The Garland of Letters: Essays on Tantra/ Mantra Sastra

This book is an attempt to explain to an English-knowing reader an undoubtedly difficult subject. It is natural that given the difficulty and the mystery that surrounds the subjects strangers to India have failed to understand Mantra. They jumped to the conclusion that it is –meaningless superstition.” This is the familiar argument of the lower mind which says –what I cannot understand can have no sense at all.” Mantra is, it is true, meaningless to those who do not know its meaning. But others do, and to them, it is not –superstition.”

The Mantra-Sastra is worthy of a close study which, when undertaken, will disclose elements of value to minds free from superstition, of metaphysical bent and subtle seeing (Suksmadarsin). A profound doctrine, ingeniously though guardedly set forth, is contained in the Tantras of Mantra-Sastra or Agama.

This book is, as the sub-title states, a Collection of Studies in, or Essays upon, particular subjects in the Mantra-Sastra, a term which is commonly applied to the Tantra-Sastra. It is practically composed of two parts. After Chapter 1, which deals with the –Word,” Chapters 2-9 treat the Principles of the general doctrine of Sabda. Chapters 10-21 are elucidations of some subjects in the Tantra-Sastra which adopt the Mimamsa doctrine of Sabda with some modifications to meet its doctrine of Sakti. Chapters 12, 28 and 29 deal with the Mantras –Om” and the Gayatri.

An understanding of such terms as Sakti, Nada, Bindu, the Causal Saktis of the Pranava, BIjamantras and so forth, is essential for, those who would understand the Sastra in which they appear Hitherto knowledge of these matters has been confined (where it exists at all) to the Gurus and Sadhakas. This does not mean that my information has been gathered from oral sources only. On the contrary, the substance of it may be found in the Tantras. These are however generally unknown. The ‘definitions must be sought in many Sastras. When found they must be explained by the aid of general Sastric knowledge and of Upasakas who possess the tradition. As regards technical terms, I refer my readers to other .books which I have published, in particular, “Sakti and Sakta, The Serpent Power,” and the volumes of the series called “The World as Power” describing the chief concepts of Indian Philosophy and Religion.

Chapters 10-21 and 14 are reprinted from the Journal of the Vedanta-Kesari. Chapters 22-23 on “Om” and the “Necklace of Kali” appeared in East and West, and Chapters 28-29 on Mantrasadhana and the “Gayatri” in the Introduction to my edition of the Mahanirvana Tantra, which is now superseded, as regards the Introduction, by the fuller account of the Tantras and Tantrik ritual given in my volume, Sakti and sakta,” and as regards the Text, by another and more correct edition which I have in preparations. Chapter 30 on the “Gayatri as an exercise of Reasoning” is a reprint of a paper read by me before the Indian Rationalistic Society at Calcutta and has been previously published in its Bulletin. Ten of the papers dealing with general principles were delivered by me in 1919 as Extension Lectures at the instance of the National Council of Education, Bengal.

As I write the concluding lines of this preface heard by the ancient and desolate Temple to the Sun-Lord at Konaraka in Northern Orissa, a continuous rolling sound like that of the Mahamantra is borne to me from afar. I heard the same sound many years ago at the Pemiongchi monastery when some hundred Buddhist monks rolled out from the depth of their bodies the mantra Om. Their chant then suggested the sea, as the sea now suggests the Mantra. Here where the sound is heard are green woods, bushes of jasmine, cacti in bloom and the rose and yellow of the Karavira and Kalika flowers. Travelling however, whence it comes some two miles seaward, the eye surveys a wide wild waste of land, with here and there sparse clumps of Ketaki, stretching from the world-famous Temple of the "Lord of the Universe” in the south to the Golra jungle on the North. On the Eastern edge the surf of the Bengal Ocean in great waves, marbled with foam with creaming crests, whipped into filmy vapour by the wind, ceaselessly beats upon the lonely shore. The waves as all else are Mantra, for Mantra in its most basal sense is the World viewed as — and in its aspects of— sound. But as I have explained in the Text we must distinguish between Natural Name in its pure sense as the sound of the constituent forces of a thing and the sounds made by the thing when so produced. All lands and therefore movements form the “Garland of Letters,” which is worn by the Divine Mother, from whose aspects as Om or the General Sound (Samanyaspanda) of ± first creative movement all particular sounds and things some. For all things may be rendered in terms of sound. The Universe is movement The Letters are the sound of particular movements. These are audible as the gross letters that Kali, the Source of movement, wears as a garland around Her neck.

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