Early History of the Vaishnava Faith and Movement in Bengal, from Sanskrit and Bengali Sources c5.s3.3

c5.s3.3

But Tantra is a term which has been very loosely applied, and its later distorted forms have obscured its proper significance. Whether Buddhist, Vaiṣṇava, Śaiva or Śākta, it implied in its essence a mystic worship of Śakti or Female Energy, exalted in conjunction with the Male Energy in the universe. Its origin is lost in obscurity, but it assumed various forms, and its doctrines spread not only to decadent Buddhism but also to the various sectarian systems of Hinduism. The Vaiṣṇava Pañcarātra system and the Kashmirian Śaiva Āgama are openly Tāntric. It also coloured the orthodox Smārta systems, and the great Raghunandana in his *Tattvas* makes considerable use of Tāntric ideas. Kṛṣṇānanda Āgamavāgīśa, author of *Tantra-sāra*¹ and great exponent of Tāntric doctrines in Bengal, is said to have been (like Raghunandana) a contemporary of Caitanya; and there can be hardly any doubt as to the wide-spread character of Tāntric teaching in Bengal. The Vaiṣṇavism of the time could scarcely escape its influence; Its bipolar system of thought and culture, for instance, must have considerably influenced and shaped the bipolar conception of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa, which Bengal Vaiṣṇavism developed and which is certainly one of its distinguishing features. The Vaiṣṇava Śakti-tattva, the acceptance of Kāma-gāyatrī, and the idea of Rādhā as the Śakti or Energy of Kṛṣṇa point probably to Tāntric influence, both remote and direct. Quotations from Tantra works are scattered throughout the standard Vaiṣṇava treatises of Rūpa, Jīva and other authoritative theorists of the Bengal school. It is not surprising, therefore, that Rādhā figures in a Tāntric light in such later Vaiṣṇava Tantras as the Nārada-pañcarātra; and Rūpa Gosvāmin in his Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi¹ declares that Rādhā is already established in the Tantra (tantre pratiṣṭhitā) as the Hlādinī Mahāśakti of Kṛṣṇa.