Shakti and Shâkta : essays and addresses on the Shâkta Tantrashâstra

PRESS NOTICES

something of -the stigma which attaches to the name of Tantra he will have achieved no ordinary triumph...This particular corner of the field of Sanskrit is virgin soil, and Mr. Avalon has entered upon it with enthusiasm, and persists in it with a doggedness that augurs well for his final success. His programme of operations has already met with discouragement from what we may call the orthodox school of pilologers, and one critical authority rather uncritically said that he was devoting his years to the elucidation of ‘ brainless hocus pocus.’ But we are glad to see that his labours have been highly extolled in Bengal, the present home of Tantrism, which is delighted at the disinterested. efforts of an Englishman to vindicate their faith and its underlying philosophy before the learned world. One excellent trait of his scholarship is that he does not treat the Tantra writings as merely to be understood with the aid of the Sanskit dictionary and grammar. He has studied them as living human documents expounded by indigenous Pandits...a skilful exposition (‘Principles of Tantra’) of Tantrik doctrines by one of these Pandits themselves...it is very trenchant.’"—Tie Times of India (Bombay).

“The appearance of Arthur Avalon as an exponent and defender of the Tantras is a momentous event in the history of Sanskrit research. No better or sturdier champion the Tantras could secure in modern times, and his powerful.grasp of the Tantrik philosophy and ritualism, his thorough appreciation of the Tintrik ideals and methods, his unabating energy and zeal in tackling the Tantrik mysteries, more than justify in us the hope that educated mind in the East as well as West will be ere long disabused of all that mass of prejudice that they have allowed to gather round the name of Tantra. It is needless to point out that this noble vindication of the Tantras redounds directly to the benefit of Hinduism as a whole; for Tantricism in its real sense is nothing but the Vedic religion struggling with wonderful success to reassert itself amidst all those new problems of religious life and discipline which later historical events and developments thrust upon it...In this new publication (‘ Principles of Tantra’) Mr. Avalon has not only fully maintained the tradition of Superior merits in his translation, but has again brought out before the world of Sanskrit research another testimony of his wonderful amount of study and insight in the shape of another Introduction, no less profound and weighty, than his Introduction to the ‘ Tantra of the Great Liberation.’ But the most noteworthy feature of this new Introduction is his appreciative presentation of the orthodox views about the antiquity and the importarce of the Tantras, and it is impossible to overestimate the yalue of this presentation.” —Prabuddha Bharata,

xiii 59 .