ABSTRACT
It was roughly the middle of the first millennium Ce that witnessed the emergence of a whole new branch of religious literature. This consists of texts which tend to call themselves ‘tantras’. It is not just the original meaning of the word ‘tantra’ which is disputed and far from clear. The nature of the material itself found here is still extremely obscure and its critical study has only just begun. The chapter on ‘Śaivism and the tantric traditions’ will summarise the results of current scholarship as far as material from Kashmir is concerned. Here some general comments will be made. Precisely because little critical study of the esoteric material has been available till very recently, all kinds of claims and global assessments by popularist writers could be made. Thus a concept ‘Tantrism’ (with the related adjective ‘tantric’) has gained great popularity, with its implied assumption that we are dealing here with a well-defined and coherent system of religious ideas and practices. But in reality, no such systematic coherence exists throughout the vast literature of the Tantras.
