Occult Roots of Religious Studies by Yves Mühlematter Helmut Zander

Author:Yves Mühlematter, Helmut Zander [Yves Mühlematter, Helmut Zander]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783110660173
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: De Gruyter
Published: 2021-06-08T00:00:00+00:00

2 The Exchange between Bengali Intellectuals and Theosophists

As indicated above, the activities of Woodroffe/Avalon emerged from a Bengali discourse that had gained momentum towards the end of the nineteenth century. In that respect, it is significant that the first two major books published by Arthur Avalon were The Great Liberation (1913) and the Principles of Tantra (1914).8 Both titles were later published under Woodroffe’s name and saw many editions up to the present day. The Great Liberation was a translation of the Mahānirvāṇatantra, a highly influential text that was probably composed by a Bengali pandit at the end of the eighteenth century.9 While the provenance of the text is still unclear, it was evidently popular among reform-oriented Hindus who had received a Western education and thus played a central role for nineteenth-century understandings of Tantra. Avalon wrote a lengthy introduction to the translation, which was later published as Introduction to Tantra Shastra and, despite its flaws, is still appreciated by scholars as a remarkably nuanced and well-informed pioneering piece. The two volumes of Principles of Tantra were a translation of the Tantratattva, a text by the charismatic guru Śivacandra Vidyārṇava (1861–1914) that had been published in Bengali in 1893. The Principles of Tantra were a collaborative effort between Arthur Avalon, who wrote the Preface and Introduction to the first volume, and two Bengali scholars: Jñānendralāl Majumdār, who had been mainly responsible for the translation, and Baradā Kānta Majumdār, who wrote the Introduction to the second volume. The lives and works of these learned Bengalis are still largely unknown. In the present context, the discussion will have to be limited to the question of how they presented Tantra as an experimental, rational science.

The works of Arthur Avalon were the climax of a long effort by Bengali intellectuals to reshape the perception of Tantra and establish it as the true, esoteric core of Hindu religion – and, by extension, of religion in general. It is highly remarkable that the effort to communicate these ideas in English to an international readership was initiated in the leading Theosophical periodical, The Theosophist. Beginning in its very first volume of 1880, we can observe a lively exchange about Tantra between Indian, European, and US-American authors that would last until 1891. It was only in 1913 that the topic was taken up again within the pages of The Theosophist: by a “Hymn to Durga (from the Siddheshvara Tantra),” penned by none other than Arthur Avalon. This is no coincidence, because the group of authors from the 1880s represented the very same milieu that would later inform Woodroffe.

As Karl Baier has observed with regard to discussions about Yogic practices, the discussion of Tantra in The Theosophist was initiated by an inquiry from a “Truth Seeker” in January 1880.10 This “European Theosophist” was fascinated by a series of papers in the Dublin University Magazine from 1853 and 1854, which discussed Yogic practices. Those were linked to a “Power” that was explained as the Kundalini, and that was supposedly described in “that most mystic of all mystic books, the Dnyaneshvari.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.