"Aurobindo & Tantrism"

    Another important “Hindu Renaissance’' figure who was influenced by Tantric ideas was Aurobindo Ghose. As Bolle remarks, “Crucial symbolisms in Aurobindo’s (Yoga) system are of a Tantric character”, despite his tedious urge for conceptualization, which was partly due to the fact that he wrote in English, into which language yogic concepts are difficult to translate.

    The basis of his system is the idea that both Matter and Spirit are real. This is a continuation of the old Tantric teachings. The characteristic Tantric equations of nirvana with samsara, and of mukti with bhukti, are congruent with this system. Of course, Tantric ideas underwent a transformation in it, due to India’s exposure to the modem world, which caused Aurobindo to reinterpret the old teachings in order to accommodate a modem audience. Thus, for example, he posed the problem of physical existence in a more straightforward way which did not take the idea of samsara for granted.

    Again, his scheme of levels or planes of reality can be compared to the subtle physiology of the Hindu and Buddhist Tantras, with its system of chakras, etc. There is in both the Tantric system and in Aurobindo’s the same urge for a “beyond beyond the beyond”, i.e. no single chakra or level exhausts the Absolute. There is always a higher stage to be reached; and in both systems, there is no doubt expressed about the possibility of experiencing the highest levels.

    The very name of Aurobindo’s system, viz. “Integral Yoga”, refers to this urge to incorporate all experience; this attitude is similar to that of Tantrism. Aurobindo himself points out that his system is an elaboration of the Shakta Tantra. teachings, which to him are “broader and larger” than other systems of yoga; of course, the goal of his yoga is even higher than that of the Tantric unity of mukti and bhukti: it is the “perfect out flowering of the Divine in Humanity”. And, like the Tantras, he claims that his system is the “shortest way" to the goal. In short, it is difficult to distinguish between the two symbolic systems: among other things, both use symbolism which is at once cosmological and individual.

    Let us finally look at the evidence of direct interest in Tantrism as such. In the nineteenth century, Western scholars of Indian religion, like H. H. Wilson and M. Monier Williams, regarded Tantrism as a set of barbarous and obnoxious practices. Again, A. Barth characterized the left-handed rites as “delirious mysticism", and called the left-handed Shakta “a hypocrite and a superstitious debauchee”. Thus, as Padoux remarks, Tantrism was for Western experts a very peculiar, even repulsive, aspect of Indian religion. Goudriaan feels that this attitude was “possibly due to their Christian conditioning”. This reaction persisted well into the twentieth century, so that Payne wrote in 1933 that Shakta literature is “debasing", and that their spirituality is “no real excuse for the sensuality of much that is in the Tantras."

    Orthodox Hindu intellectuals—“sometimes under British influence", according to Goudriaan—also tended to see Tantrism as “a willful breach" of the sanatana dharma.7Thus, Bankimchandra Chatterji considered Tantrism to be a misguided involvement with wine and woman, under the guise of religion. Another Bengali, R. L. Mitra, also considered these practices revolting and depraved. Even in the first half of the twentieth century, Benoytosh Bhattacharya, a pioneer in the study of Vajrayana, considered Tantrism a sign that the mind of the entire society was diseased. He pointed out that Tantrism had been left alone by scholars due to its repugnant contents; he sadly noted that the Hindus were still in the thrall of Tantrism in their daily life and in their customs. He not surprisingly felt, therefore, that the Hindu society should be cured of this disease. 

    On the other hand, in the twentieth century the Tantras began to be seriously studied by Westerners. In 1900, Manmatha Nath Dutt’s English translation of the 'Mahanirvana Tantra' was published in Calcutta. From 1923 Woodroffe’s Tantrik Texts Series was issued, and it was mainly his efforts that changed the attitudes of scholars towards the Tantras. Thus, in 1921 Sir Charles Elliott felt that Tantric principles are liberal in that “caste restrictions are minimized (and) women are honored.”

    According to Payne, partly as a result of the increasing contact with the West, many of the more dubious Shakta practices “disappeared, or were suppressed”. Thus, Avalon (alias Woodroffe) referred in his books to the work of “several Shakta theologians, and translated the 'Tantrattava' or “Principles of Tantra\ written by one of them.” Again, Bankimchandra described the practices of the Shaktas in several of his novels, of which Kapalkundala and Ananda Math are well known, as we have seen. Many beliefs connected with Shakti were revived in the twentieth century, and a popular literature developed around them.

    Coming to the traditional groups, Bengali aristocrats had shown a renewed interest in Tantrism, in the latter part of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century. This* had resulted in the writing of Tantric digests like the 'Pranatoshini' and the ‘Haratattvavidhi’. Then, about a century ago, scholarly works on Shakta Tantrism began to be produced in the Bengali vernacular. Even though this falls outside the “creative period of Tantric literature”, the fact remains that Shaktism is still the “prominent denomination” in Bengal in the twentieth century.

    We can, therefore, conclude that, despite the increased prudishness of the colonial period, social attitudes towards Tantrism remained largely unchanged in Bengal during the “Hindu Renaissance”, because Tantrism continued to remain a strong and vital undercurrent of Bengali culture.