Mélanges tantriques à la mémoire d’Hélène Brunner. Tantric studies in memory of Hélène Brunner

by Dominic Goodall and André Padoux

Theological and philosophical aspects of tantric literature are addressed in the contributions of Gerhard Oberhammer, Francesco Sferra, and Raffaele Torella. Peter Bisschop and Marion Rastelli throw light on connections between the tantric and puranic religious worlds. Diwakar Acharya has uncovered and published primary source material about initiation in pre-tantric saivism. Iconography and tantric ideas that underly it is the subject of the article of Pierre-Sylvain Filliozat. Leslie C. Orr and Richard H. Davis combine the evidence of inscriptions and tantric literature to present what we know of the participants in South Indian temple festivals in medieval times. Tantric speculations about the alphabet, particularly its written form at the time of redaction of the scriptures of the Trika, is the focus of Somdev Vasudeva. A scripture of the Siddhanta, the 100-verse recension of the Kalottara, is edited for the first time by Dominic Goodall. Judit Törzsök examines explanations given in the tantras of the “meaning” of ritual. The largest contribution of all, taking up a third of the book, is the magisterial survey of Kashmirian saiva exegetical literature by Alexis Sanderson.