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पंचम खण्ड | २८०
अर्चनार्चन
But whether the Tantra may or may not have originated from the Vedas, it is called the fifth Veda by the orthodox believers. This belief makes Tantra as authoritative as the Veda itself. It is said to be the guiding Shastra of the Kaliyuga. According to the ancient Indian chronological system the universe is said to pass through an endless cycle of four Yugas or ages repeating itself over and over again. We are at present believed to be living in the fourth age of the cycle, called the Kaliyuga. It was preceded by Satyayuga or Kritayuga, Tretayuga and Dwaparayuga. The four Yugas together consitute one Mahayuga. In a mahayuga the first, namely, Kritayuga is the longest of the four, its duration being 1728 thousand years. The following yugas go on becoming shorter in duration, and the Kaliyuga is the shortest of the four, Its duration is 432 thousand year. One mahayuga consists of 4320 thousand years, Such one thousand mahayugas make one day of Brahma, the creator of the universe.
The present Kaliyuga was started nearly 3100 years before Christ, or roughly, more than 2500 years before the birth of Lord Buddha, The great battle of Mababharata between the Pandavas and Kauravas was faught toward the end of Dwaper yuga.
Now each of these four yugas has its own shastra which tells the rules governing the behaviour of the people of that age, their mode of worship, religious observances, ritual and rites, It is said in the Mahanirvanatantra (I, 28.) that in the Kritayuga shruti guides the people, in the treta the smriti, in the dwapara the puranas, and in the kaliyuga the guiding shastra is nothing else but the agama or tantrashastra. This saying is repeated in two other tantra works, namely, Kularnavatantta and Kubijakatantra, But this statement about the importance of tantra in the Kaliyuga can not, obviously, be taken too strictly. We can not say, for instance, that the shruti or Vedas are now secondary to the Tantra, or irrelevant or useless in the Kaliyuga. It must be admitted that the shruti, smriti and purana are as important even today as they were in the past ages. Moreover, if the importance of Tantra would have been mentioned in the shruti itself than it would have been far more authoritative. But actually we find that tantrashastra is not mentioned in the early works at all. The word Tantra does not appear in the Amarakosha. Nor does it find a mention among the vidyas or shastras listed in ancient literature like the upanishads or early smritis. This shows that Tantra with its elaborate ritualistic discipline must have come into wide-spread use at a comparatively later date, and in all probability this might have happened about the third or fourth century A. D.
While determining how old the Tantra is, we must differentiate between Tantra as an elaborate system of ideas and practices, and particular tantric beliefs. The latter are, indeed, found in very antient Sanskrit literature but
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