Shakti and Shâkta : essays and addresses on the Shâkta Tantrashâstra

SHAKTI AND SHAKTA

which have operated in some quarters against acceptance of the authority of these Scriptures and as such responsible for the notion that the worship is modern. On the contrary the usage of wine, meat, and so forth is itself very old. There are people who talk of these rites as though they were some entirely new and comparatively modern invention of the “Tantra”, wholly alien to the spirit and practice of the early times. If the subject be studied it will, I think, be found that in this matter those worshippers who practice these rites are (except possibly as to Maithuna) the continuators of very ancient practices which had their counterparts in the earlier VaidikAchara, but were subsequently abandoned, possibly under the influence of Jainism and Buddhism. I say “counterpart” for I do not mean to suggest that in every respect the rites were the same. In details and as regards, I think, some objects in view, they differed. Thus we find in this Panchatattva Ritual a counterpart to the Vaidik usage of wine and animal food. Asregards wine we have the partaking of Soma; meat was offered in Mangsashtaka Shraddha :;; fish in the Ashtakashraddha and Pretashraddha ; and Maithunaas a recognised rite will be found in the VAmadevya Vrata and Mahavrata of universally recognised Vaidik texts, apart from the alleged, and generally unknown, Saubhagyakanda of the Atharvaveda to which the Kalikopanishad and other “Tantrik” Upanishads are said to belong. Possibly however this element of Maithuna may be foreign and imported by Chinachara (See Ch. V). So again, as that distinguished scholar Professor Ramendra Sundara Trivedi has pointed out in his Vichitraprasanga, the Mudra of the Panchatattva corresponds with the Purodasha cake of the Soma and other Yagas. The present rule of abstinence from wine, and in some cases, meat is due, I believe, to the original Buddhism. It is so-called “ Tantriks,’ who follow (in and for their ritual only) the earlier practice. It is true that the SamhitA of Ushanah says “ Wine is not to be drunk, 66