Rise of Popular Shaktism
In the 18th and 19th centuries, "a good number of Shakta-Tantric works were composed" that "attempted to make the Tantric ideas popular among the masses." Notable examples include the Mahanirvana Tantra, characterized by its "special modernism" and "liberal outlook, especially towards women." Works of the prolific and erudite Bhaskararaya, the most "outstanding contributor to Shakta philosophy," also belong to this period and remain central to Srividya practice even today.
The great Tamil composer Muthuswami Dikshitar (1775–1835), a Srividya adept, set one of that tradition's central mysteries – the majestic Navavarana Puja – to music in a Caranatic classical song cycle known as the Kamalamba Navavarna Kritis. "Dikshitar thus open the doors of to all those who are moved to approach the Divine Mother through devotional music." In the meantime an even greater wave of popular Shaktism was swelling in eastern India with the passionate Shakta lyrics of Ramprasad Sen (1720–1781), which "opened not only a new horizon of the Shakti cult but made it acceptable to all, irrespective of caste or creed." More than 80 Shakta poets appeared in Bengal after Ramprasad by 1900 the number of Shakta lyrics exceeded 4,000. And the tradition still survives."
From this point onward, "Shaktism was evolving as a liberal, universal religion" that touched nearly every aspect of Indian life. The evolution "achieved a completeness" in the great Shakta saint Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (1836–1886), "who held from his Shakta experience that the aim of all religions was the same and that the difference between the personal and the impersonal god was no more than that between ice and water."
Another major advocate of Shaktism in this period was Sir John Woodroffe (1865–1936), a High Court judge in British India and "the father of modern Tantric studies," whose vast oeuvre "bends over backward to defend the Tantras against their many critics and to prove that they represent a noble, pure, ethical system in basic accord with the Vedas and Vedanta." His complete works are still in print and remain influential to this day.
Ramakrishna's chief disciple Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) "inherited from Ramakrishna the Shakta-oriented, synthetic outlook which insisted on the cult of Shakti in the programme of national regeneration," and in fact "regarded the country as the living image of the Divine Mother" – an image that resonated throughout India's struggle for independence.
Another of India's great nationalists, Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950), later reinterpreted "the doctrine of Shakti in a new light" by drawing on "the Tantric conception of transforming the mortal and material body into pure and divine," and setting a goal of "complete and unconditional surrender to the will of the Mother."
Read more about this topic: History Of Shaktism
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