SAIVISM AND THE PHALLIC WORLD BY B.BHATTACHARYA

Posted by : Utpal Publications Wednesday, August 28, 2013

The present work deals exclusively with an area of profound mystic enquiry of perpetual interest. The secrets of the sacred East which had so far succeeded I drawing only limited interest among interested scholars appears to have, of late, exploded a popular interest. Naturally, a study of the actual bases of Saivism involves a close study of man’s preoccupations with the subject of sex on the one hand, and of divine inspiration on the other. Religions of East and West of the ancients and moderns which have left us absorbing and interesting records of man’s dive into the ocean of divine mystery and which have never been found missing in claiming the supreme intellectual and spiritual application of the human mind, have been placed under a scholarly scrutiny, which makes this work a remarkable contribution to the library of comparative religion. In fact to deal with Saivism is to deal with Hinduism in all its aspects; and to deal with the vexed subject of the worship of sex – organs is to enter into the very complex arena of primitive religions and their traditional cultural forms. This popular misconception of equating Saivism with Phallicism compels us to make a thorough study of the subject on the basis of comparative religion.

B. Bhattacharya, born in 1910 in Varanasi, received his first education in traditional ‘toles’ in Sanskrit and further did M.A (English) from Allahabad University. He has spent the best period of his life as an educationist in Guyana and Trinidad (West Indies). At present he lectures on comparative religion and Indian culture to Western audiences.

His work The World of Tantra is a unique contribution to Tantric tradition. Bhattacharya has been a reputed writer in Bengali prose and poetry, novels, stories, travelogues and belles-letters (in all 30 tiltles). His forthcoming works include Varanasi Rediscovered.