WHAT IS HINDUISM?
The importance of deep metaphysical understandings
of Tantra was emphasised by Agehananda Bharata, when
he wrote that:
“Tantrism, like yoga and Vedanta ... could be respectable
in the Western world, provided that the traditions of solid
scholarship, of learning and intellectual effort ... did
accompany their migration into the occidential world.
Without these, I regard them as fraudulent.”
Agehananda Bharata The Tantric Tradition
And indeed, in recent decades much ‘solid’ but
intelligent and also sympathetic and feeling scholarship,
particularly on the subject of ‘Kashmir Shaivism’, has
found expression in the work of such leading figures as
Muller-Ortega (The Triadic Heart of Shiva) and Mark
Dyczkowski (The Doctrine of Vibration). Much is owed here
to the pioneering work of Heinrich Zimmer on ‘The
Philosophies of India’. Born in 1890 and holder of the
chair of Indian philology at Heidelberg University until
1938, he was forced to emigrate to Oxford by virtue of his
marriage to a German-Jewess. As Urban records:
“Throughout his career, Zimmer’s life and scholarship
were intimately related: as his daughter recalls, his spiritual
vision and his object of study were inseparable, fuelling him
in a prolific search for meaning: ‘life and learning for him
were never separated. All his work was part of his life and
his life part of his work’.”