It is an honour to be assigned the task of welcoming and introducing this massive work by the renowned scholar, Dr. V. Varadacharya. He has been working on this theme for decades with admirable thoroughness and the present publication embodies his lectures under the noble Trust in Honour of the memory of the great savant, Prof. M. Rangacharya. The Trust was brought into existence by the highly accomplished and venerated son of the professor, the late lamented Prof. M. R. Sampatkumaran. The book is being brought out by the devoted and worthy cousin of the professor, Sri M. C. Krishnan. The book does promote the lofty goals of the Trust in a conspicuous measure
About the book itself, considering its vast scope, patient scholarship and meticulous documentation, it is hardly possible to pronounce a just and adequate estimate. Luckily, such is not the function of a foreword. The author starts with the giddy and dim heights of the Vedic religion and advances methodically to the delineation of recent Hindu philosophy and religion, which are dominated by the Agamas. The Recent Hinduism is Agamic in character, whether it be Sakta, Saiva or Vaisnava. Not that the hoary heritage of the Vedas, Upanishads, the Epics, Puranas and Smritis is discarded, but it is subsumed and concretized in the living traditions of practical Hinduism. Our author takes the treatment to further particularization and brings up to South Indian Vaisnavism.
The treatment is neatly introduced with a clear formulation of the subject-matter. The validity of the Agamas was sometimes questioned in the orthodox Hindu tradition itself and hence the question of their validity is considered critically
and exhaustively in the context of the vedic tradition. The dimensions of the Agamas, their classification and the principal schools of the Agamic religion receive their due consideration. This discussion arrives naturally at the second focal point of the work, the Vaisnava Agamas Their two-fold tradition, the Vaikhanasa and the Pancaratra, is taken up in all the required completeness We are given a full map of the Pancaratra texts How the spirit and doctrines of this Vaisnava agamic tradition penetrated Vaisnava literature in general is shown in great detail
The living Hinduism of recent times centres round worship. The principles and techniques of worship in private and in temples receive ample description, not excluding the art and science of the construction and maintenance of temples and the icons to be adored in them. How this conception and practice of religion deeply entered into the actual life of the people in all aspects is brought out in the concluding chapters.
The book, one may say, errs in its abundance. But it welds the bewildering mass of data into an integrated design. All the old sources and all the writings on the Agamas by modern writers are noticed and judiciously put to use. By far this is the weightiest modern treatment of the Agamas. While thanking the publishers, we are to hope for the right reception to this altogether solid contribution.
MYSORE 31-12-81
S. S. RAGHAVACHAR Professor and Head of the Department of Philosophy (Retd), University of Mysore.