Shakti and Shâkta : essays and addresses on the Shâkta Tantrashâstra

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‘© Mr. AVALON, is so far as 1am aware, a new comer in Oriental studies, but he makes his entrance therein with ‘ eclat.’ His book brilliantly inaugurates the study of the Tantras, the literature of which occupies a front rank in the religious life of Modern India. For the Tantra governs Indian beliefs, doctrines, practices, and institutions. Nevertheless, the learned in Europe have hitherto put them aside, and have neither publishe] any Tantrik text nor translation of them. Wester opinion has crushed them all under the weight of a common ill-fame, and summarily condemned them as compilations which are both stupid and obscene. Mr. Avalon has therefore set himself to work for the rehabilitation of this calumniated literature, and announces for early publication a series of works on the Tantra and its texts. As acommencement he has selected the Mah4nirvana Tantra, notwithstanding, or, rather, for the very reason, that the text has already been translated in India by a Bengali author. For he wished to show how much light an attentive and serious study can shed upon the mere mechanical understandimg of words. In his work he has not made the least demand on European learning. He had, on the contrary, been able to dispense with it without prejudice to his research. On the other hand, he shows himself to be familiar with a considerable number of Tantrik works. He cites them with profusion in the original Sanskrit, and derives from them the explanation of technical terms of which the dictionaries do not give us the meaning. His translation is precedel by an Introduction of 150 pages, which is the most solid and exact account that has as yet been written on the doctrines of the Tantras, their ontology, mystical phraseology, worship, Yoga, and ethics. All items of information given in this exposition are supported by the authorities he cites. We, however, greatly regret that Mr. Avalon has not added to his work an index of the technical terms which he defines in one or another part of his work ; for in that case our dictionaries would have been enriched by an extremely valuable supplement, The depth of the Tantrik current which runs