Shakti and Shâkta : essays and addresses on the Shâkta Tantrashâstra

TANTRA SHASTRA AND VEDA

such admits the authority of Veda, accepting, as later explained, every other belief held by the general body of the Hindu people.

In a recent prosecution under Sections 292, 293 of the Indian Penal Code against an accused who had published a Tantra (but who was rightly acquitted), an Indian Deputy Magistrate who had advised the prosecution, and who claimed to be an orthodox Hindu, stated (I am informed) in the witness box, that he could not define what the Tantra Shastra was, or state whether it was a Hindu scripture of the Kali age, or whether a well-known particular Shastra shown to him was one of the Tantras. Such ignorance is typical of many at the present time and is a legacy from a vanishing age. How is it that aShastra which has had its followers throughout India from the Himalaya (the abode of Shiva and of Parvati Devi), to Cape Comorin’(a corruption of Kumari Devi) which ruled for centuries, so that we may speak of a TAantrik epoch; which even to-day governs the household and temple ritual of every Hindu; how is it that such a Sh4stra has fallen into complete neglect and disrepute amongst the larger body of the English-educated community ? I remember a time when mention of the Shastra was only made (I speak of course of the same class) with bated breath; and when any one who concerned himself therewith became thereby liable to the charge of giving licentious sway to drink and women, The answer is both a general and particular one. In the first place the English-educated people of this country were formerly almost exclusively, and later to a considerable extent, under the entire sway of their English educators. In fact they were in a sense their creation. They were, and some of them still are, the MAanasaputra of the English. For them what was English and Western was the mode. Hindu religion, philosophy and art were only, it was supposed, for the so-called “uneducated ” women and peasants and for native Pandits