Like the scholars of head and heart that followed him
he recognised in the tantras a synthesis of the Brahmanical
intellect at its best with the “archaic matrilineal world-
feeling of the aboriginal civilization of India.” And though
he never once set foot on Indian soil, through the
“initiatiory ordeal” of the First World War, he also saw the
contemporary significance of this synthesis, anticipating
how – in our new modern ‘Dark Age’ or dark modern
‘New Age’, humanity “will tear to pieces the body of his
mother, Nature, and will quarry her for new and different
forms of power.” However Zimmer’s understanding of the
metaphysics of Tantra as a historical synthesis (culminating
in the writings of Abhinavagupta and the Trika school of
Shaivism) contrast radically with earlier views, shared by
both European scholars and Indian religious reformers
such as Rammohun Roy, that Tantrism was the scourge of
India, the source of her downfall, and a shameful
degradation – “utterly devoid of every moral principle” – of
the Aryan-Vedic religious tradition.
“If at any time in the history of India the mind of the
nation as a whole has been diseased, it was in the Tantric
age, or the period immediately preceding the Muhammedan
conquest of India ... Someone should take up ... the
diagnosis, etiology, pathology and prognosis of the disease
so that more capable men may take up its treatment and
eradication.”
Benyotosh Bhattacharya