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Thread: Assorted Material on the Bengal Shakta Nationalists

  1. #11
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    Re: Assorted Material on the Bengal Shakta Nationalists

    Quote Originally Posted by sm78 View Post
    In my understanding, the mahanirvana tantra instead of being a fake tantra created by neo-moralists aimed at diluting the kaula dharma with newer morals and vedantic slant, was instead a text written by kaulas to influence the neo vedantins and victorial moralists into better appreciation of the religion of that region (bengal, assam).

    It is true ramamohan was very much using this book in his new christian like religion, but still only to a small degree w.r.t to the whole scope of the book.
    Yes it is hard to say many of the hindu revivalist movements in that time are so to say acting in a grey area, also writers like A.Avalon are constantly appeasing victorian morals. very strange is that the only copies of the Mahanirvana tantra before printing can be traced to brahmo samaj and ramamohans library and that the british reform of marriage laws are described in that tantra, furthermore there is a lot of talk about the Brahman untypical for any tantra besides the M.
    Maybe in the past appeasement was neccesary but that was 200 years ago, India is living in that past religiously, moderntantra does not really profit from the distortions, that crept into this tantra because people where appeasing the victorian era mindset. There are no mss. earlier than the 18th century ones from the library of Brahmo samaj or Ramamohan. So it is probably a compilation of earlier texts and some fake sociological parts where inserted.
    Last edited by MahaHrada; 06 July 2010 at 11:43 AM.

  2. #12
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    Re: Assorted Material on the Bengal Shakta Nationalists

    A most influential early british description of the shakta tantras comes
    from the Reverend William Ward, one of the leading figures in
    the spread of the Baptist Missionary Society in Bengal and one of the
    first Western authors to try to categorize the many diverse sects and castes
    of the “Hindoos.” In Ward’s eyes, Hinduism as a whole was “the most
    puerile, impure and bloody of any system of idolatry that
    was ever established on earth,” a religion of “idle, effeminate and
    dissolute people” with “disordered imaginations who frequent their
    temples for the satisfaction of their licentious appetites”

    In 1817, Ward’s book recounts the insidious practices described in the
    tuntras—practices that involve “things too abominable to be revealed to
    a Christian public”.

    These where the viewpoints of the christian rulers on the Hinduism of the common man which in bengal always was based on the tantras.
    Even today tantra has a bad name due to the hate of the british of everything genuinely hindu that smacked of idolatry and "debauch".
    Music and dance was enough to qualify as debauchery nothing except the quasi monotheistic celebration
    of the formless brahman in Vedanta was considered acceptable.

    Some impression on the viewpoints prevalent among the christians of that time.

    To know the Hindoo idolatry as it is, a person must
    wade through the filth of the thirty-six pooranus. . . .
    [H]e must follow the brahmun through his midnight
    orgies before the image of Kalee.
    William Ward, A View of the History,
    Literature, and Religion of the Hindoos (1817)

    Kàlí is wholly given over to cruelty and blood. She
    drinks the blood of her victims. She lives in an orgy
    of horrors.
    Rev. E. Osborn Martin, The Gods of India (1913)

    The dark image of this goddess is a truly horrid figure. . . . [S]he holds
    in one hand a scimitar in another a giant skull. . . . [S]he stands upon her
    husband . . . to keep him in subjection till the time of the universal con
    flagration. . . . She exhibits the appearance of drunken frantic fury. Yet this
    is the goddess . . . upon whose altars thousands of victims annually bleed,
    and whose temple . . . is the resort of Hindoos from all parts of India.

    Aurobindos devotion to Kali at the time he was organising the uprise in Bengal depicting her as scarred mother india suffering from the british rule:

    “Bhavani Bharati, Mother of India”:
    Garlanded with the bones of men and girdled with human skulls, with belly
    and eye like a wolf’s hungry and poor, scarred on her back by the Titan’s
    lashes, roaring like a lioness who lusts for kill . . . filling the world with
    bestial sounds and licking her terrible jaws, fierce and naked, like eyes of
    a savage beast, thus did I see the Mother.
    Thou naked art Kàlí and utterly ruthless thou art. . . . I bow to Thee as
    the violent One, O Ender of worlds. . . . The mighty Mother of creatures
    has vanquished the age of Strife . . . in East and West, I hear the cry of the
    whole world hastening with the praise on its tongue to this country, the
    ancient Mother of the Vedas . . . firmly established in the Aryan country.
    Abide forever gracious in this land, O mighty One.
    Last edited by MahaHrada; 07 July 2010 at 11:59 AM.

  3. #13

    Re: Assorted Material on the Bengal Shakta Nationalists

    So was aurobindo a radical and a supporter of terrorism?

  4. #14

    Re: Assorted Material on the Bengal Shakta Nationalists

    Quote Originally Posted by rainycity View Post
    So was aurobindo a radical and a supporter of terrorism?
    yes or no?

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