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Research Paper | History | India | Volume 8 Issue 8, August 2019

Exploring the Changing Connotation and Unfolding the Historiography of Tantra

Nilam Kakati

Abstract: Tantra is represented as one of the most mysterious and demonized forms of scared space in Indic religious traditions. This received understanding is often synonymized with words like dark and evil edges of sacred spaces. Tantra has developed as a fascinating theme for exploration in the writings of both Indian and Western scholars. This fascination can be said to have augmented as ‘Tantra’ itself have undergone through a phase of shift and transformation in respect of its meaning and historiography. Meaning of the word ‘Tantra’ had transformed, which gave away different versions with each phase. In the initial phase, it meant knowledge of the objective world, whereas recent phase represents it as an esoteric sect. Likewise, the historiography of Tantra also had transformed from claiming it to be an inevitable part of Vedic tradition to viewing it as a separate entity from it which had an individualistic domain of its own. Both Western and Indian scholars have contributed to enrich the historiography of Tantra. This paper will attempt to examine these shifts in meaning and historiography of Tantra, its relevance and effect from an esoteric religious tradition to an ‘exotic’ substratum of Hinduism constructed during the Romantic period. It will also make an attempt to study the bearing and growth of Tantra as an esoteric sect which was influenced by the shift in meaning and historiography along with the writings of few eminent scholars on the subject.

Keywords: Esoteric sect, Historiography, Tantra, Tantrism

Edition: Volume 8 Issue 8, August 2019,

Pages: 1712 - 1715

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