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Historical Development of Tantra
David Gordon White described the historical development of Hindu Tantrism from its earliest discernible origins before the first millennium of the current era down to the present day in his book
Kiss of the Yogini: “Tantric Sex” in its South Asian Contexts (2003). White disapproves of the New Age embrace of Tantra and insists that Tantra be used to describe a religion congruent with its roots in Asian culture. He points out that Tantra was not primarily focused on sex, but rather on providing rituals and practices for villagers to manage the terrifying natural forces which surrounded them (weather, natural catastrophes, disease). A number of these early Tantric rituals did involve mystical-erotic sexual practices.
Hugh Urban’s book, Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Politics and Power in the Study of Religion (2003), takes a more politicized view of the historical development of Tantra, In it he traces the ways in which Tantra and Tantric practices were used and interpreted by different groups in different eras for different purposes. The early roots of Tantra in the first millennium of the current era, predating the first written sources, may reflect efforts by marginalized people of the lower castes in India to subvert the organized religions of their day.
By the medieval period (early second millennium A.D.), Tantra had been co-opted by ruling elites, who built elaborate temples and subsidized priests and scholars who produced the documents called Tantras. In the Colonial period, Tantric philosophy was turned to ideological purposes, providing encouragement and a vision of a powerful, Indian-ruled subcontinent to the underground Bengali movements attempting to overthrow British rule. By Victorian times native Brahmin reinterpreters of Tantra were finding ways to spiritualize the sometimes troubling sexual teachings of the early texts (much as the Christian Church has found metaphorical meaning in the Song of Solomon, noted for its erotic passages).
For Urban, the current New Age embrace of Tantra and the admixture of different cultural traditions (Native American, Sufi, Taoist, Humanistic Psychology, etc.) to produce new iterations of Tantra is just the most recent step in a centuries-long process of cultural interpretation and reinterpretation, and the diffusion and intermixing of cultural beliefs and practices. He finds it no accident that the sexual elements of ancient Tantric practice are seized upon and given central importance at this particular historical-cultural nexus in the personally alienated, sexually obsessed West.
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