Shakti and Shâkta : essays and addresses on the Shâkta Tantrashâstra

SHAKTI AND SHAKTA

would retain that independence in his thought and in the ordering of his life which is the mark of a man, that is of one who seeks Svarajyasiddhi. How can an imitator be on the same level as his original? Rather he must sitas a Chela at the latter’s feet. Whilst we can all learn something from one another, yet some in this land have yet to learn that their cultural inheritance with all its defects (and none is without such) is yet a noble one ; an equal in rank, (to say the least), with those great past civilizations which have moulded the life and thought of the west. All this has been admitted by Indians who have discernment. Such value asmy own remarks possess, is due to the fact that I can see and judge from without as an outsider, though (I will admit in one sense) interested observer—interested because I have at heart Indian welfare and that of all others which, as the world now stands, is bound up with it.

As regards the Tantra Shastra in particular, greater ignorance prevailed and still exists. Its Vamachara practice however seemed so peculiar, and its abuses were so talked of, that they captured attention to the exclusion of everything else; the more particularly that this and the rest of the Shastra is hard to understand. Whilst the Shastra provides by its Acharas for all types from the lowest to the most advanced, its essential concepts, under whatever aspect they are manifested, and into whatever pattern they are woven, are (as Professor De La Vallée Poussin says of the Buddhist Tantra) of a metaphysical and subtle character. Indeed it is largly because of the subtlety of its principles, together with the difficulties which attend ritual exposition, that the study of the Tantras, notwithstanding the comparative simplicity of their Sanskrit, has been hitherto neglected by western scholars. Possibly it was thought that the practices mentioned rendered any study of a system, in which they occurred, unnecessary. There was and still is some ground for the adverse criticism which has been passed on it. Nevertheless it was