Sandhā-bhāṣā of the Tantras generally means the infusion into some words of some technical meaning which is known only to the adept and to none else. It was the greatest sin on the part of a Tāntric to let the uninitiate into the secret of their cult, and this extreme technicality of the language, we have already pointed out, was taken as a device to prevent the public from making out anything of the secret of their cult. In the Hevajra-tantra there is a chapter on the Sandhā-bhāṣā where the Lord Vajra-sattva explains to Vajra-garbha the technical meaning of many such terms. In the eighteenth chapter of the Śrī-guhya-samāja also many such technical terms have been explained.²