Tantra Sex Secrecy Politics And Power In The Study Of Religion

A Complex body of religious practices that spread throughout the Hindu, Buddhist and Jain traditions; a form of spirituality that seemingly combines sexuality, sensual pleasure and the full range of physical experience with the religious life-Tantra has played a central yet conflicted role in the Western imagination ever since the first "discovery" of Indian religions by European scholars. Always radical, always extremely other, Tantra has proved to be a key factor in the imagining of India. This book offers a critical account of how the phenomenon came to be.